If the missionary had been calm before, now he was utterly panicked.
The power of the demon god's remnants was his primary means of attack and his greatest reliance.
The reason he hadn't been abandoned by the Doctor wasn't just because he was one of the first to defect to Snezhnaya with him, but also because he had voluntarily accepted the injection of the demon god's remnants.
Now... that power had vanished.
His first concern wasn't whether he would die here, because in his view, the Instructor would never let that kid kill him.
What he cared about was whether his power would disappear forever, whether he would be abandoned by the Doctor because of this.
He knew the Doctor's temperament all too well.
After barely dodging the boulder Collei had pushed down, the missionary took advantage of the moment she went to push another rock and climbed back up.
But once he was up, Collei was nowhere to be seen.
This immediately put him on high alert. He didn't think she had run away—she was probably hiding in the shadows, preparing to...
"Hiss—"
The missionary first felt a chill in his lower back, followed by an excruciating pain.
Gritting his teeth, he swung his blade backward but hit nothing.
Because he had overlooked one thing: Collei wasn't an adult, but a child.
So, judging from his movements that this strike wouldn't hit her, Collei pulled out the dagger and stabbed the other side of his back.
"Tsk tsk, that looks painful."
Even Bailuo, watching from the shadows, felt a chill in his lower back.
This girl really dared to stab!
Both kidneys had been stabbed, nearly causing the missionary to black out from the pain.
But as an ascetic, his willpower was stronger than that of an ordinary person. Plus, his body had been enhanced by the demon god's remnants, so he hadn't completely lost the ability to fight back.
However, he had underestimated just how much hatred Collei harbored for him.
"Hiss, hiss, hiss—"
The sound of a mechanism rang out, and the missionary felt his knees tighten. The wire contracted, causing him to kneel down, already unsteady on his feet.
Before he could stand back up, Collei's dagger had already severed his Achilles tendon.
"Ah—"
Even the missionary couldn't help but let out a wail of pain.
"In... Instructor!"
He looked at Bailuo, who was sitting not far away, and reached out his hand, seeking help.
But the hand that grasped his wasn't Bailuo's—it was a small, bloodstained hand.
With the missionary's despair-filled gaze fixed on her, Collei slowly cut the tendons in his hand.
And she did it deliberately slowly, wanting him to understand what true torment felt like.
Seeing that the Instructor still hadn't intervened, the missionary finally understood.
This so-called training had been a trap from the very beginning.
"Do you remember me?"
Collei removed the mask of the Pyro Agent, her face expressionless.
But her slightly trembling hands betrayed her true emotions.
"It's... it's you?!"
Of course, the missionary remembered Collei. She had been the last test subject in his experiments.
But in his memory, this child had died in the cell because she couldn't withstand the power of the demon god's remnants.
Back then, he had personally ordered Bailuo to dispose of her...
"BAILUO!!!!"
At this point, the missionary finally realized what had happened.
He never could have imagined that Bailuo hadn't followed his orders to dispose of the child back then and had instead raised her to this age!
"You don't deserve to say that name!"
Collei kicked him in the jaw, dislocating it.
Then she flipped onto the missionary, who was trying to crawl away, and raised her dagger high.
One stab, two stabs, three stabs...
Flesh flew, blood splattered.
Collei kept plunging the dagger into his back, pulling it out, and stabbing again, as if trying to vent all the hatred and pain she had accumulated over the years onto the missionary.
Bailuo didn't stop her.
He knew that this kind of thing wasn't suitable for a child like Collei.
Everyone understands the logic, but grievances still need to be aired, people still need to be cursed, and emotions still need to be vented.
After all, a lifetime of hatred and pain can't be resolved by mere logic or smoothed over by time.
Time doesn't solve our problems; it just makes the things that were once trivial seem less important.
But hatred and pain only become more deeply etched.
To others, this might seem like an overreaction, but only Collei knew.
Just how heavy the straw on her back had been.
Perhaps this, too, is a form of erosion.
She didn't know how long she had been stabbing, but when the missionary's screams grew weaker and the dagger she pulled out was stained with dirt, Collei finally let the dagger slip from her hand.
"Wah..."
Collei had thought she would never cry again in this lifetime. During her year of wandering, she felt she had already cried all her tears.
But as she looked at the bloodied and mutilated missionary before her, a wave of bitterness surged in her heart.
"Wahhhhh—"
She threw her head back and wailed, tears streaming down her blood-streaked face and falling onto the missionary's mangled body.
She had killed the missionary, killed her past, and killed all the hatred in her heart.
She cried like a child, like a newborn baby.
No... or rather, she was a child, a little girl who had been forced to grow up too quickly by the world, but deep down still loved pretty clothes, cartoon stickers, and longed for someone to rely on.
She had cut off her beautiful long hair and wrapped herself in a thick shell, all just to shield herself from the world's malice.
Her voice grew hoarse, her vision blurred from tears.
But she still didn't stop.
"Hmm?"
Bailuo, who had walked over to Collei, planning to take her away once she had vented her emotions, suddenly paused.
Because he could sense that something had changed.
For example, beneath his feet.
A rustling sound emerged, and the blood-stained ground began to crack.
"Could it be..."
A smile crept onto Bailuo's lips. He knew his plan had likely succeeded.
"Crack—"
Cracks appeared across Starsnatch Cliff, and countless sprouts pushed through the hard soil, stubbornly emerging from below.
They grew rapidly, twisting and intertwining as if they had been fed fertilizer.
Finally, they surrounded Collei in the center.
A budding flower bent its fragile stem, hanging right in front of Collei.
The Cecilia flower, symbolizing the wanderer's true feelings, slowly bloomed, and a green gem appeared in its center.
Seeing Collei sway and nearly collapse, Bailuo reached out and caught her.
"Alright, let's go home."
Hearing Bailuo's familiar voice, Collei gradually calmed down and fell into a deep sleep.
As for Bailuo...
He glanced at the Dendro Delusion at his waist, then at the Dendro Vision in front of Collei.
After holding it in for a while, he finally spat out one word:
"Damn!"