Chapter 29 : I don’t know how to fight!

“On my way! Almost there!”

Zhou Xuan shouted into his headset while running, holding a tablet.
He had kicked off the slippers he hadn’t had time to change, and his bare feet slapped against the concrete ground.

The massive amount of demonic energy that had suddenly appeared in Lin’an University had given him no time to prepare.
He had only had time to grab his tablet with the Luoshu system and rush out of the staff dormitory.

The moonlight stretched Zhou Xuan’s barefoot fleeing shadow into a long strip.
The dust and gravel sticking to the soles of his feet felt like he was running on a acupressure mat, and the pain made him grimace and gasp for breath.

The tablet in his arms kept blaring a piercing alarm.
The pain in his feet and this annoying sound made him want to curse.

As an intelligence analyst, he was not good at combat, and his stamina was even more miserable.

“Bang!”

The manhole cover in front of him suddenly popped up, and a black mucus slowly seeped out from the well, twisting into a limp black human figure, looking like a human form sketched with chaotic lines.

‘It was the clone of that Skin-Painter!’

“Ah… I’m an intelligence analyst, I don’t know how to fight!”

Looking at the Skin-Painter’s clone blocking the road in front of him, Zhou Xuan complained in frustration.

He suddenly remembered the formula for the “demonic energy decay cycle” in the Demon Suppression Division’s experimental thesis that he hadn’t finished reading.
At this moment, it was useless.

But the Skin-Painter’s clone had no intention of listening to Zhou Xuan’s complaints.
A tentacle formed from the mucus shot out like lightning.

Zhou Xuan hurriedly protected the tablet in his arms and dodged the tentacle’s attack with a clumsy roll.

The clone’s tentacle pierced through the stench rising from the sewer, and the splashing black mucus stained his trouser leg.

“I should have worn socks…”

Zhou Xuan muttered, staring at his corroded trouser leg, and then tore off the part that had been stained with the mucus and threw it away.

This strange, corrosive mucus would be a problem if it got on his skin.

Then, as if gathering his courage, he bit his own index finger.

“Damn! Why does it hurt so much!”

The pain made Zhou Xuan instantly grimace.
In the movies, those heroes and Daoist priests would bite their fingertips to write blood letters with such ease.
No one had told him it would hurt so much!

His middle finger rested on his index finger, and his thumb held his ring finger.
With the blood from his fingertip, he instantly drew a talisman in the air.

As the blood left his fingertip, the blood talisman had faded to a light pink, looking very much like a cinnabar annotation that had been washed out with water.

The tentacle that attacked again hit this floating talisman, but it made a hissing, corrosive sound like it had encountered aqua regia.
The melting black mucus turned into wisps of white smoke in the air.

But that was all it could do.
If he had been fully prepared with talismans, Zhou Xuan could have held it off for a few more rounds.
But in this emergency situation, he could only use his own blood to draw a temporary talisman.
He didn’t even have time to form a seal.

But as the pitch-black ghostly figure roared, the temporary talisman faded like a receding tide.

After all, it was just a temporary talisman.
Without a paper talisman as a carrier, it could only last for about ten seconds, and its effect was also a weakened version.

“Why didn’t I bring a gun!”

Zhou Xuan gritted his teeth and tried to draw another temporary talisman, but perhaps because he had been afraid of the pain and had bitten a little too lightly just now, and with the natural healing effect of his spiritual energy, the wound actually healed when he was halfway through drawing the talisman!

‘No more ink!’

Zhou Xuan had never hated the natural healing effect of his spiritual energy so much.

‘It’s over! My life is over!’

‘It’s too late to bite another wound now!’

The next second, the temporary talisman would become ineffective, and then that Skin-Painter’s clone with its long claws would tear him to shreds.

‘I, a great Heavenly Master of Dragon Tiger Mountain—although I was kicked out by my master—am actually going to die at the hands of this small fry?’

Zhou Xuan closed his eyes in resignation.
‘I should have listened to my master and learned some demon-slaying skills. Even if it was a bit hard and tiring, it would be better than dying at the hands of this little ghost now…’

“Bang, bang, bang!”

A few gunshots shattered Zhou Xuan’s final moments of life.
The blue light that streaked across the night sky could even penetrate Zhou Xuan’s eyelids.
A few bullets flew past his hair, leaving only a smell of burnt flesh.

The spiritual energy bullets instantly shot through the Skin-Painter’s clone’s eye sockets, and a faint blue flame burned out green smoke from its head.

“You’re not dead, are you?”

Gu Xiyan’s voice, accompanied by the “thump, thump” of her high heels on the ground, came from behind.

Zhou Xuan opened his eyes and happened to see the parabola of a falling bullet casing.

Then came a few more gunshots.
Spiritual energy bullets engraved with talismans shot out from the pistol, leaving faint blue trajectories in the air.

The last bullet pierced through the ghostly figure’s throat, and the shockwave from the explosion lifted the hem of Zhou Xuan’s shirt.

The bullet casings, engraved with intricate incantations, clattered to the ground.
These spiritual energy bullets would cause small-scale explosions when they hit the Skin-Painter’s clone.
The black mucus was blasted all over the place, turning into wisps of white smoke before it could land.

“Like it? A reinforced tungsten steel warhead from the War Preparation Bureau.”

Gu Xiyan leisurely ejected the magazine and reloaded, kicking Zhou Xuan’s dropped tablet to his side with the tip of her shoe.

And the limp, pitch-black ghostly figure had already been blasted into smithereens, its demonic energy completely dissipated.

“There’s no time!”
Zhou Xuan complained as he got up from the ground.

“I must go to the designated location immediately to set up the formation! Otherwise, these things will invade the city’s sewer system, and in less than three hours, the whole of Lin’an City will be crawling with them! Then we can just wait to be held accountable by the Profound Gate Council!”

“Okay, okay, you’re the boss.”

Gu Xiyan pouted.
She knew this old colleague’s personality very well.

If you said he was serious, he could be kicked out of Dragon Tiger Mountain by his master because he was afraid of hardship and didn’t want to learn demon-slaying skills.
He was nominally a Heavenly Master of Dragon Tiger Mountain, but he only knew how to tell fortunes and set up formations.
He didn’t know a single bit of the demon-slaying methods that Dragon Tiger Mountain was proud of.

If you said he wasn’t serious, he could get angry with you if you delayed him even a little bit in a mission.
And he was the most powerful person in the Lin’an Demon Suppression Division in terms of divination and formations.
Even those old seniors admired him.

It could only be said that this child was a bit too specialized.

The designated location Zhou Xuan mentioned was the artificial lake of Lin’an University.
This was the center of Lin’an University and also the location of a bit of spiritual light in the whole school.

Zhou Xuan panted as he placed the tablet in the pavilion in the center of the lake.
He placed one hand on the cold stone slab, and the blood beads seeping from his palm formed a pre-heaven eight trigrams on the stone slab.

“A thousand evils shall not emerge, ten thousand evils shall not open! Rise!”

A golden light extended from the palm of his hand, gradually turning into countless golden threads that extended to every corner of Lin’an University.
The threads intertwined and extended, passing under the feet of the evacuating students, and outlining a huge formation that enveloped the entire Lin’an University.

When the last golden thread wrapped around the lightning rod on the dome of the library, the surveillance screens of the entire campus simultaneously turned to static.

Gu Xiyan’s high heels tapped on the golden threads under her feet.
This formation was called the Spirit-Trapping Formation.
It would trap the demons within the formation and prevent them from leaving.
It also had the effect of concealing cognition.

The so-called concealing cognition was to conceal ordinary people’s cognition of demons.
All the demons within the formation and the effects they created would not be detected by ordinary people.

The Demon Suppression Division also relied on this method to hide the existence of demons from the public.

But the next second, the calm lake surface suddenly rippled like fish scales.
In an instant, it turned into a churning black mucus, as if it were boiling.

“What on earth is going on? These demons appeared without any warning! This is unreasonable!”

Zhou Xuan panted.
Maintaining the formation had almost exhausted his remaining stamina.

“Who knows.”

Gu Xiyan shrugged and flicked off the safety of her pistol.
The crisp sound of the magazine clicking into the gun chamber mixed with the gurgling sound of the churning mucus.
“Maybe someone just shipped them in?”

In the waves of black mucus, countless pitch-black ghostly figures were crawling out of the lake surface.

Unfortunately, this formation could only trap demons.
To exorcise them, a demon slayer had to do it himself.

“I don’t think I’ve bought anything online recently?”

Chengzi held the express box and shook it.
The things inside clattered, as if it contained three or five empty cans.

Who knew what was inside.

“Produced by AXE Group…”

Chengzi saw the words on the box in the moonlight.
She had heard of this AXE Group before.
She had seen it on the news.
The full name seemed to be something like Aether Biotechnology Group.
It was said that the cosmetics of its subsidiaries were very popular, but unfortunately, Chengzi had never used them.

But when she had gone downstairs just now, she seemed to have seen a girl from the next dorm also holding an express box with the AXE Group logo on it.
But her box was much bigger than the one Chengzi was holding now, about the size of a microwave.

Her slippers slapped on the ground.
Chengzi, in her thin pajamas, turned a corner, and a surging crowd of people rushed towards her, mixed with the smell of shower gel and sweat.

The person at the head was holding a megaphone and shouting that there was a fire.
He asked all the students not to panic and to evacuate the campus in an orderly manner.

Chengzi was inexplicably carried along by the crowd towards the school gate.
Someone in the crowd accidentally bumped into her shoulder, knocking the express box out of her hand.
The sound of shattering glass came from the express box, a bit muffled.

Chengzi glared at the clumsy boy.
When she reached out to pick up the express box, she found that the things inside seemed to have been shattered.
A black liquid was slowly seeping out from a corner of the express box.

“This is…”

Chengzi’s eyes widened as she looked at the strangely writhing black mucus.