Evil As Humans

Chapter 93: Convergence

The breath came quickly and stopped not far from them. It was well hidden in the dark. If its opponent weren’t a 1,000-year-old Evil Spirit, no one would have noticed that something was wrong.

The thing that was approaching was alive.

Not only was it a living entity, but its breath was also a little familiar. Yin Ren twitched his nose slightly.

In the slightly fishy vapors, he smelled a mixture of tobacco and coffee from Fu Xingchuan, as well as the cologne that Professor Li often used. As a powerful science post, Professor Li’s life response wouldn’t be any different from that of other animals, so naturally his aura was hidden.

Shian attached great importance to their execution mission, and the one who came to the bottom was actually its top combat power. Since Fu Xingchuan didn’t approach immediately, it seemed that their execution mission had to continue.

They were simply pushing the boat along the water. Did they want to see how they would “deal” with the hot potato named Qi Xin?

…There was still such a margin. It seemed that even Fu Xingchuan and Professor Li hadn’t noticed that something was wrong here. Yin Ren squeezed Dog Thing, who was continuing to play dead, speechlessly.

This thing stubbornly refused to pay attention to him, and its battery was at 43%, as if it really was powered by an actual battery.

Even though Dog Thing didn’t speak human words and its brain wasn’t very good, it was still good at predicting unexpected crises—especially those that were inexplicable—and its predictions were usually accurate.

He didn’t know what kind of “powerhouse” they encountered this time. Yin Ren tried to feel out the evil qi, but the underground evil qi was mixed. The aura of various sources was boiling like a pot of laba congee, and he couldn’t find any obviously suspicious taste.

Unfortunately, in front of outsiders, he couldn’t test it with his hair. Sunken Society had lasted for thousands of years and could live under Shian’s eyes for so long, which meant they must have some hidden ability.

Time passed with the sound of the water droplets. The three of them were sitting quietly around the fire at the center of the stone slate, giving off a posture as if they had been squatting there forever.

A few minutes passed.

“Strange.” Lu Xiaohe’s voice bounced in their ears. “There’s something wrong with the topographic map nearby… Yin Ren, please describe the surrounding situation again.”

Yin Ren: “Deep underground. It’s very dark, there are many stalagmites, and the water just past the instep has accumulated. We are resting on a stone slab right now and haven’t noticed any abnormal evil spirits for the time being.”

“Zhong Chengshuo, what do you see?”

“I can’t feel any evil spirits, and the other scenes are similar to what Yin Ren just described.”

Lu Xiaohe was silent for a while.

“…But there’s obviously no water there, and it’s not a cave landscape,” she said. “According to the topographical map, there’s not even space underground at that location.”

“Where on earth are you?”

Zhong Chengshuo held the rehydration solution he had prepared and fell into a state of confusion visible to the naked eye.

“But my inference can’t be wrong,” he murmured.

Yin Ren poked a strand of hair into the water. The groundwater wasn’t as cold as he imagined. He tasted the unique salty taste of turbid water, which was too real to be denied.

Could it be that Zhong Chengshuo got the coordinates wrong?

No… No. Zhong Chengshuo was the kind of person who wouldn’t speak too much if he was even a bit uncertain. As the strongest Nightwalker, he wouldn’t have made such an outrageous mistake.

Beside him, the tips of Zhong Chengshuo’s hair drooped a bit. He held the rehydration fluid with both hands, still immersed in the wonder and shock that “he may have miscalculated”.

Yin Ren had a general guess, but he didn’t like it very much.

Lord Ghost King thought for a moment, then took a deep breath. “Xiaohe Jie, since we don’t know where we are now, we’ll stay put and let the rescuers find us using GPS.”

The surrounding situation was unknown, but the environment was fairly stable. It would be foolish for them to wander around.

Moreover, Tweedle Fu and Tweedle Li* were by their side, so Lu Xiaohe would definitely report this abnormal situation quickly. Yin Ren didn’t have the heart to fight against the unknown, so he simply dragged out an inflatable cushion from his backpack and cheered up.

*Clarity: He’s referring to them as (大傻)and (二傻) which mean big fool and even bigger fool. You can think of it as him giving them nicknames, so I used a Tweedledum and Tweedledee reference.

When the cushion swept into Qi Xin’s gaze, for the first time, it brought on a “speechless” emotion on her face.

……

Not far away, among the stalagmites.

“According to the coordinates given by Zhong Chengshuo, this should be solid land?” Fu Xingchuan leaned on the stalagmite while licking the coffee candy in his mouth. “Lao Li, do you think that kid miscalculated?”

Li Nian bent down to scoop up a handful of water, letting the underground water slip through his fingers.

“Sunken Society’s evil thing. Describe it again,” Li Nian said in a deep voice.

“Snake Swallowing. A Class A-B abnormal phenomenon. It mainly induces greed and jealousy in living people, leaving behind rampant disasters wherever it goes… Professor Li should remember these basic information better than me.”

After Xian Jiang reported the discovery of the Snake Swallowing, Fu Xingchuan directly chose it as the “examination question” for the execution mission.

Snake Swallowing was a rare and powerful evil. Wherever this thing went, the living would plummet into chaos, leaving behind decay in the aftermath. That was to say, the Snake Swallowing was sealed in the mine. Otherwise, the situation in Gengsheng Town would have been much worse.

Not to mention the human chaos it caused, Snake Swallowing itself was really strong. If Unit 9 could work together and escape the Snake Swallowing, then their strength would be at least an A-level, and they might even be comparable to the Emergency Management Department.

Whether it could induce greed in people’s hearts or a baby egg raised by Sunken Society, there was no better suitable test than this. Seeing their perfect execution mission disrupted, Fu Xingchuan was heartbroken.

“I do remember the basic information.” Professor Li was noncommittal about this “perfect topic”. “What I want to ask is, can Snake Swallowing develop the ability to create environmental illusions?”

Fu Xingchuan snorted. “How is that possible? You science posts are difficult to deal with. Didn’t you guys specifically calculate before? To really create an illusion that covers the environment, it must be a monster older than a thousand years. To raise that kind of thing, it would take…”

Minister Fu’s snort got stuck in his throat, and he almost choked on the coffee candy.

“It would have to require a very large space.” Li Nian ignored his partner, who was coughing in the dark. “For example, underneath a mountain town.”

“Of course, I’m just suggesting a possibility,” he added slowly and methodically.

Fu Xingchuan took a breath, snapped the coffee candy, and the smile on his face completely disappeared. “I don’t feel a special aura. Assuming what you said is true, the monster must have been passed down from the ancestors of Sunken Society.”

“A 1,000-year-old monster; an ancient stronghold. Lao Li, you know what this represents.”

Professor Li sighed in the dark.

“This represents the ‘execution mission’ of Unit 9 is perhaps the most exaggerated one in the history of Shian… No, in the entire history before even Shian,” he said calmly. “Of course, it may just be that Zhong Chengshuo miscalculated the coordinates.”

Fu Xingchuan let out a long sigh.

He grabbed his slightly messy hair, and the next moment, he ignited a crimson light.

“Lu Xiaohe, inform Unit 9 that we’ll rendezvous with them immediately.”

“Minister Fu?! The execution mission…”

“It won’t work this time, but there’ll be a next time.” Fu Xingchuan raised his head toward the light of the fire ignited by the talisman. “The situation has become complicated. There are innocent people over there, so we can’t afford to bet.”

……

Yin Ren had finished inflating his cushion. The bouncy air cushion rested on the stone slab as he sorted out his mood for a while, ready to carry out his duty as a salted fish to the end.

While Qi Xin wasn’t paying attention, he separated a strand of hair and poked Zhong Chengshuo, who was still racking his brain calculating his error, and affectionately displayed his full cushion.

First, he attracted the tangled Zhong Chengshuo to take a break, and then he leaned over without a trace. According to Lord Ghost King’s experience, two people leaning next to each other would definitely speed up this long, boring time.

“Don’t think about it. Just lean over and rest—”

Boom!

Yin Ren’s courtship cushion suddenly exploded.

A stalagmite pierced through the stone platform and rose from the ground. It pierced the air cushion directly and grazed Yin Ren’s temples. The black hair poking Zhong Chengshuo was stunned stiff, while the latter was stung by steel needle-like hair, causing him to jump up.

In the frantically wavering fire, the ground shook with weird waves. The stone platform cracked open, and more stalagmites protruded from the water droplets. Yin Ren’s pupils shrank as he suddenly extinguished the flames. The moment the darkness fell, he stretched out one hand and grabbed Qi Xin. A few hair strands wrapped around Zhong Chengshuo’s feet, ready to go…

At this moment, another flash of fire cut through the darkness.

In the light of the fire, Fu Xingchuan’s red tunic was quite conspicuous. He rushed straight at Qi Xin as hundreds of flames intertwined, forming a spherical shield. The stalagmites poking out were instantly burned to dust. Yin Ren retracted his hair in an instant and froze his movements as he took advantage of the situation.

Behind Fu Xingchuan, Li Nian was like a shadow. He looked thin, but his movements were quite powerful. He threw out two black wooden poles with both hands, and amidst the strong evil qi, two flexible willow branches sprang out from the wooden poles, forming two green willow whips.

The willow branches unceremoniously wrapped around Yin Ren’s and Zhong Chengshuo’s waists and rolled them towards Li Nian’s feet.

Stalagmites were still growing tirelessly. Fu Xingchuan clicked his tongue, and as he threw out several floating charms, he picked up the dumbfounded Qi Xin with one hand. Yin Ren and Zhong Chengshuo were instantly transformed into human balloons and were dragged up and down in the air by Li Nian.

Behind them, stalagmites grew wildly from the top and bottom of the caves. They were like the sharp teeth of a beast, biting aggressively, and one almost gnawed off Yin Ren’s shoes.

Fu Xingchuan and Li Nian’s shoes were definitely high-grade spirit weapons—the two avoided the crazy growth of stalagmites and tried to run in the direction where the evil qi was weakest at a speed comparable to that of a small car. Under the illumination of the flame, the scenery on both sides quickly retreated, and Yin Ren’s face was almost blown out of shape.

“Minister Fu, ahem. Why are you here?” Amidst the wind, Yin Ren asked firmly.

Minister Fu hurriedly kicked the back of his head with his feet. “Just passing by!”

Yin Ren: “…..”

Yin Ren: “Minister Fu…”

“Don’t ask questions now!” Fu Xingchuan yelled as he frantically threw spells one after another behind him. The red flames were accompanied by the sound of explosions that made their ears ring.

“No.”

Yin Ren pointed forward.

“There’s a door—!”

The stagnant water underground had disappeared at some point, and there was no longer darkness in front of them, but a blueish-white flame. Two groups of will-o’-the-wisps floated on an old stone seat, faintly illuminating a stone gate.

It was a very weak door.

Facing the crazy pouring stalagmites, they had no choice.

“All ready!”

Fu Xingchuan’s side was surrounded by fire.

“Lao Li, let’s go in—!”

The author has something to say:

Xiao Yin bitterly lost his courtship cushion, so next time, he might as well conjure up a body cushion instead (?