A Good-for-Nothing

249. Uncommonly Ugly

Translator: Dragon Rider

The possibility they had thought of had now been ruled out. Though the process had been rather difficult, He Zheng finally proved himself innocent.

In fact, He Zheng hardly had any recollections of what had happened the day before. He had passed out during the incident and didn’t come around until the next day.

Thanks to that incident, Li Zong had now been extricated from those things and could focus on training his team. After all, they didn’t have much time left.

During the training process, He Zheng gradually began to play a leading role in the five-man team unawares.

For example, at this moment Li Zong brought them another Earth Dragon.

An Earth Dragon was a very disgusting creature. It looked like a titanic version of an earthworm. Its whole body was covered in mucus, and it had extraordinary regenerative powers. If cut in half, it would regenerate and there would be two Earth Dragons with the same level of regenerative powers.

However, though halving it wouldn’t kill it, and it was very repulsive-looking, its means of attack was not very powerful, and different people had different ways to deal with it. For example, Li Zong was capable of reducing it to a roast Earth Dragon with his Karma Flames. Xiang Hailou, who was always honest and upright, would definitely fight it at close quarters and kill it with a lethal stroke of the sword, despite the fact that its blood would stain his clothes. Zhang Jingqiu would use a Circle to trap the Earth Dragon in it and attack from the side, avoiding its frontal attacks.

But in their team, there was nobody as badass as Li Zong who was capable of conjuring Karma Flames, and none of them had swordcraft as consummate as Xiang Hailou’s, and they certainly had no knowledge of Taoist Formations.

Tao Wujiu was a Healer and his combat power was average. As a werewolf, Carnotte relied on his sharp claws and fast speed. Qiu Luo and Chen Qianlin were both good at swordcraft, but fighting an Earth Dragon at close quarters was a nasty task, and they were both neat freaks and were unwilling to be the first one to attack.

Qiu Luo had dealt with an Earth Dragon during a previous training session before, so he was even more reluctant to get close to it.

“Shit! How do we kill this thing?! It’s so gross,” yelled Chen Qianlin. The constantly writhing Earth Dragon spattered him with mucus, almost reducing him to vomiting.

“Stay away from it. Its mucus is poisonous,” cautioned Qiu Luo, cutting off Chen Qianlin’s sleeve with his sword unblinkingly.

“Oh, you literally cut off his sleeve!” He Zheng couldn’t help but tease them as he saw this scene. (In Chinese, cutting off someone’s sleeve could also mean coming out of the closet)

Chen Qianlin felt goose bumps rising up his whole body and threatened that he would cut off He Zheng’s tongue if the latter said anything like that again.

“I have an idea. You two cut the shit and stay away from it. Hurl your swords at it from a distance but be careful not to cut it in half.” Although He Zheng was teasing them from time to time, he had also been secretly observing the situation and the Earth Dragon’s pattern of attack.

“And then, Lao Ka and Lao Tao shall join hands and keep harassing it from different directions. This Earth Dragon is basically blind. I’m sure you two can give it dizzy spells.”

“So we all have our work to do. What about you? What are you going to do?” Although Chen Qianlin was ill-disposed towards He Zheng, currently there was no other way, and he had no choice but to cooperate with Qiu Luo and control his sword with his internal energy to attack the target from a distance.

He Zheng slyly produced an Elementary Lightning Fu from his pocket and said, “I’m going to have it know it should have behaved itself like a docile earthworm!”

At the sight of the lightning Fu, Chen Qianlin, who had once fallen victim to a lightning spell before, subconsciously backed away several paces.

He Zheng temporarily left the main battleground with a couple of flying leaps and then began to summon lightning.

Naturally, he had chosen a relatively powerful lightning Fu to deal with this Earth Dragon whose defense was quite strong.

Meanwhile, the Earth Dragon, injured by the swords, went furious and ran wild, writhing frantically, spattering mucus in all directions. Chen Qianlin was on the verge of throwing up. One of his sleeves was incomplete, giving people the impression that he was wearing some kind of asymmetric coat.

“What’s taking you so long, you good-for-nothing?! We are about to vomit. Just do it already, okay?” When the Earth Dragon spurted mucus at Chen Qianlin and the others again, Chen Qianlin finally roared at He Zheng in spite of himself.

“Shut up, you self-absorbed fool. Say another word and I’ll add you to my target list!”

Chen Qianlin dodged one spurt of mucus after another.

He Zheng cast his Fu forward and incanted a spell. As his proficiency in Fu-craft grew, his success rate of summoning thunderclouds had been rising. Soon, several huge dark clouds appeared in the sky which had been cloudless a few moments ago.

“Fall back! Fall back! Fall back! Make some room for the lightning!” As He Zheng yelled, the four of them flew back in four different directions.

The Earth Dragon’s eyes had become vestigial, and it didn’t rely on its eyes to get information about things around it, so it naturally had sensed the danger that was quietly approaching.

It made an attempt to dodge, abruptly burrowing its way into the ground, making a big hole in it.

It was fast, but the lightning conjured by He Zheng was faster.

With a loud rumble, sheets of lightning appeared.

“Go!” Lightning gathered on the tip of the Shadow Sword. As He Zheng swung the sword downward, bolts of lightning shot out and enveloped the part of the Earth Dragon that was still above ground. The Earth Dragon writhed madly, rubble and dust flying in all directions. In an instant, the lightning burned the exposed part of the target.

The Earth Dragon, which had only half of its body left, knew it was on the losing side and started burrowing deeper into the ground like crazy. The four of them were startled at the sight of this, wondering if the magic shield was protecting the ground as well. If not, the ceiling of the room below might be penetrated by the creature.

“Lao Ka, it’s your turn!”

Carnotte gave a nod and sprinted a few paces forward before he jumped up and transformed into a gray wolf in mid-air, letting out a deafening howl. His sharp claws mercilessly sank deep into the slippery body of the Earth Dragon, and the next second, with his amazing strength, he abruptly pulled the Earth Dragon out of the ground and bodily threw it away. It curved through the air.

“Move aside!” He Zheng shouted.

Carnotte like the wind sidestepped a clap of lightning which struck the remaining half of the Earth Dragon and reduced it to a large chunk of Earth-Dragon jerky.

As the sheets of lightning and thunderclouds in the sky disappeared, the smoke and clouds of dust dispersed, leaving no trace of what had just happened except for the mess on the ground and the mucus all over their clothes.

“Huuuu – That was thrilling.”

All of them could still feel their hearts hammering. An Earth Dragon was not very dangerous, but it was repulsive and hard to kill. Chen Qianlin, who had been trying to distract the Earth Dragon during the fight, had the most mucus over his clothes and was not giving off a foul smell of dirt. He was also the first one to fail to keep from throwing up. He rushed to a tree and started vomiting.

Tao Wujiu walked up to him with the intention to give him some tissues, but he accidentally glimpsed Chen Qianlin’s vomitus and was also reduced to barfing.

And then Carnotte joined the two of them in vomiting.

Qiu Luo and He Zheng were fine. “It seems Xiao Chen’s mental endurance needs improving. Some day I’ll put him in a shit hole, and then nothing would make him vomit again.”

On hearing these words, Chen Qianlin, who was wiping his mouth on his sleeve, couldn’t help but picture what it would be like, and the next second he resumed vomiting.

In order not to disturb them, Li Zong had been watching the fight outside the magic barrier.

It was not until they got the job done that Li Zong entered.

“Go back, clean yourselves up and then finish your routine reports,” instructed Li Zong, glancing at his wrist watch, the particularly flashy diamond watch that He Zheng had bought him, which was so shiny that the sight of it made people’s eyes sting. “I want them on my desk in half an hour.”

“On your desk? You want us to write them?” He Zheng was astonished.

“Yeah.” Li Zong nodded.

The team let out a moan.

Li Zong, appearing heartless and unreasonable on this occasion, turned on his heel and walked off. “You have 29 minutes left,” he added before closing the elevator door.

Having no time to complain, they raced each other to the elevator. When exiting the elevator, they chanced upon Elder Chen. Astonished at their dirty clothes, Elder Chen asked Zhang Jingqiu, “What did you have these kids do? Why are they such a mess?”

There was a suggestion of reproach in his voice.

Zhang Jingqiu, feeling wronged inexplicably, hastened to explain, “They just had a training session with Li Zong.”

“Oh.” Elder Chen nodded. “Youngsters do need to experience some hardships to toughen themselves up.”

Zhang Jingqiu, “…”

‘This is thinly disguised favoritism, Elder Chen,’ he thought.

It was said that after they left the elevator, the cleaning lady spent a solid hour scrubbing the floorboard to get rid of the mucus, that she was on the verge of filing a complaint.

They quickly started looking for a bathroom, so anxious as though a war were coming. They had nowhere else to go. He Zheng refused to let his stinky teammates enter Li Zong’s dorm room. Actually he himself didn’t want to go there either. Eventually, He Zheng, a guy with low moral standards, decided to go to the next-door dorm room, the owner of which was Zu Zhichong who happened to be taking a day off.

Zu Zhichong had just finished a round of video game in his dorm room. After hearing the knock at the door, he walked over and had just opened the door a fraction when five refugee-like men thrust inside, narrowly avoiding trampling Zu Zhichong underfoot.

At the sight of the slime over their clothes, Zu Zhichong came to realize what they wanted to do and flatly disagreed, but He Zheng directly gave Zu Zhichong a hug.

And then the six of them raced each other to the bathroom.

Six men were in a medium-sized bathroom, and naturally some inharmonious voices were heard. Someone raged, “Fuck! My soap, my soap!”

“Just pick it up already. Hurry!”

“For the sake of my butt, I think I’ll use body wash instead!”

” … ”

Eventually they managed to finish their reports and put them on Li Zong’s desk in half an hour. Actually the bath had taken them only two minutes, and the other twenty minutes or so had been spent on the reports.

Since they had finished their assignments, Li Zong was satisfied and told them to get some rest. He himself stayed in his office reading their training reports.

Naturally, he started from He Zheng’s.

He Zheng’s handwriting had a high level of recognizability, because it was very distinctive.

It was uncommonly ugly.

The scrawls were distributed on the paper in a disorderly manner. What with insufficient time and the haste, his problematic handwriting was even more illegible on this occasion.

Fortunately Li Zong had enough patience to distinguish the scribble which presumably nobody else could comprehend.

When he was halfway through the report, Zu Zhichong, who had finished his bath, swept into the office, preparing to tell on the five of them. Seeing that Li Zong was reading something, he leaned his head closer to Li Zong, glanced at it and asked, “Oh, a copy of hieroglyph. Where did they dig up the original, Chief?”

“It’s He Zheng’s training report,” replied Li Zong concisely.

“Huh? Someone actually wrote this?” Zu Zhichong was shocked.

Lao Zu’s reaction was an indirect indication of how “graceful” He Zheng’s handwriting was.

Li Zong had originally planned to finish reading all the five training reports in half an hour. What he had not expected was that reading He Zheng’s report alone would take him half an hour. After finishing reading He Zheng’s training report, Li Zong felt a great sense of relief as though he had fulfilled a quite difficult task.

‘Maybe next time I should have them hand in digital reports instead.’

Li Zong thought.

The five of them were unaware that He Zheng’s “beautiful” handwriting had just saved them from a lot of trouble.

Li Zong, after reading their reports with remarks, started making a new plan of targeted training for his team.

Day after day they trained and wrote reports, and soon the day came when they had to depart for the country where the exorcism championship was going to be held.