Chapter 373: Hu Tao's Pursuit
"Ahem! Cough, cough!" Hu Tao cleared her throat with exaggerated force, desperately trying to fan away the furious blush creeping up her cheeks. She straightened her posture, puffing out her chest to salvage whatever remained of her dignified aura as the Director of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor.
"N-Now is hardly the time to dawdle over such trivial matters!" she stammered, waving her hands dismissively to change the subject. "The mission takes absolute priority! Venti, Consultant, hurry up and figure out where that Sarah woman scurried off to!"
Unlike the main vanguard currently hunting down Bringer, this particular trio had locked onto a highly specific objective the moment they were scattered by the Hollow's chaotic entrance currents: capturing Sarah.
They had landed in a desolate, jagged sector of the Hollow. The air here tasted of ozone and metallic decay, thick with swirling Aether radiation. While initially regrouping to discuss how to contact Wise and the others for the grand encirclement, Venti had proposed a different approach.
"Let the wind be our eyes," the bard had suggested. Closing his eyes, Venti allowed his senses to ride the chaotic Hollow currents. Amidst the heavy, suffocating blanket of Aether radiation, he snagged a single, discordant thread. It was a lingering scent—a trail left by someone who had just fled the area, carrying a suppressed yet deeply eerie power.
It clearly did not belong to a mindless Ethereal. It was distinctly human, female, and radiating an unnatural energy. The deduction was simple: a lone woman wandering a deadly Hollow with unknown powers could only be Sarah—the treacherous collaborator working with Bringer, manipulating the bizarre Progenitor energy, and harboring malicious intent toward Ya and Tailless.
Zhongli acted immediately. The former Geo Archon knelt, his dark coat pooling around him as he pressed a bare palm against the cold, jagged concrete. A pulse of rich, geometric golden light rippled from his touch, illuminating the dust motes in the dark cavity.
"Venti's intuition is correct," Zhongli murmured, rising to his feet with a calm, measured grace. "A woman traversed this exact path no more than ten minutes ago. Her attire—a long crimson coat—and her physical dimensions align perfectly with the visual data Wise provided us. It is undoubtedly our target, Sarah."
From that moment, the Liyue-Mondstadt trio commenced their hunt. Lacking a Proxy's exact coordinates, their tracking method was delightfully extravagant. Venti read the subtle disturbances in the atmospheric pressure and residual energy echoes, mapping out her trajectory and distance. Zhongli, in turn, conversed with the very bedrock, extracting precise temporal data from the microscopic stress fractures left by Sarah's hurried footsteps.
It was a flawless, highly efficient system. Yet, the deeper they ventured into the twisting corridors of the Hollow, the more a creeping sense of suspicion settled over them.
"How peculiar..." Venti murmured, pausing near a crumbling overpass to recalibrate his winds. "Miss Sarah's energy signature isn't particularly overwhelming by our usual standards. However, the route she has chosen..."
Zhongli finished the thought, his amber eyes narrowing as he surveyed the junction ahead. The concrete was gouged with fresh, vicious claw marks and slick with corrosive, neon-green Aether residue. "She has deliberately marched straight through zones of extreme Aether density. These areas are heavily populated by Ethereals. Given the behavioral patterns of Hollow entities, they are hyper-sensitive to fresh biological life and anomalous energy. They should instinctively swarm any intruder."
"But she just waltzed right through?" Hu Tao chimed in, her plum-blossom eyes blinking in disbelief. "What, did these ugly monsters take one look at her pretty face and decide to give her a VIP pass?"
Venti let out a light, airy chuckle, shaking his head. "I highly doubt Ethereals possess an eye for human aesthetics, Director. It is far more probable that Miss Sarah is using the power of that Progenitor."
"A cloaking mechanism of sorts," Zhongli deduced, his tone grave. "Or perhaps a pacification effect. It masks her presence, preventing the Aether constructs from registering her as prey."
This revelation only sharpened their caution. A target who could stroll through a Hollow unbothered was not to be underestimated.
"Bah! I don't care what kind of fancy tricks she's hiding," Hu Tao declared. Click-clack. She smoothly slammed a fresh, high-capacity magazine into her submachine gun, the metallic sound echoing sharply in the dead air. A fiery, competitive glint ignited in her eyes. "We'll just have to catch her, knock her flat, and interrogate the answers out of her! Come on, Consultant, Venti! Keep tracking!"
Prompted by his energetic companion, Venti quieted his mind once more. He cast his senses into the erratic drafts, plucking at the invisible strings of the wind.
Suddenly, his brow furrowed. The playful bard opened his eyes, his vibrant emerald gaze locking onto a dark, jagged path branching off to their front-left. It wasn't leading toward the Hollow's exit. Instead, it pointed toward a highly unstable spatial junction, where the air itself seemed to warp and shimmer with violent energy ripples. A Spatial Fissure pulsed faintly in the gloom.
"What is it?" Hu Tao asked, instantly catching the shift in his demeanor.
"She altered her course," Venti replied, pointing toward the shimmering tear in reality. His voice lost its usual teasing lilt. "She abandoned her retreat toward the exit. Instead, she took a sharp detour... heading straight into the belly of the Hollow, where the Aether concentration is practically lethal."
"Deeper?" Hu Tao leaned forward, peering into the gloom. From the abyss, a chorus of guttural, overlapping Ethereal shrieks echoed, sending a chill through the stagnant air. "Wasn't she running for her life just a minute ago? Why dive into the monster pit? Did the Aether fry her brain?"
Venti tapped his chin, piecing the puzzle together. "Consider the commotion we caused earlier when we cleared out that vanguard of Ethereals. She likely heard the battle."
"She knows she is being hunted," Zhongli added smoothly. "Maintaining a predictable retreat would guarantee her capture. By plunging into the most hazardous depths of the Hollow, she intends to use the complex terrain and the dense Ethereal swarms as a natural barricade to delay us."
"So she wants to use those ugly brutes as meat shields?" Hu Tao scoffed, tossing her submachine gun up and catching it with a cocky grin. "They'd better be tough enough to take a beating, then! Let's go! I want to see just how far this little mouse can run!"
Despite Hu Tao's enthusiasm, handling the warped spatial geometry and the sheer volume of aggressive Ethereals inevitably slowed their pursuit.
Meanwhile, deep within a cavernous, ruined subway station, the tall figure in the dark red coat had finally stopped. Sarah stood amidst the debris, her breathing slightly ragged.
Near the toes of her boots, two bizarrely shaped syringe casings lay shattered against the cracked tiles. A thick, purplish-black liquid oozed from the broken glass, rapidly seeping into the porous concrete. It radiated an energy signature entirely alien to the Hollow's native Aether—it was freezing, frantic, and deeply malevolent.
In the suffocating darkness of the Hollow, this scent was akin to a bucket of fresh blood dumped into a shark tank. It instantly ignited the primal greed lurking in the shadows.
Screeech—!
Two ear-splitting shrieks tore through the cavern. From the pitch-black corners of the ceiling, two blurs of white shot downward with blinding velocity, homing in on the puddle of dark liquid.
They were Spine-Drill Protozoa—ferocious, dog-sized Ethereals encased in bone-white carapaces, their bodies twisting like grotesque, oversized scorpions. In the Hollow ecosystem, these parasitic entities typically latched onto larger hosts like the Tyrfing or Apeka, forming a deadly symbiotic bond. They possessed a ravenous, almost suicidal addiction to high-concentration energy.
The two monsters slammed into the ground, scrambling over each other as they pounced on the spilled fluid. Their mandibles clicked frantically as they greedily lapped up the purplish-black sludge, devouring it as if it were the most exquisite feast in existence.
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