High School of Demon Hunting

Chapter 2711 - 932: The Concealed Mark

"When you drop something, you pick it up right away."Even though his back was to the lab door, Thomas seemed to know exactly what had happened. He glanced at the warlock who had just cried out and reminded him, "...In the Wizards’ world, you never know when a feather pen you toss away will turn into an arrow that ends up in your heart. Faceless one, give him back the gemstone."

Zheng Qing really wanted to complain that after drawing so much blood from him, Thomas actually had the nerve to lecture him over a lost feather pen.

But when you’re a cat at a snake’s mouth, you have to bow your head.

So he obediently kept his mouth shut.

The rattlesnake, still smacking its lips, heard the master of the lab give an order and reluctantly twisted its body over to the foot of the experiment table. It opened its mouth and spat out a black gemstone already coated in a lot of sticky mucus.

Then its serpentine shadow flared; in a flash, the rattlesnake transformed into a delicate-looking little witch.

She was clearly the spitting image of Zhu Si.

Only, there wasn’t that bright red mark in the center of her forehead.

"It was clearly him who dropped it!"

The little witch pointed at Zheng Qing and complained indignantly, "I didn’t steal it, I didn’t rob anyone. What’s wrong with picking up something other people don’t want? No wonder the Captain keeps telling me there are no good people on Buji Island!"

Zheng Qing was dazed for a second, then suddenly clear-headed. The little witch before his eyes wasn’t Zhu Si, but the Faceless Demon who had impersonated Zhu Si in Dreamland—the same little monster who had eaten Liu Fei Fei’s pet snake and then caused a lot of trouble on campus.

But he remembered very clearly that Liu Fei Fei’s snake had been a cobra—otherwise he should have reacted the moment he saw it.

Whoosh!

The sound of a curtain being yanked came from beside his ear.

Zheng Qing came back to himself and saw that Thomas had already pulled aside the white drapes opposite them, revealing a face Zheng Qing had fully expected to see.

Nikita.

The Female Demon who had left a deep impression on Zheng Qing on the very first day of university.

Her face was as alluring as ever, a trace of madness flickering in those scarlet eyes. Only this time her condition seemed a bit off: her complexion was pale, and she was lying weakly on another experiment table, covered with a thick white sheet. A dozen or so tubes of varying thickness dangled from beneath the sheet, different-colored liquids flowing through them.

Zheng Qing stared at the bulky, uneven rise under that white sheet and strongly suspected the Female Demon’s body had changed into something else. With the slender, light figure he had in his memory, there was no way the sheet should be puffed up into such a large, irregular lump.

She noticed the boy’s curious scrutiny.

The Female Demon blinked at him.

Then her gaze shifted toward "Zhu Si," and she chuckled hoarsely, "I told you long ago, in the Wizards’ world there is no good or bad, only the clever and the stupid... but you never listen."

Zheng Qing suspected that line was her way of taking a shot at him with a Yin-Yang tone.

"Being clever or stupid isn’t fixed, because Magic is simple—people aren’t."

He borrowed a line Xiao Xiao had once said, then abruptly shifted the topic, pointing at Thomas: "Just like our Mr. Thomas... From the first day those crows showed up in the papers, I’ve had this vague unease... They feel like the seagulls in Hitchcock’s The Birds: at first they only peck people; then they disrupt a birthday party; then they attack children, blow up a gas station, and in the end the entire town is almost overrun by the madness of the flock..."

"Who’s Hitchcock?" The little witch had somehow already slipped back to Nikita’s side and was whispering into her ear.

Nikita answered in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, "Clever people will understand what he really meant by that example; only idiots fixate on who that ’cock’ is."

Lying on his back on the experiment table, Zheng Qing forced himself to stare at the bare ceiling above, pretending not to hear the two Female Demons’ whispering, and did his best to express his deep disappointment to the master of the lab: "...I suspected you, but I didn’t think you’d actually drug me! When Gan Ning fed me beans, at least he grilled me a really good steak. And you? Your so-called tonic tea tasted awful!"

"Certified!" Nikita let out two weary laughs. "I told him back then his tea tasted terrible, but he never admitted it..."

"I did not poison you."

Thomas denied Zheng Qing’s accusation. He held a half cup of freshly drawn bright-red blood in one hand and tweezers in the other, his movements as elegant as if he were at a dinner party—which only made Zheng Qing feel even more like a lamb waiting to be slaughtered. Thomas gave him a very friendly nod. "All I added to the tea were a few herbs like Hao Ma Grass and edelweiss. It was a genuine tonic to help you rest well and restore your energy..."

"A tonic that leaves you limp all over?" said the lamb on the table with a bite of sarcasm.

The master of the lab didn’t mind. "...According to the lab’s data, several generations of test subjects have all shown extremely strong resistance to toxins, so I have reason to believe that a fully successful subject like you should have even stronger resistance. Besides, I wouldn’t risk triggering the Guard mark by letting you show any signs of poisoning..."

"Guard mark?" Zheng Qing caught a new word that stirred a faint hope.

Thomas, true to the promise he’d made earlier, was very forthcoming and didn’t dodge the question at all. "Remember when the group leader and the others went to dorm 403 on Monday afternoon?"

Zheng Qing certainly remembered.

After their dorm was illegally broken into that day, two teams of investigators had come in succession. The two specialists in the morning had just gone through the motions; in the afternoon, three teaching assistants of Tuan Tuan’s group-leader level showed up.

But as far as Zheng Qing recalled, those big shots had just asked a couple of casual questions and left straight away, even less serious and responsible than the two specialists in the morning.

"...They put marks on your shoulders and elbows, so that if anything happened to you, they could find out immediately." As he said this, Thomas pointed at himself with the hand holding the tweezers. "Incidentally, I’m also one of your Guard Team members. That’s why I was able to take you away so easily."

Those few short sentences almost made Zheng Qing’s brain crash.

He instinctively glanced toward his arm and immediately recalled how Zhang Yu and the other two had patted his shoulder and grabbed his arm on their way out. The realization hit him at once.

"So... the school acknowledged my suspicions and knew there were crows out to hurt me?"

"Not necessarily crows. The school only acknowledged that you were at risk of being attacked, so they increased your protection... Though in my view, it’s a bit extravagant, the level of protection you’ve been given."

Thomas didn’t know Zheng Qing’s specific identity, so he had his doubts.

Zheng Qing had no intention of explaining anything. He just tossed off, "...And yet you still managed to spirit me away through all those layers of protection. Some protection that turned out to be."

"Like I just said, I’m also one of the Guards. I bent the rules a little."

Zheng Qing twisted his neck, feeling the pressure on his shoulders and the back of his neck, and suddenly realized something else. "Wait, that vest and armor you put on me before..."

"That’s right. They were to block the marks the captains left."