Chapter 19: You’re Oiling the Road

In the center of the basin, the blood-red light around Lilith surged.
The wildly dancing blood-red thorns, like living things, continuously clashed with the purple-black tentacles.

Lilith’s fingertips traced an esoteric crimson trajectory in the air.
A complex rune instantly took shape, emitting a heart-pounding energy fluctuation!

“This ends here!”

「Holy Blood Contract · Blood Erosion Annihilation」

A beam of dark-red light, condensed to its absolute limit, instantly pierced through everything in front of Lilith!

There was no earth-shattering explosion.
Like a red-hot iron piercing through butter, it instantly annihilated everything in its path!

The gray-robed man who had summoned the tentacles, who had already dug out a piece of his own chest, now had a large, transparent hole straight through him.

He didn’t even have time to scream before he visibly turned into a puff of scattered black ash!

Along with those strange purple-black tentacles, it was as if they had been erased by the will of the world, leaving not a single trace behind.

Utterly devastating!
Absolute annihilation!

The pupils of the sole remaining assassin shrank to the size of a needlepoint in fear.
The annihilation of his companion completely shattered his last shred of hope.

Despair turned into hysterical madness.
He let out a roar, venting the fear in his heart.
His body turned into a black shadow and remained in place, his true form nowhere to be seen.

「Void-Reality Contract · Shadow Strike」

The next moment, from the shadows behind Lilith, a pitch-black afterimage drilled out, its speed so fast that it almost surpassed the limits of visual capture!

However, Lilith still noticed it.
The moment the cold glint was about to reach her body, a red glow burst from her entire body, and her figure strangely shifted a distance.

A small hand, enveloped in blood-red light, shot out like lightning, accurately grabbing the assassin’s wrist, which held the dagger.

The force was so great that the assassin’s wrist bones made a “crackling” sound, as if they were about to break.

At the same time, several crimson thorns instantly shot out from the ground and from behind Lilith.

They tightly bound the assassin’s neck and limbs, lifting his entire body into the air like an animal waiting to be slaughtered.

“Heh~”
Lilith tilted her head slightly, her red-glowing eyes filled with undisguised contempt and killing intent.

“Weak and ignorant little rats, you really annoy me!”
Her voice was not loud, but it carried a suppressed anger.

The assassin’s eyes bulged from being strangled, and a “ho… ho…” sound of air leaking escaped from his throat.
But his bloodshot eyes burned with a fanatical will.

He stared fixedly at Lilith, using all his remaining strength to squeeze out hoarse, broken words, “Ho… hoho…”

“A world that deviates from, reality, and fate… is meaningless… We will, eventually, meet again, on the, real, other shore…”

“At that time, I, will, kill, you!”

As soon as his words fell, his entire body instantly turned into countless fine black sand particles, which scattered in the cool night wind, leaving not a single trace behind.

The basin returned to a dead silence, with only the residual energy fluctuations and the smell of burning still attesting to the fierce battle that had just taken place.

Hearing the commotion subside, Bai Jin cautiously peeked her head out from behind the boulder again.

All that was left was Lilith standing alone in the center of the basin.
The moonlight fell on her small body, reflecting a hazy red halo.

“Heh, truly incorrigible lunatics!”
Lilith clapped her hands up and down as if to dust something off, and spat in a low voice.

She seemed to sense Bai Jin’s gaze and turned around, her eyes falling in the direction of the boulder.

When she saw Bai Jin and the unharmed Vera in her arms, the tight corners of her lips seemed to finally loosen, and she even showed a rare, faint smile of relief.

However, this smile completely froze in the next instant!

Without any warning!

A long, narrow blade, purely condensed from deep darkness, pierced out from the void as if penetrating through space-time.

It pierced through Lilith’s body without any obstruction!

“Pfft—”

The sound of a sharp blade piercing through flesh was exceptionally clear in the silent wilderness!

Lilith’s small body trembled violently.
Her blood-red eyes widened in an instant from extreme pain and disbelief.

Deep within her pupils, Bai Jin’s horrified and desperate face was reflected.

The color instantly drained from her face, and a stream of striking red blood uncontrollably spilled from the corner of her mouth.

She tried her best, her lips opening and closing with difficulty in Bai Jin’s direction, and she spat out two words:

“Run… fast!”

Before her words could fall, the dark blade that had pierced her suddenly exploded!

Like ink dropping into clear water, a viscous, gel-like black liquid with a thick, ominous aura rapidly expanded, with Lilith at the center, quickly swelling into an inverted black giant bowl, instantly swallowing the entire center of the basin!

Like a nightmare suddenly descending, Lilith’s figure completely disappeared within it, not a single trace of her aura could be sensed.

Bai Jin’s mind went blank.
The arms holding Vera were as stiff as cast iron.

Everything that had just happened was too fast for her to react.

One second, Lilith was like a god of war, crushing her enemies.
The next second, she was pierced and devoured by that strange black blade…

‘Am I free?’

A thought, like the deepest black abyss in her heart, suddenly spread through her mind.

Lilith was trapped, and might even be… dead.

The crazy Saintess who had imprisoned, tortured, and treated her as a plaything and a tool had just disappeared from her sight.

The chains that bound her were still faintly aching, reminding her of the hellish experience of the past three days.

As long as she turned and ran now, ran far, far away, escaped from Twilight Town, to a place where Lilith could never find her, she would be completely free!

No more enduring that heart-wrenching pain, no more being used as a tool to extract death energy, no more…

No more having to face the inscrutable Lilith…

Her heart pounded crazily at this tempting thought.
The instinct for survival drove her legs to want to step back.

Vera, in her arms, trembled from extreme fear, burying her face tightly in her chest.

‘No, there’s still that damned contract!’

Although her body was now filled with Lilith’s life force, the shackles deep within their souls were still clearly there.

Their lives and pain were once closely linked through this contract.

And at this moment, one end of the contract was tightly embedded in Bai Jin’s soul, while the other end was empty, as if separated by space-time, not existing in this world.

Bai Jin felt an emptiness in her heart.
Waves of a sense of nothingness from the depths of her soul washed over her crazy thoughts, gradually calming her down.

‘If Lilith really died… what would happen to this contract? Would it backlash on me? Or… would it also drag me into that unknown abyss?’

More importantly, that terrifying existence that could easily severely injure Lilith, could she really escape from it?

Once the opponent dealt with Lilith, who would be the next target?
Her?
Or Vera?
Or… the entire Twilight Town?

Figuring this out, Bai Jin no longer hesitated.
She took one last look at the heart-pounding black cover, as if to engrave this nightmarish scene into her mind.

Then, she suddenly turned around, holding Vera in her arms even tighter, and once again forcibly activated the life force that had just calmed down in her body!

「Holy Blood Contract · Blood Escape」！

The familiar, intense pain of her blood vessels being ignited swept through her entire body again.

Bai Jin gritted her teeth, ignoring the tearing pain in her muscles, and holding Vera, turned into a blood-red shadow that sped through the night.