While I was chanting a curse, the system said I was Xiao Yan?

Chapter 171 Nurarihyon

He turned around, preparing to continue in another direction of the street, when suddenly a voice came from the direction of the body that had been broken in two.

"Why...why did you kill so many of my compatriots?"

Tianyan stopped in his tracks. He turned around and saw the upper half of the little old man, Zhou Ling's, body lying on its side on the ground, his hands supporting him. His large head was slightly raised, and his cloudy eyes were staring at him.

The severed lower half of its body stretched out like melted wax, then rejoined the broken upper half. Muscle texture and skin patterns were reconnected at the joint. The whole process took less than half a second, and the body was restored to its complete form.

Nurarihyon stood up from the ground, patted off non-existent dust from its knees, and its expression changed.

The sorrow he had felt while crouching beside his companion had vanished, replaced by a somber anger tinged with hatred!

"Why?!"

Its voice was much louder than before. It took a step forward, and its originally hunched figure straightened up slightly. The old man's slow and frail posture was still there, but suddenly a sense of oppression appeared.

I don’t know if it’s just my imagination, but Tian feels that the cursed spirit looks much younger.

"Are my people born to die?!"

Hearing Nurarihyon's question, Tianyan had no intention of answering.

As Nurarihyon approached step by step, he stepped forward while Nurarihyon questioned him again. His bone blade drew several arcs in the air, this time the trajectory was faster and denser!

First, there's a diagonal horizontal cut to the waist, then a vertical cut from top to bottom!

The two blades struck almost simultaneously, instantly slicing its body into four pieces!

That wasn't all. Learning from his previous experience, Tianyan punched each of the fragments again, aiming at different spots to prevent them from getting too close together and regenerating!

Tianyan sheathed his sword, his gaze fixed on the fragments scattering in the air, preparing to check if they would recombine in mid-air. Then he saw a scene that was beyond his expectations.

Each fragment begins to stretch, expand, and deform during flight, with new muscle and skin outlines extending from the broken ends. In less than a second, each fragment has completed its own body shaping before landing.

The four pieces of corpse transformed into four complete goblets, which stopped at the same moment they landed. Four large heads and eight murky eyes turned towards Tianyan from different directions at the same time.

The four slippery goblins did not attack immediately after landing, which allowed Tianyan to see their appearance clearly.

They all come from different parts of the same body. Now, after being regenerated into new individuals, their height and shape are exactly the same as the original body. However, there is one difference: each of them has a slightly different face, and you can vaguely see four kinds of faces: joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness.

However, the anger in their eyes as they looked at the Heavenly Eye remained the same as before.

Furthermore, Tianyan observed that the intensity of their spell power also decreased after they dispersed, as if the original spell power had been divided equally into four parts and redistributed to the four individuals.

However, Tianyan's brows furrowed quickly, because he discovered that at the same time, the curse power in the air was converging towards them, and their curse power was actually increasing!

And it quickly rose to the original level, which is level one.

The four enhanced split entities did not launch an attack. Instead, they began to move closer to the center. The moment the two closest split entities came into contact, their grayish-brown skins began to permeate, intertwine, and merge like melting wax, becoming one again.

Feeling the sudden surge in their magical power after merging, almost reaching the top-tier level! Clearly, the improvement after their fusion was not a simple addition or subtraction!

So he didn't intend to just watch. He stomped his right foot on the ground and charged straight at the split entity on his left. It was the one that was furthest from each other among the remaining three split entities, but also the one that was closest to Tianyan.

Instead of slashing horizontally, he thrust the bone blade in his right hand straight forward. He wasn't sure if cutting it into several pieces again would cause it to split again, so he chose to thrust straight forward, not giving it the chance to split.

The bone blade pierced its chest with precision, and the split body stiffened abruptly. At the same moment, Tianyan's left fist slammed into its head, the fist carrying a purple-gold cursed power that instantly shattered its entire head!

Tianyan's choice this time was correct. The split entity in front of him turned into black mist and dissipated on the spot, which also caused the curse spirit, which was merging with the third sub-split entity, to roar angrily.

Tianyan could hear the pain contained within; clearly, losing a split entity had also caused it considerable harm.

However, this did not stop the fusion process. When Tianyan looked over there again, Nurarihyon had already completed the fusion and was half-squatting there.

Tianyan felt the oppressive aura emanating from the other side; it was indeed a top-tier cursed spirit.

Nurarihyon stood up again, its appearance completely changed. Its body had swelled from the original hunched and short old man to a height of nearly two meters. Its shoulders and frame were much wider than before, and its skin had changed from grayish-brown to a darker dark gray, covered with fine, vein-like patterns.

The most obvious change is its arms, which are extremely thick, and two bony blade-like protrusions extend outward from the elbows, their shape and position exactly the same as the bone blades extending from Tianyan's elbows.

It glanced down at its arms, its two murky yellow vertical pupils narrowing slightly. Then it casually swung the bone blade of its right elbow twice in the air. The speed wasn't fast, but the trajectory and angle carried a familiar feeling to Tianyan.

Its mouth opened slightly, and the trembling voice that came from its throat was no longer that of an old man, but rather full of vigor. Moreover, its appearance changed to that of a middle-aged man: "So this is what it feels like... your skills."

Tianyan's pupils contracted slightly as he looked at the two bone blades on the other's elbows. Not only were they similar in shape, but even the way they exerted force was a resemblance to his own habits.

Clearly, it absorbed and learned from his attack method during the previous battle, then imitated it, and even reconstructed its body structure in order to perfectly reproduce it.

Before Tianyan could fully adapt, he took a step forward during the gap in the opponent's swing of the bone blade, accelerating to his limit in a very short distance. His right elbow slashed horizontally from the side, the trajectory of the bone blade cutting through the air with a sharp whistling sound, heading straight for the opponent's neck.

The two dark gray bone blades rose at the same moment, accurately blocking Tianyan's slash. The sound of the blades colliding was heavy and short, and sparks flew in the dim light. Each of the two bone blades left a shallow white mark on the contact surface.

He wasn't surprised. This attack was straightforward and a probing strike. Judging from Nurarihyon's previous behavior, it was expected to be blocked.

However, Tianyan also noticed that the opponent's skill level was not very high, so he turned the blade with his left elbow and directly cut open half of the slippery waist, bringing out a large amount of purplish-black blood.

Nurarihyon's expression changed slightly, and a thoughtful look appeared in its eyes. Ignoring its own injuries, it turned around and slashed out with two swords to force Tianyan back. However, the price for this wide and powerful move was that it had two more long and narrow wounds on its body!

"So that's how it is."

Nurarihyon clenched his fist, and his wounds instantly healed. He then smiled and launched an attack on Tenyan!

Blade light erupted between the two. At first, the Heavenly Flame could still inflict damage and leave wounds on important parts of Nurarihyon's body, such as his waist and head. However, it soon only left shallow wounds on his arms or thighs.

Finally, Tianyan's offensive was completely blocked, and subsequent attacks did not even touch the opponent. In close combat, they were evenly matched!

He changed his attack direction three times in succession, slashing upwards, sweeping downwards, and making a spinning horizontal slash. Each time, just as he was about to hit, he was blocked by the two dark gray bone blades in almost the same way.

The rhythm and angle of that parry were too similar to his own usual defensive style!

What an incredible learning ability! No, it should be called the ability to adapt, or even to evolve!

This can't go on. Tianyan took two steps back, gripped the storage ring on his waist with his right hand, and the Xuanzhong Ruler appeared in the air, its surface covered with firelight.

He swung the ruler from the side, and the blade energy of the Flame Dividing Wave Ruler condensed into an extremely compressed purple-gold arc in front of the ruler, slashing towards the opponent head-on!

Nurarihyon's eyes narrowed, and it raised its right arm, holding the dark gray bone blade horizontally in front of it, attempting to block in the same way as before.

The moment the blade energy touched the bone blade, Nurarihyon was pushed backward by a tremendous force. Its legs left two deep tracks on the ground, seemingly blocking the attack. However, the next moment, the pink flames attached to the blade energy touched the bone blade. The flames were like strong acid, and the moment they touched the bone blade, they caused cracks to appear on the incredibly hard surface.

At that moment, the burning effect of the pink fire on the cursed structure was taking effect, causing the bone blade's structure to collapse. Immediately afterwards, the impact force of the blade energy itself pierced through the already brittle surface of the bone blade, severing it in the middle. The remaining blade energy continued forward, cutting into the left side of the cursed spirit's torso, leaving a through gash from the shoulder to the waist.

The Nurarihyon's body suddenly stopped, and began to split apart from the middle to the sides. Dark purple liquid gushed out from the wounds. It staggered back a step, and flesh began to grow from the cracks, trying to glue its body back together.

However, the splitting flesh buds came into contact with the burning powdery fire. Although the blade energy passed through the body, the powdery fire on the blade energy remained on the broken surface of the body.

The pink flames severed the connection between the two halves of the body, causing them to fall to the ground. They then spread along the newly formed fleshy buds, scorching the internally reconstructed magical structure. Moreover, the pink flames expanded instantly as if they had encountered gasoline, engulfing both halves of the Nurarihyon's body and burning intensely!

Nurarihyon let out a painful roar!

Its two halves began to shrink visibly within the torch, any attempt to grow new flesh was burned away, one half was burned clean, and the other half was burned down to a ball of flesh.

The moment it shrank to only twenty centimeters in diameter, a thick ball of magical power surged out from its body, and the flesh ball began to expand again, much faster than before. In less than a second, it expanded to three meters, and then broke through four meters in the next instant.

The fleshy ball exploded, and the surface fragments, which had expanded to their limit, flew in all directions. Each fragment was still covered with residual sparks of pink fire, drawing countless tiny pink trails in the air.

The scattered fragments of flame landed on the surrounding gravel ground, burned for a few more seconds, and then went out on their own.

The shape inside the fleshy mass gradually became clearer.

The bony structure extends forward from the head, forming a pair of curved horns with rough surfaces and irregular growth lines.

Its head is a skinned sheep's head, with the exposed bone surface showing a yellowish color.

Its body is covered with dense, dark scales that extend from its neck to the end of its tail. The tail is thick and long, covered with the same scales as its body, and forks at the end into several sharp, spiky protrusions.

Its hands are no longer in human form, but several thin, dark tentacles, thicker at the base and thinner towards the tip, like elongated octopus tentacles, slowly wriggling on both sides of its body.

Just like the legendary goat demon!

Its goat hooves adjusted their position on the ground, and then its horizontal pupils turned towards Tianyan.

Tianyan frowned, raised his right hand, palm up, and the pink flames condensed into a ball again. He then threw it forward, and the fireball drew an arc in the air, flying towards the direction of the ram-headed demon.

When the fireball flew to a distance of about three meters from the outline of the ram's head, it seemed to hit an invisible wall, paused for a moment, and then, like a paper ball being squeezed by an invisible hand, it was compressed, deformed, and collapsed from the outside in, finally turning into a cluster of tiny pink light spots and dissipating into the air.

Immediately afterwards, an invisible force rushed straight from that direction, faster than Tianyan had expected. The impact had no obvious direction; it was more like the air pressure in the entire area suddenly collapsed in his direction and then rebounded sharply outward!

Tianyan's body was struck head-on by that force, and he was sent flying backward as if he had been hit in the chest by a giant hammer!

He flipped halfway in the air, his back slamming into the exterior wall of a shop behind him. The wall caved in with the impact, creating a shallow dent, and rubble and dust flew everywhere.

He landed on the ground, knelt on one knee, and looked down at his chest. The surface of the black iron-colored bone armor was covered with fine cracks that spread from the center of his chest outwards. The deepest cracks were close to the bottom of the bone armor. If they went any deeper, they would touch the inner cursed gauze.

He pushed himself up from the ground. The cracks in his bone armor were slowly healing, but he could feel the lingering shock of the impact still reverberating in his chest, causing his breath to catch in his throat for a moment.

The goat-headed demon stood in the same spot as before, its tentacles swaying slowly on either side of its body like seaweed floating in water.

It didn't pursue, didn't move, just stood there, as if waiting for Tianyan to stand up again. This posture, combined with its appearance, made it look very imposing!