Black Candle

Jiang Yingying climbed into the car in a daze.

The unfamiliar man's voice still echoed in her mind from the driver's seat. There seemed to be something in his words that compelled her to obey without realizing it.

Only when the man started the car again did she regain some ability to think.

"Y-you... where are you taking me?" Jiang Yingying belatedly grew nervous and hugged the rooster in her arms tighter.

The feathers on the rooster's neck bristled. He was also extremely nervous.

Su Wu turned the steering wheel with one hand and answered Jiang Yingying in the back seat, "Everything out there has changed. You aren't safe outside. Sooner or later, you'll die.

You'd better stay with me.

I'll take you out of the city."

His tone was level.

He offered no suggestive words intended to make Jiang Yingying trust him, yet she believed what Su Wu said.

Art of Speaking was a very unusual talent.

After repeated experiments, Su Wu had discovered that this talent became powerfully effective whenever he told people the truth, without any deceptive wording.

It made others readily believe what he said.

But if he tried to deceive someone or tell a lie, whether the talent activated came down to luck.

Jiang Yingying nodded gently and timidly studied Su Wu's profile. In a soft voice, she asked, "Do you know what's going on with those lanterns in the sky?"

Her parents had died in this sudden disaster.

Once she emerged from her dazed state, the grief welling up inside her took hold of her mind again.

"I don't."

Su Wu shook his head.

The era in which "Zhuo Jie" lived should have been two or three hundred years before the present.

The Secret Treasury Domain had already been teeming with fiends in that era. What had other regions been like at the same time?

If most places back then had faced the danger of fiend attacks, why had the fiends instead disappeared for so long in modern times?

Why had they only gradually begun to resurface recently?

Even figuring out why the fiends had returned was a daunting problem for Su Wu.

Tracing their origins and discovering where they came from was even further beyond him.

"Every time these red lanterns rise into the sky, they randomly take some people's lives.

The heads of those who die turn into more red lanterns.

Anyone who witnesses their heads transform gets 'infected' too, and dies as a result." Su Wu explained the Eye Fiend's rules for killing.

Hearing this, Jiang Yingying had a question. "But I... I've seen people right in front of me more than once..."

As she recalled those scenes, the girl felt not only profound grief, but also a shadow of terror that haunted her constantly.

"That's because something you carry with you has the power to ward off the red lanterns." Su Wu cut her off, stopping her from dwelling on the past.

As he spoke, he turned to glance at the rooster in Jiang Yingying's arms. "That's a handsome rooster. He's a little different from an ordinary one."

"His name is Emergency Can." Jiang Yingying stroked the rooster's bright red comb.

Then she realized what Su Wu was implying. Looking at the rooster in her arms, she asked quietly, "Are you saying he has the power to ward off the red lanterns?"

"Yes."

Su Wu nodded.

The black Cruze tore down the road, surging onto the overpass amid the roar of its engine and weaving between the cars stranded there like a butterfly flitting through flowers.

Some cars had their windows tightly closed, and terrified human heads could be seen inside, repeatedly smashing against the glass;

Others had their windows open, with only headless bodies left inside. Their heads had long since turned into red lanterns and flown into the sky.

Suddenly, as the car came off the overpass, Su Wu hit the brakes and stopped at the intersection.

Holding the Candle in one hand, he opened the door with the other. "Let's get out and have a look."

"Get out?" Jiang Yingying hesitated.

She saw a car on her side with its windows tightly closed.

Inside, the heads of a man and a woman were frantically battering the windows, casting pleading looks her way.

If an ordinary man and woman had asked for help, she would have been willing to lend a hand.

But what was calling for help inside that car was a pair of severed heads.

Jiang Yingying was terrified.

"You have Emergency Can to protect you. You'll be fine.

As it happens, I need your pet to look after me too." Su Wu was already halfway out the door, his calm voice reaching Jiang Yingying from outside.

His words eased much of the girl's fear.

Jiang Yingying obediently murmured her assent and followed him out, holding the rooster.

Then she watched Su Wu approach the car where the two dead people's heads kept striking the windows for help, reach out, and pull the door open!

What was he doing?!

As the girl watched the two heads fly out of the car one after the other, her mind went utterly blank!

Emergency Can, you'd better work!

The thought burst into Jiang Yingying's mind,

Then she saw the two heads that had floated out of the car thanking Su Wu over and over. "Thank you. Thank you for saving us."

Despite being so close to "them," Su Wu's head remained firmly on his neck, without the slightest change.

Having already taken a fiend into his body, Su Wu could distinctly feel an inexplicable force enveloping him from behind this time, shielding him against the power emanating from the man's and woman's heads.

It was Emergency Can's innate ability.

Su Wu watched the two heads floating before him. Their expressions shifted from ecstasy to stiffness, then a deep red light flooded their eyes. In an instant, they became two lanterns!

The two lanterns swayed, shedding red light,

About to drift toward the horizon.

At that instant, a pitch-black arm abruptly sprouted beneath Su Wu's right armpit. Its ten fingers spread wide, seized one of the lanterns just before it could fly away, and dragged it back!

A bone-piercing chill kept erupting from the red lantern. That aura seemed capable of freezing a human hand clean off, but it caused no change whatsoever when it washed over the Corpse Buddha Ghost Hand!

But,

Jiang Yingying watched a "third hand" grow beneath Su Wu's right armpit. After her mind went blank, her entire body began to tremble!

She wavered over whether to flee at once,

The man before her, who had brought her into his car, was clearly displaying "inhuman" traits!

The girl hesitated.

Su Wu had no eyes in the back of his head, but he still knew the struggle she was going through.

He was watching too,

To see whether she would leave him at this moment and escape on her own.

Fortunately, after a brief hesitation, Jiang Yingying stayed where she was, holding Emergency Can rather than leaving.

Su Wu spoke at just the right moment. "The world isn't quite normal anymore.

So even though I don't look quite normal, I'm actually still a normal person.

Don't worry. I'm different from those lanterns in the sky."

As he spoke, his Corpse Buddha Ghost Hand tore apart the red lantern's outer paper shell and pulled out a pitch-black candle wrapped inside it.