Chapter 856: The second day of the evaluation trial (part 9)

"...", it took a few seconds for the enemy to realize why since earlier he was called a piece of trash.

’It’s because of those women, but why, even before anything was done to them, I made sure to look into their belongings and already had memorized traits such as eye, skin or hair color, as well as anything else that could indicate someone is related to sects, families or forces that should never be offended, how is this white-haired girl connected to them!’, inwardly screamed the enemy leader to his insides.

Like previously stated, he isn’t stupid, before giving the green light to his subordinates to play with the girls they had captured, he alongside the vice-leader from back then, looked into their backgrounds.

First by inspecting the stuff they carried on them, which included their spatial rings and other accessories that had lost their cultivator qualities and turned into normal things, at least while in this place.

Weapons and the like were automatically sent into the spatial treasures of each respective participant, but small things as well as clothes were kept in the open, they just didn’t work as spirit treasures.

The previous means that the leader and the vice couldn’t look into said spatial treasures, but that wasn’t really necessary, anyone who came from a background that the mercenaries didn’t want to mess with, would have their respective symbol in their clothes, or treasures.

As for those that didn’t carry things with said symbols on purpose, like evil cultivator, the mercenary was sure they wouldn’t be captured as easily as those girls were, if they came from an evil sect, so that option was instantly discarded.

Also, and this is something that even James didn’t know about, but the five guys who were originally teammates of those girls, sold them out in a sense, because in exchange for telling the vice everything they knew about those girls, just to make sure that they weren’t overlooking anything and messing with someone they shouldn’t, they were promised to be given more food than the girls and be allowed out of their cages, individually from time to time.

And so, the last deterrent that could have changed the fate of those poor girls, was purposedly destroyed by their own teammates, on the other hand, while the food part was respected, the vice lied regarding being left out of their prison from time to time.

This "thoroughly" thought process also meant that this wasn’t the first time that this mercenary group, or well, their leading figures in specific, had dealt with a situation like this, especially the leader considering this was his tenth time leading a group already.

And so, he couldn’t believe that what was causing him this much suffering was something he had dealt with many times before.

Seeing the expression of disbelief in the face of the enemy leader, the normally bubbly and relaxed Vivian, put on a disgusted expression on her pretty face as she... stomped upon the leader’s left leg.

"Crack!", earlier she had jumped to gain momentum and snap the enemy’s bone in a single go, but this time, Vivian didn’t do, so rather than cleanly breaking the leg of the enemy leader, his bone cracked.

"Ack!", as a sign of the previous, this time rather than screaming from the bottom of his lungs, the leader only let out a pained short-lived sound, don’t forget that his constitution reinforces his legs and it is yang related to while he can’t heal a broken bone, he indeed felt less pain than a normal people would over a wound on his legs, which is also one of the reasons as to why he didn’t faint.

"I didn’t personally know any of those girls, in fact no one from my group had any relation with them", said Vivian which made the enemy leader grit his teeth.

"I don’t know how the hell you know about it, but if you felt offended because of it, I can tell you who did it, I didn’t lay a single finger on them so why are you targeting me... aghhhh!!!", this time Vivian completely broke the left leg of the enemy leader.

"Don’t worry, they will all die, but you, you deserve a worse ending, Aster always says that a leader is responsible for the actions of those under him, not to mention that you were the one who allowed it to happen", said the white-haired girl.

’Fucking hell, they perhaps come from one of those crazy female-exclusive forces, if I’m taken prisoner by crazy bitches like those, death might become a luxury, should I just...’, the inner thoughts of the enemy were interrupted by Vivian casually taking out a small container from her pocket and tossing its content onto the enemy’s face.

"W-What did you do", mumbled the enemy leader, he just lost all the strength in his body, the pain of his broken legs was still there and he could talk, but he couldn’t muster any real strength, nor even speak too loud, now, he couldn’t even bite his tongue to commit suicide in his current state.

"You won’t be able to "escape" in any way or whatsoever this time, so long as you are still breathing, sister Mylene’s healing elixirs can keep you alive, so look up forward to what’s coming to you", casually said Vivian.

She had administrated the enemy leader with a new poison created by Mylene, it was a soft paralyzing one, strong enough to weaken the body but not completely doing so and it was prepared precisely to deal with these guys.

Why you wonder, well, for starters a completely unconscious or paralyzed person is actually harder to transport than a conscious one, this is because the body of a fainted person relaxes and basically becomes a dead weight, but this poison made by Mylene prevented that from happening.

In a semi-tense state whether the target wanted it or not, their bodies will "cooperate" with being carried by half dealing with their own weight, besides the previous, it also had other very specific functionalities, the first one being not allowing the one to whom it was administrated, to relief pain by screaming, and the second one to mentally torture its target due to the previous mentioned effects.

After all, it’s worse to experience something while awake but being unable to do anything about it, it was a poison specifically made for this fight by the pink haired girl.

And it was working like a charm, given the horrified expression that the enemy leader now had on his face.

’Why, all of this for a group of women that had no relation with them, they must indeed be crazy bitches from a women-exclusive force!’, inwardly screamed the enemy, that’s everything he could do as of current.

And in case you wonder why he seemed to weirded out by the fact that Vivian clearly hated him, after he allowed fellow women like her to be played to death by his subordinates, there is a reason for that.

This had been said many times before, but in the cultivation world, close blood relatives killing each other over benefits is not an uncommon sight, the same applies to friends, lovers, you name it,

That’s the temptation that comes with power, also with time cultivators become less and less "humane", the majority stop doing mundane things such as eating food and instead rely on pills for nutrition, they also isolate for years to train, so it’s not strange for them to disconnect from the world.

It’s not like they completely become separated from "mundane" things, because cultivators have dao companions which is the term used for a single partner relationship, or they have wives, lovers, concubines and so on, not to mention that greed is quite a mundane thing and it is really abundant in the cultivation world as well.

But you get the idea, so you can imagine how much cultivators normally tend to care about the death of a stranger, even less than what a normal human would when hearing about it in the news.

Based on all the previous, for this mercenary, the strange one here was actually Vivian, given that this "punishment" he was experiencing felt personal and it was, considering Vivian’s next words.

"We had just arrived so we couldn’t help you, but at least we’ll make sure these guys pay for what they did to you, may you find someone that will brighten up your world in your next lives, just like I did", mumbled Vivian as she poured a bright green liquid over a spot close to a random rock, which made the unkept and mistreated grass on it, gain new life.

It was still dark, so there was a faint green glow now coming from that patch of soil, which the enemy leader only recognized now.

’T-That is!’, he exclaimed to his insides, yeah, that’s where those girl’s bodies had been buried, there was no tombstone nor any mark that indicated this was the place.

In fact, even the enemy leader who was the one who ordered for them to be buried far from the camp, didn’t recognize the area, so how did Vivian know about, that’s simple.

Yin and yang energies are very special among others, even at mortal level they are tightly related to many things, among which emotions are, those girls experienced horrible things, and after dying their corpses naturally produced yin poison, and that was easy for Vivian to notice.

That green liquid she poured on the ground was a cleansing medicine, with the effect of dispelling corpse poison, but it didn’t only counter it but also turned it into nourishment for the ground, thus in a sense turning "death" into "life".

It was naturally not something Mylene created for this specific moment, but it was meant to be used on the trenches where the undead beast army was burned, that being said, the pink-haired girl gave Vivian some of it when she saw the white-haired girl’s thoughtful expression after accepting to come to this "mission".

By the way this elixir was named "Healing the world" in honor to Vivian’s manual and her blood which is what inspired Mylene to create it and what was used as its base as well.

"Sister Mina was right, it’s easy to make people unconsciously move in directions which they had travelled through before without them finding it suspicious, I already knew that this was their resting place and that after saying that it was far enough from your camp you left without sparing it a second gaze, and yet just "attacking" you a couple of times was enough to make you run this way", said Vivian to then add.

"You can take him away now, I bet sister Mina is waiting for the last one of their group to be taken to where she is, given that he is their leader, his answers will confirm the ones from the others after all".

"Mmm, thanks sister Vivian", said a couple of girls from the sect that came from behind a rock formation that was close to the area, which made the enemy leader’s eyes contract like needles.

That’s right everything that happened to him was planned, the vice-leader wasn’t the one who took the things in his secret storages, it was the advance party, and Vivian was sent to deal with him, because Mina knew that they wouldn’t doubt in using the poison to try and turn the tables on them.

That wicked red-haired girl didn’t know that the enemy had access to his constitution’s ability for sure, but James did speak about it in his notes, alongside the fact that he clearly didn’t care about the other mercenaries as much as he cared for his life, this was noticed only by James, because he was the newest and his treatment was poorer than usual as they entered a place with such a unique situation as this one for his first mission.

Therefore, Mina was sure that the enemy leader would retreat after seeing Alice’s overwhelming’s strength and that after that, he would only resort to use the poison if he was sure he could escape at any moment, which would mean he had access to his innate ability, and she was right.

Due to the previous, Vivian already knew that he could run fast when he appeared on the area where the poison container was kept, and everything from there also went on exactly as Mina described it would to Vivian too.

That he would then go straight to his secret stash and that there would be a second one somewhere within the camp, with a not out of place marking trait that would prevent the enemy leader from forgetting about it... like that tree against which Vivian was leaned onto before.

Though the exact spot of the hidden storages of the enemy leader were directly discovered by Vivian, because well, he committed the stupid mistake of letting something with poison being close to his "valuables" in the presence of Vivian who is like royalty for anything toxic related.

Despite the enemy leader dancing on Mina’s palm from the very beginning, the white-haired girl was given "creative freedom" on how to deal with him, with the only condition that he had to be able to be interrogated in the short term.

So, the part of leading the enemy to this exact place was decided by Vivian, and as you can see it was properly discussed and agreed upon with Mina, since there were girls from the sect already waiting close by to take the enemy leader in custody.

"W-Why did you bring me here", said the enemy leader before his mouth and eyes were covered with pieces of cloth as the girls of the sect tied him up to take him away, the last thing the enemy leader managed to hear, was the voice of the white-haired girl saying.

"I wanted them to see you for what you are, a coward piece of trash, but it’s better for them to not see what will happen to you next".

Vivian was actually the last one to fight and she put an end to the initial part of the mission, given that they still had to subject the captives to a "quick" round of interrogation and decide what to do with this camp after that, but of course for us this was only the second fight.

So now, let’s see how things reached this point, and for that we must go back in time to even before Alice started going wild, a few minutes prior to the moment when Mule appeared for the wild dragon princess to see, for the first time to be accurate.

Aside from Alice who was obviously a distraction, a perfect work for her who didn’t know how to move discreetly and simply preferred to brute force her way though things, the other members of the advance party all had something to do as well.

Like Tiana had said this was a valuable opportunity for them to learn after all, which is why the group was divided in four, first we have Alice being a single person team and the one in charge of distraction, then we have the team which we have been seeing after that, which was in charge of neutralizing the leading figures of the enemy camp.

Said team consisted in Vivian of course as you already saw, as well as the treasure girl Camila and last but not least, the dual blue tone haired girl Nerissa, you all probably expected the other one in this group to be Tiana but there is a reason as to why she was deployed somewhere else.

Anyway, for now let’s go with what happened right when Mule was sent towards Alice to act as the signal for her to go wild.

...

"This is where we part ways, if you any trouble just use your emergency signals, good luck", said the treasure girl to Vivian and Nerissa.

The three of them had just like Alice approached the enemy camp, but from the opposite side as Alice, that’s because the attention would naturally be drawn to where that wild dragon princess was, when she started acting.

"Mm, good luck to you...", Nerissa’s words were interrupted by a soft tremor accompanied by a really loud explosive sound.

"Boooooom!", that was Alice blasting a hole on the camp’s defensive wall with her tail.

"Sister Alice never disappoints~", amusingly said Vivian, unlike most of the girls of the group, she was in really good terms with the wild dragon princess, and she even told her new ways to get "friendlier" with Aster, which for Vivian should be true, after all Alice was already close to Aster before becoming his lover, so she was one of the closest people to him in Vivian’s mind, which is not wrong, unlike the advices Alice gave to the white-haired girl.

"Ahem, we’ll have a little conversation about that later, for now, let’s go", said Camila as she jumped the fence accompanied by Vivian and Nerissa to then spread towards different areas.

We have seen how things went for Vivian already, and the next one in the list, is Nerissa, why you wonder, because she was assigned to deal with the current vice-leader, which is why she used her high mobility to rush towards a "random" refuge which was actually empty, until a moment later after which she had arrived.

It’s worth mentioning that in the meantime, a total of twelve loud explosions besides the initial one from earlier, echoed through the vicinity, they were the result of Alice throwing the spears mounted on her back of course.

"Damn it, what the hell is going on, did the enemy bring a catapult or something like that, what is up with all those explosions", cursed a lanky man as he arrived at the refuge previously mentioned and only after looking at a small and barely noticeable "scratch" on a random part of its frontal face, did he enter it.

Nerissa didn’t go in right away, she instead waited for a couple of minutes in which her sharp ears could hear the sound of dirt being moved by a small object, followed by a soft wood hitting sound.

’There it is’, thought the dual blue tone haired girl as she finally made her move, now, the vice wasn’t stupid either, he was sent here to retrieve a few things in secret, so he of course closed the door of the refuge to both prevent to be seen and to have the time to react in case an enemy tried to take him by surprise.

"Thud!", which is why when Nerissa kicked the door open and then unsheathed her sword to slash it at the enemy, the latter was able to react and while still ungracefully, roll through the ground to avoid being slashed by the dual tone blue haired girl’s sword which instead left a mark on the ground.

"Crack!", making a shallow crack to appear while Nerissa clicked her tongue to herself.

"Crazy bitch who the hell are you!", shouted the vice as he reached for his sides where two bone knives were hanging from his waist, there is another reason as to why he closed the door of the refuge.

You see, all refuges only had a single entrance and exit, why, because their design wasn’t properly thought unlike back at Aster’s camp, where while it is true that there is only one door, there are windows which can act as emergency exits in case they are needed.

But the refuges in this place were built to simply give the members of the camp a roof over their heads, nothing more, also making windows required more effort and they had to be covered with something and that costed merits, which they lacked because the blue flaming board had completely eliminated the ones which they had earned during the time the red cloud was their supervisor.

And that normally would cause the vice to be wary of closing the door given that it was the only exit, but he is a close-range fighter, and what’s more he uses double knives, with poison of course, so he is perfectly used to fight in small spaces, like the inside of this refuge.

"Heh, so you are one of those fools obsessed with using a sword for some stupid reason, in small environments like this, I have killed quite a few "talented" swordsmen before", said the vice as he dashed at Nerissa.

"Humph", the dual blue tone haired girl softly snorted, her first reaction was to propose herself to jump backwards to completely avoid the enemy, but then her spatial awareness told her that if she did that, she would end up clashing with the wall of the refuge.

’Ugh, master was right, I tend to "abuse" of my fluidness a bit too much when I fight as a mortal’, thought Nerissa.

The reason as to why she barged into the refuge to have a fight with the vice, when she could have confronted him once he left, was not only because according to Mina and Vivian there was poison that could be used to create trouble buried in here, but also because she wanted to test the results of her recent training, in which she had to focus in the opposite of her usual style, in other words she had to reduce her mobility instead of flowing all over the place like usual, all this with a couple of minutes of time limit of course.