Chapter 28: CH 21

Considering the Possibility of Falling in Love With the Villain Chapter 21

Too Dependent on You

The mutant animal that resembled leopard [1] released a level 4 intimidation before opening its bloody mouth and roared toward the sky. A shock wave visible to the naked eye swirled like a storm with it as the centre!

“Howl–!” [2]

Xu Kai’s expression changed, “It’s a sound wave attack. Everyone keep your defence up!”

Even if he didn’t say it, everyone quickly responded. Zhu Ai covered Shen Qingjia’s ears with a light blue light on his hands.

For a while, Shen Qingjia seemed to be deaf, unable to hear any sound, only her eyes accurately recording everything that happened in the real world, a world like a silent film. At the place where the sound wave swept, the ground cracked and the rocks split. The small earthquake shook the cave violently. Even if there were layers of protective shields all around, most people still fall under the attack bleeding from the nose and mouth. This kind of force is simply unparalleled.

Xu Kai’s expression was extremely heavy, “Is this…the power of level 4?”

“Actually, this is just a weakened version of level 4.” Zhu Ai calmly looked at the level 4 mutant animal that resembled leopard shape standing in the centre of the storm while keeping the hands that covered Shen Qingjia’s ears in the same position, “If a level 4 mutant animal is pregnant or having a childbirth, the strength will be weakened by at least 30%.”

“Zhu Ai Zhu Ai, are you alright?!” Shen Qingjia finally awakened from the Hollywood special effects scene [3] and hurriedly checked Zhu Ai’s ears.

“Howl–!”

Before Zhu Ai could speak, another sound wave attack came but Shen Qingjia responded quickly this time and immediately covered Zhu Ai’s defend-less ears from the massive sound wave attack.

“Even if Zhu Ai is powerful, you still have to protect yourself.”

No sound could enter her ears, Zhu Ai saw Shen Qingjia’s lips opening and closing while she lectured her with a serious face.

The whole cave was shaking violently, rubble was flying all over the place, stones falling overhead and the ground being shattered by the shockwave. For a moment, it feels like a mountain is falling and earth is split apart. Among all the chaos, the two of them are covering each other’s ears.

The world is still and silent, as if it were forever safe and sound.

Perhaps it was worried that the falling stone would kill it first before smashing the crowd into pulp, the level 4 mutant animal that resembled leopard shape quickly stopped the sound wave attack. But before everyone could breathe a sigh of relief, a low, weak cry resonated throughout the cave.

“Whimper…” [4]

“Damn it! It already give birth!” Xu Kai furrowed his brows deeper.

Mutant animals are different from humans, although their strength decreases during pregnancy and birth, they will recover as soon as they give birth. In particular, the orb on the top of the mutant beast’s head constantly emits light spots and is absorbed by it, obviously restoring its strength. Xu Kai estimated that in less than 15 minutes, they would be facing a fully recovered level 4! And they obviously do not have the strength to defeat this weakened level 4 within fifteen minutes.

Even though they have Zhu Ai, whose strength is unknown… This girl who doesn’t care about anything other than Shen Qingjia, Xu Kai didn’t put any hope on her at all!

They can only retreat!

As soon as this thought flashed through his mind, Xu Kai had already started to think of an escape route. His original purpose of coming to the secret realm was to kill Luo Sihai’s men and make a fortune in the process. Faced with this level 4 mutant beast that he had no way to deal with now and will recover in less than half an hour, Xu Kai was wisely prepared to choose a strategic retreat.

“Everyone, attack using only hot weapons that you have left to deter the level 4 mutant animals! At the same time, prepare to retreat! This level 4 mutant animal has just finished giving birth and is busy recovering, so it should not be chasing us!”

“Yes Sir!”

The members of Hope base breathe a sigh of relief and throw the grenade left in their hands toward the level 4 mutant animal. Although they are all loyal subordinates of Xu Kai, they didn’t want to fight level 4 mutant animals if they could.

“Whimper-“

“Howl-!!!!”

At that moment, an unexpected thing happened.

The level 4 originally distracted from taking care of the cubs and recovering the body. They could only helplessly watch as the group of people made troubles at its “home” but now it suddenly roared in anger and murderous fury! It swallowed the red-coloured orb and leapt several metres over the crowd on its muscular hind legs, opening its huge mouth like a watermelon and crushing the head of a man in his twenties.

The level 4 mutant animals are like tigers among the flock of sheep [5] and no one is a match for it under its sharp teeth and claws. Its skin and flesh were even more solid than the armour of the leader of the human devouring Gu worm. Except for the level 3 ability user, even a grenade could not leave a single scratch on the body and level 2 ability users were torn apart before they could even resist!

Xu Kai looked back, his face ashen, “You guys are really something. You can even kill the cubs of level 4 mutant animals!”

Where the level 4 mutant animal was lying before, a sharp shrapnel had penetrated into the brain of the young cub, the cub which had just been born had tender flesh, and now it was dead!

The level 4 mutant animal’s eyes were red, obviously furious and it had already killed five people during the jump! These are all the elite confidants that Xu Kai has raised with great difficulty, and to see it lose here makes him feel so distressed.

With a roar, the level 4 mutant animal suddenly attacked Shen Qingjia! It seemed to want to tear everyone apart and eat them, even the level 3 giant worm leader did not have such a strong resentment before he died! Shen Qingjia, who was the one to bear the brunt of the resentment, was almost overwhelmed by it.

She didn’t dare to slow down and threw a fireball at the mutant animal’s head. Taking a chance while it paused to tilt its head to avoid the fireball she grabbed a knife to block the upcoming claws!

“Clang!!!”

A metallic clash sounded, and Shen Qingjia took several steps backwards before she was able to unleash the tremendous force and stop. The force was so great that it was like a hammer hitting her heart, and stars were flashing in front of her eyes, and it was hard to breathe because of the pain in her chest, so she could hardly speak.

She didn’t lower her head but she knew that his purlicue [6] where she held the blade was already split open and blood was flowing out as if from a bag with a broken hole.

With just one blow, Shen Qingjia had already lost completely!

When the level 4 mutant animal saw that it did not kill the enemy in front of it with a single blow, it ploughed the ground with its sharp claws in anger, gathering strength in their front legs and attacking Shen Qingjia again!

“Clang!”

A knife blocked the sharp claws of the leopard shaped mutant animal. The hand holding the knife was slender and fair and her face was paler than her hand.

“The level 4 mutant animal is burning its life force for fighting power, Qingjia, this is the end of the world and you’ve already won if you can survive under its claws.” The figure walked in front of Shen Qingjia, her voice slightly hoarse compared to normal, “Leave the rest to me.”

The difference between mutated animals and evolved animals is that they have a hard time controlling their emotions, they are easily enraged, easily berserk, easily burn their lives, easily taken advantage of …… but this is no excuse for Shen Qingjia’s defeat in one move.

Yes, she finally realised that although she has been thinking about improving her strength since her rebirth, in fact, after encountering Zhu Ai again, she almost lost her ambition to improve and become stronger.

Zhu Ai is extremely beautiful, strong, gentle and considerate. She took her under her wings and protected her. She eats, drinks, and plays happily. She almost forgets that this is the end of the world and no one can be taken care of forever. She always felt that there would never be any danger around the Greatest Villain. She forgot that the future Zhu Ai the Greatest Villain, this year is only a 17 year old girl, a girl who could bleed and get injured… or even die.

She is not yet the Greatest Villain who is invincible, who can pick up the stars and catch the moon and blow up the earth. Right now she is just Zhu Ai…

Shen Qingjia stared at Zhu Ai’s thin back in a daze, bit her lips tightly and was speechless.

Translator’s notes :

[1] 豹形变异兽; author purposely saying ‘resembled leopard’ instead of just ‘leopard’ so that is why I keep the translation close to what the author written. Also see notes number 2.

[2] 嗷呜; alright. So the thing with Mandarin is that sometimes it’s hard to translate a specific part. For example this, this means ‘animal cry’ which, according to proper wording, if this is a real feline I should use ‘yowling’ however I decided to use ‘howling’ because when I check it said ‘the crying of animal/generally refer to wolf or dog’ so yeah, again, this is mutant animal. Maybe it started as a domestic cat I don’t know but the author decided it only ‘resembled a leopard’ but acted like a wolf? Anyway, link for yowl and howl for people interested and also a bonus picture of the example of this SFX that I found.

https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/209149/yowl-howl-and-wail

[3] 沈清嘉这才从好莱坞特效一般的场景里反应过来

[4] 咕哇; alright, again, this is apparently a sound that a frog made but honestly I don’t want to put ‘croak/ribbit’ in the middle of serious fight so yeah, that is why I put ‘whimper’ there.

[5] 虎入羊群; idiom for when a strong rush among the weak to wreak havoc. I decided to keep the original since it kind of fits, I mean, it is a mutant animal.

[6] 虎口; so this means tiger mouth but also means the part of the hand between the thumb and the index finger and when I search for English term it gives me purlicue.

***

I finally made a Ko-fi page. So here is how it works, as you can see from the picture below, I set the tip to 1 dollar. I count 1 dollar as 1k words. So say, the next chapter, chapter 22, raw aka the Mandarin script are 2667 words. Which means for 3 dollars I will release chapter 22 for this weeks extra [before Saturday 8th October just to be safe, since you know, timezone]