270 Chapter 269: Six Star Toad (1/2)

”I'm afraid I can't allow that.”

Everyone turned to stare at me. Lian Rou, in particular, looked furious.

”Hey! You can't do that! You can't mean to leave her out here by herself!”

”No, I'm not suggesting that we abandon her. I'm just saying we can't allow her into the city.” I gestured toward the raft. ”Are you seriously telling me you don't find any of this suspicious and overly convenient?”

”What do you mean?” Yi Ding Si asked, confused.

”You're aware that the top three demonic sects are planning to siege Wu Ling City, right?” I pointed out. ”And now we suddenly have a strange girl no one has heard of before, suddenly showing up and claiming that she's on her way to Wu Ling City. For some reason she survived poison that killed off her entire family, even though by right the poison should have killed her long ago. Don't you think it's a little too fortuitous that she's the only survivor, and she just happens to be heading toward the city that's going to be attacked by demonic sects in a few days? Normally wouldn't people be heading in the opposite direction?”

”That's true…” Tong Xue agreed as he flipped through his tablet. ”And I've run her face through the city records. There's no record or files on her in the city. She's most definitely not a resident from Wu Ling City.”

”I…I…” the girl stammered, her eyes wide. ”Please…”

”Drop the act, girl.” I sighed wearily. ”I know you're not a real member of that family.” I glanced at Tong Xue. ”Am I right?”

”Right on.” Tong Xue nodded as he scanned through his tablet. Calling up a screen, he conjured a huge holographic picture and displayed a family photo that featured the parents and the boy. ”The Xia Family. The man is Xia Si Liao, aged forty-one, and the woman is his wife, Xia Di Yu, aged thirty-eight. Their son is Xia Liu, aged twelve. They are only a family of three who have lived in Wu Ling City for over thirteen years. They made no mention of having a daughter.”

”That's…” the girl's jaw dropped. She was evidently shocked that we would check her background so thoroughly. I shrugged.

”I asked Tong Xue to check you out because there's something strange about you.” I frowned and shook my head. ”You think you're able to hide it, but I can sense the poison qi flowing through your qi channels. You're definitely a practitioner of poison arts. And that same venomous qi is what killed those three over there. You murdered them.”

”…!”

The girl turned frightfully pale and began backing away unconsciously.

”How…how…?”

”Hey!” Lian Rou complained. Tong Xue and I turned toward her, wondering if she was going to insist on defending the girl. But she merely placed her hands on her hips, looking all upset. ”You ruined my plan!”

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”What plan?” I asked, puzzled.

”We could have captured her! That's why I proposed bringing her into the city. We could capture her and probe her for information regarding the demonic sects' disposition and forces! But you just had to ruin everything!”

”Sorry, but I'm not taking any risk with her. Haven't you read The Celestial Zone?” I shook my head in disagreement. ”Even if she fails to cause any internal damage after attacking people inside the city, she will steal our maps and defense formations, and bring them to the demonic sects. She'll sell our information out to them and allow them to find a weakness in our defensive formations. I can't allow that to happen. The risk is too great.”

Having already seen what Three Star Toad did in The Celestial Zone, I wasn't pretty fond of letting her run amok in Wu Ling City. At least they had Da Nian Chu Yi to help them cure the poison, but there were still quite a lot of Mount Cloud Dream people who died to her poison when she fought her way out.

I had to say, for a supposed genius, Wang Chan was pretty naïve, taking an awful lot of risk to bring two total strangers into the heart of Mount Cloud Dream even though he was aware of the imminent attacks from the evil sects. Like…did he not figure out that they might be spies infiltrating Mount Cloud Dream? I know he was a kind-hearted fella who couldn't abandon people, but dude…that didn't mean you just let any random stranger right into your fortress, especially when you already know you were at war. In his defense, he was very young, and his senior Xue Wu pointed out that mistake to him.

As for me, who had already read The Celestial Zone and was aware of the aftermath, I knew exactly what sort of mistakes to avoid, and not to repeat the same error Wang Chan did. At least the first series was good, but The Celestial Zone II seemed to dump the character development and well-thought out plot elsewhere in favor of cool fight scenes. I kind of missed anti-hero Xue Wu…

”You've a good point.” Lian Rou sighed and nodded, conceding. ”I don't want to be responsible for the deaths of defenders.”

”How…how did you know?” the girl gasped, gaping at Lian Rou. The comely girl merely turned back with a shrug.

”You're not the only expert on poison, you know. Like Fei Wu, I kind of detected the poison qi flowing through your body when I treated you. Plus I also caught a whiff of several different kinds of toxins on your body, different from the one used to kill the three over there.” She narrowed her eyes. ”That can only be possible if you're a practitioner of poison techniques.”

The girl stared at us for a few moments, then she threw her head back and laughed.

”Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

”What's so funny?” Yi Ding Si demanded.

”Her plan got found out, and she's stunned by how big a failure it was,” Song Ting Yu explained kindly. ”She's still surprised that such a foolproof plan could have failed. If it wasn't you guys but anybody else, she would have just gotten through the gates without any issues, and she could begin to carry out whatever subterfuge she had in mind.” She covered her mouth and giggled, impressed. ”Even I didn't notice the poison laced across her body.”

The girl stopped laughing and glanced at us, her eyes narrowing. She clenched her fists and I sensed a spike in her qi.

”Well…since I've failed, I've no choice but to kill you all now!”

Her skin turned brown and boils erupted across her flesh. Noxious fumes began spiraling from her body, causing the plants and weeds around her to wither and dry up.

”Poison!”

Tong Xue and the rest quickly retreated, but I didn't. I merely stepped forward and did my best not to inhale the noxious fumes. Not because I would get poisoned, but because they were pretty unpleasant to breathe in.

”I don't know how you saw through my plans, but I'll just kill you and try again with another passer-by!”

”You'll be lucky if you run into people going toward Wu Ling City,” I pointed out dryly. ”Most people will be going away from Wu Ling City, given the imminent invasion.”

”Oh, shut up!” the girl shouted, annoyed that I exposed the flaw in her plan so easily. ”Mistress Bai Yue's schemes will never fail! If she says this will succeed, then it definitely will!”

”You do realized it just failed, right?” I scratched my head. Then I glanced at Song Ting Yu and the rest. ”And…yup, we just confirmed that she's from the Lunar Moon Sect.”

”Hmm, I'll run some analysis and check out who she is,” Tong Xue offered as he ran his finger through the touchscreen of his tablet. ”Maybe I'll unearth some useful information on her skills, which you can counter.”

”Be careful!” Lian Rou cried. The girl was already lunging at me, her poisonous palms lashing out toward me.

I smiled and met her palm strike head-on. Just like in the battle against Sha Chen, I stood my ground as our palms collided. Using Shadow Palm Strike, I forced her back.

”Hah! There is no antidote to my poison!” the girl crowed. ”You'll definitely die now!”

”Uh huh.” I shook my hands, but didn't panic. If I really wasn't confident that I was immune to her poison, I would have drawn my swords and cut off her hands. Actually, I should have done that, but I had this sadistic streak inside me. I mean, come on…who wouldn't want to see the expression on the girl's face when she realized her poison had completely no effect on me whatsoever? ”So how long does the poison take to act?”

”…”

”…”

After a few seconds passed, the girl realized something was amiss when I didn't topple over, foaming at the mouth or whatever.

”How…how is this possible!?” she cried.

”Lady, I've fought against the Heavenly Venom King himself, and won. What makes you think you are better than him? Compared to him, your poisons are a joke.”

The girl shuddered and she stared at me in dread. ”You…defeated the Heavenly Venom King?”

”…yeah. What? You didn't know that?” I glanced at Tong Xue. ”I guess we can assume that the demonic sects don't rely on the Internet to get their news.”

”Or maybe she's been out working in the field for so long, so she wasn't able to receive any news or updated information,” Song Ting Yu suggested.

The girl was staring at us as if she was wondering how we knew everything she did, right down to the smallest detail. To make matters worse, Tong Xue happened to stumble upon her information at that very moment.

”Aha! I found out who she is now! She's the Six Star Toad of the Lunar Moon Sect! She's known to be their poison master!”

”…Six Star Toad? Really?” I was burying my face in my palm. ”Can't they be more original? I can't believe they just ripped off a character from The Celestial Zone and then multiplied her stars by two. Now we're not just making fun of Chinese web novels, we're also moving on to Singaporean wuxia comics? And face it, the first Celestial Zone was the best. It was only from the second series onward that the comics went downhill.”

”Oh, just shut up! I'll have my revenge!”

Six Star Toad screamed as she charged at me again. This time, I drew Shadow Fox and chopped off her hands.