Chapter 1160: Synchronization
Qiu Shiliu's scream of agony burst from Jiang Shi's left eye like an explosion in the ears.
Bai Jiu stared at the battle on both sides, anxiety gripping her. "Shiliu... you..."
The "Door" in Qiu Shiliu's hand fell to the ground, then rolled with a clatter to the wall, coming to rest against it.
Bai Jiu also saw Jiang Shi's left eye spin wildly before finally revealing that horrifying scene.
Qiu Shiliu's right arm was torn off entirely, a torrent of blood spraying out like a water truck in a frenzy. Her face instantly turned deathly pale.
But due to the limited perspective, Bai Jiu couldn't see Qiu Shiliu's expression.
Turning her head again, she saw Wang Ba's "Giantification" had been broken, his body rapidly shrinking, also spraying blood in great quantities.
Both Xuanwu—one inside the scene and one outside—simultaneously raised the severed arms in their hands and swung them like whips, striking the person before them at the exact same moment.
Qiu Shiliu and Wang Ba both flew backward at the same time. Wang Ba was urgently saved by Wu Shisan's "Air Hover," while Qiu Shiliu crashed into the stove, kicking up a cloud of dust.
"It won't work..." Bai Jiu said with a frown. "Although the little Xuanwu wants to die, when she's on the verge of death, she synchronizes with Xuanwu... Shiliu can't succeed alone."
Everyone exchanged uncertain glances, unsure what to do.
"Reaching into the Pocket..." Qiu Shiliu said weakly from the ground. "Fourth Brother..."
"I'm here." Officer Li stepped forward, standing beside Jiang Shi.
"Her power is the same as Xuanwu's... I can't defeat her. Try Reaching into the Pocket..." Qiu Shiliu spoke through gritted teeth, her voice already extremely weak. "The eye is right there... her right eye."
Bai Jiu thought carefully.
When Qiu Shiliu had reached out to brush aside the little Xuanwu's hair earlier, she had dodged, which only meant the little Xuanwu had known from the start that there was something strange about her own eye.
"Use 'Reaching into the Pocket' to take the eyeball..."
Officer Li was stunned for a long moment upon hearing Qiu Shiliu's suggestion. Though he understood what she meant, the difficulty of the task was overwhelming for him.
What he had to do now was stare at Jiang Shi's eyes, locate the little Xuanwu's right eye within that tiny image, and then extract one of the eyeballs.
The principle was correct; the method was feasible.
But the only problem was that Officer Li was a criminal police officer. Although he had heard Bai Jiu's detailed description of what had happened, the nature of his long-term work forced him to fully embrace materialism.
No crime in this world could involve ghosts or gods, and metaphysics was not a tool used in criminal investigations.
Just now, Bai Jiu's description had been far too arcane. After hearing it, Officer Li could only try his best not to feel skeptical, but he couldn't manage to believe it completely on a subconscious level either.
Xuanwu had stored her eye in another space—in her younger self. Now he was supposed to stare at Jiang Shi's eye, cross the barriers of time and space, teleport the other's eye into the present space, and hold it in his own hand.
Even if he could accept all this and reluctantly believe it, Officer Li had no idea what it would feel like to hold an eyeball in his hand.
He closed his eyes and adjusted his thoughts for a moment, then reached his hand into his pocket, concentrating fully on trying to take the little Xuanwu's eyeball.
This elusive feeling tore him apart.
How insane would one have to be to firmly believe that the other person's eyeball was inside their own pocket?
If his conviction wavered even a little, his pocket would remain empty.
Earlier, to train himself to "take a heart," he had gone days without sleep, carrying a heart in his pocket and taking it out and putting it back in thousands of times a day. But to forget the feeling of a "heart" and replace it with an "eyeball" in such a short time was nearly impossible.
"No good..." Officer Li shook his head after more than a dozen attempts. "A child's eyeball is different from an adult's... and I really don't know what it feels like to hold an eyeball in my hand..."
Bai Jiu frowned and thought for a moment, then decisively said, "Fourth Brother, take the heart."
"The heart...?" Officer Li nodded after hearing that. "...I'll try."
He stared intently at Jiang Shi's left eye, then reached his hand into his pocket again, simultaneously trying to forget all concepts of "space" and "time" in his mind, as if the little Xuanwu was standing right before him.
She was just an ordinary prey, waiting to be slaughtered.
After a short while, Officer Li's eyes suddenly snapped open. He felt a mass of pulsing motion inside his pocket.
But when he tried to pull that mass out of his pocket, he found he couldn't budge it at all.
"Wait... what's going on?"
He looked down, his right hand straining, but the heart refused to leave his pocket, no matter what he did.
"What is it, Fourth Brother?" Bai Jiu asked from beside him.
"I think I got it..." Officer Li said, "But I can't move the heart..."
"Can't move it...?"
Officer Li quickly let go, then pulled open his pocket and looked inside. It was empty. As soon as he had let go, the heart seemed to have vanished.
No, rather than saying the heart disappeared when he let go, it would be more accurate to say that his hand hadn't reached into his pocket at all. Instead, in that very moment, it had pierced into Xuanwu's chest.
The heart inside that chest felt as hard as stone, completely immovable.
"Her heart is extremely tough..." Officer Li looked down at his palm, which was tinged with the aura of another space. "In theory, 'Reaching into the Pocket' should ignore the connections of anything it wants to take, but this heart is really strange... I can't take it."
"That path is blocked too..."
Bai Jiu knew this wasn't something that could be accomplished through effort alone. There was something odd about the little Xuanwu's physical structure. If she also possessed something like "Indestructibility"... taking her eye with a severely injured Qiu Shiliu and Officer Li, who was far away in another space, was simply impossible.
In the ruined temple, Qiu Shiliu lay on the ground, letting out a few bitter laughs. "You said 'come kill me'... but when it's almost time to die, you fight back. I was a fool to believe your lies."
"Bold words." The little Xuanwu slowly raised her head, casting an icy glare from beneath her hair. "You can kill me, but not here."
"Heh... so you finally show yourself."
Qiu Shiliu slowly turned her head, reached out from the stove and grabbed a piece of charcoal burnt pitch-black, then pressed it hard against her severed shoulder.
The smell of burning flesh began to spread, accompanied by Qiu Shiliu's screams.
She knew she couldn't die yet—she had to stop the bleeding by the fastest means possible.
"Xuanwu..." Qiu Shiliu asked, "When you were a child, your life belonged to the Bodhisattva... but what about now?"
"What...?" The little Xuanwu stared coldly at Qiu Shiliu.
"Now that you've come to a place like the 'Land of Finality,' why don't you just go die yourself?"