Chapter 217
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After Li Sanxin finished cooking, he called a few people to eat, but in the end, only Lu Haoxiu and Fu Xuezhou came out.
Li Sanxin asked suspiciously, “Where’s Yanzi?”
“Upstairs.” The silver-haired man looked tired, with a bloody scratch on the left side of his throat. He lowered his head, put his and Lou Yan’s meals on a tray, and answered Li Sanxin’s question in a cold tone, “We’ll eat in our room.”
After saying that, he carried the food and left, leaving Lu Haoxiu and Li Sanxin staring at each other at the dining table.
After finishing this meal, Lou Yan and Fu Xuezhou set off for Xiyang City.
To avoid alerting the anomalies and cultists, Fu Xuezhou flew with Lou Yan on his wings. Along the way, Lou Yan wore a stiff expression and didn’t want to talk to Fu Xuezhou at all.
Fu Xuezhou glanced at Lou Yan’s earlobes, swollen from being sucked, and the bite marks that hadn’t disappeared yet, and said leisurely, “Are you angry?”
Lou Yan snorted, not bothering to answer him.
Halfway there, it suddenly started raining heavily.
Lightning flashed perilously overhead, and in less than a minute, their clothes were soaked through.
Listening to the deafening thunder, Lou Yan worried that he and Fu Xuezhou would be struck. He raised his voice, “Let’s find a place to take shelter from the rain first.”
Fu Xuezhou looked down and saw an abandoned hotel in the storm. He flapped his wings and flew down with Lou Yan, landing in front of the hotel’s entrance.
The two quickly ran into the hotel, their clothes dripping with rainwater all the way. Lou Yan lowered his head to pat the water stains off his body and wrung out his clothes, looking out.
The sky darkened significantly under the storm, and the wind blew into the hotel, making the door sway back and forth. The trees outside swayed as well, but it made people feel comfortable, as if they were experiencing the freedom of heaven and earth, and the flight of the soul.
Lou Yan’s mood inexplicably improved a bit. He turned to look at Fu Xuezhou and saw him twisting the water from his silver hair. The rain had soaked his black sportswear, clinging tightly to his body. His young and powerful figure was clearly outlined, with faintly visible muscles. When the wind blew, his clothes trembled, and the speed of the falling water droplets increased, forming a puddle at Fu Xuezhou’s feet.
Fu Xuezhou seemed to sense something and looked back, meeting Lou Yan’s gaze. He couldn’t help but tug at his lips and smiled.
Lou Yan felt a little uncomfortable being smiled at, and continued to ask coldly, “What are you smiling at?”
“Are you cold?”
Fu Xuezhou spoke at the same time as him.
The two fell silent for a few seconds before answering together.
“Not cold.”
“Did I smile?”
Lou Yan clicked his tongue and was the first to speak, “Didn’t you notice yourself smiling?”
Fu Xuezhou shook his head and touched the corner of his lips. The smile was still on his face, and he didn’t realize he had smiled.
“You’ve been smiling a lot these days,” Lou Yan hmphed and said, “Are you so happy being with me?”
Fu Xuezhou nodded thoughtfully, raised his eyelids, and met Lou Yan’s gaze, “Very happy, haven’t been this happy in a long time.”
Lou Yan’s anger from his ear being bitten unknowingly dissipated a little. He glanced at Fu Xuezhou, “You’re really good at sweet talk now.”
Fu Xuezhou said, “Truth.”
Lou Yan made a slight hissing sound.
Could there be this benefit from jumping into the extreme cold h*ll? Even Fu Xuezhou, who couldn’t speak, had become like this.
If it weren’t for being sure that this Fu Xuezhou was really Fu Xuezhou, he would have thought that Fu Xuezhou had been replaced by someone else.
The thunderstorm grew stronger, and the two wandered around bored in the hotel.
The hotel was large, still showing signs of being a five-star hotel. It seemed to have experienced an Anomaly Resurgence, with some scattered bloodstains in the lobby and corridors. Dust was everywhere, and there was even a hole in the ceiling where rainwater and outdoor light poured in, falling in the center of the hotel’s interior, desolate yet beautiful.
There were some information about the hotel’s history and local famous attractions hanging on the walls of the lobby. After reading this information, Lou Yan looked back and saw Fu Xuezhou playing with his phone with both hands resting on the railing outside.
The faint light from the phone shone on Fu Xuezhou’s face. He seemed very focused, and his fingers moved occasionally.
What is he so focused on?
Lou Yan was curious and approached Fu Xuezhou silently. But before he could see what was on the phone, Fu Xuezhou sensitively turned off the phone, looked back at him with a faint expression, and made a questioning sound, “Hm?”
Lou Yan calmly asked, “What are you looking at?”
“I wasn’t looking at anything,” Fu Xuezhou put his phone back in his pocket and glanced at the information hanging on the wall, “Are you done reading?”
Lou Yan nodded, curious in his heart, but Fu Xuezhou’s phone was his personal privacy after all, and Lou Yan couldn’t force him to tell. Lou Yan changed the topic and asked, “Is your hair dry now?”
Fu Xuezhou looked at his silver hair, still slowly dripping water at the bottom. He shook his head slightly and then reached out to play with Lou Yan’s black hair, “Yours is almost dry.”
“After all, it’s short hair,” Lou Yan asked, “By the way, Fu Xuezhou, why don’t you cut your hair short?”
Fu Xuezhou was startled, strangely silent for a few seconds, and slowly said, “This is the symbol of the Anisange people.”
“I know that silver hair is the symbol of the Anisang people,” Lou Yan said, “But can’t you cut it?”
Fu Xuezhou fell silent again for a few seconds, “I can.”
Lou Yan was puzzled, “Then why don’t you cut your hair short? Long hair must be inconvenient.”
He suddenly remembered Fu Xuezhou’s hair extending trick and asked suspiciously, “Would cutting it short affect the power of your hair?”
“No,” Fu Xuezhou paused and said lightly, “I forgot to cut it.”
“…”
After being speechless, Lou Yan thought to himself that every time Fu Xuezhou came back from reincarnation, he would either find the Anomaly Lord or fight the anomaly, how could he remember to find a barber to cut his hair. But he remembered the information about Fu Xuezhou that he had found before, especially the photo of Fu Xuezhou with short black hair during his university days, and suddenly felt a movement in his heart.
He suddenly wanted to see what Fu Xuezhou looked like with short hair. Silver short hair shouldn’t look worse than black short hair, right?
Lou Yan suggested without changing his expression, “When we have the chance to see a barber later, you can go and cut your hair short.”
Fu Xuezhou nodded unavoidably, and his fingers touched the end of Lou Yan’s hair, suddenly saying, “Your hair has also grown longer.”
“It has grown a bit,” Lou Yan touched it himself, “We can cut it together.”
Fu Xuezhou said, “I’ll cut it for you.”
Lou Yan was surprised, “You can still cut hair?”
“A college student knows a little bit of everything,” Fu Xuezhou shrugged, lazily curling a strand of Lou Yan’s black hair with his fingers, implying something, “Especially male college students.”
Lou Yan was successfully reminded of that post and suddenly his temple throbbed. He slapped Fu Xuezhou’s hand hard, saying with a fake smile, “Then can you, as a male college student who hasn’t been to school for hundreds of years, tell me how to say ‘male college student’ in English?”
Fu Xuezhou’s expression blanked for a moment.
Lou Yan sneered, slapped Fu Xuezhou’s face, “Looking forward to the day after the Anomaly Resurgence ends, when you, an old guy who has been reincarnating for hundreds of years, go back to school and take exams.”
Fu Xuezhou: “…”
***
After the lightning and thunder stopped, they went out again.
The remaining half of the journey went smoothly. By five o’clock in the afternoon, they had reached the outskirts of Xiyang City.
Fu Xuezhou flew with Lou Yan at a high altitude, overlooking the entire Xiyang City from within the clouds. Lou Yan’s eyes turned bloody, using [True Sight], and he couldn’t help but gasp in cold air.
There were anomalies everywhere in Xiyang City. This was no longer a human city; it had clearly become an area overrun by anomalies!
The closer to the city center, the more anomalies there were, making it difficult to determine where the cultists were having their meeting in Xiyang City.
Lou Yan looked at his watch. It was already five o’clock in the afternoon, and he estimated that the cultists’ meeting was already nearing its end. If they didn’t find the meeting place quickly, they wouldn’t even be able to eavesdrop on a single word.
Lou Yan patted Fu Xuezhou’s arm, “Do you have a way to find the cultists?”
Fu Xuezhou flapped his wings and quickly flew a circle above Xiyang City, hiding within the clouds. He said, “Let’s go down and take a look first.”
After identifying a place with the least anomalies, Fu Xuezhou swooped down and landed in a dark alley, using the buildings and trees to conceal themselves.
Fu Xuezhou folded his wings and let go of Lou Yan, observing the surrounding environment.
This dark alley had several garbage bins, and several dried black bloodstains were splattered on the ground and walls. A few black rats were nibbling on something rotten at the bottom of the trash cans, but they were startled by their sudden appearance and scurried away.
Lou Yan wrinkled his brow at the smell in the air, “Such a strong smell of blood.”
This blood scent didn’t need to be intentionally sniffed; it was so strong that you could smell it just by breathing. The blood was mixed with the scents of many people, some fresh, some old, some nearby, and some far away.
Lou Yan looked at what the rats had just been nibbling on, which was a human finger with most of it gnawed off, revealing white bones.
The situation in Xiyang City was very bad.
Lou Yan and Fu Xuezhou quietly walked out of the alley and looked outside. There was not a single person on the street. This was a residential area, but the houses on both sides were either tightly closed or wide open, lifeless. Bloodstains could be seen everywhere, and there was not a single trace of human presence.
Lou Yan tried to listen for sounds around him, but there was nothing but silence. He could be sure that there were no living people inside the closed houses either.
“Can you hear the voices of other people?” Lou Yan asked in a low voice.
“I didn’t hear any,” Fu Xuezhou replied, “There are no living people within a radius of five hundred meters.”
No wonder there were the fewest anomalies when viewed from above; it turned out that there were no people alive here.
Lou Yan’s expression turned heavy, “How do you plan to find the cultists?”
Fu Xuezhou extended a hand in front of Lou Yan, and a dreamlike blue-purple butterfly suddenly appeared on his fingertip, “Use this.”
As soon as he finished speaking, countless blue-purple dream butterflies flew out of his palm and scattered in all directions.
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