Chapter 397: Dispute and Bloodshed
Yuliya followed behind the six individuals, eavesdropping the entire way.
Thanks to her impressive memory and understanding of the Heavenly Devil language, plus her ability to guess their chat topics from their gestures and expressions, she was starting to get the hang of what they were discussing.
It seemed they were heading somewhere.
After about an hour of following them—who were as chatty as a bunch of gossiping grandmas—Yuliya had managed to pick up some basic communication skills.
Her ability to comprehend the Heavenly Devil language gave her a solid foundation; otherwise, she would never have grasped a new language so quickly.
She didn’t dare to speak the Heavenly Devil language casually as it contained powerful secrets, but this… let’s call it Beastmen language, was fair game.
Beastmen language was much simpler than human languages. Especially Chinese—where one word can have multiple pronunciations and meanings, plus all sorts of special cases—it’s essentially rocket science!
Beastmen, however, preferred vague expressions. They repeated the same few words, focusing more on gestures and expressions during their communication.
In short, Yuliya was picking it up like a pro; she could learn over eighty percent of it in just one day.
Through her time shadowing them, she also grasped the situation of the six ahead.
Five of them were a crew, and the quiet one at the front seemed to be leading the charge.
The leader appeared to be female and resembled a cat.
She was noticeably weaker than the others and often yelled at, her name likely being Kaise.
Finally, it seemed they reached their destination—a big tree.
“Is this the place?”
Kaise nodded.
“Quite a trek. Step aside, time to get ready for action!”
A few burly guys stepped forward and began smashing the ground beneath the tree.
“Be careful not to destroy this tree!”
“What’s the big deal? It’s just a tree—Hani’s here, so if we mess up, she’ll handle it!”
Hani, the other female member, was somewhat ambiguous in race but had some beast-like features on her face.
Hani nodded and stood with her arms crossed, watching them.
Thus, those guys grew bolder with their wrecking spree.
They smashed the ground until they finally unearthed a cloth bag.
“This is it! We found it!”
“Found it! Let me see!” Kaise rushed toward the bag.
But a hand intercepted her: “What do you think you’re doing? Of course, Hani gets to check it out first!”
“I… didn’t we agree on this…”
“Agree on what? Get lost!”
Kaise was shoved aside and nearly toppled over.
The others laughed at her stumble and brushed the bag off before handing it to Hani.
Hani took it with a look of disdain, opened it, and began inspecting its contents one by one.
“Useless.”
“What a load of junk!”
“Tsk!”
She shook her head in disappointment and tossed the items onto the ground carelessly.
While she deemed them worthless, the others eagerly picked them up, excited about the potential cash they could fetch.
Finally, Kaise pulled out a small box, holding it up: “This one looks different!”
It was a wooden box with an unknown gem embedded on the front.
Seeing this, Kaise suddenly shouted and rushed toward Hani: “No way! This is mine! You can have everything else, but this one is for me!”
Kaise moved so quickly she grabbed Hani’s hand, trying to wrestle it away.
“Get away! I’m just taking a look!”
“No! This was left to me by my father!”
“Get lost!”
The others quickly jumped in, restrained Kaise, and carefully pulled her away from Hani, then tossed her aside with some force.
“What are you grabbing for? Hani’s the one who gets to see this!”
Realizing he might’ve overstepped, one guy kicked Kaise twice: “That’s what you get for not knowing your place!”
The hefty dude’s moves sent Kaise sprawling on the ground, unable to get back up.
She was a Cat Race member, and her only advantage was her speed; her race’s physical prowess was already lacking, and combine that with her weak state, she was no match for this kind of brute force.
Yet, she kept her eyes on the prize and shouted, “We had a deal! I need to get something first; you have to give it to me!”
“Hmph! What’s wrong with Hani taking a look?”
Hani frowned, brushing off the spot where she had been grabbed, then looked back at the small box.
She inspected it from left to right, furrowing her brow again: “This seems like it won’t open. Hey! How do you open this?”
“Let me at it, I’ll open it.”
Hani glanced at the others nearby and didn’t want to say much to Kaise.
They exchanged looks until someone finally suggested cautiously, “I heard there’s a restriction with Cat Race artifacts; you need bl**d from one of their kind to open it.”
The others immediately directed their gazes at Kaise: “Why don’t we give that a shot?”
Hani didn’t respond; she just waited for them to sort the situation out.
“Hani, please let me have the box.”
One person held the box while the other three surrounded Kaise.
“Wait! What are you doing! Give me the box, I can open it!”
“No way! No chance!”
“Behave!” One guy drew his sword.
“Don’t!”
Kaise struggled with all her might.
“Behave yourself! Can’t you understand that?”
“Ah—!!”
Out of nowhere, Kaise shrieked, clutching her hand.
“Wha—”
“I… I just meant to scare her!”
“No biggie, it should be fine.”
One guy dabbed a bit of bl**d and touched it to the box.
The next moment, a red light flashed, and the box clicked open.
They didn’t open it immediately; instead, they cleaned it off and handed it to Hani.
Totally ignoring Kaise, who was bleeding profusely on the ground.
Hani accepted it and opened it up.
Inside lay a ruby ring.
Hani’s face lit up. She took out the ring, held it up to the sunlight, and compared it to her finger.
“Nice! I really like it; I’ll take this one!”
“No! You can’t! That’s mine!”
Kaise suddenly shouted in protest, channeling untold strength from who-knows-where and lunged at Hani, snatching the ring.
The others on alert quickly surrounded her.
“Drop it!”
Seeing this, Kaise gritted her teeth and flung her bloodied hand toward the nearest face.
In that moment of obscured vision, she prepared to run.
However, having suffered a significant injury, her stability wavered.
Out of the chaos, someone swung their sword.
Thud!
In the next instant, bl**d gushed like a fountain, showering everyone around.
“Did… did you k*ll her?”
“No, I… I just grazed her!”
“Run! We’re so far from the base; no one saw a thing!”
The five flustered thieves collected their things and scurried away as fast as their legs could carry them.
