Chapter 986: Re-entering the Stone Castle
It wasn’t entirely bright just yet when the three left their camp and ran back to the stone castle. They didn’t dare to waste time as the lack of white fruits weighed on their hearts like a heavy stone. Although Ji Tianqing had no idea how Qianye and Li Kuanglan had gotten through the cold nights, it was still a fact that Qianye couldn’t carry the both of them.
They would need to find a substitute for the white fruit before nightfall, even if it was weaker in effect. Their ultimate target was naturally the four-armed natives’ castle. The trio thus returned to the castle, hoping to take it down if they could, and see what those natives were hiding. At least, they would need to figure out how they were getting through the cold nights. A sturdy physique alone wasn’t enough to explain this. Rare experts like Li Kuanglan and Ji Tianqing—no matter how physically weak they were—couldn’t be weaker than these low-level natives.
Moments later, the three arrived near the castle and began to observe the place in hiding. Actually, there was really nothing to see inside the stone castle. It was just as messy as before with a large number of natives either moving about or mating. It was as though they had no other word in their dictionary apart from eating and mating.
After a while, Li Kuanglan said impatiently, “What’s the point of this? We should just kill off these disgusting bastards.”
Ji Tianqing chimed in, “Why don’t I toss that grenade into the place? That ought to clear out everything.”
Qianye stopped them with a wry smile. “It’ll clear out everything, sure, but we can also forget about getting anything from them.”
“Then what do you say we do?” Ji Tianqing had also started to lose her patience.
Qianye found this to be a bit odd. These two were normally calm and intelligent people who would rarely get confused in the face of important matters. Why were they being so impatient now? It was easier to explain for Li Kuanglan—all that she had gone through recently had worn out her mental defenses. Then why was Ji Tianqing so restless?
Experts of their level could easily figure things out from small clues. Restlessness was an early sign of their urges escaping control.
In fact, all the natives in the stone castle could be easily dealt with. The true difficulty lay in the white mist produced by the four-armed people. Just one full breath would cause one to lose all control. Qianye was quite confident about killing everyone in the stone castle with Life Plunder before losing his senses, but there was still Ji Tianqing and Li Kuanglan nearby. He was fairly clear as to what would happen afterward.
Perhaps it was just as Li Kuanglan had said—losing control was something that would happen sooner or later, that Qianye was just waiting for an excuse that would give him relief. For Qianye, he was willing to use every ounce of strength to ensure that the feeling in his heart was pure and perfect. Nighteye was his wife and his home, even though it was only before her awakening.
Even if he were to truly lose control, having an excuse was better than having none.
Seeing that he couldn’t quite rely on Ji Tianqing and Li Kuanglan, Qianye felt that he would have to find a way on his own. He fished out Heartgrave and made ready to snipe the four-armed sentries on the towers. Unexpectedly, Ji Tianqing stopped him. “No!”
“Why?”
“The origin power fluctuation will spread far and wide if you fire in the daytime. Almost like lighting a torch in the dark night, it’ll draw out all the wild beasts in our direction. Not to mention your gun is so powerful that it’s like a volcanic eruption. We’ll have to start running after you fire.”
Qianye wasn’t expecting something like this. It would seem Ji Tianqing had already learned the hard way, so he could only put away Heartgrave helplessly. With such a powerful sniper in hand, how could he have prepared a bow and arrow?
But he was highly experienced in combat, especially field battles. In the blink of an eye, Qianye had devised a new plan.
He jumped out of his hiding place and ran past the castle gates, attracting the attention of the native soldiers. He then turned around and fled toward the woods with more than a dozen soldiers chasing after him.
Once inside the forest, these natives fell to Li Kuanglan’s sharp blades.
They rushed past her helplessly and turned into corpses.
After clearing away this group of natives, he went back to lure more natives out of the stone keep. He was prepared to gradually whittle away at the natives in this manner. However, Ji Tianqing dragged Qianye back, saying, “Let her go.”
Li Kuanglan’s face turned red as she glared fiercely at Ji Tianqing, but she didn’t object. Hence, Qianye could only produce East Peak and take over interception duty.
Moments later, Li Kuanglan returned like a wisp of smoke, followed by a hundred-strong crowd of natives! There were two strong four-armed males in the group, and their speed was actually no slower than Li Kuanglan’s. They followed close on her heels and almost managed to capture her.
Greatly alarmed, Qianye rushed out of the forest and into the group of natives. Life Plunder erupted in a split second, mowing down most of the natives in one go.
The two four-armed natives followed Li Kuanglan into the forest, but all of a sudden, they were dragged upward and suspended therein. Ji Tianqing was holding a near-translucent string in her hand, the other end of which was tied to the necks of the four-armed males. She jerked fiercely on the line, and the captives’ heads flew high in a gush of blood.
With the four-armed natives dead, there was nothing left to fear. Ji Tianqing punched left and right, felling the rest with relative ease.
A deathly pale Li Kuanglan turned back at this point. Apparently, she was fairly shocked by the ordeal, not because she was afraid of death, but rather of falling into the natives’ hands. She glanced at Ji Tianqing unhappily, but the latter said, “It’s fine, they won’t catch you if you focus on escaping.”
Li Kuanglan uttered in a cold voice, “That means you knew they were fast, right?”
Ji Tianqing blinked innocently. “I didn’t know.”
Li Kuanglan wasn’t about to fall for that. She had known Ji Tianqing for a fair length of time and fought her on many occasions. There was no way she wouldn’t know how fast the four-armed men were.
Seeing Li Kuanglan’s skepticism, Ji Tianqing added, “I really didn’t know. I think those two were just especially fast. Even if they catch you, we’ll be sure to come and save you!”
Li Kuanglan snorted with an ashen face, and then fell into silence. Those natives were so eager to mate that they could even throw away their lives—being pressed down by them for just a couple of seconds was probably enough to suffer unbearable humiliation. It was likely that Ji Tianqing had long since calculated the relative speed between the two parties and set this up to frighten Li Kuanglan. The problem was that she was really shocked by the ordeal. How was she to hold her head up before Ji Tianqing after leaving the Great Maelstrom?
Li Kuanglan believed that Ji Tianqing would be just as scared if the same thing were to happen to her. Unfortunately, the former had been too focused on the sword—she only believed in subduing people by force and was fairly weak in terms of strategy. It wasn’t quite possible even if she wanted to trick Ji Tianqing in retaliation. The latter was odd, clever, and possessed many tricks up her sleeve. Song Zining was probably the only one who could scheme against her.
At the thought of Song Zining, Li Kuanglan fell into a moment of contemplation.
The two ladies had forgotten about Qianye as they engaged in a silent war. He was currently supporting himself up with his sword, fending off attacks from several two-armed natives. He looked perfectly fine on the outside, but he felt extremely bloated and almost bursting at the seams. He couldn’t evade in time due to his sluggish movements and was stabbed by a bone dagger.
Even though it was only an attack from a two-armed native, the strike pierced through his armor and into his body. It left a bone-deep gash with blood spraying out from within it.
The injury and bleed actually relieved Qianye of his tension. He immediately pounced at that native, grabbed him by the neck, and then broke it using the momentum of his body and movement. Qianye proceeded to engage in a series of melee battles to kill off the remaining natives. He didn’t dare linger in the open for long—he charged swiftly into the forest and coughed up a mouthful of black blood as soon as he was inside.
Qianye didn’t dare refine more essence blood at this point. As such, Life Plunder became a double-edged sword that would hurt both the enemy and himself when used on a large scale.
Although Qianye was injured, the other two were still perfectly fine, and half of the warriors in the stone keep had been destroyed. There was still a sizable number of people left in the castle, but most of them were the weaker two-armed natives. Less than ten four-armed men and women remained, and the strongest two had died in Ji Tianqing’s hands. Hence, after some discussion, Ji Tianqing and Li Kuanglan left Qianye in the forest to recuperate while they continued their previous strategy of luring people out to kill them.
These natives only had reproduction in their brains. Despite the great loss just now, they still sent out a group to chase after her. It was just that the group was much smaller, this time, consisting only of two four-armed women and around thirty two-armed natives. This lineup was a walk in the park for the two ladies. They had no intention of showing mercy as they attacked with renewed ferocity. Communication was out of the question, anyway, so there was no need to leave survivors.
After another round of losses, the natives finally learned to be smarter. When Li Kuanglan appeared again, this time, none of them gave chase. But Ji Tianqing had an idea—she changed Li Kuanglan’s appearance and hair, which allowed the latter to lure another group of natives out. It would seem their intelligence was highly limited.
After this wave, however, the baiting no longer worked. No matter how Ji Tianqing changed Li Kuanglan’s appearance, the natives simply wouldn’t come out. This was also because most of the stronger ones in the keep had been killed.
Qianye had also recovered a fair bit at this point, so the trio proceeded to assail the stone keep and finish off the remaining sentries. The old and weak inside the castle poured out of the gates and scattered in all directions, but Qianye couldn’t be bothered with killing them all. He decided to seize the time and explore the castle with the two girls.
The interior of the castle was unbearably messy, with trash and sewage everywhere. Just as they had seen from the outside, there were all kinds of weeds and grass growing amidst the piles of stone. The odd thing was that there was actually no strange odor despite the chaotic mess. It could be assumed that the cold night made it impossible for the trash to decompose.
There were huts all along the castle wall for the two-armed people to stay. The simple structures were mostly made of dried grass and mud, and a good number of them were either cracked or collapsed. There was really nothing of value inside them apart from the fireplace and some straw-woven articles. From their previous observation, it would seem that the two-armed people had no fixed partner or family, and neither did they have a rank distinction. They would mate anytime with anyone. The strong warriors held no significant advantage over the old and weak.
The center of the keep was where the four-armed people lived, and that was where Ji Tianqing had stolen the white fruit.