Chapter 132: The Consciousness Beast
They picked up the trail quickly again, only to find it splitting into two paths, both marked with signs of passage — the group had split up somewhere along the way. What had happened here? Evan sank into thought for a moment before giving orders. "Jessica, take six people and follow the left path. Watch carefully — try to identify whoever left these tracks. Come back here in fifteen minutes whether you've found anything or not. Emma and I will take the rest to the right."
Jessica nodded, gathered six students, and headed left. Evan led Emma and four students to the right. Three or four days had passed, but the trail still held — the underbrush pushed apart on either side told him whoever had come through here had done so in a hurry. Evan kept watch as they walked, Xiaoshuang flying overhead.
"Stop," Evan called out, having spotted a scrap of cloth caught on a branch. The group halted. In that same instant, a wave of pressure came crashing down from above, chilling everyone to the bone — Evan included. Something in it carried a genuine trace of the divine. Startled, he looked up to find a creature hanging in the sky, something between a dragon and not-quite-a-dragon, four-winged rather than two, feathers along each wing, its body serpentine, a sharp horn jutting from its head with electricity crackling between its twin points, its tail bristling with barbs. Evan didn't recognize the creature at all.
Everyone's faces went pale. That they hadn't collapsed outright under its presence already counted as remarkable, given none of them knew what this creature even was. Emma had already begun gathering her power, chanting her strongest spell — Meteor Fire Rain. In an instant, the sky filled with streaking fire, converging on the creature above.
But something strange happened. The moment the fireballs neared it, they simply vanished without a trace. Everyone stared, stunned. Evan felt the same shock. Black smoke rose from him, coiling like a rope toward the creature — and the instant it drew close, it too disappeared.
How was that possible? Something felt wrong. Could it share the same nature as the Chaos creature he'd invented himself? He began another incantation, and Chaos appeared, four wings beating, hurtling forward like a hurled sphere — and the same strange thing happened again. The moment it neared the creature, it vanished without a trace.
The creature let out a long roar, nothing like a dragon's cry, carrying instead something that struck straight at the mind. The four students staggered, on the verge of collapsing to their knees — though they never quite did.
Xiaoshuang made a small sound of surprise. Evan glanced up to find her hovering, apparently unaffected, frowning at the creature above.
"Xiaoshuang, do you recognize it?"
"It doesn't feel real!"
The words snapped something into place for Evan at once. Not real — which meant every bit of its pressure had to be false too. A fantasy-born creature, a natural manifestation of divine power. Everything made sense now. No wonder it looked as though it kept diving down while never actually moving from where it hung. The power in its roar was a kind of illusory mental force, which explained why the students were still on their feet, barely holding on.
"Since you don't exist, why bother showing yourself here at all? If I simply ignore you, you can't do a thing to hurt me. In truth, you were never capable of hurting me to begin with — whatever harm comes, we bring on ourselves," Evan said loudly, his gaze steady.
The moment the words left him, strange as it seemed, the creature began to shrink and fade, as if Evan's words had made it real. Emma was the first to react, remembering what Evan had said about fantasy-born creatures — understanding dawned on her at once, and she straightened, her own gaze steadying. By now the creature in the sky had faded to little more than a ghost of an outline.
The four students didn't fully grasp the reasoning, but seeing the creature grow fainter told them enough — it couldn't hurt them. The fear drained out of them, and the shape above dissolved entirely.
Still puzzled, Alexia asked, "Professor, why did it fade the moment you said that?"
"It wasn't what I said that mattered. I was speaking for your benefit. That creature exists only because divine power took shape through our own minds — which is why our magic had no effect on it at all. It doesn't truly exist. It only persists because we unconsciously imagine it into being, built collectively out of our own minds. The moment we stop believing in it, it loses whatever power it had," Evan said.
The students seemed to turn this over. Evan's attention shifted back to the scrap of cloth on the branch. Clearly torn from a Hollingburton robe — whoever they were looking for had come this way.
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He fixed his eyes on the cloth, and Emma followed his gaze, recognizing it at once, needing only a moment to understand what it meant. Seeing the students' puzzled looks, she explained, "This scrap came off a mage's robe."
Understanding dawned across their faces. "It looks like Professor Damire's group came this way," Evan said. "Let's head back and meet up with Jessica's team."
They turned back, feeling somewhat lighter now — whoever had been hunting them had split off in a different direction, which meant Professor Damire's group stood a far better chance of survival.
They returned to the meeting point, but Jessica's group hadn't come back yet. "Rest here," Evan told the others. "I'll go meet up with Jessica's group."
"I'll come with you," Emma offered.
"No need. Stay here — it puts my mind at ease knowing you're with them," Evan said, declining with a smile.
"All right. Be careful," Emma said, not pressing the point — she understood he wanted her watching over the students.
Evan took up his cane and picked up his pace, moving without appearing to run at all, though he covered ground faster than a full sprint. Xiaoshuang lifted off after him. They hadn't gone far before a shrieking roar sounded from above, and Evan found the six students' legs shaking, the same creature hanging in the sky once more. Jessica had summoned her Water Dragon Beast, a great wall of water surging up — only for it to vanish the instant it reached the creature.
Jessica looked caught in the same trap. "Jessica, ignore the creature above," Evan called out. "It only exists because of your own minds. If you refuse to acknowledge it, it can't do anything at all."
Jessica went still, then seemed to understand, smiling as she dismissed her Water Dragon Beast. The creature let out a mournful cry and began to fade.
"Don't go this way," Evan said. "This isn't the trail we need to follow — we found our lead on the other side." Jessica turned to the students at once. "Let's go, back the way we came."
"But that thing's still up there," Peter said. "It looks like it's about to dive."
"Ignore it. It'll disappear on its own," Jessica said, unconcerned.
The students, only half convinced, turned back down the path they'd come from, no longer sparing the creature above a single glance. The moment they turned their backs on it, it let out one last mournful cry and vanished entirely.
"How did you work that out, Professor Wang?" Jessica said, laughing a little at herself for having been fought to a standstill by a creature of her own mind, one no spell had touched at all.
"It wasn't me who worked it out — Xiaoshuang noticed it first. I understood right away once the creature on the other side vanished the same way. I figured you might have run into the same thing over here, and it seems I was right," Evan said mildly.
Xiaoshuang had already landed on his shoulder, looking around with obvious satisfaction, nose in the air.
"What did you find on your side?" Jessica asked.
"A scrap of cloth — a corner of one of our school robes. If I'm not mistaken, Professor Damire's group went that way. Emma and the others are waiting for us where we left them. We should regroup and search that direction together," Evan said.
Before long, they found Emma and the students waiting exactly where they'd left them, breaking into smiles at the sight of the returning group.
They merged back into a single party and set off down the right-hand path. It didn't take long to reach the spot with the scrap of cloth, still there — Jessica nodded, confirming they hadn't lost the trail. Evan's brow furrowed, though. Something told him a pair of eyes was watching the group, but a careful look around turned up nothing at all.
He trusted the feeling regardless — it had saved his life more than once before. He gave no outward sign, only staying quietly alert as the group pushed on through the jungle. A flicker of white crossed his vision, and Evan's Medusa's Shield snapped into place in front of him, its eyes flaring with a pale grey light. The white shape — moving impossibly fast — slowed abruptly, its body beginning to petrify, before a burst of light shattered the stone away and it surged forward again, one claw slamming into the shield. It flipped and bolted, a streak of white racing for the treeline.
Too late. Evan's cane was already moving, cutting the air with a whistle, and struck it across the head. There was a soft crack — a burst of impact, like a hundred blossoms opening at once — and the white fox-like creature crumpled to the ground.
Evan paid it no further attention. Black smoke rose at his side, several threads shooting forward like arrows, straight into the jungle. Roars broke out one after another — clearly not a single beast, but a whole pack.
Everyone startled, throwing up a half-dome shield around the group at once. Five or six magical beasts of various kinds burst from the trees, eyeing them with open hunger. Evan drew the black smoke back — and at its trailing edge, the ghostly shapes of struggling beasts were plainly visible. Several of the pack had already lost their lives.
Evan smiled faintly, and the black smoke surged stronger, the struggling shapes at its tip growing clear and distinct — a unicorn tiger, a mottled spider, a twin-winged wolf, and one creature Evan didn't recognize at all, scaled all over yet built like an oversized rat.
He pointed, and the captured souls let out a furious roar, hurling themselves at the approaching pack. In the same instant, Emma unleashed her chain of fireballs, while Jessica summoned her Blaze-Spitting Fire Tree, sweeping across the field like a mobile furnace.
The students joined in as well, each drawing on their own strengths, spells of every color flashing and roaring across the clearing, crashing down on the beasts before them.
The beasts gave no ground either, spitting fireballs and wind blades of their own, the whole scene dissolving into chaos. In the middle of the melee, Evan's eyes fixed on one creature deeper in the trees — a beast with the head of a monkey and the body of a lion, standing apart from the rest like a king among them.