Chapter 19 - A Unihorn Lizard (1/2)

The progression of the night into the wee hours had remained largely quiet until a primal howl suddenly tore through the hushed atmosphere. It came outside of the Ye Castle, but following that howl was waves of rumbles — a couple of walls were tumbling down.

” What just happened?!”

Lights were instantly lit and flickering within the Ye Castle.

“A-a-a monster is in the Castle!”

“Mystical beast invasion!”

Frantic hollers from the clansmen on watchmen duty echoed one after another, rousing everyone else from their slumber.

It did not take much time before a few silhouettes burst into the scene in a manic blur. Ye Changxuan, Ye Zhantian and the rest of the higher-echelon pugilists had arrived.

Ye Chen, too, was sprinting toward the direction of the incident. Before he reached, however, his eyes had already caught whatever was responsible for the initial crash — it was an enormous beast that resembled a lizard!

“A U-Unihorn Lizard?! Everyone, pay heed to its lethal venom!” Ye Changxuan cried above the ding.

Ye Zhantian leapt up and slammed his palm forcefully onto its head. Yet, all that did was to cause the monster’s head to tilt to a side while a sharp pain raced through Ye Zhantian’s right hand all the way up to his arm.

The Chief understood the implication instantly. “It’s not just any normal Unihorn Lizard… It’s a Ninth Stage one! Everyone, be careful!”

Although dangerous, a Unihorn Lizard’s natural habitat laid within the deepest part of the mountains and forests. They were almost never sighted in areas like these. So why was one of them barging its way into the Ye Castle?

Getting hit by a puny human really roused the Unihorn Lizard’s ire. As payback, it swung its tail with all its might, sending several clansmen flying.

The situation was immediately lost in the melee. Ye Changxuan, Ye Zhantian, and other master pugilists took to themselves to confront the Unihorn Lizard directly, while other clansmen — acknowledging their own lack of martial prowess — retreated to the back, grabbing their bows and crossbows to provide ranged support.

It was not exactly new for the House of Ye to face an invasion of a lone mystical beast. In fact, it averaged a few times a year. The reason why the incident today was so different from normal was that all of the beasts till then were, at most, only at the Seventh Stage, and never beyond.

Fortunately, as mystical beast invasions were not exactly unknown to the Ye family, the Castle itself was actually laden with quite a handful of beast traps exactly for occasions like these.

“Lure the beast to the pitfall trap!” Ye Zhantian commanded with a growl.

Pitfall traps were one of the best tools to slay mystical beasts. First, one would lure the beast into the trap, then with a flip of a switch, a boulder would plummet into the trap as another switch ignited the layer of kerosene coated all around the bottom of the pit. By then, it would not matter how advanced a Stage the mystical beast was. It would simply be incinerated to death.

“C-Chief! S-someone has destroyed the mechanism behind the pitfall trap! Even the kerosene is already ignited!” A clansman shrieked.

Ye Zhantian’s eyebrows immediately pushed together toward the middle as his chest was slowly but surely sinking into a state of ominous terror–

“—Zhanlong! Where’s Ye Moyang?! Find him and get him… before that bastard runs away!” Ye Zhantian thundered. It could only be an act of a turncoat to destroy a private trap—and no one else fitted that bill more so than Ye Moyang!

Like an arrow fired off from a bow, Ye Zhantian hurled himself toward the direction of the pitfall trap.

Indeed, the pitfall trap was already turned into a lake of fire as the kerosene blazed fiercely. As Unihorn Lizards were fearful of fire, an ignited trap was effectively served as a red flag to them to not get close to it. With the trap out of commission, the Ye family was suddenly left with limited choices. They could either kill it which would take some time and definitely cause immeasurable damages to the Castle or chase it out of the Castle altogether.

The reason why mystical beasts were dangerous was that they were always a lot stronger and more powerful than a human counterpart even if the two occupied the same Stage. It was precisely due to this discrepancy between the humans’ and mystical beasts’ powers that was starting to take a toll on the only two master fighters who had attained the same Celestial Chi as the intruder—Ye Changxuan and Ye Zhantian.

Twish! Twish! Twish!

Came the sharp, flitting sounds of arrows as they rained down onto the Unihorn Lizard. The damages of these arrows might have been mitigated by the monster’s dense hide but the impact from the powerful shots fired off from the Ye Castle’s mangonels were still damaging enough.

The Unihorn Lizard’s mammoth-sized body— at least three or four zhangs wide — thrashed uncontrollably, its fury increasing dangerously as arrows never ceased raining down on it. Then, suddenly, it ran headfirst into the mangonels themselves.

In a horrifying cacophony of ‘ker-rash!’, three mangonels crumbled into debris within minutes.

Ye Zhantian was fuming. These weapons had costed the House of Ye a fortune—on top of a massive amount of effort to forge!

“You… Stupid beast!” Ye Zhantian hurled himself toward the intemperate beast and lashed out a thunderous wallop.