Chapter Twenty-Three: The Birdman

They sat down at the kitchen table, and Rocky, who had just finished washing his hair and was still dripping with water, wiped it twice more in annoyance.

It took a few years for people to die in this place, and all the mages who came here were dead, and no one cared about them for a long time. But all of a sudden, two waves of mages came, and they were still pinching when they were making a move.

In the past few days when they were away, Du Zhengyi arranged very well, and the chickens and dogs were still jumping near the village. Although there were no injuries, the villagers were really overwhelmed and organized a dog-fighting operation, which was naturally unsuccessful. Originally, the villagers should go to the city to ask the relevant authorities for help, but the normal process always takes time, and it has become a habit for them to enjoy the convenience brought by the temple. So, yesterday afternoon, the wishing card was hung up.

Regardless of whether the matter is considered in terms of urgency or difficulty in accomplishing it, this wish is almost immediately judged by the temple to be a wish of high merit. From this point of view, the high XP mission that Roach wanted to create has been completed. According to what Du Zhengyi inquired about this morning, if they had time to finish this matter, they would definitely be able to accumulate enough merit to enter the hall and make an appointment with the master.

But in the early hours of this morning, perhaps around the time they returned to the Guan family's old house, someone rushed over and killed all the psychic dogs.

Isn't this finding fault?

Du Zhengyi's lion was supposed to play a leading role, but he searched the surrounding mountains and forests all morning, and there was not even a shadow of a lion. The most likely outcome is that the lion is also killed, and it has always been the practice of mages to destroy unreasonable creatures that cannot see the light.

This angered Du Zhengyi more than anything else, probably because he felt sorry for his pet, but also because he never had the chance to take the lion back to the laboratory to carefully examine what caused it to attack Roach.

Luo Qi intuitively felt that this matter had something to do with Li Xu, otherwise it would be too coincidental.

Guan Xinyue listened for a long time, and then interjected worriedly, "The lion and the dog are dead, do you need to pay for the lost experimental equipment?" If necessary, I will save money to compensate you later. ”

Luo Qi suspected that she was maliciously selling cuteness, if this was what he said, he would not be able to guarantee that Du Zheng would continue to beat him, but when the girl said it, he looked kind and happy, and even controlled Fang Cai's anger.

Old pervert!

"Today is the fifteenth day of the lunar calendar, and it is said that a master will come here," Du Zhengyi said with a calm face, "Our fellow clan who is in the way will definitely arrive." ”

They talked about these things for a while, but they didn't come up with a clue. After Du Zhengyi had briefly recounted the incident, he didn't bother to repeat the details, and Luo Qi couldn't chase him and ask endless questions, they could only wait for the further development of the situation. Roach kept coming up with one idea after another, but none of them were boundary, and they didn't work. He didn't think he should talk to Du Zhengyi about his dreams now, he was annoying enough, and he shouldn't bother him with his dreams. What's more, since he opened his eyes, the details of the dream poured out like water in the palm of his hand, and the only thing he remembered was that Li Xu seemed to have killed Du Zhengyi. Unless he wanted to be beaten, he would tell Du Zhengyi about it.

He emphasized to himself at least three times in his heart that Li Xu would not kill Du Zhengyi, now it is a civilized mage society, and murder is a serious crime in any society, and it is impossible for the Supreme Council to let the murderer go. Not to mention that Du Zhengyi is still the proud protégé of that archmage, Pei Shu is one of the greatest mages in a century, his influence is enough to drive huge power, Du Zhengyi is not an unknown person.

It's just that when he thought so, he faintly felt even more uneasy. Guan Xinyue's grandfather didn't look like a nameless mage, and he didn't die in this house. Thinking about Pei Shu's identity again, didn't he want to investigate the cause of the death of a reclusive archmage?

If Pei Shu sent his proud protégé to investigate the cause of an archmage's death, would it be reasonable? The so-called social survey, as his friend Liu Xing pointed out, is nothing more than a cover for people's eyes. Maybe it's a little unreasonable to bring Luo Qi with him, but Pei Shu said that Luo Qi understands human society very well, while Du Zhengyi doesn't. This explanation is also reasonable.

But in this way, it still can't explain why Mr. Liu Li said that the reason why he was selected was because of his high L value? Teacher Liu Li is not a person with a great sense of humor.

When he figured it out, the three of them were wandering around the village. Du Zhengyi suddenly glanced at him, "What's wrong with you?" With such good weather, we are slipping around with nothing to do, why do you suddenly become angry? Can you quarrel with yourself? ”

Guan Xinyue seemed to be waiting there, and immediately replenished the gun, "Aunt is here." ”

Luo Qi was stunned for a moment, glanced at the two of them angrily, and was so angry that he didn't want to speak.

They had been wandering around the village for a long time, and Quan Zuo observed the environment, and Luo Qi had already memorized most of the people related to Guan Xinyue's family. It's a boring village, with surprisingly consistent architecture and a lack of beauty, and by noon drunks and swaying motorbikes have begun to appear, showing that the spiritual civilization is not very good. There was a lack of people on the village road, and a few dirty children ran out to play for a while, but the theme of the game was bullying a dog, and Roach went to stop it, and the child gave him a "grass and mud horse" and ran away.

He really didn't understand why the archmage of the Guan family chose this kind of place to be independent and legitimate!

They stopped at the entrance of the village to bask in the sun and dispel boredom, this prosaic and vulgar village outside the city was really not interesting, not even a little beautiful. Roach felt that as a mage, he shouldn't have chosen this place to die. This place isn't as much fun as the neurotic Guan Xinyue.

Two women came out of the village, as if to catch a bus at a bus stop outside the village. When they saw Guan Xinyue, they greeted her and called her the little girl of the Guan family, Guan Xinyue didn't care about others at all with her arms. The obvious Guan family himself is also out of place here.

Luo Qi also wanted to criticize Guan Xinyue's impoliteness, but Guan Xinyue suddenly moved for some reason, and directly attacked him and said that he had a crush on someone-wife, Luo Qi painfully asked her not to teach Du Zhengyi, who couldn't understand anything. In fact, Du Zhengyi did not participate in the conversation between the two of them at all.

Luo Qi was bored and ignored Guan Xinyue, and Guan Xinyue herself ran to the other side of Du Zhengyi to stand, posing as if she was hurt. Roach really didn't know where she had been hurt, and he refused to speak softly.

At the bus stop outside the village, there was a small bus running the suburban line, the car shell was deflated several pieces, and the car was not very environmentally friendly. Roach's mood was even worse, "Sometimes you humans are like viruses on this planet. ”

Guan Xinyue immediately shot back, "Down with ***!" ”

Luo Qi turned her head to glare at her, her face hidden exactly behind the shadow of Du Zhengyi's shoulder, and from Luo Qi's angle, she was just out of sight. Roach's eyes were drawn to the crowd of people squeezed down the bus door behind Guan Xinyue, and a tall and slender man naturally fit into the crowd, as if he had stepped out of the bus. But when he glanced at it for the first time, he didn't see this person. Roach trusted his own judgment, and among the locals who wore all kinds of furs and rode the bus, this young man in Canada goose, Chelsea boots and fashionable "yin and yang" hair was out of place. He had two long legs and a slender neck, and when Roach saw him, he remembered a waterfowl, and a familiar sensation jerked his stomach.

The birdman took a few steps forward on his two long legs, and his gaze suddenly drifted to this direction, he had a pair of sharp eyes, and a nice thin face. His gaze jumped for a moment, as if taken aback, and then burst out laughing, as if laughing at his own surprise.

The birdman straightened his collar and walked over, his face was radiant, and the whole person seemed to have increased the exposure of the foreground, as if he had entered a state of consciousness awakening, and his face was as radiant as if a peacock had opened the screen.

He looked at Guan Xinyue in a pretentious manner, gave Luo Qi a self-righteous perfunctory smile, and then turned to Du Zhengyi, who was standing in the middle, and said pretendly, "Dude, where do I seem to have seen you?" ”

Guan Xinyue raised her mean little face, which was always full of sarcasm, laughed, and asked bitterly, "Are you planning to make a date with my brother?" Buddy? ”

The birdman ignored Guan Xinyue's words quite enormously, and the adult smiled heavily. When he laughs, the corners of his mouth on the right side are much higher than on the left. This person, this smiling face, Roach will never forget.

Roach's stomach froze, his heart pounded violently in his chest, the scene from the nightmares of the umpteenth time returned, and in a trance he could once again feel the coldness of the railroad tracks, smell the dead grass and dirt, he could hear the sound of the wind passing through the decaying grass, and the great roar of the train roaring closer, and the earth trembled in this roar. Despair and fear consumed him, and he wanted to watch alive as one of his legs was crushed by the heavy, cold machinery.

He remembered the birdman's voice, his shrill whistle that still scratched Rocky's ears in some of his dreams, and he encouraged his foolish friends excitedly, boasting about the Lotus Burner's initiation guide, and Roach was their vote.

The birdman didn't know what he noticed, and he also glanced at Luo Qi suspiciously, his expression changed slightly, and he said hesitantly, "Dude, you look a little familiar too." ”

Roach swallowed silently, saying that he had long forgotten about the incident of three years ago. His throat was mush, and his thighs were filled with lead.

Guan Xinyue snorted, "Then do you see me familiar?" ”

Du Zhengyi interrupted them, he looked at the birdman, and proposed, "Find a place with few people to talk to?" ”

The birdman's attention was attracted by this person who exuded the aura of the principal, and he happily obeyed.

They came to the edge of the frozen pond outside the village, where tall willow trees and bushes surrounded by the national highway obscured the view from peeking out of the village. Roach left Guan Xinyue on the side of the road, and he paused for a moment, telling the birdman to stand in a prominent position and not go out of his sight. Guan Xinyue nodded gloomily in agreement, but fortunately she was willing to cooperate most of the time.

Du Zhengyi and the birdman walked into the snowy pond, looking at it from a distance like two city people who came to the countryside to find wild fun, Luo Qi quickened his pace and chased after him.

"The dog is yours?" He heard the birdman ask indifferently.

"Both the dog and the lion are owned by the Fifty-Seven Laboratory, and you will need to submit supporting materials to the laboratory and wait for the committee to deduct your credits at its discretion." Du Zhengyi honestly looks surprisingly patient. Luo Qi couldn't help but feel a little different, he walked a step behind Du Zhengyi, and didn't want to speak rashly.

"Oh so." The birdman laughed, revealing a mouthful of shiny white fangs. "Okay, okay. You're really following the rules. I'm sorry, brother, according to the world, how do you say it? Yes, you've been cut off by me. ”

Roach frowned, his disgust for the birdman burning a fire in his heart, and his ears were filled with the tidal sound of blood in his own body.

Du Zhengyi didn't seem to be aware of his cynicism, and he was restrained and polite. With the reasonable patience of an adult, his face was calm, and his words were polite, "It may be a misunderstanding, we are students of the Northern District Academy, and we are in charge of investigating the supernatural sightings of the human girl over there. In the course of our investigation, we found some suspicious points and wanted to learn more about the completion of the report. ”

The birdman smiled, "When I saw the psychic beast, I guessed that it was from the Northern Academy, but I didn't expect it to be a student." His gaze wandered between the two of them, and he couldn't help but laugh again, "Your academy really likes duos, the tradition of turtles and snakes?" ”

He was referring to the totems of their school, where mages and the origins of human culture are intertwined, and there are four oldest universities on the continent, and the schools have always been named after the direction, and the names of mythical beasts and gossip have been used in history. But with the passage of time, the mythical beast became a tattoo on the arm of the little hooligan, and the gossip was reduced to the art of the blue bird, and the name of the school went through several rounds of slow changes, and finally honestly became the southeast and northwest colleges, and the enrollment scope was hastily divided on the land in the form of the word "work".

However, despite the vicissitudes of life, people say that change is the only eternity, but there are still some things that do not change greatly, such as the totem of the academy.

Du Zhengyi took out a copper button from his pocket, and Luo Qi glanced at it to know what it was. He was familiar with that thing, because he also had one, and each mage apprentice in the school had his own copper button. The seal on the top of the copper button is a snake and turtle representing Xuanwu, which is one of the four-way totems of the turtle and snake entangled, and the seal below is engraved with the name of the student. As soon as Du Zhengyi took out this, he was actually frank about his identity.

The birdman took the copper button, took it in his hand, flipped it over and glanced at the name, he didn't seem to have any impression of Du Zhengyi's name, and his expression became more and more disapproving. He flipped the seal over again, looked at the seal on it, and grimaced. "The snake wraps around the tortoise, tsk, it's a little lewd. Do you know that this school emblem was a symbol of birth and colonization in ancient times? Xuanwu is a great god of life-colonization. He may think his jokes are funny, but some jokes can be made casually by insiders, but not in a good context when outsiders say them.

Du Zhengyi took the bronze button he returned, nodded politely, and somehow explained in the tone of a university lecturer, which sounded a little wooden, "The snake molted and reborn, the ancients regarded it as incredible, and in many ancient cultures, the snake meant reincarnation and eternal life; Turtles enjoy a long life, needless to say. The totem of the north is a symbol of longevity and eternal life, and Xuanwu is the god of life. ”

Luo Qi looked at him suspiciously, what was Du Zheng doing when he arrived.

The birdman was amused by Du Zhengyi, and his expression was a little helpless, probably because he didn't expect Du Zhengyi to seriously reason with him. "That's ......"

"May I ask who you are?" Du Zhengyi asked solemnly.

"I'm an executor." The birdman hurriedly said, as if he was afraid that Du Zhengyi would want to continue to talk to him about the totem. "Dispatched by the Committee. You can probably guess why I'm here. Is that girl the old man's granddaughter? She's not a mage? He nodded with his chin in the direction of Guan Xinyue.

Luo Qi instinctively didn't say anything, staring at Du Zhengyi tightly. Du Zhengyi's brows frowned slightly, "According to the regulations, I want to ask you to show your voucher first, after all, there are some sensitive points in this matter." ”

"Oh yes, yes, that's how it should be." The birdman said with a smile, with a little ridicule of the student's tone between his words, and he stretched out his left hand towards Du Zhengyi, palm up. He had a green jade wrench on his thumb, like an old object.

Du Zhengyi did not react to his actions. He laughed helplessly, his impatience even more obvious, "You don't know what it means, do you?" You need to touch my crystal, hurry, it's my identification. ”

Du Zhengyi nodded as if he had just figured it out, and turned his head to look at Luo Qi. Luo Qi stepped forward mechanically, stretched out his right hand and put it on the birdman's outstretched palm, and didn't have time to think about why Du Zhengyi asked him to do it for him.

He carefully touched only a little bit of the jade wrench with his little finger, but the flow of information was still smooth, and he suddenly thought that the Birdman's equipment was not cheap. Then his brain felt the formation of the information, and this feeling was like an epiphany in meditation, and it was like a puzzle suddenly opened. Some information naturally became a part of his memory, and he learned that the real name of the "Birdman" was Zhao Zhiyan, who was twenty-nine years old this year, and was currently a second-level executive mage of the Mage Council.

This is the end of the information that Zhao Zhiyan disclosed to him. He withdrew his hand, unconsciously clenched into a fist, he turned his head to look at Du Zhengyi, and told Du Zhengyi about the situation.

"Can this information be confirmed to be true?" Du Zhengyi asked him.

Roach was embarrassed, he didn't have the ability to tell if the information in the crystal was legally authorized or not, and he couldn't tell if the information was disguised. He had learned the theory of identifying these things, and he could probably pass the written exam, but unfortunately it didn't help him in practice.

Du Zhengyi and Zhao Zhiyan both looked at him, and he hesitated, "I can't tell the truth from the fake." ”

"Okay." Du Zhengyi said neatly.

Roach was stunned for a moment. I don't know if it's an illusion, Du Zhengyi's words are extremely brisk, as if he is in a good mood. At the same time, the wind stopped. There was a tension in the air, and there seemed to be a static electricity around it, as if the world had come to a standstill between the previous birdsong and the next.

Illusion? Luo Qi was in a trance for a moment, and then saw Zhao Zhiyan with an incredulous look. A sound of ice shattering came from Zhao Zhiyan's feet, and his body slammed into the ground, and he could only barely maintain his standing posture, looking down at his ankles with a strange expression.

He stepped one foot into the ice cave, and the water under the ice of the pond wet his trouser legs.

Rock silently took a step back. Following the direction of Zhao Zhiyan's line of sight, he clearly saw a thin hand stretched out from the ice cave and grabbed Zhao Zhiyan's calf tightly.