Liu Xiu: I Don't Think It Could Possibly Be This Much of a Coincidence!

Liu Xiu shrank the Crimson Firmament Sword and tucked it into his pocket. He was traveling alone anyway, so there was no need to hunt up a lead box to block the radiation. Hm? Wait. Where was his scabbard? What was the meaning of giving him the sword and not the scabbard! Liu Xiu looked all around. Seeing no scabbard, he began rummaging through the storage thumb ring. "I remember the female ghost Madam Liu left a jade box, didn't she..." After rummaging for a while he found the jade box, then looked at the elm-wood sword case before him. Calling it a sword case was not really apt. The sword case looked just like a rectangular block of wood. Liu Xiu thought a moment, took the wooden box apart, and stuffed it into the storage thumb ring, meaning to use it later as material for a good-looking scabbard. That done, Liu Xiu took the three immortal-aspect cultivation methods from the storage thumb ring and looked them over with care. Once he was sure there really were hidden messages left by Daoist Wang's Master, he sighed inwardly. Daoist Wang's Master was a good master. That was no lie. But his fondness for keeping things tucked away left Liu Xiu rather helpless. Even so, he bowed in the direction of the ghost domain and said his thanks. What the other party had left behind had, after all, fulfilled him! "This kindness—I, Liu Xiu, have marked it down!" He spoke with a solemn face, planning that when he returned to Wuyue Town he would go to Lianshui Town and burn some paper money for the other party. "Reckoning the time, the female ghost Madam Liu's grave ought to be finished by now..." So he thought. Before leaving Wuyue Town he had asked Huo Laosi to see to it. He meant nothing else by it. He simply had money now. Just as Liu Xiu was about to go on into Yulin, he saw the moon in the sky. Stirred by a feeling, he took out the White Jade Cicada molt, its thousand-li voice transmission already restored. Unlike the earlier chirring of insects and croaking of frogs, what came from the other end this time was a pleasant female voice, a young girl's voice. The girl's voice sounded. "Huh? Why is there a white cicada too?" "...This is white jade. And this is a thousand-li Voice-Transmitting Jade Pendant, not a cicada!" Liu Xiu said to the White Jade Cicada molt. To be fair, he felt this girl was hopelessly slow! And he was beginning to suspect that his narration cheat could already reckon things that had not yet happened. After all, there was a moon right now. Right after that, he heard footsteps backing away in fright. Only after a while did the girl's voice sound again. "Oh, oh, oh, a Voice-Transmitting Jade Pendant! Who are you?" "You may call me... the Fool!" A mean little whim took Liu Xiu, and he spoke with cool indifference. From the other end came a stifled laugh. "Your name is the Fool? Fool... so that means idiot, then. Hello, idiot. I'm Caiyi!" "Do you know me?" Caiyi or no Caiyi, Liu Xiu spoke expressionlessly into the White Jade Cicada molt. At that, Caiyi said, "I don't know you!" "Then can you reckon who I am?" "Uh, I can't reckon it. I don't know how!" "You stupid—your m—@%《×:......" Liu Xiu opened his mouth and cursed. He cursed for a good long while, and only when he heard the other party start to blubber did he give a snort and put the White Jade Cicada away. To be fair, Cursing her and then cutting out was a real thrill! "Hm? Wait. The other person was named Caiyi?" Caiyi... a young girl... It couldn't be that movie! Only then did Liu Xiu belatedly think of the movie Demon Dao. His brow lifted. He felt he might have cursed a little too fast. But he did not take the White Jade Cicada molt back out at once. For no other reason than this: he felt it could not be that much of a coincidence. It might only be the same name. And besides, He had just finished cursing her. It wouldn’t do to talk now! "It shouldn't be that much of a coincidence..." Liu Xiu rubbed his chin. He thought it over again and again, and decided it really should not be that coincidental. The probability that the person on the other end truly was Caiyi was even smaller than the probability that his master was, at this very moment, blasting the female demon with an electromagnetic cannon. Mm. That probability was basically zero! At the same time, elsewhere, in the Jiangsu-Zhejiang region, in the woods of an unnamed mountain. Swish~ A cold, clear sword-light. Bai Min'er, flying with her feet upon her sword, stopped the sword-flight, came up beside Caiyi where she squatted sobbing on the ground, and with two fingers sheathed the sword. "Caiyi, what's wrong?" "Waaah, Eldest Senior Sister, someone cursed me..." Sobbing, Caiyi raised her head, opened her little hand, and showed a White Jade Cicada of the very same kind as Liu Xiu's. Then she began to tell what had happened. "Uh..." Wasn't it you who called the other person an idiot first! Bai Min'er grumbled inwardly. She was rather surprised that Caiyi had been lucky enough to pick up a thousand-li Voice-Transmitting Jade Pendant, but as the senior sister she had to comfort her. "All right, don't cry. The next time that idiot contacts you, Senior Sister will curse him for you. Let's go, quickly. This place isn't safe anymore!" "Not safe? Didn't Master say Senior Shi was helping deal with the female demon? How can it still be unsafe!" Caiyi asked, puzzled. "It is unsafe precisely because Senior Shi is here!" Bai Min'er's face went a little pale, as if she had thought of something terrible. Even as she spoke, searing-white light suddenly lit the night sky. Her expression changed, and she jerked her head up. "Not good. Run! Senior Shi has struck again!" "???" Before Caiyi could understand, Bai Min'er swept her onto the sword and fled into the distance. In the instant they fled, white meteors fell across the whole sky. Just as Caiyi's little mouth was unconsciously saying how beautiful it was, her eyes widened at the booming crashes. The white meteors grew larger. No. These were no white meteors at all. They were white pillars of lightning, each trailing a long tail, falling from the sky. Pillar after pillar, formed of searing-white lightning, came with an ear-piercing shriek. Crackling white lightning warped space itself. One after another, lightning pillars like a torrential downpour plunged straight from the heavens and slammed into the stretch of woods where she had just been. Boom! Boom! Boom— Every tree in the woods shuddered at once. Towering trees burst apart from the middle, then turned to powder one after another. Caught by the great wind, they rose into a sky-covering black curtain and swept the surroundings. Caiyi watched with her beautiful eyes wide, her little mouth slightly open as she swallowed a gulp of saliva that went by the name of fear. She saw the ground within the woods heave violently, then cave in. Soil churned like waves, surging up without end. Broken rock and gravel shot in every direction, whistling through the air like hidden weapons. From first to last it was no more than a few breaths. The once-dense woods had become a stretch of ruins, and from within the ruins a wretched scream rang out. Right after that, a plume of demonic qi blacker than the night itself shot into the sky and fled toward the distance. Only, it was rather strange. Caiyi felt this plume of demonic qi looked a bit wretched! Bai Min'er did not know what Caiyi was thinking. She only brought her behind a great boulder, stopped the sword-flight, landed, and said, "Now you know why I said it's unsafe precisely because Senior Shi is here!" "Mm-hm..." Caiyi nodded at once. Her beautiful eyes followed a flash of searing-white lightning across the sky, and she looked around in curiosity. "Huh? Where's Master?" "..." Uh. Could she say that Senior Shi Jian had found Master a nuisance and told Master to get lost? Bai Min'er grumbled inwardly, her expression odd. At the same time, above the Ninth Heaven. Shi Jian, who had turned into lightning to pursue the female demon, let his gaze rest on Caiyi for an instant. He thought in surprise, "Ah Xiu's aura?" Convinced that Liu Xiu could not possibly have come to the Jiangsu-Zhejiang region from a thousand li away, Shi Jian had a thought much like Liu Xiu's. Namely, that the probability of Liu Xiu being here was zero! As the thought rose and fell, the searing-white lightning Shi Jian had become had already crossed several thousand meters and come down on a cliff atop a mountain. He stopped the formless gathering-and-dispersing divine ability he had comprehended from the great divine ability of primordial magnetism, manifested his true form clad in the yin-yang fish Daoist robe, and the cuff of his right sleeve opened. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh— Twelve iron beads, each the size of a thumb, shot out. The moment they emerged they hung about his body, spinning at tremendous speed. In no more than a snap of the fingers, lightning coiled around the beads and gave off a terrible crackling thunder. Shi Jian wasted no words. Both palms pushed forward. Electromagnetic lightning... Ptui. Great divine ability of primordial magnetism—activate! Boom, boom, boom— Twelve tracks of light, red and blue together, appeared around Shi Jian all at once. The instant the tracks appeared, the twelve iron beads radiating lightning dropped into the tracks' starting points. Then, as Shi Jian drove the great divine ability of primordial magnetism, they became twelve streams of searing-white light, like white meteors, and shot forth. Their target was the fleeing female demon! All of it was finished in the space of a breath. Searing-white lightning pillars tore the air, one after another, with ear-piercing shrieks and the crash of thunder. In the blink of an eye the twelve searing-white lightning pillars were more than a kilometer away, shooting straight at that endlessly roiling mass of pitch-black demonic qi in the sky. Or rather, they bore down on the black demonic qi the female demon had become, and made her roar, "Aaaah, you stinking Daoist, I'll fight you to the—" The female demon's shrill roar cut off dead beneath the successive blasts of twelve strikes of the great divine ability of primordial magnetism, as if a video had been muted. The demonic qi that ought to have held in a single mass instantly scattered and dwindled at a furious pace. Then it ran, at an even more terrifying speed. Right. She didn't fight. She ran!