Chapter 290: Drawing a Dragon

After some conversation, they learned that Hundred-Bai Jixiong not only knew Midnight Howl, but was also an old good friend of Crimson Racer.

The short-video account the latter had registered on the player forum, 【Crimson Racer Loves Playing With Dogs】, had neither traffic when it first started operating nor that many magical creatures in the park,

so Hundred-Bai Jixiong, as a Druid, would often shapeshift into a griffin, a displacer beast, an aberration tentacle beast, a mud creature, and other monsters, acting as a performer to drive traffic for the short-video account.

"Holy crap, so you're actually a big star!"

Grey Rain, sitting in the passenger seat, said in shock: "Were all those taming-magical-creatures segments in the short videos acted? The fire-breathing dragon fruit, the fanning, the CPR, all of it?"

"The first few dozen episodes were basically all acted. Later, once the account took off, I stopped appearing on camera — getting beaten up over and over really does hurt."

Hundred-Bai Jixiong, who had shapeshifted into a chubby orange tabby cat and was sitting in the middle of the back row, said honestly: "Mmm, this counts as trade secrets, please absolutely do not tell anyone else."

Grey Rain ignored him, his expression dazed, muttering to himself: "It's all fake, all iced-tea dripping, the internet is the internet, real-real-fake-fake, fake-fake-real-real, it's all deceiving the fan corpses"

The white girl in the back row, seeing the orange tabby Hundred-Bai Jixiong had turned into was simply too adorably clumsy, hesitated for a moment then reached out to pet it, trying to express friendliness.

Unexpectedly, the moment she made contact, Hundred-Bai Jixiong immediately bristled, his spine arching like a bow, the whole cat backing away while continuously hissing.

The sudden Hakkimi hiss startled the white girl, and startled himself too.

"Sorry, I don't like female creatures touching me."

After a moment Hundred-Bai Jixiong also caught himself, slowly easing out of his bristled state, and explained with lingering unease: "It's not sexism.

A while back Crimson Racer went on a long trip and had me manage the magical-creature park. I had a bit to drink and accidentally fell into the female scorpion-tailed lion enclosure. To avoid being bitten to death I could only turn into a male lion, and it just so happened to be the lions' mating season"

Uh.

Li Cheng glanced at Hundred-Bai Jixiong through the rearview mirror with a look of sympathy. A lion's mating act only lasts a brief 20 to 40 seconds, but the frequency is extremely high — at most, over eighty times in a single day.

As magical creatures, scorpion-tailed lions probably have even better stamina. Considering the park certainly has more than one scorpion-tailed lion, it's no wonder Hundred-Bai Jixiong has such a PTSD-triggered look.

Bzzz bzzz—

Just as they were chatting, the car stereo suddenly let out a burst of static noise.

"Request. sup—"

Li Cheng frowned, reached out to turn the knob, adjusting the channel, making the broadcast gradually become clearer.

"This is Fu Ding Hua Long of the Shu City Mobile Special Task Force of the Special Affairs Bureau. We are currently under siege by native species from another world, requesting support from all parties."

Fu Ding Hua Long?

Li Cheng thought for a moment — there really was such a person in the database, and the background audio was full of explosions and sounds of fighting, not seeming faked.

He turned his head to seek Hundred-Bai Jixiong's opinion. "What do you say, want to go take a look?"

"I'm fine either way."

The just-rescued Hundred-Bai Jixiong had no objections. From the fragments Midnight Howl and Crimson Racer had let slip, he could roughly guess that Master Pi Fu was the kind of super badass who scored A+ or even S on every mission,

and don't be fooled by Master Pi Fu currently being only Lv16 while Hundred-Bai Jixiong is Lv17 — if the two fought, Hundred-Bai Jixiong would still be better off shapeshifting into a displacer beast and running; the survival rate would be higher that way.

"Then let's go take a look."

Li Cheng activated the armored vehicle's radar function, turned the steering wheel, and drove toward the source of the broadcast signal.

Whether by coincidence or not, this direction was also exactly where the human-head balloon had originally been drifting toward.

————

"Hold on!"

Inside the dilapidated building, a dozen or so players were barely holding on, repelling wave after wave of attacking mutated monsters from another world.

Human-head balloons, aberrant worms, hundred-armed hundred-legged fusion monstrosities, tumor-topped swarms of crows.

By human standards, these monsters were uglier and more twisted than the last, like crude AI-batched shoddy drawings, evoking a nauseating sense of revulsion.

"Tiger."

The black-haired youth named Fu Ding Hua Long, holding an unremarkable paintbrush, swiftly sketched a picture of a fierce tiger descending the mountain on the wallpaper-peeling wall.

Though only a few strokes were used, they precisely captured the ferocious majesty of the king of the mountain.

Roar!

The tiger in the painting came to life, leaping along the wall surface until it burst out of the wall, becoming an eight-meter-plus ink-solid entity that charged into the monster horde like a tank, swiftly slaughtering the mutated monsters with pounces, slaps, tail-whips, and throat-locks,

trading one for fifty, until outnumbered and shattered back into ink.

"Lion."

Sweat beading on his forehead, Fu Ding Hua Long painted again on the wall, drawing over a dozen male lions to help the players clear out an area.

Before he could even catch his breath, a player on the other side of the defensive perimeter, gripping a machine gun and continuously spraying the monster horde, shouted: "Fu Ding Hua Long! Where's the ammo!"

"Coming, coming! Drawing it now!"

Fu Ding Hua Long shook his numb wrist, his hand a blur, drawing ammo crates and hundreds upon thousands of rounds on the ground, then grabbed hard, yanking the ink ammo crate out of the earth and tossing it to his comrade.

The paintbrush in his hand was similar to the prop in "Ma Liang's Magic Brush" — both could turn images into reality.

It's just that every painting consumed ink, and the ink could not be replenished during a mission.

"We need to relocate."

A calm voice spoke up nearby. Zhao Zijing, who had dual backgrounds in both the Special Affairs Bureau and the GOC, was using telekinesis to drive metal short-arrows, slaughtering the monsters that broke through the machine-gun fire net,

while saying calmly: "If we keep holding this position, everyone dies."

"."

Fu Ding Hua Long did not argue, his peripheral vision sweeping over the fifty-odd ordinary people trembling in the middle of the defensive perimeter.

Players' backpacks couldn't hold living things, and none of this group was carrying a high-capacity spatial item like a 【Species Bag】.

Which meant that in the process of fighting their way out of the monster horde, casualties would most likely occur.

Just as he was agonizing, an explosion suddenly rang out from outside the building.

A six-meter-plus-tall one-eyed giant gripping a bone great-axe had its chest suddenly burst open, and a petite figure covered in blood burst out,

a string of organ fragments hanging off her body, leaping straight into the monster horde. Like a tiger among sheep, she gripped a great hammer and smashed one per swing, shouting all the while with unclear meaning: "80! 40!"

When the monsters occasionally counterattacked, striking the figure, all they could produce was the clanging clang of hammering on metal.

Such a wild fighting style left the players in the defense circle dumbfounded; the machine gunner's expression was hesitant, his finger resting lightly on the trigger.

"Don't make a move."

Zhao Zijing took a deep breath and said, somewhat helplessly: "They're friendly forces."

The newcomer was none other than Grey Rain. She cleared out an area, and Li Cheng drove the armored vehicle along a road paved with blood and chunks of corpses, swaggering right into the building.