Chapter 92: Ancient Sacrifice (1)

As long as you like it. I’ll take you back in a bit to pack up, and then we’ll head straight to Yanjing. After giving Xiao Keai a look that said, “You’re finally getting it,” Wu Zui said this.

“Master, why don’t we take Sister Rourou with us? She really likes the dissection lab over in Yanjing anyway. Since we’re going there this time, how about bringing her along too?” Xiao Keai thought for a moment and decided it would be nice to bring a girl who could chat with her and occasionally come up with little inventions.

“Sister Rourou? Since when were you two that close?”

Wu Zui had been about to drive, but he immediately turned around and looked at Xiao Keai in surprise.

That girl, Ming Rourou, was definitely not a good sort.

At the thought of the fellow who always schemed to steal his blood whenever nothing was going on, Wu Zui could not help growing wary.

“Well... since the time we came back from Yanjing!” Xiao Keai tilted her head and recalled. More precisely, it had probably been after they returned to Seaside and she had traded Wu Zui’s blood to Ming Rourou for a few useful little gadgets.

If Wu Zui had known, he would have praised Ming Rourou for understanding indirect tactics. Since she could not fool him, she had turned to misleading his disciple instead.

“Be careful. That woman is far too sly. Don’t let her sell you out and have you counting the money for her,” Wu Zui warned when he thought of Ming Rourou’s designs on himself and then looked at Xiao Keai, who also had a special constitution.

“Got it~”

Xiao Keai nodded to show she understood. As for whether she took it to heart... that was another matter.

Anyway, if she did not, then once Ming Rourou drugged her, knocked her out, and drew her blood, she would understand when she woke up.

Don’t ask Wu Zui how he knew. The past was too painful to recall.

In order to keep Xiao Keai from being targeted by those strange spirits again, Wu Zui, while accompanying her back, called Ming Rourou and told her to wait at the door. That way, once they had taken the luggage, the three of them could set off directly for Yanjing.

Of course, he paid a tube of blood for that.

With Ming Rourou, there was nothing Wu Zui could get without a tube of blood. If one was not enough, then two would do.

Very quickly, everyone was assembled and the car was ready. Wu Zui took the two troublesome burdens, one big and one small, and sped off toward Yanjing.

By then, after Wu Zui’s warning, Xiao Anguo already understood how serious the matter was. No father wanted his daughter to become food for a ghostly spirit. So in Yanjing, he set aside his work for the time being and began arranging matters for Xiao Keai’s safety.

The best solution, in fact, was for her to live with Xiao Anguo and benefit from the protection enjoyed by a ministerial-level leader. So long as there was no major disaster like a high-level horde assault, the security around Xiao Anguo should be absolutely fine.

Xiao Anguo naturally thought the same. The strange celestial phenomenon had already reached its peak influence on ghosts and monsters, and now was exactly the time when large numbers of awakened individuals were needed to deal with them.

Even the guards assigned to the top brass in the country had to be used sparingly. Xiao Anguo was working from home anyway, and Xiao Keai would be staying in a magnetically enhanced room when she returned. Adding a few more people to one building should hardly make protection impossible.

On the road, Wu Zui had already explained Xiao Keai’s constitution to her. The one who had suddenly come home was very unhappy about it. After successfully coaxing her into a mood fit for petting a cat, Wu Zui felt his wallet might become even emptier.

By the time the three of them arrived at Xiao Anguo’s residence, Wu Zui and Ming Rourou had also managed to ride in on Xiao Keai’s good fortune and enjoy the benefits of ministerial treatment.

From the outside, Xiao Anguo’s residence was merely a two-story house with a courtyard. Aside from being a little large in terms of footprint, it gave no hint at all that this was the home of a senior official. In fact, from the outside, it looked rather shabby even by the standards of Yanjing.

The furnishings inside were equally down-to-earth. Not to mention that Xiao Anguo was the head of the Bureau of Investigation, even Xiao Keai’s mother was the owner of a large corporation. Yet the decor was almost... atrocious.

Only after descending the stairs through a hidden interior door did Wu Zui realize that the second floor above was merely a façade. The space beneath this little house was vast, and the security was exceptional. Even the stairwell had been painted with a mixture of magnetite and gold.

Walking in here, not to mention ghosts and monsters, even Wu Zui, a four-star spirit investigator, felt his head buzzing from the chaotic magnetic field nearby. Presumably, if a ghost or monster came inside, it would be finished by the magnetic energy flooding the place.

The underground portion of the house had five levels in total. The upper three were defensive zones, and only the lower two were living quarters.

And the security checks in those three defensive levels had already turned over every single item the three of them had brought with them. Only Wu Zui’s golden longsword and Xiao Keai’s golden hammer had not been confiscated.

As for high-explosive magnetic energy rounds, golden bombs, and other disposable wide-area weapons, even the scalpel Ming Rourou somehow kept hidden had all been discovered by a female security inspector and confiscated.

Watching Wu Zui grow increasingly numb under the security checks, Xiao Keai sighed and said in a resentful tone, “Now do you understand why I didn’t want to come back? This is supposed to be going home? Even in the old days, when a family was searched and stripped bare, it wouldn’t have been this thorough, would it?”

Wu Zui could not refute that.

Ming Rourou, on the other hand, was quite disappointed. The pills she had prepared according to an ancient recipe were confiscated as well. Although the analyzer nearby could not determine what they were for, safety came first: unknown items were not allowed inside.

Without tools, did she think she could not bring down these two blood banks? She was underestimating her!

Ming Rourou stared intently at Wu Zui and Xiao Keai from behind. In her view, Wu Zui would take a little more effort, since he was already on guard against her. But Xiao Keai... tsk, she was just a little lamb.

Her vigilance is far too poor. Baa~

At that moment, Wu Zui, who had sensed Ming Rourou’s gaze, suddenly turned around, put a hand on her shoulder, and warned, “Do you know where you are? Don’t do anything reckless. Be careful or you’ll be shot full of holes!”

“Are you worrying about me? I’m so touched~ Does that mean the three of us are living together?” Ming Rourou, startled by him, showed no sign of panic at all. Instead, she smiled sweetly at him and spoke in a soft, flirtatious voice.

“Just because we’re in the same building means we’re living together? Then you don’t need to go back and work at the bureau anymore. In the Seaside City Investigation Bureau, the moment you walk in, you’re ‘living together’ with several hundred men and women!” Wu Zui snorted. With a person like Ming Rourou, he did not dare relax for even a moment.

“You’re saying that to me... it hurts my feelings so much~” Ming Rourou rubbed at her eyes in a delicate, tearful manner, looking as though she might burst into tears any second. But even a fool could tell she was not the least bit upset. It was completely an act.

The Xiao Keai who would normally bare her teeth at Ming Rourou to defend her rightful place was unusually quiet today, as though this master were not hers at all.

While the three of them bantered, they soon reached the lowest level. Xiao Anguo had finished handling their arrangements and was busy working now, with no time to deal with them. How many matters the country had to handle every day was known only to heaven; in any case, Xiao Anguo had not rested in a very long time.

So the ones who received them were the guards here. After confirming their identities, they led them to their quarters.

The three rooms were not adjacent to Xiao Anguo’s. Each room here seemed fairly small, only about fifty or sixty square meters, and each was arranged differently.

For instance, Wu Zui’s room had fitness equipment in it, clearly prepared with the knowledge that he trained in martial arts often. Ming Rourou’s room, meanwhile, had rows of bookshelves lined with books on dissecting aberrations, along with some case materials.

As for the promised dissection room for aberrant corpses? That was asking too much. Bring an aberrant corpse in here? Impossible.

And what was in Xiao Keai’s room, Wu Zui did not know, because she would not let anyone in at all. Of course, according to the guard who led them here, the three rooms did share one thing in common: each had a small, bathtub-like magnetic energy enhancement device.

So this retreat really did become a bath.

In order to get out and go wild... or rather, deal with ghosts and monsters as soon as possible, Xiao Keai began her boring life of soaking in the tub. When she was tired, she would go to Wu Zui’s room, play with the exercise equipment for a while, practice some boxing, or go whisper a few secrets to Ming Rourou, who was immersed in an ocean of knowledge.

At their current rate of magnetic energy growth, reaching five stars would mean they would not be coming out for months...

When Wu Zui and Xiao Keai began their retreat, Wuxiang, who had been relentlessly pursuing Panying, was still in pursuit. Along the way, Wuxiang had already destroyed countless of Panying’s clones.

Inside Panying’s body, which was less than one point three meters tall, everything except her head was formed from a kind of black liquid. And whenever that eerie substance dripped to the ground, it would transform into a humanoid clone identical to Panying herself.

If Wuxiang so much as let his guard down for a moment, Panying would switch her true body and her clone. This method of escaping was extremely troublesome. As Panying led Wuxiang in circles, they were nearly reaching the depths of a grove of trees when Wuxiang gradually sensed that something was wrong.

Panying might not have been good at head-on combat, but when it came to escaping, she really had a trick or two. If she were willing to expend large amounts of black liquid to make clones, she could have gotten away long ago. Yet she had not done that. Instead, she had kept Wuxiang dangling behind her all this time.

Once he realized something was amiss, Wuxiang immediately expanded his senses farther out. He discovered that in the distance, more than one five-star awakener was moving in to encircle him. Mixed in with them was the resentful, corrupt energy of ghosts and monsters. So he immediately stopped the chase.

Wuxiang’s body twisted rapidly, and in the blink of an eye he turned into golden specks of light and vanished.

Panying also turned back and stopped running. She did not continue fleeing, nor did she pursue Wuxiang. She simply waited quietly.

Very soon, three figures appeared around her.

One was a burly man over three meters tall, his upper body bare and his lower body clad in black leather pants. Looking in the direction Wuxiang had fled, he turned his head and grumbled dumbly, “That bald monk is sharp! He was just one step away from running into our encirclement! Should we chase him now?”