Chapter 185: Let’s Run, Fox (I)

Previous Chapter ◊ Table of Content ◊ Next Chapter

Chapter 185: Let’s Run, Fox (I)

No illness or pain. No separation forced on them by death. No lingering regrets. For the first time across all the worlds Shang Ke had experienced, he and his lover had been able to spend an entire lifetime together from beginning to end.

Despite all the suffering he had endured from world to world, Shang Ke was still grateful to the System for letting him meet his lover—and for giving them the chance to fall in love again and again.

Shang Ke left that world content and happy. Yet instead of returning directly to the System Space, he found himself standing atop a mountain peak. Layer upon layer of mountains rose around him beneath drifting clouds and mist, while a magnificent expanse of rivers and land stretched away below his feet.

A pair of arms reached around him from behind and wrapped around his waist. A smiling voice sounded beside his ear. “Do you like it? This will be where we cultivate in seclusion from now on.”

Shang Ke turned, wanting to see the man behind him, but the scene changed the moment he looked back. He was now sheltered in the man’s arms while countless sharp blue-green lights whirled around them, weaving themselves into an enormous net. Crushing pressure closed in from every direction, saturated with terrifying killing intent.

“Chen Xiao, Shou Mo, I’ll make sure neither of you ever reincarnates again!” A vicious roar came from beyond the light.

Shang Ke’s vision was blurred. He could make out neither the person beyond the light nor the man beside him. All he felt was a suffocating pressure, as though something terrible was about to happen.

“Shou Mo, do you trust me?” the man beside him asked.

“Of course.” Shang Ke heard “himself” answer without hesitation.

“Then let’s gamble with him.”

“On what?”

“On all our lives to come.”

As the words fell, a burst of heart-rending pain tore through Shang Ke…

Shang Ke woke drenched in cold sweat. The familiar System Space filled his vision, confusion and alarm written across his face.

“System, what was that just now?”

System: 【What does the Host mean? The System does not understand.】

Shang Ke: “…I had a dream about someone named Chen Xiao and Shou Mo.”

System: 【…Who are they?】

Shang Ke: “System, have you not noticed that when you lie, you have a strange pause before answering?”

System: 【The System never lies. It is simply unable to answer. Questions concerning Chen Xiao and Shou Mo must be answered by the Host himself.】

Shang Ke silently raised both middle fingers at the System, only for the System to automatically censor them.

This time, he did not ask how many missions remained. He no longer wanted them to end. Once they did, perhaps he would never see “him” again. Faced with that possibility, Shang Ke would rather endure the suffering and continue through reincarnation forever.

After resting for a few days, Shang Ke entered the Hundred Training Space again to study skills that interested him.

By now, Shang Ke was practically a walking skill library, with dozens of abilities under his belt. Daily-life skills, athletics, combat, literature, art—there was almost nothing he could not handle. Naturally, his mastery varied according to his interests.

Shang Ke preferred hands-on skills: repair and assembly, shooting, alchemy, driving and piloting, design, programming, musical instruments, cooking, and so on. The rest he had mostly learned under the System’s supervision and could use competently, even if he had not mastered them.

After completing a new round of training, Shang Ke once again entered a new world.

With a heavy thud, Shang Ke hit the ground, and the scent of earth and grass immediately filled his nose.

When he opened his eyes, all he saw was green. Sunlight filtered through the dense canopy in scattered patches. Behind him came chaotic battle cries and the clash of metal on metal; a fierce fight was clearly underway.

Judging from the sound of the weapons and the primitive surroundings, this world appeared to be in an age dominated by cold weapons.

The System quickly sent him information.

This was an undeveloped primitive planet inhabited by beastfolk capable of taking two forms. They lived in tribes scattered across the continent, and their population was sparse; even the largest tribe numbered no more than five hundred.

This time Shang Ke had transmigrated into a fox beastfolk named Yanu. After another tribe seized his homeland, Yanu wandered alone for several months before the lion tribe took him in. Born unable to speak and deeply insecure because of it, he suffered considerable discrimination there. For the sake of survival, he endured it in silence and lived as unobtrusively as possible.

Once, Yanu followed Lion King Mutu on a hunting trip, only for the group to be ambushed halfway by the Avani. More than a dozen young adult lions were killed, while Mutu barely escaped with his life. Yanu, meanwhile, took advantage of his agility to slip through the encirclement during the battle.

Given the lions’ combat strength, they should never have suffered such a disastrous defeat. Someone inside the tribe, however, had colluded with the Avani and leaked their route. The Avani laid an ambush along the path, masking their scent with spiderflower and opening with poisoned arrows before overwhelming the lions with several times their numbers. The hunting party was almost completely wiped out.

Although the original Yanu fled the battlefield, he had not abandoned his companions. He raced back to the lion tribe to report the attack so they could send reinforcements and raise their guard.

Unfortunately, the traitor who had colluded with the Avani was Mutu’s own younger brother, Xite. The moment he saw Yanu stumble back in such a sorry state, he understood what had happened. Yanu was mute and could not explain the situation clearly, so Xite seized the opportunity to brand him a spy and have him imprisoned. He then led a party out in a show of rescuing Mutu. By the time they reached the ambush site, however, all they found was blood—not a single body remained.

The Avani were among the cruelest of all beastfolk. They delighted in killing and even devoured the flesh of other beastfolk. Any enemy they killed, regardless of species, could become food.

So the absence of bodies meant only one thing: the Avani had won and carried the dead lions away.

Xite outwardly displayed grief and fury while secretly rejoicing. In the name of avenging Mutu, he rallied the tribe and replaced him as the new Lion King. Yanu became an outlet for everyone’s hatred. Branded a traitor, he was publicly burned at the stake and died with his name never cleared.

Just as Xite took control and prepared to consolidate his power, the Avani broke their agreement. They turned on him, slaughtered hundreds of lions, and drove the survivors into flight. The once-powerful lion tribe collapsed in a single night.

Xite retreated with the few followers he had left and hid away, no longer daring to oppose the Avani.

Several years later, Mutu—who had survived and finally recovered from his injuries—returned, gathered the scattered lions, and rebuilt the tribe. After steadily rebuilding their strength, they eventually annihilated the Avani in a single campaign and reclaimed their homeland.

Mutu had delayed returning for two reasons: his injuries were severe, and he suspected there was a traitor within the tribe. He simply had no idea that the traitor was his own younger brother, Xite.

For an injured Lion King, returning to the tribe was dangerous. Any tribesman who coveted the throne could challenge him, and under the lions’ brutal succession rules, the reigning king could not refuse—even while badly wounded. In Mutu’s condition at the time, accepting such a challenge would almost certainly have killed him.

So Mutu had planned to recover first and return afterward to rebuild the tribe. He never imagined that the Avani would massacre the lions in the meantime. By the time his injuries healed, the lion tribe’s territory had already been occupied.

The System’s information ended there, so Shang Ke did not know whether Mutu ever discovered that Xite had been the traitor. As for the original Yanu, he had been nothing more than a victim of the plot and never even received a chance to defend himself.

Shang Ke had arrived at the exact moment of the ambush, after the original Yanu had broken out of the encirclement alone and stumbled to the ground.

【Main Mission—Protect the lion tribe’s territory from invasion.】

Shang Ke was already accustomed to the System’s endless variety of missions. Whether he could complete this one could wait; his immediate priority was changing Mutu’s impression of him.

The original Yanu was an outsider: unable to speak, withdrawn, and almost invisible within the tribe. After apparently fleeing the battlefield, he would probably be branded a coward as well.

Shang Ke rolled to his feet and darted into the trees. He quickly locked onto an Avani hiding in the treetop and crept toward him without a sound.

A poisoned arrow protruded from Mutu’s arm, and several blade and ax wounds covered his body. The torn flesh was slick with blood.

Watching his tribespeople fall one after another to the Avani filled Mutu with fury. His face twisted ferociously as he killed several enemies in succession, but the poison spreading through his body steadily blurred his consciousness and sapped his strength.

Several Avani surrounded Mutu. One seized the moment he was unable to recover his stance, rushed him from behind, and swung an ax straight at his neck.

At that moment, an arrow whistled through the air, skimming past the corner of Mutu’s eye before striking the wrist of the Avani behind him. The attacker screamed, and his ax clattered to the ground.

Mutu had no time to look for the archer. He rolled, snatched up the fallen ax, and swept it around him, forcing back the Avani closing in for the kill.

At first, the Avani did not realize Shang Ke had fired the arrow; they assumed some idiot on their own side had slipped and hit the wrong target.

When the second and third arrows also struck the Avani surrounding Mutu, they finally realized something was wrong.

“They have someone in the woods!” an Avani leader roared, immediately sending several fighters toward Shang Ke’s position.

Shang Ke dropped from the tree, picked up the broad blade left by the Avani he had killed, gave it a few testing flourishes, and met the approaching enemies head-on.

Only then did Mutu realize that the archer was Yanu—the fox he had assumed had fled the battle.

Watching Yanu repel the Avani with clean, decisive strikes, Mutu was secretly astonished. He had never imagined the fox possessed this level of combat skill.

There was no time to think further. More than half of the lions had already fallen, while the Avani still had fifty or sixty fighters left. What followed would be a battle to the death…

Previous Chapter ◊ Table of Content ◊ Next Chapter