Three consecutive Lion’s Pounces, all three evaded perfectly, each answered with a swift counter and then distance. Distance, because distance bought the room to react. And a monster that has finished an attack inevitably leaves a gap, large or small — and that gap was an opening Ye Tianxie would never let pass. It is movement that creates a flaw. Had the Golden Sword Lion Beast simply stood there without attacking, he’d have found it rather harder to get at.
Ye Tianxie’s figure wavered in front of the lion like a wind that would not hold its shape. Every time it was on the verge of pinning him, its vision would blur and its body would come down on nothing… and every time it missed by the tiniest possible margin, and every time it could not lay a claw on him no matter what it did.
Rage and viciousness gathered and flickered in the beast’s eyes like a fire that might erupt at any moment. Having missed several times over, it abandoned the pattern — it raked at the ground with its forepaws for a moment, and then a Lion’s Charge came at Ye Tianxie with crushing weight behind it.
With the Eye of the Evil Dragon and the full readout of the lion’s skills, Ye Tianxie identified the technique the instant its body began to move. He gave a small step backward, his mouth curling — and then ran straight into the charging body. He was, of course, not fool enough to meet a terrible attack head-on when it carried a high chance of double damage and a stun on top. What he did was this:
The gap between man and lion vanished — and then Ye Tianxie pushed off, sprang high, and in a low aerial flip cleared the lion’s massive body entirely, landing steadily on the far side. He did not turn to attack. He accelerated hard, sprinting for the rock face of that peculiar cave.
The Golden Sword Lion Beast, having missed again, loosed another furious roar, wheeled, and gave chase. Its movement speed was around 130, and it closed the distance quickly — in short order it had driven Ye Tianxie right up against the stone wall of the cave, with nowhere left to run.
Another violent Lion’s Charge, all crushing pressure and momentum, slammed toward the man pinned against the rock. Ye Tianxie didn’t turn. He felt the wind of it closing behind him — and leapt, and at the top of his arc set one foot lightly against the wall and flipped backward, clearing the charging body by exactly enough.
BOOM!!
A thunderous crash. The Golden Sword Lion Beast plowed at full force into the stone face, and the recoil of its own enormous momentum slammed it flat onto its back — and a ring of small spinning stars appeared above its head. Stunned.
Ye Tianxie laughed under his breath, spun in, and set about brutalizing the lion — which had knocked itself senseless and couldn’t get up — with Dragon Rend Slash, in no hurry and no fluster at all.
-851, -835, -849, -1679, -837…
The force behind a Lion’s Charge was terrifying. Even with Ye Tianxie’s very high HP and defense, taking one — if that 70% double-damage chance fired — would have stripped away well over half his health, with a strong likelihood of a stun on top. And by the same token, the recoil of a powerful technique is powerful too… The lion lay stunned for five seconds, and still could not get back on its feet.
“He’s plainly an unbeatable, terrifying enemy — so why, in Second Brother’s hands, does he suddenly look like he couldn’t take a hit?” Zuo Pojun shook his head and laughed at himself. Such was the Golden Sword Lion Beast’s strength that any player at this stage would have had no option but to turn and run. And yet here was Ye Tianxie, under no pressure at all, dancing around it with perfect ease and stripping nearly half its health in under thirty seconds… All he could do was voice the same sentiment he had voiced who knew how many times before.
“The stars, the moon, and the sun may bear witness that on no fewer than a hundred occasions I have believed him not to be of this world. That inhuman body, that inhuman strength, that inhuman presence and gaze… Oh! And that inhuman bearing and face. Is this truly an earthling?” Murong Qiushui put it more extravagantly still, and Zuo Pojun, who knew him well, met it as always with silence and no words at all. But the wonder and the fervor in his eyes were not fabricated.
How many people in this world could bear the weight of such approval and such praise from these two? Watching the man in the distance, Su Feifei’s eyes moved with the movements of his body, and slowly something rose in her that she had never felt before… Pride. That was the word for it. Pride — and something like glory.
Whether he liked it or not, she had already, and quite seriously, begun to think of him as hers.
She turned back, hesitated a long time, and finally couldn’t hold it in. “Big Brother Zuo — and Murong — how did the two of you meet Tianxie?”
Murong Qiushui’s brow lifted, and he spoke, slow and languid. “It was a night stained red with blood. That night the sky had no stars and no moon, and the dark was frightening, and the only notes were howls and screams. That night, a terrible story was quietly unfolding. And when the story had nearly reached its despairing end, he appeared out of the sky like a god, and turned the ending around… Oh! Looking back on it now, it truly was a beautiful, beautiful night. Had there been a bottle of red wine at the finish, or a flute, it would all have been perfect.”
Zuo Pojun said nothing, and did not stop him, a thoughtful look surfacing on his quiet face.
Su Feifei snorted and waved a hand. “You not only look rather strange, you talk strangely too. I’m asking you seriously… How did Tianxie come to know you? I… want to understand a little more of his past.”
Murong Qiushui had known perfectly well that the vague heap of words he’d just produced would be taken for teasing. His expression shifted slowly, and a deeper look came over his face. “We have known him five years. About him, we know hardly more than you do. He is a mysterious man — mysterious as a star at the edge of the sky. You can plainly see that it is there, and yet you cannot make out how far away it is, or how large, or what it carries inside it… Oh! And that is actually a rather beautiful feeling, because it makes me all the more certain he is not of this world.”
“Second Brother’s parents, and an older brother of his, died when he was four. They were killed by unknown men. Second Brother, and the rest of us, have never once stopped hunting for those enemies — and yet even with our resources added to his, in five years we have not found so much as a trace. It’s as though those people appeared out of nowhere and vanished into nowhere.” Zuo Pojun folded his arms and said it with a note of guilt.
“Four?” Su Feifei was startled. She knew Ye Tianxie’s parents were dead, but she had never imagined he’d been so young. A faint ache took root in her, and looking at him in the distance, she asked quietly, “Then who raised him?”
The moment the question left her mouth, Zuo Pojun’s and Murong Qiushui’s faces both went still. Zuo Pojun sighed lightly and tipped his head back. “Looking at Second Brother as he is now, you might imagine he grew up in some vast and powerful family — that’s the only way to get a bearing like that, and ability like that… Wrong. Back then he had nothing whatsoever. No family left. Not a single coin on him. Not even anything to eat… That night, at four years old, in the space of a single night, he was left utterly alone, without even one person he could talk to.”
Su Feifei: “…”
“An ordinary four-year-old would have starved or frozen to death in the street. And Second Brother’s body then was no different from any other four-year-old’s. He did not steal, he did not rob, he did not beg — and he survived, and he grew up… The suffering he took, the torments his body and his mind went through, the coldness of the world he tasted, even the things he ate… none of it is anything you could imagine. While the rest of us were alive and wondering how to live better and more comfortably, how to enjoy ourselves most thoroughly — every single day of his life, he was struggling over how to survive until the next one.”
Su Feifei simply stood there, her thoughts in a chaos that would not settle for a long, long while — even her heartbeat seemed to fall out of rhythm with her mind.
Once, in a strange tone and a very low voice, he had said to her, offhand: We’re both pitiful people.
At the time she had scoffed, muttering privately that he could not possibly understand how pitiful her life was — and only now did she understand that her whole life, set against the road he had walked, looked rather like paradise.
And all at once she understood the coldness that so often surfaced in his eyes, and the near-cruel, merciless hardness he showed to others… Because he was a man this world had wounded, thoroughly and completely.
“About Second Brother, that’s all you need. You’re living with him now, and you needn’t worry about your safety at all. I only hope you can make him smile a little more each day… If you can, we’ll be very grateful to you. Second Brother doesn’t like people bringing up his past — especially… In any case, don’t ask any more about him.” Zuo Pojun sighed. And as his voice fell away, he turned his head aside, and in his mind there surfaced that immortal figure who ought not to have existed in this world, beside whom even Liu Qiyue was thrown into shadow… Even he, seeing her for the first time, had endlessly doubted whether he was dreaming.
She had been like Ye Tianxie: too perfect to be a creature of the mortal world. He had believed the two of them possessed a settled, unalterable, perfect course and a perfect ending. He had never imagined… that it would shatter without the slightest warning, and carve into Ye Tianxie’s heart a wound that would not heal, and could not be touched, unless he found her.
He had mobilized every resource he could to search. Three years had passed… and nothing. As though she had evaporated from the world entirely.
“I understand.” Su Feifei nodded quietly, and when she looked at Ye Tianxie she found her hand pressed, without her deciding it, over her own heart. I’m living the life I wanted, under his protection. So what do I have to do to make him truly happy…?
(End of Chapter 149)