Chapter 776 Salted FisHessiana and Vivian stood in the living room, staring at each other. One ready to embrace, one ready to flee. The dynamic of their relationship reminded one of the Feast at Hong Gate¹.
Hao Ren started looking for Lily as he knew his house was safe. The duo would not demolish it for now.
“Where’s Lily?”
Vivian pointed to the direction of the back door. “We had a fight just now. I used too much a force; she is now frozen in the backyard.”
“Please take a seat and feel at home. I have to go and check out Lily,” Hao Ren said to the visitors before he dashed out to the back.
When he came to the back of his house, his jaw dropped to the ground. There was a large block of ice on the open space, Lily was still-framed inside the ice wielding her claws. But there was a circle of bonfire around slowly melting the ice.
The little demon Y’lisabet was adding firewood into the fire as she murmured, “Medium heat, slow grill… medium heat, slow grill…”
Picking up his jaw from the ground, Hao Ren went up and knocked on the ice. “Looks like it had been a brutal fight.”
Lily stared at him from inside the ice. It took her a while before she finally blinked, looking embarrassed. She wanted to break out of it but it was not an ordinary ice, she could not get leverage of her strength. The only thing she could do was wait.
“Hello, Uncle Ren!” Y’lisabet greeted him while adding some more firewood to the fire. She looked excited.
Hao Ren nodded repeatedly, and waited. But it did not take too long before he heard a cracking sound. Cracks began to appear on the Lily Popsicle, the ice had melted down enough that the husky could crack it from the inside.
Hao Ren quickly dragged Y’lisabet to aside. As soon as they got out of the way, the ice block shook violently from the bottom up before it burst like a fireworks. As fire melted the ice from below, the lower part of the ice had broken easily but not the top. Lily’s head was still trapped in the ice block; she now looked as stupid as it could get.
Lily raised her fist, broke the ice shell on her head and finally freed herself. She took a deep breath and then sneezed aloud.
Hao Ren shook off the ice shards on his body and asked, “You… okay?”
“You’re back, Mr. Landlord!” Lily greeted Hao Ren, her voice loud. She swung her arms and glanced at the backdoor before lunging toward it; her roar was ear piercing. “Battie! I won’t let you get away with it!”
Hao Ren tried to stop her. “Don’t go inside! There are—”
But she was unstoppable and was as fast as light. Hao Ren had managed to grab a bunch of white hair in his hand, which he pulled from Lily’s tail. By the time he looked up, the husky already stormed into the house that was full of vampires.
Immediately afterwards, a loud scuffle broke out. First, it was the scream of Hessiana and Kassandra, then the whine of Lily as she fled. “I just wanted to tell you that there are many of them inside…” Hao Ren said, finishing the second part of his sentence.
Half an hour later, in the living hall. Everyone gathered, with mess all around. Vivian was standing in the middle of the broken coffee table, arms akimbo, began to lash out. “You, you, and you – Doggie! Hessiana! And the two minions of Hessiana! Look at the mess you have caused! It took me great effort to clean up, you know! Stop laughing, Mr. Landlord. You think this is funny? Why didn’t you stop Doggie in the first place?”
Hao Ren stopped laughing and looked at Vivian with a strange expression. “Wait a minute. I am the main victim here, the furniture are mine! How could you treat me as one of them?”
Vivian’s arms still akimbo but she began to move to aside. “Oh, in that case, my bad. You can keep laughing.”
Lily was curling herself up in the sofa; her head leaned against Hao Ren’s arm. “It’s an expensive damage, it’s an expensive damage.”
Hao Ren looked at the husky. He could not be angry with her. He patted her head and then looked at Hessiana who looked visibly upset. “Are you okay?”
Hessiana’s head was full of bite-marks, and she felt her vision blurry. “Everything happened just too fast… why would she come after me?”
“Because you look like her,” Hao Ren pointed to Vivian. “And considering your combat skill, you’re an easier target.”
Meanwhile, Nangong Wuyue was wiping and cleaning up dog hair and blood on the floor. She forced a smile. “Why would you want to quarrel as if coming back from business trip isn’t tired enough? Give me a break, guys!”
While holding a small mirror and carefully examining the bite marks on her face, Hessiana heard Nangong Wuyue and got worked up. “Working trip? What working trip? Lady Vivian, what are you doing now?”
“Saving the world with someone,” Vivian said, glancing at Hao Ren, and then pointed her mouth at Hessiana. “Take out the thing you’re supposed to show us. And, tell us what you know.”
Hessiana nodded, but she still looked at Hao Ren in distrust. “He can solve…”
“He is the landlord here, he has the final say,” Vivian frowned. “You have prejudice against Mr. Landlord. Had you not worked together in Athens? You should know his ability.”
Hessiana pursed her mouth, but she never dared to say no to Vivian. She picked up a suitcase beside her. It was black, nothing special, just like any other suitcases people would carry to work every day. But when Hessiana unlocked the complicated password lock, a strange bloody smell drifted out from the inside the suitcase.
The smell was disgusting. Strangely, the suitcase had been able to contain it all this while. Hao Ren took a peek and found it unusual inside: it was lined with a layer of unknown grey-white leathery material full of bloody red Letta runes and magic circle. The small suitcase was a magical prop with extremely delicate construction.
It was so complicated and mysterious that Hao Ren could not believe there was a line of text at the bottom that read ‘Shanghai Bag Factory’!
Nangong Sanba who was watching on the sideline saw the inside of the suitcase. “What is inside? Why it need such a tight security?” he asked.
“It’s evil,” Hessiana said as she carefully took something that was carefully wrapped in black goatskin out from the suitcase. “To be honest, this stuff is not common even in the otherworlds. The human wizard was capable of creating such an incredible stuff.”
Hessiana opened the wrap. Hao Ren saw a dry and black, weird item of less than a foot long, looked like a fish but had a scary ‘face’, huge teeth and hideously triangular eyes. It was just weird.
Lily looked in amazement. She blurted, “Salted fish?”
Hessiana: “…..”
“This is the larvae of the Infernal Fleshripper. It has been made into specimen for hundreds of years,” Kassandra could not care less about the ‘salted fish’ theory of Lily. She explained with a soft voice. “It is something that shouldn’t have existed in our dimension. It is from an alien world called Inferno that was connected to the Earth in the Mythological Era. It is very, very dangerous.”
Then, she added, “Of course you can call it a salted fish; Infernal Fleshripper is indeed a type of fish. This is the dried form.”
Hao Ren: “…..”
The image of red-haired Vivian was still fresh in Lily’s memory. She frowned at the salted fish. “What does this thing have to do with the magic book?”
“The one who made the magic book and this salted fish is the same person,” Hessiana said, her face serious. “And the wizard must have made more of these sorcerer items, his purpose… maybe it has something to do with Lady Vivian.”
