Chapter 15: The Doll and the Girl

The night had grown deep, yet the classroom remained brightly lit. Xizi Yue lowered her head to take a sip of tea and asked without even looking up, "Did you bring a friend?"

Magic Girl Embers slowly turned her pale cheek, casting a suspicious glance toward the window in the corner.

It was pitch black outside, but the candlelight on the long table flickered. The orange glow diffused outward, illuminating Bai Jieke's face at this very moment—ghastly white skin, a mouth cracked open at the corners, and hollow eyes filled with black-and-white static, resembling a malfunctioning television screen.

This scene felt like something straight out of a B-Class horror movie: a boy and girl chatting comfortably on a summer night, only for one of them to casually turn their head and see an eerie face hanging upside down outside the window.

Embers froze slightly in place, her heart suddenly clenching as if gripped by a giant hand.

At this moment, however, Ke Mingqing felt no waves of emotion. From the very beginning, he didn't believe the puppet could hide from Xizi Yue's eyes. After all, she was known as one of the Three Great Magical Girls. Reputations could be faked, but could the "S-Class" on the Superhuman Species Panel also be faked? Therefore, from the moment Xizi Yue stepped out of the train, Ke Mingqing had already assumed she had discovered his Theater Puppet.

And that was indeed the case. Xizi Yue casually remarked to Embers, "It seems he is not your friend."

Only then did Embers recover from her fright. She took a deep breath, and the gaze beneath her bangs gradually turned ice-cold. Xizi Yue had practically spelled it out: this entity had followed her here. Yet, for all this time, she had been completely unaware—a realization that left Embers deeply embarrassed and enraged.

Meanwhile, outside the window, Bai Jieke seemingly lacked any self-awareness of being a peeping tom. It waved at Embers as if greeting an old friend. With its other hand, it lifted the tail end of its Magic Wand and slowly traced two crooked words onto the dusty old windowpane: "Hello."

After writing this, it split its mouth into a wide grin under the girl's astonished and furious glare.

In the dead silence, Embers raised her right arm horizontally, gripping her umbrella with one hand. Pointing the pitch-black tip of the umbrella directly at Bai Jieke's head, she pulled the trigger without even looking up.

BANG!

The gunshot tore through the tranquility of the classroom. A black Magic Missile shattered the window and shot outward.

However, Bai Jieke had anticipated this. It preemptively released its legs, which had been wrapped around the rooftop railing, and allowed its body to plummet into the darkness of the night, narrowly dodging the Magic Missile. Had it been half a second slower, its head would have been blown off on the spot. Both the bullet and Bai Jieke vanished into the night sky, leaving no further sound.

Magic Girl Embers turned to watch this unfold and lowered her voice. "Master, I'll go drag it back."

"Take the Protective Talisman I gave you," Xizi Yue replied without looking up, flipping through a fashion magazine while sipping her hot tea.

Embers nodded. Bending her knees slightly, she stomped against the ground. Amidst her fluttering skirts, her figure swept across half the classroom like a gust of wind.

The girl's lithe figure darted out through the shattered window. She then raised her umbrella in mid-air. As a ripple of Magic Power bloomed from the canopy, her body soared high into the sky. She sprinted through the night, vaulting over brightly lit skyscrapers as she chased after that ghastly white silhouette.

Before long, she caught up to the back of the Theater Puppet.

They were now on top of an elevated railway, surrounded by pitch-black darkness where one couldn't even see their own fingers. The distance between the girl and the puppet was less than thirty meters.

At this moment, the Theater Puppet seemed to have abandoned the idea of fleeing. Its white top hat slowed its rotation, allowing it to hover in mid-air. Just then, a snowy-white beam from a headlight swept over from the distance, slicing through the darkness atop the elevated bridge. Bai Jieke turned its head. Its eerie face was illuminated by the headlights, and its hollow eyes glinted brightly.

"Is it really necessary to be so fixated on a nobody like me?" it asked, its body slowly descending.

At that exact moment, a silver-white iron dragon sped out from the tunnel. The Theater Puppet landed on the roof of this high-speed train, the metal plating beneath its feet rattling and roaring. The evening wind blew head-on as Bai Jieke gently adjusted its top hat, setting it properly upon its head.

Embers retracted her umbrella's canopy and similarly landed firmly on top of the train. The girl remained silent, only furrowing her beautiful brows slightly. The night wind descended from the heavens, sending her long black hair dancing in the breeze and her skirts fluttering like a black rose.

"Why were you following me?" she finally spoke, her voice a low interrogation.

"Oh, because I am your number one fan, of course," Bai Jieke said in a bizarre, dubbed-translation accent. "I just wanted to understand you a little better, that's all."

"Disgusting..."

The Gothic Dress Girl spoke without a shred of emotion, lifting her head to look straight into the puppet's hollow eyes. She reached out with her left hand and slowly drew a Tachi from the bottom of the umbrella handle, much like drawing a blade from its sheath. The clear moonlight illuminated the very tip of the blade, while the dim steel reflected the girl's frigid expression.

Embers' Magical Weapon, "Cinderella," boasted comprehensive functionalities; this was exactly why Xizi Yue had taken a liking to her. Cinderella could use its opened canopy as a shield, detach a long blade from its handle for close-quarters combat, and even fire energy beams or bullets from the umbrella's tip to strike distant enemies.

Bai Jieke tilted its head, staring at this sight without a care. "I know your secret."

"Cheap tricks," Embers replied, stepping toward it one pace at a time.

Suddenly, it pulled down the brim of its hat and raised its hands in a gesture of surrender. It opened its mouth, but the howling evening wind and the roar of the train drowned out its voice. Yet, from the shape of its mouth, Embers could still discern what it had said in that instant:

"Xia Zili."

That was... her name.

The Gothic Dress Girl abruptly froze. A profound terror detonated within her chest, threatening to drown her heart completely. In this moment, neither the roar of the train's engines nor the howling of the night wind could reach her ears. The world fell dead silent.

Only after a long while did she take a step back, her expression one of utter shock. Xia Zili had worked as a Magical Girl for two years, yet she had never encountered an enemy who knew her true identity... This was an unprecedented situation for her. It felt as if two entirely different worlds had been violently spliced together, instilling in her a deranged sense of panic and bewilderment.

But in the very next second, the expression on the Gothic Dress Girl's face frosted over. The fear morphed into uncontainable fury.

With her blade drawn, the Gothic Dress Girl surged forward like a pitch-black falcon, her figure instantly closing the distance to appear right in front of Bai Jieke. In a flash, the blade—wreathed in a black ripple of Magic Power and bathed in the clear moonlight—slashed straight toward its neck!

The fierce wind battered its face, yet Bai Jieke stared straight ahead with a calm expression. In that fleeting second, it unleashed the skill equipped in its secondary Skill Bar.

[E-Class Skill unleashed—"Shifting Form and Shadow" (Instantly swap positions with a living target within a twenty-meter radius around you).]

[Cooldown: 1 hour.]

The next moment, its position swapped with the Gothic Dress Girl. The Tachi slashed at empty air.

However, the blade-shaped ripple of Magic Power swept onward, carving a massive trench into the roof of the high-speed train. The sudden, violent tremor sent the passengers inside the train carriages into a screaming frenzy.

"A position swap?" Embers stared at the empty space in front of her.

"Ah, right, I forgot to introduce myself. My name is 'Bai Jieke'," the Theater Puppet said faintly from behind her. It leaped high into the air, its top hat spinning as it carried him toward the distant sky. "Goodbye then, Xia Zi... Oh, no, Miss Embers."

But before he could finish speaking, Embers had already processed the situation. Turning her head, she raised her umbrella and fired a pitch-black Magic Missile from its tip.

BANG!

The bullet instantly pierced through Bai Jieke's heart.

Clutching its chest, Bai Jieke teetered in the night sky like a kite with a snapped string. Finally, its figure intentionally plummeted, drifting down toward Li Jing Square.

With a resounding THWACK, it was impaled on the spire of the Li Jing Iron Tower, just like Jesus trapped on the cross. Blood trickled down the spire, and its body remained completely motionless.

The people in the square looked up, screaming at the gruesome sight. Embers, who had pursued from above the silver-white high-speed train, immediately froze. Hovering in mid-air, she stared blankly and wondered, "Is it... dead?"