Chapter 32 : Oops, We’re Done For!

The evening wind whipped the girl’s flying hair.
The clash of the Skin-Painter’s claws and the crimson blade sent countless sparks flying.

The sound of metal scraping, wrapped in the pungent smell of burning sulfur, exploded under the moonlight.

The claws attacked.
As the girl leaned back, the tips of her hair brushed against the scorching blade, and a few strands of hair curled in the cold light.

Xu Zhi took the opportunity to swing his saber and slash at the Skin-Painter’s abdomen.
But the twisted lines on its abdomen suddenly split open, revealing a bloody mouth with pale white fangs that instantly bit down on Xu Zhi’s blade.

“Left!”

Xu Zhi’s blade was firmly bitten, and he couldn’t break free for a moment.
Seeing a claw pierce through the evening wind and about to attack the girl’s waist, he hurriedly warned her.

The girl also saw the claw stabbing from the left.
In that instant, her pupils suddenly constricted into a vertical line.
Scales instantly appeared on her throat and then immediately receded.

‘No! I can’t release my demonic energy!’

“Swish!”

In her panic, she hurriedly raised her long saber to block.
The sound of metal clashing made the web of her hand numb.

‘Tsk, this is so restrictive.’

The girl glanced at Xu Zhi without a trace.
With him present, not only did the girl have to deal with this guy, but she also had to divert her attention to suppressing her demonic energy.

If she grew scales in front of Xu Zhi, she wouldn’t be able to explain it even if she grew eight mouths like the guy in front of her.

Yes, after the first round of confrontation, this Skin-Painter had changed again.
Several mouths began to grow on its body, and countless turbid eyes squeezed out from the gaps in the twisted lines.
The pupils moved in eight directions, twisting crazily like a kaleidoscope.

“It’s covered in eyes and mouths.”

Xu Zhi yanked his long saber hard.
A crimson flame suddenly burst from the blade, burning the Skin-Painter’s body.
The large mouth on its abdomen loosened, and only then did Xu Zhi pull out his long saber.

“It seems to be imitating,” the girl said.

The eyeballs squeezing out from the gaps in the lines seemed to be observing their movements.

The Skin-Painter’s arms suddenly stretched and twisted.
Two pitch-black long sabers were drawn from the chaotic lines.
The opening stance was clearly the opening stance of the Snake Demon Swordswoman from “Xuanhuang Ji.”

That was also the move the girl had used to deal with it just now.

“The Skin-Painter’s ability, observation and imitation.”
The flames bursting from Xu Zhi’s blade evaporated the attached transparent gel.
“The Skin-Painter needs to learn human habits to disguise itself. I’ve encountered a similar situation before.”

He was naturally talking about his experience in the cold storage before.
But what he didn’t know was that this twisted ghostly figure was actually the same Skin-Painter he had encountered in the cold storage.

This was of course not because Xu Zhi couldn’t recognize it.
In his view, the Skin-Painter in the cold storage was already dead.
He was a human and couldn’t distinguish the same components in the mixed demonic energy just by smell.

As they spoke, the Skin-Painter’s long saber twisted like a snake and stabbed at her.
The girl retreated to avoid the thrust, her canvas shoes leaving two scorched marks on the asphalt road.

This move was called Spiritual Snake’s Tongue Flick.
It was a move of the Snake Demon Swordswoman in the game.
A minute ago, she had used this move to pierce the Skin-Painter’s arm.
She didn’t expect it to be learned by it so quickly.

“I’ve wanted to say this since the first time I met you.”
Xu Zhi dodged the ghostly figure’s slash and turned to pull out his pistol.
A few precise shots left explosive marks on the Skin-Painter’s body.
“I seem to have seen your moves somewhere before!”

‘Nonsense, it would be a ghost if he hadn’t seen them. The girl had never learned any fighting skills. All her moves were imitated from the game. Fortunately, in her demonic energy boiling state, her physical fitness could support her in making those incredible movements.’

“I learned them from a game,” the girl replied, spinning and kicking the Skin-Painter’s blade crooked.

“What game is so powerful?”

“Shut up!”
The girl spun and kicked the lamppost, using the recoil to cut through the net of blades.
“Ask again and I’ll strangle you!”

The crimson blade light clashed with the ghostly figure’s pitch-black blade in mid-air!

Fighting this Skin-Painter in shackles was already making the girl a little irritable.
If Xu Zhi hadn’t been present, she would have already released her demonic energy and frozen this guy.

“Okay, okay, I won’t ask.”

In the rain of sparks from the clash of the red blade and the black blade, Xu Zhi’s blade suddenly burst with a dazzling red light.
A cinnabar flame erupted, and the heat wave sent the bricks within a three-meter radius flying.

The flame instantly engulfed the Skin-Painter’s figure.

“This thing can breathe fire?!”

The girl, who had originally rushed up to support him, saw the large amount of flames suddenly burst from Xu Zhi’s long saber and braked sharply before retreating.
The soles of her shoes left a trail of green smoke on the melting asphalt.
She then turned and ran, afraid that the sputtering flames would scorch her.

She had thought it was just a fire enchantment at most.
No one had told her that this thing could spit fire like a flamethrower!

The girl, while fleeing the flames, glared at the same crimson blade in her hand, as if she were holding a lit firecracker.

She wanted to pull open the catch on the hilt right now and throw away the small crimson block.

What if she accidentally spit fire and burned herself?

She was a snake demon! Snake demons are afraid of fire!

“Be careful!”

The Skin-Painter in the flames let out a piercing scream that could shatter glass.
The direction it rushed out of the flames happened to coincide with the girl’s escape route.

In his desperation, Xu Zhi hurriedly threw out two flaming blade lights straight at the Skin-Painter.

“Boom!”

The flames once again engulfed the ghostly figure.

However…

“Ah!!! Blind Xu!!!!!!”

The girl scrambled and rolled to dodge the flames, shouting angrily at Xu Zhi.

And then…

‘Oops, we’re done for.’

The girl’s world collapsed after she shouted this.

Only this childhood friend of hers would call Xu Zhi by this nickname.
Now that she had shouted it, wasn’t it a dead giveaway?

She didn’t expect herself to be so reckless in her desperation.

Now she wasn’t even afraid of fire.
She just wanted to slap herself twice.

“A-Lin! Behind you!”

However, Xu Zhi seemed to not have heard and warned her again.

But the girl was sure he had heard.
Otherwise, he wouldn’t have called her A-Lin.

Like the nickname “Blind Xu,” only Xu Zhi would call her A-Lin.

The girl suddenly spun and kicked the twisted ghostly figure behind her, which was still covered in sparks, and then…

She turned and ran for her life!

‘This is bad, this is bad!’

‘He must have recognized me!’

But just as she had run a few steps, her wrist was grabbed by a familiar touch.

“Why do you have to run away every time you see me?”

The girl’s gaze passed over Xu Zhi’s shoulder to his original position.
There was a distance of seventy or eighty meters between there and here.
How did he appear behind her again?

‘Does this guy know how to flash or something?’

“Let go!”
The girl wanted to shake off Xu Zhi’s hand.
She just wanted to run away at this moment.

The twisted ghostly figure not far away had also just gotten up, holding two sabers and roaring as it rushed towards them.

“Get lost!”

The girl wanted to kick Xu Zhi away, but Xu Zhi pulled her into his arms before she could.

“What are you…”

Before the girl could finish, the spot where she had been standing was cut into a gully by the ghostly figure’s long saber.

“…doing?”

The ghostly figure turned its slash into a sweep, and the two black long blades went straight for their waists and abdomens.

Xu Zhi pressed the girl in his arms and leaned back.
The blade grazed her nose.

The scent of cedarwood instantly filled the girl’s nasal cavity.
The girl just felt that her cheeks should be bright red at this moment.

But the girl in Xu Zhi’s arms was like an untamable wildcat, struggling frantically.
She even freed her foot to kick the ghostly figure over.

“Let go! We’re fighting!”

“If I let go, you can’t run!”

“Bullshit!”

The girl suddenly elbowed Xu Zhi in the abdomen, which allowed her to break free from his embrace.

The girl panted and glared at Xu Zhi.

‘I can’t control my heartbeat. The restless demonic energy under my skin is about to burst out of my pores.’

‘It’s over. I’m dead this time.’

The girl felt that in less than a minute, no, twenty seconds, she would completely reveal her demonized form.

At this moment, the ground suddenly trembled.

‘An earthquake?’

‘No!’

‘It’s a demon!’

As a snake demon, the girl was more sensitive to demonic energy reactions than Xu Zhi, a human.
She almost instantly felt something rushing towards them from underground.

‘A hundred meters!’

‘No!’

‘Two meters!’

That thing had crossed a distance of several hundred meters in less than a tenth of a second and had arrived below them.

There was only enough time for the girl to make one move!

‘And that was to push Xu Zhi away!’

“Boom!”

The sound of the ground cracking and the sound of an impact exploded at the same time.
The asphalt road was shattered by the speeding big guy.
The girl just felt like she had been hit by a high-speed train coming out of the ground.

The huge impact sent the girl flying several hundred meters away, and she crashed into the cafeteria, shattering countless walls and objects.

“Hiss… that really hurts…”

The girl lay on the tiled floor of the cafeteria, her consciousness blurry.
The tiled floor was covered with spiderweb-like cracks, with her as the center.

‘At least I didn’t turn into a snake demon in front of him…’

She thought to herself before completely losing consciousness.

The moonlight shone down from the big hole that had been smashed in the ceiling of the cafeteria, just happening to cover the girl’s body.
In the silver light, her last consciousness was the cold feeling of the moonlight caressing her cheek, and the silk-like texture of the scales climbing up the corners of her eyes.