The second floor of the shop was a complete mess.
Countless cardboard boxes lay scattered across the floor, crushed to pieces beneath trampling feet. Thread-bound books covered the floorboards, concealing their original color.
Amid the swirling dust, an ice sculpture stood frozen in the pose of forming a hand seal with one hand, its eyes narrowed.
Huang Banxian remained sprawled on the ground, his mouth showing signs of opening and closing. The hand seal indicated that he was chanting some kind of scripture. Inside the ice sculpture, a trickle of blood slowly ran downward.
The blood flowed extremely slowly, as though struggling against the freezing effect and doing everything it could to reach its destination.
That destination was a circle similar to the Gold Generates Water Barrier. However, its inner edge was lined with thorn-like protrusions, making it look particularly strange.
It was easy to imagine that once the blood flowed into that circle, Ji Li's freezing effect would fail.
At the same time, Zhang Huairen used books as stepping stones, quickly searching through the sea of books one after another while muttering to himself,
"Five people correspond to the Five Elements. Take one internal organ from each of them and gather the five viscera.
"If they really are a deranged serial killer, this would actually be easier to handle. But religious talismans have appeared too.
"I remember this kind of talisman... I remember seeing it somewhere. Which book was it...?"
The more Zhang Huairen searched, the more anxious he became. His shriveled body trembled continuously, because the temperature in the room was simply too low.
The Gold Generates Water Barrier had been copied by Ji Li, but because he was only one-third conscious now, the barrier was spreading and was about to envelop the entire house.
Crack!
At that