The giant shadow lingered near Ke Xun's tent for a long time. Several times, Ke Xun thought it was about to reach in, but it never made another move.
Ke Xun didn't know what it was waiting for, or what it was observing. It pressed against the tent, breathing slowly and deliberately, as if it wanted to see the past, present, and future of the three people inside before making a decision.
After an unknown amount of time, the giant shadow finally straightened up and walked away from the two tents.
Ke Xun heard Geng's father choke out a low, sorrowful sob: "Hui Xin..."
Hui Xin was Geng's mother's name. The giant shadow was walking towards their tent.
"Mommy... I want Mommy..." The child finally couldn't hold back his tears and struggled to run out of the tent.
Ke Xun held the child down and whispered to Wei Dong, "Dongzi, watch him. I have an idea."
Wei Dong quickly held the child back and was about to ask what the idea was when Ke Xun suddenly lifted the tent flap and slipped into the adjacent tent.
Caught off guard, Mu Yiran was pinned down by him. His brow furrowed, and he was about to kick him back into his tent when he saw Ke Xun put a finger to his lips and shush, turning his head to stare in the direction the giant shadow had left.
The giant shadow, its back to them, seemed to sense something and slowly turned.
Seeing this, Ke Xun flipped over again, nimbly flipping back into his tent.
Looking at the giant shadow again, its massive body had only turned halfway when it suddenly stopped and turned forward again.
Ke Xun stared intently at the giant shadow, seeing it flip back into Mu Yiran's tent as soon as it turned back. This time, Mu Yiran didn't wait to be pinned down; instead, he quickly sat up, creating an opening for Ke Xun.
By the time Ke Xun flipped back into his tent, Wei Dong had already understood and was dumbfounded: "There's such a slick move?"
Mu Yiran, in the next tent, also had mixed feelings.
The first condition for the death selection was whether the number of people in the tent met the requirements.
Although subsequent selection conditions were constantly added, the number of people in the tent was clearly the first priority.
Therefore, when two or more conditions are triggered simultaneously, the giant shadow prioritizes the first-priority death condition. Only after resolving the first-priority condition will it proceed to address the second and third.
It seems that eliminating dissidents is always a top priority for any group.
However, Mu Yiran hadn't expected Ke Xun to have such an unconventional way of thinking, to devise such a method to continuously restrain—or even toy with—this demon god with absolute power and advantage.
He dared to toy with even a demon god.
So what else wouldn't this kid dare to do? Mu Yiran subconsciously clenched the fingers that Ke Xun had just gripped.
Ke Xun darted back and forth between the two tents. While the enormous creature had an absolute advantage in strength and size, it also had its disadvantages, namely, slow movement. Large movements would appear quite sluggish.
But this didn't mean that the demon god was stupid. In an environment of its size, its movements might be very agile and fast, but the problem was that the two were not the same size. Could a fly raise its hand at the same speed as a human raising their hand?
Ke Xun was exploiting this time difference in speed, constantly manipulating the enormous creature, making it spin around in place.
He didn't know how long this situation could last; perhaps soon the behemoth would figure out a way to deal with him. After all, it might be a god, or even a demon, but it shouldn't be reduced to being played with by humans.
But Ke Xun was still trying his best to hold on, stalling for as long as possible, and if he could hold on until dawn, that would be even better.
"Can Xiao Ke still hold on?" he heard Qin Ci ask in a low voice.
"If that thing doesn't cause any trouble," Ke Xun answered as he turned over, "I can hold on for two or three hours."
Two or three hours wouldn't be enough to reach dawn, and Qin Ci was about to speak with concern when Mu Yiran interjected, "I'll take over after two or three hours."
"Provided that the thing can continue to be manipulated like this." Qin Ci shared the same worry as Ke Xun.
"Don't just sit there," Ke Xun said as he turned over again. "Yiran…"
Mu Yiran: "Call me by my full name."
Ke Xun: "I'm already out of breath from turning over, so don't make things difficult for me. Um, you guys study the pattern on the tent roof…"
Qin Ci was confused: "The pattern on the roof is too blurry, and it's nighttime, so it's even harder to see."
Ke Xun turned over and quickly glanced at Mu Yiran: "It's light. I suspect it's related to light. Look at it by the light and find the right angle."
Mu Yiran's gaze sharpened, and he immediately looked up. However, even looking vertically, the pattern on the tent roof was still blurry. So he adjusted the angle, focusing on the direction from which the snow light was shining, constantly changing and adjusting until he finally found a good angle.
"Did you find anything?" Ke Xun asked.
"Yes." Mu Yiran's voice sounded thoughtful. "They are some exaggerated, intricately drawn patterns, which look like animals and plants. There seem to be horses, dogs, elephants, peacocks, and people. There are patterns that look like caltrops, and…"
As Ke Xun climbed back into the tent, he heard Mu Yiran calmly utter three words: "Mirabilis."
The giant shadow, which had been toyed with like a rattle-drum, was finally enraged. When it turned towards Ke Xun and Mu Yiran's two tents, it refused to turn back. It strode towards them with its two pillar-like legs, its eight arms bulging and throbbing with anger.
"What do we do?!" Geng's father exclaimed anxiously.
"Ke Xun, Mirabilis!" Mu Yiran called out, reaching into his robes where he still kept the bunch of Mirabilis that Ke Xun had picked for him. He quickly divided it into three small bunches and handed them to Qin Ci and Geng's father.
Ke Xun instantly understood Mu Yiran's intention from the opposite tent. He reached into his robes and found a few flowers he had picked from Mu Yiran's bouquet. He had casually tucked them behind his ear that night in the tent and hadn't thrown them away afterward.
He separated two flowers and handed them to Wei Dong, who quickly pointed to his belt: "I have some here. I took them from the bouquet you gave to the boss that day. I've been wearing them on my belt ever since!"
Ke Xun then tucked the two flowers into the boy's collar. The three of them lay down side by side, nervously watching the giant shadow approaching outside the tent.
Whether the four o'clock flowers would work, or what their purpose would be, no one dared to be sure. But it was too late to do anything else now; they could only wait and face the judgment of the demon god with a desperate gamble.
The colossal shadow arrived at the two tents, its massive body, eight thick arms, and enormous head crashing down in a devastating barrage. Without hesitation, its eight arms spread wide and swiftly clawed at the tents. In that instant, all the light from the snow was blocked by its form, plunging everyone into darkness, as if the entire world had been swallowed whole by this darkness.
Ke Xun looked at the purple jasmine he held in his hand in the darkness; its vibrant purple color stood out starkly and mysteriously against the dark background, luminous even without light.
The colossal shadow's eight hands scratched and clawed at the tents, producing a series of scraping sounds that made one wish they could rupture their eardrums and become deaf to escape the numbing, tooth-chilling noise.
Ke Xun felt his bones aching, numb, and itchy with the sound. His skin seemed to crack open with hundreds of bloody fissures, then peel back layer after layer of bloody skin, curling and pulling out fine, woven threads of bloody flesh. This
nauseating and painful feeling became more and more real and tangible. Ke Xun felt like he was going crazy. He would rather die than become that horrible and disgusting sight. He didn't want to live like this. He wanted to die, he couldn't help wanting to die!
Just as Ke Xun was gritting his teeth in the final moments of his struggle between life and death, Wei Dong next to him suddenly sat up, frantically pulling at his hair and even scratching his face with his fingernails.
Ke Xun abruptly awoke from his hallucination, flipped over, and pinned Wei Dong and the child writhing in pain between him beneath him. He forcefully restrained their hands and spoke in a low voice into Wei Dong's ear: "Dongzi, calm down. It's all an illusion. Don't think about it. Dongzi, think about your parents, think about your idiot boss, think about your idiot clients who pretend to know everything and make unreasonable demands."
Wei Dong gradually calmed down, biting hard on Ke Xun's sleeve near his mouth in excruciating pain, managing to grit out a sentence: "It was... the idiot boss and clients... who saved me..."
Ke Xun: "..." Clearly, the idiot boss and clients were even more idiotic than demons...
Amidst this unbearable torment of sound, time seemed to pass before the sound finally faded. The giant shadow slowly straightened, its head and arms gradually leaving the tent. After observing the two tents once more, it turned and left, heading towards the tent where Sha Liugeng's mother and Zhao Dan were.
"I'm going to save the child's mother—" Geng's father stood up, about to rush out with the purple jasmine he had been given, but was stopped by Qin Ci and Mu Yiran.
"You'll suffocate outside in no time." Mu Yiran had already noticed this when she brought Ke Xun back from outside.
"Yes," Qin Ci also advised in a deep voice, "If the tents are close together, it's fine. Like yesterday, our tent and Ke Xun's tent weren't far apart, which is why I was able to carry Zhao Dan to his place. Even so, I almost suffocated. Your sister-in-law's tent is too far from us. You'll die of oxygen deprivation if you don't get there in time."
"Then—then let's try the same method as before, lure it back!" Geng's father hurriedly looked at Mu Yiran.
Geng's father was at the very back of the tent, so he had no choice but to ask Mu Yiran for help.
Mu Yiran pursed her lips, lifted the tent flap, and went to the next tent.
Ke Xun had just rolled off Wei Dong and the child in the next tent and had just fallen onto the felt blanket when he was met with a hug.
Looking at Mu Yiran, who was pressing down on him with a frosty expression, Ke Xun was taken aback: "A sudden, forceful attack is the most deadly."
Wei Dong, panting heavily beside him after surviving the ordeal, glanced at him and asked, "Are you moved?"
Ke Xun: "I dare not move, I dare not move."
Mu Yiran ignored him coldly, turning his head to stare at the giant shadow outside. However, the giant shadow did not turn around again and continued to move towards the tent in the distance.
"No—I have to go save my wife—" Geng's father panicked and struggled to rush out.
Ke Xun heard this, and after Mu Yiran moved away, he sat up and said, "I'll go."
Mu Yiran stared at him coldly: "You've wasted half a day's energy, and you still won't make it to the other side."
When Ke Xun ran over, the giant shadow had not yet appeared, so he was not troubled by suffocation. But on his way back, the giant shadow was already falling. At that time, he still had plenty of energy, but he still almost died outside before he could get back to the tent. Now that his energy was depleted, it was even more impossible for him to succeed.
"I'll go, you wait here." Mu Yiran glanced at him, then lifted the curtain and went back to the next tent.
He didn't rush out of the tent immediately because the giant shadow hadn't reached the opposite tent yet. If he went out now, he might be caught halfway.
Based on Zhou Bin's death last night and Qin Ci's successful escape with Zhao Dan, he knew that the giant shadow wouldn't consider others when killing. Therefore, Mu Yiran could only run out when the giant shadow was almost upon the opposite tent, so that he could arrive just in time to enter the tent and save the other two wh
en the giant shadow had chosen and killed someone.
Yes, although one person would still die eventually, this was the result of minimizing the loss.