Chapter 146: The Storm (Part 1)
The rain began to fall. It was light but cold and damp, like the drizzle that falls in the evening of late autumn, brushing against people's arms and seeping the moisture into their bones.
Orlek paced towards her, but Ji Huaisu still hadn't received any reinforcements. She knew there was no point in delaying any further, so she simply swung her sword at the demon in human skin. The shadow blade's greatsword carved a transparent circle in the rain, its tip slicing towards Orlek's head.
The tip of the sword grazed the tip of Olek's nose.
She missed, at a distance where she couldn't miss, facing an unresponsive enemy. Even a rookie in the Resurrection Corps wouldn't make such a basic mistake. The shadow blade slashed into the ground, sending gravel splattering onto her forearm, but it didn't touch Olek, who was just inches away. Ji Huaisu retracted the shadow blade and hurled two icy daggers, aiming for the torso where she couldn't miss. At a distance of less than a meter, even a child wouldn't miss.
The ground beneath her feet softened, and the previously functional fulcrum suddenly gave way. Ji Huaisu missed her step, and her ice skate throw missed, glancing past Olek's ear. The city had experienced an earthquake two days prior, and its structure was still unstable, threatening a secondary disaster at any moment.
Ji Huaisu abandoned her weapon and went straight for Orlek's collar. At this point, there was no reason to miss; Orlek would have to respond. She didn't care about one hand, but she needed to know what means the demon would use to stop the attack.
Blood splattered from her arm, the sudden pain causing her muscles to stiffen. The basic talisman had failed to completely suppress the external force, and the wound on her right arm flared up at this moment, causing her grasping hand to miss.
Ji Huaisu immediately covered the wound tightly, sealing the wriggling black blood with ice. She gradually understood the enemy's tactics. Even a trivial attack with little impact would fail due to "accidents." As long as there was still a chance, the power of misfortune would make it inevitable.
The distance between them shrank to three steps. Ji Huaisu, imitating the knights, raised her Shadow Blade. She channeled her strength, causing the blade to grow enormous, transforming into a beam of black energy roughly ten meters tall. The Shadow Blade slashed towards Orlek once again. She prepared herself, her stance fixed with ice and dust. External fluctuations would no longer affect this strike; she would force the demon's true power to be revealed!
Olek raised a finger, and raindrops rolled down his fingertips.
"Eddy," he said.
The raindrops rose and swirled, like a shimmering, soft jewel. The water droplets floating between heaven and earth were drawn to it, gathering, swirling, and whistling with the movement of the raindrop. It was like a vortex formed by a hurricane, like the eye of the deep sea devouring life. In an instant, a vast amount of rain swirled and rose, forming a colorless vortex with a radius of a hundred meters. Ji Huaisu's slashing blow was easily swallowed by the vortex, and the elemental power was scattered in all directions as it spun!
Olek bent his finger and flicked, sending the vortex of doom drifting forward at a deceptively slow speed. Ji Huaisu turned and ran without a fight. She couldn't see the mechanics of the move, but she knew the consequences of being caught. The knowledge passed down in her bloodline brought an extreme sense of tension; being caught in the vortex of doom meant certain death!
"Run," Olek followed slowly, "Run towards the destination."
Ji Huaisu used the shield of light as a skateboard, sprinting recklessly, fleeing alone, pursued by destruction. She couldn't help but glance back, the frenzied scene behind her unforgettable. The vortex was like a liquid hurricane. Wherever it passed, buildings collapsed, the air froze, and trees were ground to dust by the high-speed current. The ground cracked and swirled back into the sky, sweeping everything into its final destruction.
She felt like she was struggling in a foul game, its background music a swirling noise of doom, mournful and hopeless, like the wails of souls once drowned in the raging current. Everything behind her was shattering, turning to a blank, as if the game were constantly clearing the "world" behind her perspective, where you couldn't see it. She could only run, constantly, faster than the vortex, or else she would suffer the same fate as the other characters in the background.
But this game has an end, and that end is her life. She can't escape forever, as if she stays even for a moment, she will die!
Ji Huaisu forced herself to stop thinking. She had to focus on escaping. Only by staying alive could she have a glimmer of hope. She turned repeatedly at intersections, changing direction to slow the vortex. Old buildings faded from view, and she avoided the residential area and entered a damp, tree-lined avenue. Banyan trees, fixed by equipment, stood in the drizzling rain, like a demon with entwined tentacles.
Ji Huaisu channeled his strength, accelerating once more. A friction-reducing ice path formed beneath his shield. A strange gust of wind blew, and a precarious screw from the hastily constructed fixture fell in the wind and rain. Ji Huaisu's shield of light knocked the screw off course, striking the rusted fixture. The entire device was thrown off balance, and an ominous groan erupted from within the banyan tree.
The old tree that was damaged in the previous earthquake fell down, and its trunk was hitting Ji Huaisu's back!
"The ability of evil fun...!"
Dodging and detouring would only slow her down, so Ji Huaisu simply drew her sword and slashed the tree trunk in half. The upper half of the banyan tree flew up, while the lower half, driven by inertia, crashed into the ground, striking a vulnerable spot in the road. The vibrations spread downward, rupturing an underground water pipe. Ji Huaisu turned around and saw a stream of muddy water bursting through the ground, spraying directly into her eyes!
In a moment of urgency, she froze the rain, forming an emergency ice armor on her face. The mud and sand that sprayed onto the armor unexpectedly tinged it with blood. The sand was mixed with the magical grit left behind by the Foolish Demon Golden Leaf two days prior. Even a mere brush against her carried the same threat as a relic of the same rank. If Ji Huaisu hadn't reacted quickly, the grit would have pierced her brain and killed her.
At that moment, the vortex from behind was approaching, and the delay allowed Orlek to catch up. Ji Huaisu hurriedly wiped her face, wiping away the blood that obscured her vision. She stood on the light shield and turned, glaring fearlessly at the demon. "If you have the guts, just come and kill me! You're using these little tricks to hurt people, and you're such a big shot!"
"You can just call me mean." Olek nodded with a smile, "I don't care."
He blew onto his fingertips, and the vortex's velocity suddenly increased by three times, forcing Ji Huaisu to use all her strength to barely maintain distance. Ji Huaisu was truly helpless this time. She felt a sense of shame and powerlessness from the bottom of her heart. He saw no weaknesses in his enemy, did not care about provocation, did not reveal intelligence, was not arrogant or careless. He truly "respected his opponent" as he said, and when he attacked, he intended to kill you with the force of thunder and with all his energy.
But Ji Huaisu instinctively felt something was wrong. Olek's attitude was so upright, so why didn't he use all his strength, instead resorting to such a playful, cat-and-mouse approach? Was this the nature of bad luck, or was there something she didn't know...
At that moment, three more trees fell, and the pressing situation interrupted Ji Huaisu's thoughts. A nearby railway sign was shaped like an arrow, pointing to the icons representing the park and the city center, one on the left and one on the right. She turned roughly, swerving past the tree trunks, breaking through the iron railings and darting into the city park on the other side.
Misfortune would use everything around her to cause accidents. To be temporarily safe, she needed as much open space as possible, at least to reduce the factors that could cause danger. In the park, there was only grass besides the fitness equipment. No matter how she played tricks, she couldn't be hurt!
"You seem to have taken the wrong path, little knight," said Olek.
Behind the broken wall, greenery shone forth, and beyond the small green space, glass-walled buildings stood in the rain. The metal road sign behind her was blown 180 degrees by the wind, now pointing in the correct direction.
She had taken the wrong path. In her haste, coincidence and malice played a huge joke on her, causing her to rush headfirst into the most dangerous Jedi!
"Fuck you, come on!" Ji Huaisu threw himself into the air and raised his middle finger behind him. "Go ahead and play with your garbage. I won't be defeated by these despicable tactics!"
The rain intensified, and she plunged headfirst into it like a courageous lion battling a ghost. The devil's laughter drifted through the rain, and the vortex swirled, scattering misfortune in all directions. One thing Ji Huaisu didn't yet know was that the power of the vortex of misfortune would only grow stronger as it swirled, for misfortune always accumulated, ready to burst forth. A new series of coincidences, incomparable to those before, were connecting in seconds, forming an unfortunate chain that bound her fate.
The half of the tree that had been severed initially rolled down with the wind and struck a water hydrant two blocks away. The high-pressure water jet, caused by the damage, happened to spray directly onto the windshield of a car. The driver failed to brake in time, causing a rear-end collision. The vehicle ahead was an overloaded delivery truck, and a loosely tied steel plate slipped off, smashing through the window of an SUV in a hurry in the next lane. The unfortunate driver was reduced to a bloody mass, his hands still on the steering wheel from inertia.
The SUV lost control, veered off the road in the rain, and crashed into the construction site, directly hitting a crane carrying cargo. The driver rushed to the scene, but the long-neglected construction vehicle failed to comply. The bundle of rebar gradually slipped in the wind and rain. A series of misoperations unbalanced the hook, which then broke. A dense cloud of rebar rained down from the sky, descending upon Ji Huaisu's head in a deadly rain!
Ji Huaisu clasped her hands together, and dust rose from either side, merging into a protective hand of sand. Steel bars were deflected by the dust, one by one piercing the earth. Buried pipelines were damaged, and the conflict between moisture and magical power caused the magical sand within the pipelines to stir. The disturbance of the earth element caused the earth to begin to unsettle once again, and localized earthquakes, confined to a small area, began. This tremor, with remarkable coincidence, shook the foundations of many buildings, which had been damaged two days earlier, causing seemingly stable high-rises to begin to sway.
Amid the people's exclamations and the increasingly violent wind and rain, more than twenty buildings collapsed simultaneously. They all crashed into Ji Huaisu in the middle of the road, as if servants of misfortune were bowing and inviting the unfortunate person to enter hell!
(End of this chapter)
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