Chapter 54: The Unknown Thing

"Didn't you go check out that spell formation or whatever? How did you end up looking like you were caught in a battlefield bombardment?"

Nono looked at Lu Mingfei, who was walking over from a distance, with a hint of surprise on her face.

Lu Mingfei looked pale, with sunken eye sockets and bloodshot eyes. He was clutching his school uniform with one hand, and large, dark smudges covered his face and clothes. He could not possibly look more battered.

Although analyzing the Azathoththeurgical invocation was not something Lu Mingfei had wanted to do, it had still drained his sanity and energy. Right now, his temples were throbbing violently, and he felt deeply agitated.

Those events from moments ago, which had almost caused everything to slide into the abyss, were things Lu Mingfei could only seal away in the deepest recesses of his mind.

"Don't ask too much, and don't look too closely. You said something felt off just now? What felt off?"

"Just now, I seemed to..."

Before Nono could finish her reply, Lu Mingfei also heard a faint, third sound amidst the mountain wind and their own breathing.

It sounded like someone dragging a heavy fabric sack across the asphalt, creating a subtle, scraping noise. It sounded as if soft items stored within fabric fibers were being deformed by the pressure of the hard road surface.

At first, the sound was so faint it was almost like an auditory hallucination, but as it steadily and continuously drew closer, it gradually grew clearer.

Lu Mingfei tried to picture the owner of this sound in his mind, but he still could not reconcile it with their current environment.

"I heard that sound, too."

Lu Mingfei had never liked making things difficult for himself, so he tossed the difficult problem to Nono, who was sharper than him.

"Don't use profiling. What do you think that is?"

Nono frowned.

"It sounds a bit like a sack being dragged across the ground, but at a time like this, why would anyone be dragging a sack around the mountaintop? Besides, this speed is abnormally slow. Are you really sure I can't use profiling?"

Use profiling in the very place where the Azathoth invocation had been set up and had nearly succeeded?

Lu Mingfei stiffly twitched the corner of his mouth and waved his hand.

"Even if we die here, you cannot use it. Fine, just let it come up."

Lu Mingfei's original purpose in going to the Amberant Club today to attend the dance was to hunt down any potential alien entities, so he naturally brought plenty of spellcasting materials with him.

Although the scraping entity was moving extremely slowly, this was the only winding mountain road up and down the peak. To avoid colliding with that thing, the only option left was to jump off the cliff.

There was nowhere to run, but he had sufficient materials and time to prepare.

Lu Mingfei decided to conserve his energy while waiting for the enemy to tire, setting up a simple ritual altar on the mountaintop to wait for that thing to approach on its own.

He pulled the small bronze censer he had used earlier at the Amberant Club from his waist, found a relatively flat rock near the mountaintop spring, and placed the censer upon it.

He had already summoned the Central Yellow Taiyi Immortal Monarch once today, and it was unwise to petition the gods again within such a short span of time, but he had other methods.

Lu Mingfei first took off his white shirt, which was nearly stained black, and squatted bare-chested by the spring water to wash his face and hands.

Although using this step as an anchor would not enhance the spell's effects or win the favor of the gods, it could calm his emotions and effectively reduce the loss of sanity.

The coldness of the spring water slightly dispelled the chaos and dizziness in Lu Mingfei's mind. With utmost caution, he pulled a transparent glass bottle from his trouser pocket, which contained pale blue powder emitting a faint, crystalline glow.

Immortal Sand.

A gift from Zhao Menghua.

The Immortal Sand derived from the decomposition of a human body consisted of three types of blue powder with slightly differing shades, originating from skin and flesh, tendons and bones, and internal organs respectively. Among them, the palest shade, derived from the "internal organs," was best suited for setting up offensive spells.

Lu Mingfei opened the bottle, pinched his nose to pour some into his mouth, and then sprinkled a thin layer over the censer.

"Ugh!"

With his extensive experience, Lu Mingfei naturally harbored no resistance to such matters. The Immortal Sand melted upon contact with the tongue, and truthfully it had very little taste, but his body instinctively rejected it, causing him to retch violently.

Having finally managed a lavish meal courtesy of Caesar, he was now returning all of it.

Because Nono's spiritual perception was too high to assist with the ritual, Lu Mingfei had dispatched her to move the car, ensuring that if the creeping, friction-making anomaly possessed terrifying combat prowess, he could immediately jump in and escape.

Seeing Lu Mingfei's strange reaction, Nono couldn't help poking her head out to ask, "Lu Mingfei, are you alright?"

"I'm fine."

Unlike the bloating pain and terror that accompanied the bestowal of power from a great existence, the power brought by the Immortal Sand was intoxicating, making one uncontrollably yearn for more.

No wonder the church's canon from his past life, which explicitly prohibited large-scale hunting of humans to produce Immortal Sand, wasn't even as useful as toilet paper.

Pulling back his thoughts, Lu Mingfei slowly exhaled a breath of turbid air, lit the joss stick, and knelt down.

Influenced by the joss stick, the burning red tip gradually shifted to a pale blue, and the pleasant sandalwood fragrance transformed into the indescribably bizarre scent of the Immortal Sand.

The sky above the mountaintop platform was dim, and in the distance, the brightly lit Cassel College could be faintly seen halfway up the mountain.

Beneath the misty drizzle, the pale smoke generated by the burning joss stick merged with the thin fog of the peak. The delicate-faced young man knelt quietly before the censer, truly possessing a certain ineffable Daoist charm amidst the mountains.

Who could have guessed what dark truth was hidden behind this scene of harmony between man and nature?

"Y..."

"Y... S..."

The sound of fibers scraping against the asphalt road grew clearer, accompanied by withered, unrecognizable mumblings.

Nono had already parked the car and stepped down, standing beside Lu Mingfei. Perhaps the mountaintop rain was too bone-chilling, causing even someone with her superior bloodline to pale at the lips and tremble slightly.

"Let's go. Don't come up. Hurry and leave..."

Lu Mingfei felt a strange confusion inside. Although Nono was sometimes eccentric and prone to offending others, her personality was brave, astute, and resilient, much like a female martial hero. How could she be scared to this extent?

"Did you see something again? If the situation is truly dire, I'll finish casting the spell and we can evacuate immediately."

With the unconscious Brother Caesar lying nearby, it didn't matter if you couldn't outrun the bear; as long as you could outrun your companion, that was enough.

Nono remained silent. As the scraping sound drew closer, her trembling gradually ceased, and her body slumped. A pale, stunningly beautiful face revealed a quiet sorrow.

At this moment, Lu Mingfei already held a talisman in one hand while placing the other on the altar of soldiers and horses, waiting to clearly identify the target before activating "Time Zero" and channeling this Immortal Sand-amplified thunder magic straight onto the anomaly's head.

"Ye Sheng, Ye Sheng..."

The high beams of the Bugatti Veyron, which had been turned around to pierce through the mist, were now illuminating the road. The entity repeating those withered mumblings finally rounded the last bend of the winding mountain road, revealing its form beneath the brilliant white pillar of light.

It was crawling along the asphalt road using blood-drenched hands in a bizarre and arduous posture.

Distorted, withered, pale, crimson, and bearing a gentle face.

Jiude Yaji.