Episode 47: Five Venoms - Toad Mo E

Accompanied by a sudden burst of force, the ingot-like fist struck Mo E in the abdomen. Struck by this impact, Mo E's frail body immediately vomited blood; the force of that punch was truly not insignificant.

Sent tumbling across the ground several times by the blow, Mo E slowly climbed to his feet and touched his battered belly.

"It hurts so much! It really hurts like hell!" Mo E glared furiously at the person who had struck him. "Who the hell are you? Stop sticking your nose into other people's business!"

"I couldn't just stand by and watch you do something so dangerous to a girl." Ryuu Mufei, still very young back then, stood before the weeping woman.

Mo E's facial muscles twitched, and he suddenly felt an unbearable itch all over his body. He was just about to succeed, so why did someone have to come and stop him? Yet he was not entirely unfamiliar with this person; though much younger than himself, he was superior to him in every respect. In just his first semester at the school, he had broken multiple records previously set by Mo E, and more importantly, he came from a privileged background.

Why? Why? Why?

Watching the somewhat deranged Mo E, the woman hurriedly hid behind Ryuu Mufei. Even though Ryuu Mufei looked several years younger than her, she still treated him as her lifeline.

"What do you think you're doing? What right do you have to interfere?" Mo E scratched frantically at the itch all over his body.

Crying, the woman hid behind Ryuu Mufei and pointed at Mo E. "He wanted to humiliate me, this toad wanted to humiliate me. I'm the goddess of this school!"

Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses! This phrase had once been deeply engraved in Mo E's mind. Every person had their superior side and their deficient side; no one was inherently nobler than anyone else, nor was anyone more humble. That was how Mo E felt. Even though his family was poor, he was better at studying than others, and he possessed a sufficiently excellent side of his own.

"What goddess or whatever, we're all just human, what's so special about that? Nobody is unworthy of anyone else, there's only who dislikes whom!" Screaming at the top of his lungs, Mo E shouted at the woman behind Ryuu Mufei, "What right do you have to think you're a cut above others? What right?!"

Mo E walked forward, holding a utility knife as he stepped toward the woman and Ryuu Mufei, who was clearly much younger than him.

Ryuu Mufei glanced back at the trembling woman, then turned his head and asked Mo E, "Well, does she like you?"

"Mind your own damn business!" Driven to rage by embarrassment, Mo E charged forward.

Ryuu Mufei also stepped forward, lowered his stance, and in a few quick moves knocked Mo E to the ground, pinning him down.

"Hahahaha~ As a member of the Psychokinetic Clan, you're actually attacking me with your bare hands!" Mo E laughed. "How unfair! Why is it that talented people excel at everything?"

"How did you know I'm from the Psychokinetic Clan? My enrollment in this school is a top-secret matter. Where did you get this information?" Ryuu Mufei stared wide-eyed at Mo E pinned beneath him.

"Your excellence, hahahahaha! Because of your excellence, you broke many of the records I previously set at this school, so I investigated you. Why? By what right? Why do you get to have all the advantages concentrated in you? Why did I have to suffer from the moment I was born?"

The woman looked at the two of them in disbelief, and she began to slowly back away.

To explain in detail this country's fear and rejection of the Psychokinetic Clan would require a lengthy discourse, but it was an undeniable fact that the Five Great Clans were ostracized in this country as if they were monsters. If Ryuu Mufei's identity were exposed, his studies at this school would have to be cut short. He clearly cherished the opportunity to study here.

"Will you just shut up!" Desperate to stop Mo E from continuing, Ryuu Mufei turned back to look, only to see pure terror toward them both on the woman's face.

"You're from the Psychokinetic Clan?" Covering her mouth, the woman backed away. Ryuu Mufei wanted to explain quickly, but Mo E went ahead and exposed his identity.

"The son of the Psychokinetic Clan's head, actually afraid of people knowing your identity! Use your psychokinesis, aren't you so talented?"

Mo E's continuous clamoring caused Ryuu Mufei to lose his composure for a moment; with a wave of his hand, he unleashed his psychokinesis and blew Mo E flying away. Seeing this, the woman ran off as if she had seen a monster.

Mo E crashed heavily to the ground, unable to get up for a moment due to his injuries. Lying there in tears, it wasn't long before the school security guards and the woman's followers came and found Mo E, beating him ruthlessly. Because of prior events, Mo E was no longer a student at the school; he had only scaled the wall to get in after catching sight of that woman.

He had no idea how long he was beaten before being dumped into a garbage heap outside the school. His arm was broken, his body covered in wounds, and he lacked even the strength to crawl. He twitched, the look in his eyes filled with desolation and hatred. He hated that woman, he hated that dazzling Ryuu Mufei, and he hated this unfair world.

Yet tears fell uncooperatively. Looking at the snapped utility knife blade embedded in his palm, he wept. Recalling the woman's face, he pulled out the blade that had pierced into his flesh.

When did I ever truly want to hurt her? She used to be my goddess, too!

Mo E lay in the foul-smelling garbage and wept loudly, recalling his past hardships. Every day was a busy life of early mornings and late nights, and walking past his old school, he had caught a chance glimpse of that woman—the person who had hurt and humiliated him. That person had once been his goddess, and seeing her reminded him of his own tragic life. He refused to accept it, he was furious, and so he had climbed over the school wall. He had originally only wanted to scare the girl, just wanting to cut off a lock of her hair as the price for the humiliation that had once ruined his family. Yet he never expected Ryuu Mufei to intervene without knowing anything about the situation.

"Your name is Mo E. May you escape poverty and never live a life of hunger again!"

These were the words his mother had once spoken to him.

Ryuu Mufei—he transferred all his hatred onto the person who had stopped his revenge. That resentment caused his hatred to deepen a fraction every single time he thought of Ryuu Mufei.

Clinging to this life with that hatred, his arm broken and his body severely injured, he didn't have much time left, nearing the end of his life. Unreconciled, just as his life was coming to an end, Zhi appeared before him.

"Who is the target you wish to take revenge on?"

Zhi asked him this.

"Ryuu Mufei!"

"And what about a greater goal?"

"The Psychokinetic Clan, everyone in this country, and the entire world!"

Mo E shouted hysterically.

For Mo E, was this kind of thing a salvation or an even deeper torment? To this day, even he couldn't say; only his urge for revenge had grown all the stronger.

Zhi had bestowed formidable powers upon Mo E, but as a price, he was transformed into this toad-like appearance and became one of Zhi's strongest Five Venoms members: Toad Mo E!

"You know what? You've messed me up so badly, so I swore an oath that if I caught you, I'd tear you to pieces! As they say, what goes around comes around, and I've finally waited for this chance." Mo E laughed wildly and savagely.

Ryuu Mufei had nothing to say to this. Did he need to take responsibility for Mo E's life? He didn't know, but chained and bound as he was, he had no room to resist.

Mo E shoved him viciously, and he slammed hard against the cold rock wall behind him. Without another word, Mo E yanked back the sleeve of his right arm, revealing countless irregular blisters bulging across the limb, enough to make one's scalp tingle. The liquid inside the blisters was boiling. The white viscous fluid secreted from the blisters turned into a smelly brownish-yellow liquid shortly after contacting the air; dripping onto the ground, the liquid even hissed with pungent smoke and corroded pits into the icy floor.

This was the present-day Mo E; his body had been remade into a vessel of deadly poison. Poison glands filled his entire body from top to bottom, connected to every pore on his skin. As his skin expanded, it formed those blisters, and the pressure within his body forced the venom to seep out through his pores.

"Kid, just this tiny bit of venom is enough to cost you your little life!" With that, Mo E threw a punch at Ryuu Mufei with his venom-drenched right arm.

Ryuu Mufei watched helplessly as the danger closed in on him without any way out, his psychokinesis completely unable to activate.

Damn it, I'm finished!