Chapter 570: Fierce Bird

Xiang Qian reached out to touch the crack on the car door, then pressed his nose to his fingers and sniffed.

Du Zhengyi did not quite approve of this style. "If you encounter the saliva of that cat of Luo Qi's, I wouldn't recommend you do that."

The Old Mage glanced at him, then crudely stuck out his tongue to lick the viscous liquid stuck to his hand.

"Get me a new partner tomorrow, otherwise I'm resigning," Du Zhengyi said coldly, turning to continue searching for other clues.

"Alright, I know you're the most fastidious Battle Mage; your reputation has long preceded you," Xiang Qian said, unbothered. "They say you are especially hostile toward female Mages. Is it sexism?"

"Don't get it wrong, I'm only hostile toward female Battle Mages," Du Zhengyi said mercilessly. "Once a woman wants to appear tougher than a man, she often falls into a misconception, thinking she should be cruder and more disgusting than a man. I do dirty work, but I still want to be a civilized person."

"As if that old captain of yours was any more refined than me," Xiang Qian tapped the car door casually. "I saw him a few days ago. I heard you took a girlfriend, a Wushan Goddess. This is Psychic Potion."

"What?" Du Zhengyi whipped his head around.

"This is Psychic Potion," Xiang Qian said patiently. "Look, you analyze and analyze, and you might still have to call an Experimental Mage to analyze it. But in reality, you only need to lick it to know immediately what it is. It contains licorice, commonly used by humans; the taste is very pungent, and eating too much will also cause a decrease in male testosterone levels."

"I mean, what is he spouting nonsense about?" Du Zhengyi said, catching a glimpse of a large black bird flying overhead, circling the vicinity a few times.

"We were saying you should get married sooner. A Wushan Goddess is fine too; I hear that while you're mentally connected with them and doing that, the pleasure during climax is amplified several times over, which would absolutely make that normal act of yours from before seem like nothing but foreplay."

"My god," Du Zhengyi muttered. "Why on earth am I talking to you?"

He turned around and, following the traces on the ground, saw a small tree on the hillside with several strips of cured meat hanging from its branches.

"Yes," Xiang Qian said. "I saw it a long time ago. Someone is constantly taking Psychic Potion, perhaps to temporarily amplify their own Telepathy, so they can drive some animals that are difficult to drive."

"I don't want to compete with you, you win," Du Zhengyi said, walking quickly toward the hillside, testing for nearby Magic traces along the way. Magic had been used here, all basic Auxiliary Magic; that is to say, this attack was mainly accomplished by Psychic Beasts, not the direct masterpiece of a Mage.

"If you really don't have a girlfriend, would you like to meet my granddaughter?"

"Thank you for your high regard," Du Zhengyi said. "Does your granddaughter not have the hobby of licking everything like you do?"

Xiang Qian burst into laughter. "Did I remember wrong, or were you always this talkative? Before we set off, Pei Shu specifically talked to me. He told me that once you set off, you would soon shake us off; this is your old habit. He wanted me to stick close to you and not let you take risks alone. I haven't felt any signs of that yet. Have you suddenly become gregarious, or are you planning to walk to the bottom of that tree and use Teleportation to leave now?"

Du Zhengyi understood what she meant and slowed his pace, letting her catch up. "Don't waste your energy watching me; put your energy into the real work. I have never liked taking risks, and today I have no pursuit of increasing efficiency either."

"How strange, aren't you the one who always scares them by saying there's no time?" Xiang Qian asked. Both of them walked to the tree; a flash of light swept through her hand, the trunk snapped, and the branches fell down along with four corpses.

"I'll work until I reach the end; can't I just work a nine-to-five?" Du Zhengyi said, his gaze sweeping indifferently over the mangled corpses. "There are traces of at least six people in the two cars; two corpses are missing."

"The style of the attack is the same; although I can't tell how many there are, it's definitely the same thing. Judging from these four corpses, this thing only eats internal organs. Logically speaking, there shouldn't be two people swallowed whole. Did they let two people go?" Xiang Qian said. She examined the corpses carefully for a while, then suddenly laughed again. "Judging by what you said, have you settled down?"

Du Zhengyi waved his hand, not wanting to continue this topic. He walked slowly to the top of the slope, pulled out a cigarette and put it in his mouth. A gust of wind blew, and he exhaled the smoke. "They didn't let anyone go."

Xiang Qian walked up quickly. The tall grass on the wasteland covered the corpses, but a Battle Mage could smell the rot in the wind.

A sharp bird cry came from overhead once again. Du Zhengyi looked up at the bird circling in the air; he couldn't say what was wrong, but something was off.

Xiang Qian said, "These are all humans; it's fine to just avoid them, there's no need to kill them all. What kind of person would insist on chasing an off-road vehicle to kill?"

"There are no supplies in their car," Du Zhengyi said. "So the first location of the attack wasn't here. These two carloads of people were likely survivors of the first attack. The camp must have been attacked, and a few people luckily jumped into the car and tried to drive away."

"Given human activity capabilities, the camp won't be too far from here, nor too far from where they discarded their equipment," Xiang Qian pondered. "This is a mountain col; perhaps we will have a harvest if we continue forward."

"Mm," Du Zhengyi nodded. Suddenly, there was another shrill bird cry overhead, even more miserable than the one just now. Du Zhengyi looked up abruptly, observing the flight trajectory of that black fierce bird. Usually, a bird of this size should mostly soar during peaceful, uneventful flight. Yet this bird was flapping its wings violently and incessantly. Perhaps some birds are just easily agitated, but this one still looked very discordant. He had a strange feeling that it was like a clumsy machine, as if flying was not its instinct, or... as if there was another will behind it, flying for it.

Du Zhengyi frowned. "This bird is monitoring us."

Xiang Qian sneered and raised her hand. "I'm not afraid of a bird."

Du Zhengyi felt the Magic power of lightning surge instantly and hurriedly reached out to stop Xiang Qian. "Wait, are you going to strike it dead?"

"Of course, maybe it tastes pretty good," Xiang Qian said. "We don't need to tolerate surveillance."

"Let it watch; let's go back to the car."

"Why?" Xiang Qian asked, disagreeing.

"We are too close to the glacier; don't use Weather Magic here," Du Zhengyi said. "Hurry up, don't cause extra trouble."

"In a rush to get off work and go home to cook, Du Zhengyi?"

(End of chapter)