Wu Xin: The Monster Killer

Chapter 279 The Lizard's Visit (1)

Shi Gaofei arrived at the train station early in the morning, but didn't see his good friend, the Lizard Alien, until the afternoon. The giant lizard, in human form, mingled among a group of seventeen or eighteen-year-old migrant workers, carrying a long bag, a flat bag, and a small plastic bag containing a cucumber. Although he and Shi Gaofei weren't from the same planet, Shi Gaofei felt a deep connection, a shared fate as extraterrestrial orphans, and believed they should unite to accomplish something great on Earth. Holding the small floral umbrella Bai Daqian had bought for Jiaqi, the tall, imposing man stood in the sea of ​​people outside the station exit, enthusiastically shaking hands with the giant lizard: "Your Lizard Planet's time is out of sync with Earth's. I've been waiting for you for over six hours, only drinking one bottle of mineral water in between. I'm dying of heat!"

The monitor lizard, who spent most of his life in dark, damp caves, now stood under the blazing sun, his gray eyes squinting. He pulled out a pair of sunglasses, put them on, and peered at Shi Gaofei from behind the lenses, recalling the past. He was certain he had made his intentions clear in the text message, and there was no way Shi Gaofei would misunderstand and come to pick him up six hours early. But as an understanding lizard, he felt that Shi Gaofei had indeed suffered, and he should rightfully express his guilt and sympathy. He opened the plastic bag and took out a cucumber, offering it to Shi Gaofei: "Want some? It's washed clean."

Shi Gaofei didn't really like cucumbers, but he was starving at the moment. He took the cucumber, took a bite, and chewed it with gusto as he put the giant lizard in a taxi and headed straight for his new home.

In no time, they got out of the car outside the residential complex. Shi Gaofei, carrying a small floral umbrella, led the giant lizard all the way to his home. When they entered, Jiaqi was sitting in the living room, enjoying the air conditioning and eating watermelon. Seeing Shi Gaofei bring his friend home, she stood at the doorway, holding a slice of watermelon, and curiously looked the giant lizard up and down. Shi Gaofei casually closed the door and said, "Jiaqi, this is the lizard-man I was talking about. Isn't he pretty handsome now? He'll be even more handsome as a giant lizard! Such a long mouth, such big teeth!"

The lizard hadn't visited anyone's home for several years, and now, rather reservedly, he placed his two long, flat bags at the door. He pulled a wallet from his pocket, and from that wallet, he took out an ID card: "Alien, to facilitate my activities on Earth, I managed to register my household and obtain an ID card during the last census. So, please call me by my human name!"

Shi Gaofei took the ID card, glanced at it, and then burst into laughter: "Hahaha, isn't this still a lizard?"

Jiaqi, hearing Shi Gaofei's lively laughter, curiously craned her neck to look as well. She had barely finished elementary school, yet the lizard's name was so simple that even she could pronounce it fluently: "Yi-xi-".

The giant lizard remained unmoved by Shi Gaofei's laughter and explained seriously, "The brilliance of this name lies in its simplicity and ease of reading, while also hinting at my identity."

This was like casting pearls before swine. Shi Gaofei continued to laugh, and Jiaqi continued to munch on her watermelon. Only after Shi Gaofei had finished laughing and Jiaqi had finished her watermelon did the giant lizard regain attention and finally get invited into the living room. The giant lizard, barefoot and wearing sandals, had traveled thousands of miles from south to north, so his feet were naturally not very clean. After taking off his sandals, he consciously tried to sneak along the wall to the sofa, trying not to leave any footprints on the Shi family's gleaming floor. However, Shi Gaofei didn't appreciate his good intentions and chased after him, shouting, "Wow! Lizard, your feet stink!"

Before the giant lizard could answer, he turned to Jiaqi and said, "It seems the lizard people are different from me; they smell worse. Look at me, I don't smell bad, and neither does the baby."

Jiaqi picked up a large slice of watermelon, eating as she answered, "You sometimes smell bad, but baby never smells bad. By the way, baby farted a lot last time, it didn't smell bad, but it was really loud!"

The large lizard stopped halfway, standing against the wall, still some distance from the door and the sofa. Moving forward was wrong, and moving backward was wrong too. All it heard was Shi Gaofei instructing Jiaqi, "Go get a basin of water and wash the lizard's paws!"

Jiaqi stood in front of the coffee table and shrugged, "I haven't finished eating yet!"

Shi Gaofei put the small umbrella aside by the door, changed into slippers, and walked inside: "All you ever think about is eating!"

Like a fish caught in a net, the giant lizard plopped down on the Shi family's large sofa and stepped barefoot into the family's large basin of water. The warm water had been brought to him by Shi Gaofei, who also brought a large plastic brush. He'd seen the downstairs neighbor thoroughly scrub the golden retriever from head to tail when bathing it, and he had a particular fondness for the giant lizard, so if the lizard needed it, he was willing to personally give it a good scrub too.

The monitor lizard, while quite large for a lizard, was only of medium size for a human, appearing even smaller next to Shi Gaofei. Shi Gaofei grabbed his hand, placed a large peach in it, and then asked, "How long do you plan to stay outside this time?"

The monitor lizard withdrew its hand, holding the peach, looking somewhat bewildered: "Not necessarily, because I no longer have a home."

Shi Gaofei immediately started thinking: "Did the Earthlings steal your hole?"

The lizard lowered its head, looked at the white and pink peaches, and sighed: "Speaking of which, it's all because of the aftereffects you left last time, which has left me homeless now."

The giant lizard launched into a long explanation to the peach, and Shi Gaofei, listening intently, understood most of it. It turned out that since they left the cave and returned to the county town, the giant lizard had begun cleaning his home, trying to restore his former comfortable environment. Unexpectedly, while he was busy, his fiancée, lying deep within the cave, suddenly came back to life.

It was called resurrection, but it was really just a case of possession, and not even a complete soul—besides some ordinary little ghosts wandering around the cave, several fragmented souls had suddenly appeared, roaming aimlessly. The giant lizard, after all, was a spirit; although not very knowledgeable in Yin-Yang arts, he could sense, through intuition, that those fragmented souls were desperately trying to gather together, seemingly trying to form a complete soul. Waves of resentment surged through the cave, driving those souls to rampage. In the end, his fiancée, as the only intact corpse in the cave, had no choice but to become the sacrifice.

Several souls coalesced within his fiancée's body to form a fragmented soul, devoid of thought but brimming with murderous intent, directing her as she staggered towards the giant lizard. The lizard, with its immense strength, could easily tear his fiancée to shreds with its teeth and claws, yet he couldn't bring himself to do it.

He had no choice but to flee. He leaped onto the giant leech's back, intending to follow the underground river outwards. But before the leech could even begin to swim, his fiancée had already pounced on him like a ghost. The giant lizard had nowhere to hide. Suddenly, he noticed a paper talisman floating in the shallow water, with faintly visible images of exorcising demons drawn on it. With nowhere else to turn, he bent down, retrieved the talisman, and slapped the wet paper onto his fiancée's face.

The fiancée's movements immediately became sluggish, and the giant leech also set off with the current. While fighting with his fiancée, the giant lizard noticed that there were paper talismans pasted on the stone wall on the shore every now and then—some of the paper talismans were upright, some were crooked, and some had simply floated into the water.

Unbeknownst to him, the giant leech, after being inexplicably vomited, was churning violently in the underground river, inadvertently disrupting the formation set up by Ding Sihan. Frantically scrambling up the rock wall, he gathered a large wad of paper talismans and threw them all at his fiancée. Although the formation was broken, the talismans still possessed a trace of exorcising power. He forcibly expelled the few remaining wisps of soul clinging to his fiancée, who lay sprawled on the leech's back, her face contorted in agony, temporarily still.

(End of this chapter)