Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
After laughing for what seemed like ages, Zhao Kuo finally stopped and slowly lowered his right hand. “I haven’t heard anyone call me ‘general’ in a long time… Are you trying to make a fool out of me?” said Zhao Kuo, his voice dropping. He gazed sternly at all three of them.
“We would never dare to do something like that to a great man such as yourself,” said Lin Xinrui, looking straight at the general. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard of… the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor?”
Zhao Kuo didn’t speak for a long while. Then he slowly said, “What does Emperor Qin have to do with me? I only want my revenge on that b*stard Bai Qi.” He said the last two words through gritted teeth.
That name had brought him nothing but shame and disgrace.
He had lost 400,000 men thanks to Bai Qi in the Battle of Changping!
How could he slaughter them all like that?! Butcher! Knave!
Zhao Kuo hung his head silently for a moment, then he continued, “You three seem like a capable lot, maybe even more so than anyone else who has dared to trespass on my domain in the last few years,” said Zhao Kuo, casually throwing a glance at the Golden Dazzling Light Boxing Champion Kangaroo and the Crystal Peacock Mantis Shrimp.
“I would like to work with you. I know what you’re after here in Changping—probably something valuable that can only be found here. I’ll let you have it, but I would like something of equal value from you in return.”
Upon hearing this, Xu Heti let out a sigh of relief.
If it’s something money can solve, it won’t be a problem for us.
“What do you need? You may not know this, sir, but we hail from an organization known as the Sky River Group. We can help you fulfill your deepest desires with our vast financial power.”
“Just like Lu Buwei?” said Zhao Kuo, smiling coldly.
He waved a hand. “But I digress. Come, tell me what it is you need.”
“The bone of a general and a Thousand-Year Heart of Darkness.”
The air instantly froze.
Zhao Kuo looked at Xu Heti, then at Lin Xinrui with an amused expression. “The bone of a general? You want my bone?”
“Deal!” boomed Zhao Kuo, leaning back in his chair. “However, you can only take one with you. As for Thousand-Year Heart of Darkness, I’ve never heard of it. I wonder why.”
“That would be your heart, sir.” Before anyone could even react, the Crystal Peacock Mantis Shrimp had already leaped into action. Its body vanished in an instant, leaving only rings of smoke in the air behind it.
It materialized before Zhao Kuo in a mere second. Its pincers lashed out explosively at the general. White translucent rings of light spun wildly around the shrimp as soon as its pincers made contact.
The force of the impact was akin to a thunderbolt.
Bam!!!
The shrimp’s pincers struck Zhao Kuo in the chest, sending him flying into a wall, where his body left a human-shaped hole. A powerful shockwave spread out around the Crystal Peacock Mantis Shrimp.
The ghost soldiers around them shimmered violently as they were pushed back by the violent shockwave. None of them could even take a step forward.
Zhao Kuo’s body crashed through a couple of buildings before finally coming to a stop. Bricks fell over his crumpled form in the last building.
The Crystal Peacock Mantis Shrimp continued swinging its pincers around. Long, slender cracks were starting to appear on its pincers as if they could crack at any moment.
“You’re really something, you know that,” muttered Xu Heti. After an attack like that, the Crystal Peacock Mantis Shrimp wouldn’t be able to use its pincers for a month. “You do know your familiar is a glass cannon, don’t you?”
After using its full power on an opponent, the shrimp would temporarily enter a depowered state.
In that time, its “weapons” would be rendered useless.
The commotion they had caused inside the building had attracted the attention of the ghost soldiers outside. More and more of them were gathering outside the place. Things were now starting to get out of hand.
“We can’t let them surround us,” said Lin Xinrui, panicking.
The White-Bellied Golden-Striped Wise Deer lightly shook its horns, which began to shine with white light. When the light touched the Crystal Peacock Mantis Shrimp’s pincers, the cracks on them began to shrink a little.
On the other hand, the deer’s white light had burned a huge hole through some of the ghost soldiers, like a ray of sunlight melting away patches of snow on the ground.
Unable to avoid the attack in time, the ghost soldiers began to disintegrate on the spot.
Seeing their compatriots turn to dust in front of them, the others began to retreat. All thoughts of moving in recklessly to avenge the fallen instantly vanished from their minds.
“Zhao Kuo should still be alive. That attack just now wouldn’t have been enough to kill him,” said Lin Xinrui calmly. Despite how viciously her shrimp had ambushed the general, she had made sure that it had pulled its punches enough to leave him barely alive.
Woo—
Suddenly, a breeze blew past them. Some of the ghost soldiers closest to them were sucked into the ground. There was another breeze, and even more ghost soldiers were sucked into the ground.
The Golden Dazzling Light Boxing Champion Kangaroo leaped 30 feet into the air in a single bound and began viciously punching at the ground.
Boom!
Golden light emanated from its every punch.
The kangaroo began pummeling the floor like a piledriver, sending dust and smoke up into the air.
The sword that was wedged in the ground suddenly flew out like a streak of lightning towards the kangaroo’s back.
The kangaroo nimbly evaded the attack.
A black figure erupted from the depths of the ruins in a swirl of dust and smoke. With the sword back in its hand, it began clashing against the Golden Dazzling Light Boxing Champion Kangaroo. It was Zhao Kuo, his hair hanging untidily over his face. The look on his face was cold and murderous.
The Golden Dazzling Light Boxing Champion reacted quickly to Zhao Kuo’s retaliation. Its Extraordinary Sixth Sense allowed it to predict and evade all of its opponent’s moves that could have inflicted fatal damage on it, as long as its reaction time was quicker than its opponent’s attacks.
“Kill them all!” roared Zhao Kuo. Ghost soldiers began converging on the ruins from every corner of the village. Waves of them surged towards the ongoing battle in response to their general’s call. They roared out in unison, waving their spears high in the air.
Suddenly, there was a rumble in the sky. A cloud-like object was gathering above the heads of the howling ghost soldiers, and something blood-red was growing inside of it. In the next second, the cloud popped, and a torrential sound soon filled the air.
The Golden Dazzling Light Boxing Champion Kangaroo suddenly froze in the air for a moment. Taking advantage of this, Zhao Kuo thrust his sword, which was now enveloped in a faint blue light, forward.
The kangaroo took the hit and tried to swing a punch at him. However, Zhao Kuo evaded the attack.
“Let’s go,” muttered Xu Heti. This was getting out of hand.
The black ball-like familiar in their party waved its tentacles around and expelled black smoke into the air like a squid spewing out black ink in water. The black smoke rapidly spread around them.
A huge blue bird descended from the sky. Xu Heti and the others grabbed ahold of its legs, while the deer leaped lightly onto the bird’s back.
The Golden Dazzling Light Boxing Champion had also jumped onto the bird’s back. Just like that, the three of them flew away from the place with their familiars on the big blue bird.
In the darkness of the ruins, a human figure holding a longsword in hand watched the party of humans and familiars fly off into the distance without a word.
Countless ghost soldiers began lining up behind Zhao Kuo. Thousands of them crawled out from the ground with no end. Ominous thunder rumbled from the dark clouds that had formed above their heads.
