Chapter 104: Li Guangxu

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The inky demonic qi had congealed into a colossal python, five meters long, its pupils blood-red, its eyes filled with killing intent fixed on Li Changqing.

The middle-aged man said in a calm tone, “Detective Li, you are an honest man. Unfortunately, honest men rarely have good endings.”

Liang Daoyi looked at Li with hope in his eyes. Trapped in the monster’s grasp, his only chance of staying alive now rested on Li.
Even though he knew that asking a detective to face such a powerful beast was madness, it was still his only hope.

“Wuwu, wuwu-wuwu!” Liang Daoyi’s mouth sounded out.
By the rhythm, he seemed to be cheering Li on.
It was his heart’s cry—and his one chance to live.

At last, Li Changqing moved.

Liang Daoyi’s eyes shifted from hope to surprise, to stunned disbelief, and finally to despair.
Because Li was tightening his hands around his own throat, and from the way he looked, he meant to strangle himself.

“Know you’re doomed and want to die a little more comfortably?” The snake demon saw this and froze, too.
It was the only reasonable explanation he could think of.
Otherwise, how could he explain the man’s move at that moment?

“Huu…”
Li slowly opened his eyes.

The snake demon sensed a strange trace in the air.
Corpse aura?
A zombie?
This detective is a zombie?

The giant snake of demonic qi opened its maw with a shriek and lunged at Li, as if to rip him apart.
It looked ready to swallow him whole.

Li Changqing pulled Tang Xiaoyu and dodged swiftly.
Boom!
The demonic python struck the low cottage with its head; the whole shack collapsed in an instant, dust and smoke billowing upward.

Then the snake swept toward the dodging Li.
Li quickly scooped up Tang Xiaoyu, using his back to block.

Thud…
With Tang held to him, Li rolled across the ground several times.

“Are you all right?”
Li frowned as a sharp heat flared in his back.
“I’m fine,” Tang Xiaoyu said, pointing behind them. “Careful!”

The huge demonic snake widened its mouth, and from it a stream of black demonic flame sprayed toward the two of them.

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“Lightning flame, fierce and swift, O Southern Fire Lord.
Flying venom, ten thousand fathoms, shake and fling to the eight directions.
Let true talismans take form; let true spirit manifest without delay.
Quickly, as law commands.”

In one breath, Li Changqing threw out ten command talismans.
Violent heat surged up at once, and ten massive fireballs appeared, instantly swallowing the demonic serpent.
The black demonic qi was instantly melted by the searing temperature.

“Ss.”
The snake demon’s eyes went blood-red as he stepped back, blood welling at the corner of his mouth. His enormous demonic qi, in an instant, had been burned to disarray by the talismans used by that brat. Worse, that youngster could use talismans at all—he was, after all, a zombie.
And the force of that spellwork was enormous.

What was this?
It was beyond anything he had ever understood.

In the blink of an eye, three great fireballs loosed from the command talismans roared toward him.
The snake demon did not dare to underestimate them; he raised his hand, and a protective barrier formed from his demonic qi.
He trusted that barrier completely...

Snap...
The moment the fireballs touched it, crack after crack spread across the barrier, brittle clicks in the air.
At once it shattered into countless shards scattered across the ground.

The giant fireball swept at him.
“Such power?” he blurted.
The snake monster dodged aside, and the blast struck the business van behind him in a blast of skyward fire.

In the next instant, Li Changqing was already in front of him.
He—
a zombie.

Pow.
Li punched him down to the ground, then one punch after another hammered the demon’s face.

“You like playing with snakes, do you?”
“Playing with snakes?”

For a zombie, strength and speed were overwhelming advantages.
After only a few punches, the snake demon was battered beyond keeping its shape.
Each strike hit like a giant hammer.
With the repeated blows, the demonic energy sustaining his human form shattered, and he slowly transformed back into a jet-black python over ten meters long.

“Hah.”
Li Changqing breathed hard, looking down at the inert serpent. He rose and slowly worked his aching body loose.

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With his fists alone, he had knocked that python out as if it had never been alive.
At that moment, Li Changqing reassessed his own strength.
It seemed this snake demon had not been as strong as he had imagined.
Or perhaps he had not been as weak as he thought.

Then a young man, perhaps twenty-seven or twenty-eight, in an expensive suit and cropped hair, followed slowly by a dozen or more men, came over.
“Wuwu-woo.”

Liang Daoyi, now frantic, struggled with all his might.

That man was Li Guangxu, president of the New South Newspaper Group.
Li Guangxu looked like the domineering hero from a television drama: handsome and imposing.

“He passed out?”
Li Guangxu cast one quick glance at the snake demon, then let his eyes drift to Li Changqing. Smiling, he stepped closer and extended a hand.
“Detective Li Changqing, we’ve heard of you for a long time. Our group was already preparing a feature interview with you. We wanted you to share your experience with odd cases.”

Li Changqing retreated one cautious step. The newcomer was not to be trusted.
Li Guangxu pulled his hand back with a smile and said, “No need to worry. I never expected you were a zombie. That means, in the eyes of the Thirty-Six Bureau, we’re both heretical outsiders—nearly one of the same kind.”
“Strictly speaking, none of us are good people. Releasing you wouldn’t be such a big deal, but—”
“You hurt my man.”

Li Guangxu was still smiling. Though they were hiding inside the New South News Group’s orbit, they dare not be discovered by the Thirty-Six Bureau.
That did not make him weak. On the contrary, Li Guangxu was a monster ambitious enough to plan to shake the Thirty-Six Bureau out of the sky.

Li Changqing tightened a command talisman in his fist and warned, “What do you want?”
He, too, was studying the surroundings. This place was open and exposed; getting away would not be easy.

He had to find a way first to get Tang Xiaoyu out, and he had no idea when Bai Chuan would arrive.

Li Guangxu, hands behind his back, circled Li once and fixed him with curious eyes.
“Tell me your secret. Why, though you are a zombie, can you use spellcraft?”

What Li had just used was clearly Daoist sorcery, not the demon arts like theirs.
If there truly were some means to let a fiend wield Daoist spellcraft, it would be earth-shattering news for creatures like them.

For monsters, obtaining a cultivation method is never simple.
Unlike human lineages, where any gifted person can learn any method,
a demon’s cultivation techniques are rare from the start. Finding one that suits one’s own species is even harder.
A snake demon and a tiger demon do not share the same method.

“There’s no reason not to tell you.”
“—but you must promise one condition: release us, including Liang Daoyi.”