Lin Xia arrived right as Bai Xiaofei was giving the Giant Corpse Brother a vicious up-the-rear attack and leaving with Lulu.
"That rear attack... well, I can only say it's truly what you'd expect from the protagonist, Bai Xiaofei. According to the plot, inside the belly of the Giant Corpse Brother, there should also be a Little Vajra."
Right on cue, Little Vajra crawled out from the mouth of the giant corpse and began to enjoy his meal.
Just as he was half-eaten through, completely lost in his feast, Lin Xia made her move.
"Hey, Little Vajra, eating half is enough, leave some for me."
Without a single polite gesture, she kicked Little Vajra flying and immediately cast a refinement spell on the Giant Corpse Brother.
With only half of him left, the Giant Corpse Brother—originally at the Human Stage Late Stage—now yielded energy equivalent only to a Human Stage Early Stage Corpse Brother.
However, she also acquired a pretty decent ability: Gigantism.
After refining and absorbing it, Lin Xia turned her gaze to Little Vajra, who was playing dead nearby. That guy was a future Peak God Tier powerhouse.
Since he eventually joined the human camp and helped Bai Xiaofei fight the Corpse King, Lin Xia actually held a certain fondness for Little Vajra.
Still, it was only natural to have a little fun with him right now. Teasing a future God Tier powerhouse was a very amusing thing to do, after all.
Lin Xia walked over, extended her skeleton palm, and viciously slapped him across the face twice.
Little Vajra: ...Zero reaction.
Watching Little Vajra maintain that dead-pig-isn't-afraid-of-boiling-water expression, the corners of Lin Xia's lips curled up slightly into a mischievous smirk.
She crouched down, leaned close to Little Vajra's ear, and whispered softly:
"Hey, Little Vajra, stop pretending, I know you're awake. If you don't react right now, I'm going to eat you up!"
Little Vajra still didn't make a single peep.
Lin Xia's eyes rolled as a new idea struck her.
She reached out and foraged around for some weird grass blades, small pebbles, tree branches, and leaves, then started arranging them all over Little Vajra's body.
In no time, Little Vajra had been decorated into a comical "leaf man."
His head was crowned with a hat woven from leaves and grass, his body bristled with branches and was piled high with small pebbles, yet Little Vajra stubbornly continued to play dead.
Lin Xia laughed out loud. "Oh, Little Vajra, you really know how to endure. But I refuse to believe you can keep this up forever."
With that, Lin Xia set about devising new ways to torment this future God Tier powerhouse.
Growing even more enthusiastic, she pinched Little Vajra's nose one moment and tugged at his ears the next.
Seeing Little Vajra show absolutely no reaction, Lin Xia felt a twinge of doubt: Could he actually have been knocked out cold by my kick?
Yet her intuition told her Little Vajra was just faking it.
She extended her bony palm, gently stroked it across Little Vajra's face, and then said in an eerie tone:
"Little Vajra, oh Little Vajra, do you really think you can escape my grasp just by playing dead or unconscious? How naive."
"Hmph, you certainly have some endurance," Lin Xia muttered, before picking up a twig from the ground.
She gripped it tightly, squeezing out the sap, and began drawing all sorts of bizarre patterns on Little Vajra's face—flowers, stars, and one huge, ugly ghost face.
When she finished, Lin Xia stepped back a few paces, looked at Little Vajra's appearance, and couldn't help bursting into laughter.
Extremely satisfied with her masterpiece, she leaned in close to Little Vajra's ear once again and whispered:
"Little Vajra, you look simply fabulous right now. When you finally wake up, you're bound to get the fright of your life looking at yourself."
Lin Xia shook her head helplessly. "Fine, you win. Just wait until you scavenge your way to power and gain some humanity—we'll see how I deal with you then."
With those words, Lin Xia turned and walked away, leaving Little Vajra—still playing dead—all by himself.
Only a while after Lin Xia had gone did Little Vajra cautiously stagger to his feet and look down at himself.
With a bewildered look in his eyes, he wondered: Which kind-hearted soul made me a set of clothes?
Wobbling unsteadily, he headed off in the direction where Lin Xia and Bai Xiaofei had vanished.
By the time Lin Xia caught up with Bai Xiaofei, they had already reached Sunshine Elementary School.
Lin Xia reminisced briefly to herself: "This is the God Gene arc, featuring the goddess-like Teacher Yu Xiaojia and that big dog, Becky. There's a scientist named Teacher Mu who gradually turns into a pervert due to being victimized—he's actually quite pitiful. The God Gene he created is quite good, though. It's just a pity it got stolen by the Dongying ninja, the Invisible Man. But since I'm here, I might as well keep all of it."
Lin Xia would never admit out loud that she was actually after the God Gene serum herself.
Lin Xia trailed behind Bai Xiaofei, watching him pull off one bizarre stunt after another until he finally managed to take down those eight combined elite-student Corpse Brothers through a round of trivia questions.
Naturally, all the long-necked Corpse Brother, the two "little beauty" Corpse Brothers, and the eight-in-one elite-student Corpse Brother along the way had already been scavenged and refined by Lin Xia.
From them, she harvested brand-new abilities: Thought Amplification, Enhanced Intelligence, and Increased Mental Resistance.
"It feels simply wonderful to tail the protagonist like this—he does all the dirty work while I freeload and grow stronger in the process. Still, I've got to deal with that Dongying ninja. That bastard can turn invisible and possesses Human Stage Early Stage cultivation, making him a bit tricky to handle. I wonder if Spider-Sense will be able to see right through him. For now, though, I'd better wait until the protagonist's group finishes fighting..."
Hidden off to the side, Lin Xia watched as Teacher Mu sent Bai Xiaofei flying with a blow.
Then, Teacher Mu transformed into an "Anti-Japanese hero," relying on his Third Eye's thermal imaging function to spot and brutally thrash the invisible Dongying ninja who had been trying to steal things.
Before long, Bai Xiaofei burst back in armed with chemical weapons, distracting Teacher Mu and allowing the Dongying ninja to instantly turn invisible and escape.
And that led directly to the following events:
Uh, Bai Xiaofei pouring chemical fertilizer down the throat of Teacher Mu, who had just injected himself with three doses of the God Gene. (Commonly known as force-feeding urine?)
Bai Xiaofei instantly looked like a complete idiot, realizing too late that he had mistaken the abbreviation for chemical fertilizer, "CF," for the chemical reagent hydrofluoric acid.
Furious, Teacher Mu unleashed a flurry of frantic punches, intent on killing Bai Xiaofei.
Bai Xiaofei threw a bottle of nitric acid, which Teacher Mu shattered; some of the splashing acid surged back toward them, but Yu Xiaojia neutralized it with a whirlwind.
Even so, Teacher Mu lunged forward and landed a heavy punch on Bai Xiaofei and the others.
At that exact moment, the invisible Dongying ninja—Niu Ben Wushier—seized the opportunity to launch a sneak attack on Teacher Mu using his Invisible Blade.
As it turned out, Bai Xiaofei's nitric acid had corroded Teacher Mu's crystal. Once the crystalized armor spread across his entire body, it grew thinner, expanding his defensive surface area while weakening its protective power.
The Invisible Blade happened to pierce right through that corroded spot, shattering Teacher Mu's supernatural ability.
Teacher Mu grabbed at empty air as the ninja evaded him, and Bai Xiaofei seized the chance to have Becky bite down on Teacher Mu's head while sticking a packet of thermite onto him and setting it ablaze.
The thermite poured through the small hole poked by the Invisible Blade straight into Teacher Mu's body, and the molten metal solidified, wreaking havoc on his internal organs.
Teacher Mu collapsed to the ground, dead.
Bai Xiaofei sat slumped on the floor, lamenting that he had only succeeded thanks to the ninja's sneak attack. It felt as though he had teamed up with Japanese devils to murder an "anti-Japanese hero," and he self-deprecatingly remarked that he was practically turning into a traitor.
Meanwhile, the Dongying ninja snatched up the black case containing the God Gene and the computer holding the experimental data, then vanished into thin air, fleeing at top speed.
Yu Xiaojia and Xiaohui hurriedly offered expressions of gratitude and comfort, the post-battle tranquility slightly easing everyone's frayed nerves.
The very second the God Gene and the computer vanished, Lin Xia activated her Spider-Sense, dropped her concealment, spread her wings, and gave chase in the direction of his escape.
Niu Ben Wushier sensed that someone was pursuing him from behind. To his utter shock, he had been exposed yet again—and he was completely invisible!
With no other choice, he spun around and hurled several poison-laced shuriken toward Lin Xia to obscure her vision and distract her.
Yet the mere glance back terrified him out of his wits: that wasn't a human pursuing him! It was a white skeleton!