Chapter 299: Red Luan Reflecting the Sun (1)

"It's coming! It's coming!" Lu Xing stood alone by the riverbank, the hand gripping his knife trembling uncontrollably from excitement.

He had carved a deep gash across Xiaofeng's neck and collarbone, and the wound was still expanding.

Holding a knife in one hand and the Eight Characters Token in the other, Lu Xing focused entirely on the dark shadow in the river, paying no mind to the massive, surging waves around him.

'Fishing for a dragon? Where does he get his confidence?' Others might not be able to see clearly, but with the Chasing Eye, I could perceive everything happening underwater.

The serpentine shadow caught the scent of Xiaofeng's blood. It actually gave up ramming the dam and surged upward instead. The entire river seemed to grow even more turbulent as it thrashed, filling the air with water mist and crashing spray.

The hundred-meter-long dark shadow gradually closed in, and a reversed whirlpool faintly began to form on the river's surface!

"This is bad, it's trying to swallow Xiaofeng!"

I shouted in alarm, but I could not step out of the Seven-Star Labyrinth Array. Trapped within the grand array, I had lost all sense of direction; every step carried the risk of treading on empty air and plunging into a deep ravine.

With Xiaofeng's life hanging by a thread, I didn't have time to overthink things. Pressing one hand to the ground, I silently recited the Profound Truth Mental Method, drawing the pitifully small amount of true essence from my lower dantian up to my eyes.

My pupils shrank abruptly. The pouring rain before me seemed to slow down, and I could capture the trajectory of every single raindrop. But this was far from enough. The Seven-Star Labyrinth Array possessed complex variations and a value exceeding that of an Upper Vehicle Talisman. Breaking the grand array with just a pair of mortal eyes was simply too difficult.

"Bang!"

While I was still searching for a flaw in the grand array, a gunshot suddenly rang out from behind me. Tie Ningxiang had fired from dozens of meters away. Seeming to know Xiaofeng was in danger, she shot at Lu Xing in a moment of desperation.

However, the bullet looked incredibly bizarre to me. The direction Tie Ningxiang shot was nowhere near where Lu Xing stood.

'She is trapped in the grand array too.' There were only two ways to break this deadlock. The first was to avoid entering the array altogether and snipe Lu Xing from a hundred meters away. With a standard police sidearm, this was extremely difficult to achieve, and the armed police battalion with their snipers had not yet arrived—they were probably still in a standoff with Er Gou.

Breaking the deadlock from the outside was difficult; the second method was to breach it from the inside. The core of the array lay just a few steps away from Lu Xing, and only the people and objects in that spot could move freely.

But trying to break the array from the inside was undoubtedly a fool's dream. Xiaofeng was already captive and had lost the ability to resist, and Lu Xing had likely killed Qiu Ren earlier to eliminate any interfering factors.

In this world, he only trusted himself. Even his senior martial brother had to die in the face of an opportunity he had waited twenty years for.

Crawling powerlessly on the ground, I was the person closest to Xiaofeng, but separated by the array, it felt like we were in two different worlds.

The river's water level had already risen to match the Lanjiang Dam, and the entire surface seemed to boil, churned by that whirlpool.

The dark shadow lurking beneath the river finally couldn't withstand the temptation. Booming sounds, like rolling thunder, echoed from beneath the surface.

"What exactly is in the water?"

"That shadow doesn't look like a school of fish..."

"Why did an earthquake happen at a time like this?"

Everyone on the dam was guessing, but no one guessed correctly. Even Tie Ningxiang and I, standing on the dam's top corridor, couldn't see clearly, as if a Pre-Heaven Stage force in our bloodlines made us instinctively avoid looking at it.

Aside from the torrential wind and rain, all that remained in my ears was Lu Xing's boisterous laughter: "Come out! The Red Luan is about to die, and no one can stop me!"

He bit the tip of his tongue and began chanting a bizarre incantation through a mouthful of fresh blood. The dragon tattoos on his face actually started to spread, and his expression grew increasingly strange and unfamiliar.

Ordinary people couldn't understand it, but the dark shadow underwater became even more frantic. A massive boom suddenly erupted from the bottom of the dam, and the entire structure trembled.

A seven-meter-high rogue wave crashed directly over the Lanjiang Dam, slamming Tie Ningxiang and me to the ground. Across the entire top of the dam, only Lu Xing stood alone in the center of the raging waters, his eyes locked on the whirlpool.

The dark shadow seemed to leap out of the water, hiding right within the crashing waves.

My head spun, and I struggled to open my eyes. By the time the waves subsided, I only saw a look of absolute horror on Lu Xing's face. His mouth hung half-open, his eyes staring fixedly at the center of the whirlpool as he muttered, "There actually is a true dragon in this world!"

While he stood dazed, a tiny, unnoticed bug crawled out from Xiaofeng's back. The river water nearly washed it away several times as it climbed ashore, narrowly surviving danger after danger.

Something was moving in the darkness. I narrowed my eyes and peered closely at it.

The bug was about half a chi long with a pair of fangs on its jaw. Its thousands of legs moved in unison, crawling at lightning speed.

"Is this... Mr. Gu's Thousand-Leg Gu?"

The Gu insect, originally thought to be lost, now dashed straight toward the Double-Faced Buddha Statue. Still immersed in his shock, Lu Xing failed to notice that something extra had appeared inside the grand array.

As the Thousand-Leg Gu approached the Double-Faced Buddha Statue, its body was illuminated by the Buddha's light. Its shiny black carapace emitted a foul stench, as if being corroded. However, the Gu insect possessed considerable spiritual intelligence; without making a sound, it forcefully pushed its way to within three chi of the statue.

Sensing a foreign object's intrusion, Lu Xing turned around, his expression changing drastically. "A Gu insect? You're courting death!"

He spun around to catch it, but how could he match the speed of the Thousand-Leg Gu?

The Gu insect wrapped its thousands of legs around the Buddha statue, coiling tightly over it, yet it had no way to destroy it. It was unknown what material the statue was made of, but the insect's fangs couldn't leave a single mark on it.

If this were a complete Double-Faced Buddha Statue with all eight consciousnesses gathered, Lu Xing wouldn't have had to worry about a mere Gu insect damaging it. The problem was that the statue's mind consciousness was not left behind by the Two-Faced Buddha's original layout—it had been replaced with Qiu Ren's Buddhist Heart!

Catching the scent of blood, the Thousand-Leg Gu suddenly stretched its head in excitement. Its fangs pierced through, digging out a bead formed of congealed blood from the statue!

"The Buddhist mind consciousness is broken!"

Several rumbling sounds echoed from inside the dam, followed closely by the workers' shouts: "It's back? The hydroelectric station has recovered!"

"The floodgates can be opened!"

"The spillway dam is operating normally!"

"Hurry! Everyone back to your posts! We must defend the dam to the death today!"

The rapidly rising water level was temporarily brought under control, but it seemed to make little difference to the final outcome. Tie Ningxiang and I were still unable to walk out of the Seven-Star Labyrinth Array. To me, this grand array was a natural chasm.

To kill Lu Xing, the array had to be broken first.

The blood bead formed from Qiu Ren's heart's blood was carried away by the Thousand-Leg Gu. The Eight Treasures shattered, and the Buddha's light covering the dam entirely receded.

Lu Xing's face was utterly grim, but he didn't pursue it. Faintly sensing that things were going wrong, he accelerated the progress of his life-swapping ritual.

"To think the only flaw was actually seized. What will I encounter next? Is this Gao Jian's layout?" Lu Xing looked at me, a flash of apprehension fleeting through his eyes. Grabbing the rope binding Xiaofeng, he was about to continue fishing for the dragon when he suddenly realized something was wrong.

His extended hand was grabbed by another pale, slightly swollen arm. "Xiaofeng? You still have the strength to struggle?"

Glancing downward, he saw that Xiaofeng appeared to be completely unconscious.

"This isn't her hand? Is there someone else on the dam?" Lu Xing turned around, only to find a young child's face pressed tightly against his.

Both Lu Xing and I recognized the girl's identity at the same time. She was the vengeful spirit that had been possessing Xiaofeng all along—the very first wronged soul to die by Lu Xing's hands!

'When I first met Xiaofeng at the Anxin Hotel, she was paying respects to a black-and-white photo. That's right, the girl in that photo was her!'

With the Buddhist Heart dug out, the Eight Treasures enveloping the dam had shattered. Without the suppression of the Buddha's light, the vengeful spirit hidden inside Xiaofeng's body was finally free from restraint.

"How is this possible? I killed you when you were four or five years old! Your three souls should be in the dry well; they should be at the Anxin Hotel! Have you been hiding inside Xiaofeng's body this whole time? You never showed yourself for so long, just for this very moment?!"

With one hand holding the Eight Characters Token high, ninety percent of Lu Xing's energy was drawn away by the token. How could he spare any focus to deal with a vengeful spirit harboring long-accumulated resentment?

Black hair wound toward the token, but it was blocked by an invisible barrier. Aside from Lu Xing, it seemed no one could touch it.

"A person with a cheap life dares to covet the secrets of heaven and touch the Eight Characters Divine Fiends?" Lu Xing bellowed ferociously. The dark shadow beneath the river was about to take the bait, and he had no desire to cause extra complications. But with the vengeful spirit biting and tearing at his body, even with his peerless evil arts, he lacked the strength to fight back. Left with no choice, he temporarily put the Eight Characters Token down.

Feeling his body lighten, he was just about to take out a talisman to deal with the vengeful spirit when Xiaofeng, who had been unconscious, suddenly opened her eyes. Risking tearing her wounds wider, she reached out and grabbed the Eight Characters Token.

Lu Xing never expected the unconscious Xiaofeng to suddenly make a move. Being a Divine Fiend as well, Xiaofeng snatched the token away without any hindrance, then hurled it forcefully toward me!