Moonscar's expression froze. Her silver eyes contracted. An earthquake struck her internal world.
Machine doll = older sister. Pregnant = likes romance, marriage, children. Caelus had saved older sister at a critical moment. Factor in his looks. Hero saves beauty = offer oneself in return.
Conclusion: her own older sister may have entered into an unclear, ambiguous relationship with him.
"This — this can't be..."
As a Judge of the Ten-Lords Commission, Moonscar was swift and decisive at work, incorruptible and impartial — but the moment anything involved her older sister, her logical reasoning inevitably became just the slightest bit more meticulous. More thorough. By approximately one billion percent.
True, knowing her older sister's personality, she theoretically would never do something like that — but what if she did?
Moonscar's gaze darkened in an instant, deep and cold as the Nine Depths' abyss. There in the dim, eerie Fyxestroll Garden, she looked like a soul drifted back from the banks of the underworld, staring at the gray-haired figure up ahead.
Caelus, who had been teasing Huo Huo, felt a sudden chill crawl up his spine. He turned his head and saw Moonscar — pallid skin, eyes glowing with an unsettling light.
The resemblance to Sadako crawling out of an ancient well almost triggered his scientific curiosity about whether female ghosts could get pregnant.
"Our Judge Xueyi said it perfectly~! Absurd superstition — as Xianzhou inhabitants, we have a responsibility not to believe or spread rumors... What's that? The ghost-fire just now? That's a Heliobus... not another name for 'spirit.'"
"Ah, I can tell from that question that you're not a local Xianzhou resident, family. Tonight, little Gui here is going to give all the viewers from beyond the Xianzhou a proper introduction to one of the rarer Formless Ones among the Denizens of Abundance — Order: Formless, Family: Soul-Flame. The Heliobus."
Little Gui was faithfully reading off the materials Moonscar had provided, giving a proper educational rundown — and along the way, she wove in the history of Fyxestroll Garden's abandonment.
"Operating in secrecy" and "exposing the paranormal" weren't mutually exclusive. Heliobus weren't remotely unusual on the Xianzhou — the locals knew them well. After all, the Heliobus had been a longstanding enemy of the Alliance throughout its history!
Giving the audience a satisfying dose of curiosity would actually lower the heat. What had begun as ghost-hunting interest would naturally shift into seeing this as an ordinary, routine matter — the Ten-Lords Commission pursuing a hostile entity.
The short version: there are no ghosts on the Xianzhou. It's just an alien parasitic organism on the loose. Nothing to see here, stop wandering around and obstructing the Ten-Lords Commission from doing their job.
[Moonlake Pavilion Janitor: Good news — no ghosts running loose in Fyxestroll Garden. Bad news — there are alien parasites scurrying all over Fyxestroll Garden... Isn't that even MORE terrifying?!]
"Hey, family, don't just blurt out the whole truth like that — there's a Judge watching the stream, and saying things like that is going to come back on you~"
Stelle clicked her tongue sympathetically.
"An internet streamer really does suffer for a living — you have to stand in a place this creepy, suppress every instinct screaming at you to run, and keep up a running commentary like a war correspondent covering a homicide."
"Mom, are you watching?"
Sushang spotted her mother's username in the livestream chat and waved at the camera:
"This time, I'm not just useful — I'm extremely useful! Getting the chance to be the Ten-Lords Commission's hunting dog and help everyone out — it's wonderful!"
"Uh... 'hunting dog' doesn't quite work that way..."
Li Sushang gave her "little sister" a helplessly exasperated look. Her counterpart in this timeline had attended private school — yet her vocabulary was beyond saving.
"Let's go this way."
Caelus gazed into the dark depths of Fyxestroll Garden and raised his hand, pointing toward an entrance.
Earlier, Moonscar had amplified her senses through the Taixu Sword Heart, scanning the surrounding area — but she had found no trace of the dark power from before.
Moonscar was certain the new-species Honkai Beast hadn't left. She had been maintaining focused attention on it the entire time during Caelus's approach.
In its concealed, soundless state, a new-species Honkai Beast theoretically shouldn't have the self-awareness to choose to lay low and stay still — yet the dark power had gone silent...
Could it be that a Heliobus had made contact with the new-species Honkai Beast earlier, and that was what had triggered the power surge?
Unable to pinpoint an exact location, they pressed forward in the rough direction where the dark power had first been sensed.
Fyxestroll Garden was vast. This was no ordinary park or garden — it was a garden grotto-heaven crafted by a Foxian master artisan. The scale of a grotto-heaven spoke for itself.
It was probably comparable in area to a small city.
Moonlight filtered through the collapsed octagonal archway, casting fang-shaped shadows on the ground below.
Long abandoned, wild camellia branches had pushed through cracks in the walls, their curled leaf-edges like grasping, clawing knuckles.
The unsettling scenery caused the comments in Little Gui's livestream to briefly thin out — the viewers were being drawn into genuine dread, their nerves tightening.
Then a ghostly, hollow wind rose without warning. The openings in the ornamental rockery formations gaped like hundreds of mouths parting and closing, emitting a thin, keening wail — like the desolate weeping of a woman.
"Waaaah~!"
Little Gui jumped in fright, phone camera swinging around.
At that exact moment the wind picked up, and a loose stone at the top of a rockery shifted with a dry clack — a damaged relief carving, its hollow eye sockets pooled with rainwater, now letting cloudy "tears" trickle down with the wind.
[Jingzhou's Number One Alpha: WHAT. Something moved in my pants. I'm out of here.]
[Ah Liang Watching My Suspension: Panic button's been mashed to bits! Oh wait, a Ten-Lords Commission Judge is here. Never mind then.]
Sound and visuals intertwined into a wall of horror — the comment section exploded — and then, in the very next second, fell suddenly, utterly silent.
The viewers heard someone in the livestream group let out a cry.
"Wow, this place is an absolute goldmine~!"
The Stellaron spirit whooped with delight, golden eyes going wide as if she'd just spotted a beach of golden sand studded with pearls as far as the eye could see.
To the blank, baffled faces of Xueyi, Moonscar, Sushang, and the others, the gray-haired girl beamed a brilliant smile and bolted forward — whoosh whoosh whoosh — scrambling up the ornamental rockery with hands and feet both.
She grabbed the damaged, tear-streaked relief carving, cradled it like it was precious treasure, and even rubbed her face against it.
[...]
[!!!]
「???????」
In that single moment, the livestream audience and the streaming team alike felt a wave of cold rush straight up through the tops of their skulls.
It wasn't just the terror conjured by the visuals and the sounds. The deeper, primary source was the sheer wrongness of the gray-haired one's behavior.
Think about it: you're in the middle of a horror scene when a severed head suddenly drops, weeping blood, streaming gore — terrifying, yes. But that's a jump-scare. The shock comes from being caught completely off-guard.
But then imagine that right at that moment, the person standing next to you rushes forward like they've struck gold, seizes the head, and starts hugging it and nuzzling it tenderly.
Your first reaction is bewilderment at what they're doing. Then your brain tries to apply logic — and the absurdity of something that defies all logic triggers a subtler, deeper, more creeping horror. The kind that only gets worse the longer you think about it.
"C-could it be — this place really is haunted!"
The vengeful spirit setting from Mysterious Revival embedding itself straight into her mind, Li Sushang went white as a sheet. Sushang, who'd had that same vengeful spirit setting explained to her, nearly had a sudden fit and keeled right over.
The hand Guinaifen was using to hold the phone began to tremble.
Even Xueyi and Moonscar — two Judges who dealt in anything but the paranormal — were completely thrown.
As for the third Judge...
Trembling from head to toe, Huo Huo's pupils dissolved into tangled yarn. Her teal-green hair stood on end like a cat that had been electrocuted. Her lips fell open in an uncontrollable oval. Her entire body went full Bocchi — dispersing into scattered lines as she slumped.
"AHWOOO~! I'm going to eat you!"
A ferocious, wretched roar — and then the darkness closed over Huo Huo's eyes. Her voice cut off dead.
Half a second later, within those fox-eyes that had dissolved into scattered, unraveling lines, a face appeared — savage as a malevolent ghost — black-red hair hanging down in a curtain, a gaping maw thrown wide to swallow someone whole.
"Urk — GACK!"
Pupils blown to maximum dilation, her drawn-out cry dying in her throat alongside her breath — Huo Huo lay down on the ground with perfect serenity.
With deeply unserene serenity — brows and eyes squeezed shut, her bangs falling across the top half of her face, the faint parting of her lips suggesting a soul gone gray and white, drifting loose from the body.
The world... had left her behind.
Huo Huo faded into pale ash.
"HAHAHAHAHA~!"
A wildly uncontrollable burst of laughter rang out. The tail on Huo Huo's back — the one sealed with a yellow talisman — flickered with an eerie glow. Blazing fox-fire tail-flame erupted, transforming into a blue-green spirit flame the size of a head, wearing a face half fox, half wolf.
Rolling back and forth through the air with laughter like it had just heard the funniest joke in existence — tears practically leaking from its eyes.
"Look at what a little coward you are — you're a Ten-Lords Commission Judge and you're getting scared by a trick like that~!"
The tail turned its gaze to Caelus, who had just pulled off a fierce oni mask, expression radiating pure, satisfied refreshment.
"Hey, kid — what's the deal with that gray-haired girl?"
Huo Huo's tail was actually a Heliobus — one that had once nearly devoured Huo Huo whole. Fortunately Moonscar had caught on early and sealed it onto Huo Huo's body with talismans, which had also been the catalyst for Huo Huo joining the Ten-Lords Commission.
Under normal circumstances, the tail would have followed up with a few more jabs at Huo Huo the little coward — but right now, even it had been thrown off by Stelle's bizarre behavior.
It had just sniffed carefully. There was no scent of its own kind on Stelle's body — meaning she had not been controlled by a Heliobus and was not acting under that influence when she'd done the bizarre thing of happily hugging the broken head-carving.
Which meant something was very, very wrong here!
"Nothing much — I just saw something good. Don't distract me, I have to hurry up — at this rate she'll grab everything first."
Caelus tucked away the oni mask — part of the gift set Asta had sent him — and while the others stood frozen in stunned horror, he sprinted forward to join Stelle in ransacking the golden-glinting Fyxestroll Garden for treasure chests.
Mostly small chests with one or two Crystals inside — but there were so many of them it didn't matter!
"This..."
Hundreds of thousands of viewers in the livestream fell silent alongside the Judges and the streamers.
Everyone watched in mute horror as the two gray-haired figures dug out a pair of red wedding shoes embroidered with golden double-happiness characters from between the pavilion eaves — and divided them like splitting gems, one shoe apiece.
A humanoid mass of algae floated up from the pond's surface, writhing and twisting in the water like something struggling to escape. Both gray-haired figures speared its head with their flaming Lances, one algae-clump each.
A rusted wind-chime. Fragments of broken roof tile...
Objects dripping with horror-atmosphere, every single one — and yet the two of them collected each item with faces full of delight and stuffed everything into their pockets.
Their joy was no performance, no mask. Genuine, unguarded happiness set against the dim, sinister surroundings — an absurdity without equal.
"Something's wrong! They — their minds have been possessed by ghosts!"
"There really ARE ghosts! There really are ghosts~!"
As Sushang's voice trembled on the verge of frightened tears, the livestream comment section detonated in a frenzy.
Xueyi and Moonscar quietly drew their weapons.
"Wait! Wait!"
March 7th — who had also been startled — heard the two of them muttering about Crystals and finally put it together.
"Those two are fine."
"You — you call that fine? Who are you trying to fool?"
The tail used its tail to point at the two gray-haired figures — currently locked in a tug-of-war over a tangle of scraggly dead weeds, teeth gritted, both leaning back on their heels with their full weight, expressions twisting by degrees into something that looked genuinely demonic.
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