Volume 1, 5: House Keeper Part 1—A Deadly Invitation

Translator: Raylight (proofread by Trespasserby & elisa; C/E edited by lucathia)

Doot doot doot—

As the call cut off, Lu Yang stared at the phone and frowned, realizing that something was amiss. He had already been trapped here for a long time. If it weren’t for the fact that he was carrying a plastic bag with breakfast and a can of milk tea inside, he would have died just from thirst!

The other person seemed to have no intent to face off against him, and instead had merely trapped him in this place, making him unable to act.

This was a small crossroad within the alleyways, its location extremely close to the university he was studying at. He was accustomed to taking this route to school, and this place happened to be a small back street. There simply weren’t many people passing by, especially at nine o’clock in the morning, when those working would have already started work and those going to class might not come through here.

Therefore, it was definitely the best possible place to put a “barrier dimension.”

This also happened to be his Achilles heel. In a fight, he had the confidence that he would be able to cut down most of his opponents with Slay, but as to this kind of method that used a “barrier dimension” to trap him, he simply had no way to deal with it. After all, the framework of the barrier dimension was perfect, and the perpetrator behind the scenes refused to appear. Therefore, he could only wait for the opponent to lose the strength to continue maintaining the barrier dimension.

Lu Yang was simply not an expert at seeing through truths and lies. If Jiang Ziya were here—No! He mustn’t drag ordinary people into this.

That was the first thing that he had learned, and it must always be adhered to.

However, could Jiang Ziya still be considered an ordinary person?

In the past, he had merely had an abnormal left eye but wasn’t involved in anything else. Lu Yang was fairly certain of this, for he had investigated him before.

When they had first entered high school, Jiang Ziya hadn’t immediately caught his attention. He had kept a low profile and was quiet. Other than his outstanding grades, there simply wasn’t anything attention-grabbing about him. As for Lu Yang, he had already started socializing with the other classmates since day one.

He had not noticed him until a few illusionary familiars had appeared in the classroom. Normally, Lu Yang would pay no heed to those low-level illusionary familiars. Simply put, there were too many to do anything about them. They were like cockroaches; although annoying, no one was bothered enough to wipe all of them off the face of the earth.

Jiang Ziya could see those illusionary familiars.

Although he had tried his best to hide that fact, having stuck thoroughly to his motto of “turning a blind eye” to them, he could not help but expose himself on occasion. Whenever those things appeared, he would sometimes unconsciously shoot a glance at them, discovering their presence even faster than Lu Yang.

Lu Yang’s first thought was that he had encountered another practitioner of the path. Therefore, he had intentionally approached him in the hopes of finding out his background. In the end though, he realized that Jiang Ziya wasn’t a practitioner at all. He merely had a strange left eye.

After the investigation, the two of them had somehow become close.

Jiang Ziya never pried into Lu Yang’s background, but he did like to talk about himself, especially because Lu Yang never questioned the things Jiang Ziya saw.

After seeing all sorts of strange things, Jiang Ziya had first suspected himself to be mentally ill. However, when he had gone for a checkup, even the doctors claimed that he was feigning sickness when they heard about his situation and found out that he was a student.

As a result, Jiang Ziya could only try his best to pretend he could not see them.

For the first time in his life, Lu Yang had thought someone to be in a worse situation than him when it came to not being able to voice any troubles. At least, he had his family who knew about these matters, but Jiang Ziya never uttered a single word for the sake of not worrying his sister.

The relationship between the two people of completely opposite personalities was very good, and this puzzled all of their classmates. What they did not know was that Jiang Ziya and Lu Yang were very similar. They could see the same things, just that one pretended not to see them, while the other would go and meet those annoying things at night—

“Come out, you bastard! How long are you planning to trap me here?”

Lu Yang was completely enraged. It wasn’t as simple as walking the same crossroad nine times—he had walked the entire day! But he still couldn’t find the weak point, and he was vexed by his own unfamiliarity with “barrier dimensions.”

However, he really had no talent in the area of “barrier dimensions.” Looking at the pages full of theories of their structures and the way to break them, he felt that he understood each word by itself, but once they all combined to form a sentence, it became a language that he could not understand. He would much rather go and spar with Slay for twenty-four hours, and then lay on the floor exhausted.

But as expected, those who don’t study hard will receive retribution.

Lu Yang felt a little frustrated at that, just a little bit. Maintaining a barrier dimension wasn’t a simple task, and though this barrier wasn’t large like the ridiculous dimension with the falling ash from before, it had persisted for an entire day already. The other party should not be able to hold it any longer. Moreover, they most likely had little combat strength, so that was why they could only trap him in this barrier dimension.

Lu Yang silently prayed for Ziya to understand that no harm would come to him and hence not to come over.

After taking another two steps, he exited the alley—at least, logically, he should have exited the alley. Instead, he entered the alley again. Lu Yang decided he might as well sit down and save some energy. After all, the only thing he had to eat for the entire day was breakfast.

This was a small alley, and both of the walls were made of bricks, uncommon in the city. Many trees poked out from behind the brick walls, changing as the seasons went by, so Lu Yang enjoyed walking along this path even though the length of his journey was increased.

Fifty meters ahead was a small crossroad, and turning right would lead to the university. Throughout the whole day, he had turned left, right, walked straight ahead, and walked backwards. He had even climbed the walls several times, but each time, he would return to the alleyway without being able to find a single weak spot.