Chapter 98: The Scale Left Behind

“Stop being so annoying!” Bai Ling cut the drunk Grudge Demon in half again. But the thick liquor leaking from its wound stuck it back together like glue.

This had happened countless times in the past two minutes. Every time it was cut in half at the waist, it spilled a huge pool of blood wine. After several rounds, the blood wine had nearly filled the entire elevator shaft.

‘So annoying. Ignore it, and it keeps squirming. Deal with it, and one cut can splash out a ton of blood wine. So there really is a little blood in the alcohol, huh?’

Bai Ling was grinding her teeth. If most of the demonic power she could pull on were not busy sealing this dense demonic qi, she would have frozen this thing into bits long ago.

‘Talk about the worst possible timing.’

Bai Ling hatefully split the thing vertically in half and began thinking about how to end this.

She was not a member of the Demon Suppression Bureau. She had no means to clear away large amounts of demonic qi. And by the Bureau’s rating, this concentration was at least level eight or higher. If it spread, people would die from demonic qi corrosion within ten minutes.

Rootless Water could dilute demonic qi, but where was she supposed to find that much Rootless Water now? Call Xu Zhi over? If she could call him, she would have already. There was no signal at all in the elevator shaft.

‘Was she just supposed to stay here and keep company with an unkillable drunk?’

Watching the demonic qi coiling around the drunk demon, Bai Ling sighed. After swallowing this qi, the thing had gotten much stronger than before…

Eh?!

A thought suddenly crossed her mind.

‘Swallow demonic qi?’

‘If it can swallow it, so can I!’

In the end, demonic qi was just demonic power diluted by air. As long as it was compressed enough, it became pure demonic power. If she compressed all this vast demonic qi into demonic power and swallowed it, her own demonic power would rise by a chunk.

Do it now that she thought of it!

Bai Ling twisted around and pinned the drunk Grudge Demon to the wall with one slash so it would stop bothering her for the moment.

Then the ice crystal dome bent downward, forming a closed glass-ball shape that locked the demonic qi inside. With micron-level control over demonic power, Bai Ling precisely expelled the excess air and created a vacuum within the ice.

Then the pure demonic qi was compressed into raw demonic power inside the shrinking ice crystal, flowing gradually through the crystal into Bai Ling’s body.

Still, controlling demonic power at the micron level while also handling this massive stream of pure demonic power was difficult. Bai Ling could feel the demonic power inside her briefly shake off its inertia, eagerly trying to pierce out through the pores between her scales.

Of course she could not let them out. This demonic power from the snake scale was already enough to give a snake a headache.

Luckily, she still had the locust-flower bracelet Qing gave her. It could temporarily suppress demonic qi for her when her demonic power went out of control.

But after waiting a long time, that familiar stinging pain never came. Bai Ling instinctively touched her wrist…

Damn!

‘Where is my bracelet?!’

‘Lost?!’

It was too late to stop now. The pure demonic power compressed from the demonic qi would not stop. More importantly, her body seemed very familiar with this power. Bai Ling even felt the demonic power inside her lining up to welcome the newcomer.

It was as if…

It belonged to Bai Ling from the start!

And the situation gave Bai Ling no time to think. The snake scale, constantly giving off dense demonic qi, suddenly floated up and, like a puppy that had found its owner, rushed joyfully toward Bai Ling’s abdomen.

What was going on?!

Bai Ling suddenly felt a stinging pain at her neck. The demonic power she had swallowed raced down along her spine and gathered at her tailbone.

Then her legs pressed together involuntarily. The snake scale clinging to her abdomen turned into new belly scales and spread to her thighs in the blink of an eye, gradually fusing her legs together.

Within seconds, the tail hanging behind her butt disappeared, and her two legs directly became a thick snake tail!

That vast demonic power finally flowed completely into her body through the ice crystal. Beads of sweat the size of beans seeped from Bai Ling’s forehead. Before they hit the ground, they condensed into ice beads and fell beneath her tail. By now, the blood wine that had filled the floor was frozen solid. Even the drunk Grudge Demon pinned to the wall had broken into a pile of ice shards at some point, with no chance of reviving.

“Phew…”

Bai Ling let out a long breath as if she had survived a disaster and patted her chest, still shaken.

‘Maybe it was an illusion, but the two mounds on her chest seemed a little bigger…’

‘Her line of sight seemed a little higher. Had she gotten taller?’

Bai Ling suddenly looked at the snake tail her legs had become. Getting taller was probably an illusion.

‘This tail is much longer than two legs…’

Bai Ling tried to move this new appendage. The tip of the tail twisted back and forth on the ice. The feeling of snake scales scraping over the grooves in the ice was a little unfamiliar.

Although she did seem much stronger than before in this state, her demonic power was also draining much faster.

For some reason, she felt that if she used up all her demonic power in this state, she might really temporarily turn into a white snake.

She suddenly remembered the new skill Liao Cao had shown at the convention, the snake demon swordsman. Why did it feel so similar…

Or was it because she had seen that form and unconsciously shaped the excess demonic power into this?

Bai Ling sighed. With a thought, the demonic power retracted beneath her skin. The snake scales receded like a tide, and the snake tail turned back into her familiar long legs.

The good news was that she had gained a life-saving skill, and the demonic qi had not leaked out.

Bai Ling kept feeling that in that state, she could even beat Elder Qin. She did not know if it was an illusion.

The bad news was that she was full…

Yes, she was full of demonic power. After doing that with Xu Zhi before, her demonic power had already risen a lot. Now it had risen another large amount.

Her body was like a bottle filled to overflowing with demonic power. If the locust-flower bracelet were still here, it might have helped suppress the overflowing part. Unfortunately, Bai Ling, the careless fool, had lost it.

She did not even know where she lost it. It had still been there when she left this morning.

Bai Ling wanted to slap herself twice.

‘You! Why are you so careless?!’

But slapping herself could wait. The important thing was to find a chance to use up this extra demonic power.

Of course, that was only a temporary fix. The used demonic power would recover sooner or later, and then she would have to use it up again before it overflowed.

Unless there was a way to enlarge the bottle’s capacity.

But Bai Ling did not know if this bottle’s capacity could be enlarged at all.

Better go back to the convention first. Tonight, find a place with no one around and unleash a few big moves to burn it off.

With that, Bai Ling leaped.

****

Tap, tap. Footsteps came from behind. A woman in a cyan vest with a high ponytail brushed past her cheek.

The short man beside her, pressing the elevator floor button, was holding a bronze box and smiling. They were crouched on the beam above the convention hall’s lighting rig. Below them, Liao Cao was enthusiastically presenting the performance for the new dungeon.

“Done?” She fiddled with her phone without turning her head.

On the phone screen was the recent hot city forum post about a drunk falling into an elevator. The ID shown by the high-ponytail woman was exactly the poster of that thread.

An urban legend made on a whim could not give birth to any proper Grudge Demon in the end?

Good thing…

“Second Sister, can just a tiny snake scale really work?” The young man crouched beside her, watching the screen below. On the screen, the new dungeon boss, a Daoist priestess in black robes, had eighty-one ancient swords floating behind her, blotting out the sky.

This was the new dungeon called Mirror of the Heart. In this dungeon, players would take on a role and undergo a trial brought by this black-robed Daoist priestess.

“That is a snake scale left by our elder sister.” The high-ponytail woman’s tone suddenly turned sharp. Her elder sister had left only seven snake scales in total. Four were missing, and she had only three. Yet she had to use one in a place like this.

The residual demonic power on that snake scale, even if one merely touched it, was enough to make that Grudge Demon several times stronger out of thin air. It was enough for them to make a huge scene here.

“I’ll collect it myself later.”

Even using it temporarily made her extremely unhappy. She even wished she could go right now and kill that idiot sitting in the chair.

But she could not yet. She needed the Netherworld Society, and the Netherworld Society needed her.

Before her elder sister returned, she had to turn this world into one where the demon race could live openly. That man surnamed Xiao was not in Lin’an. This was a chance that would never come again.

Even if it cost one scale, she had to seize it!

“Die, demon!” A bratty yell suddenly came from behind, loud enough to drown out the convention speakers that shook the heart.

Guan’er came charging over, swinging her Green Dragon Crescent Moon selfie stick, making the light rig tremble slightly.

The high-ponytail woman glanced at the short man beside her. “I’ll leave it to you.”

“Got it, got it!” The short man directly threw the bronze box in his arms toward the crowd in the convention hall. Dense demonic qi leaked from the slightly opened box!

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