Chapter 49 Witch: We Lost This Battle

Chapter 49 The Witch [Cursed Witch]: We Lost This Battle

The psychic [Psychic], who specialized in communicating with spirits, knew nothing about combat.

Upon spotting Kelly [Kelly], he did not raise an alarm but instead hid at a distance and called the team of exorcists hired by the Kingsleys.

The news spread quickly through the team. At the Kingsley estate, the exorcists who had been waiting gathered to analyze the situation, concluding that Kelly [Kelly] had likely been hiding in the abandoned school building all this time.

The body of the witch [Cursed Witch] Olivia [Olivia] was stored in a secret chamber at the bottom of the building. It had once been used to imprison witches [Cursed Witches]. Each of the six walls of the chamber was hung with a sacred cross hand-carved by "Saint Anthony," a renowned holy man from the Crusades, ensuring that no witch [Cursed Witch] could possibly escape—not even with wings.

After the witch [Cursed Witch] died, the Kingsley family sealed the chamber completely, poured holy oil into it, and submerged the witch's [Cursed Witch] body in the oil, turning the entire room into a corpse vault.

The crosses and the holy oil both possessed a natural restraining power over evil forces. The witch's [Cursed Witch] body was perfectly safe there, and since the body was the witch's [Cursed Witch] greatest weakness, the group decided not to remove it immediately. Instead, they planned to wait until Kelly [Kelly] was captured, then force the witch's [Cursed Witch] soul back into the body and burn it all to ashes.

The group suspected that Kelly [Kelly] had been hiding in the abandoned school building all along to find a way to break into the chamber, retrieve her own body, and eliminate her weakness.

Unfortunately, before she could find a way to breach the chamber, her whereabouts were exposed.

It happened to be a Saturday, with no school in session. Taking advantage of the empty campus, the group decided to act immediately.

The plan had three steps: first, capture Kelly [Kelly], who was possessed by the witch [Cursed Witch]; second, force the witch [Cursed Witch] out of Kelly's [Kelly] body and back into the witch's [Cursed Witch] corpse; third, purify the witch's [Cursed Witch] body and soul together with fire.

As a non-combatant, Rebecca [Rebecca] just coasted along on the periphery the entire time and didn't really participate in the initial capture. All of Evelyn's [Evelyn] information about the event came from Rebecca [Rebecca], so she didn't know the specifics of what happened that day. She only knew that the exorcist team, led by West [West], fought Kelly [Kelly] in the abandoned school building for several hours, from dusk until late into the night, before Kelly [Kelly] finally succumbed to the relentless waves of attackers and was subdued by the exorcists, who brought her to the secret chamber.

"That long?! I thought West [West] was supposed to be a big deal?"

Rebecca [Rebecca] sounded somewhat gleeful: "Him? He got hit by friendly fire, so to speak. Remember that Thai wizard? He practices black magic and was part of the team capturing Kelly [Kelly]. The Thai wizard tried to cast a curse on Kelly [Kelly] to make her hallucinate and be trapped by her painful past, but somehow Kelly [Kelly] did something, and the curse ended up affecting West [West] instead. West [West] really let himself down—who knows what hallucinations he saw, but he was out of it for over an hour!"

"West [West] was the leader of the capture team. Without his command, no one else in the team would listen to each other. They were all over the place, each fighting on their own, and Kelly [Kelly] picked them off one by one, seriously injuring several people. Heh heh, serves 'em right for always being so arrogant and looking down on us diviners and psychics [Psychics]..."

It was clear that the exorcists, including West [West], weren't exactly popular.

"What happened next?"

"Next... Although Kelly [Kelly] had set up various traps in the building beforehand, once West [West] regained his senses, he quickly regrouped the remaining exorcists, broke through the traps, captured Kelly [Kelly], and escorted her to the underground chamber."

The first step was complete. Next came the second step: forcing the witch's [Cursed Witch] soul out of Kelly's [Kelly] body.

This step went surprisingly smoothly. Led by the Vatican apprentice exorcist, several church exorcists surrounded the bound Kelly [Kelly], splashing holy water on the girl and reciting scripture over her.

As they chanted, Kelly's [Kelly] expression gradually grew pained. Bulging black veins appeared on her face and the backs of her hands. Her open eyes dilated, the whites completely overtaken by black, and black smoke began to rise from the areas where the holy water had touched her skin.

"Ah... Ahhhhh!"

The girl opened her mouth and let out one agonized scream after another. But the exorcists remained unmoved, heads bowed, solemnly reciting the Bible. The sacred verses rang out like a holy bell, striking the eardrums of everyone present, cleansing their minds, purifying their souls, and causing searing pain to the evil presence.

Finally, the witch [Cursed Witch] possessing Kelly [Kelly] could no longer endure it.

A black shadow rose from Kelly's [Kelly] body. The screaming girl, as if hit by a "power-off" switch, closed her eyes and her body suddenly went limp.

Beside Kelly [Kelly], the group had already prepared for the third step.

While the exorcists recited scripture, the other psychics [Psychics] and diviners had not been idle. They opened the chamber door and used ropes to hoist the witch's [Cursed Witch] body, soaked in holy oil, up to the ground, placing it beside Kelly [Kelly].

After nearly a century submerged in holy oil, the corpse looked as if she were still alive.

It was a woman in her early thirties, with black curly hair and a beautiful face. Her eyes were closed, and her eyelids and mouth had been sewn shut with coarse hemp thread, the stitching still bearing unhealed scabs—clearly wounds inflicted before death. The woman's ears had also been pierced, with dried bloodstains around the holes. When her body was laid on the ground, the group noticed that her limbs were contorted in a strange, twisted position, as if her bones had been broken.

Clearly, this witch [Cursed Witch] had suffered inhuman torture before her death.

Yet, even so, the first thing anyone felt upon seeing this corpse was an almost supernatural allure. The witch's [Cursed Witch] curled lashes, her lips covered in scabs, her slender chin, her pallid skin... everything seemed to carry countless hooks, drawing people's eyes, making it impossible to look away, tempting them to keep staring, to worship, to sink into it.

"Perhaps that's why, in medieval Europe, people slandered witches [Cursed Witches] as 'Satan's mistresses.' In reality, they were simply a group blessed by nature, possessing various special powers. Some witches [Cursed Witches] excelled at healing and were called white witches [White Witches], while others were born with a talent for curses and were called black witches [Cursed Witches]. Whether white witches [White Witches] or black witches [Cursed Witches], as long as their powers were used for the right purposes, they could do good for others. So the fear and persecution of witches [Cursed Witches] was completely unnecessary—it only drove them further from human society... Back where I'm from, witches [Cursed Witches] are a highly respected group. If Olivia [Olivia] had been born there, she might have had a different life." Rebecca [Rebecca] sighed with some emotion.

Evelyn [Evelyn] couldn't have agreed more with Rebecca's [Rebecca] point.

Unfortunately, there's no such thing as "what if" in this world.

Breaking a person's limbs, sewing their eyelids shut, piercing their eardrums, and cutting out their tongue was a very cruel form of sorcery, designed to trap the soul of the deceased within the body, unable to move, see, hear, or speak. In this way, the perpetrator could escape the victim's revenge and continue to enjoy their cushy, high-and-mighty life without a shred of guilt.

The stitches on the witch's [Cursed Witch] body remained intact, which puzzled the group—how had her soul managed to escape her body and be summoned by Kelly [Kelly] in the new school building? However, considering that Kelly [Kelly] herself had witch [Cursed Witch] blood, people speculated that perhaps the two shared some bloodline connection that allowed the witch [Cursed Witch] Olivia [Olivia] to bypass all the seals and enter the body of a descendant.

Time was short, and there was no opportunity for deep thought. Following the plan, a psychic [Psychic] took out a pair of ancestral golden scissors and cut the stitches on the witch's [Cursed Witch] mouth. Another person removed a gold-rimmed "good-luck charm [Charm]" from an ash-wood box and, without missing a beat, stuffed the tongue into the corpse's tightly shut mouth.

A complete corpse acted like a magnet, exerting an irresistible pull on the soul that belonged to that body. After the church exorcists successfully drove the witch [Cursed Witch] out of Kelly [Kelly], the spirit mediums [Mediums] joined hands and circled Olivia's [Olivia] corpse, humming an obscure ancient chant, using the music to urge the wandering soul to return to the soil that nurtured it.

Return, return, return...

It was the call of home to the wanderer, the summons of a mother to her child, the irresistible lure of "home" deep in the bloodline. As the song repeated, the witch's [Cursed Witch] eyelids trembled, and the coarse hemp stitches snapped one by one.

Under the tense gaze of the crowd, the dead witch [Cursed Witch] opened her eyes.

The instant her soul snapped back into place, Olivia [Olivia] was greeted by a towering blaze.

"The witch's [Cursed Witch] body and ghost were thus purified by the fire, turned to a heap of ashes. At that point, the case seemed to have reached its conclusion... at least that's how it seemed to us then."

According to standard procedure, Kelly [Kelly], the culprit behind the witch [Cursed Witch] murder case, should have been handed over to the Church. Ordinary courts could not handle supernatural cases. She would stand trial in the Church's Inquisition and spend the rest of her life atoning for her sins. However, no institution was completely airtight. Corrupted by Mars's money, the Church's exorcists looked the other way as the Thai wizard took the unconscious Kelly [Kelly] away.

"To ensure the witch [Cursed Witch] was truly destroyed, we waited by the fire until the flames burned out before packing up and leaving the scene. When we walked out of the abandoned school building, it was already the early hours of the next morning. The moon emerged from the clouds, casting an ill-omened red glow. Everyone looked up and met the gaze of a huge red eye in the sky... Yes, that night was a rare blood moon. The moment we saw the celestial phenomenon, everyone thought of an ancient legend: bathed in the blood of her enemies under a blood moon, a dead witch [Cursed Witch] would be reborn in a new body."

West's [West] face went ashen. He immediately urged everyone to rush to the Kingsley estate while pulling out his phone to call the Kingsleys, telling them not to let Edlon [Edlon] leave the safe house.

But they were too late.

The calls went unanswered, always busy. And when they finally arrived at the scene after trekking across half the city, the entire Kingsley mansion was drenched in blood.

Everyone surnamed Kingsley, including Edlon [Edlon], was dead. Their bodies were torn to pieces, limbs twisted, faces frozen in terror, strewn about like garbage on the floor, draped over stair railings, submerged in the mansion's luxurious pool... Thick blood covered the ground, staining the opulent estate a deep red.

The Thai wizard was dead too. He hung like a dried-up gecko, pinned to the living room wall with a dinner knife, surrounded by the countless imps he had raised. They crouched over the wizard, hungrily and greedily gnawing at his flesh, emitting a constant, hair-raising "chomp, chomp" sound.

"The scene bore the traces of a formidable presence—the work of a cursed witch [Cursed Witch]. But we found no sign of her... Kelly [Kelly]—or rather, Olivia [Olivia], who had seized Kelly's [Kelly] body—had successfully resurrected and escaped the scene."

"Evelyn [Evelyn], we lost that battle."

...