Chapter 286 : Fifth Slap (8)
Never in his worst nightmares had Ke Cang Ju ever dreamt that he would be overpowered by a mere brat, pushed to the point like this. He watched in horror as Jun Wu Xie closed the distance between them. And with every approaching step, Ke Cang Ju cringed. He flung his hands out in desperation, as puffs of smokes in various dark shades of colours sprayed towards Jun Wu Xie!
He had lived all his life with the firm belief he had in his poisons, and that brat would be no exception to the countless opponents that had died under them!
Even if the most deadly Lone Smoke had no effect, the other myriad fatal poisons he held hidden within his sleeves must have one that would kill the kid!
However, Jun Wu Xie continued forward, not even blinking, stepping through the heavily poisoned clouds of smoke that swirled around her, her cold chilling eyes shining through the dense poisonous fog.
Those eyes held nothing but utter contempt!
"Are you finished?" Jun Wu Xie asked impatiently, after seeing Ke Cang Ju's desperate attempt to throw everything he had at his disposal right onto her.
Ke Cang Ju looked at Jun Wu Xie, and words seems to fail him at that moment. The successive gusts of smoke he released had contained tens of different lethal poisons from all over the world. Even the strongest of fighters would have fallen under his incessant onslaught with the copious amount of poison he had released.
Nevertheless, Jun Wu Xie still stood, unaffected, and her radiant smile only seemed to him, to be mocking at his weakness and hideous looks.
"I can't believe ..... Unbelievable....." Ke Cang Ju fell back a step, his face taking on a deathly pallor.
He had grown up hideous, his veins and arteries deformed and incomplete, and hence his contractual ring spirit had not even awoken. He cursed the heavens at the injustice, and delved headlong, committing his whole life to the study of poison. Even without the strength given by spirit powers, without a mighty contractual ring spirit, he carved out his own path with poison, to kill all who despised and went against him.
But now, his vision had been shattered, by a young boy before him.
His prized poisons that had been his pride and joy, were now a joke to Jun Wu Xie. The study and research that he had committed his whole life to, could not even harm a single strand of hair on Jun Wu Xie.
How did she overcome his life's work so easily!?
"If you are finished, then it's my turn next." Jun Wu Xie's smile widened and she retrieved a grey porcelain bottle from a cloth bag on her.
Ke Cang Ju's eyes were fixed intently on the bottle within Jun Wu Xie's hands, as though a ferocious beast was trapped within it.
When Jun Wu Xie poured out a tiny elixir the size of her little finger's nail, Ke Cang Ju heaved a sigh of relief.
Ke Cang Ju had expected for a boy seemingly totally immune to the myriad poisons he released, to counter with a more fearsome and deadly poison. But the boy had instead produced a common pill, and judging by its outlook, Ke Cang Ju was certain that that was just a Bone Rotting Pill.
The Bone Rotting Pill was highly poisonous and deadly, and when ingested, the bones within the person's body will quickly start to rot and decay. To the common man, this poison was frighteningly lethal, but to Ke Cang Ju, it could not be something more common to him.
The Bone Rotting Pill was one of the products of his whole life's work in the study and research of poison. And most of the Qing Yun Clan's disciples would even carry a couple of them on them at all times.
The impertinent brat actually had the cheek to try to intimidate him with his own Bone Rotting Pill? That was a joke! With every kind of poison that he produced, he had researched its contents intensively and knew everything about them. He had taken all precautions to ingest the antidotes to provide him immunity from them. No matter how much of his own poison he took, they would not have any effects on him.
"Kid, do you know where that Bone Rotting Pill you hold in your hand had originated from?" Ke Cang Ju suddenly wanted to laugh, to laugh at his own uncalled for anxiety over the boy. The boy's immunity to his poisons had greatly surprised him, and besides that, he was just like any other ordinary boy. He must have been too shocked, and allowed panic to overcome him. Now that he had calmed down, he realised that he was not in that much of a danger.
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Chapter 287 : Fifth Slap (9)
Just moments ago, the needles the brat had shot out from his hands had been just common silver needles, and had contained not a trace of poison. Useless needles such as these, as long as they did not pierce into a vital spot, would not be able to cause him any harm.
Ke Cang Ju might not be confident of avoiding all of Jun Wu Xie's needles, he was sure that he could avoid them from hitting any vital spots.
The brat was immune to the poison, but it seemed his companions were not that lucky!
Ke Cang Ju cast his eyes onto the wavering Qiao Chu behind Jun Wu Xie.
Qiao Chu had released his spirit powers to shield his body, but it was not enough to stop the Lone Smoke completely, and Qiao Chu was beginning to waver as he stood, and the skin over all over his body was glaringly red, showing the exact symptoms of having been poisoned by the Lone Smoke.
Soon, Qiao Chu would be on his last breathes.
Besides his horrifying poison, Ke Cang Ju had no other fighting abilities. If he were to be engaged in a melee with a strong spirit user, he would not last a heartbeat.
But standing before him, the young boy had no strong ring spirit, and did not seem to have attained any high level spiritual powers himself as well. At his age, even if his ring spirit had awoken, his spiritual powers should still be struggling at the red level. A tiny red leveled spirit user posed no real threat to him.
Ke Cang Ju justified and cleared his fears and doubts, and a smile crept back only his face.
Jun Wu Xie noticed the change in Ke Cang Ju's expression and looked at the poison in her hand before she said: "So you call this Bone Rotting Pill?"
Jun Wu Xie's question only served to reinforce Ke Cang Ju's suspicion that the brat did not have any terrifying poison in his possession. If he was that well versed with poison, shouldn't he have recognised the Bone Rotting Pill? An ignorant kid that couldn't even identify the Bone Rotting Pill would not possess anything that posed a threat to him, and only stood up to him based on his body that was immune to poison!
With that belief, Ke Cang Ju regained his arrogance and sinister expression.
"Kid, you dare bring my own poison before me to intimidate me? How naive and ignorant."
"Your own poison?" Jun Wu Xie raised an eyebrow. Suddenly she waved her hand forward and called out: "Little Black!"
A massive black shadow streaked forward from behind Qiao Chu, and it pounced onto Ke Cang Ju who had just regained his confidence a moment ago.
Ke Cang Ju could not even react in time to dodge and found himself knocked backwards by a brutally overwhelming force and fell onto the ground. When he recovered from the shock and the pain, he found himself helplessly pinned under a black beast's massive paws upon his shoulders, rendering him immobile. Before his eyes, was a massive black beast's slavering jaws, its razor sharp fangs glinting under the dim firelight!
His newly restored arrogance melted away in that instant, torn to shreds by the black beast upon him, the expression on his face replaced with one of sheer terror.
"You claim this is your own work, why don't you try it on yourself?" Jun Wu Xie walked over slowly keeping herself on the side. That man was too filthy and if she were to touch him in the slightest, she would be so disgusted that she would want to skin herself, hence, she had made little black cat to do it for her.
Jun Wu Xie gestured to the black beast and the beast gave a ear splitting roar before it kicked its hind paw on the belly of Ke Cang Ju!
Ke Cang Ju screamed under the pain and with his mouth opened, Jun Wu Xie flicked her wrist and threw the tiny Bone Rotting Pill into the opened mouth. Little black cat immediately lifted its paw and pressed on the chest of Ke Cang Ju, forcing him to gasp and swallow the pill down his throat and into his belly.
Once the pill was swallowed, the black beast got off from Ke Cang Ju in disgust.
Ke Cang Ju sat up gasping heavily, holding his chest in pain, as he stared maliciously at Jun Wu Xie.
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Chapter 288 : Fifth Slap (10)
"The Bone Rotting Pill has no effect on me! Stop wasting any more of my time! Even if you manage to kill me here, Qin Yue will not spare any of you here! Do not think you can still step out of the Qing Yun Clan alive!" Ke Cang Ju said venomously to Jun Wu Xie.
"Really? Is that so?" Jun Wu Xie replied smiling.
Jun Wu Xie's reply made Ke Cang Ju uneasy somehow but the black beast did not make any threatening moves and remained still.
Did that mean the kid would not kill him?
As Ke Cang Ju contemplated, he suddenly felt a burning sensation on his face. He held his hands to his face as the burning intensified. His face suddenly felt warm and wet under his fingers!?
He held out his hands and looked at them in shock, and saw his hands covered in blood. The dark blood covered both of his hands and he watched in horror as a piece of flesh fell onto his hands before him!
"Arghhhh!" A horrified scream erupted from Ke Cang Ju's throat as he realised that the flesh was falling off from his face in pieces. His whole face was like molten lava, and the pain that assaulted him was unbearable.
"My face.....! My face.....!" The consuming pain drove Ke Cang Ju to his knees, and he crawled away in horror, wanting to hide his terrifying ordeal from people, as flesh and blood continued to fall. Ke Cang Ju made for a disgusting sight in the underground chamber then.
He had been born hideous, but he was nevertheless still a human. Ke Cang Ju could not imagine the horrifying fate he would have to face if his looks were to be further destroyed. It would be more merciful to just kill him now.
As ugly as he thought himself to be, Ke Cang Ju treasured his twisted features and looks. The slightest blemish or knick suffered on his face was an unbearable ordeal.
No one went up to stop Ke Cang Ju. Jun Wu Xie stood unmoving, her cold eyes staring as Ke Cang Ju scrambled and crawled to a basin of water on one side.
He looked just like a stinky bug, skittering across the floor, disgusting and nauseating.
When Ke Cang Ju got to the basin, he exerted all his strength to clamour up and kneeling, peered into the water. What met his eyes then, caused him to freeze in position, as shock ran through his entire being!
The rotting mess of flesh had disappeared completely and underneath the streaks of blood that remained, was smooth and fair skin. His puffy and saggy eyebags were gone, which had previously squeezed his eyes almost completely shut. He saw a pair of startling sparkling eyes, looking back at him in the reflection, in total disbelief at the face staring back at him.
'This is me?'
'Me???'
The man in the reflection, might not be described as handsome, but he was at least slightly good looking with even features. Compared to the hideous face he was used to seeing, this blood smeared face was exceptionally attractive to him.
At that moment, Ke Cang Ju forgot all the pain that wrecked his face, as he stared obsessively at his new face!
"This is me..... I..... I am so good looking....." Ke Cang Ju cackled maniacally, he had lived his whole life deeply immersed in his hatred of other people's good looks, and his jealousy had been due to his own hideous countenance.
All of that disappeared at that moment, as untold joy seeped into that cold unfeeling heart!
He had become handsome, that euphoric ecstasy drove any feeling of pain away from his mind.
When the last rotting piece of flesh had dropped off from his now flawless face, the eyes of the reflection on the water's surface shone brilliantly with obsession and glee.
So obsessed was Ke Cang Ju that he did not notice Jun Wu Xie, who had been standing at the same spot all this while, had eyes that suddenly turned icy, glinting with frost.
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Chapter 289 : Beauty's Facade (1)
"Like what you see?" Jun Wu Xie asked suddenly, her voice exceptionally chillingly cold and it echoed within the underground chamber, sounding rather unreal.
Ke Cang Ju's face parted in a smile, his eyes almost fanatic, and he did not hear what Jun Wu Xie said at all. He stared at the reflection, unable to tear his eyes away from the image, and lifted a shivering hand to gently wipe away the streaks of blood on that flawless face.
Beauty like this, cannot be allowed to be marred in any way.
He wiped off the blood gently, little by little, all the time marveling at his own exceptional good looks.
Suddenly, the reflection on the water's surface showed a split on the handsome face. The paper thin skin cracked, and blood poured out from the split on that face!
"NO! NO! DON'T! DOONN'T!!!" Ke Cang Ju looked at the face in the water that had been flawless just a moment ago, as more splits appeared a little by little, and the look in those eyes turned from marvel to one of unbelievable horror. He held up his hands to his face trying in vain to hold the flesh together.
It was futile, and absolutely impossible. Ke Cang Ju's skin on his face then was just like the skin stretched over a drum, and the paper thin skin was unable to withstand the pull, and had started to split apart.
Splits appeared all over Ke Cang Ju's face, as though someone had slashed him with a razor blade, a stomach churning sight.
Ke Cang Ju lost his mind then, clutching at his face, feeling horror that he had never felt before!
His flawlessly handsome face cannot be marred!
"NOOO!!!"
"NOOOOO!!!"
"What did you give me!?" Ke Cang Ju turned to Jun Wu Xie, as he realised the change had started right after he had swallowed the Bone Rotting Pill from Jun Wu Xie!
Jun Wu Xie stood with her hands crossed before her, as she looked expressionlessly at Ke Cang Ju.
"You called that the Bone Rotting Pill yourself didn't you? Was that not it?"
Ke Cang Ju was speechless, he had indeed thought that what Jun Wu Xie had fed him was the Bone Rotting Pill as it had looked exactly like it and had also smelled just the same.
But now, he believed he had been undeniably naive.
The elixir had already taken effect within his body and it was definitely nothing like the Bone Rotting Pill.
"What was that!? What exactly did you feed me with!? My face!!! Give me back my face!!!" Ke Cang Ju's hands were still clutching at his face as he stared at Jun Wu Xie, with blood flowing down his hands, with pieces of thin flesh mixed in.
Jun Wu Xie replied in a soft and unhurried voice:
"Beauty's Facade."
"What?" Ke Cang Ju was puzzled. He had never heard of anything named thus.
"The pill I gave you is called the Beauty's Facade. No matter how ugly a person was, as long as they swallowed the pill, they will gain a beautiful face." Jun Wu Xie narrowed her eyes, and her smile grew as radiant as the sun at the break of spring. "But, that beauty lasts only for a short time."
Very short, just slightly longer than a blink.
Ke Cang Ju looked in disbelief at Jun Wu Xie. He had initially thought the pill Jun Wu Xie showed had been the Bone Rotting Pill, but it had turned out to be something he had not even heard of before..... Beauty's Facade.....
And the Beauty's Facade had forced him to face a fate more agonising than death!
"Give me back my face..... Give it back....." The pain on his face was growing more and more intense, and Ke Cang Ju started to twitch as he fell to the floor. He could not shield his face any longer and he crept, struggling at every step towards Jun Wu Xie, his hair a tangled mop, his face a bloody mess, looking nothing like the arrogant and malicious Elder within the Cloudy Peaks just a day ago at the recruitment's final assessment.
"Whatever you want, I will give it to you. Just give me back my face..... If you would give it back to me....." Ke Cang Ju had never been so frightened. The face he had yearned for had just finally become his, but had been destroyed after just a fleeting moment, and made him look even more hideous than before now.
Having had a taste of possessing good looks, he could not stomach the heart rending loss and would never be able to accept this even more hideous countenance now!
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Chapter 290 : Beauty's Facade (2)
Jun Wu Xie looked down at the groveling figure at her feet, her half lowered eyes frosty with biting cold. She mercilessly retorted:
"That face was never yours."
"NO! That is mine! Mine! Please return it back to me! Whatever you want, I will give it to you! I will listen to whatever you say! Please!" Ke Cang Ju pleaded pitifully, his tears mixed into the blood, as the skin on his face split and bled further, and some flesh hung precariously from bits of skin still remaining.
Jun Wu Xie turned just before Ke Cang Ju could almost touch the end of her clothes and walked away, heading towards the already teetering Qiao Chu.
"Swallow this." As Jun Wu Xie held out an elixir within her palm.
Qiao Chu popped it into his mouth without hesitation and swallowed it immediately. The next moment, the burning pains suffered from the Lone Smoke started to fade, and except for his face being still a little pale, he did not feel any other discomfort.
"You sure enjoy hanging around, don't you?" Jun Wu Xie raised an eyebrow, as she glanced at the tall slender Hua Yao still hanging upon the wall.
Hua Yao closed his eyes a moment, and breathed out slowly, while he freed himself from his shackles.
The moment he stood upon the ground, Jun Wu Xie threw an elixir to him.
Hua Yao swallowed it without a word, and immediately felt the pain all over his body start to fade. He then proceeded to pull out the metal stakes lodged in his body while he said to Jun Wu Xie: "Thanks!"
After having shaken off the effects of the poison completely, the two youths went to look at Ke Cang Ju.
Ke Cang Ju was lying in a heap on the floor, his body in spasm from the unbearable pain. His eyes were bloodshot red, and looked extremely miserable. When he saw Hua Yao and Qiao Chu completely recovered from the poison's effects after taking Jun Wu Xie's elixirs, his eyes widened in disbelief and he opened his mouth wanting to say something, but at that moment, a wave of agony swept through his body, and the pain made him clench his jaw suddenly, which made him bite through his own tongue!
Blood spurted out from his mouth as his mouth filled and his shock made him gasp, which brought the blood into his lungs!
He clawed at his throat and chest, struggling to breathe and his spasms intensified.
The three youths just watched on calmly, quietly witnessing death come to claim the insidious Ke Cang Ju slowly.
Till the last moment, Ke Cang Ju had regret and despair written in his eyes.....
If Jun Wu Xie had not let him see his own flawless and handsome face before he died, had not granted him his life's greatest desire for that fleeting moment, he would not have understood the sense of loss and not felt such regret. He had finally firmly grasped his most prized good looks after so many long torturous years, only for it to be mercilessly snatched from his clutching fingers and destroyed bit by bit, slowly, right before his very eyes.....
If he had not known heaven, he would not have known the suffering in hell.
The black beast sat silently through it all, and licked at its paws.
[My mistress' wicked sense of humour, hasn't changed at all.....]
[Whatever her enemies treasured most, and prized above everything else, would always be the very thing her mistress crushed to dust, bit by bit, right before them.]
[It was just too wicked!]
Ke Cang Ju died, and died in regret and despair. He had died bringing with him, his most treasured face a gory mess, which could not even be described as merely ugly.
Qiao Chu stared at Ke Cang Ju's ravaged dead body, and gulped in fright as he stared at Jun Wu Xie.
"Little Xie, this thing you said was called Beauty's Facade..... You made it?" It was just too horrifying!!
Leading people right to the edge of the abyss and giving them no choice but to jump in was definitely much more cruel than a clean slice to the throat!
"I have more here if you are interested to give it a try." Jun Wu Xie asked puzzled, but was willing to share it good naturedly, as she offered it to Qiao Chu.
Qiao Chu turned white as a sheet immediately and shook his head till it almost fell off!