Chapter 464

Chapter 87: Speculation, Part 2

After eating an entire roasted fox, the intense desire to eat had diminished quite a bit.

Though I still didn’t feel full…

At least I wasn’t hungry anymore.

I smacked my lips and looked at Angel, who was squatting on a stone opposite me, speechless.

His Holiness’s eyes were deep and mysterious. “Is it good?”

“Not really,” I quickly shook my head.

“But you finished it all…”

“Yeah.”

“Doesn’t it make you uncomfortable?”

“No.”

Apart from the taste and texture being far from what I expected, I didn’t feel any discomfort. My stomach felt warm, and I was no longer starving—this journey had been rushed, and most of the places we visited were flat plains with heavy rain, making such an opportunity to eat wild game truly rare.

The meat was just too unpalatable.

“Ah… I shouldn’t have treated you as a fragile human. That was my mistake.” After a long silence, Angel suddenly sighed.

He patted his legs, stood up, and said, “Honestly, would you mind if I checked your body? Very seriously.”

“You dare,” I glared at him.

“Tsk…”

His Holiness’s tongue clicked slightly.

“Forget it.”

He thought for a moment and then waved his hand.

“You’ve eaten, now let’s do something serious.”

Serious?

“What kind of serious business?”

“Follow me.”

“Why?”

“Experiment.”

With that, Angel walked towards the tent.

?

I watched his back, hesitated for a moment, and then followed.

Inside the tent, Angel picked up the blood-stained and icy bag, carried it in front of me, and held it by the corners, letting the meat inside fall to the ground with a thud.

!

My face turned pale, and I quickly stepped back two steps, covering my mouth and nose with both hands.

“Don’t panic, this is just frozen meat.”

Angel saw my reaction and thought I was disgusted by the meat. He laughed, “Perhaps this meat, when cooked, might be much more delicious than the red weasel. It has no fat, and the color looks pretty good… Seriously, should we give it a try?”

The man spoke mostly in jest, but at the end, there was a hint of seriousness in his eyes.

I immediately got goosebumps.

“You’re disgusting!”

“Haha, I’m just joking.”

Angel slowly squatted down, poking and prodding the fist-sized piece of meat. I watched him, slowly lowered my hands, and cautiously sniffed the air.

It seemed…

There was no longer the urgent feeling of hunger.

Was it because of the fox meat?

“Woah!”

Angel suddenly let out a light cry, his hand snapped back, rubbing his chest. “Your ice is too cold; my fingers almost froze off… Ouch, it hurts a little…”

The meat was as hard as a rock, emitting a chill that made the tent feel extremely cold.

Angel looked up at me and said, “Little Black Charcoal, let’s heat it up. Try using your karmic fire power and see what happens.”

!

“Do you want to…”

I frowned, unsure of Angel’s intentions.

This guy had repeatedly emphasized that, to avoid trouble, I must not use my karmic fire power. But now he was casually asking me to use it…

What did he suspect?

“I’ve veiled the light and sound here with the Reverse Image Eschaton; no one knows what we’re doing,” Angel said, standing up and stepping back. “Feel free to use it… but be careful, this thing might not be dead.”

Hearing this, I was somewhat surprised. “What?”

“Just a guess, let’s see. Go ahead, don’t make the fire too big.”

Angel stopped talking, the smile on his face fading as a faint glow appeared around him.

… Fine, let’s give it a try.

I stepped back another two steps, took a deep breath, extended my right palm, and activated my karmic fire power. A crimson, scorching flame burst from my palm, instantly enveloping my entire right arm, and the surrounding temperature rose sharply.

“Smaller, smaller flames—”

“You’ll turn it into charcoal!”

Angel kept shouting beside me. I shouted back impatiently, “Stop talking!”

While I wasn’t particularly skilled at controlling the karmic fire, I could easily blast someone with it, but mastering the right temperature was difficult.

I needed to concentrate…

I stared at the meat on the ground, gradually compressing the power of the karmic fire, adjusting the outward flow of heat. Gradually, the flames on my arm weakened a bit.

“Phew—”

I exhaled lightly, aimed my palm at the meat, and a stream of fire shot out with a roar.

“Woah—”

The flames splashed onto the ground, nearly burning Angel’s robe. His Holiness jumped back, shouting, “Hey hey hey, do you want to roast us both alive!”

I hastily extinguished the flames, stepping back and covering my mouth and nose with my clothes.

The karmic fire surged in the tent, thick smoke rising. The meat block was engulfed in flames, and the frost was visibly melting away.

“Cough, cough!”

“What are you doing, Little Black Charcoal!”

“What’s wrong!”

“I told you to cook the meat with small flames, not burn down the tent!”

He said, I had already raised my other hand, and a deep blue light flashed from my palm before vanishing, followed by a burst of icy frost mist surging towards the flames spreading on the ground.

In terms of manipulating the Frost Order, I was already well-versed, with taking more or less becoming almost instinctive. The pale white fog drifted over the raging flames like frost in winter, hissing incessantly. A large amount of fog surged out, immediately controlling the crimson flames.

But before I could even breathe a sigh of relief, something “whooshed” out from within the mist.

“Ah!”

The instant I saw that thing, my scalp tingled.

It’s that piece of flesh!!!

The disgusting, flaming chunk of meat wriggled rapidly across the ground as if it were alive. After the frost melted, its color turned bright red to dark brown, and several vein-like green lines could be seen pulsing… It was crawling towards me!

“Ah—”

I was stunned, my mind blank, filled with intense disgust and revulsion, but there seemed to be an underlying familiarity and fear mixed in.

Without much thought, I kicked it away with one foot.

“F*ck!”

Angel, not far away, cursed. Seeing the chunk of meat flying toward him, a golden glow flashed around him. In the next moment, he appeared at my left side.

Buzzzz…

The air trembled slightly, and a fist-sized golden sphere floated above the Pope’s head.

“Inverse Image.”

Buzz—

An invisible wave of force once again spread out from the golden-haired man, and in my vision, the chunk of meat, still suspended in mid-air and about to collide with the canopy, suddenly seemed to be blocked by the air. The rebound force sent it flying back, landing on the ground, writhing to continue its crawl, but it seemed to be trapped. It crawled a short distance before colliding with the air again, flattening the chunk of meat.

This…

This sphere, Angel used during the battle in the royal city…

At that time, Nero was trapped by this invisible wall of air, and even I collided with it without knowing… I remember feeling like I was suddenly “shaken” by some force, dizzy for a long time…

“Did you do that on purpose?”

The man’s leisurely words pulled me back from my shock.

“What?”

“You deliberately kicked that thing toward me; you’re a bad girl.”

“…?”

Under those circumstances, who would care about your position?

I ignored him, my tension not yet gone, my eyes fixed on the chunk of meat not far away.

Amid the mist, the chunk of meat wriggled back and forth within half a meter, but every time it tried to crawl, it hit the invisible barrier… It seemed to be trapped in a “prison.”

“What’s going on?”

“That’s a good question.” The golden sphere flickered a few times before sinking into Angel’s chest. The man swept his bangs aside and looked at me admiringly, “That’s a very high-level question. I actually don’t know how to answer… Why don’t you look for yourself?”

As he spoke, he clapped his hands and walked toward the chunk of meat.

“As expected, just as I thought…”

The inferno inside the tent had been extinguished by the frost, and steam was everywhere, making it hard to see clearly. Angel went over, lifted the curtain, allowing the steam to dissipate, then squatted beside the chunk of meat.

He whispered softly, “This thing is alive.”

The chunk of meat continued to wriggle desperately, as if it smelled human scent, lunging toward Angel repeatedly only to be pushed back each time.

The golden-haired man squatted there, expressionless and unmoved for a moment, then gestured for me to come over.

I hesitated for a moment.

Then slowly walked over and stood behind him.

The Pope pointed at the struggling chunk of meat and asked me, “What do you think it is?”

“…I don’t know.”

My mind was in chaos. The chunk of meat made me feel extremely nauseous, and the unease from deep within made my thoughts race like a roller coaster, unable to properly think about anything… Moreover, I felt like I had seen such a thing somewhere before.

“Do you think it has thoughts?” the man continued to ask.

“I suppose, no.”

Where exactly have I seen such a thing…

“What do you think it wants to do?”

“…”

I didn’t say anything more, just stared at that piece of meat.

It seemed like somewhere else, there was also such a piece of meat, wriggling toward me…

“Ahh!”

I suddenly widened my eyes.

“I remember!”

In Elyush’s dream!

“What did you remember? You shouted so loudly.” Angel asked, digging his ear.

“I remember, I’ve seen this before, in a dream…”

The fragments of information flooded my mind, making my ears ring with a buzzing sound. The reality before my eyes shocked me to the point of incoherence, my words becoming increasingly jumbled, unsure of what to say.

“At the royal city, I was on the terrace… Elyush, he once made me enter a dream…”

That dark, eerie passage.

The room full of bottles and jars.

The desk with a blank “Book of Odes,” the black cloak similar to the Pope Knight’s cloak but with different patterns, and those containers filled with unknown liquids… I broke one, and a chunk of meat came out.

It’s this thing.

Almost identical, revolting thing!