163: Chapter 163 Physical Salvation Method
"You're saying..." Dean swallowed hard, pointing at the man across from them. "That guy over there in the Armani suit, acting like a total lapdog for a cop, is the fallen angel of Hell? Lucifer?!"
Qin Ming bit down on his straw, taking a huge gulp of cola that made a loud slurping sound: "ｏ(*'▽'*)/☆ Yes~"
Sam rubbed his face vigorously, sighing with a look of utter despair: "I can't believe it."
Dean leaned his face closer to Qin Ming: "So, the fallen angel you want to teach a lesson to is him?"
Qin Ming nodded.
"Why?" Sam was completely baffled. "Is he plotting some evil scheme to destroy the world? Or is he planning to open the gates of Hell in Los Angeles?"
Qin Ming swallowed the cola in his mouth, his tone flat and devoid of emotion: "Before I looked for you guys, I ordered a strawberry sundae at his bar. They didn't serve it to me and even kicked me out."
The air suddenly went silent.
The honking of cars on the roadside sounded exceptionally piercing.
Dean and Sam turned their heads stiffly, staring intently at Qin Ming.
Qin Ming completely ignored their 'you've-got-to-be-kidding-me' looks and continued: "So, I kindly took away his hidden wings. And by the way, I gave that bartender a little nightmare."
Just then.
The radio at the food stall broadcast a news report: "Mr. Patrick, a bartender at a well-known local nightclub, was rushed to the hospital this morning... According to witnesses, he kept screaming 'Stop forcing me to eat strawberry sundaes' and tried to wash his brain with hand sanitizer..."
Dean and Sam fell into a long silence.
Sam: "...So you caused such a huge commotion purely because you didn't get to eat a strawberry sundae?"
"That's a matter of principle," Qin Ming said, accurately tossing the empty cola can into a trash bin three meters away. "You can refuse to take in an orphan, but you cannot refuse a child a strawberry sundae. That's discrimination."
What kind of principle is that?!
Dean was left bewildered in the wind.
He touched his thumb, where he had just pressed a bloody fingerprint, feeling deeply that the contract he had signed was a massive trap.
This kid calling himself the Son of God was outrageously petty.
If he ever upset him in the future, his burning skeleton frame would probably be dismantled to make bone broth.
"Zzzzt—"
Static crackled from the radio again.
But this time it was Larry's voice: "Warning... Supernatural fluctuations detected..."
"What's wrong?" Qin Ming asked.
"Louisiana, New Orleans. It seems someone has opened The Land of the Living and the Dead."
Sam's expression changed.
"The Land of the Living and the Dead has been opened?" Sam's academic memory bank was instantly activated. "That's an absolutely sealed rift space where the dead wander, unable to ascend to Heaven or descend to Hell. If it leaks, everything inside will flood into the real world!"
A leak meant a massive number of spirits and monsters would manifest in the real world.
"Let's go take a look." Qin Ming stood up.
The figures of the three vanished from the bustling streets of Los Angeles as if erased by a pencil eraser.
Only a slightly swaying white plastic chair remained.
Across the street.
Lucifer, who was handing a hot coffee to a female detective with a smile, suddenly paused.
The cynicism and flattery on his face vanished instantly, replaced by an extremely dangerous chill.
Lucifer whipped his head around like a beast scenting a natural predator, staring fixedly at the corner where the food stall was.
No one was there.
Pedestrians hurried along the sidewalk; nothing was out of the ordinary.
He narrowed his eyes slightly.
"What's wrong?" The female detective took the coffee, looking confusedly at her partner who had suddenly frozen.
"Nothing." Lucifer quickly switched back to his charming signature smile. "The wind today is a bit strange."
As he watched the detective get into her car, Lucifer's smile turned cold once more.
He slowly raised his hand, touching the cuff of his custom suit, his brows furrowed tightly.
"Strange..." Lucifer murmured to himself. "I thought I just caught the scent of... a certain petty fellow?"
At the same time.
Louisiana, New Orleans.
This was an extremely remote, old-fashioned country villa. Dean kicked open the ajar wooden door and smoothly pulled out the gun from his waistband.
The light inside was dim, with the curtains drawn tight.
"This smell." Dean wrinkled his nose, cautiously scanning the surroundings by the faint light filtering in from the hallway.
The three passed through the entryway and walked directly into the living room.
The furniture in the living room had been roughly pushed to the edges, clearing a large space in the middle.
On the floor, drawn with dark red pigment—or rather, dried blood—was a massive and extremely complex concentric circle magic array.
The edges of the array were lined with black candles burned to their bases. Several crows that had died gruesome deaths were nailed to the four corners of the array, feathers scattered everywhere.
"Is this a blood sacrifice ritual?" Dean crouched down, poking the dried blood on the floor with his gun barrel, his brow furrowed. "This drawing style, this rune arrangement... it seems to have been done by a very professional medium or wizard. Look at this setup; it's definitely not the work of some high schooler who read a couple of posts online and decided to mess around."
Sam ignored his brother's analysis and walked straight to the edge of the array, narrowing his eyes as he pointed at the floor in the center of the living room: "Dean, forget the blood. Look at that."
Qin Ming followed the direction of Sam's finger.
The innermost circle of the massive array had a color completely inconsistent with the wooden floor outside.
While the floor outside the circle was old, the wood grain was still visible.
But inside the circle, the circular area that should have been wooden planks had turned into pure, charred earth emitting a pungent smell of sulfur.
"The material has been replaced." Sam crouched at the edge, reaching out to sense the air. "The temperature inside the circle is at least ten degrees lower than outside."
"A spatial displacement with the intersection," Qin Ming said plainly, his hands in his jacket pockets. "Using a barrier, they've directly connected a part of this living room to the rift of The Land of the Living and the Dead. They've opened the door."
Qin Ming shifted his gaze from the charred earth on the floor to a photo frame on the nearby fireplace.
He walked over and picked it up.
The photo showed a family of three. Looking at this group photo and the professional array on the floor, a connection instantly formed in Qin Ming's mind.
"The Burial," that 2025 movie.
Qin Ming casually tossed the frame back onto the table, mentally piecing together the sequence of this incident.
The mother in the photo was named Barbara. After her husband died of illness, she couldn't accept reality and was on the verge of a mental breakdown.
To bring her husband back, she spared no expense to hire a mysterious wizard, attempting to resurrect him through a forbidden ritual.
Her daughter, Megan, was also dragged into it, participating in this blood sacrifice.
Megan