Chapter 113: Insolent
[System Notification]
[Host entering "Punitive Mode." Temporary buff: Dominance +45%, Cruelty Aura +25%.]
Fluffy opened its mouth, baring the white and sparkly row of teeth at them as it looked up at her, as if asking for her permission to bite them to death, not that she would agree to this anyway.
She alone was enough to take them on.
[Non-lethal deterrence recommended. However, Host is authorized to use full force if necessary.]
Ling Yu shrugged in a manner that made the men grind their teeth. "Choose," she said in that low voice that always carried the same message: do as I say, or die.
"Pick your best fighter and put him forward for one-on-one or whatever. Winner takes nothing, but the loser will die anyway."
Her lips curved. "Make it fast."
A dozen pairs of eyes landed on one gaunt, red-faced thug with a chipped bronze skill badge clumsily floating above his head. He was the same one who had stepped forward earlier and demanded her things. Tonight, he would go in first. He puffed out his chest, mumbled fodder for morale, and staggered to the center like a man walking toward a slaughterhouse.
The courtyard was hushed as lantern flames guttered. Shen Ming’s men crowded at the edges, some trying to look offended by the whole affair while secretly wanting blood and spectacle. Shen Ming himself remained rooted where he stood, his face covered in a mask that was trying too hard to be benevolent.
The gears turned behind his pretty eyes: if she slaughtered his people outright, how would that affect his hold? But he also could not let her tear through his base without repercussion. The tug of his obsession and the instinct for control warred in him.
Ling Yu didn’t care for Shen Ming’s puzzle. She cared for the man at her feet.
The thug came on like a mad dog with wild swings, thought it lacked even little techniques. Ling Yu’s first move was almost languid, a casual parry with her dagger tip that glanced off his forearm. He overreached. She stepped inside and let him throw his weight forward; she caught his momentum at the shoulder and, with a simple twist, let his knee buckle. The sound the courtyard made was not loud, but it was a sound you felt: cartilage giving way. He screamed once, a high, ugly shriek. Ling Yu’s palm landed across the base of his throat in a staccato push and didn’t stop. Her fingers didn’t squeeze to kill immediately, but to crush him. He gurgled. Blood bubbled out as his carotid spasmed.
[System Notification]
[Minor Execution performed. Enemy combatant incapacitated. Cruelty meter +1.]
[Streamer is at risk of a potential punishment for killing a sponsored lower being.]
[Unknown Cosmic Entity sneers at the system’s remark.]
[Good. Let them taste the water of the underworld stream. Don’t hold back if you must, I’ll see who dares to touch my potential to-be babysitter!]
Ling Yu let him lie twitching, limbs spasming as he tried to pull breath through raw lungs. The others in the crowd inhaled in a single, audible gasp. Faces that had been bold now crumpled. Someone vomited at the horrible sight before their eyes, at the blood bath that happened in a few seconds.
She stepped back, wiped the damp blood from her fingers on the hem of her sleeve, and laughed a short, cracked laugh. It wasn’t meant to be pretty. It was a thing stripped down to its bones, an announcement: she would not be bargained with.
"You think," she said calmly, voice like iron filings, "that your numbers and your courage are more than a paper shield?" She looked at the men who had shoved the thug forward. "You would have them come for me? You would risk your young and pitiful lives for the chance of my potions? Foolish."
A wiry, insolent man at the back, the one who had first demanded potions, lurched forward as if to steady himself, to shout an insult. Two men near him shoved him back. They wanted to stay alive. He had to be the leader of their madness; once he fell, the others might not follow.
"Leave," Ling Yu said, the single syllable a soft, precise command that felt like a blade sliding under skin. "Or I will end every one of you and bury your bones where nothing grows."
For a beat longer, they did not move. Then one of Shen Ming’s younger enforcers, a face creased with guilt, stepped forward voluntarily, pleading in his eyes. He walked to the center with shaking hands and a knife clutched like a rosary. "Please... don’t—" he started.
Ling Yu’s eyes softened a fraction. "You don’t have to die for them," she said. "You can walk away and survive." Her voice had a strange warmth then, but it was undercut by the hardness around it. "Prove to me that you can choose your own life. Did you not do so when the world was still normal? The world can’t choose for us; we should be the ones to choose what we do and how we live our lives."
The enforcer’s shoulders sagged. He did what people do when fear becomes stronger than conviction: he turned and fled through the side gate. Others followed, not as many as hoped, but enough. Panic made them create pathways; people stumbled while running in fear for their lives. The base emptied in disjointed waves, leaving a scattering of men who stared blankly at the empty space, stunned and angry, but too cowardly to move.
Shen Ming’s face had become paper-white. His hands tightened over the hilt of a spear he wasn’t planning to use. He looked at Ling Yu as if trying to categorize her: spoiled noble, mad killer, asset, a problem he could not own. His mind raced for leverage and found none. He could not openly brand her as a threat, but he could not allow a massacre of his men like that either.