第15章 诺丁城最后的乐子

"Hey, I'm asking, what's with that expression?"

Xiao Wu abruptly turned her head away and sniffed hard. "What's wrong with my expression? My expression is just fine!"

"Just fine?" Luo Yan leaned in closer, tilting his head to look at her. "So you really are a rabbit, huh? No wonder your eyes are so red."

"San, you'd better watch out. I'm afraid it might be contagious."

"You...!"

"Alright, alright."

Tang San placated the impending explosion of rage from Xiao Wu and looked earnestly at Luo Yan.

"Where is your first stop?"

"Heaven Dou City."

Xiao Wu opened her mouth as if she wanted to say something, but in the end, she only let out an "oh."

Tang San nodded and asked no more.

The three of them stood by the school gate for a moment.

The wind blew in, carrying the scent of damp earth and the distant smell of cooking smoke.

Luo Yan adjusted the bundle on his shoulder.

"Alright, I'm off."

With that, he turned and left.

He didn't wave, nor did he look back.

Xiao Wu instinctively took half a step forward, but Tang San gently caught her wrist.

She stopped and stood right there in the middle of the road, watching Luo Yan's silhouette grow longer and smaller against the flagstones as he walked further and further away.

He didn't look back.

Not even once.

Xiao Wu clamped her lips tightly together. "Remember to write to us!"

Not until that silhouette turned into a small alley outside the city gate and vanished entirely did she turn her face away, her voice so small it was barely audible. "That jerk, he wouldn't even look back once."

Tang San didn't speak.

He continued to gaze down that empty little alley.

Meanwhile, inside the alley, Luo Yan stopped in his tracks.

He leaned against the mottled wall, lowered his head, and closed his eyes for a moment.

A few breaths later, he raised a hand and gently brushed it across his face.

The Elation Mask surfaced silently.

A trace of extremely faint spirit power undulated outward from the mouth of the alley.

One yellow and one purple, two spirit rings bloomed beneath his feet.

Luo Yan looked at that purple-glowing ring, his thoughts drifting back to the day he absorbed his second spirit ring.

That day, he had skipped class.

Calling it skipping class was really just vaulting over the back wall without even bothering to write a fake excuse note.

There weren't many places around Notting City where one could hunt a millennium spirit beast, so he had tracked his way into the middle section of the Soul Hunting Forest, squatting near a cliff for two days before finally finding a suitable prey.

A millennium Shadow Leopard.

The creature was pitch-gray all over, nearly blending in completely with the rocks when it crouched.

Luo Yan took a single look from afar and decided to give up.

Are you kidding me?

The Shadow Leopard belonged to the shadow attribute; it was fast, could conceal itself, and possessed a millennium of cultivation—and he was a single-ringed master trying to fight this thing.

He squatted behind a tree, preparing to wait for it to leave and then find another one.

As soon as he took half a step back, the Elation Mask suddenly flew out on its own.

"..."

Luo Yan watched with his own eyes as that mask flew like a flung-away iron discus, spinning in the air and charging straight at the Shadow Leopard.

The leopard reacted with extreme speed, its front paws kicking off, and the entire spirit beast transformed into a gray blur, about to scatter into the woods.

Then it got bitten.

The mask clamped onto the back of the Shadow Leopard's neck.

The Shadow Leopard shook its head frantically, rolled around, and even used its sharp claws to rake at its own shadow, but the mask simply wouldn't come off.

It was laughing.

Luo Yan stood frozen in place. Even though he was far away, he saw it clearly.

The corners of the mask's mouth were indeed curling upward.

The Shadow Leopard's body began to convulse.

Beneath its gray-black fur, ripples of spirit power were drained away like bones being pulled out, growing weaker and weaker bit by bit.

In the end, without even letting out a single cry, it collapsed onto the ground and stopped moving.

The mask slowly flew back, landing docilely in Luo Yan's palm without even a single drop of blood staining it.

Luo Yan lowered his head to look at the mask, then raised it to look at the millennium Shadow Leopard collapsed in the distance, falling silent for a long time.

"Are you mental?" he said.

Naturally, the mask didn't answer.

The spirit ring was already floating up, its purple light casting flickering shadows all around.

After careful consideration, Luo Yan chose to sit down and absorb it.

The entire process went unusually smoothly.

The millennium spirit ring entered his body, and he didn't even feel pain; he only heard laughter constantly ringing in his ears—very soft, as though leaking out from the mask, or perhaps growing straight out of his own mind.

The moment the spirit ring completely stabilized, Luo Yan checked his second spirit skill right away.

He had assumed that the Shadow Leopard's attributes would at least grant him concealment, phasing, or even an attack-type spirit skill.

As it turned out, no.

When the second spirit skill surfaced in his mind, he was utterly dumbfounded.

"From this moment on, your mask will incessantly absorb the surrounding emotions to form willpower, and you... what will you use this willpower to do? Disguise yourself as someone else? Interfere with reality? Create things that don't belong here? Or construct a simulated imaginary entity? Ahahahahahahaha~"

That's right, this was the description of the spirit skill.

Yet this was by no means the sort of effect a millennium spirit skill should have.

It was Aha's handiwork.

Luo Yan pulled his thoughts back.

Come to think of it, that night in the south of the city when he punished that rogue spirit master, he had already given it a light test run.

This spirit skill—he liked it a lot.

Aha had finally done something decent for once.

The corners of Luo Yan's mouth split into a grin, accompanied by a burst of purple light. "Second spirit skill, Floating Life Like a Dream."

When those fluctuations dissipated, the person standing in place was no longer a delicate youth.

Instead, it was a young girl facing the wall with her hair tied up in high twin ponytails.

Her red dress and silver accessories set each other off brilliantly, with a red mole sitting beneath each of her eyes. The straps of the flip-flops on her feet were tightly wrapped around her ankles, and the small attached bells chimed crisply.

She casually raised a hand, brushing away a stray lock of hair resting against her ear.

She turned around and glanced toward the mouth of the alley.

On that face belonging to Sparkle, a sweet yet dangerous smile slowly blossomed.

"Well then, considering the virtue of this spirit skill—"

Her voice was crisp, carrying a lightness that did not belong to Luo Yan himself.

"—let's bring a tiny bit of elation and shock to Douo Continent!"

She kicked the tip of her boot, her skirt spinning in a swirl, and slipped weightlessly into the crowd like a red butterfly.

Luo Yan had originally been very close to the south gate.

Yet the commotion coming from the street corner made her stop in her tracks.

A few people wearing Spirit Hall uniforms surrounded the middle of the street. The leader was a young man with an inspection badge pinned to his chest, currently kicking an elderly white-haired man sprawling onto the ground.

Knelt beside the old man was a teenager around ten-odd years old, his forehead pressed against the dirt as his voice trembled. "My Lord, my grandfather didn't do it on purpose. We really didn't mean to bump into you..."

"Not on purpose?"

The young man dusted off the ash on his sleeve. "You can bump into me when it's not on purpose, so if it was on purpose, wouldn't you kill me?"

"My Lord, please, I beg you, my grandfather really knows he was wrong..." The child cried breathlessly.

The onlookers formed circle after circle, yet no one stepped forward.

Several peddlers shrank their necks, not even daring to look too closely.

The people from the Notting City Spirit Hall Branch were the law here.

Even the city lord's mansion had to show them a shred of courtesy, let alone ordinary commoners.

Luo Yan watched the scene and smiled.

She certainly wasn't going out of her way to look for trouble; the trouble had simply walked right up to her.

She took a step and walked toward the crowd.

The sound of the bells on her ankles was very soft, yet for some reason, the people around her all instinctively cleared a path.

The red dress looked like a cluster of flames in the twilight, burning outward from the gray-looking crowd and straight up to those Spirit Hall members.

"Oh my, oh my, how very lively."

Sparkle stopped in her tracks, her hands clasped behind her back as she bent forward slightly. She looked at the old man on the ground, then at the kneeling child, and finally let her gaze fall upon the young man's face.

"Big Brother, what's going on here? I just wanted to come over and watch the fun, but seeing you guys like this, it doesn't look much like a street-performing troupe, does it?"

She smiled, her voice sweet and soft.

The young man frowned, sizing her up. "Where'd this little girl come from? Spirit Hall is on official business, don't go looking for your own trouble."

"Official business?"

Sparkle tilted her head. "But Big Brother, aren't you guys just bullying people?"

"You—"

Before he could finish, Sparkle clapped her hands together with an "Ah!"

"I get it! Are you guys helping them train their bodies? Give 'em a kick so their backs will be straight from now on. Make 'em kowtow so their necks are properly aligned, right?"

Someone in the crowd failed to hold back and let out a low chuckle.

The young man's expression instantly turned unsightly. "You motherf—"

"Oh, Big Brother, don't use dirty words."

Sparkle took half a step back, looking as though she had been startled. "I'm praising you, you know. Grandpa with the white hair is getting up there in age, but he can still help people train their bodies—how amazing is that? When he recovers, how about letting me have a turn?"

She lifted her foot and lightly tapped it against the ground, causing her bell to ring out with a ding.

"Me? I'm the absolute best at training other people's bodies."

The young man finally snapped. "Get the hell lost! Say one more word and I'll drag you into this too—"

Before his words faded, purple light swept past his feet.

One yellow and two purple spirit rings silently spun outward from the soles of Luo Yan's feet.

With her back to the crowd, no one saw the expression on her face.

Yet those Spirit Hall members saw every bit of it.

A millennium second ring.

The young man's face froze instantly, and the lackeys behind him stiffened completely.

"You... you're that person?" His voice held a trace of startled doubt.

Luo Yan said nothing.

She merely raised a hand, tucking a strand of hair that had drifted across her cheek behind her ear, her eyes shining as brightly as a sky full of stars.

"Me? My name is Sparkle, a kind-hearted person just passing by."

She stepped forward another two paces, arriving beside the elderly white-haired man, and bent down to help him up. "Weren't you guys having a wonderful time playing just now? Then how about I join in and play too, hmm?"

The young man wanted to shout out an order to seize her, but upon meeting those eyes, he suddenly felt as though his throat had been choked by something.

"Come on."

Sparkle said softly, "Whoever runs away, I'll make sure both his legs can never move again. Do you guys want to try?"

Their faces turned green.

"Not running?"

Sparkle blinked. "That's wonderful. Let me teach you a lesson, then."

She extended a hand, making an extremely light, subtle gesture.

Willpower silently dispersed, crawling along the ground toward those few individuals.

"You guys, go ahead and fiercely stamp on the exact foot the other person used to kick someone just now!"

The young man frantically tried to refuse.

Yet the very next second, a lackey behind him had already raised his foot and slammed it down viciously onto the top of his foot.

"Ah—!"

"Sorry, Boss! I—I couldn't control myself!"

"You—"

"Ah! Boss, I'm sorry!"

The street plunged into chaos.

The few Spirit Hall members stomped on each other's feet, howling in pain and cursing, like a group of clowns pulled along by strings.

The onlookers held back at first, but soon someone laughed out first, and then the entire street burst into laughter.

Sparkle stood amidst the laughter and gently patted the child's head. "Don't be afraid. Sometimes, bad guys also need to learn what it feels like to be kicked."

The child stared at her blankly, completely forgetting to wipe away his tears.

Luo Yan turned around and melted into the crowd.

With her back to the center of the street, she raised a hand and gave a little wave.

The bells chimed three times, and the person was already gone.