Upon her answer, Leona could already confirm that it was her, but who could've known that she was a young teenage girl?! Not to mention, she was shameless enough to waltz into his bedroom casually and leave as if nothing happened!
She handed the little boy gently into Leona's arms as the guy noticed that his nephew was well. Despite the commotion, it didn't escape Lotus's notice that Scar was ready to make his getaway. She raised her hand and called out, "Niersi Lily..."
A circular bundle of small lilies appeared in her hand as she held the stem. A light white mist drifted from the lily and shot out binding the ghost lion by the paws.
"Gah!" Scar cried out in surprise.
"She caught the ghost lion!" Jack stammered in bewilderment before feeling a little dizzy.
Ruggie shuddered, "I knew all woman are scary, but geez... This could be another level. She's... not an enemy, right?"
Lotus smiled and said, "I was told that the elephant graveyard holds the last resentments of the king of beasts. Looks like the lilies weren't wrong."
Lotus breathed a small unsteady sigh of relief before handing Leona three white pills, "These were made from the flower. The fairy that guards these dorms knew that you'd come here and told me to give this to you. The Elephant graveyard has a toxic miasma during the full moon. The deeper you enter these parts, the more nauseous you get till you pass out and perish here. We call this miasma corpse poison. It is a sticky green liquid that would make you become one of these skeletons if left untreated. At worst, you'll become like the lion king here and have a harder time filled with negativity till you become a resentful ghost."
"Seriously?!" Ruggie looked to her in surprise, "But, I'm feeling fine..."
Lotus raised a brow, "That's right. It's been recorded in history that the king of beasts often made trips to the outlands to visit his hyena friends, however, the lands are covered with corpse poison that hyenas are resistant to because they've lived in the elephant graveyards for so long that they've built an immunity to it. Sadly, I can't say the king of beasts saved enough sanity to actually cherish his family and friends anymore due to this. You better take the pill, though. I don't know how much you were able to resist."
"Oh, save me the sarcasm..." Scar scowled under his breath.
"Oh?" Lotus smirked and handed Leona another pill, "This is a truth pill. You can call it a potion that even ghosts can take. I spent a lot of time to make this. If you make him have it, all sorts of truths would come out. From over throwing his brother to his most embarrassing times. It'll last for two good hours once you hand it to him unless he somehow forces an exorcism on himself."
"Um, but he can't exorcise himself." Jack pointed out in confusion as he quickly took in the pill once Leona handed one to him.
Lotus smirked and folded her arms, "That's the point..."
Her words brought a shiver down their spine as Leona sneered, "Hah! You make a decent villain as well."
Ruggie's eyes widen in surprise, "Leona is actually complimenting someone?!"
Scar scowled, "You dare!"
A sudden emergence of mist came at them much to their surprise. Leona raised his staff only for Lotus to grab a hold of it.
"Crystal."
Suddenly, a white cloud of white butterflies with clear wings emerged from the surrounding mist and blew the green mist away before surrounding the ghost.
"She countered the king of beasts..." Jack stammered in surprise.
Lotus turned to Leona with a sigh of relief, "You've only just worn off your blot. It would be more troublesome for you if you overblotted again, right?"
Leona grumbled with slight irritation before he sighed, "Fine. So, who's that?"
Lotus threw the gagged person out to the front, "This is your kidnapper."
She shook her head with a sigh, "I came tracking him down after I saw him acting weird a few hours ago. Turns out he's rather skilled and acted like the real bodyguards. Those other guards you saw were fakes he created with magic."
"Geh..." Ruggie wore a small wry smile after his surprise, "You mean, they weren't real? Those tough guys?"
They were guys dressed up normally but were rather buff in stature. It was a shock to learn that they were all fakes make to look like the real ones. Leona shook his head with a sigh and handed the pill to Ruggie, "I need to let my brother know that we found Cheka..."
Leona looked to Lotus who smirked and shrugged, "Take all the credit. I have to go back now and don't want to be disturbed for a long while."
It was then that Leona noticed the blood stain on her dress as he narrowed his eyes, "You..."
Lotus smirked pretending not to have noticed, "Yes?"
"That's..." Leona hesitated in confusion.
What should he say first? Does the pill work? Or are you doing this because Cheka is his nephew? How did she get hurt? His eyes widen upon realization over his own thoughts and cursed under his breath, "What were those last two questions about? Damn! This is stupid! Fine! I'll... come up with something... Just..."
"Hm?" She raised a brow in confusion.
"N-Nothing..." Leona grumbled nervously and turned to Ruggie, "Hey, test out the pill on the ghost and take your time. I'm calling my brother."
"No! No!" Scar mewed in horror as he watched the pill land in Ruggie's hands.
Leona shook his head with a sigh of exasperation, "If you knew what betraying others mean, you should've thought twice before trying to betray trusts again. I was only checking your intention for helping us. Since when do someone volunteer to ask an outsider for help?"
He turned Ruggie and responded, "He's all yours."
"Al-alright." Ruggie stared at Leona in bewilderment when a thought came to his mind, "Wait! Y-you can't mean..."
Leona sighed, "You heard her. The king of beasts saved enough sanity to actually cherish his family and friends anymore due to the poison. Dang it... I guess I'll have to think up of another excuse..."
"No way..." Ruggie whined in an upset manner when he heard his dorm leader emphasized friends before he glared at the king of beast, "At him... So that means to say, he betrayed the hyenas at the very end? If that's true, I'll make you spill every single thing..."
Ruggie revealed an evil smirk as he closed in on the ghost with dark laughter, "Let me tell you this if the hyenas haven't told you before. Hyenas kinda get a bad rep, but they don't forget acts of kindness. However... obviously, we don't forget our grudges either… Since you haven't learned your lesson from the hyenas who trusted you before, let me show you again what we can do... Shishishi! Eat this!"
He stuffed the pill into the lion's jaws fearlessly. Jack stood back with a sigh of relief when he started to feel a little better and wondered, "I thought that it would be hard to understand the language of the king of beasts, but I guess they don't use the other animal languages that much... That's a relief."
Lotus quietly gave out a few more instructions to Crystal before using her camouflaging ability and disappeared into the mist when she tossed the lily under the skeleton of an elephant.
It was all part of the plan, after all. The lily knew where the enemy must've hidden themselves and handed her a lily. She would throw the lily into the elephant graveyard where it will grow secretly and decimate the poison from the corpse and the dark energy around the area. This would also give the Niersi Lily a wider range to supervise and help her protect the future students from wandering to far. As she was about to send her internal energy into Lotus, she paused with wide eyes and stared at her for a long time in bewilderment to which quickly introduced herself as Hou Su.
It was as Lotus thought. It was difficult to keep her identity under wraps from flower fairies...
.....
When she returned to the hall of mirrors and slipped past the ghosts, she could barely continue to stand properly as she slipped out of the building towards the Ramshackle dorms. It was then that she felt an arm pick her up and dashed out from the entrance of the building before she eventually passed out.
.....
When she came to, it was already the next morning as Lotus slowly opened her eyes to find herself in the spare bedroom she uses on occasions.
"Ah, she's awake!"
When Lotus looked around the room, she saw the two siblings inside...
However...
It wasn't how she expected at all.
Both man was kneeling on the ground before her as she stared at him in bewilderment.
"We finally found milady!" Zhang Yong stated with a wide smile.
"Please don't fool around like that again." Zhang Li chided Lotus before turning to her older brother and sighed, "Are you happy now that you've surprised her? I told you you should do it after she's sound. Now she's so surprised, she can't even think straight!"
"Um..." Lotus called out in bewilderment before reassuring Zhang Li, "It's okay... Really... So... What's going on?"
Zhang Li sighed as she watched her brother step back awkwardly in confusion as he was about to respond, "We found that the array had broken last night and tried to look for you, but you weren't in your room and there was those ghosts you talked about heading to the dome building you said was the hall of mirrors? I went in to take a look and found you heading into the mirror with a dress on... so..."
Zhang Li shook her head in exasperation and continued for him, "He found out that you really was a woman and that you have the Hui family's trait on you marking you a member of the family."
"The Hui Family's trait?" Lotus raised a brow in confusion, "If I remember correctly, the Hui Family is an independent family that under goes under cover works."
Zhang Yong nodded, "For generations, they've undertaken tasks by the higher officials and are so powerful no one could fight back against them. Just knowing the Hui Family is after you is enough for one to take their own life instead."
Zhang Li continued, "The strongest trait of the family is the eyes. All members of the Hui family have a gold hue to their eyes capable of killing their target with just one visual contact with the eyes."
Lotus frowned, "That'd be..."
She touched her eye lids with a look of surprise. As she expected, it was definitely not normal.
"Twenty five years ago, the head master of a branch of the Hui family, your grandfather, declared to cut off ties with the family. He took his family and left the main house to the countryside where they decided they would not be taking on anymore dirty works and focus solely on medicine." Zhang Yong explained with a nod of confirmation to her actions, "Not everyone is born with the characteristics. You just happened to be born with it and it's very powerful in you. That's how I knew you are a member of the Hui family."
"I see... But, medicine?" Lotus raised a brow.
Zhang Li nodded, "Your grandfather and father were both prodigies in both cultivation and medicine. For them to leave the underworld to live on the surface would be achieved easily for them as they were very powerful. However..."
He continued, "What he didn't expect was that the main branch won't let them go without their lives and held a deep grudge."
"A grudge?" Lotus looked up in confusion, "For what reason would they have a grudge?"
Zhang Li, uncharacteristically, hesitated to which her brother answered bluntly, "Your father married your mother, who had no background and an ill reputation caused by accusation at the time. Then, your grandparents accepted her into the family with open arms against the main branch's will."