The Creatures That We Are

Chapter 50: Cavalry's Coming

Splat! Thick, sharp hair penetrated Gao Yang’s waist from the back. His fall was instantly broken, and he dangled like a fish caught by a harpoon.

The first thing he felt wasn’t pain, but a strange chill spreading from his waist. Then an overwhelming pain rushed to his head, and he was made aware of the hole in his torso.

“Ahh...” Gao Yang was in so much pain that he wanted to die.

In his hazy mind, he couldn’t help but wonder how Qing Ling had done it. How did she not make a sound when her chest got penetrated? Wasn’t it painful for her? I would be rolling on the ground and screaming until I die if I could.

The black needle of thousands of hair strands pulled out from Gao Yang’s body, and he felt another unbearable wave of pain. Finally, he was too exhausted to scream. All he could feel was a dull dizziness.

Then he started falling.

He didn’t hit the ground like he thought he would. Instead, something caught him gently after a few seconds, and that something was supporting him under his armpit and behind his right heel.

Gao Yang struggled to open his eyes. He realized that he was still in the air, and beside him was a man in a fierce-looking red mask of tengu, heavenly dog.

He was holding Gao Yang’s arm with one hand and propping Gao Yang’s heel with the back of a foot, keeping him upright with ease.

“You’re...”

“Heavenly Dog of the Twelve Zodiac Signs.” The stranger had a boyish voice, and he sounded lazy and tired, a stark contrast with his vicious mask.

Only then did Gao Yang notice the black exorcist outfit the young man was wearing. His arms were wrapped in white bandages, and his hair tied into a short, upward ponytail at the back of his head, making him look like a ninja.

“You...”

“Leave the rest to me.” Heavenly Dog didn’t say anything else. He leisurely lifted a hand and pointed at the hair monster in the air. “Sever.”

Gao Yang felt the air went still for a moment, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the air before them had shifted in a subtle and imperceptible way.

The next second, the hair tying Qing Ling up split apart.

“Catch her.” Carrying Gao Yang with him, Heavenly Dog flew toward Qing Ling without even changing his posture. Gao Yang caught on immediately and braced for pain as he reached out to grab Qing Ling.

“Ugh...” The pain in his waist dragged a scream out of him.

Heavenly Dog pointed at the hair monster with his right hand.

“Sever.”

Again, it felt like space had frozen before splitting, aiming to cut the hair monster in half from top to bottom. The skull—the main body of the monster—noticed the incoming danger and quickly shifted to the left. A good portion of its hair was cut down, but the skull remained intact.

“Sever.”

Intangible space was sliced like a tangible thing again. This time, the cut was horizontal.

The white skull rushed to evade again, losing one fourth of its hair but managing to protect its main body.

“Sever.”

“Sever.”

“Sever.”

...

In a matter of ten seconds, Heavenly Dog had cut off large swathes of the skull’s hair like a barber, but he always missed the skull itself by a little.

The skull was cunning. It gave up on the fight and flew upward.

Carrying two incapacitated people prevented Heavenly Dog from catching up with the skull. He looked down and shouted, “Rabbit, it’s getting away!”

Gao Yang followed his gaze, and to his surprise, he spotted White Rabbit, the waitress he had encountered before.

She wasn’t dressed in the karaoke uniform today, and the mask of white rabbit was replaced with a white surgical mask drawn with a cute pink rabbit mouth.

Wearing a baseball cap, she was dressed in a black and white baseball jacket with a red crop-top and light blue denim shorts, under which was a pair of long, well-built legs. Her shoes were a pair of white sneakers. Holding a black metallic baseball bat with one hand, she looked like a stylish baseball girl.

Having just sat Officer Huang and Fat Jun up on the ground, she shouted at the sky, “You useless thing! Buy me a new pair of shoes!”

“Yeah, yeah. Just hurry already. It’s getting away.” Heavenly Dog still spoke in a leisurely voice and didn’t sound hurried at all.

White Rabbit crouched down and put both her hands on the ground.

“Jump!” She leapt into the air in an instant.

Officer Huang felt a shockwave of rippling air from where she had been, forcing him to close his eyes. When he opened his eyes again, White Rabbit was nowhere to be seen; the deep footprints and the cracks on the asphalt ground were the only things proving she had been there.

It took her less than two seconds to soar more than a hundred meters into the air.

And she had controlled her jump perfectly. While the skull continued to flee upward, she happened to catch up with it at the highest point of her jump.

“Hello!” She even had the time to greet the skull before raising her baseball bat and hitting it squarely. “Home—run!”

The swing was so powerful that the counterforce flung her up for another two meters.

On the other hand, the skull was sent falling down like a shooting star, hitting the dried pond in the Gu Family’s Village and making a great crater.

Slowly, the skull emerged from the mud. The cranium was now covered in cracks, and the chin had dislocated from the joints. However, it was still alive—in a sense. And it was still fleeing.

Wu Dahai was already by the pond, dressed in leather topwear and pants that could be either punk fashion or delinquency or both. Then he lifted both hands and swept through his broom head, making a lopsided, confident grin that was all teeth.

“Twelve Zodiac Signs, Electric Mouse, Ultimate Technique—” He leapt two meters into the air and swung his fist at the white skull in the middle of the muddy crater. “Super Lighting Punch!”

Actually, the lightning didn’t come from Wu Dahai’s fist, but from the sky.

Gao Yang saw the area grew dim for half a second before crackling lightning sparks surrounded the pond, rippling toward the skull at the center of the crater. Then bluish white lightning shot down at the skull. Every strike was as thick as a telephone pole.

Rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble—

For a moment, the night sky was as bright as daytime.

When Gao Yang broke out of his reverie, he had already been brought to the ground by Heavenly Dog.

Unable to keep himself up for any longer, he slumped down with Qing Ling in his arms.

Just as his consciousness slipped away, he heard Wu Dahai’s excited voice grow closer. “Done! And whoa! It does have a Rune Circuit!”

“Please stop with the dramatics, Wu Dahai.” Then there was White Rabbit’s complaint. “All the useless posturing is giving me a headache.”

“What do you know? It’s an important routine!”

“Chunibyo is a disease that requires treatment.”

Heavenly Dog interjected, “Excuse me, someone’s dying here.”

“Let me see,” the young voice of a little girl said. “Whoa...that’s bad!”

“Guys, there’s another inside the house,” said a man with a nasal voice.

“That’s a delusion monster,” Wu Dahai responded. “Leave it.”

“Not a monster...my friend...save...him...”

The rest of Gao Yang’s words got lost as his heavy eyelids dropped, and his consciousness slipped away.