"Hehe, little miss, where's your family?" The young man who had spoken first crouched beside the girl with ill intentions.
If he could spirit this little girl away without any trouble, he didn't want to resort to violence in broad daylight. After all, there was still some risk.
Na'er didn't even raise her eyes. She just hugged her knees and said nothing.
The thug leaned a little closer, and the others crowded around too. "Little miss, are you hungry? Big brother will take you to get something tasty."
Na'er hugged her knees even tighter and shook her head hard, still not saying a word.
The young man shot his companions a look. The others immediately understood and pressed together, blocking the view from outside, while he reached out to grab the girl's arm.
"What are you doing?" Just then, an indignant shout rang out, still tinged with a child's voice.
The young man jumped, pulling back the hand he'd just stretched out.
He whipped around and looked at Tang Wulin, who had suddenly spoken up.
"Where'd this little brat come from? Mind your own business and get lost!"
Looking at the little boy—who was even rather pretty—the young men couldn't help showing deep embarrassment and anger.
Being startled by such a small child was, without a doubt, humiliating for them.
Tang Wulin didn't look scared at all. Instead, he met the leader's gaze and stared right back at him.
But his tightly clenched fists still betrayed how nervous he was inside.
"Teacher, are you ready?" Tang Wulin asked in his heart.
After all, he was only six years old. How could he not be afraid of so many thugs? He was only managing to hold his ground by leaning on that bit of anger inside him.
Long Yuan found it a little amusing. It was just like watching the children among his relatives try to act brave.
[Almost, almost. This is my first time doing this, so I'm not used to it yet.]
As he answered, Long Yuan reached into Tang Wulin's Sea of Consciousness with his divine sense, then sealed it off.
He wasn't the Silver Dragon King, so he didn't have such powerful control over the mind. But at the end of the day, this was genuine divine sense. He just needed to bring overwhelming force to bear.
Sure enough, once the Sea of Consciousness was sealed, Tang Wulin quickly lost control of his body, and Long Yuan swiftly took over.
" Tang Wulin" opened his eyes, only to see a foot growing larger and larger in his field of vision.
As it turned out, the thug who was standing closer had seen the little brat staring into space right in front of him and seized the opportunity to kick him.
Though he wasn't quite used to this body, Long Yuan relied on the strength of his divine sense to twist aside and dodge the kick by the narrowest margin.
"Hey, you still dare to dodge!"
The thug's kick missed. He didn't understand how the boy had dodged, but the next moment, he threw caution to the wind and swung a fist at the other boy's face.
If he couldn't even handle a little kid, what face would he have left around here?
"Too slow," Long Yuan murmured. He dodged the punch at an impossible angle, then chopped his palm into the thug's joint.
"Ah!"
The thug cried out in pain, hurriedly pulled his hand back, and stumbled several steps away.
"Too bad," Long Yuan sighed.
Tang Wulin's body was still far too weak. Even after absorbing a little of Long Yuan's energy essence, it was nowhere near an adult's strength.
At the thought, Long Yuan's divine sense stirred, drawing another portion of Golden Dragon King essence out of the seal. This time, instead of letting Tang Wulin's body absorb it, he used it to boost his strength for a short time.
That Golden Dragon King was a sly one. He was merely strong, yet he'd claimed that his ultimate move was the Dragon King Mountain Crushing Strike.
Long Yuan recalled the moves in his mind. More than half of them amounted to a powerful left punch, a high-damage right punch, a normal attack that counted as an ultimate move, and casually making up a couple of names.
"Sure enough, I'm better suited to the numbers game."
"Enough talk! Let's take him together!"
The leader shouted, then charged at Long Yuan first.
He could tell this little brat was strange. They had to settle things quickly, or something might change if they waited too long.
"Roar? You saw this king and didn't run—you actually chose to charge at me?"
"Then..."
Long Yuan stepped forward with his left leg, drew his right hand back to his waist, and gathered all the energy essence he could summon into his right fist. Then he punched with all his might.
"Dragon King Mountain Crushing Strike!"
"Roar—"
As Long Yuan swung his right fist, the young man charging at him seemed to see an enormous dragon's head on it. A domineering dragon's roar rang faintly in his ears.
The next moment, the small fist struck the young man in the chest. With a piercing crack of breaking bones, he flew backward as if he'd been hit by a semi-truck, knocking over the other thugs. He rolled across the ground like a rag doll for several turns, then lay still.
The two thugs still on their feet had never seen anything like this. They were so frightened they couldn't move, caught between advancing and retreating.
"Hm? You still dare stand there?" Long Yuan drew back his fist and glanced sidelong at them.
The two thugs ran off at once. Before leaving, they didn't forget to join their companions, who had just gotten back up, in carrying away their leader, whose life or death was unknown.
As for whether the leader, who'd already been half-dead, would suffer any problems after all their jostling, that wasn't something Long Yuan could do anything about.
Long Yuan wasn't worried about whether there might be trouble, either. They were just a few thugs; it wasn't as if he'd be letting tigers return to the mountain. If they went around telling people that a six-year-old child had punched them into a life-or-death state, they'd probably only get looked at like idiots.
Besides, according to what his divine sense detected, there weren't any soul-guidance surveillance devices here. After all, this was only a small city, and its public security was nowhere near that of a big city like Eastsea City.
Long Yuan clenched his fist, felt the ache in his right arm, and shook his head.
"Can't even handle this little bit of energy essence? Looks like I'll have to make Blood Qi cultivation a priority soon. Otherwise, how am I supposed to become a numbers monster?"
Without giving it another thought, Long Yuan strode toward the source of the dispute.
Whether she'd sensed something or was simply reacting to Long Yuan driving away the ill-intentioned thugs, Na'er had lifted her head at some point and was staring at him without blinking.
Up close, her large purple eyes looked even more beautiful. A mist seemed to shimmer over her pupils.
Had she been crying?
Long Yuan was a little baffled. Why had she suddenly started crying?
"Don't cry. Those thugs have already run off. What's your name?"
Na'er blinked her big eyes. She didn't answer his question, but instead murmured blankly, "So familiar..."