Chapter 285

The three of them exchanged a few brief words of greeting. Realizing there was no hostility between them, Qi Bai and Lang Ze stepped back, intending to yield the vantage point at the window to the Ancient Tree Beastman.

Just then, a few different voices drifted down from directly overhead.

Outside the stands.

“Daren! Daren!” A cross-eyed beastman scrambled breathlessly onto the stone platform. He had barely straightened his back before he started shouting toward the front rows of the audience stands. But with the crowd so loud, his cries never reached the ears of the ones he wanted.

“Quit shoving!”

A few burly beastmen who’d been elbowed aside turned back with angry glares. Yet when they saw the intruder’s uniform, their ferocity vanished. Awkwardly, they yielded the way.

The cross-eyed fellow might be ugly and short, but he was a member of the Guard. That was not someone ordinary beastmen could afford to provoke.

Using that privilege, he finally squeezed his way to the front of the viewing platform.

“Bite him! Tear his other ear off too—hahaha!”

Three beastmen waved their fists, eyes crazed, roaring like fanatics. The sight of blood drove them half mad.

For just a scrap of food, beastmen were willing to fight like animals. Such a match was bound to make the onlookers’ blood boil.

“Daren! Daren!!”

The cross-eyed guard shouted again and again until one of the men finally registered his voice.

Irritated at being interrupted mid-excitement, the beastman lashed out with his foot, kicking the guard hard behind the knee. “What the hell are you yelling for? Get lost!”

The cross-eyed beastman collapsed to the ground with a thump, baring his teeth in pain. Still, he repeated breathlessly: “Daren! The Great Wu Hall is summoning the Guard! Quickly, you must go!”

Qi Bai instinctively looked up, though he couldn’t see anything—whoever was speaking was right above the preparation room, their voices coming from the blind spot overhead.

As Qi Bai pondered, more grumbling and curses sounded above. The men seemed to be leaving.

The Ancient Tree Beastman murmured: “Should we go take a look?”

Qi Bai thought it a good idea. The group above wasn’t large—three of them together should handle it.

Most importantly, the fight in the arena below had just reached fever pitch. The crowd’s cries rose in waves, every eye fixed on the duelists at the center. At this moment, slipping out would hardly draw notice.

Without hesitation, the three of them moved swiftly into the underground passageways of the arena.

As they had expected, the tunnels were deserted, and the area outside the arena equally empty.

They exited smoothly, then set up an ambush in a narrow alley that the others would have to pass through on their way back into the city.

Before long, four beastmen hurried out of the arena.

The three in front wore loose, rumpled fur robes, carrying cloaks in hand. Even as they walked, they craned their necks for one last look back.

Just then, cheers exploded inside the arena.

The sharp-mouthed beastman in the lead spat angrily onto the ground. “Damn it, so close! That monkey would’ve shredded the rat for sure—”

He never finished. A hand snatched him sideways into the alley like a phantom, and in the next instant a bone knife slit his throat.

The Ancient Tree Beastman dispatched his own target quickly. When he turned, he saw the half-beast youth silently drop another man with a knife and a strip of fur, not spilling a drop of blood. The efficiency spoke of endless practice.

“...”

The Ancient Tree Beastman unconsciously took a step back. For a moment he felt the corpse on the ground could just as easily have been him. This half-beast was terrifying. Best to keep some distance.

Qi Bai was oblivious to the other’s unease. He hadn’t wanted to waste fur to blot blood, but the sharp-mouthed one was a horned beastman—he couldn’t guarantee killing him bare-handed. If he wanted the fur robe and cloak unstained, he had no choice.

“You—!”

The remaining three Guard fighters were yanked into the alley.

The cross-eyed guard, a step behind, rushed up to look—and froze in horror at the scene. His legs shook violently. He opened his mouth to scream.

Lang Ze was already there. His arms crossed, and with a swift twist the cross-eyed beastman collapsed without making a sound.

Setting the body down, Lang Ze ruffled Qi Bai’s hair and praised him: “Well done.”

Qi Bai tilted his chin proudly. He was no weakling anymore.

The three of them donned the slain horned warriors’ garb.

Half-beasts were generally shorter than horned beastmen, but Qi Bai was an exception. Mao Bai’s height had already been decent; and Qi Bai, with years of proper food, had grown taller still.

He wasn’t as tall as Lang Ze or the Ancient Tree Beastman, but disguising himself as an ordinary horned beastman in human form was no problem.

The furs were filthy and stiff with grime, reeking with a foul stench. Lang Ze pulled the hood low over Qi Bai’s face.
“Sorry you have to suffer this.”

Qi Bai smiled and shook his head. “This isn’t suffering. Being with you, nothing feels bitter.”

The Ancient Tree Beastman silently turned his gaze aside. He should never have teamed up with these two.

Once dressed, with his little bone knife hidden away, Qi Bai asked: “What about the bodies? Leaving them here is too risky.”

The Ancient Tree Beastman wrapped one corpse in his old tattered fur. “Take them to the city wall. There are corpse-carriers there.”

Beneath the wall, in a cold dark corner, a thin layer of dead grass was spread.

Several beastmen lay there motionless. Of course, no living person could endure the wind bare like that. These were corpses—young beastmen twisted, broken, bones shattered.

Every day in Wangu City, people died. The Egu took some bones, the rest were left here to be hauled outside by corpse-carriers.

When they arrived, an old, hunched beastman was crouched before the pile. Hearing footsteps, he turned his head slowly.

The Ancient Tree Beastman calmly dropped two corpses onto the grass. “Will you deliver them on time today?”

The old man’s expression stayed flat. He glanced at them indifferently, then bent down, lifted the hands of one corpse—the one Qi Bai had slit at the throat—and slung it across his back.

Step by slow step, he carried it toward the city gate.

The Ancient Tree Beastman said quietly to the others: “As long as he’s willing to carry them, that’s enough. All the bodies here are ones with broken bones. The blood-bone guards fear the fractured-bone curse, so they never get close.”

Even if they did, the faces had already been slashed beyond recognition.

Lang Ze nodded. “Let’s go. We can still make it.”

Before leaving, Qi Bai glanced once more at where the old man had crouched.

On the grass lay a young beastman, his body still twisted, but his broken bones had been carefully pieced together.

He lay there as if peacefully asleep.

Inside Wangu City, chaos reigned. Cloaked beastmen rushed toward the center.

Their robes varied, but the cloaks were of two main colors—red and brown. Brown was far more common; red fewer.

From days of observation, Qi Bai had determined: red cloaks belonged to the Envoy Hall, brown to the Great Wu Hall.

And even within those colors, there were grades. Their current cloaks were much paler and simpler in design than those worn by a Wuzi at the city gate—proof of lower rank.

In this rigid hierarchy, Qi Bai’s group could move more easily.

They picked similar-clad beastmen to trail, following them straight into the city’s tallest building—the Great Wu Hall.

Outside the hall, beastmen gathered in twos and threes.

Some sighed: “I heard the Envoy has already sent for a healer from the Upper Temple, to save Piao Sishi. But alas...”

Some fretted: “If Piao Sishi dies within the city, will the Upper Temple hold us guilty?”

Others were simply there to watch.

“Pfft, even if they blame someone, so what? That day, Xun Wuzi was the one on gate duty, not us.”

“Hah, exactly. It was their mess, yet we’ve been dragged to search for days. If blame falls, it should fall on them.”

Suddenly, silence. All eyes turned to the hall.

Boom.

The stone doors of the Great Wu Hall swung open. Six brown-robed Wuzi strode out first.

The crowd’s hearts clenched.

Then, behind them, came a beastman with a staff, his hair white, his face ashen. The skin of his face sagged downward, his body wrapped in death-aura. Yet his steps were steady.

He stood on the platform, eyes half-lidded, gaze cold and serpentine as it swept the courtyard.

No one dared meet those eyes. It felt like to be seen was to be dragged beneath the earth by countless bones.

The entire courtyard fell silent. The chatterers shook uncontrollably, never expecting the Great Wu himself to appear.

“There will not be a next time.”

A hoarse voice, quiet but carrying.

“Yes!”

The crowd roared in unison.

The old Wuzi fell silent again. Yet Qi Bai could still feel that oppressive gaze, lingering long on their group.

He held steady, breathing even, not moving a muscle.

After a long moment, there came the faint rasp of beast hide—the sound of the Great Wu departing.

A stench spread in the air. Someone had literally wet themselves in terror.

Qi Bai frowned. What kind of past deeds had this Great Wu committed, to make the city’s beastmen quake so?

The Great Wu was gone, but the six Wuzi remained.

“Xun, Piao Sishi is dead. How do you intend to handle this matter?”