Chapter 52 - 41. Worthy of being my opponent!

Fortunately, the gentle man who had been persuading her all this time had quietly approached the girl’s side at some unknown point. The moment the girl’s mother charged at them, he was ready for trouble and lunged forward to catch the girl as she fell. Xia Feng saw this and executed a clumsy ascent into the air, stepping alternately with his left and right feet in a spiraling motion. Thankfully, no one could see him, otherwise they would have spotted a man in a black robe with a strange Black Spade mask on his face awkwardly rising into the air by stepping on his left foot with his right, and on his right foot with his left. Once he reached the fourth floor, Xia Feng made up his mind never to use such a ridiculous flight method again! As he was inwardly criticizing this, he heard a crisp slap filled with anger. "Slap!!" The middle-aged woman smacked the girl across the face, her voice trembling with rage and frustration, "You ungrateful creature! After raising you all these years, how did you turn out like this?!" Her hair danced in the wind as she tilted her head, and her dark eyes lost all their luster. At that moment, the world’s jeers faded into a dizzy silence, and she just watched the middle-aged woman’s mouth open and close, moving across the crowd like a puppet. "Enough, enough, calm down." Her husband frowned and pulled the agitated middle-aged woman away, "I told you, she didn’t plan to jump. If she wanted to, it would have happened already." Xia Feng, watching from above with a frown, sensed that as a result of her mother’s slap and her father’s indifferent words, the Evil Power within the girl began to surge and spread at an alarming rate! "Enough already! Shut the hell up!" The gentle man suddenly bellowed out, finally having enough of the parents’ words, "I’ve told you, your daughter likely has Evil Disease, it’s a mental disorder! You’re only making her condition worse behaving like this!" "Evil Disease? Our daughter eats well and dresses well, how could she possibly have such a thing?!" The middle-aged woman, incensed upon hearing this, gave the man a disdainful glare before pushing her daughter toward the stairway, "I think this girl is just acting up! Move it, see if I don’t deal with you when we get home!" Xia Feng had heard of Evil Disease before. It was said that humans in a state of extreme emotional repression can become infected by the breath of Evil Power, leading to this mental disorder known as Evil Disease. The symptoms of this disease can vary greatly, but most sufferers tend toward suicidal inclinations. Moreover, as the symptoms worsen, those affected could even undergo transformation, turning into a half-Evil Beast, half-human creature, known as — the Evil. In the Empire, the Evil were ostracized and discriminated against, and by extension, so were the sufferers of Evil Disease. It was the kind of ailment that would lead to hushed discussions, isolation, mockery, and even bullying at school. "Swoosh—Swoosh—" Just then, two sounds of something cutting through the air arrived from afar. "Damn it, stop right there!" People turned their heads to look and saw a man in a black robe with a Red Heart mask slightly leaning forward, leaping and sprinting between buildings, closely followed by a furious Holy Department Investigator. The onlookers unveiled no reaction to this scene, simply lowering their heads and going about their business as usual. Such pursuits were commonplace on Blood Evil Street; the sight of robed figures was nothing surprising. "You’re courting death again, huh?!" Amidst grumbling voices, Xia Feng turned his head, his heart skipping a beat. Sёarᴄh the NôᴠelFirё.net website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality. "Bang—" With her white skirt fluttering, the girl leaped and vanished onto the ceramic tiled platform, with only a soft sound of landing reaching them. The originally low laughter and chatter in the crowd ceased abruptly, leaving a deadly silence. Nobody had seen when the girl had run back up; some people simply couldn’t understand why she had suddenly jumped. The middle-aged woman stood there, her face turning deathly pale; she too couldn’t comprehend, how, how had she jumped? She opened her mouth and looked at the gentle man incredulously, trembling as she said, "It was you! It was because you said my daughter was crazy that she really jumped!" "Give me back my daughter! You demon, give her back to me!!" she wailed, collapsing into hysteria as she grabbed the gentle man and began to thrash about. "Damn it, no, no—" Xia Feng held his forehead and sighed, "If I keep watching, I’m going to have high blood pressure." As he pondered, he closed his eyes to concentrate, and when he opened them again— It was like shards of a shattered mirror, the scene before his eyes slowly faded to reveal its true form. He saw that the girl in the white dress had just been slapped; her head was tilted, her gaze empty as she stood in place, with the people around her also standing in a daze. "Indeed, we have been unwittingly dragged into an Illusion Realm," Xia Feng mused, looking around. He had been searching for the Evil Beast hidden in the shadows, and when he ascended to the fourth floor, he suddenly felt a fluctuation in his spirit. An ordinary First Rank Spirit Master might have been taken in by the trick, but he was a Mu Shen-brand First Rank Spirit Master, with a robust spiritual power that immediately saw through the petty Illusion Technique. However, because of this, he was forced to exit his Concealed state, revealing his black-robed figure atop the building. Shasha— The sound of rustling leaves, Xia Feng turned his head and noticed another person in a black robe standing on a nearby large tree, wearing a Black Spade mask and quietly staring at him. "Hiss— so I’ve been tricked after all." The Holy Department Investigator who had been chasing them also emerged from the Illusion Realm at this time; he mumbled, rubbing his head, "That Illusion Technique was quite something; it’s given me a splitting headache." Cursing under his breath, he opened his eyes and then was dumbfounded because both the Black Spade and Red Spade in black robes turned their heads to look at him simultaneously. What—what’s going on? The investigator’s pupils shrank with sudden alarm, his mind racing with the possibility of a trap. The Red Spade actually has an accomplice! At this thought, his mood soured even more; one Red Spade had been enough of a headache for him, and now there was a Black Spade? Are you kidding me?! Xia Feng recognized the man; he was indeed the investigator from the Empire who had once pursued Mu Qingtong into the academy. Thinking about it, he was about to speak up when he saw the investigator’s expression change from one of worry to running away, vanishing into the sky like a shooting star in the blink of an eye. "Red Spade, Black Spade! Just wait, justice is never absent! I will return!" Xia Feng: "..." Mu Qingtong didn’t respond to the investigator, instead calmly turning back around, her eyes unblinking as she stared intently at the Black Spade mask. She naturally recognized that the person in Black Spade was using the "Bronze Mask"! The Bronze Mask was her own creation, given only to Xia Feng. Thus, it was clear that the mysterious Black Spade person before her was her cheap fiancé. However, what surprised her even more was that Xia Feng had also improved the Bronze Mask into a D-rank Spiritual Clothes capable of preventing spying. She could only think... truly worthy of being my opponent, Mu Qingtong! Her surprise was tinged with an undeniable acknowledgment. "Um..." Xia Feng coughed and without revealing Mu Qingtong’s identity, he opened the conversation with a mechanically dull voice, "Do you know what’s happening here?" The Red Spade person glanced over the crowd frozen in stupor and from behind the mask came an equally dull androgynous voice: "An Evil experiment. Someone is using the Illusion Evil to conduct experiments, aiming to turn this girl in the white dress into an Evil. The soul of an Evil is a very rare spiritual material, with a wide range of uses." "Clap—clap—clap!" The clear sound of applause rose, and at the same time, a man emerged from behind the girl in the white dress, chuckling, "Not a bad guess. It looks like you both know quite a lot about Evil experiments, could it be that you are fellow practitioners?"