Chapter 222: Bai Ziling's Relic, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Bai was gone.

More accurately, she was dead. Her claim about traveling to another timeline was just a lie—one insignificant lie among many.

But to Ke Mingqing, it made little difference whether she had truly left or died. Either way, he would probably never see her again.

The abandoned building fell completely silent. No cicadas chirped in the night. It was absolutely still.

Ke Mingqing sat on a stone slab, staring blankly at the side of Bai Ziling's face.

A moment later, his eyebrows twitched. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of two strange threads shimmering in the moonlight, looking like a fleeting spiderweb.

"Are these... Bai's puppet strings?"

Ke Mingqing slowly looked up, muttering to himself.

He stood up from the stone slab and followed the path of the threads, tracing them to their source. Soon, he spotted something bizarre on a section of the ceiling:

Two threads descending from the ceiling were wrapped around a delicate little black booklet, suspending it in midair.

The booklet swayed gently. A sprig of roses tied to its cover drifted in the moonlight and shed a single petal. It brushed past Ke Mingqing's nose, carrying the lingering scent of Bai.

Ke Mingqing fell silent. He watched the petal land, feeling inexplicably reassured.

"Always with the theatrics. What is that old woman up to?" he muttered, sighing. After a moment of hesitation, he raised his right index finger and fired a weak bolt of lightning toward the ceiling.

The lightning sliced through the air, snapping the threads. The booklet tumbled downward, its pages fluttering and rustling in the wind as it fell.

It snapped shut right as it landed in Ke Mingqing's hand.

Ke Mingqing looked down at the cover. A single line of English was written across it—"User Guide for 'Bai'"—followed by a drawing of a heart bound by strings.

His eye twitched.

"Could this be any weirder?" he muttered. He flipped the booklet open and found lines of elegant handwriting, also in English.

[Bai: By the way, to spare you the trouble of explaining things, I left a puppet outside the abandoned building. You should be able to see it right about the time you read this line.]

Just as Ke Mingqing read those words, a woman wearing a black veil and a white skirt suit walked through the entrance of the abandoned building.

The woman had white hair and red eyes. She looked exactly like an older version of Bai Ziling. Without a doubt, this was Bai.

Ke Mingqing froze. He quietly stared at the figure approaching against the moonlight. His pupils contracted, and he blurted out, "...Bai?"

'No, this isn't her.' He quickly realized a crucial detail.

There was no super-human species panel hovering over her head. This meant she wasn't human, but rather an entity without actual life. Calling it a puppet or a golem would be accurate.

Staring into those dead, night-like red eyes, Ke Mingqing muttered, "This must be the puppet she mentioned in the booklet. But why did she make it look like herself?"

[Bai: That puppet shares my appearance and has roughly the same abilities. Once I'm gone, it will go find you.]

[Bai: Oh, and you must be wondering what I've been doing all day. I put a lot of effort into preparing my 'aftercare,' so you'd better remember me with gratitude.]

[Bai: My ability is fundamentally 'Puppet Strings,' which doesn't have much to do with 'puppets' themselves. The puppet I created will hand the control strings over to you—with those strings, you can command it at will with just your thoughts.]

[Bai: Next, it will follow the steps I programmed and hand the most crucial 'puppet string' to you.]

[Bai: All you need to do is tie the 'puppet string' around the fingers of either hand, then pierce your palm with the fine needle at the end. Once it absorbs your blood, the binding ritual will be complete.]

Reading this, Ke Mingqing looked up from the black booklet. "Bai" slowly approached and held out her right palm, offering him a small, faint ball of thread.

He took the puppet strings, half-skeptical. Handling the weightless, icy threads, he wrapped them around the five fingers of his right hand, loop by loop.

A moment later, Ke Mingqing found a fine needle attached to the very end of the thread.

He pricked the needle into his palm. A tiny drop of blood seeped from beneath his skin, dyeing the loops of thread red. In that moment, Ke Mingqing's right hand looked like a crimson cocoon.

A few seconds later, the threads vanished completely, leaving only a tiny prick in his palm.

"There doesn't seem to be... any change?"

Just as the thought crossed his mind, a bizarre new perspective blossomed in his head. It was as if he and the puppet were now tethered together.

Fragmented images suddenly flooded his vision. He saw a white-haired girl hugging her knees, curled up in pitch-black darkness, her red eyes glowing like a stray cat's in the night.

Later, on a freezing winter day, the door to the box opened. The girl carefully squeezed out to find a devastated world. The once-prosperous city was now a wasteland. She walked through the deserted Lingmu Commercial Street and entered an empty train station.

Amid a world of ice and snow, the girl trekked along the abandoned train tracks through a blizzard, silently murmuring someone's name...

Many, many years passed in the blink of an eye. Those scenes flashed through Ke Mingqing's mind like a fleeting montage.

The white-haired girl smiled faintly as she trekked through a vast desert with a strange suitcase on her back, raising an arm to shield her eyes from the setting sun. She reached out to pet a penguin in the Antarctic, only to yelp in surprise when it spat a fish at her. She stood beneath the Eiffel Tower, gazing up at the brilliant lights to the sound of violins, spreading her arms as if to embrace the entire night sky...

Eventually, she returned to that forgotten, abandoned building.

The girl lay sprawled spread-eagle on the moonlit stone slab, staring blankly up at the dusty ceiling.

"Giovanni, will I ever see you again...?" she whispered softly, slowly closing her eyes.

Ke Mingqing's heart trembled. Snapping out of the fragmented memories, he opened his eyes once more.

A few seconds later, Giovanni's and Bai's heartbeats fell into an uncanny rhythm. Their hearts beat in perfect synchronization, the thumping clearly audible in the absolute silence.

Ke Mingqing sat in a daze for a moment before slowly looking up.

In the moonlight, "Bai" opened her red eyes and looked up to meet his gaze. Their movements were exactly the same, matching perfectly.

[Bai: For the next four months, you can control my puppet and have it act as 'Bai' within Death Crow. This way, you won't arouse the suspicion of the boss and the others.]

[Bai: Making this puppet took me a considerable amount of time and a lot of precious materials. Logically, the other members of Death Crow shouldn't be able to spot any flaws.]

[Bai: But watch out for the 'eyes of a player.' If they notice she doesn't have a super-human species panel, they'll get suspicious.]

[Bai: Oh, this puppet also has the ability to 'turn dead Espers into puppets,' but it can only control a single Esper at a time. It's not nearly as impressive as me.]

[Bai: By the way, make sure to change her appearance. You can manage a little thing like that, right? Comrade Giovanni, you managed to fool me for so long without me ever finding out. Don't go getting caught by the rest of Death Crow the second I hand this puppet over to you.]

"You don't need to tell me that..."

Ke Mingqing smirked and muttered silently to himself. He gave the puppet strings on his fingertips a slight tug, and the woman in the white skirt suit suddenly sprang into motion.

She raised her string-wrapped right hand, traced the corner of her mouth, and pierced the fine needle at the end of the thread into her cheek.

In moments, her mouth and the corners of her eyes were stitched shut. Even the layout of her facial features shifted slightly, and faint streaks of gold bled into her white hair.

She looked like an entirely different person, radiating a wicked, eerie sense of beauty.

"Did she really have to make herself look like this?"

Ke Mingqing tilted his head, sizing up the puppet Bai. He let out a soft sigh. "When I first met you, you honestly looked terrifying, you know?"

After a long moment, he pulled his gaze away from the puppet's face and looked back down at the booklet.

[Bai: I imagine you're wondering how I went from being a vampire to an Esper. That's because my body underwent certain changes while traversing through time.]

[Bai: It's far too complicated to explain, and I don't have the time to break it all down for you anyway. I just hope you treat my relic well. But if you end up breaking it, then just pretend I never said anything.]

[Bai: Come to think of it, both of our abilities involve controlling puppets now. Pretty much a coincidence, isn't it?]

"It really is..." Ke Mingqing said softly. "Such a coincidence that it makes me wish I had never met you."

He continued reading.

At the very bottom of the page was a single, crooked line of text accompanied by a smiley face. The handwriting was messy, like a child's careless doodle. Compared to the elegant script above, it hardly looked like the work of the same person:

—"To my beloved."

That was the final line Bai had written in the booklet. No matter how many pages he flipped through, the rest were entirely blank.

Ke Mingqing sat in silence for a long time. Then, black lightning burst from his palm, instantly incinerating the booklet Bai had left behind.

The only thing he kept was the sprig of roses from the cover. He gently tucked it into the pocket of his conductor's uniform and sat back down on the stone slab.

"Bai's original body was A Rank. Even if this puppet isn't quite as strong, it should at least touch the threshold of an A Rank, shouldn't it?"

He mused.

"But the most crucial part is that this puppet retains the ability to control the corpses of Espers. If I use it properly, it could be incredibly effective."

Ke Mingqing sat down alongside the puppet Bai. With barely perceptible movements, he tugged at the puppet strings on his right hand, manipulating Bai into playing rock-paper-scissors with him to hone his precision.

Controlling Bai's puppet felt remarkably similar to controlling his Theater Puppet.

The only difference was that Ke Mingqing merely needed to blink to shift his perspective to the Theater Puppet, whereas controlling Bai required tugging the strings wrapped around Giovanni's fingers.

"Whatever, it shouldn't be too difficult," he thought. "Until I can control her flawlessly, I'll just keep her out of sight from the rest of Death Crow so they don't notice anything suspicious."

Just then, a massive gray pigeon flew in through the building's back door and landed near the stone slab.

Atop the pigeon's back sat an eerie figure. He wore a pitch-black owl mask, yet he was dressed in the blue and white uniform of Lijing No. 3 High School.

"What happened?"

Jiang Qingzi dismounted from the pigeon. Staring at the chunks of bloody flesh dangling from the ceiling nearby, he froze. He turned toward Giovanni and voiced his immediate suspicion:

"Did the Clock Maker come back for revenge? Whose corpse is that? Heimeng's? Or the Wolf Butler's?"

"Don't assume it's the Clock Maker just because you see a dismembered body," Giovanni said flatly. "The Clock Maker's corpse has already rotted away."

"Then what happened here?" Jiang Qingzi asked, walking toward him. "Are you alright? What happened to Ziling? Why are you two covered in blood?"

"I'm not in the mood. Ask her to explain."

With that, Giovanni gave the invisible puppet strings a slight tug. The threads around his fingers pulled taut, and 'Bai' stepped out from the shadows in the corner of the room.

Hearing her footsteps, Jiang Qingzi started. He turned to look at the platinum-blonde woman wearing the dark veil.

Up until a second ago, he hadn't even realized there was another person in the building. Bai had perfectly suppressed every trace of her human presence, hiding in the shadows as silently as a statue.

What was even stranger was that given Bai's usual personality, there was no way she would have kept quiet for this long.

'I don't even understand what that old woman was thinking,' Ke Mingqing grumbled inwardly. 'How am I supposed to act like her now? She really left me with a mess.'

Even as he complained, he manipulated 'Bai' into speaking, leaving no time for hesitation.

"Well, if it isn't our great magician," Bai said, stifling a yawn.

"What happened?"

"Nothing much," Bai said, throwing her hands up. "We just ran into some 'street punks.' They came looking for trouble, and our little conductor handled them cleanly."

"Street punks?" Jiang Qingzi raised an eyebrow, shooting her a skeptical look. "In a godforsaken dump like this? Are you sure?"

"What else would they be?"

Bai asked softly, raising an index finger to point at the shredded remnants of a floral shirt still dangling in midair.

Jiang Qingzi followed her finger. Bai continued, "They seemed to be old enemies of Death Crow. They tracked down our base somehow, and when they saw that only Giovanni and this little vampire brat were here, they came running right over to get their revenge."

Jiang Qingzi fell silent. Turning his head, he stared directly into Ke Mingqing's eyes through his magician's owl mask.

"Is that what happened, Giovanni?" he asked calmly, his piercing gaze as though trying to pry the truth from Ke Mingqing's face.

"What else would it be?"

Jiang Qingzi went quiet again. Frowning, he asked, "How did Ziling get hurt? Didn't I tell you to take good care of her?"

"They weren't weak," Ke Mingqing replied quietly. "I was heavily outnumbered. If Miss Bai hadn't shown up when she did, never mind Ziling—I would have lost my own life here."

"You're welcome," Bai said, tossing her hands up. "I really ought to petition for the title of 'Most Considerate Mentor in Death Crow.' Honestly, my dedication to this team goes completely unappreciated."

Smiling through her stitched lips, she stepped up and slung her right arm over Ke Mingqing's shoulder.

Jiang Qingzi shot a suspicious look at the two of them huddled together.

"Aren't you two being a little too friendly today?" he asked.

"When you have a dirty mind, everything looks dirty to you..." With that, Ke Mingqing lifted Bai Ziling off the stone slab. The hem of the girl's blood-stained skirt swayed gently in the moonlight.

"She heals quickly. Her injuries are already closed up. I'm going to find her some clean clothes."

Leaving those words behind, he turned his back on Jiang Qingzi and walked steadily toward the stairs until his silhouette was swallowed by the shadows.

Moments later, only Jiang Qingzi and 'puppet Bai' remained on the ground floor.

"What's wrong with him today?" he muttered.

"Who knows?" she replied indifferently. "Seeing Ling get hurt probably just put him in a bad mood."

"You say that as if I'm in a good mood. Damn it. The second Heimeng messaged me, I rushed straight over here. I didn't even have time to change out of my uniform..."

Jiang Qingzi sighed. He pulled off his magician's owl mask and tucked it inside his jacket, then shoved his hands into his pockets and turned toward the exit.

"Anyway, as long as you're all safe," he said without looking back.

Bai turned her head, quietly watching him leave through her dark veil.

Meanwhile, Ke Mingqing was carrying Bai Ziling down the empty corridor of the second floor, lost in thought:

'I heard the Clock Maker's corpse is still being kept at the Hero Company in Leijing. If I use Bai's puppet to turn his corpse into another puppet, that would be perfect. To hold a puppet with time-manipulation abilities...'

'That way, when it's finally time to face off against Rain Crow, I'll be able to give him one hell of a surprise.'