"Don't misunderstand. I'm not a serial killer."
"I'm not particularly passionate about this sort of thing."
"At most, I just kill a few people depending on my mood."
After patting the girl's back,
Xi Shenlian casually explained the general situation.
He felt that he probably couldn't be considered a bad person yet.
Although he had cleaned up some gangsters,
they were gangsters, after all!
At the very least, he should count as someone who upheld justice on heaven's behalf, right?
Just thinking about it made him feel that he needed to earn the achievement of "Beloved Citizen."
Of course.
He didn't think he could be considered a good person, either.
He wasn't particularly interested in saving the world or improving society.
He preferred to act according to his mood.
And as she listened to him,
the girl who had been retching raised her head slowly.
But she didn't dare turn around, afraid that she would see Xi Shenlian's face clearly.
She felt that doing so might trigger a death mechanism.
If that really happened,
things would be terribly unfortunate...
However,
Xi Shenlian didn't care about such a minor matter.
So what if she saw him clearly?
As someone who stood straight and acted with integrity, he didn't really care about that sort of problem.
Therefore,
he continued gently patting the girl's back and said calmly:
"Let me ask you a few questions. Are you a martial artist?"
"Yes."
"Then what level would you say you're at among martial artists?"
"...Fairly good."
Though she said that,
Xi Shenlian still detected a hint of pride in her voice.
Thinking of how she had leaped effortlessly down from the building earlier...
She was probably a genius?
Xi Shenlian wasn't sure.
"Was it passed down through your family? Or did you join some sort of school?"
As far as Xi Shenlian knew,
because this world had valued personal martial strength since ancient times, it was home to countless factions devoted to martial arts and cultivation techniques.
Most of them were quite powerful and wealthy.
After all, practicing martial arts could easily damage one's body, but poor people couldn't afford medicine...
"..."
At present,
although she didn't understand what the other party wanted with these questions,
the girl still answered obediently:
"It was passed down through my family."
"From your accent, you sound like you're from Kyoto?"
"Yes."
"Your family managed to establish itself in Kyoto, and you're a genuine martial artist with considerable strength at that. You must have experienced quite a lot... So you should have a fairly practical understanding of the martial artists and Awakened throughout Dongying, right?"
"...Yes."
At this point,
Xi Shenlian was delighted.
"Great. Then let's find somewhere to talk~"
"As a senior, I think you should explain some basic information to this newbie."
With that,
he directly put an arm around her stiff waist and half-dragged, half-pulled her toward another direction.
--
A few minutes later.
Several police cars arrived with sirens blaring.
The cluster of headlights even brightened this somewhat dim area considerably.
A group of police officers with guns strapped to their waists quickly got out of the cars.
They charged into the alley.
Then came the screams and retching.
At that moment, the scene in the alley
turned many people into vegetarians.
And since no trade meant no killing, Xi Shenlian, who had inadvertently saved countless living creatures, truly possessed immeasurable merit!
After that,
the ambulances arrived at top speed.
Besides collecting the bodies,
they also had to provide emergency treatment.
Because the monsters hadn't all died.
While casually tearing apart several monsters, Xi Shenlian had also remembered to carry out his own idea, letting some of them adopt a different way of life.
A brand-new way of life where they wouldn't need to see scenery, hear sounds, chew food, walk, pick things up, bathe... for the rest of their lives.
In short,
the ones who didn't curse him basically died.
The ones who cursed him basically survived.
As a bonus, as a craftsman skilled at playing cat's cradle with threads, he had also practiced his technique a little.
Thus, when the medical personnel in the ambulances saw the survivors, they immediately vomited.
Even though they were accustomed to all kinds of unfortunate people who had died gruesome deaths and all sorts of bizarre, disgusting injuries,
the few who were still alive nevertheless reminded the medical personnel of countless splatter films and ancient execution methods, instinctively making them refuse to look at the victims' miserable condition with their own eyes.
Meanwhile,
Xi Shenlian was warmly questioning the girl with an arm around her:
"What do you think of that shop?"
It was a shop with a very interesting style.
It gave off the feeling of a Tokyo red-light district.
It was quite suitable for lonely, cold men and women.
However,
after determining from the girl's attempt to kill him with her eyes that she didn't want to go inside, Xi Shenlian could only abandon that option with some regret.
Instead, he pointed toward another shop: an upscale café that looked somewhat expensive.
"What about there?"
It had to be said,
he was very polite.
This time, the girl didn't try to activate her eye-based heat vision again, so she was probably satisfied enough.
Thus, Xi Shenlian took her straight over.
The girl nestled in his arms looked at Xi Shenlian's faintly smiling expression, as if he were merely doing something trivial.
After thinking for a moment,
she asked somewhat irritably:
"What exactly are you trying to do?"
By now, judging from Xi Shenlian's words and actions, she had already determined that her life was not in danger.
Naturally, her attitude had become much calmer.
As the one being questioned, Xi Shenlian answered casually:
"Just asking you a few questions~"
"I'm still unfamiliar with the various factions throughout Dongying, and I'm nothing more than a novice Awakened. As a newbie, I happen to need you to help fill me in on some relevant common knowledge."
As someone who had barely come into contact with the martial artist system, and who, despite being a genuine Awakened, didn't understand the various circumstances surrounding Awakened very well, Xi Shenlian felt that the girl before him could make up for some of his information deficit.
In this regard, relying solely on the online information collected by the Auxiliary AI ultimately lacked a great deal of practical understanding.
But when she heard Xi Shenlian call himself a novice Awakened and a newbie, the girl instinctively curled her lips.
She looked as though she didn't believe him at all.
As someone from an ancient, prominent martial arts family, she knew exactly what a normal novice Awakened should be like.
Although she still couldn't defeat him,
the gap was absolutely not as enormous as Xi Shenlian had shown it to be.
If an Awakened came from a martial arts background,
then upon awakening, they could rely on their foundation as martial artists to quickly adapt to the changes in their bodies and accelerate their awakening, making their strength and growth rate far surpass those of ordinary Awakened.
The girl had seen people like that before.
But even so,
they still hadn't been anything like Xi Shenlian, who had completely and utterly crushed her.
Thanks to: 100 Qidian Coins from "I Love Victorique the Most"! 500 Qidian Coins from Ximen Jiangxue! 3,000 Qidian Coins from tazaki!
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