BXBX NOVEL Chapter 123: Elv
As the figure of the little girl took shape, it remained tethered to the floor. With a distinctive "pluck," it detached from the ground, ascending into an upright position. The haunting sound resonated throughout the room, leaving an eerie echo in its wake.
Fully risen, the shadow began to expand, its form swelling into that of a complete human girl. Its hue, dark and unsettling, was a stark mirror of Elv's shadow. Every aspect of the figure was enshrouded in profound blackness, from its attire - mirroring Elv's - to its inky eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. In all its eerie blackness, only the subtle contours of the shadow's face bore a semblance to Elv.
The shadowy, human-like entity moved gracefully toward a set of shelves, which previously held many books that Lu Zhen had taken.
It attempted to push the shelves to the side, visible tremors rippling through its form as it struggled for a moment. Eventually, the shadow succeeded in shifting the shelves slightly.
As it managed this minor feat, the human-like shadow's visage appeared to ripple, resembling the disturbance of water, when it realised that it had only marginally moved the shelves despite its considerable effort.
Nonetheless, it refused to concede defeat and pressed on, exerting its full strength. Finally, the shadow succeeded in pushing the shelves halfway, but in doing so, it seemed to shrink in height, its form quivering with ripples.
Just as it was about to cease its efforts, the human-like shadow noticed a small lever emerging. It lowered the lever slowly while chanting in an unfamiliar language, different from the mage language.
As the shadow opened its eerie, black mouth and uttered these strange incantations, a deep, rumbling sound echoed through the room. In response, a door swung open exactly where the human-like shadow had manipulated the lever, causing the shelves to be fully shifted aside.
"I knew it, he hid it using the Origin language..." Elv, following closely behind Lu Zhen, displayed a glint of interest in her eyes, though her expression remained impassive.
The shadow entered the dark room, almost melting into the room's darkness. It struggled to locate a switch but eventually managed to turn on the switch.
Instantly, the room was flooded with bright light, revealing a peculiar contraption that bore a striking resemblance to a motor.
A series of small stones inscribed with mysterious letters in a flask linked the motor through a complex network of tubes. These inscribed stones would occasionally crackle with ethereal energy as they contained pure attribute-less qi.
If Lu Zhen were present, his eyes would undoubtedly gleam with greed upon seeing these stones, recognizing them as top-grade qi stones which was enough to create a first-stage martial artist through sheer resource alone if the first-grade stones were enough. Even the four major families didn't have many of these top-grade qi stones that showed how valuable it was.
As the motor processed the inscribed stones, it belched forth black smoke, filling the room with a sinister, bone-chilling sound that sent shivers down one's spine.
After a substantial passage of time, the motor finally yielded a stunning result: a steady flow of sky blue liquid emerged from one end, connecting to another flask that contained the same mystical blue substance.
"I knew that Bastard was able to convert qi into mana." Elv saw the scene in the room through her shadow. She had a faint suspicion seeing that the red-haired bastard was using mana so much without remorse; after all, Elv was stronger than even him, and her mana reserves had already been exhausted even when she stayed the whole time in seclusion just from time itself.
After all, time was the most terrifying thing in this world, and nothing could escape time.
When she first escaped the mages destruction, as she was in her seclusive retreat to break through to sixth circle, she was terrified when she sensed the destruction of the mages when her signal wore out, and she investigated to find that the mages were wiped out with the technology, mostly gone for some reason.
Although she wanted to go out, she found that there was a strange force that was strangely sapping her life force whenever she went out with no choice, she could only stay in her seclusion helplessly, as she didn't feel her life force being sucked when she went into her seclusion.
For some reason, her life force is drained only when she is in the outside world. With no choice, she is forced to stay in her seclusion.
However, by staying in seclusion, she noticed that her mana was slowly slipping away, as if washed by time itself. No matter how hard she tried to regain the mana, it continued to disappear as time passed.
Although she didn't care about that, soon her lifespan was decreasing. So, she had no choice but to go into a long sleep to slow down her cells, which would decrease the rate at which she used her lifespan.
After she woke up, she found herself in this martial arts era where mana was completely erased, and qi was the mutated form.
At first, Elv thought that she was the only one alive in this martial artist era. However, upon seeing the red-haired man who was previously from the same faction as her, she had to rethink her decision.
With how little mana Elv had, she wanted to abandon her servant after her comrade turned on her, after all, from her observation, the red-haired mage had quite a bit more mana left than her, although she was more powerful than him by a large margin since he was a fifth-circle mage and she was peak of the fifth-circle, which in the mage era she could destroy him like a bug, but in this era her mana was already running thin with her power washing away with time.