Chapter 53: Lightning

The night was hazy, and Li Si looked at the starry sky above, but couldn’t see a single star.

His heart skipped a beat. With such dense cloud cover, could it be about to rain?

Just as this thought crossed his mind, a raindrop hit his cheek.

It really was raining. Li Si inwardly cursed his bad luck. He hadn’t even found a place to take shelter yet, and now the rain was adding insult to injury.

Moreover, he hadn’t killed the tiger spirit yet. If he left now, the tiger spirit might escape.

Suddenly, Li Si looked at the large tree on the cliff, pondered for a moment, and immediately a hint of joy appeared on his face.

He picked up the Black Sword and went to cut some vines from nearby trees.

Then he put these vines together, tied them with the rope he had brought, making a “long rope” about fifty or sixty meters long.

Next, Li Si used the Black Sword to make small holes in these vines, inserting some small pieces of gold into them. Then he had Xiao Duan use an earthen pot to get some water, and poured all the salt he had brought into the pot, stirring it.

After stirring until the salt grains were no longer visible, he poured this saltwater onto the strange rope, soaking the odd rope made of vines and hemp.

Then Li Si tied one end of the vine to the base of the big tree, wrapping it around several times, tying it securely, and threw the other end of the rope down the cliff.

As the rope fell onto the platform, it startled the tiger spirit. It looked at the rope with uncertain eyes, then looked up towards the cliff.

Li Si, standing on the cliff, looked at the long rope scattered on the platform and said to the tiger spirit, “Come up. Don’t waste time. Let’s have a fight to the death.”

The tiger spirit’s eyes showed hesitation, but it quickly sneered, looking at Li Si as if he were an idiot. It lay down and quietly rested to heal its wounds.

It wasn’t stupid. If it went up now, it might be attacked by this person. It was better to wait on the platform for its injuries to heal.

Li Si slightly raised his eyebrows at the tiger spirit, then looked towards the group of trees behind him. He picked up the Black Sword and walked over.

Soon, “crack” sounds continuously came from the forest as trees fell one after another.

Hearing these sounds, the tiger spirit at the bottom of the cliff quickly stood up, its eyes showing alertness. It suddenly felt something wasn’t quite right.

This person had been very cunning since their first encounter. Could he be up to something again since it didn’t come up?

Thinking of this, its eyes showed hesitation. It exhaled, and this breath turned into a four or five-year-old child.

The child had a grieving face, his upper body showing emaciated ribs, wearing a tattered pair of pants on the lower body, looking very pitiful.

The tiger spirit gestured with its head towards the mountain above. The child immediately understood and began to climb up the cliff face.

Soon, he climbed to the top of the cliff. At this time, he saw Li Si cutting down trees.

He looked around vigilantly, then carefully walked towards Li Si.

After walking a short distance, the child heard Li Si cursing in a low voice: “I’ll just burn you to death, see if you come up or not.”

Hearing these words, the child immediately showed a thoughtful expression and turned to run back down the cliff.

At this moment, Li Si put away the Eight Trigrams mirror, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and continued to cut down large trees.

Although the Black Sword’s sharpness made cutting these trees like slicing tofu, he was still very careful when felling trees. After all, it wouldn’t be good to be hit by a falling tree.

So his felling speed wasn’t very fast.

Fortunately, there weren’t as many trees here as imagined, so Li Si cleared all the trees in the area before long, leaving only the large tree on the cliff standing alone in the night.

Meanwhile, the tiger spirit below heard the child’s report and ate the child in one bite. Then its eyes revealed a venomous look. This person was really determined to fight to the death with it, even wanting to burn it alive.

Then it looked at the rope beside it, its eyes showing hesitation. If it waited for that person to throw down firewood to burn it, it might not even have a chance to escape.

But before it could make a decision, suddenly a silver-white lightning flashed across the sky, followed by a thunderous boom.

“Splash…”

Large raindrops began to fall, soon forming a curtain that enveloped the entire forest. The sound of rain hitting leaves could be heard from time to time.

The tiger spirit smiled, its mouth corners stretching wide, saliva dripping from the corners of its mouth.

It got up and walked to the tiger corpse, biting the corpse’s neck and dragging it towards the bottom of the cliff. Here it could be less exposed to wind and rain.

At this time, Li Si was also crouching down, dragging a corpse – Cao Qing’s corpse.

The corpse left trails on the ground as he dragged it. He was panting, occasionally coughing, with traces of blood at the corners of his mouth.

In Li Si’s current state, he wasn’t really fit to be dragging corpses. After all, he had been hit by that tiger earlier, and his wounds hadn’t healed yet.

But he knew that lightning might strike soon. If he left the corpse under the tree, it might be struck by lightning and turned into charred remains, leaving nothing behind.

Li Si walked down the cliff, walked for a while, found a low-lying area and placed the corpse in it. Then he cut some branches from trees to cover the corpse.

After covering the corpse, Li Si took out a straw rain cape from his book box and put it on. He looked at the only large tree left on the cliff, his eyes revealing an expectant expression.

Then, after about ten minutes, a lightning bolt flashed, but it didn’t strike this tree. Instead, it tore a horizontal silver crack in the sky, followed by a deafening sound. Li Si felt as if the entire mountain had shaken.

Hearing this thunder, even the tiger spirit on the platform below the cliff flattened its ears against its head, letting out a low, ferocious growl.

Then silver snakes danced across the sky, illuminating the entire forest as bright as day, with occasional rumbling thunder.

At this moment, Li Si also crouched down, his heart trembling, filled with awe at the power of nature.

It was at this moment that a lightning bolt as thick as a water bucket struck down from the sky, directly hitting the large tree on the cliff.

Li Si saw a burst of fire on the big tree, and at the same time, an electric current followed the rope he had set up earlier, leading to the platform below the cliff.

“Roar!!!” A sky-shaking roar came, filled with anger and fear.

But it wasn’t over yet. Another lightning bolt as thick as a water bucket struck, fiercely hitting that tree, followed by a dazzling silver light that made Li Si involuntarily close his eyes.

“Roar!!!” A tiger’s roar full of anger and venom came from the platform.

“So tenacious?” Li Si was somewhat surprised. He had thought lightning was the bane of monster creatures, but he didn’t expect this tiger spirit to be able to endure for so long.

Fortunately, he had added saltwater and gold fragments to the vines earlier. Otherwise, these vines would have surely broken due to high electrical resistance.

At the same time, because the vines were scattered on the platform below the cliff, along with the three hundred or so jin(about 500 grams) of gold scattered on the platform, this tiger spirit was surely doomed today!