257 The Strange Parliamen (1/2)

”Why did you come to the Royal Musician Division?” Ye Qingxuan regretted it as soon as he asked because the guy’s face was filled with confusion. The shock of ”What, this is the Royal Musician Division!” was written all over. He did not know anything! Then what use did he have?

Furrowing his brows, Ye Qingxuan was about to speak, but the broken alarm by his foot suddenly trembled with a strange sound. It traveled far instantly, causing his expression to darken.

”N-not me!” Herbert yelped when he saw Ye Qingxuan’s face change. ”I didn’t do it! It’s someone else’s alarm! Someone else!”

The cane on his throat pressed down, almost suffocating him. The hoarse voice said, ”You have five seconds to explain.”

”This alarm connects to another touch-activated trap. I don’t understand either.” Tongue-tied, Herbert screamed but his eyes suddenly brightened. ”I know, there must—must be other people who followed us in!”

”No sh*t, I did!” Ye Qingxuan furrowed his brows. But when he heard the faint crashes and shuddering above him, he understood what Herbert meant. Did someone have the same idea as him? Regardless, he did not have much time. Looking down at Herbert who was crying pathetically, he could not help but sigh.

Seeing Ye Qingxuan like that, Herbert froze. Understanding something, he yelped, ”Don’t kill me! I can give you the secret implantation technique of the School of Choir to you…and money. I have sixty-thousand gold coins in my account. Sixty-thousand!” He looked at the youth and forced a fawning expression onto his face. ”I’ve heard of you before. You’re the Vengeful Spirit, right? You don’t kill people.”

”Yes, you’re right. I can let you go.” The youth lowered his eyes and slowly moved the cane on his throat away. Herbert was ecstatic, but then he felt a hand on his forehead. ”But you’ve done so many immoral things with those dark musicians. Are you really innocent?” The youth’s voice was filled with pity and overlooking coldness. ”I can let you go, but will the people who you killed let you go?”

Herbert froze. His relieved eyes changed, the fawning smile and politeness disappeared, replaced by sinister eeriness. He looked up at the youth but his gaze was dragged into the youth’s eyes.

Those eyes…seemed to be filled with hellish pain. Flames licked inside them—that was the resentment of the dead burning with heart-stopping beauty. Then a black river rushed over and swallowed him.

Herbert fell onto his back under the plaintive melody and sank into an endless nightmare. Ye Qingxuan slowly retracted his hand and left. After two steps, he paused and looked back. Having a mental breakdown, Herbert spasmed continuously but his body turned gray bit by bit until he stopped moving in the end.

He had turned to stone.

Ye Qingxuan furrowed his brows at the strange transformation. He did not know his music score had this odd feature. If it was not him then there was only one answer.

The youth looked around in the darkness. Wind blew past, bringing with it a faint laugh. It seemed that there had been someone watching him ever since he entered Avalon’s Shadow, being happy or sad for him, cheering him on. Perhaps this was a hallucination; perhaps it was not. Anything could happen in this f*cked up place. He decided to stop scaring himself now.

-

When he crawled out of the narrow opening, he found himself in the backyard of the Royal Musician Division. It used to be a garden but it was clearly not anymore. There were only shriveled and dried rhizomes stuck haphazardly in the dirt. They looked like an odd art piece made of steel wire under the faint light.

Light—there was light here.

Ye Qingxuan looked up and saw a lantern hanging on the wall in the near distance. The light was weak and the lantern was covered in dust as if it had been burning for a millennia.

Under the dim light, the barren garden had an unsettling atmosphere. Using the marks in the dirt, Ye Qingxuan found signs of people leaving as well as some alarm traps. These dark musicians really were careful. They had left traps after arranging sentries.

Under the seemingly-average traps, the perception threads sensed a chain-reaction of explosive traps. The aether within those was enough to blow half of the garden into the sky.

Just as he was sneaking around the trap area, the ground suddenly shook. A fulmination sounded by the door in the distance. The shaking almost set off the traps; Ye Qingxuan’s face paled in fright! It would be really sad if he died for these stupid reasons.

He quickly ran to the safe zone and closed his eyes in deep thought. He pulled the perception threads into one spot and floated toward the source of the sound. After going past various buildings, the threads began to sense the scene.

The perception broke the moment it was created. The water vapor threads had evaporated due to the terrifying power at the scene.