Chapter 40 – Zhu Gu Niang

JUNE 26, 2023 BY ILOVEYURI

Shen Qingjia’s paralysed face normally didn’t change colour even when she was poked into a hole with a sword, but now she had a horrible expression as if she was seeing a ghost and Xia Yu couldn’t help but be a little curious.

“What’s a Ghost Cave?”

Shen Qingjia stood still, her head hanging low, Xia You could not see her expression, but could only see her hands clenched into fists, and then loosened as if she had lost her strength.

After a long silence, Shen Qingjia said quietly, “The speed of biological evolution has its own laws, whether you try to slow it down or speed it up, you will pay an extremely heavy price. According to the current rate of biological evolution in the End Times, it is absolutely impossible for level 6 to appear so soon. Since an abnormality has now occurred, the only possibility is that it is a demon, so you can imagine how much it would really cost to create such a thing.”

Xia You nodded somewhat confusedly.

Shen Qingjia continued, “Although the secret realm is mysterious and dangerous, at least there is hope for people to live and take the treasure. The Ghost Cave is not, there are no secret treasures in it, only a huge hungry monster waiting for food, only death. The Ghost Cave is not a secret realm, yet it is so similar to it as to be almost indistinguishable, for it originally evolved from it.” [1]

“Pick a secret realm, seize the secret treasure, use the secret treasure to refine [2] sacrifice the guardian beast, use countless human flesh and blood souls as living sacrifices, and then feed the guardian beast enough energy …… to eventually have a certain chance of getting a powerful demonic beast with astounding battle power, some people also call it a War Giant. [3]

That’s right, now this space has turned into a living altar, we are now food in human form for the level 6 demonic beast to feed on, those who died earlier may have been absorbed by this monstrous beast to the point of no scrap remaining.”

“Such a powerful level 6 …… in order to successfully refine it, perhaps this Yuanjiang City has now become an empty city.”

The first sentence in the post-apocalyptic history of Yuanjiang compiled by post-apocalyptic historians is “What harms humans the most is not Nature, not Calamity, not Zombies, not Beasts, but Humans! It’s always been Humans!”

The Level 6 Demonic Beast howled so loudly that it was as if space was about to be shattered by the sound wave, and everyone in the audience felt a tightness in their chests to the point where they almost coughed up blood from their mouths.

The demonic beast built up its strength and pushed its limbs together, and the chains that were already being torn, creaked and shredded, broke almost instantly.

The crowd was shocked, originally seeing this demonic beast bound by chains there was still some residual sense of security in their heart. But now they were only concerned with running for their lives especially since most were not from the same base.

Despite its huge body, the Demonic Beast moved with great agility, stretching out its huge hands and catching several people in one go, throwing them all into its large mouth full of interlocking teeth and chewing them with a spurt of blood. Seemingly stimulated by the scent of blood, the Demonic Beast became even more excited, and its eyes were filled with the ghastly glow of blood and cruelty.

Xia Yu looked at the shrinking space, constantly dodging as well as constantly pouncing in this space, speechless: “It’s like an eagle pouncing on a chick …… Am I going to die in such a humiliating way? Which one of these bastards has set us up! It’s simply unethical ……”

Xia Yu suddenly stopped speaking, her gaze fixed.

“Using the secret realm as a cover to attract most of the high ranking battle force of the two provincial bases, on the one hand, she can provide energy for the Giant’s evolution, on the other hand, she leaves the major bases’ defences empty, and if I’m not wrong, now she has prepared several options to attack the major bases with this Giant after this.” Pulling out her long knife and slashing down hard on the Giant’s outstretched fingers, while rolling over a few times in the air to dodging, Shen Qingjia took a deep breath, “Really …… Ji Qianhuang you really are something!”

“Well, it’s true that my subordinates are so smart, yo~”

A voice with a playful tone [4] suddenly appeared in this space. Shen Qingjia looked up and saw that the barrier, which only allowed entry but not exit, had stopped shrinking, and almost everyone had been driven there by the barrier to become food for the Giant.

At that moment, a group of people suddenly appeared in the space, not many, only ten or so, and even the level of their powers was not high, except for the leader, the others were only level 4 They had expensive and rare flying mutant beasts as their mounts, and each of them had travelled thousands of miles to get here, and the one in the lead had a glowing face and was stunningly beautiful.

“Well, good morning to you all~”

It was a stunningly beautiful woman, with a gorgeous posture, the corner of her eyes were glowing and sparkling.

“Bastard! What are you?!”

A peak level 4, thinking himself superior, shouted at the woman, but instead the next moment he was pinched by the Giant’s body, and this time the Giant didn’t put the man in its mouth and chew him, but simply crushed him to a pulp with a grip of its palm!

The whole room was silenced!

“My name is Ji Qianhuang, perhaps you are not familiar with me now, but it doesn’t matter.” The woman’s face was seductive, and when she smiled, it was even more bewitching, “As you can see, I am the chief director behind this great drama.”

She continued to smile, “My aim is to recruit you, and if you refuse, there will be serious consequences~”

Someone was furious, “You’re joking! Is this the best you can do to make us submit?”

Before the words could end, the next second they were crushed to pieces by a huge hand that broke through the air.

Ji Qianghuang spread her palm and smiled faintly, “I already said that I never lie, if you don’t listen to me carefully, the consequences will be really serious, yo~”

This time there was no one to refute her, even a fool could see that this Giant was controlled by Ji Qianhuang.

She drove the flying mutant beast to the ground and walked up to Shen Qingjia and Xia You, “It’s been a long time. I really missed you, my dear subordinates.”

Xia You looked at Ji Qianhuang with disbelief, “You don’t feel a bit uneasy about sacrificing tens of thousands of people who have no grudge against you?”

Killing one person and ten others is completely different from killing tens of thousands of people, let alone tens of thousands of people who have no grudge against you, and it is impossible to even try to selfishly and hypocritically comfort yourself that “they deserve to die because they have angered me”.

Those were not pigs or dogs, those were human beings with a living mind and intelligence, surviving in a small city of 70,000 people whose lives have stopped forever in the last few days. There may be people who can say they killed XX and chopped up XX, but most ordinary people feel guilty for even unintentionally injuring a human being. This is the deepest reverence for life in the souls of intelligent beings.

Because one loves one’s own life, one has a greater reverence for the lives of others.

“Obviously Xia Yu is the least in a position to say that about me, grudges and numbers and all that are just excuses.” Ji Qianhuang’s face didn’t show any other emotion than a smile, “Life is so precious, and a good executioner only needs to give them a worthy end.”

“The only way to live up to the splendour of life is to have a magnificent end.”

Xia You wanted to say something else, but was stopped by Shen Qingjia, who had been keeping her head down, “What Ji Qianhuang said is not wrong, in a way we are all the same person, there is absolutely no need to compare who is more despicable.”

Even though she said so under her breath, even though she had long known that Ji Qianhuang was such a person, even though she knew that the real Ji Qianhuang was 10,000 times more cruel and unfeeling than she was now, more like the true The Greatest Villain compared to the real one, her heart still inevitably turned to ashes inch by inch in disappointment.

“But I want to ask you a question.” Shen Qingjia’s voice was very, very soft, “Are you using me and Xia Yu as pawns to confuse people this time, or are you simply feeding us as food to this level 6 Giant!”

“Well, what’s the difference? Anyway, you guys now have survived, aren’t you?”

“There’s a big, big difference. ……” Shen Qingjia was quiet for a moment before a ominous laugh popped out of her throat, “If it’s the latter you didn’t even think of letting us survive, and the so-called precognitive message was all a lie!”

Lashing out! [5]

The long knife was instantly sheathed, and the cold light cut to the tip of Ji Qianhuang’s nose in a flash.

With the precognition, Ji Qianhuang dodged away in advance, without a look of annoyance on her face, she only said one word to Shen Qingjia

“One ……”

Shen Qingjia blade trailed like a maggot attached to a bone, “Don’t try to cheat, Xia You’s news is from me, even if you don’t come to Yuanjiang City, you can still know.”

“Two ……”

“What do you mean ……? Ji Qianhuang if you lie to me again I will kill you!”

“…… Three.”

A man who was being chased by a Giant in the distance suddenly emitted a miserable scream, “Don’t kill me! Devil …… you are the devil!!! The woman surnamed Zhu is also the devil!!! All are devils…… Don’t come over!”

Shen Qingjia’s ears twitched and stopped to look at Ji Qianhuang.

Ji Qianhuang’s smile remained unchanged, “The so-called future, either will be one step earlier or later, however sooner or later it will happen, so to say that precognitive psychics will not lie on the precognition.”

Shen Qingjia gritted her teeth and saved the man from the Giant’s hands before he turned into pulp, “Who is that woman named Zhu you just said!”

The man seemed to have gone insane and looked straight at Shen Qingjia, mouthing only the word “devil”. Shen Qingjia’s spiritual power was entering his brain, but she found that his spiritual power was in a mess.

“I’ll do it.” Xia Yu walked over, a layer of grey and black light emerged from her palm and entered the man’s body before saying, “You can ask, but in three minutes his brain will explode due to overload.”

“Which base are you …… you from?” Shen Qingjia heard her voice tremble a little.

“Northern Tigers City.”

Shen Qingjia took a deep breath, “The woman surnamed Zhu that you just said, what her name is.”

The man’s voice was mechanical and unclear, but in Shen Qingjia’s ears it almost turned into the most beautiful music.

“I only know that Lord once called her ‘Zhu Gu Niang’… but even if she is a demon, she is probably the most beautiful and lovely demon in the world.” [6]

The author has something to say:

In the next chapter, the Greatest Villain will finally appear… The author, who almost dying, can finally breathe a sigh of relief (lying soft on the ground)

It’s not easy to get to the point where I am (lying soft on the ground)

The author, who no longer need to be devastated, feels like once again filled with love for the world (Stareye)

Translator’s notes :

[1] So, continuing from the last chapter. Raw for last chapter’s title are 鬼窟鬼兽 and you can see that author use ‘鬼 Ghost’ twice but well…using ‘Ghost Cave Ghost Beast’ is, erm, repetitive? Vice versa for ‘Demonic Cave Demonic Beast’. Which is why I decided to use ‘Ghost Cave Demonic Beast’.

Sorry, English isn’t my first language, I googled oxymoron and it is not exactly what I mean so yeah, I have no idea how to explain it, but still, translator’s choice of words, feel free to comment if you have suggestions.

Also, I am no expert in Xianxia/cultivation story but I remember reading a lot about Demonic Beast and rarely saw Ghost Beast? So yeah, again, I just use what I feel flow better.

[2] Again, I am no expert in Xianxia/cultivation but yeah, explanation : a secret realm will have guardian beasts just like in the previous arc. Now, imagine this guardian beast as a wild pokemon that you have tamed and now you want to ‘evolve’ it. So ‘evolve’ is the same as ‘refine’ but the evolution stone here is more like Philosopher’s Stone in Fullmetal Alchemist because you can’t buy it from the store but you need to use human’s life to ‘refine’ the ‘pokemon’.

Hope this makes sense lol. Also, sorry for spoiler (?) but Fullmetal Alchemist has already been out for so long plus it is the best example that I can think of for this ‘refine’ thing.

[3] 战争巨人; Direct translation is War Giant. I tried to search for a picture of this in Baidu but I got either Hulk or AoT lol so yeah, we already got Ultraman in the last chapter so just imagine a Giant wearing armour because I guess that is what the author means?

[4] I spent quite some time on the Internet just to find what this [~] speech is. Turn out, it is either playful or flirty so well, I choose playful.

https://grammarist.com/punctuation/tilde-symbol/

[5] 呲吟

[6] 城主;I haven’t read next chapter so I have no idea is this is City Lord or should I just use Lord? Because the dictionary gives me lord of a castle ; castellan so yeah, might come back to edit this later. Italic this with the

祝姑娘; again, I haven’t read next chapter so I will just leave the pinyin there but the literal translation for this one is ‘Wish Girl’ so yeah, these two are subjected to be changed later?