Biao
News that the black and white demons’ little beast king is challenging her reaches Xue San Si, who refuses to believe it until she investigates and confirms the challenge is real. She has no history with him and cannot fathom the reason, and settles on the private judgment that he must simply be a lunatic. But her mood shifts as she takes stock of his record: Fang Yuan already killed Tyrant Heng Mei, who had visited him only out of goodwill, and beat the mercy begging Fei Li into meat paste, both rank four Gu Masters at the middle stage cut down by a cultivator still at the initial stage. The narration calls him unreasonable and ruthless, a man who acts with no discretion and leaves people feeling threatened. Xue San Si, herself rank four middle stage and by her own judgment close in strength to the two dead men, admits to a genuine trace of fear at being challenged. ch. 342
In her own mind she brands Fang Zheng too cruel and unreasonable, accusing him of building his reputation on the corpses of senior Gu Masters, with Fei Li sacrificed for his ambition and her own turn now arrived. She had done arrogant things herself when young, but only against rank three Gu Masters weaker than her, never seeking out opponents above her own stage the way Fang Yuan does. Her godfather is away in closed cultivation refining a Gu, so with no one to turn to and the challenge already public, she has to accept it herself or watch years of built reputation collapse. ch. 342
Xue San Si has spent years on the demonic path and knows its cruelty firsthand: showing kindness or weakness brings no peace, only greater danger and the greed of others, and gaining fame or resources at all requires killing and giving offense. To defend her name she agrees to the challenge, and the two settle on a wide valley as their battleground. ch. 342
Three days later Xue San Si meets Fang Yuan for the first time, and his gentlemanly bearing surprises her: no fierce or boorish features, only dark, peaceful eyes. He praises her past aloud, her exile after offending a clan superior, her secret rise through hunting beast kings, and her later return to kill the elders who framed her, and says he admires her for it. The crowd is startled by his courtesy, some guessing at romantic interest, others warning that little beast king disregarded even Hu Mei Er and is ruthless and cold blooded, so no one should expect favor from him. ch. 342
Fang Yuan proposes an unusual spar: he will stand still and let her strike him three times, since she is a woman, then answer with a single blow of his own. The offer draws her in at once, and she agrees. ch. 342
Her first strike, delivered as twin tiger claws, sends him crashing into a rock that explodes on impact, and he climbs up laughing, calling it a good hit, though at least four of his ribs are broken and his intestines are bleeding. Weighing whether to hit harder, which only strengthens him further, or softer, which would make him easier to defend against later, Xue San Si decides to attack with everything she has and finish him in three strikes. ch. 342
Her second strike activates a Gu that swells her body to over twice its size and more than doubles her strength. Behind her a beast phantom appears: a Biao, the winged king among tigers, whose strength is five times an ordinary tiger’s and whose phantom alone can suppress three to four of Fang Yuan’s beast phantoms. The blow throws him several hundred steps into a mountain wall that collapses on top of him, and onlookers ask aloud whether Fang Zheng is dead, until someone answers that his aura still lingers. He climbs out with both arms crippled, his iron bones broken, his steel tendons mushed and his bronze skin torn, barely able to stand. The injuries are already healing, and he can now field eight beast phantoms at once. ch. 342
Wanting to finish him before he recovers, Xue San Si grows wings, climbs to about a kilometer, the highest she judges safe, then dives with the Biao phantom no longer hovering above her but fully merged into her body. She is confident this attack will kill him. Fang Yuan looks up at her and activates golden shield Gu, only a rank three defense, against her strongest attack. ch. 342
