Mystery: Mr. Witch and Ms. Hunter

Chapter 274: The Final Return

(Yesterday, someone in the book club asked me privately if I had mixed up the books... Actually, this copy is the plot of the last few weeks of the book I conceived in December. I had originally voted it in, but I didn't have enough time. Now I'm making up for it from this copy, so you can read it with confidence.)
Half an hour after separating from Wendy, Adele returned to the garden community.

She hadn't paid much attention to the surroundings just now, but when she came back here for the second time, she observed more carefully than before. Wendy pointed out to her the ancient writing of place names such as "hospital" and "duty center". Before she found the rules, she had to make sure she didn't step into new areas casually.

Although the neighborhood has been severely damaged, the weathered remains of the buildings still show that they were originally neatly planned. Huge plants grew out of the middle of the building, breaking it apart, with the remaining parts suspended in the air by tree trunks like a bird's nest.

However, Adele was very sure that when she came last time, there was definitely no pale yellow thing hanging on the thick tree trunk supporting the half of the building like it was now.

Those pale yellow long objects were hung around the building by the barbs on the tree trunks. When the wind blew, they swayed gently, collided with each other, and made slight crackling sounds.

That is a dried human body.

Adele had been gone for only two hours, and they were left hanging on the branches, as if being eaten by a giant shrike.

Similar signs were not only seen on the buildings, but also on the neatly laid roadsides where piles of damaged bodies were piled up. Some were as brown and brittle as those dried by the wind, some were relatively fresh and still elastic, and some looked as if they had just died not long ago.

"Fuck me..."

Since becoming a witch, Adele has rarely swore. In fact, even when he was still a man, he was a polite person, and there were not many things that made her swear.

But no one can remain indifferent when seeing the current scene.

This wasn't something that could be caused by some disease... it was more like the sacrificial ritual of a crazy cultist that had gotten out of control.

Adele frowned. As a cult organization, the Witch Cult would not organize such bloody rituals with cruelty as the theme. They paid more attention to the disaster itself than the means of creating the disaster.

This is still within the scope of the "Garden Community", but the situation has suddenly become much more serious.

Adele took out her gold-cased pocket watch and checked it to make sure her sense of time was not confused. It was now six o'clock in the morning in Constantinople. She hadn't slept for 32 hours.

Although the "Witch of Pleasure" provided her with a strong physical fitness, she still couldn't take staying up late as seriously as Britton. Adele knew that if she didn't get enough rest in the next 24 hours, her mental state would probably be in trouble.

Knowing the importance of maintaining her condition, Adele quickly made a decision. She decided to check the area again and then return to Wendy. After resting for four hours, she continued exploring and returned to Wendy before four o'clock the next morning.

The time was particular. She didn't know whether the changes here were periodic, so she took one day as the boundary to make sure she was not in the scene when it changed.

Pinching the back of her hand, Adele cheered herself up and continued to explore the interior of the community.

She found the map engraved at the entrance of the community. Although she didn't recognize many of the words, she found the addresses that Wendy had annotated for her.

The Garden Community is located at a relatively high altitude, and from here you can directly see most of the buildings marked on the map, including the Walmart supermarket and the duty personnel headquarters.

Adele thought for a moment, copied down the map, and then walked along the overgrown road towards the duty personnel headquarters.

According to Wendy's description, the duty brigade at that time was most likely the professionals responsible for dealing with pollution, and their remains may contain clues to finding the source of all this.

Adele walked alone on the street, alert to everything around her. Most of the magical items on her body were still unusable, which made her feel a little uneasy. However, she suppressed her negative emotions as much as possible and walked forward in silence.

She walked past the room where she had rested before and found that the door was locked. No one knew who or what had locked it.

The further they walked forward, the stickier and wetter the air became, as if the gloomy fog in the Backlund factory area had crossed time and space and appeared here. The fog was transparent and would not block their vision, but it would refract the sunlight at different angles, making the area ahead colorful, like walking in the dream of an innocent child.

Not far from the community, you can see the low-lying duty personnel headquarters. Looking down from the mountain road, the tiles on the circular duty personnel headquarters reflect the light like water waves, like a shallow and wide vertical shaft.

It would take a long time to go down the mountain road, so Adele looked at the surrounding environment and decided to take a shortcut.

White spider silk spread out from her body, quickly hooking onto the surrounding trees, pulling her body and moving rapidly, floating through the lush trees, leaving the lifeless neighborhood behind.

She glided and dived close to the ground, feeling her blood rushing to her head under the influence of gravity, but she quickly adapted to this feeling and adjusted her body posture in the air so that she landed steadily on the ground in front of the duty center.

After carefully looking around and finding that there were no ambushes around her, Adele breathed a sigh of relief and began to look around for something like rules and regulations.

Just then, she saw the light.

At first, there were tiny points of light hidden in the mist, and then those lights quickly gathered at the mouth of the well. By the time Adele, who was at the bottom of the "well", realized what had happened, the light had formed a mighty torrent, causing everyone who saw it to have a strange feeling from the bottom of their hearts, a feeling that doomsday was coming.

The color of the light was between red and blue, and it flickered rapidly between the two colors; they flowed along irregular trajectories, but their ultimate destination was the bottom of the valley of this duty center.

This feeling was beyond Adele's imagination. She stared blankly at the phosphorescence that was gathering towards the bottom of the valley from all directions. The gushing light in an instant even covered the sky. There was nothing but light as far as the eye could see. Plants grew wildly at an unimaginable speed. The grass and trees twisted and tangled together, emitting the same light as the torrent.

A flood of phosphorescence engulfed Adele, and soon she lost consciousness completely.

……

At the same time, Wendy and Tracy outside the air barrier, and Katarina and the witches on the boat also witnessed the flow of light.

The lush green jungle suddenly lost its color, flowing like water into the valley inside the barrier. The glittering, amorphous color slowly flowed along the ridge, glittering in the pale shadows cast by the trees and rocks.

The surfaces of the objects swallowed by the torrent of colors emitted light of the same color as the torrent, and they shook violently as if they were blown by a strong wind, and deformed organs grew on their bodies.

"Come on!"

Tracy didn't dare to stop, she picked up Wendy, tied her to her back with a silk thread, and rushed to the beach where the sun was shining brightly. The acceleration method she used was similar to Adele's, but faster than Adele's.

Wendy did not resist, but just stared blankly at the barrier in the distance, tears streaming down her face uncontrollably.

At that moment, she suddenly realized that she might have lost her first and possibly last precious chance to return to her hometown. Although that chance might very well be accompanied by death, the shock still made her sob softly.

The surging colors flowed into the barrier behind the two people, leaving a turbulent vortex in the middle of the shadow. Although the colors exposed to direct sunlight melted like snow, forming invisible steam, the colors that gathered together still rushed.

The sunlight here is not the cause of color vision, but the cause of the elimination of color vision!
After the last of the color flooded into the trough, Tracy and the others stopped right on the exposed beach, gasping for breath.

Wendy felt warm liquid running down her face and was about to reach out to wipe it away, but what she wiped away were not tears, but tiny spheres.

Wendy's face suddenly turned pale - this was not a figure of speech, but a real loss of color. Spherical teardrop-shaped objects stuck to her hands, formed by a bunch of germ-like creatures wrapped around Wendy's tears.

Before Wendy could even exclaim, the creatures quickly died in the sunlight, water droplets scattered and wet her sleeves. She felt something and quickly took out her pocket watch from her pocket, and found that one of the four long scales on it had disappeared, and the second scale was slowly losing color and finally disappeared.

"There's something wrong with the spring water there..." Wendy muttered to herself with some fear. However, before she had time to feel sorry for her magical item, an extremely familiar feeling occupied her mind.

Following that feeling, Wendy stood up and looked into the distance.

What comes into view is a grayish-white forest. After the color in the forest disappears, the entire forest turns grayish-white, slowly wriggling in the sunlight, with the grass and trees intertwined, forming a spirally rising platform.

The tall trees gradually twisted to form a huge spherical platform with a narrow gap in the middle. Even the sunlight from Bimini Island could not remove the deep darkness inside this area.

"what is that?"

Tracy's voice was trembling, and soon she heard Wendy's equally shocked voice.

"If my eyes are not wrong... that's the observatory."

……

Adele didn't know how long it took her to wake up.

After waking up, she was surprised to find that she was not injured. Her clothes were intact, and her magical items were not lost. The starry sky light on the Heart Stealer's lip gloss disappeared, and it was restored to a usable state.

She blinked hard, trying to confirm what changes the light just now had brought.

Surprisingly, the process was much easier than she had imagined.

Everything around her had changed. The plants that had grown wildly from the buildings had disappeared, and the buildings had returned to their state thousands of years ago, covered with fresh or dried blood. An iron container with flashing red and blue lights lay across the road. Adele judged from the wheels underneath that it should be a means of transportation at that time.

In addition, the sunlight that had been shining on the island disappeared, and the sky became gloomy and dark, making people feel particularly depressed, as if the gray sky was only two meters high above everyone's head.

Where is this...

Adele's eyes flickered, and she found it difficult to adapt to the current situation.

Anyway, contact the Tarot Club first... Adele made a quick decision. She quickly read out the name of Mr. Fool, hoping that Miss Justice and Mr. Hanged Man would respond to her.

However, she was horrified to find that her connection with the gray fog was blocked. She could still sense the umbilical cord-like connection between herself and the gray fog, but she could not transmit any information through this connection.

This is a bit bad... Adele seemed a little flustered for a moment. However, she quickly suppressed this panic with her excellent psychological quality.

Things have come to this point, and she has no other choice but to continue exploring.

Just as she was about to step towards the woods, a shrill sound suddenly came from behind her, sharper and higher in frequency than a train whistle.

Adele turned around and found a vehicle with flashing red and blue lights speeding towards her and stopped in front of her.

Soon the car door opened, and two men in heavy grey vests came out. Using the car door as a cover, they shouted something to Adele. They had large pistols in their hands and various weapons on their backs. Adele was surprised to find that she could understand what they were saying.

"Take off your hat so we can see your face!"

A gun-wielding woman shouted nervously, and Adele could feel her hands shaking. Not wanting to have a conflict with the other party, Adele slowly raised her hands and took off her lady's soft hat on her head.

"Very good, now turn around, we need to check if there is anything abnormal with you!" the woman continued to shout, and Adele did so.

"Finally, take eight steps towards the police car and get closer to the police lights!" The lady relaxed a little, but still remained vigilant. "If you don't cooperate, we have the right to use any force!"

Adele was a little confused, but she did as she was told and took eight steps towards the police car, still two or three meters away from the woman.

"OK, she's fine." The other party breathed a sigh of relief and then saluted her with a not-so-standard salute. "Temporary duty police officer Qiao Qiao is currently on patrol."

"You're safe now...for now."

(End of this chapter)