Chapter 57: The Unveiling of Baoyu

Until she followed Polaris back to the battlefield, Baoyu remained uncertain whether her decision to return was truly the right one.

The sheer magical power, radiating from the two mutually devouring Corrosives, was palpable even from a considerable distance; it was unequivocally a battle she could not easily meddle with. Not only her, but even more seasoned magical girls like String Moon and Asherah would likely be barred from participating. It was an instinctive dread that transcended the simple word ‘dangerous’; merely approaching the vicinity sent a bone-chilling cold involuntarily coursing through her body.

One misstep, and she would be irrevocably lost.

Yet, despite this profound apprehension, she had held Asherah back and strenuously persuaded Polaris when the latter was prepared to confront the two Corrosives alone. Baoyu understood that Polaris might endure the monster’s onslaught for a time, but she would never inflict meaningful damage. A shield, solely for defense, was utterly insufficient; she also required a spear capable of creating an offensive and decisive blow.

And when she successfully brought down the monster attempting to flee, she felt a profound certainty in her choice. Though the fear within her heart lingered, her body had gradually acclimatized to the intense atmosphere, compelling her to focus and meticulously shoot hole after hole into its wings with her pistol.

****

With her and Senior Polaris’s timely arrival, the tide of battle appeared to shift in their favor. Polaris ceaselessly diverted and disrupted the enemy’s assaults, her shield, shimmering with faint starlight, offering its customary sense of unwavering security.

She had been somewhat taken aback upon first witnessing Black Mirror’s brutalized state, but seeing her body mend at a visible pace, Baoyu quickly grasped Black Mirror’s fighting style. Simultaneously, a question arose: why had Black Mirror ceased using her earlier ability to vanish and reappear? Was there a constraint on that power, perhaps due to the present environment?

Connecting this observation with her previous conjectures about Black Mirror, a rough conclusion began to coalesce in Baoyu’s mind.

Now, Black Mirror had assumed Asherah’s position. Unlike Polaris’s strategy of defensive containment, Black Mirror’s tactics were fiercely aggressive, often disregarding physical injury to forcibly gouge damage into the monster. The efficacy was undeniable: this Corrosive-level entity was clearly struggling to endure such a “life-for-life” war of attrition.

This pair of sworn adversaries displayed no intent of cooperation or mutual cover; they fought as if oblivious to each other’s existence, each battling independently. Yet, the outcome was a synergistic space where both could maximize their respective strengths, significantly alleviating combat pressure while skillfully compensating for their individual rhythmic deficiencies.

One, an unyielding tumbler, the other, a rabid dog that met attacks head-on, determined to tear off flesh even unto death. Confronted by these two, the monster conspicuously exhibited signs of exhaustion from being overwhelmed, forced to channel the majority of its attention into close-quarters offense and defense. It had no opportunity to unleash the threatening rays again, a circumstance that created exceptionally favorable conditions for Baoyu’s own attacks.

At this juncture, witnessing the entity once known as Liu Tianze reduced to such a grotesque form, Baoyu subconsciously dismissed any hope of his salvation. He had already been “condemned” to death by Black Mirror. Moreover, even exerting her full power might not inflict effective damage, so how could she possibly show any clemency?

Reloading her revolver, Baoyu aimed her Inkfall at the monster’s colossal facial eye and unleashed another rapid volley. The creature consciously used other parts of its torso to shield that area, confirming it as a critical weak point.

Her determined actions seemed to ignite its fury. The emotion was unmistakably captured in its bulging eyeball. This was hardly surprising; it had believed it could shake off Black Mirror and escape to sow more chaos elsewhere, but now its wings, riddled with holes, were temporarily useless, and its body was pinned to the ground under relentless assault. With no avenue of retreat, it endured continuous, non-fatal yet inescapable damage, and the death knell seemed to toll directly above its head.

Polaris, seizing a precise moment when Black Mirror attacked the monster’s right leg, delivered another blow. Her heavy shield slammed fiercely into its knee, causing its lower limbs to momentarily lose balance. Black Mirror capitalized on this, directly circling behind the creature, pressing down on its neck, and forcing it to the ground. She sacrificed her left arm from the elbow down to restrain its movements, thereby presenting Baoyu with an ideal attacking window from afar.

Consequently, a bullet struck the monster’s eye with pinpoint accuracy. The azure casing burrowed deeper into the blood-red orb, inflicting significant damage through Inkfall’s “piercing” characteristic.

This monster possessed no mouth, and the tidal waves of magical energy that assailed them were its most piercing lamentations. This dense, chilling magic barely affected Black Mirror, herself a Corrosive, but it took a toll on magical girls like Polaris and Baoyu. Even Baoyu, who had maintained a safe distance, suddenly experienced a dizzying sensation. The fatigue she had been relentlessly suppressing to maintain focus abruptly surged, catching her completely off guard. In the seemingly endless rain, her vision blurred, and a persistent buzzing echoed in her mind.

Polaris, despite being closest to the monster, appeared largely unaffected, yet the starlight emanating from her shield momentarily dimmed. Having fought on the front lines with a body Xirang had once described as “half-buried” (TL Note: A Chinese idiom, ‘banjie rudu,’ meaning to be on the verge of death or extremely worn out), she continued to provide unwavering cover and protection for her companions. Perhaps only she, the one enduring it, truly knew the extent of her own limits.

The agonizing pain from its injured eye spurred the monster to unleash even greater power. Whether it could truly be classified as a “biological entity” remained unknown, but it was undeniable that upon its birth, after completely devouring Liu Tianze, it had acquired the most fundamental and vital instinct of survival. And once it perceived a threat to its very existence, it would become exponentially more dangerous.

After erupting with immense force to fling the two magical girls aside, it swung its still-mobile fist down upon Polaris. The heavy fist, enveloped in cracks, struck brutally against the shield, which was too diminutive to fully cover her slender frame. Despite her utmost effort to brace, Polaris’s legs buckled involuntarily, and several new fissures marred the already damaged surface of her armor.

The Crushing Lord, with a sudden, surging impact, fiercely embedded itself into the monster’s side. This time, however, it stood firm, utterly unmoving. It then spun, seized Black Mirror, and slammed her into the ground by her chest. Its bullet-shattered eye fixed its unblinking gaze upon her.

This was the desperate stare of a cornered beast, its most perilous moment.

Several bullets struck its back, yet they merely grazed the surface, failing to inflict deeper damage. Baoyu successfully diverted its attention from the other two, but in doing so, placed herself in grave peril.

After an arduous roll and dodge to evade a beam of light hurtling towards her, Baoyu noticed the creature rapidly bearing down. In that fleeting moment their gazes met, she felt her body plummet into an icy abyss. Her trigger finger suddenly became disobedient. To regain control, she bit her tongue, using the sharp pain to compel her body back into action, swapping the Inkfall in her hand for the Thunderclap strapped to her back.

The black whip swiftly snaked out, tightly coiling around the monster’s ankle. The pain amplification effect of the Thunderclap’s ‘Torturer Lord’ (TL Note: The ‘Torturer Lord’ refers to a specific ability or mode of the Thunderclap whip that enhances pain perception) caused its eyes to tremble with agony, yet this only served to fuel its rage further. The immense disparity in their physiques allowed it to effortlessly yank Black Mirror, who had attempted to halt the long whip.

Watching the heavy fist, wrapped in cracks as if capable of rending space itself, leap high and hurtle towards her face, Baoyu raised her gun barrel and pulled the trigger, utterly devoid of any thought of retreat.

A thunderous gunshot reverberated across the park, now a scene of utter devastation. Beneath the gloomy, dark clouds, a spectacular blue fireworks display erupted in the rain. Polaris, having flashed over just in time with her ability, desperately deflected the punch with her shield. Even so, she and Baoyu were sent tumbling diagonally into the grass below due to the sheer force of the impact.

In the lingering aftermath of the explosion, the monster’s scorched body was flung amidst the expanding, tempestuous air. Baoyu had unsparingly poured nearly half of her remaining magical energy into that shot. Although the creature had raised an arm to protect its head at the instant of impact, Thunderclap’s characteristic of maximizing firepower ensured it was still caught in the blast, inflicting some damage to its eye. A copious amount of purple liquid oozed from the wound previously pierced by the bullet, and even the eye itself was now tinged with purple, bleeding into the blood-red.

“Now you’ve lost an arm, you bastard.”

Black Mirror, swinging her hammer from behind, slammed it heavily into the monster’s other arm, which had been injured in the explosion. After successfully crippling both its arms, she followed up with several more crushing blows.

“Hoo… hoo…”

Black Mirror stood amidst a puddle, rainwater trailing from her fingertips. She cast a fleeting glance at the monster, now prostrate and unmoving beneath her, breathing softly.

It lay utterly still, like a scattered mass of broken flesh, collapsed amidst the pooled water and mud. No sound, no struggle, only its nearly shattered eye continued to twitch.

‘Can this thing feel pain, too? Does it fear death?’ The moment this question surfaced, Black Mirror chuckled at her own idle thought. A sudden, electric-like jolt coursed through her body, but she disregarded it, dismissing it as mere physical exhaustion.

The magical girls behind her were silent, most likely pushed to their absolute limits in this grueling battle. With this thought, she raised the Crushing Lord, poised to finally extinguish the life of this abomination.

However, the warhammer, raised high, ultimately did not descend upon that abhorrent eye. It wasn’t due to some sudden, foolish surge of pity in Black Mirror’s mind; rather, her Crushing Lord had abruptly flown from her grasp.

Along with her right shoulder and her right hand.

The sound of two bullet casings striking the ground echoed with an unnerving clarity amidst the rain.

“What is the meaning of this…?”

Black Mirror couldn’t help but whirl around, glaring furiously at the person who had shot her from behind. She had never imagined that the one who had consistently fired under Polaris’s protection would now turn their weapon on her.

And it was only when she looked that she realized something was profoundly amiss with Baoyu and Polaris.

She saw Polaris kneeling on the ground, supporting herself with one hand while clutching her head with the other. Her bloodless lips moved, but no sound reached Black Mirror’s ears.

She saw Baoyu swaying precariously, raising her shotgun and aiming it at Black Mirror. Baoyu’s pupils were unnaturally dilated, and her breathing grew increasingly rapid and shallow.

“Hey, what are you two—”

“Bang!”

Another shot, aimed directly at her. After dodging two bullets infused with magical power, Black Mirror finally grasped the source of the anomaly.

“Mental pollution.”

The monster, having narrowly escaped destruction, slowly rose again. And now Black Mirror finally saw it clearly—the once unnoticed buds on its chest had blossomed into a plant poised to unfurl, slowly opening under her watchful gaze.

Petal by petal, it revealed blossoms of such vivid, unsettling color, like an exotic flower thriving amidst a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.

‘Is this an organ, a weapon, or—’

And the instant she witnessed its bloom, that electric-like stimulation surged through her body once more, jolting her into realization.

It was this peculiar flower that had released the mental pollution. As a Corrosive, she was completely immune to its effects. But judging by the current state of Polaris and Baoyu, they had been unable to resist the attack.

Polaris could barely cling to consciousness, but beyond that, she was utterly incapacitated. As for Baoyu, her mind was already in complete disarray, having utterly lost all perception of her surroundings.

“Damn it, hey, wake up… Tsk, it’s no use.”

Every attempt Black Mirror made to approach Baoyu only provoked a more ferocious assault. Seeing that communication was impossible, Black Mirror decided to temporarily leave her be. Since the source of the mental pollution was the flower, destroying it should simultaneously nullify all related effects.

But what transpired next compelled her to halt abruptly.

Throughout the continuous engagements, Baoyu had strived to maximize her hit rate and targeting to optimize her magic power usage. Yet, even this could not compensate for her inherent weakness of limited magic reserves. When she had struck the enemy with Thunderclap moments ago, she had reserved just enough magic for movement and attack, but after suffering the mental attack, her thoughts became muddled, illusions danced before her eyes, auditory hallucinations echoed in her ears, her consciousness grew increasingly strained, and her magic power exhibited signs of instability.

Under such dire circumstances, the nearby magic power of the Corrosive triggered a violent stress response within her. Unconsciously, she unhesitatingly poured her last vestiges of magic power into Thunderclap’s barrel and fired it at the nearest sensed presence.

Under the relentless drain of magic power and the persistent mental pollution, her body and mind had been pushed to their absolute breaking point, unable to even sustain her magical girl transformation.

With a “thud,” one of the magical girl presences in Black Mirror’s perception vanished. She instinctively glanced back, but then found her gaze utterly transfixed.

A black-haired girl lay collapsed in a cold puddle, her face pale and etched with pain. That face made Black Mirror blink several times before she could finally confirm the girl’s identity.

‘How… could… this be?’

A crucial corner of her world crumbled in that instant.

All the blood in her body seemed to turn to ice. She blinked repeatedly, yet she could not bring herself to comprehend the sight before her.

She had never cared about the true identities of magical girls; it was utterly irrelevant. It *should* be irrelevant.

But why, then, was it someone she knew lying before her eyes?

Jin…

Jin Shiling.

The person whose gaze she had met, and then avoided, countless times.

Jin Shiling, who lived under the same roof, yet always maintained a palpable distance and unfamiliarity.

How could she possibly be…

Jin Shiling, the magical girl Baoyu.

In an instant, memories connected to the magical girl Baoyu surged into her mind: their initial encounter, the things she had done to her… Without Baoyu’s slightest awareness, two figures who should have been utterly distinct now jarringly merged into one.

Her younger sister, Jin Shiling, was a magical girl.

Black Mirror, Zhang Qingwei, had always believed that the realm of magical girls and Corrosives was profoundly distant from her everyday life—so far that no intersection was conceivable.

But now, this gear had suddenly been violently forced into the cog, grinding with a scalp-tingling shriek of violent misalignment.

Her sister, whom she remembered as always masking her true self, always pushing through, now lay before her in the most wretched state, as fragile as a dying young animal.

A certain order, one that constructed “Zhang Qingwei” and “Black Mirror” yet simultaneously kept them separate, silently collapsed with a deafening crash.

“Hiss.”

A subtle sound hissed past her ear. A black tendril abruptly shot forth from the flower on the monster’s chest. This tendril did not extend towards the stunned Black Mirror, but rather bypassed her, striking menacingly towards Jin Shiling, who lay prostrate on the ground.

There was no time for thought or hesitation, nor was thought even necessary; her body had already made a choice before her consciousness could process it.

…

So cold, so painful, utterly devoid of strength.

Cold raindrops ceaselessly pelted her faintly breathing face. Her leaden eyelids strained to lift, allowing only a blurred, indistinct glimpse of her surroundings.

‘What happened…?’

Unable to think, unable to recall. The slightest attempt to stir her thoughts brought a searing, needle-like pain to her head. The air was thick with a decaying, oppressive scent that suffocated her.

So tired, so desperately wanting to sleep…

“Wake… wake…”

Something cold and damp pressed against her forehead. Warm, ragged breaths roughly brushed against her skin.

‘…Who is it…?’

Struggling to open her eyes, the blur in her vision gradually sharpened.

Purple, purple eyes, Baoyu, my eyes?

No…

She, you, you are—

“Black Mirror…?”

Recognizing the girl before her, Jin Shiling’s muddled consciousness somewhat revived. The forehead-to-forehead proximity made her instinctively recoil slightly, yet her body remained unresponsive. In her confusion, her gaze began to drift downwards, towards the other girl’s body.

“—”

A slender, branch-like tendril had pierced through the chest of the uniformed girl before her. Its sharp tip was mere millimeters from her own chest, and that final minuscule distance was blocked by the girl’s limbs. Her hands tightly gripped the portion that had emerged from the girl’s chest, preventing it from penetrating even a fraction further.

She had been saved by her.

But why?

Even though she had saved her, why…

Why was she the one displaying an expression of profound relief, as if *she* had been the one rescued?