Chapter Ninety-Seven: What’s Wrong with Me?
In the taxi.
After a brief silence, Luxianbei looked at Huasang and spoke again, “Well, uh… can we discuss something?”
“Uh-huh, go on.” Huasang nodded.
“The situation is urgent, about the engagement…” Luxianbei said quietly.
“You brought it up first,” Huasang replied.
“……”
Luxianbei felt a bit awkward, and after a two-second pause, said, “How about from now on, whoever says ‘you’re a dog’, is a dog?”
“Dog…” Huasang furrowed her brow slightly.
“Don’t like it?” Luxianbei blurted out, “Then you’re a turtle, and I’m a dog?”
“Uh, okay…”
The taxi driver glanced at the two through the rearview mirror, his expression quite subtle.
Young people nowadays really know how to have fun.
Subway, Elderly, Mobile Phone.JPG
————
Half an hour later.
The taxi passed through a small part of the city and arrived at the outskirts of Shizhou City. About two or three kilometers away from the scene where Hu Chuan attacked several Dachunyang Palace disciples, Luxianbei and Huasang got out of the car.
Walking along the old street, they reached the vicinity of the dilapidated tube building located via the mourning owl’s location. After taking a quick look around, they spotted other Dachunyang Palace disciples who had rushed over after receiving a distress signal in the open area behind the tube building.
In the weed-filled open space, six or seven Dachunyang Palace disciples formed a circle about two meters in diameter, their weapons already drawn. In the center of their encirclement sat a pale-faced girl on the ground.
Just looking at the scene, it resembled an ongoing bullying situation.
However, the faces of those six or seven disciples showed fear and confusion, completely lacking the arrogance of bullies. The girl in the center also appeared clearly unwell.
She had her head down, with her hair hanging down to cover half of her face. The exposed half showed wide open eyes, a vacant stare, and her off-white T-shirt was mostly stained red with bl**d, her limp hands resting on the ground, with her right hand that held the short kn*fe visibly fused with it.
Next to her lay two long swords and several mangled remnants of limbs.
“Seems a bit off, right?” Luxianbei whispered to Huasang.
“Yeah…” Huasang softly replied.
As they spoke, they exchanged a glance and nodded in understanding, hastily walking forward.
Hearing footsteps approaching, the nearest Dachunyang Palace disciple trembled slightly, suddenly turning around and growling, “Wh-what do you want?!”
His shout startled the other disciples, and they turned around as well, several weapons glinting harshly in the afternoon sunlight.
The atmosphere suddenly turned tense.
Huasang did not expect her fellow disciples to raise weapons against her. Remembering the strange occurrences with Wu Yutang the night before, her heart sank, and she instinctively activated her spirit energy, stepping forward to shield Luxianbei.
At that moment, Luxianbei slipped away…
————
Everyone’s gaze fixated on Huasang, scrutinizing her. After several seconds, someone recognized her and hesitantly asked, “Is that you, Senior Sister Huasang?”
“Yeah, it’s me…” Huasang nodded slightly, causing the others to lower their weapons, a collective sigh of relief rippling through the crowd.
Although many had met Huasang before when Qing Xiazi assigned tasks, they still remembered her only from her previously disheveled appearance.
This time, the bizarre spirit energy incident had everyone on edge, leading to an overreactive response when they failed to recognize Huasang at first.
“What’s the situation now?” Huasang asked one of the familiar junior brothers, “What happened to the senior disciples who issued the distress signal?”
“Um…” The Dachunyang Palace disciple’s expression grew complicated, “Senior Liao and the others…”
“Are they dead?” Huasang asked calmly.
“……” The disciple didn’t answer, but his downcast expression already confirmed the answer.
————
While Huasang was negotiating with the Dachunyang Palace disciples, Luxianbei, who had been ignored, quietly slipped past everyone and approached the girl slumped on the ground, crouching down in front of her.
“Hey, miss, are you okay?”
The girl, “……”
“Do you recognize this?” Luxianbei waved a finger in front of her.
The girl, “……”
“Tsk, looks like she’s completely messed up!” Luxianbei pouted, “That guy Hu Chuan really is something else; he’s already a fugitive…”
After observing the girl for a few seconds, Luxianbei’s gaze shifted down to the weapon in her hands and then further down where he spotted two strange objects, raising an eyebrow involuntarily.
One object was two bare, translucent plastic sticks that looked like chopsticks but were shorter and not made of the usual materials for chopstick production.
The other item appeared to be a twisted, deformed piece of metal wire, resembling a long-used steel wool ball.
Pausing for two seconds, he locked his eyes firmly on those two objects, concentrating his mind.
Come on, let there be some effects, let me figure out what happened just now!
Although Luxianbei’s eyes often saw the remnants of spirit energy fluctuations caused by previous incidents, this ability wasn’t an active skill, and it wasn’t even really a passive skill; it functioned sporadically.
So far, he still had no idea of the principle behind this bizarre ability, only sensing a vague connection to the core of the mythological species urban legends.
However, when he was in Dream City before, his mom left him a lot of useful information but never mentioned anything about his eyes, as if she didn’t know that the core of mythological species urban legends could grant him various strange abilities.
Thus, the only way to trigger the ability was by sheer luck!
And this time, it seemed his luck was good…
His eyes lingered on the short kn*fe in the girl’s hand and the scattered remnants on the ground for a few seconds. Accompanied by a surge of warmth, Luxianbei’s vision blurred, a familiar dizzy feeling overcame him, and objects in front of him rippled like a disturbed water surface…
Then.
He witnessed a betrayal and a brutal killing!
————
“That girl…”
Huasang glanced toward the near-lifeless girl, her gaze lingering on Luxianbei, who had his eyes shut tight for a few seconds, then she continued to ask the familiar Dachunyang disciple, “What happened to that junior sister? Is she a survivor of the attack?”
“I-I don’t know. Senior Qin and the others were the first to arrive…” the Dachunyang Palace disciple said, turning to a tall girl beside him, making a querying look.
“I…” the girl looked awkward, “When we arrived, Junior Sister He was already slumped there, covered in bl**d, holding a kn*fe, and that kn*fe was… connected to her hand…”
The girl fell silent, while a panicked male disciple who was with her stepped forward and shouted.
“I think it’s very possible that Junior Sister He was manipulated and attacked Senior Liao and the others! She’s the murderer…”
“YUE——YUE——!”
Before the male disciple could finish his words, a sudden violent retching sound interrupted him.
Everyone turned to see the pale-faced boy vomiting uncontrollably, a pile of small white particles scattered around him, his expression becoming increasingly peculiar, a murmur going through the crowd.
“Who is this guy?”
“Don’t know, seems like he was brought by Senior Sister Huasang.”
“He hasn’t dealt with many urban legends, has he? His threshold for shock is too low; just seeing a bit of bl**d and limbs makes him vomit…”
“……”
Luxianbei scanned the crowd of onlookers and rolled his eyes, “What are you looking at? Haven’t you seen someone vomit after taking a digestive aid?”
Everyone, “……” Indeed, not only had they not seen someone vomit this stuff, but they also hadn’t seen anyone take so many digestive aids.
“Ah——!” Luxianbei took a deep breath, adjusted his state a bit, and looked at Huasang, “That girl did attack and even injured her companions, but the fatal wound wasn’t caused by her.”
Upon hearing this, the disciple who had been poised to pin the accusation of m*rder on the girl blushed slightly and hurriedly said, “Then who do you say it was? Gu He?”
“It’s safe to say that, but you could also say it wasn’t,” Luxianbei glanced at them and continued, “Just now, I used the special skill of my spirit patterns to see the course of the incident. He only used his powers to animate those objects, and those objects killed the other three.”
He had just experienced the same bizarre situation last night, and even with his predictive abilities, he had been caught off guard by the objects flying around, and those three Dachunyang Palace disciples, after being stabbed by their own, had no way to react to the subsequent attack.
“Objects?” A less informed Dachunyang Palace disciple asked, puzzled, “Gu He controlling objects to k*ll isn’t the same as him killing, right?”
“Not quite, little sister…” Luxianbei looked at the naive-looking girl and explained, “That guy only gave the objects self-awareness and guided them a bit, at most it could be considered incitement to commit a crime. As for how those objects killed the three…”
Luxianbei paused for a moment, then shifted the focus of his words, “By the way, have you all had lunch yet? How about we find a place to sit down and eat while we talk?”
“We already ate! Hurry up and tell us!” someone urged.
“You’ve eaten? That’s good…” Luxianbei nodded, a sly smile flashing in his eyes, “The fatal wounds to those three were caused by two toothbrushes and a window screen.”
Hearing this, the naive-looking girl showed confusion, “How could toothbrushes and a window screen…”
Before she could finish, Luxianbei suddenly made a strange sound.
“Swish——Swish——Swish——!”
Accompanied by the strange sound from his mouth, his hands exaggeratedly mimicked a rubbing motion.
Indeed, those three Dachunyang Palace disciples were ground down little by little by the toothbrushes and window screen. The toothbrushes had worn down to the point they resembled two stick-like ridges, and the window screen was twisted into a ball of wire.
Aside from the few scattered remnants on the ground, the rest of their bodies had all turned to a muddy substance mixed together, the image quite avant-garde.
Luxianbei had seen many urban legends, but he had never seen anything this disgusting; it was even worse than Pestilence Taijie.
Upon witnessing this, the collective realization hit the Dachunyang Palace disciples, their faces turning pale.
At that moment, Luxianbei fittingly supplemented his statement, “Now your three missing comrades have turned into an abstract art piece styled like a slime monster; it’s fantastic! If you go into that tube building and look closely, you should be able to catch a glimpse in some corner of a room.”
His words solidified the conjectures in the minds of the Dachunyang Palace disciples, and several of them couldn’t hold back from vomiting.
“……”
Laugh at you! Now do you understand why I vomited?
I was witnessing it live!
Luxianbei thought as he walked around the crowd of Dachunyang Palace disciples toward Huasang, raising an eyebrow, “Your tolerance is pretty good!”
Huasang glanced at Luxianbei and replied calmly, “I’ve seen worse; do you want to hear about it?”
She had already sensed something was off when Luxianbei asked the group if they had eaten lunch.
It was no surprise; Luxianbei was definitely up to something.
“Forget it!” Luxianbei waved his hand, rubbing his stomach. “My stomach hasn’t been well lately; I can’t take any more…”
After saying that, he looked around and gently tugged at Huasang’s sleeve, giving her a look to suggest they speak privately.
Seeing Luxianbei’s expression, Huasang nodded in understanding and followed his lead.
After distancing themselves from the group of vomiting Dachunyang Palace disciples, Huasang asked, “What’s wrong? Is there something else you found that’s troublesome to say?”
“Yeah!” Luxianbei nodded, lowering his voice, “The situation is a bit dire.”
Huasang tilted her head.
“A little while ago, I saw some things…”
“You didn’t see them through the spirit patterns ability, did you?” Huasang interjected.
She had seen the blackened silhouette of the Ifrit spirit pattern surrounding Luxianbei’s hands through her gas observation technique long ago.
She understood very well that no matter how mutated the Ifrit spirit pattern was, it couldn’t let Luxianbei exhibit the strength he showed last night, nor could he see the entire course of the spirit energy attack incident just by observing objects.
“……” Luxianbei was silent for two seconds, not denying Huasang’s words.
“From what I just saw, I discovered that in the Secret Society, aside from a few high-level members and those fused with the objects like we encountered last night, the others probably have no idea they are members of the Secret Society.”
Huasang frowned, “What do you mean?”
“Just like that girl; before she was controlled by the short kn*fe in her hand to attack her companions, she seemed completely unaware that such a situation would occur…”
Upon hearing this, Huasang suddenly understood Luxianbei’s implication, “Got it, you’re saying that some disciples have unconsciously become Hu Chuan’s informers?”
“Exactly!” Luxianbei nodded, glancing at a certain Dachunyang Palace disciple in the distance, lowering his voice, “Within them, there might be Hu Chuan’s informants, and even more within Dachunyang Palace; it’s completely unrealistic to uproot them all.”
It’s like trying to find a few strands of ginger in a pile of shredded potatoes.
“That guy Hu Chuan is now like a heavenly eye player. If we let those disciples who don’t even know they’ve become members of the Secret Society continue to participate in the hunt, we might never catch Hu Chuan.”
“However, I’ve already come up with a plan to deal with him.”
When it came to staying alive while being hunted, Luxianbei knew all too well.
He empathized with Hu Chuan’s situation and could roughly guess what he might be doing now.
Even if he was wrong, acting upon his assumptions would be much better than having all his movements exposed to Hu Chuan.
Then, Luxianbei took a few steps closer, leaned closer to Huasang’s ear, and whispered a few sentences. Huasang gradually furrowed her brows.
“Seems a bit underhanded? I agree with your plan, but using it against Hu Chuan is one thing; using it against Elder Wang, well… my master would probably not let that slide.”
Though as the disgrace of Dachunyang Palace, Huasang felt she could accept it somewhat, she was well aware that Qing Xiazi would never allow them to act recklessly.
“Your master wouldn’t care about this too? You’re a Dachunyang Palace disciple; I’m not; what’s wrong with me being underhanded?” Luxianbei said matter-of-factly.
Huasang, “……”
