“If only we have Jing Yu, here!” Zi Dan panted as he used a pot to block a strike from the six legged Valg before retracting back to the ceiling and using the entire kitchen to its advantage.
“Don’t joke around already! You are technically the fastest between the three of us!” Xia Mao said when he hid from a spitting poison projectile from the Valg. He assumed it was some sort of poison since it corroded the large wooden table he was hiding behind. (He could not understand why only the appliances were human-sized while the rest of the furniture around the castle were large by default.)
“You want me to use my cultivation techniques at the start of the raid? Come! Take over my body and feel how painful it is when the aftereffects set in!” Zi Dan yelled at Xia Mao from a distance, and that attracted the Valg’s attention, prompting it to chase after Zi Dan. “Shit! It’s like a freaking spider waiting to entrap us!
“Do you mean toying with us? Besides! That freaking monster only has six legs, not eight!!”
“I do not think some minor differences in technicalities actually matter right now!” Zi Dan took his chain ball mace and infused it with enough chi to block the incoming projectile. Sadly, that was not the end as the Valg had learnt how those pesky humans were avoiding its attacks.
Thus, it sprung forth towards Zi Dan, hoping to grab him before he could run into safety again.
“Shit!” Zi Dan saw the incoming mass of hands (or legs?) waiting to grab him, and that scene alone had already paralysed him with much fear. Yet, Xia Mao was not going to let his teammate to be killed by the hideous monster even before reaching to the main boss. (Although that seemed to be the case for the both of them most of the time.)
Xia Mao shot a projectile in the shape of a cat’s head from his crossbow, and it miraculously hit the Valg. That one shot was sufficient to push the monster away from hitting Zi Dan, and the sight of the cat’s head smashing itself directly on the Valg violently awoke Zi Dan, allowing him to move towards Xia Mao as quickly as possible.
“What were you doing, freezing up right in front of the monster?!” Xia Mao scolded Zi Dan, and he hit him back on the head!
“It’s not my fault! For some reason, I was paralysed the moment I saw its eye on one of its palms.. or legs or whatever!! When that cat projectile of yours hit the monster, it broke its eye contact with me, and I was able to move again!” Zi Dan explained as they ran to another hiding place to rebuttal against each other.
“And holy shit! You still using those cathead arrows? I thought you swear not to use them anymore!” Zi Dan asked as the arrow that Xia Mao was using had a literal cat head arrow that continuously gnaws when infused with chi.
“Hahahah! That excuse was to simmer your anger, besides it saved you this time around! This cat head arrow is a marvellous work of mechatronics! More advanced than you think! Instead of piercing the enemy, it bites the enemy until I detonate it (to explode) after that!” Xia Mao saw no fault in the quiver full of such arrowheads that looked like a cat.
“Well, just because you had some lessons from Jin’s NPC blacksmith to make your own arrowheads doesn’t mean you can do this kind of crazy stuff! It’s equally scary and had been annoying me up till to this day!” Zi Dan argued back before they realised a hand emerged from the side of the wall with an eye looking at Xia Mao. True enough, the immediate eye contact had instantly froze Xia Mao, unable for him to react.
As Zi Dan was facing towards Xia Mao during their heated arguments, he knew that fancying another look at the eye was too much a risk. Thus, he infused more chi into his chain ball mace and swung it sidewards. He did not care if it hit or not, as long as the eye breaks contact with Xia Mao, they could run away safely. Too bad for him, the attack missed but it hit the side of the wall, causing debris to fly all over the place, causing the Valg to retract his hand and broke the paralysis on Xia Mao.
Xia Mao retaliated the moment he could move to shoot out of its cat head arrows at the hand, and he did not stop just there. A button on his crossbow allowed him to activate a one time inscription charm meant to power boost his shot should he need it. That inscription infused the cat head arrow with an exceeding amount of chi, and when the projectile flew, the cat head was enlarged to five times its size.
Zi Dan saw the size of the cat head, instinctively realised they are too close to the blast radius and he had activated his cultivation, the Bullet Cheetah. He grabbed Xia Mao by the waist and with a burst of speed, he sprinted 100 metres away from the place they were hiding. This also allowed Xia Mao to confidently detonate his cat head arrow, hoping it would deal some damage to the monster.
Ironically, the Valg thought that the big size cat head arrow was alive with its seemingly real facial features. So, it decided to lift four of its palms towards the cat head arrow to make eye contact with it. The monster did not know that it merely quickening its death and soon the Valg exploded into several pieces. Its impact sent most of the body parts flying before it was burnt into crisp from the attack.
“Arsehole! Did you not notice that we are so close to the target?!” Zi Dan shouted at Xia Mao after seeing a blueish explosion from the corner of the eye.
“Heh Heh! I had confidence you will bring me out of the blast radius.” Xia Mao said in a shaky voice, and Zi Dan sighed at his blatant bluffing. The Valg continued to shriek at its demise, allowing the other two to think that would be the end of it.
Or so they wished.
The desperate howling from the dying Valg was, in fact, a cry for help and the rest of the Valgs which were lurking around the castle began to proceed towards the castle’s kitchen with the two not knowing how their impending doom was developing behind the scenes.
Until then, Xia Mao and Zi Dan revised what they had in their inventory seriously. While the two elderly cultivators did not know what other horrors of unnatural beings were stalking this area, they knew the previous fight would not be the last. With their combined experience more than a hundred years, they had the same premonition that more of those Valgs were rushing towards them.
And that was where one of the new features that Jin spent the time perfecting it before releasing the raid to the public came into play.
