Chapter 143: My Wounds Run Deep
Ruru Rosa, Cade Barret, and Lordi Payne exchanged glances, their eyes reflecting the weight of Shirley Quinn’s ironclad logic. Her plan to slip away from the Hanz Clan estate, letting Jorge Blue and Donovan Valdez’s squads face the Ancestral Shrine’s horrors, was a calculated gambit that promised survival.
Ruru’s sharp nod came first, her hair curls bouncing, her voice crisp with respect. "Captain’s right. We’re too beat up to stay. Let’s move."
Cade’s broad shoulders relaxed, his gruff tone steady as he rumbled, "Agreed. Rest now, fight later. Smart."
Lordi, clutching his Blade of Life Hater, his Seventh Layer spirit energy flickering like a spent candle, gave a curt nod, his rasping voice low. "No arguing with that. We’re out."
Lordi stepped forward, his bloodied frame tense, his tone respectful but edged with urgency. "Senior Sister Quinn, how do we get out of this cursed place?"
Shirley’s lips curved slightly, her voice casual but precise, exuding the confidence of a Ninth Layer strategist. "My Suicide Squad mapped the grand array before we set off. Its breach points open every eight or nine hours." She produced a delicate glaze sundial, its surface etched with faint runes, and held it aloft, the fading dusk glinting off its curves as she gauged the time. "The next breach is in fifteen minutes, at the Water Lily Lake’s central pavilion. Move fast, and we’ll make it." Her emerald eyes met theirs, a silent command to follow, her raven hair swaying as she turned toward the exit.
The squad moved swiftly, their footsteps echoing through the crumbling tower as they descended, weaving through the estate’s shadowed paths toward the Water Lily Lake.
Not long after, the four arrived the rear mountain’s southeast corner.
Only moments ago, the lake had been a nightmare. Shirley had torn through its illusion with her Life Absorption Art, revealing the horror beneath—a crimson abyss of severed limbs, heads of the Hanz Clan bobbing like grotesque blossoms among the water lilies, their lifeless eyes staring through the murk. It had been a slaughterhouse, a hellscape of blood and malice that had nearly claimed them all.