Fang Zhao was a boy with a slight and slender build, a few centimetres taller than Yu Han, with red eyes and black hair that sparkled even when covered in grime.
Li Yao took his helmet off. “Holy landlords. Tubs, did he just grow a foot? Red Eyes, you gonna grow wings next?”
“W-what do you mean?” Fang Zhao said, his voice a notch deeper. Refreshingly deep. That was a voice to host the Golden Globes!
“Are you choking on a bone?” Li Yao took a step back. “Is it a dragon bone made of gold and spirit stones?”
Li Yao’s reaction wasn’t overboard. Even Fei Rui clicked his claws.
Fang Zhao’s whole body was bulging with lean, mean, toned muscles. He’d grown taller, probably nearing two metres. His skin was white like a CGI render but not pale. Clearly, blood flowed underneath all that rosy glamour.
His hair was at his hips now, and his eyes were like crimson rubies, not just red.
No clothes. Just two rings and a bracelet. At his feet were the ripped clothes and his sect tokens.
“That’s it.” Li Yao put his helmet back on again. “I’m going to find myself a cursed ring and level up.”
“Won’t work,” Yu Han said. “You gotta be exiled from a clan first. And have your lover leave for another man.”
Fang Zhao seemed to just notice his change. He observed his transformed body. His fist opened into a palm, then clenched again.
“Those are yaoi fingers,” Yu Han said.
“What fingers?” Li Yao asked.
“Han’er, did he put on clothes yet?” Huang Niuniu asked. “Why are nobles so perverted?”
Fang Zhao hurriedly took out an extra set of robes from his stone storage ring.
“It’s tight.” The red-eyed boy flushed. After some tugging, the trousers actually ripped at the seams.
“T-that was an accident!” Fang Zhao tried to explain. “My strength has grown too much. I gained so many points in it.”
“Are you showing off?” Li Yao said.
They had stored all their extra clothes in Fang Zhao’s ring. In the end, he wore some of Yu Han’s. Although nothing was long enough, Fang Zhao could roll up the ends of the trousers and wear them like short pants. After ripping off the sleeves, he could wear the upper part of the sect robes. He looked like a tank-top-wearing hunk, though. Elder Chang might approve of the fashion. Li Yao already did.
Huang Niuniu was still glaring at him. “Exhibitionist.”
Fang Zhao’s face looked like he was about to kill himself. But after dealing with the clothing logistics, the reality of the situation finally hit Fang Zhao.
“I levelled up,” Fang Zhao said. “I’m… Level 1. I levelled up.”
“A man doesn’t cry,” Li Yao said.
“I-I know, I—” Fang Zhao stammered.
“What a little boy,” Huang Niuniu said.
“Stop being so petty,” Yu Han said to the girl. He patted Fang Zhao. “There’s no shame in letting out a few sobs.”
That’s what his dad would have said. Johan would have rather died, though. But Yu Han was coming to appreciate the more emotional part of being alive.
Fang Zhao wailed as if a dam had broken. Even Huang Niuniu didn’t make a mean comment. After all, the girl was just jealous of his progress, not heartless.
Fei Rui clicked to Fang Zhao and nudged the boy with a pincer.
After a while, Fang Zhao calmed down.
“I’ve shown you something shameful,” Fang Zhao said. He had wiped his face clean, but the corners of his eyes were still red. Every few seconds, he hiccupped. “It works, Brother Yu. I can use—huh?”
“What is it?”
“I’m going through the edicts from my dao record,” Fang Zhao said.
Edicts were what they called status notifications.
“My bloodline trait changed?” Fang Zhao’s eyes widened. “It was the Red Fiend Ancestry before. Now it’s the Jade Sanguine Asura Ancestry. What even is that? No, rather, why evolve? Bloodline evolution can’t happen with the blood of lesser beasts. And there must have been a mix of thousands of species in the pool!”
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“What grade is it?” Huang Niuniu asked. “Maybe it isn’t an evolution but the opposite?”
“It’s—” Fang Zhao stopped himself. A grin broke out on his face, and he started laughing.
“First crying, now laughing,” Huang Niuniu said. “Did you lose it?”
“I can’t say the grade,” Fang Zhao was still laughing. “My vow prohibits me from saying. But I did gain another bloodline art. It’s called Sanguine Blood Mark.”
“What does it do?” Yu Han asked.
“I don’t know. I have to test it out,” Fang Zhao said. “I gained six points in body origin.”
“So six in each sub-origin? Thirty sub-origin points?” Yu Han didn’t want to show unsightly jealousy like Huang Niuniu. But he was definitely feeling envy.
Fang Zhao nodded. “One of those was the heavenly allocation. But the rest, it just says that I gained the sub-origins. I also gained a full point in mind and spirit origin. I-I can finally allocate primordial qi. Seven years. It’s been seven accursed years!”
If there was any doubt before, all of it was dispelled. Fang Zhao had a unique fate. The fate of a filthy cheater. Whether Yu Han called it a protagonist template or luck’s favourite, even hiccupping might cause the red-eyed boy to power up. He’d barely survive the hiccup, then gain some stupid buff.
Fang Zhao clenched his fist, his eye going to the golden, tiger-engraved ring. He pulled it.
It wouldn’t come off.
“No luck,” there was discontent in his voice.
But a second later, a loud screech echoed.
“Ah—!”
“Hells!”
“Wha—”
“—my ears!”
The sound went on, like an infinite drone! Speleothems and rimstone domes shattered. As did the bones at the bottom of the pool.
Fang Zhao’s hand suddenly jerked forward. A white blur left from the ring and fell to the ground.
“Eeek!” Huang Niuniu screamed, jumping back. Li Yao brandished his sword, and Yu Han readied the last two elite-grade stone arrow talismans. The sound had stopped, but the pain remained.
Fei Rui was at his full size, his shell marked with scratches from the previous battle.
It was a corpse.
A dried husk of a woman, a mummy clothed in pristine white robes as if made from silver. Magnificent gold and obsidian embroidery adorned the robe, depicting a tiger on the left shoulder. Down the torso, the scenes changed to inky fire.
The corpse opened its eyes. It had no pupils.
Huang Niuniu screamed louder. She screamed and screamed and screamed, as if she had an unlimited supply of oxygen.
The sound was honestly worse than the previous screech.
“Annoying,” the corpse spoke. It was a melodious voice. Perfectly pitched like a singer’s, but soft and mellow, akin to the chime of bells.
That just made Huang Niuniu more agitated.
“A ghost!” Her knees wobbled, and she plopped down. Yet the volume of her screams rose.
As if bothered by the high-pitched sound, the corpse broke apart into a cloud of fiery sparks. The sparks formed into the shape of a cat with two tails and jumped into the dried-up pools.
The sound of crunching bone was followed by the squelch of munching meat.
The cenote quaked. More speleothems broke from the ceiling and floor. Bone dust rose like a tornado.
Yu Han saw the cat-shaped figure devouring the pool bed that had been accumulating flesh and bones for decades, probably centuries. In minutes, the mountain of bone and paste disappeared. As the cat ate through the biomass, its form grew more solid. With every tonne devoured, its colours grew vibrant.
It finished all the remains nearby. Then it moved to the other connecting pools until not a speck of bone or paste was left.
The cat climbed up the edges of a shattered dam. It spotted the remains of the many Redgrass beasts and, of course, the giant Redgrass Beak Viper boss.
It opened its mouth and munched. Half the giant Redgrass Beak Viper disappeared. In a minute more, the last of the corpses were gone too. It moved on to the Lesser Nurturing Bloodferns.
Yu Han watched with morbid curiosity. A cat eating vegetables.
Soon, what was left was a winged cat with two tails.
“Who are you?” it asked. She—the voice was that of an adult lady. She didn’t open her mouth, but the sound reached their ears, anyway.
I-is this qi -speak?
Before Yu Han could answer, Fang Zhao roared forward.
“Wait, you idiot—” Yu Han wanted to stop him. But it was too late.
“You’re the one who cursed me!” Fang Zhao charged. One step, and he traversed metres.
Feather Scale Step!
“You took away my future!”
He punched out. The sound of his fist broke the air like thunder.
Thunderclap Fist!
“You ruined my life!”
His eyes were bloodshot. If looks could kill, the cat would’ve died already.
“Death is too good for you!” His fist went through the cat.
“Fast,” Li Yao whistled.
It was just an afterimage. The cat had hopped, dodging the fist. She landed on Fang Zhao’s outstretched hand.
“Why?” she asked. This time, the confusion in her voice was palpable.
“Perish, fiend!” Fang Zhao, on the other hand, had gone mad. He punched, kicked, and clawed.
Every attack missed. The cat gracefully weaved between them.
“Why are you mad?”
“Die!”
“What is your name?”
“Die!”
“Why should I?”
“Die!”
“No.”
After a while, Fang Zhao was sweating buckets. Even with the level up and all those extra stat points he’d gained, he couldn’t touch a tuft of fur.
Yu Han sat down.
“Should we help him?” Li Yao asked.
“That cat ate half of that giant Redgrass Beak Viper with one bite,” Yu Han said. “We’d already be dead if she wanted.”
Li Yao sheathed his sword.
“Let’s wait until Fang Zhao’s done playing,” Yu Han said. “Niu’er, you good?”
“I-it’s not a ghost?” Huang Niuniu was calmer now. “She’s so cute!”
…right.
After some more time, Fang Zhao was on his back, gasping for air.
“Cursed demon.” His voice was hoarse. “Fight me with honour!”
“I’m no demon,” the cat said. “I’m a tiger—”
“You’re a calico!” Fang Zhao said with a menacing scowl, as if he was dishing out the sickest insult.
“I’m a tige—”
“A calico!”
“I’m a human with the bloodline of a Celestial Tiger.” The cat padded around the prone Li Yao with silent grace. “Look at my graceful orange and white and black.”
“A calico!” Fang Zhao said.
“Is he a kid?” Li Yao said. “Did his brain turn funny after growing taller?”
“She’s a tiger.” Huang Niuniu squeezed closer to Yu Han. “Tigers have black and white and orange stripes, right?”
“I mean, yeah,” Yu Han said. “She only has some patches, though.”
The cat had a white, fluffy belly. Her face and back had large patches of orange and black. Certainly, the colour scheme matched a tiger’s, but not the shape of those colours.
It was a calico cat with wings and two tails. A fluffy one. Kinda chubby, or was it the fur? Huggable.
“This is my first time seeing a tiger,” Huang Niuniu said excitedly.
“I-I’ll kill you,” Fang Zhao said. His voice had grown weak, but not the ire. “You took everything from me. You—”
“Do you mean true and pure qi?” the cat asked, trotting up to Fang Zhao’s face and pawing his forehead.
“Y-you’re humiliating me after sucking me dry, you—”
“I don’t eat other humans.”
“He is, in fact, referring to his true and pure qi, in accordance with your prior assumption, Revered Cultivator.” Yu Han decided to answer in Fang Zhao’s stead, taking a more respectful tone.
The cat looked at Yu Han with those feline pupils, then at Fang Zhao’s finger with the tiger—no, calico-engraved golden ring.
“Didn’t you read the instruction manual?” The cat cocked her head in confusion.
OMG! There was an instruction manual? I wonder what happens next :X
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