Chapter 1: Plastic Wrap Comes to Life!
Hua Ji ran, stumbling and staggering.
Behind him, a figure in a black skintight suit followed like a shadow, nearly grabbing Hua Ji with every move, but each time Hua Ji cleverly dodged.
Hua Ji cursed furiously in his mind. Which bastard had dared to hire a vampire to come after him? Once he found out who it was, he would never let them off easy!
Hua Ji fled in a panic, dashing out of the jungle, only to find fine white sand before his eyes. Damn, he’d run too far!
Hua Ji was blinded by rage. At this moment, he regretted it immensely—he shouldn’t have come to Hawaii for a vacation. Now he didn’t even have anywhere to run.
The vampire chasing from behind let out a sinister cackle.
“Truly foolish! Did you think running into the sea would stop me from catching you? Have you forgotten? I have wings!!”
As soon as he finished speaking, two tears ripped open in the black tight-fitting suit on the vampire’s back, and a pair of massive black bone wings unfurled into the air, reflecting the full moon in the sky, making him look all the more eerie and bizarre.
Hua Ji couldn’t be bothered to look back. The vampire behind him was merely a baron, roughly on par with his own strength. If not for the explicit laws of the Flower Country stating that animals are not allowed to cultivate into spirits after the founding of the nation, and that even if they do, they must shrink down to the size of a dog—which had caused his cultivation to progress at a snail’s pace—he would have long since turned that damned little bat behind him into roasted wings!
But this place really wasn’t suitable for him to display his abilities. A fox demon like him running to the water’s edge—how was he supposed to survive?
A sharp whistling sound flashed past his ear. Hua Ji immediately twisted his body. The next second, sharp fingernails grazed the hair by his ear, nearly clamping around his neck for real!
No, he couldn’t keep going like this.
Just as Hua Ji was about to unleash his ultimate move, a sudden chill came from beneath his feet.
He was startled. Damn, he had unconsciously wandered into the sea!
Swoosh, the seawater washed over the shore. Hua Ji’s feet slipped, and he skidded three or four meters in a twisted, awkward posture—which, by sheer luck, happened to dodge the vampire’s attack from behind.
The vampire burst out laughing. “Oh my, your moonwalk is really quite good—no wonder you’re a little entertainment star.”
Hua Ji had no time to retort. He stared suspiciously at the sea surface, the hairs on his back standing on end.
The pitch-black sea surface shimmered with faint moonlight, the water surging in a strange rhythm, the sound of the waves like soft whispers. Faintly, Hua Ji felt that something was approaching.
He instinctively stepped back, but before he could react, another vampire attack came from behind. Long, sharp claws clamped directly onto his shoulder. Before Hua Ji could release his fox fire, an iron chain was already around his neck, and the vampire burst into wild laughter.
“Ha ha ha, let’s see where you can run now?!”
Hua Ji fell back into the sea with his back to the vampire, his hands instinctively gripping the chain tightly. His entire body was tense as he screamed hysterically, “Idiot, let go of me!!”
The vampire said disdainfully, “Are you stupid? If I let you go, how am I supposed to turn in the quest? You’re worth thirty thousand dollars!”
Hua Ji flew into a rage. “Idiot, I’ll give you fifty thousand dollars, now let me go!!”
The vampire guy paused. He asked, “Are you sure? You’ll give me fifty thousand dollars?”
Just as the vampire guy was calculating that he could first take the fifty thousand dollars, then catch Hua Ji and turn him in for the quest to get another thirty thousand—eighty thousand dollars in total—the seawater suddenly spread and rose. In just one second, the water level went from ankle-deep to calf-deep.
The young vampire looked down: “Hm?”
Hua Ji was on the verge of tears. Foxes were born with the gift of sensing danger, and he could feel a tremendous threat approaching, but he had been caught by that vampire who had sold himself out for thirty thousand dollars, and he couldn’t even run away.
The seawater kept rushing toward the beach with a swishing sound. The moonlight was hazy. Vampires had always had excellent eyesight. The young vampire stared desperately at the seawater, his grip on the chain loosening slightly. He lowered his voice and asked Hua Ji, “Hey, do you feel anything?”
Hua Ji wore a mournful expression. “I feel like I’m about to die!”
The young vampire frowned. He loosened the chain a bit—he couldn’t just strangle the mission target to death, after all, the client had requested the target be taken alive. Then he looked toward the sea surface, and at this look… my old Satan above, what the hell was this?
The sea surface seemed to be covered with a layer of transparent film, shimmering with an eerie luster, ripples dazzling and colorful, as if countless fish were swimming beneath the water. At the same time, the young vampire and Hua Ji both touched something.
The young vampire’s wings gave a powerful beat, and he flew straight into the air, while Hua Ji kicked his legs desperately: “You @#￥%&… m-me, my neck!!”
The young vampire immediately lowered his altitude—oh dear, he absolutely must not hang the target to death.
Hua Ji fell back into the sea, but his feet suddenly gave way—what, what had he stepped on?
“Hey, you stepped on me.”
A crisp voice rang out. Hua Ji turned his head and looked around, but saw nothing at all.
“Look down, look down, you’re stepping on me.”
Hua Ji immediately jumped up. In the instant he leaped, something seemed to flash beneath his feet. When he landed back in the sea, he finally stepped onto the familiar sandbank.
Then he and the young vampire witnessed a miraculous moment together.
The surface of the sea seemed to be pushed upward by something, and a transparent membrane slowly stretched open. Through the milky-white film, Hua Ji could even see the moon behind it and the dark reefs in the distance. However, these sights were somewhat distorted by the membrane’s refraction, bizarre and kaleidoscopic, like another magical world entirely.
“What are you doing?”
A massive membrane stood erect over the sea. Hua Ji’s mouth hung wide open as he stared at it in disbelief. This enormous membrane was at least a hundred meters long, and once upright, it reached the height of five or six stories. Standing before this membrane, he felt as insignificant as a piece of cured meat about to be wrapped in plastic wrap = =
The young vampire was stunned as well. He even forgot to flap his wings and fell into the water with a splash.
After all, the ‘plastic wrap’ also covered him!
The transparent plastic wrap looked at the two stupefied little pieces of cured meat and repeated, “What are you doing? Could this be what the books call a vendetta killing?”
Hua Ji was the quickest to snap out of it. After all, in the legends of the Flower Kingdom, all things had spirits—anything could become a demon. He might as well assume the plastic wrap had come to life!
He immediately said, “Senior, please, I’m begging you—help me take out this bat demon behind me! I’ll pay!!”
The vampire also snapped out of it. He tightened the chain and warily eyed the plastic wrap. “What are you? Don’t tell me you’re here to steal my bounty? I’m telling you, I’ve already registered with the Mercenary Guild—this mission is mine alone! Even if you want to take it, you’ll have to wait until I fail first!!”
‘Plastic Wrap’ quivered. It didn’t understand a word the two were saying, but that didn’t matter.
It said, “You look tastier. Let me take a bite, and I’ll help you.”
It was speaking to the young vampire.
The young vampire was furious. His originally pale face flushed faintly red with anger: “What did you say? You dare insult me? I, Douglas King Alardku, declare war on you!!”
‘Cling Film’ sensed the young vampire’s anger and was puzzled. Why was the other party angry?
It simply said to the other piece of cured meat: “I’ll help you get rid of it. What can you give me?”
Hua Ji said without hesitation: “Everything! All of it!”
Plastic Wrap was extremely satisfied. Whether it was English, the global lingua franca, or Chinese, the language spoken by the most people worldwide, it understood both.
The next second, boundless waves came roaring in. The waves suddenly surged, reaching dozens of meters high, crashing down and blotting out the sky. The vampire young man let out a terrified scream, his body turning into an afterimage as he vanished completely.
But no one saw it—a transparent, milky-white tentacle silently jabbed at those afterimages and stuck straight to the young vampire.
The young vampire was flung back like a yo-yo, slamming hard into the transparent plastic wrap.
Hua Ji watched in horror as the plastic wrap in front of him began to light up—one dot, two dots, three dots, holy crap, countless points of light started flickering. What the hell is this thing?
Those were eyes.
Countless densely packed eyes widened, staring intently at the vampire guy stuck to the tentacles.
The plastic wrap said, “So fragrant.”
The vampire guy turned his head and was immediately terrified by the dense cluster of eyes. He let out an uncontrollable scream, and without hesitation, his left hand actually chopped off his own right hand!
The next second, his body turned into a mist of blood and vanished completely.
The plastic wrap was stunned for a moment, its tone utterly dejected: “Gone.”
But then it looked at the right hand stuck to its tentacle and said joyfully: “I can eat it next time.”
Then the tentacle stuffed the continuously bleeding right hand behind the massive plastic wrap. Hua Ji clearly watched as the right hand was instantly dissolved into countless drops of blood, flowing through the transparent plastic wrap’s body. In an instant, the entire milky-white membrane turned blood red.
The full moon reflected through its body, and it actually became a blood moon.
Hua Ji lay sprawled on the beach in a daze, his body colder than the seawater.
He murmured, “You, what exactly are you…”
In just three to five seconds, the plastic wrap turned back to a milky white, and countless glowing dots on its surface all converged on Hua Ji’s side. Being stared at by so many eyes at once, Hua Ji’s entire body went rigid, and he didn’t dare move a single inch.
The plastic wrap’s body began to shrink, contracting bit by bit, while its entire body emitted a seven-colored radiance—and it actually transformed into a person!
He was a strikingly handsome man, with high brows and deep-set eyes, silver-white pupils, and an extremely pale complexion. His brows and lips were white, and he wore a long, milky-white robe that resembled the coarse garments of ancient Greece, save for a sea-blue silk ribbon tied at his waist. Upon closer inspection, the white robe seemed to ripple with the movement of water.
The man had long, silver-white hair, with only a few strands falling over his front, while the rest cascaded directly into the water, spreading out like a silver curtain, rising and falling with the sea waves—breathtakingly beautiful.
He stepped toward Hua Ji.
Hua Ji stared blankly at the god-like figure before him, unable to believe that just ten seconds ago, this man had been a sheet of plastic wrap!!
The man spoke, his voice as silky and soft as the ocean.
“I am a jellyfish.” He repeated: “A jellyfish from the early starfish era.”