Chapter 167: Hidden Dangers?

Hah… hah…

After letting out that roar, Lin Yu felt like all the air had been sucked out of her lungs.
Her chest heaved violently.

So good!
So damn good!

She had bottled all of that up for far too long. Now, borrowing the “Lulu” persona, she’d finally blasted it all out in one go.

Looking at Luo Shaotian standing there dumbstruck, like a wooden chicken, the anger in Lin Yu’s chest dissipated by more than half.

“Honestly… every single one of you is such a headache…”

She muttered, her gaze unconsciously drifting downward.

Then—she froze on the spot.

She’d been too busy tearing into him just now and hadn’t noticed how…
morally indecent his current state was.

Because of his earlier explosive growth, Luo Shaotian’s clothes had long since turned into scraps fluttering through the air.

What he had left on him now was only… a rag.

In the bleak wind and bitter rain, that pitiful scrap of cloth was soaked through, clinging to the roots of his thighs, shivering in the cold as it barely covered the most critical—

—area.

Aside from that, his solid chest muscles, abdominal muscles, and even the corded lines of his thighs were all fully exposed to the air.

“Ahem! Uh, well…”

Lin Yu hurriedly turned her head away, reached out to cover Li Qing’s fox-like eyes that seemed to be sneaking glances over here, and silently chanted the command in her mind:

“Transformation time—!”

Voom—

Pink motes of spiritual energy rapidly gathered.

This time, Lin Yu didn’t conjure some frilly little dress.
Instead, she directly materialized a wide, thick black hooded cloak.

“Put this the hell on!”

She irritably flung the cloak over, rudely plopping it down over Luo Shaotian’s head, then crouched down and personally tied the clasp at his collar.

“You’re a grown man already—can you pay a little attention to public decency?!”

Lin Yu muttered nonstop as she tied a bow,

“Seriously… aren’t you afraid of catching a cold…”

Constructs made of spiritual energy had a distance limit—once they strayed too far from the caster, they would dissipate from lack of energy supply.

But with the two of them standing so close now, this cloak was particularly sturdy and warm.

After finishing all that, Lin Yu clapped her hands and stood up.

“All right, stop kneeling there like an idiot and get up already!”

“Don’t worry. I won’t tell Lin Yu about this.”

When she said the last few words, Lin Yu felt a strange sensation—like she was patting herself on the back.

This response left Luo Shaotian utterly baffled.

He clutched the fabric that still carried the girl’s body warmth, lifted his head blankly, and looked up from beneath the hood at the girl standing there with her hands on her hips, lecturing him.

Rain dampened her bangs, sticking them to her pale cheeks.

In those heterochromatic eyes, there was none of the disgust he had anticipated—
no contempt, not even the slightest trace of fear.

There was only…

A kind of helpless disappointment, like hating iron for not becoming steel?

Why…?

Luo Shaotian’s mind was a complete mess.

He didn’t understand.
He really didn’t understand.

By all logic…

Facing someone who had just nearly violated her, nearly devoured her—a pervert—

The normal reaction should have been to look at him like trash, then slap him hard across the face and curse,

“Disgusting. Freak. Go die.”

But then…

Why was Lulu reacting like this?

What was this supposed to mean?

Did this mean she thought he hadn’t gone far enough?

That couldn’t be right!

Just then, Li Qing, who had been silently observing from the side, suddenly let out a startled cry.

“Huh?”

Lin Yu jumped, instinctively tensing up.

What was wrong?
Could that thing still revive?!

“It’s not that perverted monster…”

Li Qing frowned and pointed at an empty patch of ground not far away.

“Look over there.”

“What about it? Broken rocks?”

Lin Yu followed her finger. Aside from a few collapsed support pillars and shattered glass all over the floor, there was nothing there.

“No—stones aren’t the point.”

Li Qing shook her head, her tone turning unusually grave.

“There… is a corpse missing.”

“A corpse?”

Lin Yu froze. Then, like lightning, images from earlier flashed through her mind.

“You mean…”

“Yes.”

Li Qing nodded firmly.

“I’m talking about that guy who was turned into a monster by the black-robed one at the very beginning…”

“I remember it clearly. Before Luo Shaotian—before that red giant entered the scene, that guy was still tangled up fighting Yingying.”

“Later things got too chaotic. Everyone’s attention was drawn to the red giant and the angel, but…”

Li Qing pointed at the empty ground, a chill creeping into her voice.

“Now that the battle’s over, where’s his body?”

“Hiss—”

Lin Yu sucked in a sharp breath.

She remembered!

That was right!

That Dragon Bro had turned into a monster, but in the final chaotic melee, there really hadn’t been a scene where he was clearly killed!

When Luo Shaotian entered, it was just indiscriminate slaughter—everyone’s attention was on him, the Abyssal Cantor.

After that, Seraphine descended and suppressed the entire battlefield.

That Dragon Bro… where did he go?

“Hah… hah…”

Cold rain mixed with the metallic stench of blood washed over his body.

In a narrow alley between city buildings, Dragon Bro dragged his shattered body as he fled in panic.

During a lull in the fighting, when the black-robed figures had been slaughtered to the last, the polluted power clinging to him weakened as well, allowing him to briefly regain his sanity.

But it was precisely this clarity that made the pain even worse.

As a gang boss who had lived on the knife’s edge for decades, his insight far surpassed that of ordinary people.

He immediately judged that if he stayed here any longer, he would only—

Be ground into dust.

He absolutely could not die… absolutely could not die here!

He had only just wrested control of the Chicheng Gang from “Iron Old Man.”
Only just ascended the throne of the underground world of Xinhai City!

Glory and wealth, money and women—everything had only just begun!

He couldn’t die like a joke in a godforsaken place like this!

He had to go back!

As long as he lived!
As long as he could return to his original form!

With his own methods and connections, he would definitely rise again!

“Damn it… that cursed charlatan…”

Passing a shattered shop window, he caught sight of his reflection.

It was a half-human, half-spider monster.

On his back, four grotesque segmented limbs still twitched uncontrollably.

Yet the filthy, twisted desires were being suppressed by an even stronger instinct for survival.

He still had things left to do.

He had to live.

—No matter the cost.

“—If… if only I could do it all over again…”

“Then I wouldn’t provoke that monster.”

But in this world, how could there be so many ifs?

The human facial features on his face had already been replaced by a corrosive, slime-dripping mouthpart.

“Grrrk—ugh—”

Dragon Bro retched violently.

He wished he could grab a knife right now and hack off this ugly carapace and these segmented limbs inch by inch, mincing them into pulp!

“When I get back, the first ones I’ll settle accounts with will be you freaks who pretend to be gods!”

He pinned all of his hatred on the 【Abyss Gospel Society】.

His mutated body made it impossible to walk along main roads, forcing him to move through these narrow, filthy, garbage-strewn alleys.

The slick ground made him stumble and fall repeatedly, while those disobedient segmented limbs kept getting snagged on debris.

The once-dominant underworld tyrant of Xinhai City now couldn’t even manage basic upright walking.

This humiliation only made the hatred burn more fiercely.

“You just wait… I’ll make every last one of you—”

Cursing as he went, he crawled on all fours into the bend of the next alley.

Then, he stopped.

At the end of the alley stood a figure.

It was a deep void-like blot, like a mass of ink that couldn’t be dissolved.

The rain poured down in sheets, yet in the small patch of ground where that figure stood, not a single drop fell.

Raindrops seemed to strike an invisible wall and splashed outward.

In that instant, all the blood in Dragon Bro’s body seemed to freeze.

The figure slowly stepped out of the shadows.

The towering hatred instantly drained away. He tried to control his facial muscles and squeeze out a sycophantic smile.

“【Kong】… sir?”

“Shk—”

The reply was a black line, fast beyond perception.

A chill brushed his neck.

Then the world spun.

His final moment of consciousness was seeing his own grotesque, headless body collapse to its knees in the rain.

“Thud.”

His head rolled across the ground, splashing up a ring of muddy water.
On that face, a ridiculous expression was frozen—terror and flattery intermingled.

In the alley, the black-robed man slowly crouched down.

Ignoring the twitching remains, he casually lifted the severed head— as if picking up an ordinary object from the roadside…