“Is that all?!” He Jiulu roared. Her left bone blade carried a momentum that seemed capable of tearing through anything as she slashed toward Xuan Chenzi’s waist.
Xuan Chenzi was terrified. He retreated rapidly while summoning a simple, ancient bronze shield that expanded in the wind.
*Clang!*
The bone blade struck the giant bronze shield, producing an ear-splitting sound of clashing metal. Light flashed wildly across the shield’s surface as a deep crack instantly appeared.
The immense force caused Xuan Chenzi’s blood to churn. He was sent flying backward. A hint of fear finally flashed in his eyes. “You… what exactly are you?!”
“I’m your father!” He Jiulu pushed her advantage, her wings of flesh and blood flapping again as she stuck to him like a shadow.
She swung her twin blades without any formal technique, yet they were ridiculously fast and terrifyingly ruthless. Every slash carried primitive power, stirring the surrounding thunder, fire, and spiritual energy, crushing everything with sheer, overwhelming violence.
Xuan Chenzi dodged and blocked in a pathetic state. His flying swords and magical treasures were sacrificed one after another, but under He Jiulu’s two bone blades—which seemed to devour energy—and her completely irrational strength, they were knocked aside, their spiritual light dimming.
He tried to summon a stronger celestial tribulation again, but He Jiulu’s attacks were like a torrential storm, giving him no window to form hand seals or chant incantations.
He Jiulu suddenly delivered a heavy blow. Xuan Chenzi felt as if he had been hit head-on by a high-speed train. His chest visibly caved in, and he sprayed blood as he flew backward, crashing through the outer wall of a building.
He Jiulu didn’t stop. Folding her wings, she followed him into the building like a cannonball.
A series of even denser, more terrifying sounds of impact, tearing, and the brief, forcibly interrupted screams of Xuan Chenzi echoed from inside. Occasionally, massive bursts of lightning and splashes of minced meat erupted from the holes in the wall, showing just how violent the battle inside was.
Sui Luowen hovered in the air, her giant pen, Critique, moving rapidly. Precise spatial rifts expanded around her. The rifts she wielded quietly swallowed falling debris from the large buildings, burning car wreckage, and even out-of-control lightning and fire, providing maximum protection for the city below.
She occasionally looked toward the shaking building that was emitting strange noises. There was no ripple of emotion in her blue eyes with their nine-square grid pupils; she simply continued to focus on her rescue work.
A few minutes later, the commotion inside the building came to an abrupt halt.
*Thud!*
Xuan Chenzi was thrown out of the hole like a rag doll. His Taoist robes were shredded into strips, and his face was covered in blood. No one knew how many bones he had broken. His aura was extremely weak, with only a single breath left in him.
He Jiulu’s figure appeared at the edge of the hole. The fleshy membranes of her wings and the bone blades in her hands were slowly retracting into her body. Her torn military uniform miraculously repaired and reorganized itself, quickly returning to its original state.
Even her beret reappeared on her head, her red-streaked hair perfectly in place. Aside from her face still being cold with anger and a bit of dust and blood on her combat boots, she looked almost exactly the same as when she had first arrived, as if that brief, bloody melee had never happened.
She brushed off some nonexistent dust from her hands and spat at the limp Xuan Chenzi below.
“Trash.”
Chiwutu’s voice rang in her and Sui Luowen’s minds at the right moment, carrying a hint of lazy mockery.
‘Squeak squeak~ Mission accomplished! Your efficiency isn’t bad, He Jiulu. Sui Luowen, stop working; leave the rest to the follow-up processing unit. Take this old failure to the branch’s Transition Room and deport him directly back to his original Grotto-Heaven.’
‘This anomaly seemed quite weak. He was much easier to handle than Zhen Yuanzi. Could it be that your traits just happen to counter him? Or has the soul absorption over the past half a month caused you to grow a lot?’
‘Oh, right.’
It paused before adding, ‘Remember to report the maintenance bill to the higher-ups. This lightning broke quite a few streetlights and windows… Tsk, though it’ll probably be us paying for the repairs with Elements again.’
He Jiulu let out a long breath. She exchanged a look with Sui Luowen below and nodded.
—
The two turned into streaks of red and white light. Grabbing the unconscious Xuan Chenzi, they flew toward the shifting cluster of living buildings in the city center.
“Sigh, these cultivators are all such a headache. That Zhen Yuanzi from two weeks ago tried to use those ginseng fruits to slowly turn the citizens into monsters. At least he gave us some time to react.”
On the way, He Jiulu suddenly started making small talk, her tone feigning ease.
“These two old guys we ran into today were something else. One tried to refine the city, and the other tried to strike it with lightning. If we hadn’t arrived quickly, Yulin City would probably be gone by now.”
She and Sui Luowen flew with Xuan Chenzi, the devastation of the city below blurring past them.
“Seriously… if the ginseng fruit thing was a chronic infection, then these two cultivators were like acute poisoning—the lethal kind. Especially this one.” She slapped Xuan Chenzi again. “He looked intimidating, but in the end, he was just a glass cannon. He couldn’t take a hit.”
He Denghong, controlling He Jiulu, turned his head to look at Sui Luowen, who remained silent beside him.
The young girl’s face was buffeted by the airflow during their high-speed flight. She still lacked any expression, but those blue eyes with the Lo Shu Square patterns seemed a bit more hollow than usual.
“Hey,” He Jiulu hesitated but spoke up, trying not to make her tone sound too abrupt. “I say, do you have something on your mind lately? I feel like you… you seem to space out from time to time.”
After fighting side by side for the past half a month, He Denghong was no longer the ignorant newcomer who only thought about self-preservation and making money.
Although he still scoffed at Chiwutu and Gong Jishi’s rhetoric about “saving the universe” most of the time, the countless life-and-death situations they had shared had given him a sense of genuine concern for this quiet young comrade.
He had noticed Sui Luowen’s abnormality long ago. Sometimes, during a gap in combat, she would suddenly freeze for a few seconds. Her blue pupils would lose focus as if her soul had been pulled away.
Sometimes, when they were handing over missions inside Gong Jishi’s living building, she would stare blankly at the pulsing veins of flesh or the shimmering veins of ghostly light. She wouldn’t react until Chiwutu or the researchers called her name a second time.
At first, He Denghong didn’t think much of it.
‘Who doesn’t have their own personal baggage? Maybe Sui Luowen is just naturally prone to daydreaming, or she’s still adjusting to her identity as an Eshtu and the pressure of combat.’
He himself was often overwhelmed by the dual perspective and synchronized pain, so he didn’t have much spare time to worry about others.
But as it happened more often, that trance-like state became unsettling. Especially when facing the “uncanny,” a single moment of distraction could be fatal.
He told himself, ‘This is just out of consideration for a comrade’s safety and worry about the success rate of the sealing. It’s definitely not because I’ve actually started to care about the mental health of this ten-year-old brat.’