Actually, letting a policeman disguise as the criminal Lao San and attracting the monster to make the rescue, the whole fake scene arranged yesterday was just a deliberate camouflage. The real purpose was to obtain information on the monster. I knew that the arclight wasn’t enough to wound it. But it wouldn’t run too far away and would secretly come back soon.

We didn’t tell the policemen the truth in case they ruined the act. We actually pretended to be frustrated just to act in front of the monster. At that time, I patted on the policeman who did the disguise to let the Bee Scout out, while Lin Feng and Chongxi were waiting nearby unnoticed. And when the Bee Scout passed by, they followed stealthily and found the monster’s lair without alerting it. Today, I continued the act and deliberately led the monster to the place of custody to let it see Lao San. Then when it came down to attempt the rescue, I released the sword. Although what I did wasn’t above board, I was no match against such a monster one-on-one!

So right now, after hearing Lin Feng’s report, I was on the way to the monster’s lair with Zheng Shuang. Its lair was about a hundred kilometers away. Because it was wounded by my sword, it flew quite slowly. Therefore our car arrived before it did. I let Zheng Shuang stay in the car and walked up to the hillside alone. From a distance, I could see Lin Feng sitting in an open space, looking around. Then I walked over. After we each lit a cigarette, I asked, “Where’s the monster’s lair?” Lin Feng pointed to a direction. Then I looked at it and found that there was a cave close to the ground in the south cliff. Chongxi was sitting at the entrance of the cave holding a bell, on his guard for all possible dangers. I waved at him and pointed to the direction from which we came, to tell him that the monster was incoming.

After we smoked two cigarettes, we saw that the monster flying over from the south. Out and away, I called out to Chongxi to stay alert because it was coming close. While I pulled out my sword, I said to Lin Feng, “This thing is fierce, and we are no match for it. When it comes over, we will use weapons to hold our own. Just don’t get hurt by it. When it is dawn, it will become weak and fall by itself! What we need to do now is to keep fighting it until it gets exhausted.

The shadow flew over from a distance. After the monster circled once in front of the mountain, it sped down to the cave. Chongxi hastily stood up and strongly shook the bell. With the bell ringing, the monster took a sharp turn with a swoosh as if it were hit. Then it started hovering again, looked for a chance in the air, and came down again. Chongxi didn’t dare to slack off and rang the bell again to repel the monster, which repeated several times. Seeing that it didn’t stand a chance, the monster flew into a rage out of humiliation and swooped down at Lin Feng and me. Luckily we had weapons. In the face of my sword and Lin Feng’s dagger, the monster tried a few times but still didn’t succeed. Therefore it kept hovering above us. Whereafter it flew to Zheng Shuang’s car.

I took a look and had a bad feeling about that. What worried me wasn’t that it would attack Zheng Shuang in the car, but was that it tried to rest in the pine tree on the right side of the car! I took out my phone immediately and rang Zheng Shuang, and told him to shoot at will if the monster fell upon the tree! As expected, with a puff, it swept past Zheng Shuang’s car and sat on the trunk of the pine tree. Bang! Bang! Before it could steady itself, Zheng Shuang pulled the trigger! Frightened, it flew up again, heading to the car. The police car was scratched as if it were a toy, and sparks flew. However, the window of the car was opened just a little and left the monster no chance to enter. Then it had to fly up again.

In this way, whatever trick it played, the triangle we formed could control the situation and prevent it from landing. The monster got ever more irritated while the eastern sky began to brighten, trying a few times more to burst into the cave. But Chongxi rang the bell and repelled it! When it was daybreak, we finally saw the real appearance of this monster. It was a huge bat! Its body was much bigger than a goat with its wings open. I sneered in my mind at that moment! Bats were different from eagles. They not only feared the day but also flew with an inferior posture compared with birds like eagles and frigatebirds. If the monster were a frigatebird, we might not be able to defeat it. Frigatebirds and eagles could soar on updrafts without flapping their wings. They could stay in the air a day or even more. However, bats didn’t have that advantage. They had to keep flapping their wings. Although their aerobatics were as good as eagles, flapping their wings would exhaust them! Therefore the monster got extremely tired and fell on the lawn!

We quickly surrounded it. The monster was standing on the ground with its evil eyes and mouth wide open, showing a pair of fangs as if it were going to tear apart whoever came close! Lin Feng and I looked at each other in the eyes, then he took out a Shuaitou and threw it to the monster with a swoosh. However, it didn’t hit its body but pierced through its wings. With Lin Feng pulling back the Shuaitou with strength, the monster let out a painful squeak. The Shuaitou that Lin Feng used was created on the basis of a concealed weapon owned by a legendary swordsman. There were a few types of them. This one was a swallow-wing-shaped with sharp cutting edges. The wings on the flanks could not only adjust directions but also work as barbs. On the wing of the monster, there were muscle tissues. And with one move, Lin Feng’s Shuaitou tore a large opening in them.

This time, it would never be able to fly again. At this point, Chongxi also came over. He took out a slingshot from his bag and loaded it with iron shots. Such a shitty idea. Although his shots were off, he hit the target from time to time. The monster couldn’t help squeaking a lot. Lin Feng, on the other hand, was much better. He had trained using concealed weapons before. He took out an iron lotus seed which was also just iron shots and waved his arm. With a crack, the iron lotus seed went in the monster’s mouth right between its fangs! It seemed that the monster gave out a low groan, and fell. Then Zheng Shuang also pulled out his gun to shoot at the monster. “Pah! Pah!…” With many shots, the monster finally died. Meanwhile, its soul came out of its body. I immediately took out the calabash gourd and sucked it in.

Then we picked up some firewood, lighted a fire, and burned the monster’s body to ashes right on the spot. When the body was being burned, Zheng Shuang asked me, “Brother Yan, why did we burn it? It would be a great discovery if we brought it back with us! Few people had ever seen such a big bat!” I shook my head helplessly and said, “That was not an ordinary bat. That was the head of the Thirteen Tapo organization!” After hearing what I said, Zheng Shuang’s jaw dropped, “Ah!? How is that possible! Obviously, that was a bat!” At this point, Chongxi came over, passed me the bell, and said to Zheng Shuang, “You never know. That thing wasn’t a normal bat. It was a legendary monster! To be exact, it was a bat spirit!” Zheng Shuang looked at the burning fire on the ground with a face full of doubts and went speechless. I took the bell from Chongxi, turned around, patted on Zheng Shuang’s shoulder and said, “In the Thirteen Tapo organization, there were not just humans, but also evil spirits! Don’t overthink it. You should focus on how to write your report after you get back! You can’t write a monster into your report, no way. So what you need to do now is to figure out how to explain things.” Now Zheng Shuang came to his senses and nodded to me.

Now we were tired to death. So we went in the car and took a nap. But Lin Feng turned on the flashlight and went into the cave. He found a lot of bones of the dead inside. From the shape of the skull, most of them belonged to children! Based on analysis, it was probably because the monster had a wide range of activity, the children it took traveled a long distance, over a hundred kilometers. And when they were brought to the cave, they were already dying. Then it ate them all.

It was already noon when we returned to Wu Zhong County. The nap we took in the car didn’t help us relax. Instead, it made us more tired. Eventually, I gave up on sleeping. The first thing we did was to go to the Sinology Center to see my dad after going back. When I opened the door and walked into the room, my dad was already waiting there. I put the bell on the table and said, “Okay! It’s done.” Dad put the bell away, nodded, and said, “If you had worked harder on cultivating, you wouldn’t have needed this.” I felt embarrassed for quite a while and whispered to myself, “Oh, dad, don’t you think that you’re expecting too much from me?” At this moment, Lin Feng asked my dad, “Uncle, there’s something that I still don’t understand.” Dad looked to him and implied him to bring forward the question. Lin Feng asked, “How did you know that the head of the Thirteen Tapo organization wasn’t a human but a monster?” In fact, I had this doubt too. Yesterday, when I came to meet dad, he told me directly that the head of the Thirteen Tapo organization was a bat spirit and gave me the bell, saying that it could restrain the evil. Because Master Six had once told me that even he couldn’t see through my dad’s cultivation, I didn’t ask my dad even though I also had that doubt. I asked him at that moment about the possibility of my dad being a deity. He denied firmly that my dad wasn’t a deity. And he also knew the reason why my dad wasn’t. Therefore, in my mind, my dad was just as good as a deity. It wasn’t weird that he knew about the monster.

Apparently, dad was also quite surprised that Lin Feng would ask this question. Thus he motioned to us to sit down, laughed, and said, “Actually the reason was very simple. The reason that I knew it was a bat spirit was because I had encountered the cult a few years ago.”