"Oh, you think that's fair!" Lady Hua narrowed her eyes at Yang Kai, a cold glint flashing through her pupils.
"It is pretty fair," Yang Kai nodded.
"Then if you think it's fair, get the hell out of the way. I'll settle my score with you later." Lady Hua swept her sleeve and snapped impatiently.
Yang Kai grinned, then slowly extended one hand forward and reached out.
The woman he had just slapped flinched at the sight, thinking Yang Kai was about to attack her again, and hurriedly scrambled aside.
But Yang Kai had no intention of dealing with her at all, which only made her feel foolishly dramatic. She clutched her burning cheek — whether the stinging was from the slap or from embarrassment, she couldn't tell.
Splash —
Water sprayed into the air.
When Yang Kai withdrew his hand, somehow a fish had appeared in his palm — a carp with a brilliantly golden back and a body the color of burning red.
The Golden-Backed Red Carp. This was unmistakably the very same Golden-Backed Red Carp that Lady Hua had raised for over a decade!
No one had seen clearly how he'd caught it. It was as though he had simply reached out, and the red carp — called "Little Red" by Lady Hua — had appeared right in his hand.
The woman holding the fish bowl froze for a moment. She glanced at the red carp in Yang Kai's hand, then at the fish bowl she was still holding, and her face went pale as she shrieked: "Ah!"
Lady Hua realized what had happened too, her expression turning ghastly ugly as she roared: "What are you doing?! Release Little Red right now!"
"Just a red carp. You treat it like a treasure? In my eyes, it's worth nothing at all." Yang Kai let out a soft, cold laugh.
A surge of dread welled up in Lady Hua's heart. Her face shifted color as she snarled: "I'll count to three. If you haven't let go by then, prepare to die." Without waiting for a response, she began counting: "One!"
Pfft!
A muffled sound rang out simultaneously, and Lady Hua's pupils contracted sharply.
Because right before her eyes, Yang Kai's hand holding the red carp had suddenly clenched tight, crushing Little Red to death on the spot. Little Red was indeed a demon beast, but only at the fifth rank — how could it possibly withstand a single blow from Yang Kai?
Under the force of that grip, the fish's body split cleanly in two. The head and tail tumbled to the ground, revealing their true form of three zhang in length, already very much dead upon landing.
Yuan Wu sucked in a sharp breath and stared at Yang Kai as if looking at a lunatic. He could never have imagined that this guy would have the nerve to do something like this.
A red carp was nothing in itself — but it depended on whose red carp it was!
This was Lady Hua's pet! It had been her companion for over a decade. Earlier, someone had merely injured it and knocked off a couple of scales, and Lady Hua had mobilized her entire entourage to come personally for retribution. Now the thing had been crushed to death right in front of her — how could Lady Hua possibly let this go?
This kid was dead. There was absolutely no way out.
Yuan Wu was overjoyed inwardly, and his gaze toward Yang Kai turned positively gleeful with schadenfreude. He still remembered the humiliation Yang Kai had inflicted on him just days ago. He didn't have the ability to strike back himself, but if Lady Hua's hand could do the killing, that would be a rather satisfying consolation.
Lü Sanniang and her daughter were both struck dumb. The two of them had limited interaction with Yang Kai, knowing only that he was Li Jiao's friend. They could never have guessed that Yang Kai would be this audacious — as if Lady Hua didn't even exist to him.
What were they going to do now? There was no way to smooth this over. If it had been the earlier situation, the worst case would be some punishment for mother and daughter, a few words of venting from Lady Hua, and it would probably blow over. But now...
Her mind raced with anxiety. She blamed Yang Kai's impulsiveness, and she hated herself for dragging him into the disaster they had created. How would they ever explain this to Li Jiao afterward?
"You... you actually killed Little Red!" The woman holding the fish bowl had gone sheet-white, staring at Yang Kai in disbelief, a silent wail rising from the depths of her soul.
Where had this madman come from? Did he not know what kind of catastrophic consequences this would bring?
The other woman stood rooted to the spot as well, her hand still pressed to her cheek but no longer feeling the pain — every ounce of her being was consumed by the scene unfolding before her.
The onlookers were horrified, their expressions varied, but the one who had committed the act showed not the slightest awareness of having caused a catastrophe. He merely regarded Lady Hua with a mocking look and sneered: "You wanted an eye for an eye. I wonder — how exactly do you plan to collect now? Why don't you show me how."
Lady Hua's chest began heaving violently, her once-pretty face contorting into something twisted and terrible as she screamed in a near-hysterical shriek: "Kill him! Kill him! Kill him for me!"
She had reached the end of her patience. When she had first come here, she had only wanted to seek justice for Little Red — to teach a lesson to the brute who had injured her pet. Upon seeing Lü Sanniang and her daughter, she had changed her mind, intending to thoroughly humiliate the wretched woman who had competed with her for favor over the past several centuries. But now, her eyes held only Yang Kai, and all she wanted was for him to die!
Little Red had been killed right before her eyes. Only this man's life could quell the fury burning in her heart.
She gave the order, but no one moved.
The two women Lady Hua had brought along were also Fuchi's playthings, but they were merely at the third layer of the Dao Source Realm. How could they possibly have the courage to step forward against a first-layer Emperor Realm cultivator? And judging by Yang Kai's behavior just now, he was clearly a lunatic who operated outside all reason and restraint. To approach him now would only be to invite humiliation. So after a moment of hesitation, neither woman made a move — though the struggle was plain to see on their faces.