Chapter 45: Divine Communication Art

"Junior brother, you seem a bit irritable."

Inside the brightly lit yet dead silent Amundsen Hall, only the lingering screams of that male student echoed in the air. Fingel scratched his head with a troubled expression before finally speaking up, "Actually, if you want to cut the power, you just need to give Norma a command. You didn't have to run all the way to the circuit breaker."

He pulled out the expensive custom smartphone Caesar had given him, tapped on the screen a few times, and said to the device, "Norma, cut the power to Amundsen Hall."

The faint sound of lights clicking off traveled from far to near, plunging Amundsen Hall into absolute darkness.

Holding his phone, Lu Mingfei—who had spent far too long in that gloomy alien realm—suddenly remembered the convenience of electronic devices. He slapped his thigh and asked, "Why didn't we just try calling Nono directly?"

Everyone fell silent. It was unclear whether they simply hadn't thought of it or were too reluctant to answer such a naive and foolish question.

Lu Mingfei drew his N96 from his pocket. In the pitch-black environment, the light from the phone screen illuminated his pale face. He searched for Nono's number in his contacts, dialed, and waited quietly.

"I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is powered off. Sorry..."

Although Lu Mingfei hadn't turned on the speakerphone, the pin-drop silence inside Amundsen Hall allowed the automated prompt to carry clearly across the room. No one dared to laugh.

Nor was there anything funny about it; this was by no means a useless test.

The phone being powered off, rather than ringing or going unanswered, revealed crucial information about the attacker.

First, the attacker possessed human-like perception and modern knowledge to a large extent. Had that not been the case, it would not have known how to turn off a mobile phone.

Second, the attacker was deliberately concealing its whereabouts. Otherwise, it could easily have taken Nono's phone away or let the call ring through to create a misleading diversion.

Of course, it was also possible that Nono's phone had been broken or simply ran out of battery.

The indirect information only made Lu Mingfei more anxious. Concealment and disguise did not merely signify fear on the part of the attacker; far more likely, it harbored a dark and sinister plot that forced it to adopt such camouflage!

He could wait no longer!

Lu Mingfei turned off his phone, clapped his hands, and raised his voice. "Everyone, let's each do a brief self-introduction. Just call out your number and state your name. I'll go first: 1, Lu Mingfei."

The first to respond was Fingel. He scratched his large head and asked with a troubled expression, "Junior brother, what are you up to this time? Is there any form of divination that requires this procedure? 2, Fingel."

A brief silence fell over the hall. The guests in Amundsen Hall exchanged glances in the near-total darkness, and for a moment, no one spoke.

Then, a cold, emotionless voice came from somewhere further away:

"3, Zero."

Upon hearing that voice, Lu Mingfei immediately recalled Zero's delicate and refined collarbones, her impossibly slender waist, and...

And the slender, white-silk-clad beautiful leg that had kicked the Nanton Hall director's desk flying and interrupted Lu Mingfei's ritual.

This pretty young woman was actually attending the Student Union banquet as well.

In hindsight, Lu Mingfei had to admit that Zero had largely saved him. At the time, he completely lacked enough people to share the burden of that terrifying ritual which had clearly undergone a mutation. Had all of that proceeded, the ultimate outcome would have been too ghastly to contemplate.

Yet Lu Mingfei felt no gratitude toward Zero.

Although the ritual had a ninety-nine percent chance of ending in failure and death, wasn't there still a one percent chance of success? That one percent chance of success had been ruthlessly obliterated by Zero!

With Zero breaking the dead silence, the roll call ordered by Lu Mingfei proceeded.

"4, Katerina."

"5, Anna."

...

"44, Bailey."

Dark clouds obscured the moonlight in the sky, and the electric lights had also been extinguished at Lu Mingfei's behest. There was barely a shred of light left inside Amundsen Hall.

Using the faint, lingering glimmer between heaven and earth to confirm that everyone present had called out their numbers, Lu Mingfei took a deep breath.

He untied his neatly knotted tie, picked up the clear water a female Student Union member had fetched for him earlier, rinsed his mouth, and simply washed his hands.

Shortly after, he produced a small incense burner and three sticks of incense from somewhere, ignited them with a lighter, and placed them on the cleaned dining table.

Outside Amundsen Hall, the monster hidden beneath human skin was step by step executing its stealthy plot. With every passing second of delay, the situation threatened to grow worse.

Yet the more urgent things became, the slower Lu Mingfei moved.

He methodically completed his series of preparations, and in the process, his initial irritability gradually subsided.

He reaffirmed his train of thought once more.

The unknown evil entity from the "prophetic dream" scenario had sneaked into Cassel College. Instead of immediately causing massive destruction upon infiltration, it had chosen to hide its identity and blend into the college.

However, its anomalies could not escape the eyes of Nono, a profiler, which was why Nono had lost contact after they targeted her.

What needed to be done now was to find Nono or directly locate the hidden evil entity to put an end to all of this.

And since his intuition told him that today was unfavorable for divination arts, Lu Mingfei decided to take a risk and use something with an even more potent effect—

The Art of Spirit Communion.

He intended to directly communicate with a certain Great Existence and demand that It give him the answer!

In truth, asking a Great Existence about such trivial, housekeeping-like matters was somewhat foolish and might even incur Its displeasure or punishment.

However, Lu Mingfei was, after all, a person currently being watched by the "Crawling Chaos," Nyarlathotep. Any seemingly insignificant matter could potentially snowball into an unimaginable catastrophe, so no amount of caution could be considered excessive.

Under normal circumstances, summoning the great Great Old Usurpers or Outer Gods required human sacrifices of matching dates and zodiac signs.

Although Lu Mingfei was a veteran of such arts and could bypass certain steps and conditions through specific incantations and talismans, preparing no sacrificial offerings at all still seemed rather whimsical.

However, that applied only under normal circumstances.

Had Lu Mingfei not already captured the attention of that "Immortal Lord of Central Yellow Supreme Ether" during the previous ritual at Nanton Hall? It would suffice to simply contact Him.

Lu Mingfei offered a well-intentioned reminder: "Everyone, please remain in place for the time being. If the fear becomes truly unbearable, you may cover your ears, but please do not make loud noises or run around blindly."

Amundsen Hall remained dead silent. No one was willing to engage with this mysterious, unhinged, and volatile fellow.

Lu Mingfei nodded. Lambs should look like lambs. He was quite satisfied with the attitude of the people inside Amundsen Hall.

"Very well, let us begin now."

At that moment, a cold voice rang out from the darkness:

"Does it really have to be done this way?"

It was Zero—Zero, who had survived one such gathering and deeply understood its terrifying nature.

Of course it didn't strictly have to be done this way, but it wasn't impossible either.

Lu Mingfei curved the corners of his mouth, pretending not to hear, and chanted in a cadence full of ups and downs:

"Brilliant are the nine heavens, vast and boundless the cloudy skies.
Gloomy and dark is the night, the constellations of the winch and basket are fixed.
The times of old have passed away, arriving suddenly as if in a flash.
Deficiencies in the four directions, let the spirits manifest here.
The return of the great man, the answer returns in a trance.
Trembling in fear, life is born from this very dread.
A name matched with heaven, summoned by the gods themselves..."

The red embers burning on the three sticks of incense in the burner suddenly turned green. Gusts of turbid, bizarre wind swept through the grand hall of Amundsen Hall, causing the smooth, elegant curtains to struggle and roll with flapping noises.

No entity deserving of the title "human" should ever consider this a good omen, yet it was about to unfold with irresistible momentum.