Want to get naughty, friend? The kind of naughty where you lose your head?
For this raid, Jiang Xuesheng’s plan was absurdly simple—so simple it sounded almost perfunctory, making one suspect he was slacking off.
In a nutshell, Mulan the moon-dragon would enter the “combat matches,” dragging things out without harming herself or her opponents and drawing the attention of every demonic cultivator in the arena. Meanwhile, the others would use the opportunity to locate the imprisoned divine beasts, rescue them, then leave together with Mulan.
It sounded straightforward enough. In practice, however, it would be extremely difficult.
First of all, aside from Mulan, Shu Fu and the others did not know any of the divine beasts participating in the matches. There was no guarantee they would cooperate seamlessly; they might very well fight each other to the death in the arena.
If that happened, Shu Fu’s group would have no choice but to intervene, and in doing so, they would inevitably risk exposing themselves.
Secondly, the divine beasts they were rescuing had not been imprisoned in the same place. Different demonic cultivators had brought them in from all over.
Once they fell into demonic cultivators’ hands, these divine beasts would most likely have their auras concealed and their appearances altered, becoming unrecognizable to outsiders. Someone like Nan Gongming, who simply let a moon-dragon run around loose, was truly a freak among freaks.
In the worst-case scenario, the demonic cultivators would keep the divine beasts carefully sealed in airtight bags until it was time for them to enter the arena, making them impossible to locate.
In truth, even now, Shu Fu had no idea how to solve this problem.
—If you wanted to save someone, you first had to know where they were!
Jiang Xuesheng offered her no explanation. He merely said, “Fu’er, just do what you think is right. Leave the rest to me.” It was a tender, considerate, and utterly useless platitude.
That said, Shu Fu had to admit that when it came to strategy, layered schemes, and one trick piled atop another, she truly could not compare to Jiang Xuesheng.
The past twenty years had taught her that the path best suited to her was, in fact: “See injustice, shout it out—then slaughter every scumbag and bastard under heaven.”
Jiang Xuesheng, dog of a man, and Shu Fu, dog-slayer—those two had always been meant to be a team.
Since Jiang Xuesheng had his own calculations, the rest was no longer Shu Fu’s concern.
She only needed to fulfill her own duty: keep her eyes on the arena and make sure no divine beast came to harm. Whoever wanted to harm a divine beast, she would make sure harm came to them instead.
“Come to think of it... aren’t there a few too many demonic cultivators here?”
By rough estimate, the entire combat arena could hold around two thousand people—about the size of a modest cultivation sect.
Shu Fu swept her gaze over the stands. Heads packed tightly together, shoulders jostling shoulders; the crowd was a dark, surging mass, like an anthill in chaos. The place was nearly full, and merely looking at it made her dizzy.
On closer inspection, many of the demonic cultivators had Golden Core cultivation or higher. They clearly had some real ability; they were not merely idle street thugs from the Demon Realm.
Among this motley assortment of heretics and demons, trying to find the cultivators holding the divine beasts was like looking for a needle in the sea.
Something was wrong. Shu Fu thought.
No matter how she looked at it, there were simply too many people.
“Divine beasts slaughtering one another” was certainly a gaudy selling point, but at the end of the day, this performance had no substance whatsoever. It was nothing more than a lowbrow killing show.
—Were demonic cultivators really so bored? Didn’t they have fields to till back home?
Sexy demonic cultivators, gambling online?
“Hmph. I can barely stand to watch this.”
Nan Gongming, a seasoned farmer, had nothing but disdain and condemnation for the other demonic cultivators’ obsession with vulgar amusements and their complete lack of ambition:
“As cultivators, how can anyone be so eagerly drawn to this sort of thing, taking endless pleasure in it? Cheering and placing bets here, wasting away your time—using the humiliation of others to entertain yourselves. Does that somehow make you better? You’ve got your priorities backwards. It’s utterly foolish.”
His attendant looked ready to weep. “My Lord, we’re demonic cultivators. Do you really think it’s appropriate for a demonic cultivator to say something like that? You’ve been reading those so-called moral values all day until they scrambled your brain! That woman has led you terribly astray!”
Nan Gongming said, “What do you mean, ‘that woman’? Call her ‘Miss.’ That’s terribly rude!”
His attendant: “...”
Shu Fu: “...”
At that very moment, all she wanted was to dedicate a song to Nan Gongming: *The Light of Righteousness Shines Upon the Earth*, played on an endless loop as background music.
At this rate, Demon Lord Nangong’s life would surely go down in history under the title: *What Are You Laughing At? You’re a Successor of Socialism Too.*
In any case, she hoped the attendant would be all right.
…
Meanwhile, He Xiuwen was no less anxious than Shu Fu—if anything, even more so.
He was nervous not only because he cared about his money and spent every day on edge, terrified that someone else would barge in and ruin this rare business opportunity. Before the match had even begun, an unwelcome visitor had appeared before him.
“Ghost-Faced Demon Lord, it has been some time.”
It was a wisp of consciousness from the Cunning Demon Lord—the second-ranked among the Seven Demon Lords.
Many cultivators could separate off a portion of their divine sense, but it generally had to be anchored to some external object, and it was merely a weak phantom. Like a shadow clone in a comic, it would vanish with a single punch; it was not a true “incarnation.”
Only cultivators who had reached the Great Perfection of the Nascent Soul stage—half a step into the Divine Transformation realm or beyond—could create a complete incarnation outside their body, one capable of traveling the world in place of the original.
Even if such an incarnation were destroyed, the original body would not be in mortal danger, suffering at most an injury.
Furthermore, the incarnation’s abilities varied according to the depth of the original body’s cultivation.
As the “second most powerful figure in the Demon Domain,” the Cunning Demon Lord’s true body was an authentic Divine Transformation cultivator, utterly beyond comparison with ordinary demonic cultivators. Even this mere wisp of consciousness possessed unfathomable strength; with one punch, he could knock out five He Xiuwens.
What was more, he had brought along seven or eight carefully refined living corpses. They looked and acted no differently from ordinary people, but their cultivation ranged from the Golden Core to the Nascent Soul stage—more than enough to split He Xiuwen into five equal portions on the spot.
He Xiuwen was a businessman, someone who had always valued harmony as the path to prosperity. He had long been perfectly content occupying last place. When had he ever seen a lineup like this?
“Cunning Demon Lord, I—I had no idea you would honor us with your presence. Please forgive me for failing to welcome you properly.”
A sheen of sweat appeared at his temples. His tongue seemed to tie itself into seventeen or eighteen knots, and he could barely speak clearly. “May I ask what brings you here this time?”
“Oh, it’s nothing much.”
The Cunning Demon Lord appeared to be a delicate young man, with long, narrow upturned eyes. Even his voice was high and affected, like an old eunuch putting on airs.
“Ghost-Faced Demon Lord, I came here simply to help keep an eye on the place. I hope you don’t mind?”
“K-keep an eye on the place...?”
“That’s right.”
The Cunning Demon Lord drew a female living corpse into his arms, leisurely stroking one of her pale hands as though admiring a jade statue. “You may not know this yet, but I have received word from elsewhere: people from Shaking Light Peak have already infiltrated the demon realm. Going by their usual methods, they will surely come to rescue these divine beasts.”
“I bear them a certain grudge. So do you, don’t you? Why not join forces with me and wipe them out in one stroke? Then we can both rest easy forevermore.”
“…”
At the mention of “Shaking Light Peak,” He Xiuwen’s heart clenched. The polite, businesslike smile vanished from his face in an instant, leaving not even the faintest trace behind.
A moment later, his expression turned livid, and a sinister gleam gradually sharpened in his eyes. In a low voice, he asked:
“Cunning Demon Lord, is that true?”
…
No one knew what the Cunning Demon Lord and He Xiuwen had discussed, just as no one knew what Jiang Xuesheng was truly planning.
Several quarter-hours later, the fighting tournament officially began.
Mulan was the first to take the stage. Her opponent was a youth transformed from a Black Tortoise.
The youth was a body cultivator—tall and powerfully built, dark-skinned, with solid muscles all over his frame. At a glance, he was clearly the same type of plain, honest country man as Ye Shusheng. His rustic air was so overwhelming that Shu Fu could not help feeling his real name ought to be something like “Wang Dazhu” or “Li Tieniu.”
Shu Fu was worried at first, until she saw Mulan form a hand seal and unleash an elegant frost spell, freezing the Iron Bull Boy flat on his back where he stood.
The victor was decided in an instant, yet neither of them had suffered so much as a scratch.
“…Whew.”
As Shu Fu let out a long breath of relief, her confusion about Mulan only deepened.
—She clearly possessed such skill, yet she had deliberately concealed her strength and endured in silence until now. What exactly was she plotting?
The next moment, Shu Fu understood Mulan’s intentions.
“This is far too weak! How laughable. They call themselves ‘descendants of divine beasts,’ yet they are utterly unworthy of the name. Are opponents like this even fit to share an arena with us Moon Dragons of the Eastern Sea?”
Having won her first match, Mulan refused to yield the stage. Instead, she planted herself boldly in the center of the arena and declared:
“Since we have to fight anyway, why not send everyone up together? Or have them come at me one by one and see how many I can take on.”
The Moon Dragon girl tilted up her pretty little face. Her voice rang as clear as a bell, her eyes glittering like stars. She played the part of a charming, innocent little girl who knew nothing of the world’s dangers to perfection, greatly stirring the demon cultivators’ sadistic impulses.
At her almost provocative proposal, the entire venue first fell silent. Then it erupted into thunderous, wave-like cheers.
The demon cultivators’ eyes reddened one after another. They cheered, roared, and clamored with feverish excitement, impatiently urging He Xiuwen, “Grant her wish! Grant her wish!”
From the bottom of their hearts, they longed—longed to see this flower-like young girl torn to pieces before their very eyes; to see her pride trampled, her spirit broken, until she could never again wear that fearless, confident smile.
The crowd was delighted, and naturally He Xiuwen had no objection. He immediately ordered the schedule changed: the elimination rounds would become a gauntlet, with every divine beast taking the stage one after another to face Mulan.
—As long as someone was willing to place bets, what did the rest have to do with him?
And yet, the outcome still exceeded his expectations.
Mulan fought her way through the rounds, winning all six matches in a row. There was scarcely any suspense throughout; she won every bout with spells, never even leaving so much as a scratch on her opponents.
She herself, however, had suffered several injuries. Blood streamed from her wounds, and she panted for breath, periodically drawing cheers from the demonic cultivators.
Naturally, such a lopsided string of victories left some spectators puzzled. They began to wonder whether this little girl might be a plant He Xiuwen had arranged.
But the moon-dragon clan had always been proud and aloof, unable to tolerate even the slightest blemish. They were famed far and wide for their fastidiousness—why would they ever agree to act as shills for demonic cultivators?
The demonic cultivators could not make heads or tails of it. Some rejoiced while others despaired, and so they arrived at the final match of the day—
The moon-dragon girl Mulan versus another young, mixed-blood cloud dragon.
Perhaps because of his mixed heritage, this young cloud dragon’s scales differed from Old Qing’s. They were a bright, vivid green, making him a handsome and striking “Bamboo Viper.”
“...”
The youth transformed into human form on the platform. He was thin and slight, with an expression like ice and snow frozen eternally upon his face. His gaze was so gloomy it seemed as though water might drip from it.
“Please enlighten me.”
Though Mulan was covered in blood, she still offered him a radiant smile.
“Please enlighten me.”
...
No one noticed that, while everyone’s attention was fixed on the battle in the arena, Jiang Xuesheng, Liu Ruyi, and Wu Yao had silently vanished from the spectator stands.
Amid several thousand people, the panda family—plainly dressed by demonic cultivator standards and looking rather like a troupe of goofy tourists—were hardly conspicuous.
No, that was not quite right.
To be precise, one person had noticed.
“Miss Shu, where are your Little Mom and elder brothers?”
Nan Gongming asked in confusion. “There are many demonic cultivators here, and quite a few are cruel and unscrupulous. Cultivators and spirit beasts are often abducted. If they have gotten separated, I fear they may be in danger.”
In a listless voice, his attendant corrected him, “My Lord, we are demonic cultivators too...”
“Don’t worry.”
Shu Fu neither blushed nor skipped a beat. Without even blinking, she brazenly spun her tale. “My brothers are very interested in divine beasts and went to have a little ‘chat’ with some friends who possess them. Little Mom went along to keep them company.”
In a sense, it was not entirely untrue.
—Want to flirt, friend?
Flirt long enough, and they would flirt your head right off.
“I see. The three of them are traveling together, so they should be safe enough.”
Nan Gongming nodded in understanding, though a trace of bewilderment remained on his face. “Still... they are grown men. Do they really need their Little Mom to accompany them? Little Mom certainly has it hard.”
“Of course.”
Without hesitation, Shu Fu declared, “Haven’t you heard? ‘Men are boys until the day they die.’”
