Chapter 76: Deadly Singing

Chapter 76: Deadly Singing

Hearing the Hanged Man’s words, Klein’s heart suddenly skipped. He had a bad premonition.

He did not stubbornly cling to his persona. Setting down the lantern, he took two pieces of notepaper from his pocket, crumpled them into balls, and stuffed them into his left and right ears respectively.

Seeing Gehrman Sparrow act directly without asking questions, Alger could not help breathing in relief. Inwardly, he sighed that working with an experienced person was truly easy and convenient. Even an adventurer known for madness would listen to reasonable words and know what ought to be done and what ought not.

He was just about to throw the still slightly warm dead rat toward the Illusory Chime Tree to lure it into capturing it when he suddenly saw the bushes and weeds beside them shake. A yellow tiger with black stripes emerged.

Amid the beautiful tinkling of chimes, the tiger walked step by step toward the strange tree ahead. Its movements were normal, but its gaze was vacant, carrying an indescribable eeriness.

Seeing this, Alger lowered his arm and temporarily gave up his attempt to throw out the dead rat. Enduring the intense headache, he calmly watched the yellow, black-striped tiger walk toward the Illusory Chime Tree amid the increasingly urgent and loud melodious sounds.

It crouched, raised its right paw, and, with a sharp snap, extended its claws, cutting itself across the neck.

Blood gurgled out. Yet the tiger seemed to have lost all sense of pain, continuing to drag its paw and lengthen the wound, making it deeper and longer. Then, bit by bit, it began peeling off its own fur, revealing a blood-drenched, “naked” body that was difficult to look at.

The wind chimes gradually quieted. Those branches suddenly came alive, spreading downward, one after another stabbing into the tiger’s body that had lost its fur’s protection, a sight too gruesome to endure.

Alger, who had long since prepared himself, immediately drew the short blade at his waist, opened his mouth, and sang hoarsely:

“Break, break, break,“O Sea, on thy cold gray stones!“Break, break, break,“O Sea, at the foot of thy crags!” (Note 1)

His singing was rough and heroic, yet completely off-key. It violated the normal cognition of humans and living beings, and it came with a metallic, noise-like rumbling. It was filled with a power that made people irritable, nauseous, and head-splittingly miserable.

All the branches of the Illusory Chime Tree trembled at the same time and withdrew together, as if trying to curl into themselves. The beautiful bell-like sounds that rang out afterward slightly diluted that terrifying noise.

Although Klein, standing beside Alger, had blocked his ears with paper balls and proactively restrained his spirituality, a vein on his forehead still bulged at that moment. The urge to kill the singer and destroy everything before his eyes instantly rose within him.

Moreover, he felt as if his mind were being torn apart. The muscles and blood vessels under his skin began faintly wriggling on their own.

Other people sing for money. Mr. Hanged Man sings for lives!

Klein used internal ridicule to fight against the agitation in his heart.

“Break! Break! Break!”

Every word Alger burst out gradually approached the sound of waves pounding against reefs. One silver-white bolt of lightning after another fell, as though they were rounds of applause.

Silver-white light rose one after another, all striking the surface of the Illusory Chime Tree. They blasted the strange tree until it trembled uncontrollably, blasted the swaying of its branches into stiff confusion, making it unable to produce an orderly hypnotic sound.

Alger seized this chance. He dropped the dead rat, stretched forward with the short blade in his hand.

The sound of wind suddenly rose. Invisible blades whistled forward, slicing at the branch at the very top of the Illusory Chime Tree, the one closest to the trunk.

Crack!

The fist-sized…