A Good-for-Nothing

92. My Husband (2)

Translator: Dragon Rider

Using a lightning Fu to invoke lightning was very physically demanding. He Zheng used three lightning Fu in a row but without any luck. All of them ended up like the first one. There was no lightning.

After so much exertion, He Zheng’s face paled visibly due to energy depletion.

He didn’t know whether it was because of his exhaustion, but the third lightning Fu could no longer ignite spontaneously like the first two. It could barely float in mid-air.

Consumed with anger, He Zheng sat on the ground in fidgets and miserably held his chest, panting heavily. The spells had cost him too much energy and his body was on the verge of being overloaded.

While resting, he conveniently looked around to see how others were doing with their cultivation.

Several young employees were practicing, and one of them attracted He Zheng’s attention.

It was a female, whom He Zheng assumed was a cultivator of both Fu-craft and swordcraft. Pointing her sword at the sky, she cast a lightning spell and with that the tip of the sword drew a flash of lightning from the sky, which instantly enwrapped the blade. Then she gave a casual swing of the sword and the lightning flashed forward, hit a giant block of granite a couple of meters away and blasted it to pieces with an almighty boom.

He Zheng’s eyes briefly lit up, as if he had just had a flash of inspiration. And then, unaware of how, he rose to his feet and walked towards the girl.

The girl, who was practicing very attentively, gracefully sheathed her sword with a silvery clang, casually wiped the sweat off her forehead and exhaled deeply.

“May I borrow your sword for a while?”

Taken aback, the girl instantly looked at this stranger with wariness, unsheathed her sword with a ringing sound and trained it at He Zheng’s throat, demanding, “Who are you? How did you get through my magical barrier?”

With a frown on his face, He Zheng, who couldn’t be bothered to quarrel with a girl, managed to keep his temper. “I walked here. Just now, I saw you guide the power of a lightning spell with your sword, so I want to borrow your sword and try it myself.”

A frosty look in his eyes, he casually pushed the tip of the sword aside and added in an unmistakably displeased tone of voice, “Don’t point your sword at me. I’m a bad-tempered man.”

Probably having never met someone of this kind before, the girl was sent into a brief trance of surprise. Then the thinly disguised impatience on He Zheng’s handsome face brought her to the realization that she was overreacting. The girl hurriedly withdrew her sword and replied, “Sorry.”

But then she looked at He Zheng suspiciously. “Who are you? Why is this the first time that I’m seeing you in this place?”

He Zheng was bored stiff by the girl’s questioning, turned around and intended to leave.

The girl was amazed. “Hey! You haven’t answered my question yet!”

“I don’t want to answer your question. You are very annoying.”

The girl felt somewhat aggrieved but was also very curious. At last, her curiosity got the best of the tussle in her. She hastily trotted up to him and said, “Okay. I apologize to you, but these magical barriers were jointly put up by the couple of uncles. You couldn’t have got through them so easily unless you have very high clearance.”

The girl flicked He Zheng a weird glance. “This can’t be happening. You need to be at least a vice superintendent to have this kind of clearance. Surely you are not Li Zong, are you?”

The girl shook her head and denied this conjecture of hers. “No. You are too young to be him. And you don’t behave like him either.”

As if something had just occurred to her, the girl was instantly on the alert, her face flinty. “Did you steal someone’s clearance card?!”

Expressionless, He Zheng replied archly, “Li Zong’s my husband. Thanks.”

‘Steal a clearance card? If I had that kind of strength, I wouldn’t have come here to practice in the first place,’ he thought.

The girl fell speechless.

After a brief moment’s astonished silence, she gave a gasp. ‘Everybody in SMB knows Supt. Li has got married, but isn’t the one he married the eldest son of He family who is believed to be incapable of cultivating?’ She looked at the grayish black powder on the fingers of him and then sized him up, feeling that he indeed didn’t seem like a non-cultivator.

“Su–Su–Su–Supt. Li is your husband? You are that He…”

“He Zheng.”

He Zheng felt that coming here to borrow her sword was the most stupid decision he had ever made. In a pang of regret, having no intention to say another word, he turned around and wanted to walk away. The girl, as if having just woken from a dream, hastily blocked his path. “Oh, so you are He Zheng! Then there’s no problem. Here you are. Take it.”

The girl hastened to hand her sword to him with both hands. “This is my training sword. It’s okay if you want to borrow it for a while.”

A cultivator would never lend his sword to other people, but this sword of hers looked dull. It must’ve been specially made for training.

He Zheng’s brow corrugated in a frown. A while ago, he had wanted to practice, but now he didn’t feel like it.

“Come on, just take it. I’ll keep an eye on you. Nothing could go wrong.”

While saying this, the girl put the sword into his hand.

After hearing so much nonsense, he finally got the sword. Since the price had been paid, he felt that he deserved something in return. As a result, holding the sword with one hand and a Fu with the other, He Zheng incanted the spell. The Fu flew upward from the tips of his long fingers and ignited spontaneously in mid-air. With that, He Zheng pointed the sword at the sky. Though his pose was somewhat funny, the smoke from the burning Fu wound itself around the tip of the sword and, the next instant, a thundercloud quickly floated over and a thunderbolt shot downwards from it and hit the sword blade, the lightning and the gleam of the sword woven together. Remarkably, with a silvery clang, the lightning flashed across the blade, the hilt and then He Zheng’s arm, threatening to have He Zheng suffer a lightning stroke for a second time. The girl was transfixed with shock. Having never made this kind of daring try before, she barely had enough time to yell “Drop the sword!”

He Zheng heard her but was unable to throw away the sword. It seemed to have stuck to his palm. As the glaring lightning forced his eyes shut, he cursed in his head. ‘Fuck! It seems I’ll never be rid of lightning!’