CH 26.1

translator: baumkuchen  editor: ellabells

Lu Qingjiu pointed the gun at Hu Shu’s head. Now, the distance between the two was less than two metres. Even if Lu Qingjiu wasn’t using a gun, he could still easily hit Hu Shu, never mind the fact that Hu Shu had no desire to dodge.

“What are you looking forward to?” Lu Qingjiu stared at Hu Shu, “You’re looking forward to me shooting?”

Faced with Lu Qingjiu’s questioning, Hu Shu began to get a little impatient. He spat the cigarette in his mouth out onto the ground and said, “Don’t disturb the fun of my game. If you don’t want to play, I’ll announce the end of the game right now.”

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Lu Qingjiu said, “And after that?”

Hu Shu broke into an ear-splitting grin and licked his lips with a scarlet tongue, “After that, of course, it’s time to enjoy a delicious meal.”

Lu Qingjiu said, “Alright.” He took a deep breath, as if about to pull the trigger. Seeing Lu Qingjiu’s movements, a kind of crazed excitement appeared in Hu Shu’s black eyes. Lu Qingjiu fired — the bullet shot out of the gun, the huge force of the recoil making Lu Qingjiu take a step back. However, after the gunshot, Hu Shu was still standing across from Lu Qingjiu, perfectly fine. There weren’t any wounds on his body, instead, there was a still-smoking bullethole at his feet.

“What the fuck are you doing—” Hu Shu hadn’t anticipated this happening. He immediately raged, “Laozi told you to shoot at me, where are you fucking shooting?!”

Lu Qingjiu said, “Ah, sorry, I’ve never shot a gun, my hands suddenly slipped.” Yeah, right. He actually purposely aimed at Hu Shu’s feet. The fierce god before him who wanted him to shoot clearly didn’t harbour good intentions. Even though he didn’t know why he was doing this, Lu Qingjiu had still grasped onto an essential factor — he seemed to be seeking death.

Hu Shu glared fiercely at Lu Qingjiu.

“Then…… One more time?” Lu Qingjiu was made a little uncomfortable by his glare and could only awkwardly make a proposal.

“Where would I have the time to try again with you? Fine, since you don’t want to play, then nevermind,” Hu Shu sneered, “Go die!!” After saying this, he rushed towards Lu Qingjiu. At some unknown time, a gleaming dagger had appeared in his hands. Now, he unrestrainedly stabbed at Lu Qingjiu.

Lu Qingjiu’s reaction was extremely quick. He turned, wanting to climb up onto the body of the pickup truck, but Hu Shu had already caught up behind him, and with one grab, caught hold of his arm and forcefully pulled him away from the pickup truck.

Lu Qingjiu’s strength was not even close to Hu Shu’s level, immediately falling into disadvantage on the first move and was pressed down to the ground by Hu Shu with a death grip on his neck.

Hu Shu’s gaze towards Lu Qingjiu was filled with malicious intent. He kept exerting pressure with his hand, “The game is over.”

Lu Qingjiu’s mouth fell open in pain. He could only repeatedly try to get out of Hu Shu’s hold. As his hand scrabbled on the ground next to him, he felt an ice-cold something… it was the dagger that Hu Shu had casually thrown to the side. He threw away the dagger? Logic dictated that brains lacking oxygen should be unable to think, but in this instance, Lu Qingjiu’s mind was abnormally clear. He grabbed hold of the dagger and stabbed it into Hu Shu’s arm.

Hu Shu screeched from the pain, but didn’t loosen his grip. Instead, he became even more excited, giggling into Lu Qingjiu’s ear. His voice was as if he’d become a different person, turning low and sinister, “You found it? Choose. Today, either you will die… or I will die…”

Lu Qingjiu forced out, “Fucking cheater, the dead one would clearly be Hu Shu…”

Hearing this, Hu Shu laughed. He asked, “So what?”

Lu Qingjiu stabbed at Hu Shu’s arm again, wanting to make him let go from the pain. But it seemed Hu Shu, who was being controlled by the fierce god, was completely unaffected by this minor injury, the strength of his grip not relaxing at all.

Black spots began to appear in Lu Qingjiu’s vision and his conscious started to go hazy. Now, he did indeed have a choice: to directly take the life of the person before him. But he didn’t want to do so. His last bit of reason was telling him that there was a chance Hu Shu wasn’t dead, but if he stabbed in the knife, Hu Shu would really die…

Just at this critical moment, the pickup truck behind them honked a few times before actually turning around and directly driving over to Lu Qingjiu and Hu Shu.

Hu Shu had never expected that that little pickup truck would actually be a spirit and seemed to be shocked. But he quickly calmed down. Unexpectedly, he gave the pickup truck that had drove towards him an angry not-smile, loosened his grip from around Lu Qingjiu’s neck, and coldly spat out two words, “How interesting.” Following that, he stood up from the ground, faced the pickup truck, and opened his arms, “Come, I want to see if you can kill me.”

The headlights of the pickup truck flashed, and a long “beep” sounded. It then let out that special buzz of the accelerator pedal being floored. Lu Qingjiu wasn’t in time to stop it and saw it rush over towards Hu Shu.

“No—” Lu Qingjiu yelled.

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Just as Lu Qingjiu thought that the pickup truck would directly run Hu Shu over, an ice-blue flower bloomed from its front. Upon seeing this flower, Hu Shu’s expression changed drastically, but before he could react, he was wrapped up by the ice-blue flower.

“Fuck—” He didn’t know what exactly this flower was, but the wrapped up Hu Shu began to scream in horror and rage.

After Hu Shu was wrapped up by the pickup truck, a plume of black mist filled the truck cab. After the black mist dissipated, unexpectedly, Bai Yuehu appeared inside the truck.

He looked slightly different from his usual self. His face was abnormally pale, but his lips were shockingly red. He left the truck, walked over to Lu Qingjiu, and extended a hand towards him, “You’re alright, right?”

“Yeah, alright,” Lu Qingjiu took his hand. He noticed that there seemed to be some red marks by Bai Yuehu’s lips, “What’s that on your mouth?”

Hearing this, Bai Yuehu lightly wiped away the markings with his thumb and licked his lips, “Nothing.”

Lu Qingjiu, “…” He seemed to smell a hint of blood. Connecting that to that sated expression on Bai Yuehu’s face, Lu Qingjiu surmised that he might have just had a filling meal.

Currently, Hu Shu was still wrapped up within that blue flower. Lu Qingjiu walked over to take a look and realised that this flower should be part of the pickup truck’s body, it was a blue coloured flesh flower.

“Let him out.” Bai Yuehu licked off the last remnants of blood on his lips.

Only then did the pickup truck let go of Hu Shu. Hu Shu fell to the ground, seeming to have already lost consciousness. His eyes were closed shut and his arm still had the wounds caused by Lu Qingjiu.

“Is he alright?” Lu Qingjiu asked, a little nervous.

“He’s fine,” Bai Yuehu said, “He won’t die.”

Lu Qingjiu asked, “What about that fierce god?”

Bai Yuehu replied, “He was eaten by me. There are some godly remnants left, so I might still need a little longer to dispose of them, but they won’t be able to do anything.”

Lu Qingjiu was originally planning on helping Hu Shu up, but was stopped by Bai Yuehu, who said, “Don’t bother, all he has are some flesh wounds on his arm. He’ll wake up in a bit. If you’re still not reassured, just call 120.”

Lu Qingjiu nodded. “Alright.” He took out his cell phone, dialled 120, and reported his location.

Hu Shu’s body was coated in some strange mucus. It seemed to have been left behind by the pickup truck. Lu Qingjiu said, “I never knew our family’s pickup truck was actually so great.”

Bai Yuehu’s expression turned slightly strange when he heard those words. He asked, “Oh… That counts as great?”

Lu Qingjiu said, “If not for it, I might have died.”

“You couldn’t have died,” Bai Yuehu replied indifferently, “It’s a god after all, it can’t personally make a move to kill people. If it did, it would be stained with blood and its godly power would be greatly reduced.”

“Right, what kind of god is it?” Only then did Lu Qingjiu think of an important point.

“Have you heard of the Shebishi?” Bai Yuehu asked.

Lu Qingjiu exclaimed, stunned, “It’s actually the Shebishi?!” After the incident with the wenyao, Lu Qingjiu had revised The Classic of Mountains and Seas, and has an impression of every spirit. The Classic of Mountains and Seas didn’t just have records of spirits, but also of various gods. Shebishi was a type of god. Legends said that he was a heavenly god, but was killed for various reasons. However, his soul didn’t disappear after death so he continued to live with the body of a corpse. This kind of god had the body of a beast but the face of a man, and even had two green snakes hanging on his ears. It was just that for some unknown reason, his presence was really low. At least, before carefully reading over The Classic of Mountains and Seas, Lu Qingjiu had never heard of this god’s name.

“En,” Bai Yuehu said, “A fallen phoenix can’t compare to a chicken, probably is referring to him.”

Lu Qingjiu forced out a smile.

With the progression of time, people’s faith and superstitions became weaker and weaker, not to mention for a minor god like Shebishi. Other than the written records, he didn’t seem to have any believers. Bai Yuehu had said before, a forgotten god couldn’t even compare to a spirit.

“You ate him?” Lu Qingjiu asked.

“Gods are immortal,” Bai Yuehu said, “What I ate was only a part of his remaining faith. As long as he is patient enough and continues to accumulate power, there will inevitably come a time when he’ll be able to find a new vessel for his power.” Speaking up to here, he smiled. “But you don’t need to worry. Continuing to search for faith isn’t such an easy matter.” Especially for a forgotten god.

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Lu Qingjiu nodded.

By the time the ambulance came and took Hu Shu away, Hu Shu had already come to. When he woke up, he stared at Lu Qingjiu with blank eyes, seeming to not understand what had happened before this.

Lu Qingjiu said to him, “Go to the hospital first and get those wounds on your arm dressed. We can find some other time to slowly talk.”

Hu Shu said, “Alright… I don’t remember anything. Right, who caused these wounds?”

Lu Qingjiu answered calmly, “A non-human.”

Hu Shu, “Oh.”

Only after sending Hu Shu away in the ambulance did Lu Qingjiu and Bai Yuehu drive back home in the pickup truck. In the pickup truck, Bai Yuehu knocked on the steering wheel, and coldly warned, “Do not use that to wrap up Lu Qingjiu.”

The pickup truck let out a honk. Somehow, Lu Qingjiu could actually hear a trace of sadness in it.

Lu Qingjiu had pretty much already guessed what the pickup truck’s original form was, but what exactly was that purple flower? Is it its special ability? Originally, Lu Qingjiu didn’t think too much about it, but after hearing Bai Yuehu’s warning, a strange feeling formed in Lu Qingjiu’s heart. Thus, he secretly took out his phone, clicked on the search bar, and entered in one word: slugs.

After the search results loaded, Lu Qingjiu clicked into the image search tab. Following that, he found that people indeed shouldn’t be too curious. Two slugs were intertwined on the webpage, and on their lower bodies bloomed an ice-blue flesh flower. The caption under the photo was: Slugs mating. So, what that ice-blue flower actually was, he completely understood now.

Lu Qingjiu silently put down the phone. He had the urge to put his face in his palms. No wonder Bai Yuehu told him to not to touch Hu Shu. He actually thought that Bai Yuehu was worried about Hu Shu getting hurt for a second time. But now… it was probably because he didn’t want him to touch that subtle layer of mucus on Hu Shu’s body.