Every Punch Strikes Flesh

He turned to see the Shadow Cat tear through Ning Yue's clothes, shredding his brand-new outfit into strips of rag from the chest down.

"Hey, I've been waiting for you."

Ning Yue's eyes were deep as he called out calmly, like a seasoned hunter waiting for a cunning fox to fall into his trap.

The Shadow Cat's attack was obstructed when it struck his chest, and for an instant, the cat faltered.

Ning Yue curled his right hand into a claw and unleashed his strength. As quick as lightning, he grabbed the Shadow Cat by the back of its neck.

An ordinary cat seized like that would have gone limp all over, as though its vulnerable spot had been caught.

The Shadow Cat, a vicious beast, only grew fiercer.

Claw shadows flickered as it unleashed a flurry of lightning-fast kitty punches.

"Hiss, hiss, hiss!"

The Shadow Cat's blade-sharp claws raked Ning Yue's chest, throwing off showers of sparks and leaving white marks across his skin. Ning Yue felt a little pain.

The sight stunned the martial artist beside him.

He stared, dumbfounded, with only one thought in his head:

He's so damn tough.

Is he even human?

Ning Yue had no attention to spare for what anyone else felt.

Although the Shadow Cat couldn't break through his defenses, the attacks beneath that flurry of claw shadows were real, and he could feel the force behind them.

Waves of intense pain made Ning Yue's face flush red, and he roared, "Quiet down!"

He brought up his left hand and joined it with his right, clamping both hands around the Shadow Cat's throat.

He exerted his strength and twisted his hands in opposite directions.

"Creak... crack!"

After a series of sounds like a screw being turned, there came a snap.

Ning Yue broke the Shadow Cat's neck.

Even so, the Shadow Cat didn't stop attacking, continuing to rake its claws across Ning Yue's broad chest.

Then it went limp, hanging from Ning Yue's hands like a lump of mangled meat.

"Not bad. Pretty cute."

Ning Yue praised it.

A dead vicious beast was a good vicious beast.

A living vicious beast was only ferocious, never cute.

The Shadow Cat had grown up and learned to behave.

See you later.

With a forceful swing, he smashed the dead Shadow Cat into a lump of mangled meat.

"What a waste of all that vicious beast meat. It could've been worth several thousand yuan."

Seeing this, the martial artist beside him expressed his regret.

Ah.

Ning Yue heard him and felt a little regretful.

He was rather short of money at the moment. Since the Myriad Heavens Simulator's upgrade, each simulation cost one hundred thousand yuan, and all the money he had left wasn't enough for even one simulation. Several thousand yuan was no small sum either.

If I pick it up now, is it too late?

Would it be embarrassing?

"Young brother, you're really impressive. With defenses like that, you must have cultivated a special technique, right?"

The martial artist glanced at Ning Yue's chest, where there were only white marks, and praised him.

He guessed that Ning Yue must have cultivated a defense-oriented technique, such as the Tiger Roar Dragon Chant Golden Bell Shield or the Eighteen-Layer Iron Cloth Shirt.

Such techniques took a great deal of time and effort, so most people wouldn't choose them.

Judging by Ning Yue's age, his family was probably wealthy or influential, and he had exceptional martial talent. With the help of various pills and medicinal baths, he had managed to reach this level.

He kept these thoughts to himself and didn't ask.

Among martial artists, prying into another's secrets was especially taboo. Speaking too intimately when they barely knew each other meant more words and more chances to make mistakes, easily inviting a fatal disaster.

"Young brother, hurry and take out the Shadow Cat's crystal core. I'll go help the others."

With that, he charged toward the other battlefields.

Right, the crystal core is the most valuable part of a vicious beast.

Thinking this, Ning Yue, who had just killed a vicious beast for the first time, realized he had nearly forgotten about it. He called out, "We killed it together. Once it's sold, we'll split the money!"

"No, no! Once the vicious beasts are dealt with, I, Old Cao, will thank you for saving my life!"

The martial artist called back with his back to Ning Yue.

Seeing this, Ning Yue didn't insist.

A first-rank vicious beast's crystal core was worth only around ten thousand yuan at market price.

It wasn't very valuable.

Even that was because humans hunted relatively few first-rank vicious beasts. Their rarity was the main selling point, adding to their inherent value.

"According to the books, before the Sixth-Rank Realm, a crystal core serves as the equivalent of a human heart, so it's basically located where the heart would be."

Ning Yue picked up the Jade Blood Saber he had dropped earlier and brought it down in a single stroke.

The Shadow Cat was cut in half down the middle.

He picked up a transparent crystal the size of a pigeon egg from the ground and put it in his storage inventory.

"Hiss."

Ning Yue took a deep breath. His chest really did hurt. Although he had no major injuries on the surface, waves of tearing pain came from the wounds.

"What a waste."

He looked at the Shadow Cat's remains again, regretting his earlier impulse a little.

Vicious beasts were immensely valuable. Their meat could be eaten, and eating it regularly could increase cultivation speed, strengthen the physique without one noticing, and enhance defensive power.

Their claws, fangs, and bones could be refined into weapons or made into medicinal liquids.

The pill company his parents ran made several pills with vicious beast bone powder as one of their ingredients.

After thinking it over, Ning Yue still gave up on the Shadow Cat's remains.

They were simply too badly mangled to be worth much.

Having finished up, Ning Yue looked toward the other battlefields and saw that the martial artists had already brought the situation under control. With the help of the martial artist from earlier, they had quickly slain a vicious beast.

The two remaining vicious beasts were like fish on a chopping block, with little time left to live.

He didn't join in. If he joined in now, he wouldn't be helping; he would be stealing the fruits of someone else's victory.

His ears twitched.

"Boom!"

A tremendous noise reached his ears. He looked over and saw a massive Fire-Patterned Giant Bull rampaging about, its enormous body making the buildings look tiny.

The Fire-Patterned Giant Bull stood more than thirty meters tall and was over a hundred meters long. The fire patterns all over its body blazed fiercely, setting the whole sky alight, and the scorching waves of heat made the air shimmer and distort.

Isn't that the Volcanic Giant Bull?

Ning Yue thought.

Seeing it in person was very different from seeing a photograph. The Volcanic Giant Bull was even more enormous, and the two streams of white vapor it snorted from its nostrils made it all the more intimidating.

"Mroaar!"

Its thunderous roars reached Ning Yue's ears, making even his legs feel weak.

The gap between their realms was too great for him; he could barely withstand the intimidation of a peak sixth-rank vicious beast.

Fortunately, it was some distance away.

As a divine eye of laws, the Eye of Heaven Observation had basic abilities in addition to its special functions: it could see farther and pick out finer details.

Even with the aid of the Eye of Heaven Observation, Ning Yue couldn't make out who the human fighting the Volcanic Giant Bull was.

He could only see that the man was flying in the air, making him a Seventh-Rank Heaven-Human Realm grandmaster.

The human grandmaster wielded a hundred-meter battle-axe, chopping at the Volcanic Giant Bull again and again, leaving it able to do nothing but withstand the blows with its defenses, unable to strike back.

As time passed, the Volcanic Giant Bull's injuries grew worse and worse.

It tried to flee, but the grandmaster drove it back each time, trapping it where it stood. It could only keep bellowing "Mroaar!" to vent the pent-up frustration it had no other way to release.

Ning Yue left the old street and ran toward a place where the commotion was louder.

He planned to kill a few more vicious beasts. Every ordinary person bore responsibility for the rise and fall of the nation, and as a martial artist of Xinyuan City, he had to shoulder the responsibility of protecting it.

Secondly, if he could slay a few more vicious beasts, he would also lighten the burden on the other martial artists.

As for the spoils he obtained from slaying the vicious beasts, those were all incidental benefits.