Chapter 52: Awakening
Shigure Kira pursed her lips, her gaze involuntarily glancing downwards.
"Ugh... they can't be doing it all night, can they?"
"I can even enjoy such a good show before I die. I don't know whether to laugh or cry."
Shigure Kira felt incredibly desolate. The bad news was that she was trapped here, unable to leave. The good news was that there was music to listen to. The sounds weren't bad, just a bit… lewd.
Which girl has such a high libido? To be able to go at it so energetically with a corpse?
Shigure Kira was incredibly envi… disgusted by such behavior. But in this situation, she was actually looking forward to hearing more shameful sounds.
Because she was so bored, and would probably die soon anyway. It didn't matter whether or not it was shameful.
At 7:00 PM, the bell in the auditorium didn't ring, the ground didn't tremble, and she didn't even see a single ghost.
Everything in St. Freya seemed to have returned to normal.
What Shigure Kira couldn't see was that the Cognitive Ghost, which looked like a child, was shrinking, its body constantly becoming smaller, turning into a stillborn infant, crawling on the ground.
It was less than two meters away from Shigure Kira.
It was affecting the perception of everyone around it, trying to inconspicuously reach Shigure Kira. But it had been entangled by the pure white hair and was unable to move.
The Cognitive Ghost didn't have any extra characteristics for killing people. It didn't have any methods of attack. All it could do was interfere with the perceptions of the consciousnesses around it. Bound by the white hair, it couldn't escape, nor could it kill Shigure Kira.
Shigure Kira still wasn't able to see it because the hair only bound the ghost's body, and didn't suppress its abilities.
One human and one ghost lay on the ground, enjoying this long-lasting "performance."
But the Cognitive Ghost had no emotional fluctuations. It couldn't appreciate it. The only one whose heart was in turmoil was Shigure Kira.
At night, hunger troubled Shigure Kira greatly. If the hair still refused to release her, Shigure Kira would have to consider eating dirt.
"Slap!"
A crisp slapping sound echoed. It didn't come from underground, but from beside her.
Shigure Kira turned her head with great difficulty, but she didn't see anything around her.
But the slapping sound continued.
"Slap! Slap! Slap!"
"There's a ghost next to me, but I can't see it. Whatever… What's the point? I can't even move."
Shigure Kira gave up on thinking. In her current state, except for her head, which could barely rub against the ground, her other limbs were tightly bound.
Shigure Kira could even feel that the Honkai energy inside of her was as good as dead.
Not far from Shigure Kira, a stillborn infant was being pulled up into the air. Hair had condensed into whips, lashing against its face, over and over again.
Every lash left a mark on its head.
After going through this long torture, many bloody marks appeared on the face of the Cognitive Ghost. The bloody marks, when connected, could be translated into a sentence: [No one starves here.]
…
One month later—
The black coffin was still shaking intensely. However, the bizarre instincts had become weaker and weaker, and the human impulse for physical intimacy had gained the upper hand.
Kiana's body also became increasingly similar to her original Herrscher form.
Honkai energy surged once more inside her, attempting to wake the host's consciousness.
But all attempts had ended in failure.
The notebook suddenly fell onto Li Mo's face, flipped open to the last page, and rested on it.
The last page was filled with dense content, the handwriting overlapping and interweaving. It looked as if there were countless authors who had left their signatures on this page.
All the content only repeated a single sentence, a straightforward sentence that was so simple, it couldn't be simpler.
[My name is Li Mo, and I will not die.]
Suddenly, his consciousness, which had stopped functioning, seemed to have had the obstruction between its gears removed. It slowly began to turn.
The clockwork spring of his soul was tightened once more and began to move forward.
The simple words weren't enough to pull back Li Mo's consciousness, which had already faded. Contaminated consciousness wasn't his original consciousness.
Li Mo's contamination wasn't as complete as Bizarre Kiana's. At least this body hadn't been contaminated.
But the Unlucky Ghost had retained the consciousness that should have been completely contaminated. The bizarre had spread, and then had been suppressed by the black coffin, unable to continue to spread to his entire body.
All it needed was the most straightforward wedge to wake the sleeping person. Because a person's body had countless parameters. There was no such thing as a body with exactly the same parameters. A unique body was also one of the symbols of the original self.
Even though the body couldn't completely represent the original self's consciousness, it was the equivalent of a coordinate, a coordinate that represented the original self's consciousness.
Li Mo's consciousness was returning. And what woke up even before his consciousness was the Unlucky Ghost in his mind.
"Haha! You're finally dead! And I'm still ali…"
The Unlucky Ghost, as always, mocked Li Mo. But when it noticed the woman sitting on top of Li Mo, it started its wailing again.
"It's that woman again!! I'm going to die!"
With that, it immediately fell silent. The trauma caused by this awakening would probably take several days to heal.
"Ugh…" Li Mo's dry lips moved, and he opened his eyes with difficulty.
"I finally woke up, only to be met with such noise. It won't even let me be at peace for a bit… Is the Unlucky Ghost giving me a buff again? Did the bizarre come again?"
"Damn it, my back hurts so much!"
As soon as Li Mo sat up, he saw Kiana sitting on top of him, her face flushed, her eyes hazy, with her legs apart.
"Oh no, I must have gotten up too quickly. I'm seeing a completely naked Kiana on top of me."
"I must have gotten up in the wrong position."
Li Mo lay back down again, then shifted gears and launched himself forward, quickly sitting up straight.
The scene before his eyes hadn't changed at all. The white, naked body was like a perfect work of art, flawless, soft and smooth to the touch…
As soon as he sat up, Bizarre Kiana reached out and wrapped her arms around his neck. Her cherry-red lips pressed against his passionately, sucking the air from Li Mo's mouth. Her slippery tongue teased Li Mo's teeth and the base of his tongue, intertwining with them.
And then she tried to bite them, but failed.
Before separating, their saliva stretched into a crystalline, translucent thread.
Li Mo stared blankly for a long time, his eyes wide open.
"WTF??? Did I just get…?"
"No, no, no. Just what is going on?!"
Li Mo was stunned. Before he "died," he had considered the possibility that he would be tricked by the notebook, that his rebirth would fail, and he would die completely.
He had also considered the possibility of a successful rebirth, but that he would face the risk of being attacked by bizarre entities as soon as he woke up.
He had indeed been attacked by Bizarre Kiana, but it was a different kind of attack… a "human way of attacking."
"I'm not sure how Kiana got inside the black coffin, but…"
"The smell here is so strong. It's a bit unbearable."
Li Mo pinched his nose and glanced sideways. White and crimson were mixed together, covering the bottom of the black coffin. It had even submerged his ankles.
The air inside the black coffin was filled with the smell of XXX. Ambiguity lingered between the two naked figures.