"Cross-dressing..."
Xiao Chu's mouth twitched nonstop.
What was with monks these days? Why were they just like chubby shut-ins?
"Right."
Tang Luo nodded. "Layman Chu is the most suitable candidate."
There were four men present.
Tang Luo was out of the question. He was tall and handsome; no matter how he dressed, he wouldn't pass.
Li Liang was drained and half-dead.
Gao Er was a gloomy young man with dark skin and unshaven fuzz above his lip. He had the air of a constable's advisor.
Xiao Chu was different.
He was of average height and slender, perfect material for cross-dressing. He had great potential.
Xiao Chu furrowed his brow and thought for a moment before nodding. "All right, Master. I'm placing my life in your hands!"
He was decisive.
If he couldn't take part in the mission and complete it alongside the others, he wouldn't get the reward in the end. What would that make him, if not a salted fish?
Xiao Chu had thought it through.
Even if he piggybacked on someone else and scraped through this time, what about next time? Could he do that every time?
How could he grow stronger without facing danger and making sacrifices?
Fortune was found in peril.
This wasn't some pay-to-win game where you could get stronger just by spending money.
This was the God and Demon Game!
"Good. Then we'll set out tonight." Tang Luo settled on a time.
Night deepened.
The inn's front door was firmly shut.
Tang Luo grabbed Xiao Chu and leaped up, clearing the inn's specially heightened wall, which stood over two meters tall, before landing in the shadowy alley behind it.
"Master, you said you couldn't use lightness skills!"
After landing, Xiao Chu clutched his pounding heart and said.
His voice carried a hint of excitement.
The stronger Master Xuanzang was, the safer he would be, and the greater their chances of completing the mission.
"I just jumped a little higher than usual," Tang Luo said, without the slightest hint of pride.
There truly wasn't anything to be proud of.
What were lightness skills, anyway?
Graceful and elegant, flying over grass, skimming across water.
Divine abilities were on a whole other level.
As for Tang Luo, when he really needed to hurry, he was like the Hulk, leaping hundreds of meters at a time and smashing his way along.
There was absolutely nothing to boast about.
He looked up at the night sky at a forty-five-degree angle, missing the days when he could ride a dragon or a horse.
Little White Dragon, your master misses you so much.
"I'll follow you. Be careful."
Tang Luo patted Xiao Chu's shoulder. The Merit Jade Lotus glimmered faintly, then flashed out of sight.
A trace of merit power was expended, forming a measure of protection around Xiao Chu.
Xiao Chu nodded and began to shuffle forward.
As for Tang Luo, he leaped onto a nearby rooftop. From his elevated vantage point, he could see in all directions and hear everything around him.
The city wasn't actually quiet in the dead of night.
It wasn't bustling with people; instead, they could often hear crows calling and the sound of their wings beating.
At first, Xiao Chu was startled by them.
As time went by, he gradually got used to it.
He walked for over half an hour. They didn't see a single person, let alone Jack the Ripper.
Xiao Chu began striding forward, deliberately choosing all sorts of alleys.
Eventually, he had no idea where he was.
They were also far from the busier parts of the Small City. Aside from the bleak moonlight and dim light filtering out through the windows of the houses,
there were no other sources of light around them.
Xiao Chu slowed down again.
"Creak!"
Suddenly, an old door creaked open diagonally ahead.
Then came two overlapping gasps.
One was Xiao Chu's; the other belonged to the person opening the door.
They had both been startled.
"Who's there?"
The person opening the door was a man. He was too hard to make out in the darkness. Though he shouted loudly, his voice sounded a little shaky.
"What are you doing?"
Xiao Chu asked in return, his voice sounding somewhat distorted and not quite like a man's.
"Why aren't you home in the middle of the night? Looking to get yourself killed?"
The man realized the person who had startled him seemed to be a woman, and his nerves settled. He cursed at Xiao Chu.
"What's it to you?"
Xiao Chu refused to back down.
"Get lost! Get lost! Don't wander around my house. If you weren't a woman, I'd have tied you up as a thief by now..." The man's voice trailed off, and he abruptly slammed the door shut.
Who knew what he'd opened the door for in the first place?
"Crazy."
Xiao Chu muttered and continued on his way, his steps now noticeably lighter.
They had just traded insults, but even that had done something to dispel the chill of the night.
However, Xiao Chu didn't notice
that the man he'd just exchanged insults with quietly opened a window, squeezed his way out, and silently followed behind him.
The man's right hand seemed to be holding a coil of rope.
"Jack the Ripper?"
Tang Luo wondered from the rooftop, though it didn't seem likely.
None of the corpses showed any signs of having been tied up with rope.
In other words, Jack the Ripper didn't need rope to kill.
The man had a coil of rope, not a knife. Was he more likely someone who'd been overcome by lust?
Perhaps his own words had prompted him, stirring up the wicked thoughts in his heart.
So he'd decided to take his chance, knowing he could pin the blame on Jack the Ripper anyway.
Xiao Chu hadn't sensed the danger drawing near. By the time he heard footsteps behind him, it was too late.
A dark line flashed before his eyes, and coarse rope cinched around his mouth, turning his cry into a muffled grunt.
"Shut up!"
At the same time, a breathless male voice sounded by his ear.
"Damn it!"
A million alpacas galloped through Xiao Chu's mind. In an instant, his thoughts raced.
He reached almost exactly the same conclusion as Tang Luo.
The person behind him probably wasn't Jack the Ripper.
He was someone who'd been "overcome by lust"!
At the same time, Xiao Chu recalled a news story he'd read.
It had said that a cross-dressing man had been attacked by a pervert on his way home from a convention. When the attacker discovered he was a man, he hadn't stopped; he'd gotten even more excited!
Xiao Chu had thought it was just a fabricated story, but now it was actually happening to him.
Just as the rope tightened around Xiao Chu's mouth and forcibly dragged him backward,
a golden light suddenly burst from his body.
The protective power Tang Luo had bestowed on Xiao Chu using merit power activated by itself.
The golden light formed an arc-shaped barrier, separating the rope and the man from Xiao Chu.
But it also grew dim, like a candle flickering in the wind, and seemed ready to disappear at any moment.
After all, it had been only the tiniest trace of merit power.
Staring at the arc-shaped barrier that had inexplicably appeared around him, Xiao Chu was utterly shocked.
What was this thing?
Could this be the legendary "gene lock," triggered in a life-or-death situation and granting him an ability?
No, according to the God and Demon Game's rules—and what the veteran, Old Zhou, had said—this should be a benefit gained during a mission?
So this was how you got one?
Young and inexperienced, Xiao Chu failed to seize this perfect chance to run or pull out his revolver and fight back.
Instead, he stood there dumbfounded, caught up in his excitement.
The man behind him wasn't about to stop. He simply dropped the rope, reached into his clothes, and pulled out a short knife.
Without a word, the man stabbed toward Xiao Chu's back.
It seemed he'd given up on abducting him and decided to kill him instead.
The blade struck the arc-shaped barrier. The barrier shuddered silently, then dissolved into twinkling points of light.
Like sparks, they drifted away and vanished into the night.
Xiao Chu didn't notice at all. He was still smiling.
Just as the blade was about to pierce him, a sharp whoosh cut through the air.
A streak of black shot toward them like lightning.
The man reacted even faster. He shifted his body and retreated several meters.
The black streak skimmed past him and struck the ground where he'd been standing, sinking almost completely into it.
Once it stopped, the exposed part of the black streak could be seen. It was unmistakably the tip of a walking stick!
The sharp whistle jolted Xiao Chu to his senses. Realizing he was still in danger, he immediately turned around.
Then he saw—
A black silhouette, wings spread like an eagle's or a bat's, blotting out the dim moonlight as it descended from the sky.
The instant the man dodged the walking stick and landed, Tang Luo was already standing before him.
His black trench coat billowed as he reached out with one hand.
He pressed it against the man's face, curling his five fingers inward.
Tang Luo clamped the man's head in his palm.
Grabbing the man by the head with one hand, Tang Luo lifted him as casually as a giant doll, then turned his elbow.
He slammed him down!
The stone-paved road and the man's head met in an intimate embrace.
A cracking sound rang out. For a moment, it was impossible to tell whether the stone pavement or the man's head had cracked.
Or perhaps both.
At the moment of impact, Xiao Chu felt as if the ground itself had trembled.
When he came back to his senses, Tang Luo was already standing upright. He bent over, pulled the walking stick out of the ground, and gave it a couple of casual swings, apparently checking for damage.
Behind him,
lay a headless corpse, its head fused into the sunken crater.
It was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.
The pungent stench of blood reached them.
It made Xiao Chu gag.
After retching for quite a while, Xiao Chu looked at Tang Luo and asked in a slightly trembling voice, "Master, you killed him?"
It was, of course, a pointless question.
"Mm."
Tang Luo looked at the damaged tip of his walking stick. Even though he'd used a little technique, the impact had still damaged it.
"When he pulled out the knife, I thought he was Jack the Ripper," Tang Luo explained. "So I didn't go out of my way to spare his life."
"Heh."
Xiao Chu gave a dry laugh.
Back at the church, he'd said he was merciful, but when he actually got into a fight, he'd been so violent that he'd committed murder without hesitation.
Heh. Men. Heh. Monks.
"It's just a shame he wasn't. Otherwise, we would've completed the mission by now."
Tang Luo continued, "Amitabha Buddha."
He even chanted a Buddhist invocation at the end.
"Oh, right."
Xiao Chu felt a little regretful. If that man really had been Jack the Ripper, the mission would have been over.
"But—"
Tang Luo looked at the headless corpse he had created. "Even I, a humble monk, don't believe this man was an ordinary person."
"Hm?" Xiao Chu was confused.
"If he'd been an ordinary person, he would've died when I threw my staff just now. Why would I have needed to finish him off myself?" Tang Luo said. "But he managed to dodge it. Let's go check his house. We might find some clues."
After seeing Tang Luo's "eyes blazing with righteous fury, his methods as swift as thunder," Xiao Chu certainly had no objections.
Whatever you say, Master!
Leaving the headless corpse behind, the two headed for the house the man had just come out of.
The weather's turned bitterly cold. Typing at night has left my hands and feet freezing—I need recommendation tickets to warm up.
There'll be another update tonight.
Before you continue