After confirming that Ye Chui was not joking, that he truly intended to go to the hot spring resort to kill that Blood Snake Beast, and that the eager expressions on his guild members’ faces were not feigned, Xi Lesi could only say with a face full of horror: “You lot are truly mad!”
After discussing some action details with Ye Chui, Xi Lesi took the controlled fat steward and the others and temporarily departed. The fat steward was, after all, an important figure in the Second Prince’s residence and could not disappear indefinitely. She needed to return to the residence and control his actions. Her [Insect Spirit] could control others, but it had a certain distance limit.
“I cannot act with you all, so be very careful when you move.” Before leaving, Xi Lesi said to Ye Chui, “The Blood Snake Beast is a sixth-tier magical beast; that kind of thing is very difficult to deal with.”
“Don’t worry, it poses no difficulty for us.” Ye Chui gave Xi Lesi a confident smile.
He was, of course, not blindly confident.
Magical beasts had a deep connection to dragons. It was said that from ancient times, there were originally no magical beasts in this world. For a time, the entire continent had been dominated by the dragon race. Later, the dragon race interbred with other fierce beasts and wild animals, producing species with dragon bloodlines. These creatures contained a portion of dragon blood within them and generated magic cores in their bodies, so they were called magical beasts.
Later, the dragons went extinct, but the magical beast race proliferated greatly. However, with each generation, the dragon bloodline in the magical beasts thinned rapidly. Although it was only a little at a time, over countless years, the number of magical beasts still sharply declined. In the Age of the Gods, the God of Gods had recreated dragons from extinction, this one being Ye Chui’s summoned beast, the Black Gold Flame Dragon, Long Bao.
After Long Bao, countless dragons appeared one after another. In the God Realm, there was a dragon’s nest where the re-proliferated dragon race lived. But after the gods fell, the dragon’s nest vanished, and the dragon race went extinct once more. Following that, magical beasts had now also become scarce resources.
Magical beasts were divided into nine tiers; a “tier” represented the content of dragon bloodline in the magical beast’s body. When it reached the peak of ninth tier, the magical beast could undergo ultimate transformation and grow into a dragon. Back then, the God of Gods had continuously enhanced the dragon bloodline in Long Bao’s body, allowing it to ultimately evolve from an ordinary magical beast into a Black Gold Flame Dragon. Later, he had used the same method to successively nurture countless dragons. However, after the gods fell, the method for transformation into dragons was also lost, and no magical beast could ever step over that “dragonisation” threshold again.
On the current Castro Continent, there were still a few ancient relics surviving from the Age of the Gods to the present day; they were all ninth-tier magical beasts, but they had been stuck at that pass for thousands of years without advancing a step.
The Beast family’s Beast God was precisely such a ninth-tier peak magical beast.
The Blood Snake Beast was a sixth-tier magical beast; this was also a very rare powerful magical beast nowadays. With each tier increase, a magical beast’s strength underwent a qualitative leap. The magic core would change, making them smarter, and for magical beasts, being smart meant being closer to humans, which in turn represented power. The highest-tier magical beasts Ye Chui and the others had faced before this were only fourth-tier.
But Ye Chui was not overly worried about the Blood Snake Beast, because he could summon Long Bao. Although Long Bao’s current power was not even a thousandth of its prime, it was still a dragon, an existence at the pinnacle of the magical beast pyramid.
Its [Dragon’s Might] was enough to intimidate any magical beast!
After Xi Lesi left, Ye Chui had his guild members rest well first, preparing for the evening’s battle.
By dusk, they gathered in the secluded private room, ordered a full table of lavish dishes, and ate a hearty meal. Then, under the moonlight, they left the Heavy Timber Inn.
Everything in the imperial capital was now utterly different from Debbie’s memories. Along the way, Debbie kept saying things like, “This place used to be a shop; I even bought toys there.” “How has this turned into a mansion? I remember it was a bunch of rundown shacks.” Ye Chui and the others listened in silence; from Debbie’s words, they could clearly sense the sigh of how things had changed.
Danni was very familiar with the current imperial capital. She led the group, and soon they arrived in the western district of the city. It appeared desolate but was actually the most valuable area in the entire city. In the distance, tall city walls could be seen, and the vast region in view was enveloped in greenery. According to Danni’s introduction, this was the territory of the city’s wealthy and powerful nobles. Although within the city walls, it retained its primitive landscape. The estates and villas of the lords were all built here, along with some high-end brothels, theatres, and wineries, making it a very upscale pleasure ground.
Even commoners were forbidden from setting foot here, and there were many terrifying rumours. Some commoner children, out of curiosity and playfulness, entered this area but never left again. Days later, their bodies were discovered, clearly having been tortured to death. Yet, faced with such tragedies, the commoners could only swallow their grievances. The noble gardens in the west thus became even more feared.
The Anduin family’s hot spring resort was located among them.
The terrain here was far more complex than the labyrinthine urban districts: mountain paths, dense forests. Under Danni’s lead, they spent considerable time before finally reaching the outskirts of the Anduin family’s hot spring resort. It was a cluster of buildings nestled among birch groves, exuding an air of elegance and serenity. But now, it was pitch black inside, long uninhabited.
From a nearby thicket, Ye Chui and the others slowly approached. Soon, Ye Chui noticed the situation around the resort’s courtyard in the night: magic light lamps embedded in the door and walls emitted a faint glow. At the main gate, two armoured swordsmen were patrolling, with two ferocious-looking magical beasts at their feet. Ye Chui was all too familiar with those magical beasts: second-tier ones, Earth Dragon Beasts.
Back when the Tenth Prince had brought his Dragon Knight Guards to intercept Ye Chui, those guards had been equipped with this low-tier magical beast. They were not even enough to fill the gaps in Long Bao’s teeth.
Ye Chui and his group hid in the thicket and could hear the two guards’ conversation drifting out.
“…To my mind, there’s no need for us to guard this place at all. Now the entire imperial capital knows this hot spring belongs to our Jores family. Who would dare come here looking for trouble? I really want to soak properly in the hot spring and have a nice drink.”
“Don’t jinx yourself. If something happens, Lord Yuren won’t let us off easy. He’s a man even more brutal than a magical beast.”
“I’m just saying it. Our Lord Yuren is indeed terrifying. Heh heh, a few days ago, that fat deadweight from the Anduin family actually tried to spar with Lord Yuren and ended up easily beaten into critical condition by him. Serves him right. The Anduin family deserves to be wiped out. Sigh, what do you think has happened to that Joker girl Danni now? I heard she was kidnapped by that Whatever Name Magic Guild.”
“That woman’s a notorious idiot. She’s probably been done in by now. That illegitimate son Ye Chui is no ordinary fellow. They say he’s a super pervert; to join his magic guild, you have to offer yourself to him first. So his guild is full of beauties!”
“Exactly, exactly. I hear that illegitimate son is eight feet tall with an eight-foot waist. He doesn’t spare the old or young. That brute-strength girl is supposedly only ten years old, and that Debbie, she’s of the same generation as the old emperor and Prince Geller, probably seventy or eighty this year. Who knows how Ye Chui dug her up from some graveyard, but he didn’t let her go either… Tsk tsk, Danni probably couldn’t escape his clutches either.”
Rumours about Ye Chui and his group were varied and wild; all sorts of gossip existed. With the great divide between warm water in the north and south, it was inevitable that stories about Ye Chui would twist by the time they reached here. Moreover, these two were just chatting idly, speaking even more recklessly. Mixing in the rumours they had heard with their own embellishments, they casually said such things. Hearing these words, Ye Chui and his group were all furious.
Green: “What do you mean ‘offer yourself to the guild leader first to join’!?”
Guni: “Who said I’m only ten? I’m at least fourteen!”
Danni: “They actually called me an idiot!?”
Debbie: “Seventy… seventy or eighty!?”
The one who could not tolerate it most was Ye Chui: “Am I really that vile? The guild being full of beauties isn’t my fault! That’s the decision of the great cosmic consciousness, okay…”
Debbie was already unable to hold back and prepared to charge out. Ye Chui hurriedly pulled her back: “Don’t make too much noise. Let me handle it.” As he spoke, Ye Chui’s body suddenly transformed with a rustling sound into a swarm of bats, scattering and flying apart.
The two guards heard the noise and looked over. Seeing it was a flock of bats, they paid it no mind and resumed chatting. However, after just a few words, both felt a weight on their shoulders, as if something had landed there. Turning their heads, in the dim light, they saw it was a small bat. The bat opened its mouth full of sharp fangs and bit straight into their necks.
Both were greatly startled and opened their mouths to cry out, but a sense of powerless weakness rapidly swept through their bodies. They thudded to the ground one after another.
The two Earth Dragon Beasts, startled, leaped up from their prone positions, looking around left and right for danger. They opened their mouths to roar in fury, but the dense swarm of bats had already converged in the air. The first to form was a pair of arms; those arms rapidly grew larger, turning into enormous green hands. The two hands, one each, pressed down on their heads.
With a squelch, like watermelons smashed on the ground, the heads of the two Earth Dragon Beasts were crushed to pulp. Their massive, ferocious bodies then slumped to the side, completely lifeless.
The bats continued to gather, reforming into Ye Chui’s figure. The green, enlarged arms also returned to normal.
