Chapter 132.2

Mist swirled everywhere, obscuring most of the view.

On the second floor of the photo studio, a group of white centipedes was silently using their antennae to dig through the defensive formation set here.

They were extremely cautious, making sure the one who had laid the formation would not notice.

And this work had clearly begun long ago. It could be said that the moment the dense fog rose, these centipedes had already started working under its cover.

At last, a tiny opening appeared.

One white centipede slipped into it, landed on the second-floor windowsill, then squeezed in through the crack in the window.

The centipede saw Deng Chen sitting before the blue backdrop, his entire body tightly bound by a special net rope.

Deng Chen had clearly seen the white centipede on the floor as well. He began struggling in terror, and wisps of black aura burst out from his body.

This was the aura of the black python, representing the eyes!

...

Outside, the pig-headed man, who was confronting Li Zhuiyuan in his “General Sun” state, lightly curled the corner of his damaged pig mouth.

He thought to himself:

Black Python, he may not have killed you or attacked you, but clearly, he never really trusted you either.

Heh. All of you, really... do you even know what you are? Even if you do good deeds and build up virtue, do you really think these people who call themselves righteous will accept you and make room for you?

You’d be better off with the five of us. Let me take the lead and fuse us back into one. Only then will we have a chance to stop hiding like rats in a filthy gutter and live once more in something resembling... a human way.

The pig-headed man blinked and issued the order.

...

On the second floor, the white centipede quickly climbed up the Homecoming Net, crawled all the way up onto Deng Chen’s face, opened its mouth, and bit down on the center of his forehead!

...

“Ha!”

The pig-headed man spread both arms and relaxed completely.

It had now taken control of the other four yin beasts. It could reconstruct a complete set of five senses.

It had won.

The pig-headed man pointed a hoof at Li Zhuiyuan and laughed.

“Heh heh, you don’t need to keep pretending anymore. I admit I really was fooled by you at first, but it didn’t take long for me to see through it. You failed to invite a god to possess you.”

He had been found out.

Even though there was still half the time left before the “spirit-writing end time” Li Zhuiyuan had set for himself.

But now that the other party had already seen through it ahead of time, there was no point in keeping up the act.

Li Zhuiyuan dropped the disguise, his aura returning to normal, looking somewhat drained.

He reached into his pocket, grabbed a small handful of candy, and tossed it into his mouth.

The pig-headed man continued, “My apologies for making you act with me for so long. The truth is, I never brought out my real strength or fought you seriously at all.”

As Li Zhuiyuan crunched the candy in his mouth, he raised one finger and wagged it.

“I admit you didn’t go all out, but don’t dismiss my efforts so casually. You were fighting seriously. You just didn’t want to pay the price of being gravely injured.”

When this pig had tried to break the formation earlier, it had been serious, apparently drawing deeply on the monkey’s ability.

But the problem seemed to be that it had only obtained their spirits, not their power. Most likely, that was because when it obtained those spirits, they had either been dying or severely injured already, with little power left in them.

Though he did not know the exact process, Li Zhuiyuan guessed that in this regard, he should thank his three companions.

They had exhausted the power of those three corresponding yin beasts.

Which meant that although this pig could use the abilities of the other yin beasts, in the end, it was still consuming its own strength.

And this pig itself simply did not have that kind of deep reserve to squander recklessly.

Its best course of action should have been to maintain the state it had at the beginning and go all out, no matter how great the cost.

Especially after pulling Li Zhuiyuan out from the photo studio’s defensive formation, it had clearly lost the earlier force it showed when breaking the formation. It had started trying to deal with him at the smallest possible cost.

And once it realized that killing him would require paying a massive price, it had backed off.

Even though it had long since discovered his spirit-writing was fake, it had still deliberately played along to drag things out.

The pig-headed man began stroking its face. With two soft plops, the pig ears on both sides fell to the ground.

Then, with two wet crunches, it dug out its own pig eyeballs and casually tossed them aside.

Rip...

It tore off the chunk of flesh where its nostrils had been.

Li Sanjiang’s favorite drinking snack was pig head meat, and in his opinion, the tastiest part of it was the snout.

Now, that best piece of meat was also thrown to the ground by the pig-headed man.

Finally, it opened its mouth and stuck out its tongue.

Smack!

It tore the tongue off.

But even without a tongue, with only a mouth left, it could still speak, probably by using the muscles in other parts of its face to create resonance.

“Once I pulled you out of the photo studio’s formation, there was no longer any absolute need for me to kill you. Though I must admit, you really are impressive, and your talent truly is terrifying.

If you could grow to the same age as the Dragon King who suppressed and shattered us back then, you would undoubtedly be even more terrifying than he was. The five of us would truly have no chance of making a comeback.”

Li Zhuiyuan said, “Thanks for the compliment.”

“But isn’t it funny?

The Heavenly Dao never gave us a second glance, but it seems it doesn’t think much of you either. It didn’t even give you the chance to fully grow up.”

Li Zhuiyuan replied, “The Heavenly Dao has its own arrangements.”

“Heh, that really does sound like a joke.”

The pig-headed man’s head began to shrink, no longer as huge as before, reducing to the size of an ordinary adult’s head.

Only four facial features were still missing.

“What, have you already accepted your fate?”

Li Zhuiyuan said, “What else can I do?”

Buzz!

A new nose grew on the pig-headed man’s face. It was blue at first, but after forming, it returned to the appearance of a normal human nose.

Its aura began rapidly climbing.

“You can praise me. If your praise puts me in a good mood, I might consider giving you a chance to go back, light the lamp, end the River walk, and keep your life.”

Li Zhuiyuan said, “How do you want me to praise you?”

Buzz!

A pair of white ears grew out again, then their color returned to normal. Its aura rose by another large step.

“You know exactly how to praise me. Perhaps in your heart, from just now until now, you’ve already praised me many times.”

Li Zhuiyuan said, “You’re very smart.”

Buzz!

It opened its mouth, and a vivid red tongue grew back. It was very long at first, but quickly shrank and adjusted to normal length.

Its aura surged even higher.

“Go on. I enjoy hearing it.”

Li Zhuiyuan said, “You’re the smartest pig I’ve ever seen.”

The pig-headed man passed one hand over the area below its forehead and above its nose. The originally bare, flat flesh there began slowly sinking inward, gradually forming the shape of two eye sockets.

“I don’t like that sentence. Take a look at me now. What part of me still looks like a pig?”

Li Zhuiyuan shook his head and said, “No matter how smart you are, you’re still a pig.”

“Although I never intended to give you another chance to light the lamp and end the River walk early, you’re so incapable of appreciating kindness that even now, at this point, you still want to preserve that ridiculous confidence and pride of yours.

Then let me tell you the truth first.

I’m going to kill you and peel off your human skin.

I’ll make your skin into a banner and use it to declare my attitude to the Heavenly Dao.”

Li Zhuiyuan said, “Is that fun?”

After the eye sockets appeared, eyelids, eye seams, and even eyelashes above them grew out as well.

Now it looked as though it were speaking with its eyes closed.

“It’s very fun, future Dragon King. Aren’t you supposed to be a smart man? You stepped over the threshold and treated things like us as scraps you could hook at will.

How spirited and full of ambition you were then.

Things like us, unfit to be seen in public, could only hide behind the white fog, trembling and praying you wouldn’t pick us.

Hahahahaha...

But you didn’t expect this, did you?

Even if all of us were once defeated by the Dragon Kings of the Qin and Liu families through the generations, if the Dragon King had to personally deal with us, how could we possibly be as simple as you imagined?

You say I’m a pig,

but it was this pig of yours who saw through your pattern. You and your people have all become my puppets this time, working for me.

I,

am smarter than you!”

Li Zhuiyuan said, “Actually, you’re not smart enough. You’re too cautious and too careful.”

The pig-headed man said, “Shouldn’t smart people be more cautious and more careful? That’s just human nature. Aren’t you the same?”

Li Zhuiyuan shook his head. “I’m not. If I were, I wouldn’t have come out of the photo studio on my own and chosen to gamble with you.”

The pig-headed man gently stretched its arms, took a deep breath, and prepared to open its eyes to welcome its complete form.

Hearing Li Zhuiyuan’s words, it smiled and said, “Heh. Gamble on what?”

“On you being unwilling to pay a huge price to kill me. On your single-minded focus on your ultimate goal. On your caution, on your carefulness.

On the fact that no matter how smart you are, you’re still only a pig.”

Li Zhuiyuan lifted his head, glanced around at the surrounding white fog, and said:

“Aren’t you curious? I was able to set up a defensive formation strong enough to block you, so after coming out, why did I never try to break the fog miasma you set down?

Could breaking the miasma really be harder than setting up the formation?”

A look of shock and suspicion suddenly appeared on the pig-headed man’s face. Its eyes, which had been about to open, now seemed afraid to open at all.

A powerful sense of danger was rising from the bottom of its heart, yet it could not understand where this feeling was coming from.

But its still-unopened eyelids were already twitching nonstop,

as if they could no longer wait to open and look upon this world!

“You used the abilities of the Red Ape and the Azure Ox, so why didn’t the White Centipede come out? It only released some fog?

I was waiting. Waiting for those little centipedes you sent out to hurry up and chew a hole through my formation.

Really, your movements were far too slow. So slow that I was almost unable to resist opening the formation myself and sending your little centipede inside by hand.”

...

Second floor, beneath the blue backdrop.

A hand grabbed one corner of the Homecoming Net and gave it a light tug.

The Homecoming Net came completely loose and fell to the floor.

Two people were seated on one chair, one sitting atop the other. Earlier, because they had been completely wrapped from top to bottom by the net rope, it had been impossible to tell from outside.

The person sitting below was continuously emitting the aura of the black python.

The person sitting above was “Deng Chen.”

But at this moment, huge cracks appeared across “Deng Chen’s” “face,” and then it all began to flake away piece by piece, dropping to the floor like a torn photograph shredded into fragments.

Once the original “Deng Chen face” fell away, the new face revealed beneath was Lin Shuyou.

That tiny white centipede was currently biting down on the center of Lin Shuyou’s forehead.

The Homecoming Net, consecrated with pure yang black dog’s blood, already had the effect of weakening the perception of evil things.

And the photographs taken by Deng Chen with his “eyeball” also possessed a realistic, fine-grained effect capable of passing falsehood off as truth.

At that moment, Deng Chen, sitting below, wore a face full of disbelief.

At first, he had not believed that the young man would truly be willing to accept him, or trust what he said. But the facts proved that the young man really had believed him.

And now, he could hardly believe that the young man’s plan had actually succeeded.

That pig was the smartest of the five.

But the facts had also proved that

you

were still, in the end, only a pig.

...

Li Zhuiyuan said, “Ayou, spirit-writing. Invite the child medium!”

On the second floor.

With his eyes closed, Lin Shuyou spread open his left hand, clenched his right into a fist, and let out a long chant from deep in his throat:

“Officers of the Command Banner, evil ghosts are slain, never ferried across~”

The pig-headed man’s eyes suddenly flew open.

They were vertical pupils!

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