At this moment, Lu Mingming's mind was in a daze, her thoughts consumed by Gray Blue's action of pulling his arm away.
A string of crystal tears silently traced down her tightly closed eyelids, while her face held an expression of absolute, stark coldness.
She was like a saintly figure painted by an artist, full of compassion for the world, or like a snowflake clinging to the tip of a tree branch in winter.
"I didn't expect Teacher Mingming to be... an S-class mental power user."
"Gray Blue" did not conceal his shock and fervor.
"Teacher Mingming, you should join my side and contribute to the great Wu Clan!"
Lu Mingming's gaze, as cold as ice, shot towards Gray Blue's direction. A silver light flashed at her fingertips, and countless sharp ice blades condensed around her slender body.
"Wait, wait, Teacher Mingming, what do you want? The Wu Clan will satisfy anything!"
"Gray Blue" had no intention of giving up. He casually tossed the cub in his hand aside, allowing it to crash against the hard wall with a "crack" of breaking bones.
Lu Mingming's eyes closed faintly, her hand slowly raised. Under her command, the ice blades shed flecks of frost, their most lethal edges aimed at the dwarf opposite her.
Lu Mingming spoke without a trace of emotion.
"I want you dead."
Her arm abruptly lowered, and the ice blades filling the room suddenly shot out with a breaking wind. A series of sonic booms echoed frequently in the air, a fierce attack aimed at annihilating the enemy in a single blow.
"Gray Blue's" expression turned solemn as he quickly summoned the blood vines in the room to block the attack.
The blood vines intertwined, forming a solid vine-blood shield. Initially, it could resist, but compared to Lu Mingming, an awakened being who never tired and wantonly expended her mental power, it was utterly insufficient.
"Thump! Thump! Thump!"
Under the continuous barrage of ice blades, the blood vines were quickly pierced with large and small holes, as if the shield would break through at any moment, turning "Gray Blue" into a hedgehog.
Not only that, but the ice blades carried a faint electric current, which repeatedly eroded the interior of the vines, generating a burnt charcoal smell from the inside out.
"I'm not playing with you anymore, Teacher Mingming. I have other matters to attend to."
Sensing the unfavorable turn of events, "Gray Blue" retracted his blood shield and forcefully lifted himself, leaping towards the window and then down.
"Trying to run? Impossible."
Lu Mingming's lips parted slightly. She looked into the distance, her slender fingertips pointing towards the night sky.
In the pitch-black night, several massive, sky-obscuring dark clouds inexplicably gathered.
One could see the clouds churning, the wind howling fiercely. Electricity had shifted from the horizon to the zenith, streaks of lightning dancing like golden serpents on the peaks. The muffled rumble of thunder approached from afar, thick and resonant.
With a thunderous "boom," a white light, carrying a formidable and fierce aura, like a brandished sword, cleaved down towards the figure scrambling to their feet below.
"Gray Blue" cried out in disbelief:
"How is this possible?! You just awakened S-class mental power, you couldn't possibly trigger celestial phenomena so quickly!!"
Yet, all of this was happening.
Blinding light continuously exploded from the point of impact, forming rings of shockwaves that rippled outwards, like pebbles tossed into a calm, still water surface.
The scouts below ducked their heads and covered their ears. When it subsided, they couldn't help but curiously peek out, witnessing this rarely seen spectacle.
"Is there a powerful figure here?"
"Could it be upstairs? Is that person alright?"
Molly panicked, abandoning her cleanup work. She pushed through the crowd and hurried upstairs.
"Damn it, Mingming, wait for me, I'm coming to save you!"
In the center of the surrounding crowd, a small child hugged their servant, both crying.
It was Gray Blue and the scrawny man.
...
Following that world-shattering purple lightning strike, Lu Mingming thought "Gray Blue" was surely dead.
But suddenly, the scene before her faded and disappeared. Gray Blue, the cub, the corpse, the blood vines – everything dissolved into the air. The room returned to its state with furniture covered by white sheets.
An empty space.
Lu Mingming's eyes darkened. Standing by the window, she watched the small figure run until it was out of sight, her mind filled with a thousand thoughts.
Molly's voice echoed in her ear: "Mingming?! Can you hear me?!
Are you in trouble? I'm on my way! I just saw you standing in the monitoring room facing an empty room for a long time. The search of floors 123 below is complete, and Gray Blue and his servant were found on the first floor.
They admitted to the kidnapping and said that Xue Gao escaped this morning in an aircraft.
Mingming, can you hear me?!"
Lu Mingming lowered her gaze, looking at the electric sparks flashing frequently in her hands.
There was no mistake, everything that had just happened was real.
Lu Mingming did not reply, searching the room.
After inexplicably awakening a mysterious power, Lu Mingming's body had never been so rational and energetic as it was now.
Lu Mingming, without conscious effort, emitted an invisible mental wave, scanning the room inch by inch. Finally, in a corner of the room – at the spot where the scrawny man's corpse had been – she found a lit candle.
She crouched down and sniffed.
The strange fragrance was exactly the same as the scent Lu Mingming had smelled upon entering the room.
Besides that, next to the candle was a piece of white paper with a drawing of a small red rabbit, looking exceptionally docile and extremely bizarre.
Smelling this scent, Lu Mingming felt a slight instability in her mind.
She quickly covered her nose, extinguished the candle, and put it into her spatial storage.
Perhaps she could ask the experts in the "Observation Room" for an explanation.
After this ordeal, Lu Mingming calmly walked downstairs, preparing to report the outcome of the matter to Molly. However, before reaching the staircase, her body suddenly went limp, and she fainted unconsciously to the ground, with only Molly's anxious cries nearby.
Lu Mingming's sleep during this dream was extremely uneasy, with continuous conversations echoing in her slumber.
One of the voices, a man's, was deep and magnetic, both familiar and strange. The other was gentle with a hint of coldness.
"I said you were kidnapped for nothing? I don't mind sending you to the army for training."
This was the deep male voice speaking.
The other person said, "No, I wanted to see what the other party was planning. I didn't expect to discover something unexpected."
"What?"
"Rather than capturing that useless little cub, I think the one giving orders from behind the scenes is more suspicious..."
The voices faded into the distance, and Lu Mingming fell back into a deep sleep.
"Mingming, are you awake?"
"Mingming?"
Lu Mingming furrowed her brows slightly, slowly waking from her slumber. She struggled to open her eyes and looked at the clean white ceiling.
A round little tiger head popped out from the left, soft paw pads pressing into Lu Mingming's palm. A cute cat mouth revealed tiny canine teeth, obscuring one of Lu Mingming's fields of vision.
Immediately after, a silly smiling little Samoyed head darted out from the right, its pink tongue hanging out in appeasement, stretching its smile as wide as possible to apologize.
As if it were a very ordinary, warm day.
Lu Mingming managed a weak smile, stroking the small paws of the two little ones to indicate she was alright.
"Here's your water."
It was Molly. The voice that had spoken just now was also hers.
Molly quickly brought a cup of warm water and carefully fed it to Lu Mingming.
"You have no idea how scared I was. I saw you walk all the way to the fourth floor and stare blankly for ten minutes. None of us knew what you were doing, so we had to break our thirty-minute agreement and send out a search party to rescue you."
Speaking of which, Lu Mingming silently recounted, "It was an illusion. I encountered an illusion."
Evidently, the so-called illusion was not kind to Lu Mingming. Everyone could see that she was not in good spirits, her complexion pale and her mind disoriented.
Molly sat by the bed, patting Lu Mingming's back to gently comfort her. Lu Mingming responded with a tight hug, almost suffocating Molly.
"It's good that you're alright, it's good that you're alright."
After a period of comfort, Lu Mingming finally regained her composure. She reached out and pulled the two cubs, who had grown significantly, to her sides, holding them tightly.
Molly breathed a sigh of relief and added:
"Oh, right, you didn't know you'd accidentally awakened S-class mental power, did you?"