Chapter 131: Like the Wailing of an Infant

At the entrance of the Mountain Dwelling Inn, a fierce battle erupted after an unexpected encounter between the Eleventh Prince of the Demon Royal Court and a human named He Changan, drawing the attention of almost everyone in the small town.

The sheer momentum and intensity of Ying Eleven’s three punches were so staggering that even the donkey belonging to Widow Zhou, at the western end of the town, was startled. It jerked its head up, ears pricked, peering toward the eastern end of the town, stubbornly refusing to eat its grass. Widow Zhou was furious; she brandished a stick, struck the donkey a few times, and cursed the brawling beasts, but eventually, she could not resist and ran out herself to join the crowd of onlookers.

Linglong Town was isolated from the rest of the world, and its inhabitants loved nothing more than a good spectacle. People flocked in twos and threes to the inn’s entrance, only to realize that it was the Eleventh Prince teaching a young human a lesson. After taking three or four blows, the young man was bleeding from the corner of his mouth, his face deathly pale, his hair disheveled, and his sleeves shredded by the force of the punches, exposing his thin, spindly arms. He appeared to be faring quite poorly.

Among the onlookers, a young demon boy was trembling with excitement. He bit his lip hard, cursing incessantly in his mind, wishing that the damn prince would beat He Changan into a pulp. No, a pulp wasn’t enough—he wanted him beaten to the point of total helplessness, where even a stray dog could urinate on his face. At the same time, the boy complained that He Changan was useless, just taking a beating without fighting back.

"Fight back, you coward! Kill the prince of the Demon Royal Court, bring the wrath of the Nine-Infant clan upon yourselves, and let them tear your human race into pieces and scatter your ashes… You bastard—no, you father of He Changan, are you even a man? Damn you, He Changan! Damn you, Ying Eleven! You both deserve to die…"

The boy crouched in the crowd, trembling with agitation, his dirty palms slick with sweat. He wore a shy, harmless smile on his face, but deep in the depths of his eyes—where no one could see—a fanatical flame burned, scorching his young, abused heart.

In the end, this demon boy was a bottom-feeder. In the eyes of most in Linglong Town, he was nothing more than a talking ant, a piece of filth, the product of a wild coupling between a celestial wolf and a stray dog. He loathed himself and hated everyone else. Especially his mother—that wretch who had raised the four of them only to betray her husband for a scrap of food. If she hadn't died so early, the boy had often imagined he might have killed her himself, throwing her flesh into a sewer to let it rot slowly, letting the wriggling maggots eat until nothing but a shell remained. Ah, how wonderful that would be; a gust of wind would come, and the shell would simply drift away.

"Still, I hope He Changan gets beaten to death!"

The boy imagined with poisonous glee whether Ying Eleven would toss the corpse into the sewer after killing him. If that happened, he would fish it out in the middle of the night, chop it into pieces with a firewood axe, and toss them one by one to be eaten by the big black dog at the Celestial Fox Lady’s house. Yes, that was the plan. Next time he snuck a peek at the Celestial Fox Lady bathing, that black dog wouldn't bite him to death. Damn, those thighs of the Celestial Fox Lady… why were they so white?

Just as the demon boy was lost in his spiteful, hateful, and gleeful fantasies, the battle between Ying Eleven and He Changan finally reached a fever pitch. After bracing himself against four of the prince’s punches, He Changan began to counterattack. Before, to avoid being knocked unconscious or permanently crippled, he had used the momentum to backflip, retreating a dozen steps to dissipate most of the force. Now, however, he began to advance.

With every step forward, he threw a punch. His strikes were strange; he seemed to be performing a set of movements entirely for his own sake, not aiming specifically at Ying Eleven. But the prince’s expression grew increasingly grave. He felt a faint sense of crisis, as if he were facing a cornered beast preparing to fight for its life.

He Changan, bearing the pressure of Ying Eleven’s peak Sixth-Rank martial prowess and the violent, surging blood energy of the demon lineage, moved forward step by step, as if carrying a mountain on his back. The punches he cast out casually dissipated silently into the air, turning into white mist that drifted seven or eight yards around him.

After a few breaths, he had completed half of his routine. He Changan had fallen into a strange state, feeling as though he were back beneath the Dragon Gate Falls, swimming against the current. His mind was clear and peaceful, devoid of anger. He simply wanted to reason with this damn prince; the books were clear—there is a first and a second time, but no third or fourth. He just wanted to ask why the prince had repeatedly ambushed him with such malice and murderous intent. Since the path of humans and demons diverged, and the prince would not listen to human words, he would have to use his fists to make sense of things.

It had been a long time since he had reasoned with anyone. He Changan felt quite stifled. Ever since arriving in this demon town, it seemed everyone could bully him and grind him under their heels. He had held this breath for too long. Since you want to ambush me and kill me, then come; today, I will properly teach you what it means to strike with one breath and charge forward without fear!

A demon, is it? A prince of the Royal Court, is it? Ying Eleven, is it? Come!

With a heart full of grievances, his fist intent flowed like silk and sounded like drums. He was going to pummel this arrogant, handsome-looking beast!

The seemingly unremarkable "ancient fist technique," in the hands of a Ninth-Rank martial arts greenhorn like He Changan, actually carried the aura of a grandmaster. This took Ying Eleven by surprise. However, he still did not take He Changan seriously. In his mind, this was just the death throes of a monster he had provoked, perhaps capable of inflicting a minor injury at best. A cornered beast fighting back—that was all this was.

The naturally violent Ying Eleven wore a cruel, sneering smile. He took a deep breath, threw his head back, and roared. Dense, intricate scales erupted across his face, neck, and arms. In his grayish-white eyes, a ghostly flame flickered in the left, while a clear spring welled in the right; he had directly manifested his half-man, half-demon form.

The Nine-Infant lineage descended from a great general of the ancient Demon Court. They were naturally brutal, fond of consuming living beings, and had long viewed human cultivators as "blood food"—the most potent of tonics. They were the cruelest of the cruel. Later, after the Demon Emperor fell and various factions within the Demon Court scrambled for power, the ancestor of the Nine-Infants had wiped out most of his rivals single-handedly to seize the throne… The Nine-Infant bloodline, even if not entirely pure, was terrifying.

Seeing Ying Eleven shift into his half-demon state, the townsfolk retreated, fearing that if he went on a rampage, they would be caught in the crossfire.

"He Changan, you lowly human, go to hell!"

Ying Eleven pushed off the ground and lunged forward, throwing a punch directly at He Changan, who was struggling forward step by step. The fist, the size of a millstone, expanded rapidly in the wind, manifesting the phantom of a nine-headed giant serpent that lunged forward with a hideous face. All nine heads opened their blood-red maws simultaneously, emitting the wailing cries of infants. The sound carried a magical, terrifying aura that pierced directly into the soul, leaving He Changan in a momentary daze.