Chapter 184 - Bull Head

Chapter 184: Chapter 168: Bull HeadNegotiations broke down, and Jiang Zhihui’s face remained expressionless as three red paper cutouts flew out from the depths of his sleeves on their own.

The papers, caught in the roiling heatwave of the courtyard, rapidly expanded in the air, transforming into three dark silhouettes.

One was a Blue Priest — a blue-skinned, cyclopean monk towering nearly two meters, wielding a Zen stick, with a broad back and round waist, his muscles bulging and veins protruding like twisted ropes.

Another was a Sea Priest — a fish-headed humanoid standing nearly three meters tall, dressed in the divine officer’s clothes of Shintoism, holding a keen scythe.

The third was a Bull Demon — a monstrous creature with the head of a bull and the body of a crab, its eyes bloodshot and mouth full of fangs, its size comparable to a giant truck, firmly blocking the path ahead.

If the shikigami released by ordinary members of the Spirit Sect are merely slightly stronger "creatures," then these three shikigami have stepped into the ranks of "demons and monsters."

Surrounded by a thick fog-like black evil aura, they effortlessly blocked the bullets fired from the shotgun controlled by mechanical arms.

Li Cheng’s heart remained unruffled; he had seen the potential future on his way here using the "Suicide Notebook," where these three shikigami appeared repeatedly, obviously Jiang Zhihui’s commonly summoned entities.

He raised his rusty straight blade, and with the momentum of the bat-wing motorcycle’s forward surge, he stabbed at the Blue Priest.

The cyclopean monk swung his Zen stick diagonally downward, trapping the blade with the glimmering rings at the end of the stick, while the Sea Priest stepped forward and twisted, his sharp scythe cutting straight toward Li Cheng’s neck.

At the same time, the Bull Demon also raised its crab-like legs, thrusting them towards the chasis underneath Li Cheng.

In the nick of time, Gray Rain charged from behind, arriving later but striking first, ramming into the neck of the Bull Demon with an iron-filled shove.

Over eight hundred kilograms of weight multiplied by the acceleration of the charge crashed onto the Bull Demon’s neck, the cracking and distortion of the spinal bone sounding like rapid-firecrackers.

The impact forcefully pushed back the gargantuan Bull Demon several steps.

Taking advantage of this brief gap, Li Cheng twisted the motorcycle’s handle with his left hand, tilting the vehicle along with himself to the left, almost touching the ground, narrowly avoiding the Sea Priest’s slashing scythe.

Continuing to pivot on his left foot, Li Cheng revved the motorcycle’s throttle, controlling the vehicle as if taming a fierce beast to lift off the ground, and with the rapidly spinning rear wheel, he hammered into the Blue Priest’s knee.

The Blue Priest shifted his leg back, his grip on the Zen stick loosened, no longer trapping the rusty straight blade.

Li Cheng retracted the straight blade, slightly bent his left leg to regain contact between the motorcycle’s tire and the ground for traction.

At the same time, he swung the handle with his right hand, leveraging the motorcycle’s spin, combining the wheel, his body, his arm, and the blade into one, slicing across the belly of the Blue Priest.

—Swish—

The rusty straight blade sliced open the Blue Priest’s thick, ox-hide-like blue skin, spewing out disordered intestines and black evil aura, a rather magnificent sight.

The blade’s momentum unabated, it continued its trajectory towards the Sea Priest’s chest and abdomen.

The fish-headed Sea Priest, despite his imposing stature, possessed agility that belied his size. He grasped the scythe and changed his original slashing stance to a lifting one, using the handle as a lever to flick the rusty straight blade away.

A scythe is a type of long-hafted weapon in Japan, with a broad blade and a long handle. The Sea Priest succeeded in deflecting the rusty straight blade but at the cost of the four fingers on his left hand, sliced off in unison.

Shikigami are not completely sentient beings and have extremely low perception of pain.

The Bull Demon, with a nearly broken neck, engaged in a desperate fight to the death with Gray Rain,

While the Blue Priest knelt on one knee, scooping up the intestines from the ground to stuff them back into his abdomen; the Sea Priest, unfazed by the pain of his severed fingers, gripped the scythe with his right hand and struck straight at Li Cheng’s right shoulder.

—Crack—

The Sea Bishop’s scythe stroke was both swift and fast, but before it could cleave into him, Li Cheng’s right shoulder detached on its own, causing the scythe to miss its target.

Assembly Puppet Special Effect I, Painless Disassembly. The user can freely remove any part of their body. When a part is removed, the wound will not bleed or cause pain for a short time.

The cross-section of the shoulder was as smooth as a mirror, you could clearly see each and every muscle strand, each delicate nerve, and every cavity of the bone.

Blood stayed inside the vessels, still flowing, yet not a single drop splashed or spilled out.

The detached arm, too, maintained a similar "static" state. Under the effect of inertia, it flew up into the air.

It was hard to tell whether the Sea Bishop, with its fish-like head, showed any emotion akin to shock.

Before it could change from a slash to a thrust towards Li Cheng, the latter had already turned the motorcycle around, controlling it to spin in place. Its rear wheel sharply lifted, swinging toward the Sea Bishop’s wrist.

The Sea Bishop was larger and more robust than the Green Bishop, and this attack only shifted the trajectory of its scythe slightly.

But it was enough.

Li Cheng steadied himself, lifting his upturned right shoulder to catch the detached arm with precision.

Nerves reconnected, blood vessels joined, bones fitted together, and in an instant, he regained perfect control of his right arm, and thus control of the rusty straight blade clutched in his right hand.

Puchi.

The straight blade chopped into the Sea Bishop’s right shoulder, carving downward diagonally with an unstoppable momentum, exiting from the left side of its waist—a strike that could be called a perfect Kasaya Cut.

The Sea Bishop swayed slightly in place for two seconds, its whiskers gently quivering, before its body exploded and disintegrated into ashes, leaving only a torn paper-cut in the grey ashes.

All of this happened in the blink of an eye. By the time the Green Bishop had gathered up all its intestines and stuffed them back into its abdomen and just lifted its head, it saw four shotguns, controlled by mechanical arms, firmly pressing their barrels against its forehead.

Indeed, the aura of spirits around the Shikigami could greatly reduce the power of the bullets. But when the gun barrel crossed a safe distance and pressed against the forehead, no spirit barrier was of any use anymore.

Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang!

The next volley, firing solid slugs, penetrated the dark mist and entered the Green Bishop’s forehead; its entire frontal skull was obliterated in an instant, as if a shovel had sliced off a large chunk.

The Green Bishop also turned to ashes, and the two torn paper-cuts still floated in the air, swiftly grabbed by Li Cheng, who put them into the Backpack.

At this point, the battle between Gray Rain and the Bull Demon had also concluded—the Bull Demon was not to be underestimated, with a surging Strength packed inside its reinforced truck-like body, and its crab-body surface covered with a chitin shell nearly as metallic as special steel armor, which gave it protection comparable to special steel plates.

Such a biological weapon, dismantling buildings was like child’s play.

It was just unfortunate that it faced Gray Rain. The purely physical blows of its crab pincers and legs had no effect when landing on liquid metal.

The Bull Demon’s only ranged attack method, spraying Poison Liquid, couldn’t poison Gray Rain at all.

The latter leaped high into the air, thrusting one hand into the Bull Demon’s eyeball, melting her arm into a stream of metal, first grinding the eyeball’s lens to pieces, then proceeding through the eye socket directly into the brain.

A twist and dig, completely pulped the Bull Demon’s brain.

"Bull-headed men must die."

Gray Rain muttered softly, pulling her arm out and landing back on the ground, "Hmm? Where’s that woman?"

"In the sky."

Li Cheng pointed upward to the night sky. Jiang Zhihui, after releasing three Shikigami, summoned a Tengu that picked her up by the shoulders, carrying her and her baby in arms, soaring into the high sky, flying toward the distant city.