Chapter 240
Chapter 240
“Earth Womb?” Qin Ying repeated instinctively.
Han Lie grabbed her wrist and pulled her into a run along the faux-antique bluestone street.
“Ah Ying, what was this city originally built on?”
His question caught Qin Ying off guard. As she ran after him, she searched her memory.
The wooden pagoda in the ancient quarter had stood for more than a thousand years, and the city had gradually grown around it.
What had this place originally been…?
After thinking for a moment, Qin Ying answered, “An ancient battlefield!”
More precisely, it was where the aftermath of an ancient battle had been dealt with. Long ago, a great war had taken place here, and a vast number of captured soldiers had been buried alive at this very site.
The wooden pagoda itself had been built to suppress the baleful energy.
Even into modern times, people often dug up human bones while laying the foundations for new homes.
By the time she finished her brief explanation, Han Lie had already pulled her across the street.
His expression turned grave. “No wonder.”
“I’ll explain later. First, we need to find that Xie fellow and Jinbao.”
His pace slowed slightly as he dragged Qin Ying along.
Noticing this, Qin Ying immediately said, “Go on ahead.”
She lightly tapped Di Shang on her right hand, about to tell him she had a way to protect herself.
Before she could, Han Lie spun around, wrapped an arm around her waist, and slung her over his shoulder like a sack.
“Hold on tight,” he said, then broke into an even faster sprint.
Qin Ying pushed herself upright and wrapped her arms around his neck.
Han Lie was incredibly fast. Even with a fully grown person over his shoulder, he reached the Hu Family Manor without so much as panting.
In terms of sheer physical ability, even the world’s greatest athletes likely couldn’t hold a candle to him.
Fortunately, he was that fast. By the time they reached the Hu Family Manor, half of Xie Shao’s foot had already been dragged over the threshold.
He was tenacious, though. He clung to the door panel with all his strength, fighting against whatever was trying to drag him inside.
Purple-blue lightning crackled through the air. The Thunderbird Jinbao itself was nowhere to be seen; all that was visible was a dancing arc of lightning that struck down every bat trying to approach Xie Shao.
Had Jinbao not stayed behind, Xie Shao would probably have been dragged through the doors long ago.
The moment Qin Ying and Han Lie approached the entrance and entered the bats’ range, they came under attack as well.
A swarm of bats hurtled straight at Qin Ying’s face. Han Lie swept up an arm and scattered them, and in the same instant, lightning and silver light erupted.
The moment Jinbao saw Qin Ying under attack, it abandoned Xie Shao without hesitation. Arcs of electricity crashed down, electrocuting scores of bats on the spot.
The silver light, meanwhile, came from inside Qin Ying’s right sleeve. Di Shang’s passive defense activated to protect its master, transforming into a silver whip in her hand.
It looked slender, but one edge was actually a razor-sharp blade. Every bat in its path, and even the unlucky crows caught in the attack, was sliced cleanly in two.
All of this happened in the blink of an eye.
A muffled grunt rang out. Caught off guard, Xie Shao had several clusters of bats smother his face.
Their stench filled his nose as their sharp claws and teeth tore into his face, leaving deep, bloody gashes with every bite and swipe.
Xie Shao proved himself tough. He didn’t panic, thrash around, or give up his struggle against whatever was dragging him.
Instead, he smashed his face into the ground as though he didn’t care if he disfigured himself, crushing the bats trying to gouge out his eyes.
He didn’t come away unscathed. His nose was instantly knocked crooked, blood gushing from it. When he raised his head again, two flattened bat carcasses were stuck to his face.
“Jinbao, help Xie Shao,” Qin Ying ordered, gripping the metal whip Di Shang had transformed into.
The airborne Thunderbird hesitated for a moment, then flapped its wings and shot toward Xie Shao like a bolt of lightning, too fast for the naked eye to follow.
Wreathed in thunder, it circled Xie Shao once. Amid a barrage of crackling explosions, countless bats and crows fell dead, filling the air with the stench of charred flesh.
Qin Ying and Han Lie rushed forward and grabbed Xie Shao by the arms.
Qin Ying immediately felt that the force gripping Xie Shao’s foot was unbelievably powerful.
It was as though an elephant were pulling from the other end.
Han Lie grabbed Xie Shao’s arm with one hand, then reached down with the other and caught hold of the back of his waistband.
Even the tough-as-nails Xie Shao, whose face had been smashed askew, finally cursed, “My pants are riding up! They’re crushing my crotch!”
No sooner had he spoken than the force dragging him through the door grew even stronger.
Han Lie tightened his grip on the back of Xie Shao’s pants and said without hesitation, “Bear with it.”
Xie Shao sucked in breath after breath through his teeth. How the hell was he supposed to bear with this?
Qin Ying, however, was quick on the uptake. Realizing her meager strength wasn’t doing much, she let go and instead seized the hem of the Black Trench Coat where it had ridden up over Xie Shao’s lower back.
She used Di Shang to slice open the back of the coat.
With a series of ripping sounds, the two sides of the Black Trench Coat, lined with thick hide, split apart.
No longer concealed by the Chi Hide in the Black Trench Coat, Xie Shao’s body began swelling and mutating at a speed visible to the naked eye.
In the blink of an eye, apart from his arms still encased in the coat sleeves, his back was densely covered in black bristles.
Han Lie froze for a moment. “Dang Kang?”
“A wild boar!” Qin Ying blurted out as well.
Xie Shao raised his head. Most of his mangled face bulged with thick flesh and sprouted black bristles, while his deformed snout thrust outward and grew a curved tusk.
“It’s a Dang Kang!” Once his mutated body was exposed, Xie Shao’s strength surged, improving his situation instead.
An indescribable snort rumbled from his throat, like an enraged boar.
Qin Ying watched his back inflate like a balloon, slabs of fibrous muscle bulging one after another. She could almost hear a woven plastic sack being ripped apart.
As those muscles swelled, combined with Han Lie’s strength, the tide turned.
Not only did Xie Shao manage to get back to his feet, but he also pulled the leg trapped beyond the door out by a fraction.
Whatever was holding his leg was exposed as well.
The light was poor, but by the flickering lightning around Jinbao, Qin Ying vaguely made out an arm gripping Xie Shao.
An arm… a thick, muscular man’s arm that Qin Ying didn’t know how to describe.
She flicked Di Shang, which had taken the form of a whip. It dissolved like mercury for an instant before condensing into a short blade.
Qin Ying stepped forward and hacked at the arm.
Even with the peerless sharpness of a weapon formed by Di Shang, Qin Ying felt tremendous resistance, as though her blade were cutting through more than a dozen layers of thick cowhide.
Its sharp edge sliced through most of the arm at first, but the deeper it went, the greater the resistance became.
Afraid the blade would get stuck, Qin Ying yanked it back.
The next instant, all three of them heard a violent wail erupt from behind the vermilion gates of the Hu Family Manor.
The voice was deep and raspy, belonging to a grown man, yet its sobs sounded like those of a child.
It seemed to be throwing a tantrum because Qin Ying’s blow had hurt it.
Qin Ying had little sympathy to spare. Realizing she had managed to injure it, she pressed her advantage, pulled the blade free, and struck again.
With a metallic clang, the blade hit the arm’s rock-hard bone.
It carved a deep gouge into the bone, sending white bone dust flying.
In pain, the creature finally loosened its grip.
Xie Shao hunched forward and wrenched his foot out from beyond the door. Han Lie held him up and retreated several steps.
“What the hell is that thing?” Xie Shao had swollen to over two meters tall, and the bones in his foot were broken. Han Lie supported him with one arm.
“It’s an Earth Womb, a baby born from the ley lines.”
The crying behind the gates of the Hu Family Manor continued as the doors creaked open.
At last, the thing behind them revealed its true form.
Its hunched body was knotted with muscle. The stocky, grotesquely stunted humanoid completely blocked the doorway.
If it stood straight, it looked as though it would be five or six meters tall.
Eight arms grew from its ribs, their claws flailing wildly through the air.
The arm Qin Ying had nearly severed hung limply at its side.
The thing behind the door sobbed and sniffled. Huge tears and streams of drool rolled down its face, which somehow looked both old and infantile.
It threw itself on the ground and rolled around in a tantrum.
Its male anatomy was extremely conspicuous.
Qin Ying and Xie Shao both turned to Han Lie and demanded in unison, “You call this thing a baby?”