After the glaring white light had dissipated, a hollow echo reverberated for several minutes in the air. There was energy hovering over the family hall, but it could also be an illusion, as the Shades of Chaos had dissipated under the intense light. Hasse ordered the demon hunters to maintain the sacred-flame barrier for a while as he and White Flame went out to check out the situation. A moment later, he declared the situation as safe.
“Phew…” Lily breathed a sigh of relief, her puffy tail shrank. “It was exhausting,” she said.
Hao Ren looked at the husky with a wry face. “Were you not just sitting by and watching all the while?” he asked.
Other than a pair of claws, Lily knew nothing about magic. Her brute strength was useless against the Shades of Chaos. The only thing she could do here was to be a cheerleader. She had wanted to help when Hesperides and Vivian were trying to restrain the deranged demon hunter, but it was all over before she could do anything.
Holding her head high, the husky bragged, “My battle cry had given you buffs!”
Hao Ren thought for a moment, sneering. If her bark were a battle cry, he would have at least gotten three bars of buff over his head if he were to take a tour at a canine breeding ground.
“Is it over?” Hao Ren looked at the direction of the family hall. The shadows had completely disappeared. The darkness inside the hall had dissipated. The massive exorcism ritual had cleared the inside and outside of the building of the negative energy and a sense of sacredness in the form of a milky white halo was floating above the dome. “Wow, that was a freaking powerful ritual, eh?” he said.
“It is of the demon hunters,” White Flame said as the flame on her body went out slowly. She looked a little tired but other than that she was fine. “It seems that our exorcism is better than your shadowmancy, but of course, your gun is quite powerful too,” she said.
Hesperides carried a dark demon hunter over and dropped him before Hasse. “Your man has got lucky today; he’s still alive. But if he couldn’t recover from his deranged mind, I will finish him myself,” she said.
It was the demon hunter possessed by the Shade of Chaos. After getting bombarded by 100,000 volts of current and bat swarm of Vivian, the demon hunter’s body was as black as coal. His body occasionally twitched with the electric current still flowing under his clothes. Hasse immediately bent down to examine the warrior’s condition. Aside from visible wounds on the outside, the warrior seemed fine mentally.
“He has healed?” White Flame was astonished. “How?”
“How?” The last thing Hesperides wanted was to talk to Hasse and White Flame, but since White Flame had asked, she replied, “With some good beating.”
Hasse’s face looked somber while he used magic to examine the injured demon hunter. Hao Ren sensed something was wrong. “How is he? Shouldn’t he have recovered?”
“This has never happened before. Normally, it requires a very complicated ritual to dispel the Shade of Chaos out of a person,” Hasse said without looking up. “A month ago, some demon hunters were attacked by these shadows. Since then, we have somewhat found the treatment according to some ancient records though the method is pretty troublesome. But I have never heard of anyone could heal a deranged person by giving him a good beating,” he said.
Lily interjected. “I saw on TV that the possessed people would recover after getting a good beating,” she said.
Hao Ren shot Lily a look. “As you said, it is a TV program; it is not real,” he said.
The MDT came out and muttered, “In fact, I know a person who can do that, but he is not here.”
Hasse did not hear what the MDT said as he was too engrossed with Hesperides and Vivian. “What have you done?” he asked Hesperides.
Hesperides thought for a while. She remembered she was wielding a mace and swung it indiscriminately at the possessed demon hunter, but she could barely hit the target. So she raised her finger pointing at Vivian. “She was the one making the last strike.”
“It’s the electric shock,” Vivian replied. “It’s the lightning discharge of the bat swarm. To me, it is a common move. It does not possess any exorcism power.”
“Electric shock? An electric shock could relieve frenzy?” White Flame muttered, incredulously. “I’ve never heard that striking someone with lightning could treat mental derangement.”
At this time, the injured demon hunter struggled to get up. Black smoke puffed out from his mouth when he said, “No… she struck me more than once…”
He then lay back down and twitched.
While Hasse and White Flame were engrossed in their thoughts of whether lightning could heal people from the Shades of Chaos possession, Hao Ren was thinking something else. Having learned a great deal about Vivian, he began to link the healing to the unique life of this bat demon. “I’m afraid it has nothing to do with the lightning. Maybe it was Vivian that expelled the Shade of Chaos,” he said.
Hasse had no idea what Hao Ren meant, but there was a weird reaction on Vivian’s face. “You mean… Hell no! How are those strange things have anything to do with me?” she asked.
Hao Ren remained silent while Lily rolled her eyes. “Because you’re the weirdest one in the house.”
“What are you guys talking about?” White Flame looked at Hao Ren, bewildered. “The power of Countess Vivian has suppressed the Shades of Chaos?” she said.
“Ahh, no, nothing, it’s just my wild guess,” Hao Ren said, giving a superficial response knowing that it was not easy to sort out the matter. “Vivian was one among the ancient gods who sealed the Shades of Chaos thousands of years ago. So I wonder if she still retains the influence over the shadows,” Hao Ren said.
Hasse looked at Vivian in surprise. “Is what he said true? Are you one of the persons who built the seal?”
Vivien nodded, embarrassingly. “Yeah, I guess, but I can’t remember that.”
Hao Ren then explained the origin of the seal to Hasse and then steered the conversation back to the Shades of Chaos. “How did the shadows appear? Any clue?”
White Flame’s brows pulled together as she recalled, “They just appeared suddenly. I didn’t know how. Wasn’t your assistant who alerted us about it?”
“If the Shades of Chaos also suddenly appeared in the hall one month ago, then it would be easy to explain what happened to the Ancattero family and the demon hunters,” said Hasse in a low voice. “They would have no time to react because as soon as one person began to lose his mind, the situation would immediately get out of hand.”
Everyone knew how they would end up if not for the heads-up from the MDT. With so many people gathered in a confined space, even the most experienced demon hunters would fall in the hands of the Shades of Chaos. The mind-attack that drove people into insanity posed the biggest threat, and it worked the best in a crowded space. So it was not difficult to imagine how the Shades of Chaos was able to cause a catastrophic chain reaction when Amatura and his fellow demon hunters were meeting with the Ancattero family in the hall. “Did anyone do, move, see or felt anything unusual at that time?” Y’zaks’ low-pitched voice sounded calm and reassuring. “We want to find out if there is anything that has disturbed the shadows.”
Everyone began to rummage in their memory. The MDT had a visual record of what happened at that time—much more detailed than anyone could describe verbally.
Each of them had told what they did, see or felt right before the shadows emerged, but there was nothing particularly suspicious. It seemed that the Shades of Chaos just appeared out of nowhere for no reason.
While they were scratching their head, White Flame suddenly spoke, “I don’t know if this is relevant, but those shadows began to appear when I let down my guard.”
Hasse looked at his disciple. “Is that your guts feeling?”
“Well, at least I think it matters,” White Flame said, nodding her head slightly as she explained what was in her mind. “When I completely let down my guard against Hesperides, the shadows appeared.”
White Flame’s words reminded the other demon hunters, and they began to recall the incongruence at that time. Even Hasse and Hesperides had their moments when they let down their guard. “There was a moment when I have forgotten that Hasse is my enemy,” Hesperides said, very honestly.
