“So tired!” Xia Yan sighed weakly and took out his Nokia to check the time and discovered eight hours had just passed. It was already six o’clock in the evening now. His grumbling stomach acted as a reminder that he had skipped on lunch.
[Was I perhaps too dedicated?] Xia Yan mocked himself. [If it weren’t for the exceptional remuneration from the Liu family, it wouldn’t have been worth it for this bro to put in so much effort!]
After having some water and a ten-minute rest, Xia Yan prepared to open the door. He wished to put off the discussion for later and have a good rest too, but if he did that, Liu Shan would have flipped out for sure, especially after the eight-hour-long wait. So Xia Yan planned to wake up old man Liu and then have a relaxing sleep.
Liu Shan’s haggard face came into Xia Yan’s view immediately when he opened the door. Liu Xue’er’s lovely face had also gained black circles under the eyes. Dong Quan stood behind Liu Shan with a fierce glare in his eyes while gazing at Xia Yan, appearing as if he wanted to give two firm slaps on Xia Yan’s face through it.
“Xia Yan, how did it go?” Liu Shan failed to contain his excitation after seeing Xia Yan and thus inquired nervously.
“Fortunately, I have accomplished it.” Xia Yan borrowed a phrase from the books.
“That’s great!” Liu Shan let out a deep breath and craned forward to have a look inside the room, “Where’s the thing?”
“On the tea table. Get someone to carry it out. I’m too tired to lift it.” Xia Yan replied.
“Oh my! You look sapped!” Liu Xue’er exclaimed after she finally noticed how fatigued he looked.
“Xia Yan, it’s been tough on you!” Liu Shan commented.
“I have to toughen it out to make money,” Xia Yan stated cheekily.
“Isn’t it all just an act?” Dong Quan muttered softly, but he didn’t have the guts to say it out loud.
Liu Shan strode into the room, and his eyes lit up when he laid his eyes on the tusk placed atop the tea table. He cupped the hard tusk with both hands and revealed a shocked expression when he saw that perfect esoteric magic circle.
Eight hours was a long time, but it was far from enough to carve out such a perfect ornate design. Mammoth tusks were also very hard, so it required expertise and overwhelming raw strength to produce an ivory carving.
Liu Xue’er and Dong Quan also saw this simple yet abstruse piece of carving that looked intricate yet didn’t lose its ruggedness. In that instant, they realized that Xia Yan hadn’t feigned his fatigue.
[But what’s the use of carving out this ornate design? Is he going to use this to cure grandpa?] Liu Xue’er felt puzzled.
“Xia Yan, what is this?” Liu Shan queried as he felt fascinated by it.
“Mr. Liu, you can just think of it as an exorcist artifact,” Xia Yan stated. [Actually, it falls under the category of magic staffs. To speak in game terms, it is a staff exclusive to necromancers. It has a bonus effect of increasing the success rate of bone-type undead magic and also boosts the bone spirit spell…]
Unfortunately, this magic staff required a high power stat as it was impossible for Xia Yan to run around while carrying such a heavy object. Therefore, he had no plans of taking it with him and felt it was better to set it aside for the Liu family.
[Is an exorcism really going to happen?]
The members of the Liu family gazed at each other helplessly, revealing skeptic expressions once again.
Xia Yan noticed this, but he didn’t feel like wasting his time giving them an explanation. He wanted to end this matter sooner and sleep.
“Mr. Liu, are we heading out then? Before we do, I must trouble you to order a bowl of beef noodle soup with extra beef, extra noodles, and extra chili oil for me!” Xia Yan felt famished, so he just asked them to order food with no reservations.
“Lil’ Quan, order beef noodle soup for everyone,” Liu Shan commanded Dong Quan as even they felt hungry because they hadn’t had lunch too.
Dong Quan ran the errand, and soon after, the hotel’s kitchen delivered a dozen servings of beef noodle soup. As Xia Yan watched everyone gorge on the food, he discovered that the way these multimillionaires ate noodles differed little from how a broke person like him did.
Half-an-hour later, Xia Yan arrived at the provincial hospital again. Dong Quan and another youngster from the Liu family carried the tusk and followed behind him prudently.
“Shift the patient to a common ward and don’t use any devices.” Xia Yan instructed.
As matters stood, even the staff of the provincial hospital felt disinclined to stop the thing as Liu Shan wouldn’t cause them trouble in case something happened. They planned to observe this farce from the sidelines.
[Exorcism? We live in the era of science, okay? If shamans could treat illnesses, would the world need us doctors?]
Besides Liu Xue’er, most of the younger generation of the Liu family remained outside the spacious and tidy room. Old man Liu’s three sons and daughter had stayed behind as the next of kin.
As a staff of the hospital, Doctor Wang had also stayed behind.
“Silence!” Xia Yan stated.
The ward and the corridor quietened down immediately.
“Mr. Liu, come help me.” Xia Yan continued.
Liu Shan stepped forward at once, and Xia Yan handed over the mammoth tusk to him, “Touch the crown of the patient’s head with the tip and don’t break the contact. Also, make sure you don’t stab the patient.”
“All right!” Liu Shan had a habit of working out, so it wasn’t an issue for him to hold the tusk. He cautiously touched his father’s crown to the tusk’s tip and tried his best to keep his hands steady.
“No matter what you see later, don’t speak a word. You must never move the tusk away, got it?” Xia Yan stated.
“Go ahead. I won’t move!” Liu Shan replied.
“All right.” Xia Yan nodded and turned back towards old man Liu. He took a deep breath and calmed his mind. Silence pervaded the ward, and even the sounds of breathing weren’t audible. An indescribable feeling took over everyone’s heart.
Xia Yan opened his mouth suddenly and chanted in a language known to none other. Filled with strange syllables, varied pronunciations, jarred yet hypnotic rhythm, and fluctuating tones…
His chanting resembled a song yet also seemed like dialogue, but no one could comprehend the syllables. A strange feeling sprouted in everyone’s hearts. [Why does this resemble the actions of those fake experts on TV?]
Xia Yan had no time to consider their perception of the situation as he was chanting the bone spirit spell. He only had a meager amount of magic power left. But with the tusk and the bone spirit magic circle to assist him, he only needed to provide magic power to activate the magic circle. He had enough magic power for that.
If he wanted to use this magic without the help of a magic circle, he just needed the strength of a novice mage.
Novice-grade spells had short chants, so Xia Yan didn’t even take ten seconds to finish it. The moment he stopped, a gust of wind blew inside the ward suddenly. This gust had come too fast, bringing along a chill with it. Since the air-conditioner wasn’t running inside the room, everyone felt a shiver pass through them and felt goosebumps on their arms.
Doctor Wang’s eyes opened wide. [This gust is too weird. How could a gust appear for no reason inside a room?]
Xia Yan calmly pointed his finger towards the base of the mammoth tusk and poured all his remaining magic power into it. A wave of exhaustion hit him at once and made him lose strength in his legs. He collapsed to the bed while sweating all over as a dizzy spell hit his head.
[So this is how magic drain feels… Feels so f••king awful! I will never let this happen again!]
No one was paying attention to Xia Yan right now because the moment he had transferred his magic power, blue flames had ignited throughout the bone spirit magic circle on the mammoth tusk.
Liu Xue’er almost cried out in alarm instinctively when she saw this scene. But she recalled Xia Yan’s reminder and covered her mouth immediately, her eyes filled with shock as they turned into saucers.
The others also showed similar reactions and watched the scene before them in disbelief.
Liu Shan received the biggest shock out of anyone else as he was always holding the tusk. Those blue flames covered his hands inside them, but strangely, these flames weren’t warm at all and instead possessed a bone-chilling iciness. Although it brought some pain to him, it was still tolerable.
Liu Shan had experienced the vicissitudes of life and witnessed a lot of things, so he had a better mental fortitude compared to others. Although he felt shocked, he restrained his movements while gritting his teeth. His hands hadn’t wavered even an inch, and the tusk’s tip was still in contact with the crown of old man Liu’s head.
Suddenly, a transparent white ball with a long trailing tail flew out of the mammoth tusk like a comet and spun around it.
“Ghost!” Liu Xue’er used all her strength to stop her voice from coming out of her mouth, which caused her hands to shudder. This white ball looked just like ghosts in the movies and evoked fear within others.
The temperature inside the ward suddenly dropped by a dozen degrees when the bone spirit appeared. The temperature was at a high 30℃ initially, but the ward had now become colder. This gave an unpleasant sensation as it felt like the slight chill would penetrate through the skin and invade the body.
The eyes of Liu Xue’er’s aunt had almost popped out of the sockets while her legs quivered in fear. She flopped to the floor directly and couldn’t even stand up.
The bone spirit spun around the mammoth tusk, circling from the tip to the base and then back to the tip. It suddenly pounced towards old man Liu and drilled into the crown of his head without leaving a trace behind.
Liu Shan felt alarmed and looked back at Xia Yan. Collapsed atop the bed, Xia Yan somehow nodded at him. Liu Shan felt a bit assured after this.
After a few seconds of silence, a terrible howl echoed inside the ward. A layer of fuzzy shadow had enveloped old man Liu’s face before anyone had realized it. Along with this echo, the shadow expanded outwards suddenly and transformed into a semi-transparent black skull one meter in diameter. Its lower jaw moved up and down as if it wanted to devour its target.
“Mr. Liu, you can let go now.” Xia Yan noticed Liu Shan’s hands were shaking violently, yet he still hadn’t let the tusk go, so he told him this weakly.
Liu Shan moved the tusk away from his father’s head instantly and retreated a few steps back, watching that terrifying skull in shock. The other members of the Liu family had lost their wits too. The eyes of Liu Xue’er’s aunt had rolled back, and she had fainted from the fear.
The bone spirit also flew out of old man Liu’s head and sprouted long fur all over its body suddenly, transforming into a white mammoth with huge tusks. Its long trunk coiled around that black skull.
The skull released yet another ear-piercing howl, but the mammoth remained unaffected. It dragged the skull near its mouth and chewed it clean in two to three bites. Following that, the mammoth transformed back into the bone spirit and disappeared into the mammoth tusk.
Absolute silence reigned inside the ward. Even Xia Yan felt stupefied after witnessing this freakish scene as seeing it with his own eyes felt very different from having a memory of it. Mere novice-grade undead magic had shown this kind of shocking spectacle. It was too stimulating!
After a good while, Liu Shan gulped down and asked with much difficulty, “Xia Yan… did it succeed?”
“It did!” Xia Yan’s voice sounded dead-tired. He felt sick, just as if he were suffering from cramps in his legs after sitting for too long. Even a slight movement sent pangs of pain through his body and made him feel like his head would explode.
“Arrange a room and let me rest there for a moment!” Enduring through the pain, he left these before his perseverance ran out and entered a deep slumber.