“Cough! Well, bro..” Shi Yitong had to endure the awkwardness in order to clear things with Zhu Xuan. “I think you misunderstood something. I’m really not..”

“Not what?” Zhu Xuan was lost.

Just as Shi Yitong wanted to explain himself, a loud explosion suddenly interrupted the conversation.

The explosion came from somewhere nearby and we immediately looked in the direction where the sound came from. I couldn’t see anything. A burst of smoke blew from the distance as if a giant object had crashed on the ground.

Then, we heard a cry for help from afar.

“Help!”

“There is a monster! Someone died!”

Zhu Xuan’s face suddenly became sullen. He rushed towards the direction where the sound came from, leaving the three of us confused and standing there.

“Gu Yu, what should we do?” Shi Yitong asked foolishly.

“What else can we do but follow?” I patted Shi Yitong on the back. “Go after him! Don’t lose him!”

We didn’t know how long we chased him for, but we only caught up to him when we arrived out of breath at our destination. It was the exit of Longning Temple.

We could see a small asphalt road. Usually, there were many vendor carts selling snacks and souvenirs on both sides of the street. It was the current time for lunch, so there were many pedestrians on the street.

The moment we arrived here, I thought that a car crash had happened. Because at the center of the frightened crowd, there was a large pool of fresh blood. Obviously, someone was seriously injured.

However, when we took a closer look, we found that there wasn’t a body nor vehicle at the scene. On the contrary, everything around the blood pool was knocked over, whether the bricks on the street or the small carts at the sides. It seemed they had been violently knocked over by someone.

“What’s.. going on here?” Shi Yitong’s reaction was the same as mine. We were utterly stunned.

“Madam, what happened here?” Su Xiaoyun was the first to recover and she ran to a middle-aged woman standing on the side of the street.

The middle-aged woman was still in shock, she looked at Su Xiaoyun, shaking uncontrollably. “Monster..monster..”

“Monster?” Asked Su Xiaoyun.

“A huge monster suddenly jumped out of the woods, and then, then..” The woman pointed at the blood with her trembling finger. “The monster dragged a man away..”

“Dragged a man away? Where did they go?”

However, this anxious inquiry was not from any of us. We turned around simultaneously. As we expected, it was Zhu Xuan who asked.

“They were.. heading that way.” The woman pointed in a direction towards the woods.

“Thanks, and please go back home accompanied. Don’t stay here any longer,” Zhu Xuan said and ran into the woods without hesitation.

“Hey! Wait!” I immediately ran after him; Shi Yitong and Su Xiaoyun followed closely.

Zhu Xuan soon found out that we were following him. He shouted at us with a gloomy face, “What are you doing? Didn’t I tell you to go back?”

“Why should we listen to you?” Shi Yitong, who had already been dissatisfied with him, became angrier.

Just when they were about to have a big fight with each other, I came forward to calm them down.

“Alright, alright. Now isn’t the time to fight with each other. Zhu Xuan, the blood on the street.. Is it true that the beast Chen dragged a person away?”

Zhu Xuan glanced at me and nodded. “That man lost too much blood, he is doomed.”

“I still don’t understand,” Su Xiaoyun frowned and said. “The whole story about ‘beast Chen’, what is it? Why did beast Chen hurt people? Is it because humans are its food? Or does it hate humans? And this is a big world, why does it only attack Mt.Diecui?”

“No, none of your theories are right,” Zhu Xuan said while breaking open a way through the branches in front of him. “The beast has no particular feeling for humans. It hurts humans solely for revenge.”

“Revenge?” The whole story was getting even stranger.

“Revenge on who?” Su Xiaoyun asked.

Zhu Xuan looked back at her and said, “Bai Ze.”

“..You mean, beast Chen and Bai Ze had a history?” Shi Yitong was surprised. “What happened?”

“Bai Ze sealed beast Chen 30 years ago, and it held a grudge since then. And.. there are some other reasons,” Zhu Xuan vaguely said. He apparently didn’t want to say anything else.

“Where is Bai Ze now?” Shi Yitong said angrily. “It caused this mess, so it should take care of it! The lives of countless residents and tourist are in danger. Two people died in only two days, and who knows how many more deaths will happen! Gu Yu, you must call Wen Jiubo right now and tell him about this!”

“But..” I was dumbfounded, but before I could respond, Zhu Xuan interrupted me.

“It won’t work. No one can help.” The light in Zhu Xuan eyes dimmed.

We stared at Zhu Xuan, perplexed.

“Bai Ze is dead, it can’t protect us anymore,” Zhu Xuan whispered. “This is just an unrealistic expectation humans always hold towards the so-called gods.”

“Dead? How do you know that it’s dead?” Shi Yitong was surprised.

However, before Zhu Xuan could answer, we heard a huge roar ahead of us.

“It’s beast Chen! It’s in front of us!” Zhu Xuan shouted and instantly rushed forward.

“Oi, why are you running over, do you want to die?!” Shi Yitong was stunned but he immediately followed him.

“What? Do we have to run again?!” Su Xiaoyun was still panting. She complained, “If I knew we were gonna run so much, I wouldn’t have worn these shoes today!”

“Okay, let’s go.” I grabbed Su Xiaoyun’s arm and followed.

That strange roar sounded like a lion roaring and a wolf growling at the same time. But no matter what kind of animal it was, we could tell from its roar that it was enjoying its victory.

“Over there!” The instant Zhu Xuan broke through the branches in front of him, a wide and open space appeared in front of us.

A giant white beast was lying in the middle. It had a wolf-like body, eagle-like beak, and sharp claws, and three thick tails slightly thrashing on the ground.

There was a pool of blood in front of the beast, after taking a closer look, I could see human bones sticking out.

“Ah!!” Su Xiaoyun’s face turned pale as she screamed.

Shoot! Her scream instantly attracted the beast’s attention, which apparently was still excited by his successful hunt. The beast raised up his head and howled, then turned and rushed over!

“Watch out!” Zhu Xuan grabbed Shi Yitong, while I grabbed Su Xiaoyun. We quickly lay down on the ground and dodged its claws. It barely missed us.

“Get up, get up! Hurry up!” Zhu Xuan was the first to stand up from the ground. He shouted, “Run!”

We didn’t hesitate and immediately stood up and began to run.

“Go into the forest, it’s too big to catch up to you in the forest!” Zhu Xuan shouted. We were completely stunned and unable to think. The only things we could do was follow Zhu Xuan and run as fast as we could.

In the end, the four of us ran through the dense bushes and hid in a narrow cave. We were out of breath when we stopped.

“It should be safe here..” The moment Shi Yitong started to speak, Zhu Xuan covered his mouth.

“Don’t talk and try not to breathe heavily,” Zhu Xuan whispered. “The beast Chen is very smart. We can’t let it find us.”

After hearing this, we immediately held our breath.

It was very quiet. The excited giant beast was silent at this moment. All we could hear right now was the sound of wind and leaves.

I didn’t know how long had passed. Time seemed to be frozen. We stared nervously at each other.

“That beast.. won’t come here, right?” Shi Yitong asked nervously.

“I don’t know either. But it looks like.. it hasn’t found this place,” Zhu Xuan said while popping out to check the situation.

At that very moment, as if we were in a horror movie, the instant Zhu Xuan popped his head out, a huge face suddenly showed up at the entrance!

“Ahhh!!”

It turned out that the beast never left, it just stayed at the cave entrance waiting for us to come out!

“Run!” Zhu Xuan shouted.

However, this time, we didn’t have time to run away. The beast put its claw into the cave and immediately grabbed me.

“Gu Yu!”

After being dizzy for a short while, I saw a huge mouth in front of me, and the only thought in my head was, ‘Damn, am I really going to die here?’

I wasn’t killed by the serial killer nor by the ferocious human-eating Gudiao. But today I was going to be eaten by an unknown big beast?!

Just as I lost hope and closed my eyes to accept my fate, suddenly the beast Chen let out a huge roar as if it was scared, and threw me in the air.

I was caught off guard and harshly fell on the ground, but fortunately, the ground was soft so I didn’t break any bones.

What happened..Why did the beast Chen suddenly give up on eating me and instead threw me in the air?

I sat up and suddenly found the reason while rubbing my head.

Because of the shock, the green fan Wen Jiubo gave me had fallen out of my clothes.

Was this the reason? Is the beast afraid of this fan??

I quickly picked up the fan, opened it and faced it towards the beast.

As expected, the beast Chen let out a howl of fear and slowly took a step back.