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Chapter 325: After Modification - Two Hundred Ninety-Seven - Painting the Dragon

Chapter 325: After Modification: Chapter Two Hundred Ninety-Seven - Painting the Dragon

After a round of conversation, he learned that Bai Jixiong not only knew Midnight Howl but was also good friends with Red Driver.

When the latter’s short video account [Red Driver Loves Playing with Dogs] started operating on the player forum, it not only lacked traffic but also didn’t have many magical creatures in the park,

so Bai Jixiong, as a druid, often transformed into griffins, shift beasts, abyssal tentacle beasts, mud monsters, and other creatures, acting as performers to generate traffic for the short video account.

"Damn, turns out you’re a big star!"

Gray Rain, sitting in the front passenger seat, exclaimed in shock, "Were the scenes where you tamed magical creatures in those short videos all just an act? The dragon fruit, the fanning, the cardiopulmonary resuscitation, were they all staged?"

"The first few dozen episodes were basically all staged. Later, when the account took off, I stopped appearing—it genuinely hurt to keep getting hit."

Having transformed into a chubby orange cat and sitting in the middle of the backseat, Bai Jixiong confessed honestly, "Well... this is kind of a trade secret, please don’t tell anyone."

Gray Rain ignored him, with a vacant expression, muttering to himself, "All fake, all just ice tea drops, the web is just the web, real and fake, fake and real, it’s all to deceive the fans..."

The white girl in the backseat, seeing Bai Jixiong transformed into an endearing orange cat, hesitated for a moment and reached out to touch him, trying to show friendliness.

Unexpectedly, as soon as she touched him, Bai Jixiong immediately bristled, his back curving like a bow, the whole cat retreating while hissing continuously.

The sudden Hajimi hissing startled the white girl and also scared himself.

"Sorry, I don’t like female creatures touching me."

After a moment, Bai Jixiong also realized and slowly returned to normal, explaining apprehensively, "It’s not gender discrimination.

A while ago, Red Driver went on a long trip and left me in charge of the magical creatures park. I drank a bit and accidentally fell into the female manticore enclosure. To avoid getting bitten to death, I had to transform into a male lion, just as it happened to be the mating season for lions..."

Uh...

Li Cheng looked at Bai Jixiong through the rearview mirror with a sympathetic gaze. Lions’ mating lasts only a brief 20 to 40 seconds, but the frequency is extremely high, reaching up to more than eighty times a day.

Manticores being magical creatures likely have better stamina, no wonder Bai Jixiong had such a PTSD-like reaction.

Zzzzz——

While chatting leisurely, sudden static noise blared from the car’s sound system.

"Request...assistance..."

Li Cheng frowned, reached out to turn the dial, adjusting the channel to make the broadcast sound clearer.

"This is Talisman Nail Dragon from the Special Affairs Bureau Shu City Mobile Task Force, we are currently under attack by native creatures of the Otherworld, requesting support from all sides."

Talisman Nail Dragon?

Li Cheng recalled, there was indeed such a person in the database, and with the background noise filled with explosions and fighting sounds, it didn’t seem fake.

He turned his head to seek Bai Jixiong’s opinion, "What do you think, shall we go have a look?"

"I’m fine with it."

The just-rescued Bai Jixiong had no objections. From the descriptions by Midnight Howl and Red Driver, he could roughly guess that Talisman Nail Dragon was one of those who had A+ or even S-level tasks in every mission,

despite Talisman Nail Dragon currently being only Lv16, while Bai Jixiong was Lv17, if they were to fight... Bai Jixiong would still turn into a shift beast to escape, having a better chance of survival.

"Let’s go have a look then."

Li Cheng activated the armored vehicle’s radar function, turned the steering wheel, and drove towards the source of the broadcast signal.

Coincidentally or not, this direction was exactly where the human head balloon had floated off to.

————

"Hold on!"

In the dilapidated building, a dozen players were struggling to fend off wave after wave of attacking Otherworld mutated monsters.

Human head balloons, misshapen worms, fused creatures with countless hands and feet, flocks of crows with tumors on their heads...

From a human perspective, these monsters each looked more hideous and twisted than the next, like crudely drawn images generated en masse by primitive AI, giving a nauseating discomfort.

"Tiger."

A young man with black hair named Talisman Nail Dragon, holding an ordinary brush, swiftly painted a fierce tiger descending from the mountains on the mottled wallpaper-covered wall.

Although he only used a few strokes, he could accurately outline the ferocious and majestic essence of the mountain king.

Thump!

The painted tiger came to life, leaping along the wall until it jumped off, transforming into an eight-meter-long ink entity, charging into the monster horde like a tank, slaughtering mutated monsters with pounces, swipes, tail whips, and throat locks,

one killing fifty, until it was overwhelmed and dissipated into ink.

"Lion."

With sweat on his forehead, Talisman Nail Dragon painted again on the wall, depicting over a dozen male lions to clear an area for the players.

Before he could catch his breath, on the other side of the defensive circle, a player wielding a machine gun shouted as he continuously fired at the monster horde, "Talisman Nail Dragon! Where’s the ammo!"

"Coming, coming! I’m painting it!"

Talisman Nail Dragon flicked his numbed wrist, his hand moving like a blur, drawing a box of ammunition and hundreds of rounds on the ground. With a sudden grasp, he pulled out the ink ammunition box from the ground and threw it to his teammate.

The brush in his hand was akin to the item in "Divine Brush Ma Liang", able to transform images into reality.

However, each painting consumed ink, and it couldn’t be replenished during a mission.

"We need to move."

A calm voice sounded nearby. Zhao Zijing, with dual backgrounds from the Special Affairs Bureau and GOC, used telekinesis to drive short metal arrows, slaughtering the monsters that breached the machine gun’s fire net,

calmly saying, "If we continue to hold out, everyone will die."

"..."

Talisman Nail Dragon didn’t argue, his peripheral vision sweeping over the fifty-odd trembling ordinary people in the defensive circle.

Players’ backpack slots couldn’t store living creatures, and they didn’t have large capacity space-items like [Human Species Bag] with them.

This meant that during the rush to break out of the monster horde, casualties were highly probable.

While he was hesitating, explosions sounded outside the building.

A six-meter-tall one-eyed giant holding a giant bone axe suddenly had its chest explode, and a small blood-soaked figure rushed out,

with a string of organ fragments hanging from the body, directly jumping into the monster horde, slaughtering the monsters like a tiger among sheep, wielding a big hammer to crush one monster after another.

The monsters occasionally retaliated, but their attacks only produced the sound of metal clanging against iron on the figure.

Such an outrageous combat style left the players in the defensive circle stunned, the machine gunner hesitated, his finger hovering over the trigger.

"Don’t shoot."

Zhao Zijing inhaled deeply, somewhat helplessly saying, "She’s one of us."

The newcomer was Gray Rain, who cleared an area, allowing Li Cheng to drive the armored vehicle along the path formed by blood and corpses, driving swaggeringly into the building.

The newcomer was Gray Rain, who cleared an area, allowing Li Cheng to drive the armored vehicle along the path formed by blood and corpses, driving swaggeringly into the building.