Chapter 8 : Anyone Who Disturbs My Gaming Can Go Die!

When Xu Zhi kicked his ergonomic chair, he nearly knocked over his unfinished iced Americano.
He didn’t even have time to slam the security door shut before rushing out of the Demon Suppression Division’s dormitory.

The motion-sensor lights in the corridor flickered on from the sound of his urgent footsteps.
He quickly pulled out his phone.

“Xu Zhi, Demon Suppression Envoy of the Lin’an Demon Suppression Division! All teams, get a lock on my position!”

His slightly hoarse roar echoed off the tiled walls.
The glass of the fire hydrant reflected his sprinting figure.
The imprint of his gaming headphones was still visible on his ears.

“Gu Xiyan, prepare to enter at the west intersection!”

The sound of fabric rubbing came through the earpiece, and he could even faintly hear the crisp sound of high heels crushing fallen leaves.

“Lu Qingtian is taking a shortcut! He’s sent his shared location!”

The young man’s panting was mixed with the ringing of a shared bicycle’s bell.
He was pedaling so fast he was about to make the poor bike smoke.

Then came the sound of Zhou Xuan’s rapid keyboard tapping.
“The core of the demonic energy has been located. West entrance of Lin’an University City!”

Before his words had faded, Lu Qingyu’s voice, accompanied by the siren of an ambulance, sounded.
“The emergency response team is on its way.”

In the span of a few words, Xu Zhi had already burst through the iron gate of the underground garage.
The black SUV parked in the garage seemed to still have traces of last night’s rain on it.
The Shanhe Group logo printed on the car door reflected a fluorescent light in the darkness.

He vaulted into the driver’s seat with one hand on the car door, saving the time it would take to open it.

The Demon Suppression Division’s exorcism operations had always been a race against time.
Being a second faster could mean saving a life.

The engine roared to life, and the red light of the dashboard illuminated Xu Zhi’s tense jawline.

The headlights cut through the floating dust in the darkness, and the friction of the tires scattered the ant-swarm-like gloom.

Thirty seconds ago, Xu Zhi had received an emergency report that someone had been attacked by a demon in Lin’an University City.
Their status was currently unknown.

Thirty seconds later, the black SUV with the Shanhe Group logo shot out of the garage, turning into a stream of light as it rushed towards Lin’an University City.

The setting sun gradually hid behind the tall buildings, and the sky was dyed a cold, blade-like color.

“I’m so pissed! We were at the final boss!”

Gu Xiyan gritted her teeth in frustration, kicking open the iron door with her high heel.

Old rust flakes fell off.
The beam of her tactical flashlight cut through the darkness like a sharp sword.

This was the cold storage warehouse at the west entrance of the university city.
This warehouse supplied almost the entire university city with fresh produce.

She flicked off the safety of her pistol with a “click,” the sweet taste of the milk tea she had been drinking while gaming still lingering on her tongue.

‘What was that?!’

She suddenly shone the flashlight beam straight ahead.
Something was rustling through the shelves in the darkness.

‘Was it the demon?!’

The strong light swept across the rows of shelves, but she couldn’t find the thing’s figure.

Gu Xiyan’s gaze suddenly froze on the corner of a row of shelves.
A pair of porcelain-white calves lay there.
They belonged to a female university student.
She was lying on her back in a pool of blood in a frog-like position, her kneecaps bent backward.
Black patterns wriggled on her face like living tattoos.

“I’ve found the victim!”

Gu Xiyan rushed forward.
As she knelt on one knee, her stockings scraped against the ice on the floor.
“Checking the victim’s condition…”

Just as her fingers touched the victim’s nose to check for breath, she felt a sudden chill on the back of her neck.

“Bang!”

Years of training made her body react before her mind could.
A bullet grazed her hair and disappeared into the darkness.

“Tsk, did I miss?”

Gu Xiyan’s gaze swept across the ceiling with her tactical flashlight.
The sound of nails scraping against metal stimulated her eardrums.

The light spot illuminated half of the thing’s face.
It had no facial features, like a human form sketched with chaotic lines.

“So you’re the one who disturbed my game, huh!”

Gu Xiyan immediately spun backward and leaned back, firing her pistol continuously.
The bullets chased the ghostly figure, chipping sparks out of the steel beams.

But the black shadow folded its torso at an angle impossible for a human, floating into the gap between the shelves like a crumpled newspaper.

The rotten smell of demonic energy suddenly intensified.

“I’ve found it!”

Gu Xiyan notified her teammates of the demon’s specific location while ejecting the empty magazine.

“Rip!”

The black shadow suddenly drilled out from behind the shelves, its sharp claws heading straight for Gu Xiyan’s shoulder blade, but it only tore the strap of her dress.

Gu Xiyan used the momentum to roll forward and crash into the shelves.
The moment a new, fully loaded magazine clicked into the gun chamber, she had already twisted her body and opened fire again.

The continuous gunfire and the noise of the ghost’s nails scraping against the ground overlapped into a symphony of death.

This symphony lasted for several seconds before finally coming to an end.

“Are you done yet?!”

Gu Xiyan emptied another magazine.
In the gap while reloading, she leaned against a shelf and yelled.

“Heh heh…”

The response was an inhuman laughter.
The black shadow suddenly hung down from the ceiling, and the sharp claws sketched with chaotic lines stabbed fiercely at Gu Xiyan’s eyes!

“I want your skin!”

The voice was hoarse, not a sound a living creature could make.

“In your dreams!”

A faint blue ripple suddenly began to appear in Gu Xiyan’s pupils.
A scorching heat flowed from her heart and lungs, into her limbs and bones.

The world in her eyes suddenly slowed down.
The sharp claws stabbing at her from the shadows froze in front of her eyes.
The hot breath she exhaled condensed into ice crystals in the air.

“Boom!”

The strange feeling of stagnation only lasted for a moment.
The roar of the SUV and the sound of the brick wall shattering shook the icicles from the ceiling.

Xu Zhi had driven the SUV straight through the outer wall of the warehouse, sending the ghostly figure flying.

The headlights instantly dispelled all the darkness in the warehouse.
The ghostly figure immediately let out a screech like a stuck cassette tape.

Xu Zhi kicked open the car door and leaped out like a sharp sword, unleashing a chilling blade of light while tossing a rifle to Gu Xiyan.

Gu Xiyan took the opportunity to roll to the back of the car.
As she caught the rifle, she felt the bloodstain on the stock.
It was the demon’s blood that had splattered when Xu Zhi hit the ghostly figure.

“Four o’clock direction!”

The moment Xu Zhi’s blade cut into the black shadow’s torso, the inscriptions on the blade burst with a cyan light, like a hot iron sinking into butter.

The ghostly figure was actually cut in two by his blade, but the severed sections instantly spewed out a large amount of gelatinous black liquid.
The two halves of the ghost instantly turned into an asphalt-like liquid and drilled into countless corners.

“You almost ran me over!”

Gu Xiyan complained as she flicked off the rifle’s safety.
The blue light of the tracers wove a spiderweb in the darkness.
Every bullet that hit the black liquid would cause a small-scale explosion.

“If I hit you, you’d only be injured. If that thing hit you, you’d be a hundred percent dead.”

Xu Zhi flicked his blade, sending a still-twitching shadow tentacle flying.
The bronze beast mask muffled his voice.

The tentacle actually writhed like an earthworm after landing and drilled into a crack in the ground.
Gu Xiyan stomped on it hard, the feeling of crushing an exoskeleton coming from the sole of her high heel.

She suddenly felt a tightness around her ankle.
More black threads were surging out from the crack in the ground, climbing up her calf!

“Close your eyes!”

Xu Zhi threw out three flashbangs.
The black shadow let out a high-pitched scream in the bright flash of light.

Gu Xiyan took the opportunity to tear off her corroded stockings.
Spiderweb-like black spots had already appeared on her calf skin.

“Almost messed up!”

Gu Xiyan cursed as she aimed the rifle at the ground and opened fire, blasting all the black threads into smithereens.

“Southeast corner, ventilation duct!”

Zhou Xuan’s warning suddenly came through the earpiece.

The rotten smell suddenly changed direction.
Xu Zhi instantly threw his long saber with a backhand motion.
The blade spun and stabbed into the ventilation duct.
In an instant, black blood seeped out from the cracks in the duct.

Gu Xiyan simultaneously aimed her gun at the ceiling and sprayed it with bullets.
The black shadow had already turned into countless black liquids and hidden in the cracks of the warehouse.
She could only spray it like this, hoping to destroy more of the black liquid.

The shattered fluorescent light tubes fell like a rain of glass, each falling shard reflecting the afterimage of the black shadow.

The black liquids actually re-condensed into several smaller ghostly figures!

Xu Zhi’s blade light and the bullets from Gu Xiyan’s rifle rushed forward together.
The newly formed small ghosts were shredded before they could even stretch their bodies.

“They’re imitating and learning!”

Gu Xiyan emptied her second magazine.
While reloading, she suddenly discovered that the demon’s evasion trajectory was gradually getting closer to human tactical movements.

The movements were exactly the same as when she had first fought the ghost!

It even struck a fighting stance.
The chaotic lines sketching out its muscle bundles perfectly replicated Xu Zhi’s sword-wielding posture.

Xu Zhi abruptly tore off his beast mask.
The white breath he exhaled frosted on his eyebrows.
“Zhou Xuan! Interfere with it!”

“Injecting interference system! Close your eyes!”

The entire warehouse’s lighting system suddenly flashed wildly.
The black shadows let out a piercing sound like a disk being formatted.

Gu Xiyan seized the fleeting opportunity.
The rifle roared, spitting out several belts of bullets that pierced through the demon’s body.
The shockwave from the bullet impacts overturned three rows of shelves, sending frozen steaks and lobster tails flying like cannonballs.

But when the ice shards and frozen goods had completely settled, the dark demons had disappeared, leaving only a floor of still-writhing black liquid.

Xu Zhi and Gu Xiyan stood back-to-back, on guard against each other.
Suddenly, Lu Qingtian’s scream came through the communicator.
“The drainpipes are full of this stuff! Wait, no!”

His voice was cut off by a violent explosion.

After the noisy sounds ended, Lu Qingtian’s panting voice came through.

“They’re not the main body!”

“The demonic energy reaction has completely disappeared! It’s like a sea cucumber shooting out its internal organs to escape. It left a part of itself behind and ran away.”

Zhou Xuan’s annoyed voice came through the channel.
“The demonic energy reaction produced by the part it left behind completely masked its own demonic energy reaction. We’ve lost it!”

Gu Xiyan tore off her icy earpiece and found her own blood splattered on the inside of her bronze beast mask.
The black mucus on the tip of Xu Zhi’s blade was vaporizing, emitting the foul smell of burning plastic.

Xu Zhi sheathed his long saber and looked at the recently destroyed freezer door.
In the depths of the freezer, seven bodies, twisted in the same posture, were faintly visible in the icy mist.

“Damn it!” Xu Zhi gritted his teeth, his canines piercing his lip.