Chapter 469: Why Is It Her?

At that moment, Tie Shi wished he could crawl back into his mother’s womb. He hadn’t even had time to react before all the Jiepeng experts died.

Not even butchering pigs happens this fast.

When Li Xiaofei’s gaze landed on him, Tie Shi felt as though Death itself was staring him down. His knees nearly buckled, and his legs twitched uncontrollably.

This madman had the audacity to slaughter Jiepeng experts without hesitation. What chance did Tie Shi stand if he angered him?

"Sir, I..." Tie Shi stammered, forcing a smile that looked more like a grimace.

"Relax," Li Xiaofei said calmly. "I won’t kill you."

Relief washed over Tie Shi, and he nearly wept with gratitude.

But then Li Xiaofei continued, "Go to the Jiepeng Consulate and deliver a message to Tsukiha Tensō. Tell him I’m waiting for him at the Lijing Hotel—and that he should hurry here to meet his death."

Tie Shi nodded instinctively, bowing repeatedly. "Yes, yes, right away... wait, what?"

He froze mid-response as the weight of Li Xiaofei’s words hit him.

Tsukiha Tensō? That was the name of one of the Saints of Jiepeng!

The sheer magnitude of this challenge left Tie Shi dizzy with disbelief. He lifted his head to look at Li Xiaofei, his face pale with shock. Huang Fulai, An Xiaohu, Hua Wuying, and the others wore similar expressions of stunned incredulity.

He’s challenging a Saint? Does Li Xiaofei truly have the strength and confidence to pull it off? Or is he so far gone that his audacity bordered on madness?

"Hmm?" Li Xiaofei turned his gaze to the still-frozen Tie Shi and said, "Why aren’t you moving yet?"

"Y-Yes, I’ll go now!"

Terrified, Tie Shi dared not utter another word. He quickly turned and ran out.

Huang Fulai watched Tie Shi’s retreating figure with a faint trace of pity in his expression. It wasn’t hard to imagine the chaos and fury that would erupt among the Jiepeng people when Tie Shi delivered the message to the consulate. Nor was it hard to predict what fate awaited Tie Shi himself.

The enraged Jiepeng would never let him go. Perhaps a brutal death awaited him. No, there was no perhaps. It was certain.

Li Xiaofei then turned to Hua Wuying and asked, "How are you feeling? Should we get you back to the slums to rest and recover first?"

Hua Wuying, having already consumed the vial of Starforce Reagent, had regained some energy. Her injuries had temporarily stabilized.

"You... are you really going to challenge Tsukiha Tensō?" Hua Wuying asked, still struggling to believe it.

Li Xiaofei nodded calmly.

"The situation in Haijing City has decayed too much," He said evenly, as though discussing a mundane matter. "A drastic cure is needed. So, we’ll use Tsukiha Tensō’s head as the key ingredient for that cure."

Huang Fulai’s astonishment was beyond words. He found it difficult to believe. Yet, at the same time, a flicker of hope ignited within him. If Li Xiaofei could truly slay Tsukiha Tensō, the third-ranked Saint on Haijing City’s power hierarchy, it would undoubtedly serve as the drastic remedy the city needed.

Not only would it deliver a crushing blow to the arrogance of the Jiepeng, but it would also serve as a deterrent to the other foreign powers.

But... could it really be done?

Huang Fulai gazed at the young man before him. He felt like Li Xiaofei was shrouded in an impenetrable fog. Despite being so close, he seemed enigmatic and unreachable.

The others in the lobby had already left in haste. The scale of what had just transpired was as though the very heavens had been torn apart. None dared linger any longer, not even out of curiosity. As they fled, word of the incident spread like an unstoppable plague throughout Haijing City.

But Huang Fulai and An Xiaohu remained behind. Hua Wuying, of course, had no intention of leaving either.

"What’s the story with those four?" Li Xiaofei asked, his attention turning to the four peculiar young girls.

Hua Wuying glanced at Huang Fulai.

"They’re trustworthy," Li Xiaofei said, sensing her hesitation.

Hua Wuying nodded and began, "The Jiepeng people secretly control the Haisha Gang and other factions within Haijing City. For years, they’ve been involved in heinous activities, including human trafficking. They’ve been abducting women and young adults for forbidden experiments. Recently, I discovered that twenty women were being held captive by them in an abandoned brick factory in the slums. Acting covertly, I rescued them. Most were safely relocated through Dragon Group channels, but these four girls stood out..."

When Hua Wuying first encountered the four girls, she immediately noticed that they were not entirely human. Sensing something unusual, she decided to keep them close and observe.

Over time, she discovered an astonishing secret: the four girls underwent a mysterious process every three days, similar to the molting of snakes. During these periods of dormancy, they would shed their skin and experience extraordinary biological transformations.

In just three cycles of this metamorphosis, the girls had aged significantly, growing from what appeared to be seven or eight years old to their current state, resembling eleven- or twelve-year-olds.

Hua Wuying’s careful attention and care eventually earned the trust and dependence of the four sisters. Through simple communication, Hua Wuying learned a shocking secret from them. The star beast crises that had plagued Haijing City in recent years were not natural phenomena. They were deliberate. The Jiepeng people had developed a secret technique to control star beasts.

They had driven massive numbers of terrestrial and aquatic star beasts to the outskirts of Haijing City, repeatedly orchestrating devastating beast tide assaults on the city. It wasn’t just Haijing City. Several of Great Xia’s base cities surrounding Haijing had suffered similar fates.

This strategy had placed immense pressure on Great Xia's city defenses, leading to heavy losses among stationed troops and martial experts. Eventually, Great Xia had been forced to seek assistance from the Star Council.

Thus, under the Star Council’s directives, Haijing City had been opened to foreign powers. The Wanmao District was established, allowing foreign military forces to station themselves within the city. Unfair treaties were signed, effectively opening Great Xia’s southern gateway to external control.

The reason Hua Wuying knew all this was because of the four sisters’ mother. She was one of the Beast Kings driven from the ocean by the Jiepeng people. She was a cyan-scaled sea serpent imbued with the bloodline of a Divine Dragon.

During a recent large-scale beast tide assault, this serpent, while in the midst of giving birth, suddenly awakened a trace of her latent bloodline. When she awakened, she had managed to break free from the Jiepeng people’s secret control techniques. However, the bloodline awakening had come at a price. The majority of her vital essence and energy had been channeled into the four eggs she was carrying.

𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

The serpent hatched the eggs, giving life to the four sisters. But the Jiepeng people quickly realized what had happened and unleashed other Beast Kings to attack her. Weakened after transferring so much of her energy, the serpent had fought desperately, ultimately using her awakened bloodline techniques to teleport the four sisters to safety. She had ultimately perished in the shallow waters, holding off her pursuers.

The four sisters, newly born and dazed, carried the memories encoded in their bloodline. Through sheer coincidence, the serpent's bloodline technique had transported them into Haijing City. Drawing on the residual energy from their mother, the sisters had undergone multiple evolutions, eventually taking human forms resembling four or five-year-old children.

Their intelligence quickly developed, enabling them to distinguish danger from safety. They survived for a time in the harsh conditions of Haijing City but eventually caught the attention of human traffickers. When they were captured, they were sold to the Haisha Gang, who specialized in abducting women to sell to the Jiepeng.

The four sisters, who were all stunningly beautiful, were seen as rare treasures by the Haisha Gang. They were held in the abandoned brick factory alongside a dozen other young and beautiful virgins, awaiting inspection by the gang’s executives. The plan was to offer them as gifts to the Jiepeng people.

Hua Wuying’s daring rescue had shattered the Haisha Gang’s ambitions. Ordinarily, the loss of a few women, no matter how stunning, wouldn’t have been enough to provoke the Jiepeng people into launching a city-wide manhunt in Haijing City.

However, the Jiepeng people were already aware of the cyan-scaled serpent’s evolution, her death, and the teleportation of her offspring.

"Since the sisters possess bloodline memories, they can access their mother’s perspective and expose the Jiepeng people’s conspiracy. This is why they’ve become the target of relentless pursuit and capture," Hua Wuying explained in a single breath.

Li Xiaofei’s expression was filled with surprise. When he looked at the four sisters again, his gaze softened with a hint of kindness.

So, they were born of a dragon. No, that’s not entirely accurate. When the cyan-scaled serpent gave birth, she had already awakened her Divine Dragon bloodline.

Calling the sisters Dragon Maidens isn’t an exaggeration. They inherited the Divine Dragon bloodline. But why, then, are they not dragons themselves? Why had they taken on human forms?

As Li Xiaofei regarded them with curiosity, the four sisters shrank back, hiding behind Hua Wuying. Peeking out from either side of Hua Wuying’s waist, their little heads glared at Li Xiaofei, baring their teeth in a playful yet defiant manner. Their fierce demeanor was endearingly innocent, more adorable than intimidating.

"To think the Jiepeng people have mastered such a secret technique," Huang Fulai said through gritted teeth, his entire body trembling with rage. "Does this mean the fall of Xu Base City was also part of their manipulation? They must have been after that..."

He abruptly cut himself off, but the fury burning in his heart was evident as it threatened to erupt like an uncontrollable blaze.

Meanwhile, Li Xiaofei was following a different line of thought. The fall of Xu Base City surely bore the fingerprints of the Jiepeng people. The chaotic state of Great Xia’s southern territories was clearly the result of deliberate infiltration and meticulous scheming by the Jiepeng. The Yiggs, the Europians, the Bayerians, and the Indi people were all also complicit as they fanned the flames for their own benefit.

As for the Star Council? This supposedly supreme human institution seemed far from innocent in its role during this crisis. Its actions, or lack thereof, were anything but honorable.

"We must protect the four sisters at all costs." Hua Wuying said firmly. "Their testimony and the evidence they carry must be made public. We’ll expose the Jiepeng people’s despicable schemes to the entire world and make them pay for what they’ve done."

Li Xiaofei nodded faintly but did not echo her sentiments. If the sisters truly held the evidence to prove that the Jiepeng people had manipulated star beasts to engineer beast tides and mass slaughter, it might indeed bolster Great Xia’s position on the international stage and create some level of global condemnation.

However, Li Xiaofei didn’t believe this would inflict significant damage on the Jiepeng people or force them to halt their plans. After all, in the current era, no nation would willingly abandon its gains because of external criticism.

The lessons of five centuries ago, during a certain localized war, had already proven one immutable truth: only strength ensures a nation’s survival. Control of public opinion has always been in the hands of the powerful.

In this era of stark divisions between the strong and the weak, that reality had only been elevated to an extreme. There was only one path to seek vengeance. The blade.

However, the value of the four sisters was undeniable. They must be protected at all costs. As this thought crossed his mind, hurried footsteps echoed from outside the hotel lobby. Large squads of Jiepeng soldiers were approaching rapidly.

Huang Fulai and the others immediately tensed, their expressions turning grim.

Is the third-ranked Saint of Haijing City finally arriving? Is the ultimate battle about to begin?

Soon, a figure stepped through the doorway. But it wasn’t a towering, menacing warrior. It was a woman. She entered the lobby with measured steps, her presence commanding and poised.

Her face was beautiful and elegant, exuding both purity and strength. Her striking features radiated a quiet confidence and grace.

Li Xiaofei froze for a moment, his eyes narrowing slightly.

Why is it her?