The Adventures of Wang Ning

“What’s the situation?” Teacher Louie asked a levitation device operator.

The operator, who had just seen the device get smashed, silently took off his headset. “…The situation on-site doesn’t look too good. Is that blue-haired girl the berserk target? I see two girls who are injured, and another girl is being held by the blue-haired girl.”

Teacher Louie: “?”

‘The blue-haired girl… that should be Boli An, right? But wasn’t it the Academic Committee Member who went berserk?’

‘What on earth is going on?’

In the meeting room.

Kelbert wasn’t the only one who hadn’t missed that sharp sound. The others had also stopped in their tracks and looked back at the surveillance screen in surprise.

The sound had been brief and was followed by silence. Some even thought they had imagined it, nudging their colleagues and whispering, “Did you just hear a ‘beep’ sound? Not anything else… but the sound from the magic detector.”

Her colleague stared at her blankly. “I think I heard it too.”

“Could it have been broken…” someone said uncertainly.

Many gazes slowly converged on Kelbert, subtly observing her attitude.

Kelbert didn’t pause for long. Instead, she turned around and walked towards the detector. The others exchanged glances but said nothing more.

The opened door was closed again.

Number 1, number 9, number 20, number 43… number 108.

Kelbert scanned the numbers on the detectors one by one. Amidst a sea of red lights, she found the number that had made the sound earlier. She looked up at the technician and asked, “Who is number 108?”

Each detector used by the students had a corresponding number. The technician quickly scanned the student list and said, “It’s a student named Shulimai.”

‘A name she’d never heard of.’

But the next second, Kelbert paused and said, “Who is still in the Class A testing room right now?”

‘The instrument reacted, which means it was triggered by someone still in the classroom, whether intentionally, unintentionally, or because the machine is broken.’

‘But, it’s better to be safe than sorry.’

“There are only four people left in the classroom right now.” One of them was in a berserk state, so the possibility of her being a pure human could be ruled out. That left three people.

They still didn’t know that the situation on-site had changed drastically.

Principal Vera, who had been watching silently from the side, suddenly spoke up, her tone serious. “I don’t think there’s any need to wait any longer. After such a long testing period with no results, for a sound to suddenly appear now.”

“The most likely possibility is that the instrument was damaged in the chaos, which caused that accidental ‘beep’ just now. And not…”

She didn’t finish her sentence, but everyone else completed it for her—”It’s impossible for a pure human to be suddenly detected.”

In the meeting room, the expressions of the people from both Kaos and God’s Blade were varied. Kelbert, however, smiled. Her 60-year-old face had few wrinkles, and her brow showed a sense of calm, giving her the dignified air of an elder.

She paced back to her original seat and said lightly, “Then let’s wait and see. It’s just a matter of waiting a little longer. It’s no trouble to test them one more time.”

“And call a few more people to help them.”

The next course of action was decided.

Principal Vera sighed helplessly in her heart.

‘It seems I need to contact Her Highness Karin. A minor principal like me can’t stall for long. Although I don’t know if there is a pure human, Her Highness Karin’s attitude is indeed one of concealment.’

‘The people from God’s Blade are just too aggressive.’

Smack!

Wang Ning watched as another levitation device fell from the sky. The dim sky was like a white canvas, sparsely painted with a few strokes of blue. Boli An’s fingers were pinching a sharp, blood-stained piece of rubble. The small bun her hair had been tied in had come loose. Strands of misty-blue hair were scattered across her slender, fair neck and next to her blood-stained cheek, her eyes calm and emotionless.

She looked as she usually did now, showing no signs of being berserk.

—If one could ignore the group of rescue personnel who had already fallen at the entrance.

To better defend her position, she was holding Wang Ning, the “hostage,” and leaning against a wall, right next to a window.

The people outside were sweating with anxiety. One person shouted at Louie, “Are you sure this student’s rank is only A-rank?”

They had sorted out the cause and effect and now knew that it wasn’t just one student who had gone berserk—and, the blue-haired girl’s strength far exceeded their estimates.

Teacher Louie said with a headache, “Boli An’s file does indeed say so…”

In fact, the information in Boli An’s admission file was simple, and her background was vague. Louie was even surprised that this student, who had good grades but was always sleepy, possessed such formidable power after going berserk.

“Change of plans. We need to dispatch a Purifier here now,” the guard captain said.

A commotion suddenly erupted from the crowd not far away. They looked over and heard scattered words like “Saintess,” “Purifier,” and “Kaos Church personnel.”

The crowd gradually parted, and a person in a long white robe walked up to them and said, “Take us to the scene.”

—It was a Purifier.

Wang Ning’s nervous heart had slowly grown weary during the endless wait. In the end, she just gave up and let things be.

No matter what she said to Boli An, Boli An ignored her, only occasionally glancing at her when she struggled too much—with the kind of look one would give a weak little rabbit trying to tickle a fierce beast.

Wang Ning: “…Fine, fine, I’ll stop struggling, okay?”

‘Please stop looking at her like that.’

‘Her defenses were completely shattered right now.’

The incantation the teacher had mentioned flashed through Wang Ning’s mind. It was a basic spell to gather magic particles, pretty useless. She just treated it as this other world’s version of “Balala **,” “Demons and monsters, quickly **,” or “God bless me,” seeking a trace of psychological comfort, thinking about it without any real expectation.

But in a place she couldn’t see, Boli An’s body stiffened. It was as if something in her eyes had been dispelled, but it was quickly covered up again.

She lowered her head slightly, looking at the white-haired girl held in her arms, seemingly lost in thought. The next second, a swift gust of wind brushed past her ear, leaving a small hole in the wall behind her.

Boli An reacted quickly. Even having lost her sanity, she dodged the successive attacks almost purely on instinct. She grabbed Wang Ning with one hand, turned, and her cold, jade-green eyes calculated the trajectory of the incoming projectiles. With a backhand motion, she shot the piece of rubble held between her fingers towards the target’s location.

“Ningning!”

It was Karin’s voice!

Wang Ning’s eyes widened as she searched for Karin’s figure. The white clouds drifted away from the sun. The broken window was unscrupulously invaded by the sunlight. Under the intense exposure, the manned helicopter in mid-air made a deafening roar, but the owner of the voice was nowhere to be seen.

Boli An squinted to avoid the glare, searching for the intruder’s figure, and quickly retreated with Wang Ning until they were near the edge of the corridor.

Wang Ning said frantically, “Boli An!”

The railing was right behind her! Wang Ning glanced back, and her heart rate slowed, as if about to stop—behind her was a drop of several meters to the ground, with a crowd of people looking up at them.

If she were “lucky” enough, she might be able to measure its height with her own life—and get a news headline in the process.

Boli An finally looked back at her. The wind lifted her hair. Her eyes were devoid of emotion, but Wang Ning thought she caught a fleeting, faint smile.

Just as Wang Ning thought she was seeing things, the hands holding her suddenly pulled her away from her original position with immense force. Immediately after, a hand with veins bulging from the strain suddenly appeared, grabbing at empty air.

Wang Ning looked in astonishment at the railing she had been leaning against, now being gripped by a pair of hands. Then, a figure vaulted up, the most distinct feature being those fiercely burning golden eyes.

Karin’s voice was icy. “Boli An, let her go.”

Behind her, several silver-black levitation devices appeared, their infrared lasers all aimed at the blue figure.

Wang Ning’s eyes widened. Before she could call out in joy, Boli An’s hands fumbled to cover her mouth before she could even open it.

She paid no mind to the fact that she was being pointed at by a bunch of guns. She just lowered her head, moved closer to Wang Ning, and whispered in her ear, “You are not allowed to say her name.”

Wang Ning: “…?”

Before she could process what that meant, she was suddenly swept up into a horizontal carry. Boli An unhesitatingly took a step, leaping and dodging while looking for cover, with the sound of dense gunfire behind them!

Wang Ning: ‘!’

‘Wait, you’re using live ammo?!’

But she had no time to be terrified. Boli An had already reached the window at the end. Outside was a hovering helicopter. Then, Wang Ning felt an intense sense of weightlessness, her vision filled with shaking images.

It was as if she had blacked out after that. Her mind was a complete blank. When she came to, she was inside the helicopter.

Boli An was sitting in the original pilot’s seat. She turned her head and said to her, “We can go… Do you know how to fasten a seatbelt?”

But Wang Ning was petrified and didn’t react, her soul seemingly leaving her body. Fragments of memory leaked into her mind: high altitude, falling, entering the helicopter, the blue-haired figure quickly seizing control.

—‘Damn it, what movie set am I on?!’