dmims Page 50
Page 50
"Aren't you both Shatuo Blue Dragons?"
Another person continued to ask questions.
"I really don't know. I was born on the third basement level of Kaifeng, in the oldest pre-Qin city of Daliang. After wandering in the tunnel for a few days, I inexplicably came out and then drifted aimlessly until I entered Liangshan. Today is the first time I have seen other dragons!"
Li Cunxiao was also very aggrieved. She picked up her broken baby tooth and tried to put it back in, but failed three times in a row. Frustrated, she hid the dragon tooth in her pocket—this thing was very expensive.
"The Great Liang City with three levels below basement? Impossible!"
"A scoundrel screamed."
"A hundred years ago, the city of Daliang, which lies three levels below Kaifeng, was already compacted! The Han Dynasty Kaifeng County, which lies two levels below, was so compacted by the two cities above that only some tunnels were passable, let alone the city of Daliang, which lies three levels below!"
"But that's how I ran away! How am I supposed to know why! I even remember the roads around here! It happened seven years ago!"
Li Cunxiao retorted sharply.
"Alright, alright, stop arguing. I don't know why, but we've all managed to escape with our lives, so let's keep going and keep running! Don't stop!"
Several Liangshan spearmen interrupted the argument between the two men and quickly led them to continue their escape, finally managing to shake off the entanglement of Shatuo Lanlong and the Kaifeng Imperial Guards.
Lin Chong and Liu Hong fought against Empress Fu, and the battle ended in a draw, but Lin Chong held the advantage.
Li Cunxiao escaped by sheer luck, and the situation on both sides was passable.
Meanwhile, Lu Zhisheng, Wu Song, and the remaining half of the Liangshan army, including Lu Zhisheng's rogue troops, encountered a nightmare—the only surviving member of the Nine Protectors, Li Cunshen, who had lived since the late Tang Dynasty, and his Shatuo personal guards, which had existed since the Five Dynasties period and were completely inherited by the Song Dynasty: a full hundred blue-scaled dragon demons stood like a nightmare in the basement of Tang Kaifeng City.
Li Cunshen's plan was excellent. There was an underground river on the first basement level, through which they could escape. However, the second basement level was just an endless series of underground tunnels, all of which led to the first basement level, leaving no other way out.
I don't need to take such a big risk, transforming into human form and entering the narrow second-level underground tunnel.
At this moment, all I need to do is destroy the ship's support, block the underground river, and keep an eye on the passages between the first and second basement levels. Then these guys won't be able to escape!
Wu Song, who had popped his head out to scout, stared in surprise.
Each dragon demon was the size of a giant bear, its four claws rooted to the ground like living siege towers. Barbed blue steel scales grew from the base of its claws, densely covering its entire body. Its long, blue-scaled whip tail swept out, creating terrifying sonic booms in the air.
The upper body, resembling that of a Han Chinese nobleman, rose seamlessly from the dragon's neck, clad in the armor of a Northern Song Dynasty infantryman. The steel armor compensated for the lack of defense in his flesh and blood body. His two unusually large and thick arms, stained with dragon blood, didn't even carry a crossbow; he directly drew a powerful bow on the battlefield! One after another, steel arrows wrapped with blue dragon lightning were aimed at Lu Zhisheng and Wu Song!
Half-human, half-dragon, is called Dragon Demon.
Even more terrifying was the Nine Protectors hovering beneath the rocky dome. When this desert overlord spread its forty-meter-wide dragon wings, the entire underground city instantly turned into a static hell. Its twenty-meter-long cobalt blue body moved beneath the thunderstorm clouds, and each of its inverted pyramid-shaped scales was covered with crystallized patterns from centuries of sandstorms.
From the base of the dragon's horns to the tip of its tail, twelve lightning-shaped energy bands pulsated in the grooves of its scales, magnetizing all the sand and gravel within a five-mile radius into suspended blue stardust.
"run!!!"
Wu Song made a decisive decision and immediately ordered a retreat. The group that had just climbed up from the second basement level immediately retreated back into the tunnel and ran away! This caused the Dragon Demon's first wave of arrows to miss its target.
Li Cunshen frowned. This situation was very troublesome. Without taking human form, there was no way to enter the second basement level.
If I transform into human form, my combat power will be greatly weakened.
But if we don't go in, it's annoying to see these rats finally peeking out and then sneaking back into the tunnel. It's better to deal with it quickly and go home to sleep!
Finally, tormented by his morning grumpiness, Li Cunshen let out a deafening roar. Amidst the changing thunderclouds, he transformed into a vigorous old man and leaped down from the cave where Lu Zhisheng and Wu Song had escaped! The chase began!
Debris rained down from the dungeon walls, and Li Cunshen's azure dragon horns scraped against the tunnel walls, sparking bursts of lightning. He had barely landed when Lu Zhisheng, wielding a hundred-pound ink-wash Zen staff, launched a thunderous foot charge towards the ancient relic! The sparks flying from the black iron staff scraping against the granite left a three-zhang-long trail of crimson gold behind him!
"Prepare to die! You old geezer!!!"
With a furious roar, Lu Zhisheng's extremely burly 2.4-meter-tall body filled the entire narrow tunnel, crashing straight into us like a mountain!
"Where did this nun come from?"
Li Cunshen snorted coldly, summoned a terrifying thunderstorm with his left hand, which was so thick and viscous that it was almost liquid, and froze the liquid lightning into a halberd shaped like a twisted lightning bolt with his right hand. Taking advantage of the weapon's length, he stabbed it hard into Lu Zhisheng's left shoulder!
The lightning, frozen by the ice, melted the instant it touched Lu Zhisheng's blood. Bunches of lightning, which had been frozen and stopped, exploded inside Lu Zhisheng's body with a terrifying roar! They spread throughout her limbs and bones along with her blood!
Meanwhile, the icy exterior was spreading, and thick white frost instantly covered the snow-white body embroidered with peonies, attempting to freeze Lu Zhisheng, who was paralyzed by electric shock, into an ice sculpture of death.
"Rubbish."
Li Cunshen sneered, having no interest in the nuns of this era. There was nothing to say; he killed them all with a single halberd strike. Li Keyong, Li Cunxu, Li Cunxiao, and even Chai Rong and Zhao Kuangyin were all dead. Was there anyone in this era who could defeat him?
"Click!!!"
Just as Jiu Taibao was reminiscing about the past, that voluptuous body, covered in ice and paralyzed by lightning, was still charging forward! The water-polished Zen staff, wrapped in pale golden holy light, smashed directly into the ice cage! The exposed arms were muscular like a mother bear, and the embroidered tattoos jingled between the waves of her breasts.
Li Cunshen was stunned. Lightning paralysis, freezing cold, shoulder injury—such a complex set of injuries, and you only paused for a moment? What kind of constitution is that?!
"Take this Heavenly Strike Slash!!!"
Lu Zhisheng roared, and the golden Buddhist aura instantly tore through the underground gloom, illuminating the dark underground city as if it were daytime!
Li Cunshen's vision went white as he was temporarily blinded by the Buddha's light. The lightning shield he had deployed was almost instantly melted by the brilliant golden Buddha's light bursting from the Heavenly Gang Slash.
Before he could even react, he felt a sharp pain in his stomach, as if he had been struck by a blunt object and burned by Buddhist flames. Then, a terrifying sense of weightlessness washed over him! It was as if he had been thrown into the air! His back slammed heavily against a hard, solid piece of paper.
The other dragon demons were astonished to see a beam of Buddhist light erupting from the underground tunnel, and fragments of earth wrapped in decaying golden-green flames, tearing the entire tunnel apart from the inside into radial cracks! The gushing residual energy was like a volcanic eruption!
No, that wasn't Buddha's light at all! It was Lu Zhisheng's Heavenly Gang Slash! With a maximum power of sixty, plus the fivefold Heavenly Gang Slash in Buddhist form, he sent the humanoid Li Cunshen flying from the second basement level to the rocky dome of the first basement level!
Leave of Absence Request (Updated Statement)
Lately, things have really been going wrong: tooth extraction, root canal treatment, fever, breakup... and today something even bigger happened QAQ
Today is my last busy day. I promise I'll make up for everything I owe within a month!
Chapter 109: The Demon-Slaying Guardian Displays His Power
"You nun, you really make me happy. The last person to hit me so hard with a stick was that brat Zhao Kuangyin!"
Li Cunshen was sent flying backward like a kite with a broken string, his back slamming into the rocky dome. Spiderweb-like cracks burst open on the stone wall, and countless dust and dirt gushed out from the fissures, forming a terrifying yellowish-brown cloud on the dome.
But the next second, his ten fingers dug deep into the rock, his knuckles cracking like popping beans, and he tore his own bloodied body out of the half-foot-deep, human-shaped crater. Stone chips mixed with congealed blood fell in a cascade, crashing down from the yellowish-brown clouds and raining crimson rain into the dark cave.
The next instant, Li Cunshen, who was covered in wounds, was bathed in a halo of spiritual energy and returned to his original form.
"You old geezer! Come down here if you dare! I'll give you another whack with my staff!"
Lu Zhisheng laughed arrogantly. The hundred dragon demons originally wanted to go down and chase after him, but when they saw that Li Cunshen had been knocked away with one blow, they hesitated and stopped.
Li Cunshen snorted coldly, though he was secretly alarmed.
He was sent flying dozens of meters away by a single blow from a staff, and he flew straight into the sky! His ribs ached all over, probably because several of them were broken, and his internal organs had also suffered considerable damage.
This person's physique is quite terrifying; he can withstand three types of damage from himself and move freely.
Its strength is terrifyingly high; where did the Zen staff come from when it blasted itself?
"Good, good! Good!!! Now, let alone my era, even the era of those little kids like Zhao Kuangyin, Yang Ye, and Yelü Xiuge has long ended. But the world is still seeing such powerful figures emerge one after another, which truly makes me happy!"
"I've made up my mind. I'm going to capture you alive! I'm going to make you consider me my godfather! And make you my bodyguard!"
Li Cunshen spoke arrogantly, but his actions were utterly cowardly. A drop of gilded amber suddenly condensed between his fingers, appearing as a shimmering pearl when splashed, but collapsing into a liquid vortex the instant it left the string! Amidst the tremors in the void, caramel-colored turbid waves surged forth, engulfing Lu Zhisheng's limbs and bones!
This living, amber-like substance, gleaming with a golden sheen, was wrapped in an immense amount of adhesive force. In the blink of an eye, it formed a beeswax coffin around her body. The viscous substance stretched out spiderweb-like crystalline threads between her eyelashes, and a sticky, muffled sound came from her joints as thousands of spiderwebs tightened simultaneously. Even her nasal cavity was filled with a suffocatingly sweet and fishy smell.
[Third Ring Psionic Power - Slow]: Consumes 5 Psionic Power to attempt to slow all actions of a target by 50%.
Immediately afterwards, from the deepest part of the darkest abyss, a tentacle covered with ferocious suckers burst forth with a stench. This terrifying, living creature, dripping with sizzling slime, coiled around Lu Zhisheng's waist and abdomen like a venomous python. The tangled suckers actually crushed the honey wrapped around Lu Zhisheng into dust, and the moment they touched flesh and blood, they injected bursts of black energy into her body.
[Fourth Ring Psionic Power - Black Tentacles]: Consumes 7 Psionic Power to summon dark tentacles to attack the target, dealing damage and attempting to inflict a negative status effect on the opponent.
Lu Zhisheng was somewhat stunned by the two spells cast by his opponent. The [Slow] spell greatly restricted his movements, while the [Black Tentacles] spell was even more troublesome. Although the negative level was temporary and not permanent, it could reduce his level from 12 to 11 for a very critical period of time!
Even after casting two spells, Li Cunshen was still not satisfied. With a flick of his fingers, three layers of hand seals were formed in mid-air, the overlapping incantations reverberating through the sky! The witchcraft straw doll he pulled from the hidden pouch of his blue robe, glistening with the cold light of corpse oil, suddenly resonated with Lu Zhisheng the moment a drop of blood from his fingertip dripped into the straw's veins. Under the incantation's blessing, the straw stems frantically reconstructed their skeleton, even releasing swarms of nanobots to construct a life-size model of flesh and blood—this miniature Lu Zhisheng, down to the smallest detail in the folds of his robe, was identical to the original!
The voodoo dagger didn't simply pierce through; its tip trembled in a spiral, releasing a subsonic curse. Real pain radiated from Lu Zhisheng's heart, as if thousands of leeches were gnawing at his spiritual energy along his veins. Even more horrifying was the puppetry technique constructing a reverse energy siphon; every straw fiber shredded by the dagger corresponded to a muffled tearing sound from his own muscle tissue.
In an instant, Lu Zhisheng felt all his strength draining away, and his power was beginning to decline due to the witchcraft curse!
[Third Ring Psionic Power - Sorcery]: Consumes 5 points of Psionic Power, reduces the target's random attribute by 6 points.
"Roar!!!"
In his final moments, Li Cunshen still couldn't resist showing off his unfathomable combined spellcasting skills, spewing out thunder and unleashing two spiritual powers simultaneously.
In an instant, blinding lightning scorched her eyeballs, and deafening thunder shattered her eardrums. Four streaks of blood gushed from Lu Zhisheng's eyes and ears, blinding her with a white light and leaving her ears ringing from the thunder, temporarily depriving her of sight and hearing.
[Second Ring Psionic Power - Deafness]: Consumes 3 points of psionic power to temporarily deafen the target.
[Second Ring Psionic Power - Deafness]: Consumes 3 points of psionic power to temporarily deafen the target.
"Don't be afraid of that nun, she's crippled! All troops, charge!!!"
Even after using five spells to weaken Lu Zhisheng to this extent, Li Cunshen still did not make a move. He remained flying in the air, cautiously observing the battle situation, and ordered his Dragon Demon Guards to launch an attack first.
It was precisely this caution that made him a renowned general.
It was precisely this caution that allowed him to survive the chaos of the late Tang Dynasty.
It was precisely because of this caution that the ninth of Li Keyong's Thirteen Protectors, whose ranking was neither high nor low and whose strength was neither strong nor weak, was the only one among his brothers and sisters to survive to this day.
"You old geezer! If you've got the guts, come down and fight me one-on-one! What's the point of hiding in the distance and throwing spells around? Can't you act like a real man and fight me for real?!"
Lu Zhisheng, who lacked ranged attack methods, was quite angry. She was a chivalrous person, and although her magic resistance was not as exaggerated as Liu Hong's, it was not low either.
However, Li Cunshen's spellcasting level was too high. He used his strength to break through Ren Xia's magic resistance. Despite Ren Xia cursing, he couldn't make Li Cunshen's mentality fluctuate in the slightest.
At that moment, several enormous dragon demons, accompanied by the sounds of their giant claws stomping, their scales rubbing, and their heavy breathing, rushed into the tunnel on the second basement level!
"Sister! You go first! I'll hold them off here!"
Wu Song rushed over to cover Lu Zhisheng's retreat, which was severely weakened by spiritual energy. He then led the Liangshan troops to fight against the Dragon Demon Guards.
Chapter 110: The Blood Rage of the Sky-Piercing Wounded Traveler
At this moment, the narrow tunnel has become a nightmare for both sides. The place is too narrow, allowing only five people to walk side by side at most, or two rows at most. Even with ten muskets firing at the same time, only two dragon demons can rush in at the same time to launch an attack.
"Fire!!!"
At Wu Song's command, ten fire lances, accompanied by a deafening roar, exploded amidst smoke and flames against the stone wall, while small-caliber shotgun shells coated the dragon scales from a distance of five zhang. As sparks flew from the exploding blue scales, a large amount of crimson vapor, reeking of evaporated dragon blood, erupted. The front-line lancers could even see how their own shotgun shells scraped honeycomb-like bloody holes into the monster's scales.
At this moment, the two dragon demons were also extremely shocked. What the hell was that? I was startled by the loud noise as soon as I came down. My ears are still ringing from the echo of the explosion. I didn't even have time to react before I was injured?
What injured me?!
There was no time to think. The two dragon demons instantly drew their powerful bows and launched a counterattack. Before the soldiers in the back two rows could hand over their loaded fire lances to the soldiers in the front row, four steel arrows wrapped in dragon lightning whistled through the air!
"clang!"
Wu Song swung his sword to knock down one lightning arrow, and dodged the second one with his agility. The others were not so lucky. Two of his brothers were like fallen leaves scattered by a storm, shot directly by the lightning arrows and pinned to the rock wall! Every vein in their body became a track for lightning.
The skin at the edge of the wound instantly carbonized, and the splattered blood droplets were electrolyzed in mid-air, turning into hundreds of red electric snakes that twisted and burrowed back into the wound. All the pain receptors had been melted by the electric current, and the Adam's apple trembled violently in the blue light, but could only emit a hissing sound like a leaky bellows.
Even more terrifying was that when the other Liangshan soldiers saw the gruesome deaths of the two men, a chorus of questions and screams rose and fell!
"What is that thing? It survived a volley of our fire?"
"His dragon scales are even more durable than the armor of a foot soldier!"
"Monster!!!"
"Damn it! Quick, switch weapons! Shotgun shells have a slightly weaker penetrating power, switch to iron bullets to get through these monsters!"
Wu Song immediately realized the problem: the Song army's fighting spirit was indeed weak. After the infantrymen's armor was pierced by muskets and several more died, even the morale of the Imperial Guards quickly collapsed.
However, the morale of the Liangshan troops, which were reorganized from the Song army, only improved due to better treatment. Liu Hong's comprehensive reform of the Liangshan military system was just beginning.
Therefore, when they realized that their fire lances had failed to kill the enemy in one shot, their confidence waned and their morale collapsed! Facing such a top-tier unit as the Dragon Demon Guards, if their casualties were too great, they too would quickly crumble!
With no other option, Wu Song led the charge to boost morale. His right hand wielded a flaming blade like fiery glass, while his left hand held an ice shard like a sculpture of ice. He manipulated fire and ice with both hands, forcefully intercepting the arrows fired by the two dragon demons, thus buying time for the group to switch weapons and fire.
"boom!!!"
Eight iron bullets shot out, covering a smaller area but with greater penetrating power, instantly shattering the iron armor of the foot soldiers and even breaking the scales of the Thunder Dragon, which was weaker than the giant dragon! Accompanied by the sound of steel tearing through leather, fleeting blood bullets bloomed in the darkness.
Those dragon demons still did not fall. Even though they were covered in wounds and scars, when those giant monsters, more than three meters tall, dragged themselves covered in blood, roared and swung their giant axes as they charged towards Liangshan, they still terrified everyone!
"Second Master! Should we retreat first? This...this...this guy is unkillable!"
Several Liangshan musketeers were terrified; their hands holding the muskets were trembling. They were already brave enough. Lu Zhisheng, that scoundrel, had never believed that the muskets could do anything from the beginning, and now he was already fleeing!
"Keep fighting! What are you chickening out for?! I'm willing to fight these monsters face-to-face, and you don't even have the guts to fire three shots from a distance?!"
At this moment, Wu Song had already charged forward. The two dragon demons had no choice but to drag their wounded bodies, abandon their bows and arrows, and draw their giant axes to fight Wu Song, giving the musketeers more time to switch guns.
The instant Wu Song stepped into the battle, frost bloomed on the scorched earth beneath his right foot, and blue flames rose from the ice shards swept by his left foot. The trajectories drawn by his twin blades were not straight lines, but arcs of light, like yin and yang fish, their ends connected.
As the Fiery Blade deflected the left Dragon Demon Axe handle, the Ice Blade had already traversed seven inches along the crack in the right Dragon Demon scales, scraping off countless electrified blue scales.