Lie Huo Jiao Chou Volume 2 Chapter 42

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Sheng Lingyuan looked up and glanced at him, and said with a hint of a smile: "Not too old, yet what a big temper."

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   The bones fell down, and like raindrops, they "deeply" nailed the ground; Xuan Ji was almost nailed like a specimen. But he wasn't the one who had nailed Aluojin to the coffin board for thousands of years, who could he reason with?!

    The landing spot happened to be a little downhill. Xuan Ji folded his wings, and due to the inertia, he rolled forwards for more than 20 meters. A wind blade was closely trailing him; it crudely split open the top part of a big tree, and that treetop fell towards him.

    Team Leader Wang: "Look, a van!"

    Three 'Fengshen I' members started the van and rushed over. Zhang Zhao stepped on the brake, hit the steering wheel, and the back of the van swept across, bumping into the treetop that just fell down. Gu Yuexi opened the door of the van and pulled Xuan Ji up: "Sit tight!"

    Xuan Ji saw a few big words ''MouMou Seafood Supply" on the top of the van from the corner of his eyes and suddenly felt an ominous premonition: "Wait a minute, where did you get this van?"

    "It was expropriated by the roadside, and the situation was urgent," Team Leader Wang showed him his feet. He only had shoes on one foot and the hotel's disposable slippers on the other. "I didn't even put on my shoes."

    Xuan Ji was shocked. "Now the Deviant Control Office fieldworkers have to break in and force the lock?

    "She—" Team Leader Wang pointed at Gu Yuexi with his chin, "—looked through the hole and picked the lock."

    Xuan Ji said nothing at first, then he suddenly remembered something. He turned pale with fright, covered his crotch, and his tone changed: "What, you have X-ray vision?"

    Gu Yuexi: "...You really can be a leader of a 'wasteland'." 

    The van shook hard, and the window on one side was pierced by bones. Half of the finger bone was still attached to the white bone and it moved around scarily. Team Leader Wang smacked it out with his elbow. Aluojin also dove down next to the speeding van; his feet were slightly off the ground and his body was like that of a ghost. As if feeling Team Leader Wang's gaze, he then turned his head, and a strange smile appeared both on the mask and his face at the same time.

     Team Leader Wang was so shocked by his smile that even his leg hairs stood up.

    Gu Yuexi quickly said: "The blood holes on his body are the core of his energy. "

    Team leader Wang held out a hand to her, Gu Yuexi understood and passed a gun. Team Leader Wang directly pointed the muzzle into the shattered window and steadily, he fired three accurate shots to Aluojin.

    Although he was terribly bad at directions, his shooting technique was at a national representative level. The special bullets flashed luminous white light and plunged into Aluojin's body. One of those hit the blood hole in between his eyebrows, on the place in which he had been nailed.

    Xuan Ji: "A ten-ring* player, brother!"

*refers to the bullseye of a paper target in riflery.

    But before he had the time to laugh, he saw that the blood hole hit by the bullet was quickly healed. Those specially treated bullets were like sand thrown into the sea, they were sucked in and even the ripples couldn't be seen. Aluojin's speed didn't decrease, and another wind blade was formed in his hand!

    "What the hell is this, fuck!" Team Leader Wang shouted in a loud voice, "Director Xuan, do you have any other big tricks besides setting fire? It won't do, you should try to bake him. If you accidentally burn the forest, I will put it out for you!"

    Xuan Ji: "Bullshit!"

     It's not that he had a great inner quality and paid attention to environmental protection that he was reluctant to burn some trees, but this was a forest which was very close to an urban area. Devils, such as Aluojin who came out of the fire, probably had a fire resistance that was much higher than asbestos, probably even on the same level to that of the monkey brother* who rolled around in the immortality furnace. The average fire spurting from his body would just basically warm his hands.

*refers to Sun Wukong of Journey to the West who has a fire resistance charm on him.

    Not only the fire that could hurt him should've been equal to the one which turned the entire Dongchuan into an oven, it also needed to be the one Team Leader Wang, the hybrid carp, could extinguish.

    At the same time, a question flashed quickly in Xuan Ji's heart —— he saw Sheng Lingyuan nailed the devil into a coffin; it was as easy as wedging a few nails to hang an oil painting on the wall. At one point, Xuan Ji had an illusion, as if this Aluojin could only play some incantation techniques with great fanfare but not much effect.

    Why?

    Was it just because he and Aloujin's attributes restrained each other?

    However, he had no time to think about it at this moment. When the wind blade in Aluojin's hand was about to take shape, the air flow would make a sound which was similar to the sound of metals rubbing against each other. Xuan Ji visually guessed that his "blade" could cut a bread roll into sliced bread.

    "Give me the gun." After saying this, Xuan Ji raised his hand and pressed on Zhang Zhao's shoulder, "Brake!"

    Zhang Zhao subconsciously stepped hard on the brake. Aluojin was caught off-guard, yet he still rushed forward. The flying wind blade scraped and swept past the front windshield.

    Xuan Ji's palm caressed the gun that Gu Yuexi gave him. The gun was full of engraved inscriptions, and as his fingers swept over it, it seemed as if the inscriptions were activated, and a flame-colored light burst out.

    "Do me a favor," Xuan Ji said to Wang Ze in a deep voice, "Wrap the bullets I will shoot out in water; even a single spark mustn't leak out. Dongchuan has a GDP of nearly 2000 billion a year. We can't afford the compensation."

    Team Leader Wang responded, and the "water and fire" duo got off from both sides of the van at the same time. Xuan Ji raised his head, and a flame-colored pattern appeared on the space between his eyebrows. It was an ancient totem that had already been passed on for three thousand years, born from raging fire and dried bones, sorrowful yet serene. Thus, when he stood there expressionlessly without a smile nor a word, a quaint, odd, and contradictory divinity passed through time again and emerged.

    Aluojin reached out and held on to a large tree. He used the tree as an axle, turned himself around and faced towards them. The face of the old shaman tribe leader had a somewhat innocent vibe, his long hair and robe sleeves danced around, like a butterfly wearing flowers around the tree*, almost showing a bit of naive beauty.

*穿花绕树, "wearing flowers around the tree", refers to a wuxia technique.

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    Then he smiled faintly, pushed forward the wind blade, and the whole person pressed on towards Xuan Ji.

    Xuan Ji jumped up and tiptoed briefly over the edge of the wind blade —— it was very easy, as if he was able to walk on the wind. He lifted his hand and pulled the trigger: "Wang Ze!" 

    The bullet was ignited with flame. At the moment it shot out, a concentrated membrane of water appeared and surrounded the air around it, firmly wrapping the sparks in the middle. However, the flame temperature was too high, and the water was continuously evaporating; Team Leader Wang could only incessantly grab onto the surrounding water vapor until his face was choked red.

    Gu Yuexi looked down, and her X-ray vision fell into the trunk behind the van. She pried open the trunk, pulled out a box of mineral water inside, opened the lids, and threw it one by one into the sky: "Here comes the water, catch!"

    It was a pity that the shot didn't hit, the meteor-like bullet wrapped in a sufficient amount of water passed by Aluojin and shot into the ground. However, for some reason, the fire in the bullet wasn't extinguished. The fire hadn't gone out, and Team Leader Wang didn't dare to retract the isolated water ball, and had to say to Gu Yuexi, "Don't stop the water!"

    Xuan Ji stepped on Aluojin's shoulder, and Aluojin grabbed him by his ankle firmly and tried to take him down. Xuan Ji looked down and fired a second shot at him, then his other leg fiercely kicked Aluojin's wrist, and got free.The inertia still got him to rotate for more than half a circle, with posture as graceful as in figure skating... except for that slight discrepancy —— the bullet didn't hit, and went in the ground again.

    He didn't wait for Team Leader Wang's protest. Xuan Ji fired the third and fourth shots one after another... Team Leader Wang was about to collapse, because the spark in every "buried" bullet was not extinguished, and with every additional bullet, the pressure on him got greater, so he couldn't move anymore!

    Gu Yuexi: "Boss, the mineral water is empty!"

    "Find a way!" Wang Ze shouted, "Director Xuan, brother! Are you a negative ten-ring player? I beg you, get a Parkinson's treatment for that trembling hand, ah! You...  just come back!"

  As he spoke, Xuan Ji had shot the sixth bullet, and Team Leader Wang couldn't even wipe off the cold sweat from his body: "Gu Yuexi, water!"

    Gu Yuexi suddenly remembered something. She crawled out of the car, braved the flying wind blade, then opened the engine quickly and easily, and pulled out the water tank in the car: "Make do with this." 

    The sixth bullet almost burned the vines on the ground. Team Leader Wang hurriedly drew the water from the water tank, narrowly wrapping it.

    Xuan Ji was chased by Aluojin and his wind blade up the sky and down the ground, fleeing in disarray, dodging thrillingly several times in a matter of life and death, walking on the tip of the wind blade. Suddenly, he didn't notice his feet and was tripped by a tree vine. For a moment, although he didn't fall, his whole body stumbled, and his balance immediately went out of order.

    "Burn it again," Aluojin stared at him fiercely, muttering in shaman language, "Burn it again!"

    The soft and low-pitched shaman language was destroyed in his throat, and that sound made a person shiver all over the body. He drew out a three-meter long wind blade in his hands, seemingly like a small hill, advancing down towards Xuan Ji. Xuan Ji rolled away with difficulty and made a scratch on his neck, exactly like how Sheng Lingyuan scratched his nails in the shaman grave.

    The next wind blade was formed before the previous one was completely released, and then chased immediately. This time, Xuan Ji seemed to have no place to dodge. Team Leader Wang paled, Gu Yuexi couldn't help but look away, Zhang Zhao desperately pinched the watch on his wrist.

    Time was paused, but Xuan Ji didn't hide. He actually used this precious chance of escape to shoot Aluojin's feet for a second.

    Wang Ze: "You are crazy..." 

    In an instant when the seventh bullet landed, some kind of connection with the other six bullets buried in the ground rose up. A large flame-colored net floated out, and Aluojin was in the center of the net.

    Xuan Ji shouted: "Restrain!" 

    Aluojin was shocked at this time, but it was too late to hide. The fire guardians who guarded Chiyuan had been dealing with the evil spirits who wanted to break out of the earth for generations. Even if there was a fault in their inheritance, there were plenty of arrays to deal with devils.

    The "big net" was based on seven true fires, which corresponded to several blood holes nailed out from Aluojin. The fire was like a thin thread, passing through Aluojin, "sewing" him to the ground.

    The dangerous wind blade disappeared, leaving only a light mark on Xuan Ji's clothes.

    Aluojin struggled resolutely, but he couldn't open it. Those "threads" didn't move at all. First, the white bones around him fell down, then, the "fine threads" restrained him and his waist was pushed down. Aluojin shouted in pain, and his body began to become rigid.

    Team Leader Wang looked at the devil trapped in the net and tried to tilt his head to say something to Xuan Ji. Upon seeing the totem between his eyebrows, a little fear rose in his heart and he forgot his words.

    No one knew when the moon and stars above the forest park disappeared. There was only one star in the night sky, and the east was vaguely lit up.

    The whole night of chaos was about to pass.

    The flame pattern between Xuan Ji's eyebrows disappeared. As soon as his forehead was clear, his personality became young and bright.

    He took a step back, leaned back exhaustively on the big tree behind him: "Brother Wang, you are really a porter of nature, you must have a ready-made water source? Well, the water tank is empty now, how are we going back? "

    Team Leader Wang looked at him hesistantly.

    Xuan Ji knew what he was thinking at glance: "Dream on! Go away! I'm not an airliner!"

    Gu Yuexi and Zhang Zhao got out of the car, not daring to approach Aluojin, glancing at him from a distance and asked: "How do we deal with him?"

    "I don't know. " Xuan Ji sighed with a headache," Sleep first, go back and ask that… that... "

    And deal with that person.

    When he thought of it, Xuan Ji was as tired as if he hadn't slept for two weeks. He spat out his suffocation, not knowing whether the Deviant Control Office could pay his first month's salary first if he resigned now.

    "It's really amazing. Did you study the array yourself, or was it a family tradition?" Gu Yuexi carefully studied his array, and the more she looked at it, the more delicate it became — in her eyes, the seven bullets on the ground formed a closed ring, cleverly putting Aluojin in the middle. In this way, even if he had the power to move mountains and seas, he was just fighting against himself.

    The more Aluojin struggled, the more he consumed himself. The mask on his face had a sinister expression, bleeding from the inside and outside corners of the eyes, flowing down his cheeks.

    Gu Yuexi was in no mood to ask, but a layer of shadow swept past Xuan Ji's expression, and he did not answer.

    This array method was on the map of the Thousand Demon Atlas. Xuan Ji originally thought that the surviving section of that ancient book was a general undergraduate reading material. After walking out of the shaman tomb, he learned that it had something to do with the mysterious Imperial Preceptor, Dan Li.

    But why did Dan Li's things fall into their hands?

    Was it possible that the ancestors were related to that person?

    As soon as he thought of this, Xuan Ji felt inexplicably nauseous.

    Aluojin who was in the trap suddenly roared heartbreakingly, and those "threads" drew into his flesh, but the mountains of Dongchuan were silent in the morning mist. From the moment he first left with the young people of his tribe, the mountains and waters of his hometown never responded to his voice.

    In someone's life, there would always be hatred and regrets. Many people have daydreams of "if everything can be started over", but when they wake up from that dream, they would know that it was impossible, and just forget about it.

    For Aluojin, he was attracted to the magnificent dreams of the world in his youth. His rebellious youth was a delusion born from boiling blood. He grew up splendidly, didn't know cold or heat, didn't know pain or suffering, wandering in unrealistic countless dreams. Then those dreams broke one after another, and only this last poisonous dream could he not wake up from.

    "As long as Chiyuan's fire is burning, Dongchuan will return to its original state, as long as..."

    Therefore, he went overboard and had no good end.

    Gu Yuexi was startled by him and stepped back a few steps: "Let's contact the head office as soon as possible and let someone think of a way to deal with it... Oh, by the way, Director Xuan, is he the one who was sealed in the coffin? How did he get out? Director Xiao, what's going on with them? I'll contact..."

    Before she unlocked her phone, a call came in. It was a strange number, but looking at the prefix, it was from the internal line of the head office.

    Gu Yuexi quickly answered: "Hello, it's 'Fengshen I' fieldworker Gu Yuexi, we happen to have a situation to report to the superior… Hello?"

    There was only a "rustle" on the phone.

    "Hello? Can you hear me?" Gu Yuexi frowned. "Maybe the signal is not so ... Ah!"

   There was a sudden pain on her palm, and a dark flame came out of the phone, peeled off a layer of skin on Gu Yuexi's palm, and the phone rolled down to the ground. A hoarse voice came from inside, saying incomprehensible words.

    That's...

    "Gloomy sacrifice, let it go!" Xuan Ji was distracted at first, then pushed away Team Leader Wang at his side. A coin flew out of his fingertips and smashed Gu Yuexi's mobile phone, but it was already too late ——

    One of the seven bullets was shaken halfway out of the ground. Aluojin bellowed, struggled rigidly, and pulled it out. The delicate array suddenly broke, and those flame-colored "threads" carried along enchanted wrath, doubling towards Xuan Ji to devour him. He didn't even have time to ponder whether the first month's salary would be gone or not if he died at the frontline…

    At this moment, a figure flitted across and stood in front of him.

    Xuan Ji's pupils suddenly dilated, and all the flame-colored threads penetrated into the man. The man who arrived slightly trembled but did not utter a word.

    Then, the breeze the man had brought arrived late and brushed past Xuan Ji's hair.

    There was an old-fashioned yet extravagant smell in the wind.

    Aluojin saw Sheng Lingyuan, who was standing between him and Xuan Ji, and suddenly hesitated.

    Sheng Lingyuan slowly raised his hand and caught the "thread" pierced into his chest, and blood suddenly rushed out along the "thread". The crazy Aluojin suddenly seemed like he ran into a natural enemy and retreated at once.

    But Xuan Ji's array was too complex, and the threads were tied to his body in knots. Sheng Lingyuan's blood quickly covered the fire on the threads as if they had lives, and then quickly penetrated Aluojin.

    The black air spread through Aluojin's eyebrows, limbs, chest, and abdomen, leaving a spider web like crack on his face.

    He blankly stared at Sheng Lingyuan, suddenly smiled, and said in shaman language, "Lingyuan-ge, you are the same right?"

    Sheng Lingyuan's expression didn't change.

    Aluojin said softly: "Otherwise, why can the gloomy sacrifice wake you up? In fact, you are the same as me. Did you ever have a good day in your whole life..."

    Before he finished speaking, resembling a cracked mud, his whole person "cracked" along those black lines, and then, together with Xuan Ji's array, he turned into ashes.

    At that moment, in the forest park of Dongchuan, all the silent birds mournfully cried towards the sky at once, and the morning mist in the mountains suddenly scattered, revealing a clear ridge.

    Sheng Lingyuan pulled off the "threads" that had been pierced into his chest without any change in his expression. The wound and the torn clothes healed quickly. He said gently: "The thunder seal I left was touched by someone, but it seemed to be just a diversion. I'm sorry, it was a mistake."

    Xuan Ji's lips moved: "You..."

    Are you all right?

    Sheng Lingyuan looked up and glanced at him, and said with a hint of a smile: "Not too old, yet what a big temper."

    After speaking, he didn't look at the place where Aluojin turned to fine ashes. He raised his legs and walked back and forth for a few steps. After walking for a while, as if remembered something, he held a tree and stood there. Xuan Ji thought he had something to say, then saw Sheng Lingyuan's knees bend and he slid down weakly against the tree.

Chapter end