“Who… is she?” Su Feifei’s eyes were all but shooting fire, and inside she was burning worse still — she wanted nothing more than to drag Ye Tianxie away on the spot… Why was the look he gave that girl so gentle? Even his voice was soft, as though he were afraid of frightening her. He had never once shown her that expression, or used that voice.
“That, uh — we don’t know either. They must have only just met.” Zuo Pojun was rather dumbfounded himself. Never mind Su Feifei; the look on Ye Tianxie’s face right now was one even they hadn’t seen in eight hundred years. Who was that girl…? Why had he never known this person existed?
“Sister Su, you have to understand — our magnificent Second Brother was never fated to be a mortal man. The sun told me he is the son of the sun… the Sun Prince. The stars told me he is the son of the stars in the heavens — the Star Prince. The moon told me he is the son of the moon in the heavens — the Moon… ahem. His charm is as dazzling as sunlight, as brilliant as starlight, as intoxicating as moonlight, and a man like that needs a great many equally beautiful stars around him for ornament…” Murong Qiushui moaned on and on in this vein, and Zuo Pojun very deliberately put three steps between them and turned his face away.
“Hmph!” Su Feifei ground her teeth and stamped her foot in a fit of temper. “I knew it… He’s always been a sex-starved creep who runs around harassing young girls — a giant lecher, a giant pervert, a philandering radish!!”
Zuo Pojun: (⊙o⊙)!!
Murong Qiushui: (⊙o⊙)!!
“Thank you.” Shattered Star-Heart kept her head down, murmuring her thanks. In truth she was so grateful she no longer knew what to say. And the onlooking crowd finally understood that Xietian had struck on this girl’s behalf. Clearly, Thunderstorm had provoked the one person he should never have provoked.
“Why would you… help me like this?” She raised her head and asked the question she had been wanting to ask. She wanted to know why, when they were strangers, he had helped her again and again… Was it because of her face too?
“Because I once had a past much like yours. The look in your eyes made me feel as though I were seeing my old self. Two parts fear, two parts strength, five parts stubbornness — and one part despair, buried deep, that you don’t dare and don’t want to touch. Because I once had a past like that… crueler, even, than the one you’re living now, I know what I needed then, and what you need now…”
Shattered Star-Heart watched him in silence, her gaze going hazy.
“I was four when I had no parents, no family of any kind left. From four years old, with nothing but the clothes on my back, I had to stay alive… I remember it clearly — between the ages of four and ten I came within a hair’s breadth of death more than thirty times. The closest was the year I was five and a half. I hadn’t eaten in three days, and in the dead of winter I passed out from the cold and lay buried under the snow for a full day and night. By sheer luck an old man out clearing snow found me, brought me around, and fed me the three fullest meals I’d had in that entire stretch of my life… That is also the only debt I owe anyone that I have never repaid to this day. The longest stretch was seven straight days on nothing but water — no proper food at all. I didn’t know how to beg, and a child that young couldn’t work out a way to earn money, so all I could do was wander in despair, thinking every single day about how to stay alive…”
Shattered Star-Heart’s expression shifted from gratitude to deep shock. She stared blankly at Ye Tianxie as his flat, unadorned words sketched out one desolate picture after another in her mind…
A man like him — with a past like that…
Ye Tianxie shook his head with a smile and said gently, “I’m telling you this because I want you to know that however hopeless things were back then, I can still live well now — better than anyone. The present is destined to become the past. What you should be thinking about isn’t your misfortune right now; it’s gathering up every scrap of hope you have and looking toward the future with the lightest heart you can manage. However terrible things are at this moment, don’t despair and don’t fall. All right?”
She wiped away tears that had spilled from the corners of her eyes at some point without her noticing, and nodded gently. “I understand… I’ll remember every word you’ve said. As long as I don’t give up, Xue’er will get better, everything will get better… everything will be all right…”
She looked up and asked softly, “Could you… tell me your name?”
The conversation between Ye Tianxie and Shattered Star-Heart could be heard by no one but the two of them. The onlooking crowd hadn’t dispersed, and nobody was tactless enough to walk over and interrupt them — but clearly, none of this was over.
And that was precisely why Ye Tianxie hadn’t left the moment he finished with Thunderstorm.
The crowd was shoved roughly apart, and Thunderstorm stepped out, his face black as charcoal and murder written all over it. The instant he laid eyes on Ye Tianxie he roared like a man staring down his father’s killer: “That’s him — go! Cripple him for me!!”
The City of Stars’ respawn point wasn’t far from here. One-shot in public inside a city — an indignity he had never in his life suffered — Thunderstorm had lost control at the respawn point and bellowed several times, then snatched up his communicator and roared for every Battle Soul Hall member in the area to gather, before racing back to his earlier position as fast as he could. He still didn’t know that the man who had killed him was Xietian, first on both the Level and Renown Rankings. He hadn’t had time to consider whether that man might already have been hauled off by the city guards, and he had no thought to spare for how terrifying the attack power behind that one-shot must have been. He no longer cared that this was inside a city at all. Rage had stripped him of nearly all reason, and all he wanted was to find the man who had killed him and kill him a hundred times over.
Thunderstorm had brought more than thirty people, covering every class. They all crowded in around him, elbowing aside onlookers wearing every sort of odd expression. At his command they advanced together — but their steps were visibly hesitant… This was, after all, inside a city. PK here would achieve nothing and only get them hauled away for their trouble. And besides — thirty-odd people mustered at once to deal with one man? Wasn’t that just handing outsiders a joke to tell about Battle Soul Hall?
“That’s a lot of people… should we go help?” Su Feifei’s chest tightened slightly, and she said it uneasily. In the real world, three times this number wouldn’t have made her doubt Ye Tianxie could handle it. But here…
“Young Mistress Su, that’s not a very clever question. What you ought to be asking is… how long can this many people last under Second Brother’s hand?” Zuo Pojun said with a curl of his lip, eyeing the group with amusement, as though he really were calculating how many seconds each of them could stay alive.
“Tianxie… he really will be all right?” Su Feifei asked, still not reassured.
“Aiya! If Second Brother had nothing but the attributes and gear I’m carrying right now, toying with this rabble would still be like playing with monkeys — never mind everything he actually has, which heaven itself must envy… Ugh! Pray they don’t have nightmares tonight.” Murong Qiushui arranged his face into an expression of pity.
All of this was exactly what Ye Tianxie had expected, and exactly the outcome he wanted. He made a small pushing motion behind him, signaling Shattered Star-Heart to stand further back, summoned the Hour of Fate, and — cold smile all over his face — walked toward the Battle Soul Hall members still hesitating over whether to actually attack. “It seems your subordinates aren’t so eager to do as they’re told. Well, if you want to die, allow me to oblige.”
His words sent a quiet jolt through the crowd… Could he really mean to take on all thirty of these players by himself? This wasn’t a duel, and it wasn’t two or three opponents — it was more than thirty! No single player could face that alone, not even Xietian, first on the Level Ranking.
But the answer was yes… A single Dragon Shadow Slash went off. All anyone saw was a blur of shadow, and Ye Tianxie’s body had shot five meters forward, slamming the two nearest Guardian players clean off their feet… And even with the highest HP and defense of any class, that one impact left them with nothing but a sliver of health. The charge also drove Ye Tianxie straight into the packed cluster of Battle Soul Hall players, and the Hour of Fate in his hand carved a pitch-black 270-degree arc… That single blow caught three of the more tightly-packed Battle Soul Hall players.
-667, -672, -1302!
The front of their formation was uniformly Guardians and Warriors. With that one blow, a critical hit outright one-shot the Guardian hauling the heavy shield, and the two Warriors were left with a pitiful thread of health. Before either could react, the Hour of Fate reversed its swing and cut them both down where they stood.
In the space of a blink it had all begun, this abruptly — and the one driving it wasn’t the thirty-odd players of Battle Soul Hall. The one who attacked first was Xietian, alone. One stunning charge, two blindingly fast horizontal slashes, and in barely enough time for anyone to react — three dead and two wounded!
What kind of terrifying speed and attack power was that?!
The instant Ye Tianxie launched his first attack, two city guards appeared again — and the moment they saw who it was, they turned and left without a word. With a City of Stars Pardon Token in hand, Ye Tianxie held the privilege of initiating PK inside the City of Stars five times without penalty, and it could also cancel out a full 50 points of Sin Value. And Ye Tianxie was carrying two such tokens. Which meant he could initiate PK inside the City of Stars ten times over, and kill a hundred people in a row without accruing a single point of Sin Value.
So: nothing to fear.
“Get him! Cripple him, now!”
Three dead and two wounded in an instant had shown the Battle Soul Hall players, through their shock, just how terrifying the enemy in front of them was. Thunderstorm was growing agitated too at last, and all he could manage was one hysterical shout.
The two Guardians who had been knocked flat were chugging potions while backing behind the line for a Priest to heal them, and the five Mages at the very rear all began their incantations at once. Facing the players closing in on him, Ye Tianxie gave a contemptuous smile and slipped forward like a fish through water; with a handful of impossibly tight turns he went around every one of them and arrived in front of the Mages sheltered at the back. When those mocking, disdainful eyes appeared in their field of view, the Mages broke off their casting in something close to horror.
“Standing this close together — are you waiting to die together?”
The Hour of Fate swung almost casually, sending three numbers floating up and one-shotting three Mages. Before the swing had even finished he stepped forward, pulled the weapon back and turned the motion into a forward thrust, running the other two Mages straight through. With the Mage class’s pitiful HP, there was no surviving even a careless blow from Ye Tianxie. In another brief instant all five Mages had been one-shot, near enough at the same moment.
From the crowd, every eye locked on the spot, came the sound of indrawn breath.
In the blink of an eye, five more — and these five were the Mages sheltered at the rear, the strongest attackers of the group, every one of them dead!
(End of Chapter 162)