Chapter 14: All Monsters Are Deserving of Death
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Yue Lingshan let out a shriek and darted far away before finally realizing from the corner of her eye that Wang Jingyuan was already fully dressed. She was instantly embarrassed and furious. “Junior Brother, what on earth were you doing just now?! How could you be standing there stark naked? You… If you ever do that again, I… I’ll ignore you!”
“Tsk. You’re not even brave enough to look at a naked body. What if someone stripped naked and came to kill you? Would you just squat there and wait to die?”
“Who in the world would do such a thing?”
“Hey, you just met one today!”
“You!”
“Bleh-bleh-bleh!”
Yue Lingshan glanced at the leader, who was still lying on the ground and had not yet died. After hesitating for a moment, she asked Wang Jingyuan, “Are we really just going to leave him there?”
“I punctured his lung and damaged an artery. Given the medical care available nowadays, he’s certain to die unless some miracle-working physician suddenly descends from the heavens. Still, since you brought it up, Junior Sister, you’ve reminded me not to leave anything to chance. Even a low-probability event like that must be guarded against.”
“That’s not what I—”
A massive hammer appeared in Wang Jingyuan’s hands. Gripping the haft with both hands, he swung it violently and smashed it squarely into the leader’s chest and abdomen. The man bounced twice in place like a shrimp, and then fresh blood gushed from his mouth and nose.
“Now even Hua Tuo himself couldn’t save him. Wait, why didn’t my proficiency increase? Tsk, was that the wrong way to kill him?”
Wang Jingyuan put away the hammer and began searching the bodies. Since he had no use for a dead man’s clothes, he searched with extreme brutality.
He simply tore open the dead men’s garments. Whenever he encountered a place that might conceal a hidden compartment, he pried it open with his sword. Before long, one of the corpses had been stripped down to the waist.
“Ah! What are you doing?!”
“Keep your voice down. I’m not touching you, so stop jumping at every little thing. I’m looting the corpse. If you kill a monster and don’t loot it afterward, then you’ve killed it for nothing.”
“L-Looting a corpse?! Junior Brother, how could you… Ah!”
When Yue Lingshan saw Wang Jingyuan stripping the clothes from a corpse and leaving it stark naked, she immediately turned away and retreated a long distance. She could vaguely hear her junior brother defiling the corpse while muttering something about “hardcore.”
Yue Lingshan truly could not understand it. Where in the world had her father found such a disciple? At that moment, even the fiends of the Demon Cult looked more like human beings by comparison.
Wang Jingyuan searched the five men and found ten copper coins. They were of little use. The leader’s saber and the burly man’s axe, however, were fairly decent, so Wang Jingyuan tossed them into his inventory.
Once he had finished, Wang Jingyuan mounted his horse, only to be called back by Yue Lingshan.
“Wait!”
“What is it now?!”
“Are we really going to leave their corpses lying in the wilderness and do nothing?”
Wang Jingyuan casually gestured around them. “Although we’re near Huayin City, I’m sure there are still wolves, wild dogs, and the like around here. Before long, they’ll be turned into organic fertilizer and returned to nature.”
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“You intend to let wild beasts gnaw on their corpses?!”
Wang Jingyuan spread his hands. “What else am I supposed to do? I’ve killed countless monsters. Not making use of their bodies a second time is already generous. Do you expect me to prepare their coffins? Do you have any idea how much more troublesome burying corpses is than killing people?”
“Th-That still doesn’t mean you can do this…”
Considering that he had gained quite a bit of proficiency from Yue Lingshan, Wang Jingyuan sighed and shook his head before dismounting. He dragged the corpses by their ankles and piled them beside the official road.
After casually clearing away the weeds nearby, he produced a jug of oil from his inventory and poured it over the bodies. He soaked their clothes in oil, set them alight, and threw them onto the pile.
Though the human body contained plenty of water, it also contained plenty of fat. The burly man in particular made excellent firewood.
Wang Jingyuan turned to Yue Lingshan. “Will this do?”
“After killing them, you’re going to burn their corpses too?! You… Forget it…” Yue Lingshan gave up as well and mounted her horse. She was afraid that if she said much more, Wang Jingyuan would do something even more outrageous.
Wang Jingyuan and Yue Lingshan rode away from the burning pile of corpses. Yue Lingshan turned her head aside, unwilling to look at the cruel sight, while Wang Jingyuan did not react in the slightest.
After they had ridden for quite some time, Yue Lingshan finally spoke. “Earlier, when those men heard that we belonged to the Mount Hua Sect, they were prepared to let us leave. Junior Brother, you attacked them without warning, which was contrary to martial honor.
“Even if you despise evil above all else, the last man fled and then willingly came back to save his companions. That showed a measure of chivalry. You should have spared his life.”
Wang Jingyuan adjusted his trajectory and shifted into a more comfortable position on the horse before answering as though it were self-evident. “You don’t need to overthink killing monsters. Besides, I hate monsters with escape mechanics. Since that fatty came back, it was a gift from nature. How could I possibly let him go?”
“Monsters?”
“Just understand it as ‘enemies.’”
“But…”
“A monster is a monster, and an enemy is an enemy. They’re trials I encounter along the road, nourishment for my growth, and amusement to relieve my boredom. Whether they’re good or evil, loyal or treacherous, I don’t care.
“Whenever I meet a monster, I kill it.
“If I don’t kill one at the time, it’s only because my current strength is insufficient. I’ll leave it for later and kill it then.”
Yue Lingshan wanted to say more, but she remembered some instructions her father had given her before their departure and swallowed her words. She simply felt that her junior brother seemed strangely unfamiliar.
Perhaps she had never truly known him at all.
Wang Jingyuan glanced at her, then said, “Let me put it another way, in terms you’ll find easier to accept. Earlier, I searched them and found ten copper coins. The surfaces of those coins had already darkened somewhat, probably from dried blood.
“That proves they had taken the coins from dead people. I don’t know whether the victims resisted during the robbery or whether the bandits killed them afterward to silence them.
“But I do know that at the Spring Breeze Pavilion in Huayin City, a table of food costs a hundred coins, and one prostitute costs between a hundred and two hundred. In other words, the minimum charge at the Spring Breeze Pavilion is two hundred coins.
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“And the street women in the city aren’t cheap either. The better ones cost forty coins, while even the worst can take ten coins to ‘walk hand in hand to bed.’”
“Wait. Why are you so familiar with these prices?”
“When I was asking Uncle Qin, the doorman at the Spring Breeze Pavilion, for tobacco leaves, he told me all about them to pass the time. Anyway, back to the point. There were five of them, and together they had only ten coins. You could grab any random punk girl near my home, and she’d be richer than they were. So it’s highly unlikely they had spare money to go looking for pleasure.”
Yue Lingshan frowned. “What exactly are you trying to say, Junior Brother?”
“That supposedly loyal dead fatty had a filthy look in his eyes from the moment he saw you. He’d clearly had a taste of women before, and had developed an appetite for more. Guess what? Perhaps some woman thought he was brilliant, mighty, and exceptionally handsome, and offered herself to him.”
Yue Lingshan lowered her head in silence.
“Robbery, murder, and rape. They earned their deaths.”
After saying this, Wang Jingyuan smacked his lips, still unsatisfied. “Tsk, that was truly hardcore. I never expected a random roadside encounter to be designed with such care, leaving behind so much hidden information. The developers must have put a great deal of work into it.”
Yue Lingshan’s brows relaxed. She accepted Wang Jingyuan’s reasoning, but still asked, “Junior Brother, if we encountered a powerful enemy, would you come back to save me as that bandit did?”
Wang Jingyuan answered without hesitation. “Of course.”
Yue Lingshan felt slightly better. Although her junior brother was somewhat contemptuous of human life and treated corpses with grotesque irreverence, at least he…
“Even if I arrived too late to save you, I’d still come back to collect your corpse. Who knows? Your body might drop something like ‘Yue Lingshan’s Force Field’ or a ‘Secondhand Destruction Sword.’”
Yue Lingshan clenched her fists. “As expected, you’re still as infuriating as ever! Since we’re at the foot of Mount Hua, I’ll let you off this time. But once we reach the Fuwei Escort Agency, you’ll have to listen to me. Don’t cause any unnecessary trouble.”
Wang Jingyuan glanced at Yue Lingshan. “So, what’s your plan for this mission?”
Yue Lingshan pondered for a moment. “We’ll lie in ambush near the Fuwei Escort Agency and observe the situation. If, as Father said, the agency truly encounters some calamity, we’ll step in and help.”
Wang Jingyuan’s face creased in disbelief. “I’ve always known you weren’t very clever, but I had no idea things had reached this alarming degree.”
“Junior Brother, you’re asking for a beating!”
“I’m dodging!”
“Stop right there!”
“Hey, I won’t! What good is it that your martial arts are better than mine? Your horse isn’t as fast as mine.”
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