Chapter 26 Alley Warfare
The city slept soundly, and the summer wind, like a homeless wanderer, roamed the empty streets.
“After the announcement of monsters roaming, people are almost invisible on the streets, and there’s no way to find anyone to ask for information.”
At the alley entrance, Su Jiu’s black robe rustled in the wind. She looked down at the location sent by Liu Hong and scanned her surroundings again. It was as empty as ever.
The silence was eerie.
“According to Sister Liu, that demonic mole can hide in the spiritual space, it’s likely man-made…”
Seeing no one around, Su Jiu stomped on the ground with her back foot, using the force to climb onto the window sill of a nearby hotel, and then sprang up with a flip, landing on the guardrail of the rooftop.
Putting away her phone, Su Jiu gently tapped her forehead, her eyes instantly turning into vertical pupils, her vision stretching and widening. After scanning, her gaze finally fell on an alley in the adjacent street.
There, it looked like a quarreling couple, the girl wanting to leave, the boy constantly pulling her hand, as if begging for something. The girl’s body became stiff and no longer moved.
With a few leaps, Su Jiu naturally landed on the side wall of the two, just as she was about to walk over and ask them if they had seen anyone strange.
A black shadow, like a kitten, suddenly appeared behind her and pounced without a word.
“Pfft!”
In an instant, Su Jiu drew a dagger from her leg sheath and, without looking back, stabbed the black shadow in the head. A warmth immediately spread onto her hand.
“Mischievous Monkey? Are there many of these outside the campus? Or else…”
Upon seeing the black shadow clearly, Su Jiu casually threw it into a trash can a few meters away. She wiped the blood off her dagger and muttered to herself.
“Who’s there?” a man’s voice called from inside the alley, interrupting Su Jiu’s thoughts. It sounded a bit like the couple from before.
Hearing this, Su Jiu took out her phone and opened the identity APP. A work permit with a black pupil popped up, along with her information: Bronze level Exorcist.
“City Exorcist, I need to ask you some questions now.”
She walked towards the man and woman who appeared to be a couple, presenting her credentials.
As she got closer, Su Jiu noticed that the girl seemed to be keeping her head down, her wrist firmly locked by the young man in front of her. She subtly gripped the dagger in her hand.
What’s wrong with her?
“Are you from the City Exorcist Team?”
The young man looked suspicious, seemingly deeply doubting Su Jiu, who was wearing a mask. He then asked his own question: “I know people in the Exorcist Team, and I don’t recall anyone like you?”
“I’m newly joined, haven’t been here for long. But why are you out here so late at night?”
As she spoke, Su Jiu’s gaze remained fixed on the girl. If the girl showed any sign of asking for help, she would immediately subdue the man.
The young man’s eyes narrowed slightly, but then he smiled, turned, and gently stroked the girl’s head from her hair to her earlobe, saying with affectionate indulgence, “It’s nothing, my girlfriend is just being difficult, wanting me to buy her some food this late at night… Sigh, she knows herself that Huayang City has been restless at night lately.”
Without waiting for Su Jiu to ask anything further, the young man, seeming quite talkative, continued with a smile, “This exorcist, listening to your voice, you should be young, right? Aren’t you afraid to be out alone? I heard there have been many Advanced Stage Warrior level monsters appearing recently.”
An attempt at probing? Or something else?
With over forty years of experience, Su Jiu was not a real high school student. She slightly lowered her eyelids and said in a casual tone, “I am a little afraid, but even if Advanced Stage Warrior level monsters appear, my companions are nearby, and we can fight them together.”
“If your strength isn’t enough, you won’t be able to wait for your companions’ rescue. You don’t have an Advanced Stage Warrior, do you?”
The young man nodded slightly in agreement, smiled, and kissed the girl’s cheek beside him,
“But my companions are nearby, just a dozen meters away, it won’t be a problem,” Su Jiu said with a genuinely innocent tone, like a student who had just left university.
Upon hearing “a dozen meters,” the young man was slightly taken aback, his expression momentarily frozen, but then he inexplicably waved his hand.
The girl trembled slightly and slowly raised her head, about to say something, when a Mischievous Monkey jumped from the balcony railing above onto the young man’s shoulder.
“Jiji jiji.” A strange sound came from its mouth.
The young man did not resist, but listened quietly. He nodded gently, his gaze towards Su Jiu gradually turning into a smile.
“What, is this monster yours?” Su Jiu asked with a smile, having already secretly activated her Avatar skill.
When asked by Su Jiu, the smile on the young man’s face deepened, but he shook his head and said with extreme seriousness, “These are not monsters, they are the most loyal messengers.”
“They told me there’s no one outside. Little sister, you seem to be lying.”
As soon as he finished speaking, the girl who had been looking down suddenly looked up. It was a haggard yet quite beautiful face. She suddenly shouted at Su Jiu, her voice hoarse, “Run! He’s a cultist!”
“Cultist? Darling, what are you talking about? You just swallowed a Poisonous Ghost Centipede, didn’t you?”
The young man tilted his head to look at the girl, grabbed her chin with one hand, and said with a strange smile, his expression appearing utterly manic.
He was the shadowy young man from before. Since it wasn’t time to meet the short boy, he had randomly kidnapped a beautiful woman.
There was no other way. Their cultivation methods and worship of foreign so-called gods required a price for power, and all sorts of desires would be infinitely amplified…
Just as the young man was about to extinguish the fire, he was informed by the Mischievous Monkeys scattered nearby that someone had forcibly entered the area, so he had to use his beast pet to control the girl.
Su Jiu wasted no more words and raised her hand, slashing towards the young man’s neck with extreme speed, as if she were facing a beast rather than a person.
The slash stirred up a gust of wind. The young man’s pupils contracted sharply. Forgetting the girl beside him, he retreated three meters, but his face was still grazed by the sword qi, dripping a few drops of scarlet.
He looked at Su Jiu with an uncertain expression, never expecting that a newly entered exorcist would be so ruthless. This gave him a sense of facing a Dragon Hunter.
Seeing Su Jiu stepping forward again, the young man glanced at the girl beside him and sneered at Su Jiu, “You forced my hand.”
Hearing this, Su Jiu’s peripheral vision followed the young man’s gaze. She saw the girl painfully collapsing on the ground, vomiting black blood. Suddenly, a meter-long centipede emitting a faint blue glow shot out from her mouth.
Its faint blue aura seemed to be some kind of poison. Within two seconds, the girl fell to the ground, unable to move…
Then, with undiminished speed, it attacked Su Jiu’s back.
“Poisonous Ghost Centipede, an Advanced Stage Warrior level monster, capable of releasing poisonous mist… I absolutely cannot be touched by the mist.”
Su Jiu, who had memorized the monster encyclopedia, immediately recognized what it was. She turned her hand holding the dagger and swiftly unleashed a sword qi towards the centipede from the opposite direction, using the sword qi to forcibly change her direction, landing at the alley entrance ten meters away from the young man.
