Chapter 218: Short Needle
The cerulean flame exploded on the shield’s surface, creating web-like cracks. Li Wen stumbled back under the impact, crashing into a display case. Shards of shattered glass floated beside her like frozen icicles. Heli tapped the face of her pocket watch with her fingertip, and the suspended shards suddenly reversed direction, transforming into a rain of sharp blades that pinned her to the wall.
Blood beaded and slid down the glass edges, but before it could touch the floor, it instantly flowed back. Li Wen could only watch as her own blood seeped back into her body, her wounds healing on their own. Her damaged Emerald Star Cloak also rewove itself, becoming as good as new. However, the shards embedded in her flesh remained, delving deeper with every pause between Li Wen’s breaths and heartbeats.
Heli approached slowly, stepping over the remnants of gears scattered on the floor. Her decayed right cheek was overflowing with amber-colored mucus, each drop solidifying into an amber-like crystal upon hitting the ground.
“This isn’t fun,” the girl tilted her head, her split pupils reflecting Li Wen’s tense face. “You should scream and run like the others.”
Li Wen didn’t know who “the others” referred to and therefore didn’t reply. She subtly reached for the Fairy Pocket at her waist. Heli suddenly chuckled softly and tapped her pocket watch lightly…
Time froze abruptly.
Li Wen’s action was captured in the moment of retrieving an item. She could clearly feel her heartbeat stretching into a dull throb, her blood slowly churning in her veins. Even more terrifying was that her thoughts were also frozen along with time, each idea like one sinking into a mire, crawling forward with difficulty.
Heli smiled slightly and tapped her pocket watch again.
Pain became meaningless. Li Wen felt her heart beating in reverse in her chest. The pain and suffocation from her blood flowing backward made her vision go black, and this sensation was endlessly prolonged.
In this infinitely long agony, Li Wen forced hoarse gasps from her throat. She tried to cast Prayer, but found the incantation dismantled into scattered syllables, slowly drifting between her lips and teeth. Heli observed these glowing syllables with interest and suddenly reached out and grasped one.
“Sun?” she held the syllable before her split pupils. “A very interesting power, but too weak. Useless to me.”
The grasped syllable suddenly expanded and exploded. A phantom image of a miniature shield appeared in the bright light. Heli blew on it, and the shield shattered like a soap bubble. The splashing streams of light turned into tiny light spots, evaporating before they even hit the ground.
“Let me see what else you have…” Heli, like a child discovering a new toy, was filled with playful curiosity. She picked up Li Wen’s hand holding the dagger and discovered a dim mark beneath her wrist, then reached out to touch it.
The moment Heli’s fingers were about to touch the sun mark on Li Wen’s wrist, the dormant mark suddenly burst forth with blinding golden light. The girl’s fingertips recoiled sharply as if touching a red-hot iron. A vast power directly blasted her away. The girl’s split pupils contracted violently, her decayed right cheek instantly cracked, and amber mucus surged like boiling water, hissing and corroding as it dripped onto the ground.
“This is…” Heli’s voice wavered for the first time, tinged with unbelievable tremor. “Crimson Crown’s…”
Li Wen didn’t give her time to think. Seizing the moment when the other party was distracted and unable to manipulate time, she endured the pain of her blood flowing backward in her chest, her hands making prayer gestures with difficulty. The long-prepared Divine Prayer was unleashed instantly.
Thirst for Light!
A brilliant flame ignited, and a moth engulfed in fire flew out from the light and flames. It flew directly towards Heli.
The girl, who had reacted, instinctively raised her brass pocket watch and tapped the dial urgently, trying to rewind time before the moth attacked. However, the fiery moth seemed to ignore the constraints of time, tracing an arc that defied logic in the frozen spacetime, and easily burrowed into Heli’s clear pupils.
“Ah—”
Heli instinctively screamed, but then she discovered that this strange magic hadn’t affected her much.
“Are you playing with me!” Heli glared at Li Wen, furious and embarrassed. “I told you, this low-level Divine Prayer is useless to me!”
She no longer intended to play and thus decisively moved the pocket watch’s pointers, preparing to permanently freeze Li Wen at a specific point in time.
However, as soon as Heli activated the power of the Time Sequence Path, a fierce, violent, and distorted golden flame erupted from within her. Heli’s scream abruptly twisted into a non-human roar. The golden flame burst from her eye sockets, instantly engulfing half her face. The decayed, bark-like skin curled and peeled off in the fire, revealing writhing bloody tissue beneath. She staggered backward, her pocket watch slipping from her grasp and falling to the ground. The glass on the watch face shattered upon impact, and the three pointers trembled frantically like dying insects.
“How dare you…” Heli’s voice was so distorted it was no longer human. The left half of her childlike face was contorted in pain, and her right hand frantically clawed at her eye sockets, trying to extinguish the utterly unquenchable flames.
As the pocket watch left Heli’s control, Li Wen was also freed from the shackles of time. She looked at the girl’s tragic state and finally let out a long sigh of relief.
She had gambled correctly.
While the power of the Time Sequence Path was immensely powerful, it also had significant limitations. Judging from Heli’s half-decayed face, Li Wen surmised that each time she manipulated time, she paid an equal amount of her own time as the price. This meant that as long as Heli continued to play with time, her body would gradually age and decay.
For an ordinary person, such frequent use of time-related abilities would have long ago turned them into mere dust under the order of time. But Heli was different. Her father was a Long-lived being who founded Amber City, so she likely possessed that same lineage of eternity. Time could at most leave deep marks on her but could not completely kill her.
By sheer chance, Li Wen happened to possess a Divine Prayer, Thirst for Light, which only revealed its true power over time. Once Thirst for Light hit its target and persisted for ten minutes, the target would be consumed by light until death.
Thus, Heli used her pocket watch, paying time as the price, which directly triggered the effect of Thirst for Light.
Li Wen first used Divine Prayer to recover her state, and then, dagger in hand, prepared to finish off the madwoman. But at that moment, a voice came from behind her.
“Heli merely enjoys playing with others and harbors no malice. I implore you to show mercy.”
It was a voice that was difficult to pinpoint but seemed to possess extreme distinctiveness. It sounded like a boy’s, yet also like a girl’s, like a child’s, yet also like an old person’s, sometimes seeming extremely close, sometimes extremely far.
Li Wen turned around and saw a brass mask.
