The mother beast lay wounded, blood flowing incessantly. Xiang Ling and Tiran were relatively unscathed, standing between her and the young beasts, their long spears and sword blades poised to strike down the mother beast at any moment. "Why do I feel like we are the villains here..." Tiran grumbled, holding his head in pain. "Ugh, my head is spinning, feeling queasy. It will take a while for me to raise my mental power to withstand the effects of the rules..."
"Since she attacked us, she should be prepared to pay the price, regardless of good or evil," Xiang Ling replied sternly.
"I was just complaining casually, you don't have to take it so seriously," Tiran retorted.
"...Alright."
"Instead of complaining," Tiran, feeling a bit less dizzy and his mental power slightly recovered, tapped the large block of ice beside him and glanced at the large pool of fresh blood surrounding the mother beast lying on the ground, "what should we do now? Should we kill her?"
While it would be the most logical choice to eliminate a potential threat, Tiran found it difficult to bring himself to do it. After all, this wild beast had been lured here by Yuan, and making such a decision for the sake of her offspring traveling a long way was not something he could easily accept.
"Stay alert, we still don't know her rules," Xiang Ling warned, her eyes devoid of mercy, stepping carefully through the bloodstains, a lesson learned from battles past—to never let down one's guard until the enemy's head was severed.
If there was a chance for communication, there might have been room for negotiation, but Xiang Ling could not afford to be delayed any longer, especially not with a Holy Rank threat looming near her territory.
"My apologies, but I will let your child go," Xiang Ling said softly, whether in hopes that the mother beast would understand her or to reassure herself.
The mother beast, lying prostrate on the ground, showed no response except for a slight movement of her body. Only the silent flow of blood remained.
"Hey, General Xiang, don't you think there's too much blood flowing here?" Tiran stepped back and realized, with the sound of liquid splashing, that the mother beast's blood had slowly spread to his feet, saturating the surrounding sandy ground with a dark red hue.
"Step back!" Xiang Ling swiftly kicked off the ground, but it was a moment too late. The mother beast's blood, like some unstable chemical compound, boiled and then exploded at an astonishing rate.
Boom! The blood explosion had a bomb-like effect, but fortunately Xiang Ling's quick activation of her spiritual power provided some cushioning, along with her leap that managed to evade most of the damage. Tiran, benefiting from the Frost Chi attribute, froze the blood around him with a kick of his foot, impeding the explosion's progress. Other than being startled, he suffered minimal harm.
"Much more resilient than expected," Xiang Ling adjusted her scattered breath and saw the mother beast stand up again, readying her spear for battle.
The damage from Tiran's strike was not as severe as anticipated, perhaps due to the high physical strength and recovery abilities of an adult wild beast like the mother beast. Although the wound on her chest remained, it no longer bled.
More daunting than the fact that the mother beast had not been defeated was her previously undisclosed ability to explode blood, which made close combat a risky endeavor unless one attacked from a distance, preventing face-to-face confrontations that could lead to certain death.
Most importantly, the mother beast had yet to reveal her Holy Rank rules even after being pushed to this extent.
The good news is that now Mang Qing's focus seems to be off Tiran and Xiang Ling. After forcing the two to retreat with a bloody explosion, Mang Qing immediately moved to the ice block that sealed her child, threateningly chirping at the two while continuously destroying the ice block.
If only she would just go back like this.
When Tiran witnessed this scene, he still held a glimmer of hope in his heart. Even if they ended up killing this innocent beast after all the struggle, Tiran knew he wouldn't feel good about it.
"But it seems like hope is dwindling away..."
So, communication is really important. If they understood the beast's way of communication, they wouldn't have ended up fighting. They would have simply explained things and returned the child to her.
Tiran also tightened his grip on the sword handle, facing off against the weary young beast Mang Qing, who had just licked herself free from the ice, lingering in place. Despite retrieving her child, the protective mother beast didn't seem to intend on backing down.
Tsk, looks like she won't stop until she kills us, huh? Looks like there's no choice but to fight.
Although he said that, Tiran was quite confident. Holy Rank against Holy Rank, and with a few well-timed sneak attacks, he should be able to win without much difficulty.
However, the events that followed made not only Tiran, but even Xiang Ling, look a bit grim.
"Are you kidding me?"
The mother beast raised her head and let out a completely different chirp. This time, unlike the previous meaningless displays of aggression, she received a response.
Apart from the barely conscious young beast lying on the flatbed, another similar chirp echoed from the sky.
A beast that looked exactly like Mang Qing, but with jet-black feathers, hovered overhead, with several chilling eyes fixed firmly on the two below.
How come there is another one? The instructor, this is not what we agreed on!
Tiran remembered clearly from the bamboo slips that Mang Qing, due to having only "females" in the population, had a reproduction method completely different from normal creatures, with no physical copulation involved. Two mature individuals would each divide a part of their original power, merge it, and then inject the embryo into the uterus of one individual. In a sense, this could also be considered a form of asexual reproduction...
Typically, the Mang Qing that nurtured offspring would raise the young alone, while the other would not have any responsibility and would not even have any contact with the mother beast.
Therefore, from start to finish, Tiran and Xiang Ling had believed they would only face one Holy Rank beast.
The black Mang Qing circling in the sky seemed to be mercilessly mocking them.
The situation took a sharp turn. The comparison of Holy Rank strengths was that simple; unless they encountered someone like Kongming who was exceptionally powerful, where the number of people in a camp equated to their strength, and the two individuals' laws could cooperate to overwhelm a single Holy Rank, it was difficult to outnumber one with similar strength.
"I think we might have a big problem here."
"There is indeed no record of a pair of Mang Qing. The black one could be a mutant."
"I don't care if it's a mutant... the point is, how do we deal with the one in the sky and the one in front of us?"
Tiran's scalp prickled, with the mother beast staring fiercely ahead and the highly likely other Mang Qing in the sky acting as the "father."
"I can handle it."
Xiang Ling responded calmly.
"Sis, are you serious?" Tiran raised an eyebrow. A two-versus-one situation, both at the law level, did she really think she had a protagonist aura now?
"Of course," Xiang Ling said, taking a half-step back with her right foot after speaking, and at the same time bending her body slightly into a tense posture. "Buy me some time."
"Is there no other choice... These are two Holy Rank after all, I don't think I can hold on for very long," Tiran said in dismay, but Xiang Ling seemed to have no intention of giving her any other options, and simply kept quiet.
Even though Tiran couldn't see, she could clearly sense a kind of 'momentum' building up around Xiang Ling.
Perhaps sensing this as well, the two wild beasts, one black and one white, no longer remained passive. They both lunged towards Xiang Ling's position from the front and back.
"Huh, isn't this a tough spot?" Unable to bear watching Xiang Ling get hit, Tiran had no choice but to join the fray. Forced into a difficult situation of fighting two opponents, she had to brace herself. Unable to freely utilize her half-baked understanding of the rules in battle, she knew she couldn't wrestle with two Holy Rank wild beasts. Her only hope lay in the protagonist's halo.
