Chapter 58: Can’t Escape
After a while, Liu Haoyu wiped the dark red bloodstains from his Skull Crusher.
At his feet lay a corpse with a completely crushed head.
He took out a talisman from his pocket, lit it, and threw it onto the corpse.
Blue flames instantly engulfed the body, sizzling as they burned the decaying flesh and blood.
When the flames died down, only a pile of black ash remained on the ground.
However, Liu Haoyu did not put away the Skull Crusher. The eyes behind his gas mask narrowed into a line.
He stood up and looked into the depths of the pitch-black forest.
“Had enough watching? Gu Qianyang.”
Perhaps hearing Liu Haoyu’s voice, a figure in a black Taoist robe slowly applauded and emerged from behind a large tree nearby.
Besides him, there were four others.
To be precise, they were four ghost exorcists, and the Nekomata was among them.
Seeing such a grand display, Liu Haoyu frowned slightly.
“To deal with just me, so many people are needed. You really think highly of me.”
Liu Haoyu said coldly.
He had expected only Gu Qianyang, but now it seemed he had miscalculated.
Including Gu Qianyang, there were five people here, and the strength of all five was incredibly terrifying.
In a one-on-one fight, he would have a hard time defeating any of them, let alone facing all five at once.
This was destined to be a battle he could not win.
“I didn’t expect there to be such a young and vigorous ghost exorcist.”
Since Liu Haoyu was wearing a gas mask, Gu Qianyang couldn’t see his face, but he nodded with some admiration.
“Youngster, haven’t you heard a saying?”
“Even when hunting a rabbit, one must use all their strength, let alone… an unknown enemy like you.”
Gu Qianyang knew many ghost exorcists, but he had never heard of the man in the gas mask before him.
It was as if this person had appeared out of nowhere.
Why had he kidnapped Qin Liu?
And whose pawn was he?
Gu Qianyang didn’t know.
“This person is quite formidable,” the Nekomata squatted on a tree branch, its golden vertical pupils fixed on Liu Haoyu. It licked its sharp claws, “I thought it would be a mutual destruction, but it turned out to be a crushing victory.”
In fact, from the moment Liu Haoyu engaged with the ghoul, these five ghost exorcists had already noticed Liu Haoyu’s presence.
Such an exaggerated barrier might have made the military police lose their way, but for them, ghost exorcists, it was not a problem at all.
The five ghost exorcists formed five points, surrounding Liu Haoyu tightly.
Looking at these ghost exorcists, each holding a magical artifact and ready to strike, Liu Haoyu weighed the Skull Crusher in his hand. A muffled breathing sound came from beneath the gas mask.
“It seems I can’t get away today.”
Gu Qianyang’s sinister gaze swept over the man within the encirclement, and the five of them naturally heard Liu Haoyu’s low murmur.
The Nekomata licked its lips.
“Are you going to give up resistance? That would be a wise choice for you.”
“Then will you spare my life?”
Liu Haoyu looked at the Nekomata with a sarcastic gaze.
The Nekomata merely shrugged and said.
“No, we’ll just give you a quick end. You have only yourself to blame for knowing too much.”
The secrets of the mansion could not be known by anyone, and the best way to make the man before them keep silent was to eliminate him completely.
“Dead men tell no tales.”
Hearing their words, Liu Haoyu took a deep breath and then suddenly burst into laughter.
The laughter echoed through the gas mask, making the five of them vigilant for a moment.
A cornered beast will fight. In this situation, they had to be prepared.
“You are right,” Liu Haoyu slowly raised his hands, making a gesture of surrender. “Dead men indeed tell no tales…”
But at that moment, Gu Qianyang’s pupils constricted sharply.
“Careful! He’s forming a seal!”
However, by the time he spoke, it was already too late.
A dazzling red light flared, and the Skull Crusher at Liu Haoyu’s feet suddenly exploded, sending hundreds of steel fragments glinting coldly in all directions like a downpour.
The closest ghost exorcist, unable to defend himself, was pierced in the thigh by several fragments, even though he managed to protect his vital points.
Another one’s compass was smashed to pieces.
The Nekomata dodged in time and was unharmed, but it smelled a scorched scent. The scattered fragments had ignited the surrounding forest, and the flames began to spread like wildfire.
He couldn’t escape from here, but he didn’t seem to want to let them leave either.
Gu Qianyang lowered his Taoist robe, which had blocked the fragments, and realized at that moment that all the fragments had passed through the man’s body.
This meant that the man before him was not a real physical entity.
He was in a state between a spiritual body and a physical body. To put it bluntly…
He was a ghost?
Why would a ghost retain such high intelligence?
Gu Qianyang couldn’t understand, but no matter if the man before him was human or ghost, he had to die here!
———-
Meanwhile, Qin Liu, clutching the Black Book, was running frantically towards the direction of the forest.
The Black Book wasn’t sure if what it was doing was right.
But seeing the forest in the distance transformed into a deep blue sea of flames, it knew…
From the bottom of its heart, it also didn’t want Liu Haoyu to die.
From the aura permeating the air, it was clear that it wasn’t just Gu Qianyang and the Nekomata who had arrived here, but also other ghost exorcists, and their strength was equally formidable.
Given the current time, Liu Haoyu was in grave danger, and might have already perished.
“Hoo… hoo…”
But even after so long, Qin Liu continued to run forward. She held a talisman in her hand, and a semi-transparent protective shield enveloped her.
The heat waves distorted the air, and the entire world seemed to refract with ripples.
Qin Liu endured the scorching heat, stepping on ashes as she moved forward.
Suddenly, she stepped on something round, which caused her to slip and fall to the ground.
When she stood up and looked carefully, it was a half-charred arm, its fingertips tightly gripping a burning talisman.
Qin Liu didn’t know whose arm it was, but her sense of unease deepened, and her gaze became more anxious. She ignored the exhaustion in her body, and the hot air around her made her breathing burn like fire.
“Please don’t let anything happen…”
At this moment, she could only pray, but how much effect could this prayer have?
It probably couldn’t even comfort herself.
“Thump!”
The sound of a heavy object falling came from ahead. Through the distorted air, she clearly saw.
Liu Haoyu, holding a peachwood sword, slowly looked up. Only the upper part of his gas mask remained, the lower half had long since shattered, revealing his dry, cracked lips.
His left arm was gone, and he was currently kneeling on one knee in the center of the circular scorched earth.
Beside him, two ghost exorcists were heavily injured.
One of them had fallen to the ground, and his fate was unknown.
The fur on the Nekomata’s tail had been burned off, and it was now bristling with rage, letting out continuous hisses.
Gu Qianyang’s left eye had a deep gash, and blood flowed continuously from it, making his angry face extremely ferocious.
