Chapter 20: Night Patrol
No longer hesitating, [Mutated Spiritual Root] forcibly loaded, and the sealed power instantly surged forth.
Yuan Zhu, situated in Running, had his eyes glow with dark gold, his pupils contracting into a vertical line. As his breathing rose and fell, the shadows within ten meters around him also began to stir restlessly, like boiling, rolling water.
The oppressive pressure brought by the armored warrior receded like the tide, while the man charging toward him similarly showed surprise mixed with delight in his gaze, inwardly sighing: As expected! This kind of guy who dares to wander at night and faces temporal anomalies unflinchingly is definitely not simple. This time he guessed right.
The black-armored knight suddenly stopped, raising his right arm toward Yuan Zhu’s direction. The chains wrapped around his arm guard emitted crisp clashing sounds, rattling nonstop.
His right hand then made a ranging gesture, then switched to sword fingers, pointing from afar at the fleeing man’s back. The chain hook claw wrapped around his arm immediately came alive, launching into the air and shooting at extreme speed, piercing straight through the chest from behind just one second before the other was about to step out of the alley.
Crack!
Under the moonlight, blood light flashed, the mechanical claw piercing through the man’s chest like a drill bit, then opening and blooming like petals, stabbing back into the flesh. The armored man swung his right hand, turning the chain into a forward arc-shaped wave, ultimately reaching the man’s chest.
‘Pfft!’ With a sound, the man who already had one leg stepping into the Running area was yanked high into the air by the chain hook claw, then heavily smashed back onto the ground of Xiao Tian Shui Jing Lane, spitting out a mist of blood from his mouth.
“Save, save me!”
One hand tightly clutched the package in his arms, while the other trembled and reached toward Yuan Zhu, hoping he could lend a hand.
At this moment, Yuan Zhu’s body was already covered and wrapped by shadows, pitch black all over, his body elastically trembling like jelly. He struggled to control himself from transforming into [Tiger Demon], instead striving to maintain a human silhouette, revealing the outline of a kitten standing upright.
He had a premonition that once he could perfectly manipulate shadow power, he might not necessarily have to turn into a black shadow tiger demon; he could similarly retain human features, transform, and obtain a ‘humanoid demonic monster posture’ more suited for battle.
Clatter… clatter……
The armored figure once again stepped forward, walking step by step toward the alley entrance, not rashly attacking the shadow demonic creatures. He merely twisted his right arm back and forth, reeling in the launched chain back to his wrist, dragging the man whose mouth kept overflowing with blood backward, leaving a striking bloodstain on the bluestone pavement.
Ding-dong…… ding-dong……
The copper bell rang out one after another, spreading simultaneously in the moonlight and dark spacetime, suppressing all anomalous elements and dispelling the dangers hidden in the shadows.
Even the shadowified Yuan Zhu was forced into an unprecedented state of calm rationality. Power surged within his body like a volcano about to erupt, ready at any moment to manipulate shadows to unleash ultimate moves. But his mental thoughts were unprecedentedly calm and clear, not wanting to rashly attack, displaying utmost rational restraint.
“Right now, I’m as cool-headed as Zhuge Liang!” Yuan Zhu boasted to himself, feeling exceptionally good.
Game Sprite: “Your mental state is very strange, overly rational, just like cold machinery. That bell has the effect of ‘calming the mind and spirit’. Looking at that guy’s appearance, he wouldn’t be some midnight night watchman, would he?”
Because the armored warrior showed no attacking intent, Yuan Zhu also restrained himself from acting, maintaining his shadow reinforcement state and silently observing the other’s actions.
Crack!
The armored warrior walked step by step to the side of the man who was frantically vomiting blood, his eyes beginning to glaze over. He straightened and tightened the iron chain, blood surging violently from the wound. Immediately after, he stepped out, his iron boot crushing the man’s shoulder. The package he had been clutching tightly also fell to the ground as his arm went limp.
The armored man held a blood-light lantern in his left hand, bending down at the waist. His right hand grabbed the package, yanking it forcefully to reveal a plump doll gleaming with metallic luster inside.
It was a plump doll the size of a full moon baby, with chubby little arms and legs, eyes tightly closed with no breathing, its surface showing a metallic sheen, like a lifelike handicraft.
However, at the hands and feet of the metal infant, they seemed to have been deliberately torn off, without hands or feet. Instead, at the wound cross-sections, densely packed plant roots extended out, like processed ginseng root tendrils.
The armored man ignored Yuan Zhu staring intently from not far away. He merely formed his five fingers into claws, viciously pinching the infant at the back of its neck.
The next moment, this plump-looking metal doll suddenly opened its mouth, revealing a mouth full of dense, sharp tusks, and emitted a piercing, shrill scream and cry. Yuan Zhu immediately felt a stabbing pain as if his brain membrane was about to be torn and gouged. This cry was poisonous!
Then the plump infant twisted its limbs, struggling violently. Though it looked like metal, its body displayed the elastic texture of flesh. And the root tendrils extending from the limb stumps also came alive, wildly growing and spreading in the air.
Some root tendrils drilled into the blood-vomiting man’s flesh, frantically extracting his vitality. Another portion of root tendrils wound and spread along the arm pinching its neck.
Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding…!
The left hand holding the blood lantern quickly shook, making the copper bell emit urgent ringing that spread in the darkness, suppressing the sharp, piercing scream of the metal infant.
Amid the standoff of these two sounds, the chain on the armored warrior’s right arm came alive again, slithering like a poisonous snake toward the metal infant, intertwining and slaughtering with the root tendrils flailing in the air, ultimately binding and sealing the desperately resisting metal monster infant.
After all this ended, Yuan Zhu noticed that the scene in the opposite alley gradually blurred, the transparent air beginning to fluctuate and distort violently. The man, dying with only half a breath left, slightly trembled his fingers, his eyes showing despair, regret, unwillingness, resentment… glaring deadly at Yuan Zhu who hadn’t acted from start to finish, filled with hatred in his heart.
The armored warrior picked up the infant wrapped into an iron ball, turned his head to look at Yuan Zhu’s gradually receding phantom, then flicked his hand to send a token flying, breaking through the distorting and separating spatial fluctuation, escaping from the moonlight world into the dim shadow world.
Snap.
Yuan Zhu likewise raised his hand to catch the flying copper token, then the scene before him suddenly vanished like a TV shutting off. Xiao Tian Shui Jing Lane disappeared, replaced by a row of shuttered shops.
The two briefly connected worlds thus silently disconnected.
Deactivating the [Boss Template] that hadn’t been useful, Yuan Zhu picked up the copper token in his hand, which was engraved with [Night Watch Division] three words. As he expected, it was a nighttime patrol security officer.
However, what exactly was that world opposite? A mere nighttime security patrol officer had given him considerable pressure. Was it that the other side was full of powerhouses, or was his own [Tiger Demon Form] actually a weakling?
The Game Sprite also shook off the influence of the copper bell’s ‘rationality blessing’, recovering its lively energy, and said: “It seems the spacetime phenomenon just now wasn’t caused by [Great Desolation Immortal Scripture]. Even you were just a passerby NPC who stumbled into the scene. The real protagonist was that unlucky guy who died. He should be a Running local who stole something he shouldn’t have, then got chased and killed!”
Yuan Zhu also pieced together the sequence of events, somewhat worried: “Is this world a bit too dangerously excessive? It feels like every three steps, you run into something unclean. Docking of different spacetimes is something I’m qualified to encounter? What a pity, if that guy had run a bit faster and successfully returned to Running, escaping the armored warrior’s pursuit, I could’ve blackmailed and snatched that root tendril monster infant.”
Game Sprite: “Not recommended. That strange infant contains extreme polluted aura. Stronger than the ‘shadow root’ that the [Tiger Demon Template] devoured, it’s a super bomb. That armored warrior might be a justice partner who contains such evil contraband. His copper bell is a treasure that suppresses evil, exorcises demons, and calms the mind rationally.”
Yuan Zhu: “What do you think that moonlit alley was? Another corner of Du Ling Star? Or some other different time and space? Or one of the eight external universes?”
In confusion, he picked up the Night Watch token for close inspection, muttering: “It’s actually Earth clerky script? There must be unspeakable secrets between Du Ling and Earth! Who knows what this thing is for? Can it let me cross over too?”
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