A Good-for-Nothing

255. A New Teammate

Translator: Dragon Rider

An hour later, the contestants, the total number of whom was a hundred or so, arrived at the island. The conditions of the venues for the last two events had been unacceptably poor, and the International Exorcism Federation (IEF) had received many complaints. This year, staff members of IEF had made a lot of efforts and eventually selected this island. There were only dozens of islanders living on this island, all of whom had been temporarily transferred to another island. As a result, currently members of the organizing committee and the competing teams were the only ones on the island, and they wouldn’t be disturbed.

The infrastructure on the island was satisfactory. At least they had rooms with roofs to live in. In the past few years, contestants had had to bivouac in selva.

All the contestants did not arrive at the same time, and the organizing committee had made it clear that those who arrived early were free to walk around on the island outside the area designated for the event.

He Zheng and the others did not go to the activity hall built by the IEF immediately after disembarking, because Lao Ka started vomiting badly the moment he got off the ship. Tao Wujiu had a lot of pills on him, but he had not prepared anything that could relieve motion sickness, because he had not bargained on Carnotte suffering severe motion sickness.

“Do you have any candies or anything sweet?” Chen Qianlin scrabbled around in his backpack but didn’t find anything.

Something occurred to He Zheng in a flash of inspiration. “Yeah!”

Having bought quite some chocolate before leaving the airport, he hastily produced a couple of pieces and handed it to Carnotte.

At this time, someone on the side asked, “Excuse me. Would you please be so kind as to spare some chocolate for my teammate? He’s seasick as well.”

The man was speaking fluent Chinese.

He Zheng turned his head around only to find that the speaker was not a fellow countryman but a tall white man, who was blonde-haired, but whose eyes were dark brown and nearly black. He was supporting a young lady who appeared as seasick as Lao Ka.

It turned out that someone else was also suffering from seasickness.

He Zheng handed him a piece of chocolate. The man thanked him several times and then had the lady eat the chocolate. The sugar in the chocolate slightly eased the nausea. Lao Ka and the young lady both looked better.

“Are you going to the hall? We’d like to go with you, if you don’t mind. Let me introduce myself. I’m an exorcist from the Rose Kingdom. My mother’s from the Republic of Hua. My Chinese name is Xiao Qi. She’s my sister, Xiao Han.”

Li Zong slightly narrowed his eyes. “A lady of the Xiao family in Hang City married into the Murdock family, the most renowned family of exorcists of the Rose Kingdom. After that, she settled down in the Rose Kingdom and never returned to the Republic of Hua.”

Xiao Qi was astonished to find that Li Zong knew about his parentage. Feeling flattered, he said, “Yes, but my mother misses her home country very much.”

He paused, scrutinizing Li Zong’s face. After a brief moment, an expression of dawning comprehension flashed across his eyes and with that he exclaimed, “I heard my mother mention you. You’re Supt. Li!”

Li Zong waved his hand and said with a bland look on his face. “Let’s go.”

Supporting his sister, Xiao Qi thanked them and then headed for the hall as well.

He Zheng and Li Zong were walking abreast. Looking at Xiao Qi’s tall frame from behind, He Zheng was a little frustrated. “You even know his mother?”

“Many staff members of the SMB sub-bureau in Hang City are from the Xiao family. At that time, Ms. Xiao was working for SMB as well, so she’s actually my former colleague.”

Amused at He Zheng’s unhappy face, Li Zong said, “Ms. Xiao had met her future husband already when I made her acquaintance.”

He Zheng was somewhat embarrassed. He found that he had been becoming a little effeminate since he had married Li Zong. However, Li Zong was indeed too charming. He was actually a heart-throb. They kept running into his admirers wherever they were.

“By the way, you said we have another teammate, Chen Kai. Why has he still not rendezvoused with us?” asked He Zheng.

While they were talking, a commotion came from one side.

A yellow-haired young man wearing jeans with two big holes in the knees was standing with his back to them. Around him were a bunch of angry-looking foreigners, men and women, tall ones and short ones. They quickly surrounded the yellow-haired young man.

“How dare you snatch stuff from our hands, pal?”

“What’s going on over there?” said Tao Wujiu, looking in that direction. Onlookers don’t care whether the incident would escalate or not. He said, “It’s not going to become a mass brawl, is it? But I remember the organizing committee has put a ban on such things. If a contestant provokes anybody, their whole team would be disqualified from the competition.”

He Zheng glanced at those people. Knowing that Li Zong was not inclined to be a busybody or get into any trouble, he said, “We could easily get us into trouble if we go there to look on. Let’s just go.”

As Li Zong’s eyes rested on that yellow-haired young man, they slightly narrowed. “Let’s go and take a look,” he said.

“Eek?” Even Chen Qianlin was surprised.

While they were talking, that young man’s voice, heavy with disdain, was heard. “Snatch? What’s wrong with me snatching things from your hands? Shouldn’t your things be snatched by me?

The law of the jungle. You lost the fight, so you give me your stuff.”

“Wow. This yellow-haired guy sounds pretty aggressive,” said Tao Wujiu.

He Zheng snorted, intending to find out who that guy was who was acting more arrogantly than he did in the presence of him!

When they approached, that young man happened to be twisting his head aside. He was actually a fellow countryman of theirs!

Chen Qianlin’s stomach did a back-flip. “Good-for-nothing, I have a sudden foreboding feeling.”

He Zheng also had a faint sense of foreboding at the sight of the young man.

They had a teammate to rendezvous with, whose name was Chen Kai, and who was said to be a young man.

“Don’t jinx us, Ego Freak,” sniffed He Zheng, beginning to have headache.

However, recalling Li Zong’s behavior, He Zheng was two hundred percent sure that this yellow-haired pal was their new teammate, Chen Kai!

But now did not seem to be the right time to take in a new teammate. Chen Kai, by saying those words, had provoked those foreigners. One of them raised his fist with the intention to beat Chen Kai.

“Come on. Punch my face. Do it hard,” said Chen Kai, pointing at his own face which wore a cocky smirk, raising his chin slightly, his eyes full of contempt. “You’d better hit me hard, so that you people won’t have to fight in the competition and could directly get your asses out of this place.”

“You–! You–!” The man was beside himself with fury at Chen Kai’s words.

Chen Kai added provocatively, “If you want a fight, do it right away; if not, I’ll be on my way.”

“You want to leave? Give Julie her whip back!” roared a tough hombre.

Chen Kai picked his nose and said, “You mean that shabby rope? I fed it to the sharks some time ago.”

The girl beside the man was instantly reduced to tears. She sobbed to the thickset man who was sticking up for her, “My whip … I want my whip …

Dave, you said you’d help me! Dave!”

The girl’s cry obviously added fuel to the flames of Dave’s rage. Dave did not want to lose face in the presence of so many people, but if he resorted to violence, they could well be disqualified, which would be too high a price for them to pay. However, Julie, an adorable girl, was heartbroken. If he helped Julie, she would definitely be receptive to him and agree to be his girlfriend …

Dave wavered over it.

“Hey, stop crying, Aunt. Look at your ugly face. If you keep crying, I’ll start vomiting.” Chen Kai pointedly rubbed his eyes and ears. “My poor little ears, I’m sorry to subject you to such noises.”

He Zheng, watching this in the distance, directly dissolved into laughter. “Ha–ha … That guy’s pretty shameless.”

Chen Qianlin was just about to say “Almost as shameless as you” when his eyes alighted on Chen Kai and with that his pupils contracted drastically.

“Shit!”

For some reason Dave made his move without warning.

Chen Kai’s eyes went cold and a sinister look appeared on his devil-may-care face. He quickly dodged the blow, but Dave, who seemed to have lost his marbles, launched another attack on Chen Kai.

“That bitch cast a spell on him,” Chen Kai muttered angrily. Great strength was clearly Dave’s forte. His strength was ten times that of a common person. That punch of his hit the ground, leaving a large dent in it. Had it hit Chen Kai, it would no doubt have broken a couple of his bones.

Chen Kai nimbly dodged the blow, which proved that Chen Kai was pretty good at fighting.

“That Dave guy is a little strange,” observed Chen Qianlin in a deep voice.

“Yes, and so are his teammates. I mean, they seem totally indifferent to the situation,” said Qiu Luo, who also noticed that something was wrong. That man who had been the first to show the inclination to resort to violence also had an unconcerned look on his face.

Chen Kai quickly sidestepped his opponent, but he kept dodging, not attacking.

A malicious look flitted across Julie’s face. Watching Chen Kai having a hard job dodging Dave’s attacks, Julie crowed with a smirk, “Humph. You ruined my plan, and now you have to pay for it.”

“Ignoring you will cause you more pain than slapping you in the face.” Chen Kai disregarded her, swiftly dodging Dave’s blows.

Dave had great strength, and he was attacking with no scruples whatsoever. He appeared quite unhurried, but Chen Kai was having progressively greater difficulty defending against the blows.

At this time, Julie decided to go the whole hog. She mobilized her psychic energy and boosted Dave’s fury to the extreme and with that Dave let out a roar like a mad man.

“We need to do something, or else the little guy’s going to die.” Chen Qianlin knitted his brows.

“Lao Ka,” He Zheng called Carnotte by his nickname.

Carnotte nodded. He had almost recovered from the seasickness. In terms of speed, nobody, except those capable of controlling wind, could outshine a werewolf who ran like the wind.

Carnotte ran forward a couple of paces before he took a flying leap and turned into a giant wolf in mid-air. By sunlight, the wolf’s fur was shining. It looked like an envoy from the heaven, who appeared in myths of many countries. Some people distantly saw it and with that the whole place was full of intermittent exclamations of astonishment.

Carnotte quickly grabbed Chen Kai, threw it onto his back and rapidly carried him to Li Zong and the others before Dave could land his next blow.

“Hey, who are you? Why are you making trouble for our team for no reason?” He Zheng blocked the path of Dave who was advancing towards Chen Kai. Li Zong was standing behind He Zheng, radiating an almost palpable sense of power which made Dave quiver, despite the fact that his mind was being controlled.

Julie abruptly spat out a mouthful of blood and with that she let out an anguished scream, clapped her hands to her head and started groaning. Dave forced his mind out of Julie’s control, inflicting severe internal injuries on her. At the sight of the scene, Dave who had now come back to his senses, immediately caught on to what had just happened. The look on his face suddenly became rather ugly. He recognized the seven-man team in front of him. They were none other than the national team of the Republic of Hua, who had shown up in the hotel yesterday, and whom all other competing teams were wary of!

Julie, that stupid woman, had actually controlled his mind with her pathetic mind-control skill and made him an enemy of this team!

As Julie stopped using her mind-control skill, all Dave’s teammates regained control of their minds and found out that they had been manipulated.

The team leader, who also came to understand what had just happened, went furious and thundered, “JULIE–!”

“You bitch!” Dave went ballistic and raised his foot with the intention to kick his teammate Julie who was lying on the ground groaning in pain.

“Wait!”

He Zheng stopped Dave.

At the sight of He Zheng, Dave restrained his anger, but he still said in a hoarse voice, “Sir, this is an internal affair of our team.”

“Yes, it is,” said He Zheng. He stopped Dave not because he wanted to help Julie. Without even glancing at Julie, he added, “You guys had better figure out how to explain your actions to the organizing committee.”

Dave stiffened at the words. Then he twisted his head around only to find that several members of the organizing committee had arrived.