Zhang Shun closed the door and looked back at his brother, who was curled up on the hospital bed. His heart felt as if it had been hit hard.
He knew that it was because of his calls for help that his brother had suddenly woken from his coma.
Human potential was just that immense. A severely injured mother would wake up at her child’s call, and a wife saving her husband would suddenly erupt with the strength to lift a car. People would risk their lives for those they truly wanted to protect. It was an unimaginably terrifying power.
In that instant, Zhang Shun once again recalled Chu He’s plea—Can you return Maha’s life to me?
Who is Maha? Countless doubts flashed through Zhang Shun’s mind, but he was also very certain of one thing: if Chu He truly wanted it, he too would abandon everything to fulfill his wish.
Li Hu had spoken with great certainty, but her arrival was slow. A full hour passed with no news. Zhang Shun tried to make a call on the internal line, but the signal seemed to be cut off, leaving only a busy tone. He could only stare at the door with a terrified heart. Just when he thought Li Hu would never come, a distant explosion suddenly echoed from within the hospital building.
Zhang Shun’s pupils constricted. He heard the sound rapidly approaching, followed by a loud clang! It sounded as if a heavy object had been slammed against the door!
Zhang Shun shot to his feet. “Li Hu? Li Hu, is that you?!”
“Don’t open the door!” Li Hu’s hoarse shout came from outside. “Whatever you do, don’t open the door!”
“Are you okay! What happened to you?!”
“I’m fine—Ah!!”
Li Hu suddenly let out a blood-curdling scream that barely sounded human. Before the Second Young Master Zhang could ask, he heard her say with a tremor, “Don’t… don’t open the door. Stay with your brother. Don’t come out… Ah—!”
Zhang Shun had never seen a woman suffer like this in front of him. Just as he was about to rush out, a low and cold male voice came from outside the door—a voice that sent a chill to the bone just by hearing it. “Forty-nine demon-suppressing nails. Let’s see how long you can live.”
With a sharp whistle through the air, Li Hu’s scream, now distorted, rang out again. “Feng Si! Feng Si, I know you’re in there! Wake the hell up, I’ll f— your ancestors—! Ah!!!”
With a deafening, earth-shattering boom, Zhang Shun could no longer hold back. He rushed over and pulled the door open!
In the next second, a tide of cold, sinister energy surged in. Before Zhang Shun could even react, he was sent flying by a huge force hitting him squarely in the chest!
With a thud, the Second Young Master Zhang hit the wall and scrambled back up. In the midst of his sharp pain, he saw a tall man in a black robe walk through the door, holding Li Hu by the throat. The woman was dressed in red, and it was impossible to tell if the clothes were originally red or dyed red by her own blood. Her long hair was disheveled behind her, and her feet were trembling violently. From the frequency, it seemed she would stop breathing within a minute or two.
Blood rushed to Zhang Shun’s head. He grabbed a leg from a shattered chair, shouted, and charged forward!
But then, the black-robed man lifted his crimson eyes and glanced at Zhang Shun—
Zhang Shun was instantly frozen in place by a boundless, bone-chilling aura, as if his blood had turned to ice. The chair leg fell from his hand with a clatter.
It was in that instant that he recognized the man. He had seen him before—on the night of the haunting, after Chu He had arrived in his room, the ghoul had vanished, and this man’s image had suddenly appeared in the corner of the room.
At that time, he had given Zhang Shun a cold glance, said nothing, and then disappeared into thin air.
Back then, Zhang Shun had thought he was hallucinating or that the man was also a ghost, but at this moment, a sudden realization struck him. “You-you-you—you are—”
A terrible gurgling sound came from Li Hu’s throat. The man, while applying pressure with his hand, glanced nonchalantly at Zhang Shun.
Zhang Shun was incredulous. “You’re my brother’s—boyfriend?!”
The man: “…”
Li Hu: “…”
The man in black seemed to have heard something very amusing. For a moment, Zhang Shun even saw him truly smile. Then he changed his mind about killing Li Hu and casually tossed the woman aside like a sack.
“Boyfriend,” he repeated with great interest.
With a thud, Li Hu fell to the ground. Disheveled and battered, she clutched her neck and coughed violently, hissing through gritted teeth, “Demon Lord Fan Luo…!”
“Worthy of a fox who has cultivated her ninth tail. That gate-guarding array was quite interesting. It’s a pity this blockhead managed to blunder his way through and break its core.” The Demon Lord sized up Zhang Shun with great interest. “Little brother, if you had really managed to keep the door closed, I wouldn’t have been able to get in even after killing this fox… What a shame.”
Zhang Shun said angrily, “Who are you? What do you want?”
The Demon Lord didn’t answer, only walking toward Chu He on the hospital bed. Li Hu, who had been coughing as if on her deathbed, suddenly scrambled up as if injected with chicken blood. “Stop, you won’t get away! Zhou Hui is already on his way!”
The Demon Lord said, “So what?”
“You can kill me, but can you kill Zhou Hui?!”
The Demon Lord answered her with his actions. He directly lifted Chu He horizontally from the hospital bed and walked toward the door.
“Even if Zhou Hui follows the scent of that zombie child to find the onmyoji’s hiding place, then discovers that the Japanese man was a decoy, and finally rushes over, it will take him at least two hours. Do you think two hours is enough for me to turn you from a fox into a fox-skin shawl?”
Li Hu’s face instantly turned deathly pale. She stared at Chu He and asked, “Are you just going to watch your lover threaten me like this?”
Chu He was unconscious in the Demon Lord’s arms and naturally couldn’t answer her.
The Demon Lord smiled. “Just now you called me a boyfriend, and now I’m a lover. Speaking of which, you two can dig at each other on one hand, and on the other, fight for each other to this extent. It’s a very strange relationship…” As he spoke, he turned and walked toward Li Hu. His posture made it clear even to Zhang Shun that the “fox-skin shawl” comment was not a joke!
“The nine-tailed fox of the sixth team from Yunnan,” the Demon Lord said slowly. “Today, I will start by settling the score for the siege of the Hell Realm back then with you.”
Carrying Chu He with one arm, he reached out his other hand toward the coughing Li Hu on the floor. Countless bizarre red patterns suddenly appeared on his hand in mid-air, followed by a series of dazzling, snake-like electric currents! Li Hu’s eyes instantly went wide. This woman was fierce. In the next second, she flew backward and roared, “—Feng Si!”
Chu He still didn’t react, but the Demon Lord’s figure appeared behind her like a ghost. A heavy punch landed on her back!
Li Hu spat out a mouthful of blood. Her body flew and slammed into the immobilized Zhang Shun, then crashed into the hospital room wall, creating a large web of cracks! The Demon Lord landed and walked steadily forward. Amidst the falling wall dust, Li Hu trembled and tried to get up, but after a couple of attempts, she fell back down. In desperation, she grabbed Zhang Shun and bit down hard on the spot where his neck and the back of his head connected.
“Ah!” Zhang Shun cried out in pain, feeling as if his flesh was about to be torn off. “What are you doing!”
“Doing your sister!” Li Hu trembled. “Go! You can’t let him take your brother! Once your brother enters demonhood, the Heavenly Dao is finished!”
“But I…” Before Zhang Shun could finish, he suddenly felt he could move again. It seemed Li Hu’s bite had actually hit one of his acupoints. He scrambled to his feet and rushed forward—but after two steps, he froze. “I-I-I, what do I do if I don’t know anything?!”
Li Hu roared hoarsely, “Are you stupid?! Your brother returned that mouthful of Buddha’s breath to you! It means he’s telling you to help him deal with the Demon Lord!”
As soon as her voice fell, Zhang Shun noticed the Demon Lord’s expression change. Although the change was very subtle, almost imperceptible in the smoky dust, Zhang Shun still noticed it. With almost no hesitation, as if guided by instinct, he rushed forward, blocking the Demon Lord with one hand and reaching for his brother with the other!
Everything happened in a flash, as dazzling as a fast-forwarded movie.
The moment Zhang Shun’s hand touched the Demon Lord, a golden swastika flowed out from his palm and clashed with the demonic red patterns on the Demon Lord’s body, creating a series of ear-piercing explosions. At the same time, the Demon Lord grabbed Zhang Shun and casually threw him aside. The Second Young Master Zhang’s flying body knocked down Li Hu, who had just managed to struggle up, hitting her so hard that the fox almost went to see the Buddha directly.
Li Hu: “Your sister—”
In the next second, the golden Buddha seal overpowered the demonic patterns. The skin on the Demon Lord’s entire arm exploded!
—To be fair, this blow was not a fatal injury for someone at the Asura King level like the Demon Lord, but it was completely unexpected by everyone, even Zhang Shun himself was stunned for a moment. A fountain of blood mist erupted, instantly dyeing the Demon Lord red, making him look as if he had just escaped from hell!
“…Truly worthy of…” the Demon Lord Fan Luo said slowly, his long, narrow eyes looking at Zhang Shun, “worthy of the Buddha bone…”
He took a step toward Zhang Shun and said, as if finding it very interesting, “Little devil, I really should start treating you like a man.”
It was only then that Zhang Shun realized that a door had appeared in the void behind him at some point. The door was shrouded in black mist and adorned with white bones. As the Demon Lord walked toward him, the door gradually opened in mid-air, and from within came incomparably sharp and mournful ghostly wails.
Li Hu, while spitting blood, grabbed Zhang Shun. “Run… run, quick!”
“My brother! My brother is still with him!”
Li Hu’s eyes were red with anxiety. “Your brother wouldn’t die if he didn’t court death! Let him die! The Demon Lord is about to summon his Asura King Dharma-form, ahhhhhh—!”
In that instant, the Demon Lord reached into the void. A bolt of lightning bright enough to burn one’s retinas formed into a long sword and, wrapped in a destructive electric glow, struck at Zhang Shun’s back—
At the same moment, Chu He opened his eyes.
He reached out and pressed down on the Demon Lord’s strong wrist. He looked up, his face as pale as paper, but every word he spoke was as if quenched in ice. “Who gave you permission to touch my brother?”
With a loud whoosh, a fierce wind rose from the ground. Zhang Shun turned his head in astonishment!
With Chu He’s feet as the center, blades of wind swirled like a ten-thousand-foot vortex. In the eye of the storm, his silhouette rapidly changed. His white robe reached the ground, his long hair flew, like a phoenix soaring in the nine heavens. With a flick of his sleeve, a slender arm was revealed. In his left hand, he held a string of cyan Buddhist beads, and in his right, a long spear, which he brought down on the Demon Lord with the force of a thunderbolt!
—BOOM!
Zhang Shun was swept away by the air current generated by the clash of weapons, his back slamming into the wall with a clang. He almost coughed up a mouthful of blood in mid-air!
He managed to struggle up with great difficulty and saw Li Hu lying beside him, fumbling for a phone from her pocket and starting to record.
Zhang Shun: “???”
“Aren’t you going to record?” Li Hu said while coughing up blood. “Your brother’s Dharma-form is known as one of the Ten Great Sights of the Heavenly Dao. It’s very rare.” She then with great difficulty opened WeChat and started posting to her Moments.
Zhang Shun: “…”
·
Li Hu opened a WeChat group, sent a few trembling messages, and after a long while, a ding-dong sound of a reply appeared.
Zhang Shun glanced over from the corner of his eye. The angle was too skewed to see what was written on the screen. He could only vaguely see that several different people had replied. The light from the phone screen made Li Hu’s face look a bit eerie. She looked up and gave Zhang Shun a ghostly glance.
The Second Young Master Zhang felt a chill run down his spine. Fortunately, after that one glance, Li Hu ignored him and said hoarsely into the phone, “Stop joking. Feng Si is fighting for his life up front. What do we do if Boss Zhou is still on his way?”
A voice message was sent over. Li Hu didn’t have the strength to lift the phone to her ear, so she casually played it on speaker. A voice with a Cantonese accent said, “You’re the one joking, Fox Six. I just spoke with Beijing. Zhou Hui has been guarding the Qiankun Array under the Great Hall of the People for three days now, okay?”
Zhang Shun saw Li Hu’s face instantly turn deathly pale. She trembled and said, “What did you say?!”
On the other side, the long spear and the sword’s edge pressed against each other, making a horrifying grinding sound.
The Demon Lord narrowed his long, slender eyes, a movement that made him appear even more cold and ruthless. With a sudden flick of his wrist, he forcefully pushed Chu He back several steps!
Zhang Shun cried out, “Bro!”
Zhang Shun stumbled forward, not even feeling the sharp pain from his dislocated elbow. But then his brother raised a hand and stopped him forcefully. Chu He still had his back to him. The side of his face visible from under his hair was so pale it was almost blue. He was panting rapidly, as if he was about to stop breathing.
The Demon Lord stared into Chu He’s face and said, word by word, “Your true form is destroyed, your primordial spirit is exhausted, and your heart’s blood is almost gone. You still dare to fight me with your Dharma-form? Do you want to die that badly?”
—The Demon Lord was clearly enraged. Chu He panted for a long while before he managed to stop. He straightened up, looked at him, and said wearily, “Then come and kill me.”
Even Zhang Shun could hear the despair in those words. He reflexively wanted to say “don’t,” but then he saw the Demon Lord turn to him with a very obvious sneer. “Why would I kill you? But the life of this generation’s Buddha bone, I will take it today.”
Zhang Shun immediately sensed something was wrong. In a fraction of a second, just as he was deciding whether to turn and run or face the challenge, a torrent of lightning descended from above, reaching him in an instant!
It all happened too fast. Zhang Shun didn’t even have time to react before he was sent flying by a great force. In the next moment, someone flew over from behind and caught him in mid-air, landing heavily on the ground and pressing his head down!
In the next second, a stream of fire, like a great dragon’s breath, roared past the back of his head, instantly charring the rubble behind him!
The hair on the back of Zhang Shun’s head was completely singed. He knew that if he had been 0.01 seconds slower, his entire head would have been burned off. He spat out a mouthful of hot, charred blood. He felt a sharp pain in his ribs and couldn’t move. He turned his head and saw that the person who had caught him in mid-air was Li Hu, and the one who had pushed him away was his brother.
—Chu He had blocked the final blow. His back slammed hard against the wall. The force was so strong that his slender body even bounced back, and then he spat out a mouthful of blood!
With a thud, Chu He fell to the ground, his cheek pressed against the floor. He tried several times to get up but failed.
The Demon Lord walked up and looked down at him.
“So pathetic…” he said in a low voice, seemingly with a smile. He bent down and grabbed Chu He’s chin.
From Zhang Shun’s angle, the Demon Lord’s strong back blocked his brother’s face. He could only see the white robe and long hair tangled on the ground, his head tilted slightly upward, probably because the Demon Lord was holding his chin and forcing it up.
Although Zhang Shun would be an idiot to still think this man was his brother’s “boyfriend,” the posture and angle still gave him a strange and ambiguous feeling.
“I know you don’t want to die. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have come to me, borrowing my power to escape the heavenly tribulation.”
The Demon Lord leaned close to his ear and said softly, “I’ll give you two choices now. First, come with me. Although I can’t help you revive Maha, I can at least keep you alive. As long as you’re alive, anything is possible. Second, kill your brother.”
Chu He’s face was ashen, completely devoid of blood. His eyelashes were lowered, and he panted lightly in pain.
It was extremely rare to see such an expression on this face that was perennially as cold as an ice sculpture. The Demon Lord admired it for a while before smiling into his ear. “I advise you to make a decision quickly… If I watch you pant like this for a little longer, I’m going to get hard.”
Chu He stiffened slightly and held his breath. It was extremely difficult for him to do this. He choked on blood several times before he managed to swallow a mouthful of bloody saliva and say, “I…”
“He’ll definitely choose the first option,” a lazy voice came from the doorway. “But I’ll choose the third for him.”
Chu He suddenly closed his eyes tightly. The Demon Lord, after a moment of stunned silence, started to laugh. He turned his head and asked, “What’s the third option, Zhou Hui?”
Zhang Shun, enduring the sharp pain in his ribs, abruptly turned his head. At the same moment, he felt Li Hu let out a long sigh of relief, her whole body almost collapsing.
A young man stood in the doorway, wearing a motorcycle jacket. He was tall and well-built. He took off his sunglasses, revealing an extraordinarily handsome face. That face wore his usual somewhat roguish, carefree smile. Zhang Shun had always found this smile annoying, but at this moment, it was so reassuring that it made that handsome face look countless times more pleasing to the eye.
“The third option is that he stays, his brother lives, and you go back to the Asura realm by yourself. Don’t think that just because I came alone today, I can’t kill you. I just spent too much energy on that little onmyoji beauty just now and don’t feel like playing with you today.”
As Zhou Hui spoke, he even waved at Zhang Shun and asked with great sincerity, “How about it? Now that you’ve seen your brother’s boyfriend, have you discovered that I’m still better?”
“…” Zhang Shun asked, “Can you maintain your posturing for two more minutes?”
The Demon Lord started to laugh. With just one hand, he easily held Chu He. Under the black robe adorned with bone chains, his other hand lifted his sword. The blade, still dripping with blood, pointed at Zhou Hui. He said mockingly, “Your esteemed wife is good at everything, except for his taste in men, which is truly… There aren’t many people who can watch their own flesh and blood be struck by heavenly retribution until their soul dissipates and remain indifferent. You are truly one of a kind in the six realms.”
It was unknown if it was Zhang Shun’s imagination, but he felt Zhou Hui’s back stiffen.
But Zhou Hui controlled his expression very well, showing no sign of abnormality. His gaze only moved to Chu He.
Since he had entered, Chu He had not made a single movement or sound. His face was buried in the Demon Lord’s chest, so his expression was unclear. But from the clotted blood on his robe and the blood dripping from his five fingertips, it was clear he had truly reached his limit.
Zhou Hui’s breathing became deep and long.
The Demon Lord Fan Luo smiled. “I choose the first option. Do you want to try and see if you can stop me?”
As soon as his voice fell, Zhou Hui took a step forward, and a fierce wind suddenly whipped up at his side without any warning!
This wind was not as tightly spiraled as when the Phoenix Dharma-form was summoned, but was extremely wanton and arrogant. In a few seconds, it brought the entire hospital room crashing down! Zhang Shun, holding on to his last bit of strength, grabbed the barely conscious Li Hu and quickly retreated to the corner of the room. He saw the ground where he had just been standing instantly crumble. Zhou Hui manifested a ten-foot-tall golden body out of thin air, wielding two menacing sabers, and descended upon the Demon Lord like the sky falling!
—RUMBLE!
Half of the hospital building collapsed completely, as easily as pushing over a domino. Amidst the rain of large bricks and stones, Zhou Hui’s Dharma-form, like a primordial divine beast that could hold up the heavens, opened its blood-basin mouth, large enough to swallow the sky, and lunged toward the Demon Lord—
And behind the Demon Lord, the gate to the Hell Realm, now ten zhang high, opened. Countless resentful ghosts and souls, wrapped in a sea of blood, rushed straight into the sky!
Zhang Shun clung tightly to the edge of the broken rubble, his pupils dilated in extreme shock. “This… this is Zhou Yi…”
“This is Boss Zhou’s Heavenly Dao Dharma-form,” Li Hu said weakly. “Do you find it very terrifying, completely different from Feng Si’s?”
Zhang Shun didn’t know what to say and just nodded.
—Chu He’s Dharma-form was completely human. The Demon Lord’s was at least half-human. But Zhou Hui, although it was called the Heavenly Dao Dharma-form, was a completely terrifying demonic creature from ancient myths that occupied heaven and earth.
Its ferocity and cruelty were such that even tens of thousands of people before it would be nothing more than a plate of flesh and blood on the vast earth.
“The Heavenly Dao Dharma-form changes into ten thousand forms according to one’s will. A complete Dharma-form is a thousand times taller than this,” Li Hu said wearily. “I was too unlucky to run into the Demon Lord today. One day, when I have the energy, I’ll show you my true form. My true form is… wait, what is this?”
Li Hu suddenly got up and staggered toward the floor, which was broken in two, revealing countless steel bars and open to the sky.
Zhang Shun turned his head in astonishment and saw Zhou Hui’s giant Dharma-form suddenly freeze in mid-air, as if it had been fixed in place, and then rapidly devolved back into a human.
The storm ceased, the ghostly wails ended. Zhou Hui stood on the devastated ground, his expression indescribable, only his body trembling strangely.
Chu He stood opposite him.
Chu He had already withdrawn his Dharma-form and returned to the familiar appearance Zhang Shun knew. He held Zhou Hui’s blade with one hand.
Blood poured down his arm like from a severed pipe, drenching his whole body, but he didn’t even move. He looked at Zhou Hui, his face impassive, without a trace of expression.
—He was standing in front of the Demon Lord Fan Luo, shielding him.
