"Squeak, squeak, squeak..."
In the hot summer evening, the noisy sound of cicadas echoed as if eternal background music in the dense jungle.
In this seldom-visited forest, there sat a small courtyard that took up only a small space.
If one could look down from above, through the scattered branches and leaves illuminated by the setting sun, one could catch a glimpse of a two-story building with an open-air hot spring pool, with a signboard at the entrance of the courtyard that read "Wu's Hot Spring Hotel".
Wu Xian was currently the only living person in this hotel.
He was lying on the reception desk, weakly fanning himself with a fan.
Yes, in order to save a bit on electricity bills, he couldn't even bear to turn on the lobby air conditioning.
Yet another whole day went by without a single visitor or any order notifications on the app.
Damn it, if things continued like this, the only family asset of the Wu family would be repossessed by the bank due to supply cut-off!
As the night grew deeper,
Wu Xian, filled with deep despair, wandered back and forth in the dim corridor like a zombie.
"Damn it, damn it! Why is it so difficult to be a hotel owner who can make money while lying down!"
Just then, a fierce lightning flashed across outside the window, followed by thunderous roars.
A sturdy tree-shaped lightning struck straight down from the sky, precisely hitting the almost dried-up hot spring pool in the courtyard.
Wu Xian originally thought that the non-existent natural spring suddenly gushed out spring water.
A layer of white light instantly enveloped the entire hot spring hotel, as if it had been separated from the earth in an instant, but upon closer inspection, it was still one entity.
Being situated in a remote area, even if there were some unusual lights, they were hardly noticed by anyone, obscured by the lightning and thunder.
Although there was a slight warning sign on the monitoring platform of a certain secret department for the area where the hotel belonged, to the monitoring personnel, it was almost insignificant compared to the violent fluctuations occurring elsewhere.
Perhaps this was just a normal manifestation of a large-scale thunderstorm and was wrongly judged as normal by the instruments.
...
At the same time,
On the Andrea continent, in the dense forest outside Dingwo Village.
The starry sky was dim and lightless, as the black night was left with only the flickering light of torches.
From a distance, the flickering light resembled scattered fireflies, emitting a thrilling light and shadow in the lonely night.
"Chase her!"
"Don't let her escape!"
"Damn it, it's been three days without eating, and she can still run so fast!"
"You bunch of useless people, you can't even keep an almost dying witch in check! Capture her quickly!
Otherwise, you will be put on the stake in her place!"
Accompanied by the continuous shouts, dozens of villagers holding torches were shuttling through the pitch-black forest. Not far ahead, a petite figure was struggling to run in the darkness.
Due to being unfamiliar with the terrain, coupled with the pitch-black sky, she kept falling and getting up again.
The tree branches and thorns left bloody marks on her face, arms, and exposed skin.
Seeing that the pursuers were getting closer and closer, the girl exerted all her strength to throw a small fireball behind her.
Amidst the villagers' cries of astonishment, the weak fireball exploded in the air before it could reach them, turning into a wisp of smoke and dissipating.
"Haha, the witch is almost done for!"
"Damn it, scared the hell out of me!"
"Hurry up, whoever catches her first will be granted the qualification as a knight's attendant by the church!"
Upon hearing the priest's promise, the already exhausted villagers swarmed towards her like they were injected with chicken blood.
The girl had reached her physical limit by now,
And the rapid running that lasted for nearly half an hour just now undoubtedly further consumed her already little strength.
"Thud!"
Finally, the girl's legs went weak, and she was tripped by a long and thick tree root, falling heavily to the ground.
The villagers following closely behind her cheered, thinking that their prey was within reach.
But what they didn't expect was that right in front of the girl was a steep slope. After falling, she immediately tumbled down the slope.
With the sound of the girl's feeble moan as she collided with a stone, she disappeared into the pitch-black shadow below the slope, as if being swallowed by infinite darkness. This caused the crowd to hesitate and stop in their tracks."She couldn't have died from the fall, right?"
"Damn it, the prey slipped away."
The priest in a black robe immediately shouted, "Dead or alive, we must see the body! Even the corpse of a witch will bring misfortune to the world! It must be burned in flames to completely rid it of the devil's curse. Do you understand?"
The villagers dared not defy the priest's orders and quickly held torches and continued to follow the witch's trail down the mountain from the other side.
At this moment, the girl, who was rolling like a torn sack, finally fell motionless at the bottom of the valley after paying the price of bruises all over her body and even a gash on her forehead caused by a stone.
In a daze, the cries and shouts of the villagers in the distance did not fade away but grew closer. And before her eyes, it was like a hallucination.
In the originally desolate and pitch-black valley, there appeared a two-story house that looked clean and tidy, shimmering with dazzling lights.
The magic lamps on the corridors remained constantly bright, more enduring and stable than the most luxurious Winston Hotel in the capital city. The light seemed to freeze at its brightest moment forever.
Could that be the paradise everyone yearns for?
At this moment, the villagers' shouts grew nearer, and the shadows of the torches danced closer to her.
Yet, the two-story house, less than twenty meters away from her, still maintained its mystery and tranquility, as if nothing in this world could affect its normal operation.
For some reason, when her gaze fell on the house again, her heart skipped a beat, as if the building was gently trembling and beckoning her to enter.
Well, before being captured by those villagers, there was no harm in going in to take a look.
This time, she wouldn't run away anymore.
If witches were born in this world to taste all the sorrows of life, she believed she had done so.
Such a life was no longer enough to sustain her perseverance.
She was tired.
The girl stood up slowly, enduring the pain with each step that felt like a dagger piercing her heart.
What surprised her was that as she moved closer to the house, the intricately carved wooden door would open a fraction, and the slender light leaking from the gap gradually widened, eventually swallowing her trembling figure.
