Chapter 261: The Battle of the Aliens (1)

"What is the Seventh Grade Advanced Defensive Magic you set up like?" Luo Qi asked casually; if those Psychic Beasts were going to delay their attack, he would have to start chatting. He didn't know what they were doing; if their pre-battle strategy meeting was going to last for hours, he would have to find a place to sit for a while. If the goal was simply to create fear, then the pacing was a bit off—it wasn't even as scary as the stairwell in Du Zhengyi's building.

Who would have thought that just when he felt they had both started to relax, his cat suddenly became active, its fur standing on end. His heart skipped a beat, and he hurriedly looked at Du Zhengyi; Du Zhengyi had also sensed something and held a finger up in front of his lips. Luo Qi swallowed reflexively and turned to look at the pitch-black, broken window behind him.

Luo Qi still heard nothing, yet a chill raced down his spine. Perhaps he had seen a shadow, perhaps he had heard a vague sound, or perhaps he had smelled a faint, lingering scent of rotten vegetable leaves. These sensations were infinitesimal; his conscious Yajian might have instinctively noise-cancelled them into the background static of the world, but his increasingly complex conscious structure would now react to every subtle change. It was as if a wisp of wind would always leave a faint ripple on the surface of the Abyss.

The wind blew out from the broken window behind him—a draft in the old house in the dead of night, carrying a rotting, icy chill, as if a ghoul crawling up from the depths of hell had exhaled a foul, putrid breath behind his ear.

Holy shit. Luo Qi suddenly realized.

Du Zhengyi grabbed his arm abruptly, lunging forward with him. Right, Luo Qi thought, they had been standing here for so long and hadn't felt a single draft blowing out from the old house. Something had entered the house; something had opened an entrance at the back of the old house.

This was truly insidious—giving them time to set traps and defenses, only to circle around to the back to attack when they started to let their guard down.

Luo Qi was pulled into the middle of the courtyard. Du Zhengyi had used too much force in his haste and let go even more hastily, causing Luo Qi to tumble to the ground due to momentum. However, he didn't blame Du Zhengyi for being too rough; he braced his hand on the ground, landed on one knee, and looked back just in time to see the evil shadow that had smashed through the broken window leap into the air and pounce.

Du Zhengyi turned around, and to Luo Qi's great surprise, Du Zhengyi actually met it head-on. He knew that even for Du Zhengyi, in terms of agility, he was still only at a human level and shouldn't choose to engage in close-quarters combat with those monsters. But whether his eyes were playing tricks on him or not, that jet-black Alien Seal Beast actually faltered for a moment.

Luo Qi was startled; the monster had been full of momentum and sure of success, and now that its attack was thwarted, it seemed a bit confused. A floating Fireball happened to drift near the Seal Beast, and Luo Qi suddenly caught a glimpse of black vines on the Alien Seal Beast's legs, one end seemingly connected to the wall, as if it were a plant growing out of the wall itself.

The Seal Beast was distracted. It all happened in an instant; it probably hadn't expected that a Mage human, without a shell to cover him and entirely soft, would get so close to it. It stretched out its sharp claws to pinch the Mage's neck. The Mage didn't retreat at all, as if fear didn't exist for him; without flinching or dodging, he was a step faster. Two black blades appeared in his hands; the left-hand blade severed the Alien Seal Beast's tentacles, and the right-hand blade accurately thrust into the tiny gap beneath the tentacles, perhaps where its mouthparts were. The blade entered the flesh and immediately grew automatically, piercing through the Seal Beast's neck and protruding from the back of its neck. Du Zhengyi stirred it around in the wound, thoroughly killing the Seal Beast.

Luo Qi suddenly remembered that outside the frozen pond in Guan Family Village, Du Zhengyi had used the same method to entangle Zhao Zhiyan's legs. This type of defensive magic simulated the natural form of plants, though what stretched and curled were high-strength metal chains.

He couldn't help but reach out to touch the ground beneath him; the ground had no reaction. Du Zhengyi must have set traps here too. But the traps had no reaction to Luo Qi. Luo Qi hadn't learned the theory behind this stuff yet, but it seemed it could definitely identify people; the password might be genetic data, Luo Qi couldn't say for sure.

Just as he was distracted, two more Alien Seal Beasts jumped down from the eaves.

"Luo Qi!" Du Zhengyi shouted at him.

He didn't wait for Du Zhengyi to say a second word; he understood what he had to do. He jumped up and lit a fire on the fallen corpse to cremate it and cut off any future trouble.