Chapter 1160: Synchronized

Qiu Shiliu's screams, like exploding thunder, blasted out from Jiang Shi's left eye into everyone's ears.

Bai Jiu looked at the battles on both sides, a moment of anxiety flashing in his eyes. "Shiliu... you..."

The "door" in Qiu Shiliu's hand dropped to the ground and rolled noisily to the wall, coming to rest against it.

Bai Jiu also saw through Jiang Shi's left eye. After a dizzying spin, the horrifying scene finally appeared.

Qiu Shiliu's right arm had been completely torn off, blood spraying out wildly like a sprinkler, and her face turned deathly pale in an instant.

But due to the limited view, Bai Jiu couldn't make out Qiu Shiliu's expression.

Turning his head again, Wang Ba's "giant transformation" was undone, his body shrinking rapidly while spraying a large amount of blood.

The two Xuanwu figures, one in the scene and one outside, simultaneously raised the severed arms in their hands and whipped them down like lashes on the people in front of them, perfectly synchronized down to the second.

At the same moment, Qiu Shiliu and Wang Ba were flung through the air. Wang Ba was urgently caught by "Levitate" Wu Shisan, while Qiu Shiliu crashed into the stove, kicking up a cloud of dust.

"It's not working..." Bai Jiu frowned and said, "Although Xiao Xuanwu wants to die, at the brink of death, she synchronizes with Xuanwu... Shiliu alone can't succeed..."

Everyone exchanged uneasy glances, unsure of what to do.

"Tan Nang..." Qiu Shiliu whispered from the ground, "Fourth Brother..."

"I'm here." Officer Li stepped forward and stood beside Jiang Shi.

"Her power is the same as Xuanwu's... I can't beat her, try Tan Nang..." Qiu Shiliu spoke through gritted teeth, her voice extremely weak, "The eye is right there... her right eye."

Bai Jiu thought it over carefully.

Earlier, when Qiu Shiliu had reached out to brush Xiao Xuanwu's hair, she had dodged. This meant that Xiao Xuanwu had known from the start that there was something odd about her own eyes.

"Use Tan Nang to take the eyeball..."

Officer Li was stunned by Qiu Shiliu's suggestion. Although he understood what she meant, the task seemed overwhelmingly difficult for him.

What he had to do now was stare into Jiang Shi's eyes, spot Xiao Xuanwu's right eye in that tiny scene, and then extract one of the eyeballs.

The principle was sound, and the method was feasible.

But the only challenge was that Officer Li was a detective. Despite Bai Jiu's detailed description of the events, his long-term work had ingrained in him a strict adherence to materialism.

In this world, no crime involved ghosts or gods, and metaphysics wasn't a tool for criminal investigation.

Bai Jiu's description had been so mystical that Officer Li had tried his best not to doubt it, but he couldn't fully believe it on a subconscious level.

Xuanwu had stored her eyes in another space, on her childhood self, and now he had to stare into Jiang Shi's eyes, overcoming barriers of time and space to transfer the other person's eye into the present space and hold it in his hand.

Even if he could accept and barely believe all of that, Officer Li had no idea what it would feel like to hold an eyeball.

He closed his eyes to steady his thoughts, then reached into his pocket, fully focused on attempting to retrieve Xiao Xuanwu's eyeball.

This elusive sensation split his mind in two.

How insane would he have to be to truly believe that his pocket contained the eyeball from her eye?

If his conviction wavered even slightly, the pocket would remain empty.

Previously, to master "taking the heart," he had gone days without sleep, placing a heart in his pocket and removing and replacing it thousands of times a day. But to forget the feeling of the "heart" so quickly and replace it with "eyeball" in such a short time was nearly impossible.

"It's not working..." Officer Li shook his head after trying more than a dozen times, "A child's eyeball is different from an adult's... and I really don't know what it feels like to hold an eyeball..."

Bai Jiu furrowed his brow in thought for a moment, then decisively said: "Fourth Brother, take the heart."

"The heart...?" Officer Li nodded, "...I'll try."

He stared intently at Jiang Shi's left eye, then reached into his pocket again, trying his best in his mind to forget all concepts of "space" and "time." That tiny Xuanwu was clearly standing right in front of him.

She was just an ordinary, helpless prey.

In no time, Officer Li suddenly opened his eyes wide. He felt something throbbing in his pocket.

But when he tried to pull that thing out, he found he couldn't budge it at all.

"Wait... what's going on..."

He looked down, his right hand straining with effort, only to discover that the heart refused to leave his pocket, no matter what.

"What's wrong, Fourth Brother?" Bai Jiu asked from the side.

"I think I got it..." Officer Li said, "But I can't move this heart..."

"Can't move it...?"

Officer Li quickly let go and peered into his pocket. It was completely empty, as if the heart had vanished the moment he released his hand.

No, it was more accurate to say that his hand hadn't gone into his pocket at all—in that instant, it had plunged into Xuanwu's chest.

The heart inside that chest was as solid as stone, impossible to budge an inch.

"Her heart is extremely tough..." Officer Li glanced at his palm, which was enveloped in an aura from another space, "Theoretically, Tan Nang should ignore any connections when taking something, but this heart is just weird... I can't take it..."

"So even this path is blocked..."

Bai Jiu knew this wasn't something that could be achieved through effort alone. Xiao Xuanwu's body structure was unknown, and if she had something like "immortality" or other anomalies... trying to take her eyes with a severely injured Qiu Shiliu and Officer Li from another space was simply impossible.

In the ruined temple, Qiu Shiliu lay on the ground and let out a few hollow laughs. "You said 'come kill me'... but when death is near, you fight back... I can't believe I fell for your lies..."

"How dare you." Xiao Xuanwu slowly lifted her head, shooting a cold glare from beneath her hair. "You can kill me, but not here."

"Heh... so you've shown your true self."

Qiu Shiliu slowly turned her head, reached into the stove, and pulled out a charred piece of wood. She then pressed it hard against her severed shoulder.

The smell of burning flesh spread with Qiu Shiliu's screams.

She knew she couldn't die yet—she had to stop the bleeding as quickly as possible.

"Xuanwu..." Qiu Shiliu asked, "In your childhood, your life belonged to the Bodhisattva... but what about now?"

"What...?" Xiao Xuanwu looked at Qiu Shiliu with a stern expression.

"You've come to a place like the 'End of All Things'—why not just end it yourself?"