### Chapter 50: The Urban Legend of the Cat and Mouse
Although Jiang Li sensed that the unfamiliar girl was lying to her, she didn’t expose her right away. Instead, she walked in the completely opposite direction, as if nothing had happened.
After walking a certain distance, Jiang Li suddenly flashed and stopped after turning a corner.
She leaned against the wall, peeking out with one eye, following the ancient street with her gaze, looking towards the unfamiliar girl, and soon saw her turn into a narrow alley.
Waiting in place for two or three seconds, and realizing that the girl hadn’t come back, Jiang Li finally took action.
She took a swan feather out of her backpack, held it in her hand, and softly murmured, “In the still night, shimmering lights, the phoenix has no shadow, and humans are silent…”
As the spell formula was completed, the feather in her hand shone with brilliance, then seemed to vaporize, dissipating and merging into her body.
In the next moment, her spirit energy fluctuations and all sounds she made while moving were covered by an invisible spirit energy barrier.
After performing the spell, she didn’t linger for a moment and quickly followed in the direction the girl had gone.
Jiang Li determined that the reason the unfamiliar girl was lying had three points.
Firstly, while the girl acted as if she had no relationship with Luxianbei or the Lu Family Manor, her tone and demeanor when speaking exuded a sense of arrogance, as if she were the owner of that old manor.
Secondly, the girl emitted weak spirit energy fluctuations, while someone born and raised in this special space should not have such fluctuations, raising doubts about her identity.
Thirdly, and most importantly, the girl had displayed strong hostility towards her upon appearing.
From another perspective, Jiang Li thought that if she held hostility toward someone, unless there were ulterior motives, it was impossible for her to say anything truthful when answering the other person’s questions.
A few seconds later.
When Jiang Li followed the unfamiliar girl to the alley entrance, she was slightly taken aback to find the empty alley, her brows furrowing.
“Disappeared? Did she realize I was following her?”
Jiang Li murmured to herself, looking around at the environment, hoping to find the path the girl took. Just then, a woman’s scream suddenly echoed from deep within the alley.
“Ah—!”
What’s going on? Jiang Li’s gaze sharpened, and she quickly ran towards the source of the scream deep within the alley, soon arriving at the entrance of a dead-end where she saw a middle-aged woman “tangled” with a wild cat.
It was a pitch-black wild cat, its size clearly abnormal, larger than an ordinary wild cat, resembling a medium-sized feline beast like a lynx rather than just a typical wild cat.
It seemed to suffer from a severe skin disease, with several patches entirely bald, exposing dark red, inflamed, and rotten skin.
It was viciously clawing and biting at the woman’s face, while she desperately struggled, hitting it with a vegetable basket in her hand, but couldn’t shake it off, only able to roll on the ground, screaming in agony.
Seeing this, Jiang Li didn’t think twice, stepping forward quickly and delivering a side kick to the wild cat.
“Meow—!”
With a painful howl, the wild cat was kicked away, crashing into a stone wall, but quickly rolled and got back up, glaring at Jiang Li with fierce eyes, a cold light glowing unnaturally red.
Its body arched, baring its white fangs, letting out a series of unpleasant roars.
Detecting weak spirit energy fluctuations radiating from the wild cat, which exhibited abnormal size and behavior, Jiang Li immediately became alert, discreetly retrieving an amber from her backpack while unfolding her spirit patterns.
With a twist of light and shadow, a silver long kn*fe suddenly appeared in her hand.
It was at this moment she noticed that the bald patches on the cat’s body were not skin disease, but rather writhing masses of dark red flesh.
As the dark red flesh moved, she could even see the white ribs exposed beneath the rotting flesh on its left side.
An urban legend?
Looking at the wild cat, which resembled a “zombie cat,” Jiang Li didn’t hesitate for a moment, raising her hand, the amber shot forth like a b*llet towards the wild cat.
“Play the python flute, strike the turtle drum, the moon shoots coral, the pine yields amber… Seal spell fifty-three, the python-turtle amber manifestation!”
Although the spirit energy fluctuations emanating from the wild cat were likely only below level D, Jiang Li considered that her own spirit energy fluctuations were limited; the power derived from using alchemy materials would not be as strong as a normal execution, so she used a precise spell for safety.
With the incantation completed, a dazzling light burst forth from the amber.
The crystal, shimmering transparent and seemingly endowed with life, rapidly grew under the radiant light, slithering through the air towards the wild cat.
Sensing danger, the wild cat retreated repeatedly, then bolted, launching itself onto the eaves using the gaps between bricks.
It glanced around the area before bolting away at an incredible speed like the wind.
At that moment, behind it, a brown light flashed.
The crystalline entity slithering toward it split at the end into a curved hook resembling a turtle’s beak, shooting forth and binding its body.
In the next moment, a large number of crystals arrived, tightly wrapping around it like a python.
In an instant, the wild cat seemed encased in amber, with only a vital part of its body exposed.
“Meow—!”
As its body was compressed by the crystal, the wild cat succumbed to agonizing pain, unable to hold back a shrieking cry.
At that very instant, Jiang Li’s figure suddenly flashed before it.
The silver long kn*fe whistled through the air, stabbing through the gaps in the crystal and impaling its body.
Hydra toxin released.
The wild cat convulsed a few times, its head drooping lifelessly. Shortly after, its body inflated like a balloon at an observable speed, and then…
“Boom!” It exploded, foul-smelling pus and bl**d splattering everywhere, leaving behind a deformed skeleton, which, as the crystals created from the python-turtle amber dissipated, fell to the ground.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Jiang Li stepped forward, the long kn*fe horizontally across, sweeping the back of the blade, jolting the kn*fe, instantly shattering the deformed skeleton into fragments.
After simply dealing with the urban legendary wild cat’s corpse, Jiang Li quickly turned around and knelt down to check the middle-aged woman’s injuries.
The middle-aged woman, frightened and bleeding significantly, lay face down on the ground, unconscious.
Jiang Li carefully turned her body over, then realized that she had several bite marks on her face, with skin and meat turned over. Though the wounds weren’t too deep, they were certainly disfiguring.
On her neck, there was a gruesome bloody mark, and from Jiang Li’s repeated experience recording An Qing’s autopsies, she noted that if this wound were just a tad deeper, it would sever the carotid artery.
Furrowing her brow, Jiang Li looked at the empty alley again and then at the severely injured middle-aged woman.
Having encountered such a sudden incident and losing time, it was clear she couldn’t continue tracking the unfamiliar girl.
Sighing silently, Jiang Li tore two fabric bags from her backpack, simply bandaging the middle-aged woman’s wounds, then took out her phone and dialed the emergency number.
Killing, dealing with urban legends, she was quite proficient at, but unfortunately, she wasn’t good at healing, and the few treatment spells she knew were not suitable for an ordinary person’s body.
“Hello, hi? Yes, I have an injured person here, likely attacked by some kind of wild beast…”
“What kind of wild beast? I’m not too sure! When I arrived, I just saw her lying on the ground…”
“Location?” Jiang Li looked up at a nearby house number, “In the alley near Mudan Street 96.”
“Okay, okay, I’m Jiang Li, I’ll wait for you here, feel free to contact me anytime, bye.”
After hanging up, Jiang Li looked solemnly at the unconscious middle-aged woman on the ground, lost in thought.
According to Bai Kai and Qi Dong, there should not be any urban legends within this special space.
However, from the information transmitted by Gold Horn’s secretary, Beres might have already employed some method to control the Inheritance Beast.
Up until now, it was unclear whether the bl**d and flesh of the Inheritance Beast, under Beres’s control, had successfully infiltrated this special space, but now it seemed even the wild cat was affected and had become an urban legend, indicating that even if it hadn’t succeeded, it was probably very close. Jiang Li thought.
———
Huacheng Central Hospital was not far from Mudan Street, only about two kilometers away.
Jiang Li hadn’t waited long when the sound of an ambulance siren echoed from outside the alley, quickly followed by a call from the emergency personnel.
“Yes, the injured person is stable, that’s right, it’s the little alley you turn into from the old street… mm-hmm!”
After a brief exchange with the emergency personnel, Jiang Li hung up.
Soon, several medical staff in white coats hurried over, lifting the unconscious middle-aged woman onto a stretcher.
During the swift escort of the middle-aged woman out of the alley, two medical personnel pushing the stretcher glanced at her injuries, unable to help but engage in a low conversation.
“What is happening today? How many wild beast attacks is this now?”
“Seventh or eighth… I’m not sure; Old Wang and their team have also responded to a few.”
“I’m just baffled—how could there be wild beasts in Huacheng? Even if there were some, why are there so many suddenly appearing?”
“Who knows?”
Hearing the conversation of the two medical personnel, Jiang Li momentarily froze, flashes of the news she had heard earlier at home surfacing in her mind.
If only a small number of animals were affected by the Inheritance Beast’s bl**d and flesh and became urban legends, the situation wouldn’t be too severe.
But if traffic accidents in the city and equipment failures in substations were also related to the Inheritance Beast’s invasion, then the situation would be serious.
If that’s the case… not only would this special space be destroyed, but the real Huacheng would also be doomed.
According to Qi Dong, if this special space, constructed based on the projection of Huacheng, were to be destroyed, the shattered fragments would rise from the shadows, flooding into Huacheng, causing a disaster for the entire Huacheng.
Just like the mine where Banshan Primary School is located.
There were only two ways to solve this.
First, find Beres and the Inheritance Beast that he had taken with him while fleeing and k*ll the Inheritance Beast to fundamentally resolve the issue.
Second, find Luxianbei and awaken him.
“But… why that guy?” Jiang Li murmured.
In fact, Qi Dong hadn’t told Jiang Li what would happen after awakening Luxianbei; he even thought Jiang Li might be “forbidden from access” just like Bai Kai.
After pondering for a few seconds, Jiang Li cursed in a low voice, “d*mn it, b*stard Luxianbei.”
Then, she quickly took action, pulling out the alchemical materials prepared in her backpack and starting the divination.
After failing both through social media and visiting potential residences, she had also lost track of the unfamiliar girl who seemingly knew Luxianbei’s whereabouts.
Now, she could only resort to this “dumb” method.
———
While Jiang Li was busy performing the divination to locate Luxianbei.
On the other side, in a long-abandoned old courtyard on Mudan Street.
Waves of dark red smoke drifted through the air, the long-unmaintained pavilion in the courtyard scattered like being torn apart by a storm, with “disjointed limbs” strewn across the ground.
Atop the “mountain of corpses and sea of bl**d” formed by the debris of the pavilion, a girl in a white linen dress stood barefoot on the highest chair, elegantly poised. Her long black hair fluttered without wind behind her like flowing clouds, and a three-foot-long sword in her slender hand flickered with eye-searing cold light.
Before her, over a dozen rats the size of a basin, with large amounts of slippery, viscous bl**d and flesh oozing from their corpses, moved stealthily and emitted waves of dark red smoke.
The girl was Nanling Yaohua, and the rats, severed at the waist, were what she encountered as an urban legend when she inadvertently entered this desolate old house to evade Jiang Li’s pursuit.
“Jingle—!”
The tips of Nanling Yaohua’s feet gently tapped, and the bronze bell on her ankle chimed, producing a sound as clear as a spring.
As the sound of the bell echoed, her graceful figure floated down from the wreckage of the pavilion.
In an instant, the dark red flesh that had been stalling seemed startled by her movement and surged, sweeping up two towering curtains of flesh that fell ruthlessly.
“Hmph!”
Seeing this, Nanling Yaohua emitted a cold snort, and a formless and colorless shockwave erupted explosively from within her.
Long sword, fall!
The sword figures intertwined.
Nanling Yaohua stepped forward with exaggerated speed, swinging her sword against the oncoming dark red flesh, weaving a dazzling arc of blue light in the air.
In the next moment, a piercing scream burst forth.
The dark red flesh was caught in the intertwined sword dance, shattered by overwhelming force.
Thus, the tearing sounds of flesh echoed ceaselessly.
Nanling Yaohua stood among the spraying stench of bl**d, untainted, gazing towards the boundary of the visible steel and concrete forest outside the courtyard, frowning.
