This Damned Thirst for Survival

Feng Li followed the monk to a cave.

The sound of water pattering, listening to the sound, it seems that there is a dark river flowing inside. Feng Li's face is light, and although he has followed his enemy into the unknown, he is not worried.

As Tian Shifu's youngest Heavenly Master, he is revered and feared by countless people, and naturally has the confidence that he will emerge from a tiger's den.

After walking for a while, Ge Wuchen stopped in his tracks and turned around and said respectfully, "Master Tian, my master is just ahead, please go in."

Feng Li glanced at him lightly and walked in without hurry.

Soon Feng Li saw a black figure at the edge of the dark river that looked familiar.

The Heavenly Master's stern eyes narrowed as he said meaningfully, " Chi You ."

The evil spirit turned his head sideways, the handsome man's face pale, the corners of his lips raised high as he trailed off, the side of his face reflecting the mysterious ripples of the dark river as he said slowly and deliberately, "It has been a long time, Celestial Master."

Feng Li turned the jade trigger finger on his hand and his aura pressed up with a horrific killing intent.

"There's no need to be so nervous," the evil spirit shrugged helplessly, "I only invited you here to talk to the Master of Heaven about cooperation."

"Cooperation?" Feng Li's tone was mocking, "Cooperation in selling my disciples to you?"

The evil spirit burst out laughing abruptly, his laughter echoing continuously in the middle of the cave, eerie and eerie, before he stopped with difficulty a moment later and apologised, "Excuse me, it's just that this is so funny from the Heavenly Master, as if Jiang Luo is your thing."

Feng Li pursed his lips straight in displeasure, his fingers forming a seal in front of his chest as the evil spirit said slowly, "Does the Heavenly Master not want to know those little secrets anymore?"

Feng Li's hand is a beat.

The evil spirit looked back at the dark river, "This is the water of the Lian family Tianbi Pond, it will flow to the great spring pool in the old mansion. I'm sure the holy water has experienced the effects of the Tianbi, and I have to say, it works well."

Feng Li lowered his hand as he looked towards Dark River and said with a slight mockery, "Ge Wuchen of the Rebel Buddha has defected to you, the last ruler of the Chi family is indeed not to be underestimated. You are so much better than Chi Zhongye."

The villain smiled and the gentleman fluttered, "Thank you."

Feng Li twirled his jade trigger finger, "How did you know about my relationship with Ji Yaozi and the Fates?"

"Besides you, Master Celestial, there are several other people who know about this, and they all know more than you do," said the evil spirit, "such as-"

"The predestined man takes your body as a shell for his second body."

Feng Li crushed the jade trigger finger on his finger in one swift motion, his eyes sinking as the storm swept over him before he calmly asked, "What else do you know?"

The evil spirit said carelessly, "A lot."

Feng Li was about to say something else when the evil spirit suddenly "huh?" He looked up and extended his hand into the air.

A ball of paper ash suddenly appeared in the air and slowly condensed into a green and white card in the evil ghost's hand. The evil ghost gazed at the piece of paper for a long time, and his smile suddenly changed somewhat as he said with a low laugh, "Surprisingly ......"

Feng Li frowned as the villain held the card between two fingers and put it in his pocket, his attitude becoming slightly more distracted as he said, "Let's pick up the pace, Celestial Master."

He looked to Feng Li with a scarlet glint in his eyes and whispered, "I'm still waiting to go on my date."

Feng Li's eyes went blank for a moment, his eyes lost their focus, and he froze in place as if he had lost his mind.

The evil demon sighed, "Heavenly Master, it's really not easy to control you. Even now, I've only been able to give you hinted orders that you can't detect. I used to want to make you my puppet, but who let your disciple draw away most of my attention? Causing me to have given up on you."

"Originally, I wasn't going to get to you so soon," the evil spirit sighed, "but you and Jiang Luo got too close."

He said, "It upsets me."

*

"If you want to learn psychic arts well, it is best to remain a child," Ji Yaozi gave Jiang Luo a special look, "because the child's body has the most yang energy and it is easy to gather clean spiritual energy. But you don't need to dwell on it now, you can do as well as you can."

Jiang Luo nodded, "Lao Ji, what exactly is psionics?"

"All things have spirits," Ji Yaozi said. "People have spirits, ghosts have spirits, and animals and plants have spirits too. The psychic arts you understood before are too monotonous to deal with ghosts alone. But psychic techniques are not that strong, although everything has a spirit, you can only choose one to practise, and how far you can take your psychic practice depends on how much air you have in your body."

Ji Yaozi stretched out his hand, and a sharp needle suddenly flew out of his sleeve, through the falling leaves in the trees and turned and flew back, stopping straight in front of them both.

"The spirits of all things have a will of their own, and they will choose you in turn. I love smithing and spend the most time with my artifacts, fortunately they like me too, we have the same mind and learn psychic arts with half the effort, so you should also choose a direction that suits you best to learn."

Ji Yaozi withdrew the pointed needle, "Some people also call my hand the imperial weapon, and that's actually true."

This was so handsome that Jiang Luo watched with rapt attention, "So if you've become a weapon spirit, is it impossible for other people to practice?"

"Or they can," Ji Yaozi said, lifting his chest slightly, "but if they are not as gifted as I am, they will only ever come second, and they will never be able to surpass me."

Always second, that's too stifling.

Ji Yaozi said, "What aspect of psionics are you going to use?"

Jiang Luo humbly asks, "What do you suggest?"

Ji Yaozi thought for a moment and spoke eloquently with his hands behind his back, "This psychic art can encompass all things, whether it is wind, water, thunder and lightning, or gold, wood, water, fire and earth, as long as you practice it well, any of them are extremely powerful, you can feel all these things in front of you and see if you can experience the spirit inside them."

Jiang Luo nodded understandingly, "I'll think about it."

What would be readily available, battle-hardened, and varied?

Jiang Luo is fond of greenery, but it needs to grow in an environment, and if it is in winter, in the deep sea, in a wasteland without greenery, even if he has mastered the spirit of the plant, it will not be able to work.

"It's really hard to choose, after all, there are so many things with spirits, so who knows which one is best for you?" Ji Yaozi said kindly, "Go back and read the book and try to pick out the item you want to channel before you go."

Jiang Luo nodded and suddenly said, "So the spirits of speech have a choice?"

Ji Yaozi stared for a moment, then his face sank slightly, "Someone has already chosen the spirit of speech, and in the event that he has, you had better not choose the same thing as him."

Jiang Luo was thoughtful, thanked Ji Yaozi and went back to his room to continue reading.

But after going through a book, Jiang Luo still didn't know what to use for the seance.

But the five elements are so intertwined that if you learn one of them, there is a way to break the other. And Jiang Luo is a greedy man, he is not willing to learn just one.

He wanted to suppress the evil spirits and protect those he wanted to protect, then the choice was too deliberate and Jiang Luo's attitude could not have been more cautious.

By the time he looked up from his book, it was dark outside.

The ginseng spirit was carefully removing the rose from the table and squeezing two tears into the vase. With the tears of a five hundred year old ginseng spirit, even at night, this rose blooms magnificently and burns the eyes.

Jiang Luo said, "What are you doing?"

As if woken by his call, the ginseng doll jerked and scratched its head, saying honestly, "I was watering the flowers."

Jiang Luo looked out of the window like, "Don't pour, it's getting dark."

The ginseng doll responded with a sluggish response and slowly made its way back to bed, falling fast asleep on Jiang Luo's pillow.

Jiang Luo washes up and lies down, his nose smelling of mint toothpaste. He looks at the ceiling for a moment, the Fu Lu crumpled in his fingers, but finally puts it away and slowly closes his eyes.

Since arriving at the summit, he has only met Chi You once in a dream.

It must be said that Jiang Luo's interest was piqued by the "mad pursuit" as the evil one called it.

--He may give alms to the evil spirit for one meeting.

*

"Master, please trust me, I will definitely impress Master Jiang this time."

Ge Wuchen's voice was unhurried and confident, "All you need to do is show your strength, wealth and ambition and Master Jiang will naturally fall under your spell."

No one is better than Chi You at making people feel good about themselves and charming their subordinates with their personalities. But how to woo Jiang Luo was a real first for Chi You.

And he did not want to treat Jiang Luo in the same way as before.

In fact, Chi You even wanted to kill Jiang Luo after he realized that he liked him.

Only when Jiang Luo died would he be completely and utterly his own. But when Ge Wuchen learned of this thought, he immediately persuaded him to let it go.

Or what if death affects his character so that he doesn't make Chi You feel so interesting anymore?

Chi You was convinced by him.

After all, the Jiang Luo of today is not the Jiang Luo of old, and even Chi You cannot guarantee that Jiang Luo will not disappear from this world when he dies.

On the bed, Chi You's eyes are lazily closed, a sickly pallor added to his pale face, a vaguely excited smile on the corner of his mouth, a smile that looks rather nervous on the large, tidy bed, and the straight suit he wears when he falls asleep.

"Strength, ambition?" He grunted, " Ge Wuchen, what do you want to do?"

"I have only put the appearance of your future rulership into the dream to show Master Jiang your power," Ge Wuchen smiled unchanged, "moreover, I have also informed Teng Bi that he will allow Master Jiang's friends to follow him into the dream. In the dream, your relationship with Master Jiang can be openly known to the humans as well."

Chi You remembered the repulsive attitude of Wen Renlian's group towards his approach to Jiang Luo at the hotpot restaurant, and the corner of his mouth quirked, "That's a good idea."

Ge Wuchen smiled faintly and then worried, "Master, but would such a dream world be too dangerous?"

"The more dangerous the better," Chi You said languidly, "he'll love it."

He tapped his fingers pleasantly on his belly, "And I get to be a hero and save the day."

Ge Wuchen nodded, "Then I will leave you to it, master."

He exited the room and closed the door, and after standing in place for a few seconds, Ge Wuchen went to the door and found the Beaver and asked him and Teng Bi to deliver the message that it was time to do something.

Teng Bi said, "Got it."

Once the sound of the beaver's voice had stopped ringing in his head, Teng Bi looked at the room of people lying around and pursed his lips.

At dinner time, he ordered something and everyone passed out. Thanks to the fact that it was almost time for the trial, everyone stayed in Lu Youyi's flat, even Sai Liaoer, who had returned from abroad, in order not to have any accidents caused by the lack of numbers.

Teng Bi remembered what Ge Wuchen had said to him in the afternoon.

"At night, you will have those men enter the master's dream world with Jiang Luo," Ge Wuchen said, "and I will persuade the master to show the master as he will be when he rules the metaphysical world, and only by making Jiang Luo and the others realise the dangers of that world will Jiang Luo will only stop the master."

He repeated, "In this world, only Jiang Luo could pull the master back and make him give up such terrible thoughts."

"You don't want them to die either, Teng Bi." Ge Wuchen concluded.

Teng Bi snapped back to his senses, wanting to sigh a little, and said to himself, "I see."

He took out a needle, took the lead, went to Lu Youyi and knelt down, pierced Lu Youyi's finger and took a drop of blood and put it on Lu Youyi's brow.

The unconscious Lu Youyi's brow furrowed and his fingers struggled a little.

Teng Bi clutches his hand and presses a cotton swab against the pinhole-like wound as he looks silently into Lu Youyi's face.

"I hope you know my name is Teng Bi after ......," he said, "and invite me to New Year's Eve dinner, my friend."

*

Jiang Luo opened his eyes, which hurt from the harsh light from the ceiling.

He took a hand to shade the light and rolled up to find himself in the middle of a hotel.

The room was extremely shabby, like a small hotel where you could stay overnight for fifty dollars. The bedding on the bed was spilled with beer and there were holes from cigarette burns. The ceiling and walls were covered with newspaper in many places, some of which had fallen off halfway, revealing mouldy wall coverings underneath.

This time the dream was a little different.

Jiang Luo lifts the covers and walks to the table, holding onto the wall. The touch of the wall was so real that one wondered if it was a dream or not. He went to the table and sat down, where a book of notes lay, surprisingly written in Jiang Luo's own handwriting.

Jiang Luo raises an eyebrow, interested in the content of Chi You's dream this time. He opened his diary, which contained only the first page of writing.

It's a short half-page, and from it, Jiang Luo finds himself in a dream with a new identity. His name is still Jiang Luo, but he is a love brain who dropped out of college before finishing it and ran away with a wild man. Now, he is eloping with his "husband" to a small hotel.

He and his "husband" had spent all the money they had, and he decided to stay and work for a while to pay for the rest of the trip. At the moment, his husband is working outside and will be back from work at six o'clock.

Jiang Luo looks up at the clock on the wall, it is now 5pm and his "husband" will be back in an hour.

The dream seemed interesting, and Jiang Luo got up and turned the room around.

He found a mobile phone next to his pillow, which had only one number in its address book with the note "husband". Apart from that, there was a QQ and a WeChat.

Jiang Luo clicked on QQ and found that there was a group for Bai Hua University's Natural Science and Social Studies 01 class, "Please burn incense when you have something to do".

It was Lu Youyi who was in the group, and their avatars were all online, but Jiang Luo's finger moved over them a few times, but he didn't click in.

Lu Youyi How could they be in a dream? Probably the same dummies as those in the last classroom teacher and students again.

Never mind, Jiang Luo puts his phone down for the moment and goes on to check the contents of the room.

The poor, rundown hotel was immediately visible, and when Jiang Luo dug into the toilet to check it out, he found the mirror in pieces, shattered into several pieces.

Small and large fragments are barely framed in the mirror, distorting and splitting Jiang Luo's face in a vaguely eerie way.

The mirror in the toilet was broken, which was not a good sign. Jiang Luo turned around and exited the bathroom, walked over to the bed and dialed the hotel reception.

"Beep, beep, beep ......"

It took a while for the phone to dial and a male voice came from the other side, "Hello, guest in 203?"

203, Jiang Luo wrote down the room number, "The mirror in my toilet is broken, have someone come and fix it."

Surprisingly, the service at this hotel was very good, "Yes guest, we will send someone over to fix it now, please be patient for a minute."

The caller hung up without waiting for Jiang Luo's response, and Jiang Luo thought something was odd. He looked up at the clock on the wall and the seconds quickly spun round, and just a minute later there was a knock at the door.

There was a deadpan knock on the door three times.

Jiang Luo walked slowly through the door, his brow furrowed.

Strange, the soundproofing in a small hotel like this was known to be bad when you thought about it. Why had someone walked up to his door sixty seconds before when he hadn't heard any footsteps at all?

There was a cat's eye on the door and Jiang Luo went over to it and looked out through it. The corridor was dark and there was nothing there.

There was no one outside, so how did the knocking come about?

Jiang Luo had not yet backed away from the cat's eye and he looked closely, but with decent night vision he really didn't see anything in the pitch black corridor this time. Jiang Luo was about to leave the door when there were three more knocks on the door of the room.

Grass.

Jiang Luo takes a step back and away from the door.

Surely something is odd.

Jiang Luo, who has no Yin Yang Ring or Fu Lu on his body, tries to make a seal and draw his own charms, but finds that neither works. It seems that Chi You wants to play a big game this time.

Jiang Luo laughed coldly, as he had guessed correctly, the evil spirit's talk of a mad quest was to play him to death, right?

The hotel phone by the bed suddenly rang.

Jiang Luo walked over to pick up the microphone and the hotel owner's voice became a little more impatient than it had just been, "Guest, our man is at the door of your room, why don't you open the door for him?"

Jiang Luo lied without changing his face, "Is it here yet? I didn't hear it, did he knock on the wrong door?"

The innkeeper affirmed, "There is no wrong knock, he is now waiting at the 203 door, open the door for him or ......" his voice became gloomy, "or else, guest, you will have to pay an extra hair fine."

Jiang Luo hung up the phone straight away.

The next moment the phone started ringing like crazy, as if it was about to vibrate from the table to the floor. At the same time, a knock at the door followed. Jiang Luo stood by the phone with cold eyes, not knowing how long it would be before the phone finally stopped and so did the voices at the door.

Before Jiang Luo could breathe a sigh of relief, his mobile phone vibrated again.

Jiang Luo frowned as he picked up his phone and found an unread text message in his mailbox.

He clicked on the text message, which contained a stolen photo.

It is he who is the subject of the surreptitious photograph.

The dark-haired young man is standing in front of the bedside table, checking his phone with his head down, his dark hair draped over his shoulders, the eerie blue light reflecting on his face.

A threatening phrase was appended to the bottom: [Open the door now!

A chill rises from his back as Jiang Luo takes a deep breath and begins to compare the angles of this sneak peek.

Elevation shot from bottom to top, within two metres ......

His eyes slowly moved to the bottom of the bed.

The bottom of the bed was thirty centimetres wide, and from his angle, nothing could be seen underneath it in the darkness.

There is a man hiding under the bed in the room?

...... or is it a ghost?