Chapter 578: A Rat in a Hole

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Walking on the wet stone path while listening to the sound of the spring water, Zhang Lisheng walked past the bright flowers and into the only three-story building in Huxin Island.

There were carved beams around him, gold and jade vied with each other in brightness, rosewood furniture modeled after antique carvings, and palace lanterns draped to the ground. It was an endless grace and magnificence, but no service personnel showed up to welcome the young man, causing him to be slightly taken aback.

However, when Zhang Lisheng recalled that they were about to conduct a private gathering, it was pretty standard for there to be no service personnel at all. At once, he was no longer suspicious and merely coughed loudly a few times out of politeness before shouting, “Senior Sister, I’m here, are you upstairs?”

Then, he began to step on the brown-red wooden stairs to head upstairs.

He came to the second floor, and a vast exquisitely carved mahogany windscreen hung with a magnificent landscape wash painting of several dozens of meters entered his sight. At that instant, when he saw the wash painting, a hateful roar suddenly resonated in his ears, “It took us a lot of effort and plenty of planning, and now, you finally entered our trap!”

After this shout, the dead bodies of the green-clothed Taoist priests who were sitting in an Eight Trigrams Formations in the pavilion vanished right away without a trace. In the twinkling of an eye, the Heaven’s secret that was disrupted returned to its right track and Zhang Lisheng immediately felt as though a pair of invisible palms was gripping his heart. Chills ran down his spine, the massive windscreen in front of him distorted into a kaleidoscope and began to spin.

When he finally returned to his senses, he realized that he was already tightly surrounded by a group of people and was in the middle of a stormy island.

“Won’t you Taoist priests get tired of constantly looking for troubles with me? If it wasn’t for the fact that I regarded all of you as Earthlings during the last ambush and felt that we should be united as one against a common enemy in the face of the corrosion of the alien civilization, then I wouldn’t have stopped last time. I can’t believe that my magnanimity actually resulted in another trap of yours again! Do you all really wanna die in my hands and let your Gate of Dao be annihilated?” Looking around at the crowds dressed in different ways, with the elders dressed in fluttering robes traditionally, Zhang Lisheng realized that he had most likely fallen into another trap of the Gate of Dao. Gritting his teeth, he asked angrily, half in classical Mandarin while the other half in vernacular language.

Upon hearing his words, the Gate of Dao’s people around him fell into a moment of silence. After all, just a few months ago, the young man had magnanimously disregarded all their past grudges and opened the floodgates to allow the Gate of Dao to obtain the jade mine in the Noah World that the US controlled. It was indeed immoral for the Gate of Dao to once again ambush him without any reason.

In this moment of silence, one of the handsome, noble-looking young men among the Gate of Dao’s disciples saw that the elders of the Gate did not say anything, so he could not help but blurt out in anger and hate, “You repugnant scoundrel! How dare you put on airs despite stepping into our trap? We should be united as one against a common enemy? Humph! If you really had the intention to unite with us as one against a common enemy, then my Senior Brother Tianliang wouldn’t have died in the first place!”

“Duan Lianbao, you’re always a part of the Gate of Dao’s disciples who scheme to trap me! You have such good talents, so why didn’t you polish it up properly but keep wanting to carry out schemes? You must have been evilly influenced already!” Looking at the man’s distorted expression that was utterly opposed to his temperament, Zhang Lisheng said coldly, “That time, the three of you set up a scheme to trap me and placed me in a difficult situation for no reason, so it’s just a matter of fact for me to kill Zheng Tianliang. Forget it, you’re completely blinded by your obsession now, so I won’t say anything more. After I break out of this trap, I’ll destroy the jade mine in Noah World and break the opportunity for the Gate of Dao to strengthen. At that time, all of you will definitely regret it!”

“Hahaha… Just you alone can break the big opportunity of my Gate of Dao? Let me tell you frankly, you scoundrel, that jade mine in the foreign world has already had its foundation taken by the elder using my formation and has already become nothing but trash. Speaking of it, it’s all thanks to your fake generosity that we have the chance to set the formation with ease. Not only that, but I also have one more interesting news to tell you. I heard that your Caucasian girlfriend disappeared for no reason two weeks ago…”

“What did you say? You! You…” Upon hearing Duan Lianbao’s last sentence, horror dawned on Zhang Lisheng’s expression. Clenching his fist, an invisible force instantly wiped the thousands of rolling waves around the island out. The casual breeze blowing in the low altitude of half a foot from the ground that was fluttering the tiny gravel and sand on the ground also grew silent right away.

“What? Can’t you hear clearly what I told you? Your Caucasian girlfriend has disappeared out of the blue two weeks ago, and nobody knows whether she’s dead or alive now! Hahaha…” When Duan Lianbao saw the black-haired young man not far away bristling with anger in his bafflement, he crushed his talisman, and two Taoist virtual figures appeared behind him right away to block the killing aura as he laughed heartily.

His temper had long been dried to become mature and stable, but the reason he would talk so much this time was that he wanted to see the pained expression on his enemy, with the purpose of wanting to feel pleasure over it.

Upon seeing Duan Lianbao’s obsessed manner, who was pleased with his own schemes, several Gate of Dao’s elders who intentionally allowed Duan Lianbao to indulge in his evil influence, so he could disrupt the heart of the ancient witchcraft’s successor could no longer remain calm verbally. One of the elders who were prominent in size and had hair completely white but a face as delicate as a baby looked at Zhang Lisheng and said, “You scoundrel, don’t have such a low opinion on our Gate of Dao. Although your crime of intentionally disrupting China’s human affairs is true, your Caucasian girl is innocent, and we’ll never harm her to ruin our own name.”

“Then who else can it be…” Upon hearing the Old Taoist’s argument, Zhang Lisheng gritted his teeth. However, when his words left his mouth, he suddenly remembered that Sheila must have probably informed Tina about the affair he had with Trish, so perhaps the girl had gone into hiding for having her heart broken over this issue. At once, his words could not help but lodged in his throat.

Recalling the help that Tina had given him in the past, he imagined the terrible impact on her when she learned about the affair her love had with her boyfriend. At once, Zhang Lisheng, who was unsociable, eccentric, and cold, began to feel incredibly guilty for the first time ever since he became a wizard. Tears began to brim in his eyes.

It seemed that he couldn’t vent his guilt out, at once, it turned into a fit of irresistible inexplicable anger. The young man looked at the Gate of Dao’s people as malicious intent started to the harbor within him. Without warning, he roared tyrannically, “Stop spouting nonsense! Since things have reached such a stage, let us put an end to this matter once and for all! All of you will die….”

Waving his fists around, he punched them on the ground.

In an instant, the calm sea water surrounding the island suddenly spun and charged up the sky, transforming into columns of vigorous water that bent and roared as they charged towards the Gate of Dao’s disciples on the shore.

Under the impact, the top of the water column rubbed violently with the air and radiated hot red light before rising to become steam. Then, they twisted like dough and turned into ferocious-looking beast heads that were baring their teeth with their bloody mouth open, about to swallow the Taoist priests up.

Right at this instant, between the two virtual figures behind Duan Lianbao, one of the thin old men who was wearing a grayish-green hemp dopo robe with three long beards sitting on a futon suddenly opened his tightly shut eyes. The horsetail whisk in his arm spun in the air and radiated green light that blocked the beast heads that transformed from the seawater.

“You scoundrel, how dare you to make a sneak attack…”

“The spiritual energy here is endless, so let me show you my moves…”

“This is just a desperate fight that a desperate person is putting up. Since you’ve already made your moves to seek for death, let me expiate your sins then…”

When the Gate of Dao’s elder saw how Zhang Lisheng straightaway made his move without announcing and a cumbersome, powerful all-kill technique on top of that, one by one, they shouted out loud as they began to make their hand gestures and mumble lightly. With some casting their relics and some casting their spells, they began to scramble to attack the young man

At once, flying sword, talisman saber, fire-spurting gourd, and golden ray-shooting jade flew all over the sky. There was even kirin transformed from black smoke, and black turtle transformed from white smoke amongst them as they descended from the air, wanting to drown the young man all at once.

All of the various means of the Gate of Dao’s disciples descended on Zhang Lisheng’s head, but he did not evade. With the killing aura remained unchanged in his eyes, he snorted coldly. The mud behind him rolled and instantly built a dome over him. That dome was exceptionally miraculous. It was initially only two meters high, but with every inch that the magical spells corroded, it would grow a yard high. The more it was attacked, the bigger it became.

The Gate of Dao’s members already knew that the young man was strong, so they did not have high hopes of destroying him in one single blow. However, when they saw how Zhang Lisheng relaxedly and effortlessly blocked their attack like that, it was still considerably beyond their expectations.

After ten seconds, upon seeing this towering giant umbrella that was transformed by the mud canopy being shattered to condense into a mountain shape to resist them, a fat Taoist priest with big ears who were standing under a shadow could not help but exclaim in surprise, “T-This doesn’t look like a witchcraft spell! On top of that, it’s obvious that we’re in paradise, so how can he, a witchcraft’s successor, use the five elements power more easily than us Taoists?!”

“With the power granted from the heavens and earth, I summon thee, Heaven Soldier!” The mud mountain collapsed but remained unharmed by the Taoist priests beneath no matter what kind of spells they cast. When a thin and hale old Taoist who was standing beside the fat Taoist priest saw this, green veins popped up on his face as he drew a talisman on the sky and muttered loudly.

When his words left his mouth, the sky vapor sank while the earth vapor rose. The two met in the air and linked together to transform into two swimming fishes of black and white. They leisurely swam to form a yin and yang Taichi image that slowly cracked to turn into a human figure of hundreds of meters high.

In just the span of a breath, that figure solidified and turned to become a muscular-looking giant with a square nose and a full mouth whose long hair spread over his shoulders brimming with bravery and power dressed in ancient Chinese armor. As soon as it appeared, it immediately lifted the mud mountain pressing down its shoulder.

The Taoist priest who summoned the giant of hundreds of meters high immediately had colors drained from his face at that instant when the giant lifted the mountain. A few seconds later, after that giant struggled with its all to throw the mud mountain into the sea, luster brilliance began to shine on his face.

“T-This ancient witchcraft’s successor has already traced back his ancient bloodline and obtained a trace of the divine power of his ancestral witch, the Ancient Goddess Nuwa! He can exclusively command the power of water and soil at any situation! Remember, the Five Elemental Spell is mutually restricting each other, so we shouldn’t use them! We must watch out…” He roared out his warning as two streaks of jade veins flowed out of his nostrils. His vitality gradually disappeared as he transformed into ashes that dispersed with the wind.

Many of the Taoist priests who put the cultivation of their temperament aside to focus on progressing their power. They saw how a Taoist priest exhausted his entire vitality to block the ancient witchcraft’s successor’s power once they exchanged blows and heard their comrade of the same Gate who died during meditation said that the enemy that should have been a rat in a hole had mastered the power of the ancient goddess Nuwa in the Chinese Legend, they could not help but feel their hearts tighten. At once, the gestures they were making in their hands and the incantations they were mumbling in their mouths slowed down right away.