Chapter 120: 120
"What happened?" Looking at Yang Ze's pale face, Cang Yue immediately stepped forward before rubbing his back gently while her eyes gazed in the direction of the forest.
"The clone has been destroyed." Yang Ze's words made her raise an eyebrow.
"Was it a demonic beast?" The first thought that came to her mind was that it was a demonic beast. After all, humans normally wouldn't attack another human unless there are sufficient benefits, especially in the dense forest filled to the brim with Demonic Beasts.
"No." Yang Ze shook his head, then recalled the last thing he had heard.
"So, they talked about adding your skin to their collection?" After listening to him, Lin Yue couldn't help but nod in response as if she had expected it.
"Those are the members of the Blue Faced Tribe."
"Rumours are that the members of the Blue Faced Tribe love to capture men, skin their faces and paint them blue before using them as masks." Lin Yue's words were nonchalant as if she was talking about something extremely insignificant, yet for Yang Ze, they felt like the devil's whispers.
For a moment, he was even beginning to regret coming to this place. But since he had already decided to accompany Cang Yue, he could only bite the bullet and move forward.
"What are we going to do now?" He couldn't help but ask nervously. If it were up to him, he would just run away.
"....." The scene plunged into a brief silence before Cang Yue patted his shoulders.
"Not we; YOU..."
"HUH!?" For a moment, Yang Ze thought there was something wrong with his ears. What the hell was she talking about? He was here to merely accompany them, not engage in a fight. In a sense, he was more like a support instead of the main fighting force.
"You heard that right." Ignoring Lin Yue's and Xiao Ruolan's confused gaze, Cang Yue spoke further.
"It is about time you get some combat experience." The Yang Ze, under the influence of the Crimson Heart, was a monster... Capable of going toe to toe against both Lin Yue and herself alone. And that too when he was restricted by the surroundings and was getting used to the presence of Crimson Heart.
At first, she thought it was his true combat capabilities, but when she saw him fighting against Lin Yue earlier, displaying his skills and showing his limits, she realised just how inexperienced he was.
His fighting skills were akin to a child who had no clue what to do. He would throw a punch, use his movement skill to constantly get behind the opponent and then use his Wail before trying to punch them.
This was it...
And these actions of his were filled with the aura of a beginner, too. Clearly, this was his first time trying close combat.
"ME?" Yang Ze pointed towards himself as his eyes widened in disbelief. While it was true that he had zero combat experience and didn't even know how to throw a proper punch, it couldn't be blamed on him. After all, in both his lives, he never really needed to fight.
Now listening to Cang Yue and seeing her stern face, he couldn't help but take in a cold breath.
"I am only doing this for your own good." Ignoring his exxegrated reaction, Cang Yue spoke in a flat tone. "If in the future, you are alone and ambushed, I want you to be able to fight back, not just punch around aimlessly."
"..." Yang Ze wanted to say that with his newly promoted Enlightenment talent, it wasn't going to take him to make progress by leaps and bounds. At that moment, he could simply crush the opponent due to the sheer difference in cultivation, but in the end, he held back.
He could only nod helplessly.
"Do we really need to do this?" It was at this moment that Lin Yue's dissatisfied voice sounded in their ears.
"In case you have forgotten, we are here on a mission, not some training trip."
"If you want to train him, how about waiting till we complete this mission?"
"Just keep a few members alive, and we can make him fight them."
Yang Ze, upon listening to her, couldn't help but jump in agreement.
"Hey... she is right. How about we..."
Halfway through, he swallowed his words upon looking at Cang Yue's smiling face that sent a chill down his spine.
"Go on." Ignoring Lin Yue and her remarks, Cang Yue's smiling gaze was focused on Yang Ze, waiting for him to complete his sentence.
*Gulp
Swallowing down a mouthful of saliva, Yang Ze didn't dare to finish his sentence. He had a feeling that if he dared to say something, she was definitely gonna do something even more ridiculous.
"That's what I thought." With a nod, Cang Yue finally moved her eyes away from Yang Ze towards Lin Yue.
"As for you..." The smile on her face finally disappeared as she spoke in a cold voice.
"You don't need to worry about our matters. Besides... I am the one taking care of the Tribe leader and elders... You just need to shut your mouth and focus on the other members of the tribe."
Listening to her blatant provocation and mockery, Lin Yue almost flew into rage. She had never liked this bitch, and now that she had managed to step into the 5th Vein Expansion realm, she looked down on her even more.
If not for the fact that she was still not used to her strength and needed to hide her sudden breakthrough, she would have taught this bitch a painful lesson.
"Hmph!" In the end, she just turned her head with dissatisfaction.
With a satisfied smirk, Cang Yue once again focused on Yang Ze in front of her.
"Now then... Go and take care of that group."
"Don't worry... I will be watching you all the time. I just want you to get used to the combat."
"..." Yang Ze took a deep breath before nodding in response as he walked in the direction where his clone was killed.
On the other side, two women in their forties were looking at the ground in front of them with bewilderment. Their eyes would sometimes glance at the arrow stuck there and sometimes at each other with confusion.
"What... what's going on?"
"Didn't we hit that man in the head? Where is the corpse?"
One of the women asked in disbelief. She was sure that her arrow struck the man in the head, but forgot about the corpse; there wasn't even a single drop of blood anywhere.
For a moment, the two of them couldn't scratch their heads, wondering if they were hallucinating. But if it was just one person, they could blame it on seeing things, but the two of them saw the same thing. This was no longer just seeing things...
The middle-aged woman who shot the arrow picked it up before bringing it closer to her face. She could see her scarred face in the reflection of the metal, but other than dirt, there wasn't anything there.
"Strange..." The second woman, who looked like she was malnourished, couldn't help but narrow her eyes, wondering what just happened, and it was at this moment that the two of them heard the sounds of rustling from the distance.
"Who's there?"
"Come out."
The two of them simultaneously shouted while jumping back. The scarred-faced woman immediately pointed an arrow in the direction of the sound, whereas the thin woman took out a pair of knives.
"...."
The two women watched in silence as the figure of a man slowly walked out of the bushes. It looked to be a man in his thirties, and the only thing that stood out about him was his short height.
"Huh!?"
"It's you."
The two of them immediately recognised that face. Wasn't this the same guy whom they just shot? How was he still okay?
Yang Ze, on the other hand, was still thinking about how to handle the situation. With the knowledge of a modern person from Earth, he thought about gaining information from them first. If they could learn more about their base, the number of people as well as how they all operated, it would be of immense help.
Cang Yue, who was watching it from a distance, couldn't help but facepalm.
While Yang Ze was thinking about what to say and how to cover with these two women, the sacred-faced woman released the bowstring, shooting an arrow directly towards his head.
"Damn." Yang Ze immediately bent his knees, avoiding the arrow, but before he could decide his next course of action, the thin woman was already in front of him with two knives, aiming for his neck.
"Visualise." With a soft mutter, a blue light flashed as a pair of gloves appeared on Yang Ze's hand as he directly placed the back of his palm between him and the pair of knives.
*Clut
With a soft sound, the knife stopped moving. With both her hands holding knives stuck on the gloves, the woman wanted to pull back, but before she could, Yang Ze thrusted his head forward, directly hitting her nose as her figure flew back, stopping only after hitting the ground three times.
"Li." The scarred-faced woman was taken aback by this sudden turn of events as she launched another arrow, aiming at Yang Ze's stomach.
Because of using his head to hit the thin woman, Yang Ze couldn't dodge in time, so he just raised his hand, meeting the incoming arrow with his palm.
*Thud
With a soft sound, the arrow hit Yang Ze's palm before falling to the ground, completely failing to penetrate his glove, much less do any harm.
"What kind of glove is that?" The scarred-faced woman couldn't help but narrow her eyes. She had never heard of a thin cloth glove that was able to stop knives and arrows without being damaged.
Only Yang Ze knew that it was partly because of the materials as well as his Mental energy.
As long as the items he conjured weren't destroyed instantly, they would recover in an instant because of his mental energy. This was one of the most heaven-defying features of Mystic Nether Art and the reason why it was so hard to practice.
Cang Yue, who was about to take action when the thin woman attacked with her knives, couldn't help but narrow her eyes as she too looked at the pair of gloves that appeared out of nowhere.
However, unlike the scarred-faced woman, she knew what this thing was.
"Mystic Nether Art!?" She couldn't help but exclaim in surprise as her gaze towards Yang Ze turned even more complicated.
She herself tried to practise this technique when she was younger, but never got any results, so she knew just how difficult it was. Usually, it would take anywhere from years to decades, just to visualise one thing, and that depends on how complicated the thing they were visualising was.
For the pair of gloves on Yang Ze's hands, it would have taken decades for ordinary cultivators. But he... she couldn't help but take a sharp breath. She couldn't help but wonder if this was because of the Supreme Dao Body.
She then focused back on the scene in front of her. Yang Ze, after stopping the arrow, took a step forward as his figure disappeared from its initial location before appearing directly behind the scarred-faced woman.
"Not good." It took a moment for the scarred-faced woman to react. She wasn't expecting such a sophisticated movement technique. She wanted to stab back using her arrow covered in internal energy, but before she could, she heard an ear-splitting screech in her ear as her internal energy went out of control, and she lost control over her body.
The thin woman, who was dazed after being hit on the nose, suppressed her discomfort while using her hand, trying to stop her nose from bleeding. She circulated her internal energy, hoping to retreat, but in the next instant, an ear-piercing scream disturbed her internal energy before she lost control of her body and fell onto the ground face-first, directly hitting the ground with her already injured nose.
Ignoring the thin woman, Yang Ze raised his palm before hitting the scarred-faced woman on the back of her neck, making her faint.
After doing that, he calmly walked towards the thin woman before doing the same with her.
"Okay." Even though it was somewhat awkward and clumsy, he finally managed to take down two members of the Blue Faced tribe.
"Shall we interrogate them?" He was wondering what he should ask them, but before he could think of any questions, he saw Cang Yue standing beside him with a stern face.
She then looked at the two unconscious women on the ground before pulling out her thin needle and handing it over to Yan Ze.
Yang Ze just looked at her in confusion, wondering what she was trying to do. If she wanted to give him a weapon, she should have done so before the battle. Now that the fight was over, what was he supposed to do?
Under his confused gaze, Cang Yue simply spoke in a chilling voice that was devoid of all emotions.
"KILL THEM."
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