High School of Demon Hunting

Chapter 1121: Chapter 183: There’s a Ghost

”This talisman is almost burned out!”

While checking the fourth piece of talisman paper, Xin Fat Man seemed to spot something terrible and shouted out, waving to catch Zheng Qing’s attention toward the warming talisman in front of him.

Zheng Qing, with a long face, sidled up next to the fatty and took a glance. Indeed, the three-inch-long yellow paper had burned down to less than a finger’s width, and the originally clear smoke had begun to muddy.

”You’re such a busybody.” The young scholarship student muttered but didn’t walk away. Instead, he sluggishly pulled out a new, inferior talisman from his grey cloth bag and reattached it to the pavilion column.

It was only a moment later that the finger-width remnant of the talisman struggled, burst a few sparks, and then extinguished. The new warming talisman, aided by those few sparks, began emitting a faint but steady blue smoke.

Zheng Qing nodded in satisfaction. He had just straightened up when a force hit him squarely from behind, nearly making him stumble and fall, almost crashing headfirst into the pavilion column.

The warlock turned around in anger, wanting to see who dared to bump into a tiger’s rear.

He saw Su Ya, teeth bared and claws out, chasing Poseidon all over the pavilion, trying to catch it. Meanwhile, the Little Fox, wagging her big tail, giggled shrilly, darting around, teasing the little fox lady—recently awakened children were all like this, energetic and recklessly brave, never afraid to tweak the tiger’s whiskers or even touch its rear.

”Quiet! What are you doing?!”

The young scholarship student yelled in an attempt to stop the two foxes from disturbing the order at the scene. However, his shout had no intimidating effect on the foxes; instead, it surprised Li Meng, who had been dutifully napping on a bench, awake.

”What? Is the patrol over?” The little witch, holding a small white cat, stood up abruptly, disoriented, and asked, ”What time is it? Can we go back now?”

Zheng Qing looked at her, speechless.

The white cat in the little witch’s arms also covered its eyes with a paw.

”If you feel sleepy, you can go back first. We’ll watch this cat for you,” Zheng Qing kindly offered, reaching out to take the little white cat, and added, ”Sleeping is more comfortable in a bed... It’s late and cold, what’s the point of dozing on a hard bench?”

The little white cat slapped Zheng Qing’s outstretched hand with a paw.

Li Meng screamed as if stung by a wasp, clutching the little white cat and hopping backward to avoid him. Their dramatic reaction left Zheng Qing with an embarrassed face, his hands hovering uncertainly as if he were the villain.

”Is there a need to scare people like that?” The warlock finally withdrew his arm, rubbing his swelled hand where the little white cat had scratched him, turned to his colleague, and explained, ”I just thought it wasn’t good for her to sleep here, so I suggested she go home to sleep...”

”So you took liberties?” Xin Fat Man said, his face full of disapproval.

”Who took liberties!” Zheng Qing immediately widened his eyes, indignantly said, ”I was just going to hold that cat!”

”That’s a female cat.” Xiao Xiao calmly reminded him.

”Not sparing even a cat,” Zhang Ji Xin lamented, shaking his head repeatedly, ”Indeed, just as my brother always says, society these days is degenerating, and people’s morals are not what they once were!”

Zheng Qing was at a loss for words, not knowing how to rebut these soul lights.

The night was dark and cloudless, the lake surface tranquil. A cold wind blew over, and the barely sprouting branches, revealing hints of green, trembled in the cold wind, just like the mood of the young scholarship student.

Poseidon was still darting around the pavilion, with the little fox lady screaming and chasing after it; Li Meng held Xiao Bai, the cat, warily watching the young cost student; several hunters from the Absolution group looked at their captain with disappointed eyes.

What kind of damned looks were those! What kind of damned thoughts!

For a second, Zheng Qing thought about drowning everyone in the pavilion in Lin Zhong Lake, or feeding them a handful of fishman’s dung.

Until Poseidon’s joyous bark turned into a scream.

The little fox lady’s shocked voice cut through the night, piercing the ear drums of the male and female wizards.

”There’s a ghost!!!” Su Ya, completely lacking the poise and calm of a maid from a noble family in a crisis, screamed as if she was a commoner little girl seeing a ghost for the first time: ”A big, big, big ghost!!!”

The little white cat wriggled out of Li Meng’s arms, crawled up the little witch’s arm for two steps, turned around to perch on her shoulder, then leaped with all its might, landing on the little fox lady’s shoulder, its tail hooked around her neck, then it stretched out a paw and pushed up, clamping the little fox lady’s jaw that was about to drop from fright, also stuffing back any further screams into her throat.

Only then did the pavilion quiet down a bit.

Zheng Qing completely missed these details; as soon as he heard Poseidon’s scream, he turned his head back in panic and looked in the direction from which the scream had come.

Perhaps because it was bounding too joyfully, the little fox had unconsciously sprinted out of the pavilion’s boundary, running beyond the coverage of the rune array. Then, before Su Ya could catch it, it bumped into a dark figure.

Because it was night, and the pavilion was surrounded by dense bushes, the dark figure initially did not stand out, seemingly just like a pruned holly bush—that might be why the little fox bumped straight into it, perhaps it just wanted to hide in the bushes to play hide and seek with Su Ya.

In any case, after it collided with the dark figure, Poseidon sadly discovered that it was a wizard cloaked in an invisibility cloak, wearing leather arm guards. The little fox had slammed right into his arm guards, screaming in pain on the spot.

After being hit hard by the little fox, the dark figure’s stance wavered, and it could no longer hide its shape, standing up staggeringly under the black cloak, like an earth-bound spirit just awakening.

That was the whole incident.

In the pavilion, Zheng Qing’s patrol stick thudded heavily on the bluestone floor, and a circle of faint yellow detection light rippled out, swiftly sweeping over the dark figure.

It did not stir up any ripples.

It was not a demon, nor a ghost, nor one of Lin Zhong Lake’s fishmen or kappa.

With the reaction of the detection light, Zheng Qing immediately made a judgment—that dark figure was merely a wizard cloaked in an invisibility cloak. More precisely, he was a wizard from the First University.

If it had been a foreign wizard, under the detection light, a red warning glow would definitely have flashed. Only when facing a wizard from the First University would the magic light remain so undisturbed.

”Who goes there?!”

Zheng Qing barked harshly.

At the same time, he held the wooden staff in one hand and had already reached into the grey cloth bag with the other, pulling out his Colt Silver Python revolver, disengaging the safety. The barrel was now angled toward that unfamiliar wizard.