Chapter 7367
The Devil Among Us
"But...but the target location hasn't been found yet..."
“I don’t need a seat.” Xiao Chen interrupted him, pushed open the car door, and the cold night wind, carrying a salty and damp smell, poured into the car, blowing his hair. “The general direction is enough.”
Zhuang Yuan looked at Xiao Chen's expressionless profile, his crimson-gold eyes filled with a resolute determination to destroy everything. All the questions and words of advice that were on the tip of his tongue were swallowed back down.
He nodded emphatically, grabbed the walkie-talkie, and his voice regained its military decisiveness: "Command center! This is Zhuang Yuan! Immediately dispatch an armed helicopter to my coordinates! Repeat, immediately! Top priority! No cost whatsoever!"
However, the moment he finished his call, Xiao Chen in the back seat of the car had already disappeared, leaving only the howling wind outside the window, as if playing the prelude to the impending bloody revenge.
……
Twenty minutes later, on the East China Sea.
The inky black waves surged and rolled, giant waves like mountains crashing against the dark sea, emitting deafening roars. And a tall figure was walking on the waves.
He lightly touched the crest of the wave with his toes, causing ripples to spread beneath his feet, yet they could not budge him an inch; he remained as steady as if he were standing on flat ground. It was Xiao Chen.
The gale tore at his black Zhongshan suit, his hair danced wildly, and his clothes fluttered, but he remained motionless, his cold gaze sweeping across the chaotic horizon where the sea met the sky.
On his left palm lay a yellowed sheet of paper inscribed with runes. The paper was covered with intricate and ancient patterns, drawn with his own blood and a special cinnabar mixture. As the runes flowed, they exuded a faint bloody scent and a mysterious power.
In the center of the yellow paper lay a dry hair... He had found it on the old clothes Li Can had left at the villa before he left.
Xiao Chen closed his eyes and focused his mind, his fingertips hovering over the runes, his aura gradually becoming calm and concentrated.
This is the long-lost secret technique "Blood Tracing Shadow," which uses the practitioner's own blood as a guide and old objects tainted with the target's aura as a medium to forcibly peek into the secrets of heaven and trace the target's precise location.
This method has a tremendous backlash; at best, it can deplete ten years of vital energy, and at worst, it can damage one's foundation in the Dao, or even lead to a backlash from the heavens, resulting in the destruction of one's soul and spirit.
But at this moment, he had no choice and was unwilling to wait any longer.
"The sky is clear, the earth is turbid, heaven and earth are in their proper places. All things have spirits, and when a thought arises, they arrive..." A deep and obscure incantation flowed from his lips, each syllable seemingly drawing upon the energy of heaven and earth. The surrounding air began to tremble violently, and even the roar of the waves seemed to become distant.
The blood-red runes on the yellow paper lit up one by one, emitting a dark red glow, like will-o'-the-wisps from hell.
The hair began to vibrate and hum, and fine cracks appeared on its surface, as if it might shatter at any moment.
Xiao Chen suddenly opened his crimson-gold eyes, a fierce light flashing in them. Without hesitation, he bit his tongue and spat out a mouthful of blood containing immense divine essence onto the core of the rune!
"boom……!!!"
All the runes instantly burst into a blinding red light, soaring into the sky, and then contracted in an instant, disappearing completely into that strand of hair!
The hair instantly turned to dust, but an extremely fine, almost invisible blood-red thread shot out from it, piercing through the heavy night and pointing precisely to the horizon where the sea meets the sky in the southeast!
At the same time, a fragmented and blurry image forcibly entered Xiao Chen's mind:
The desolate and lonely rocky island, with its jagged black reefs resembling the sharp teeth of a monster, menacingly pierces the night sky.
On the leeward side of the island, a huge, rusty, abandoned ocean-going cargo ship, as big as a small mountain, was stranded. Its hull was broken and riddled with bullet holes, like a dead deep-sea monster.
In the dark and damp hold of the cargo ship, under the dim emergency light, ten figures bound by ropes swayed weakly, blood dripping from their wounds and pooling on the ground in a glaring red... Li Can's figure was among them, his head bowed, his breath weak, yet he still maintained an unyielding posture.
The scene abruptly ended.
"Pfft!" Xiao Chen's body swayed violently, a trickle of bright red blood spilled from the corner of his mouth, and his face instantly paled. The backlash from forcibly using the forbidden secret technique arrived as expected; his meridians throbbed with pain, and his divine essence experienced a brief period of disorder.
But he simply stood still, raised his hand to wipe the blood from the corner of his mouth, his face showing no pain, only a chilling coldness more piercing than the sea.
He slowly drew his Reverse Scale Sword.
As his fingertips brushed the cool hilt of the sword, the longsword instantly emitted a clear and long hum, as if responding to its master's rage. Dark golden light flowed across the scabbard, and a sharp sword intent, thirsting for blood, spread out, causing the surrounding waves to instinctively retreat.
Xiao Chen gripped the sword hilt tightly, raising his eyes to gaze southeast, where the crimson thread pointed. Night had fallen, the sea and sky a chaotic blur, where only boundless darkness and surging waves met.
But he knew that his goal was right there.
"Roar……!"
The giant wave roared in, and Xiao Chen lightly touched the ground with his toes, his figure shooting out like an arrow, leaving a white trail as he tore through the thick night and sped towards the dark sea that had swallowed his warriors.
In the icy sea breeze, his barely audible soliloquy drifted across the air; his voice was soft, yet sharper than a blade, more piercing than ice:
"You will soon find out what the price is for angering me."
……
East China Sea, an unnamed deserted island.
That rusted steel behemoth... the abandoned ocean freighter, like a dead whale, lay silently among the jagged black reefs, exuding an aura of decay and bloodshed.
On the deck, figures moved about, and the clamor in the accent of Jiyin Island drifted in the salty sea breeze, mixed with unrestrained laughter.
Seven or eight men dressed in black tight-fitting clothes gathered in the center of the deck, around a makeshift barbecue grill made from a gasoline drum. The fire roared, illuminating the uniform curved swords at their waists, as well as the undisguised contempt and smugness on their faces.
"What Western Martial Arts Army, what Dragon Kingdom elites, I think they're just a bunch of trash!" A burly man with a scar on his cheek took a big gulp of sake, wiped his mouth, and sneered.
"They couldn't even break the ancestor's 'Yin Binding Curse,' and they took them all down in no time. It's such a waste of our time!"
A lean, monkey-like man beside them poked at a sizzling, oily fish on the charcoal fire with the tip of a knife, a fanatical smile on his face, and chimed in:
"That's not how it works. It's not that they're too weak, it's that we're too strong! Bathed in the divine glory of the Extreme Yin Ancestor, the mere Dragon Kingdom Martial Arts Army is naturally no match for us!"
A greedy glint flashed in his eyes. "After we deal with this batch of 'sacrifices,' we'll lure Xiao Chen here, take his head, and offer it to the ancestor. The reward will be plentiful! Then, we can all rise to heaven along with him!"
“Speaking of that Xiao Chen,” another person leaned over, lowering his voice but unable to hide his curiosity and disdain.
"Why did the Ancestor insist on capturing him alive? Is a mere twenty-something-year-old Chinese kid worth all this fuss? And to use the Western Martial Arts Army as bait, isn't that making a mountain out of a molehill?" (End of Chapter)