Chapter 280: Old Acquaintance
The battle inside the room was still raging.
The fat cultivator had no intention of leaving—nor of calling for help.
The tiger demon had been starved for a long while and had much of its blood drained; its strength had plummeted. He originally thought he could subdue the beast with his own cultivation.
As a newcomer, if word got out that he’d blundered and allowed the tiger demon to break free from its chains, he’d surely be held accountable—and at the very least, scolded fiercely.
So, subduing the tiger demon quietly, without alarming others, was the best solution.
But as the fight dragged on, the fat cultivator realized—if this continued, forget subduing the tiger demon, he’d be lucky not to become its meal.
The tiger demon’s strength was far beyond what he had expected.
A doubt crept into his mind.
This beast has been starved so long—how can its blood energy still be this strong?
After a few more exchanges, the tiger demon showed no signs of fatigue. Instead, it fought with increasing ferocity. The fat cultivator suddenly realized—
“Something’s wrong!”
“Someone fed the tiger demon!”
His heart trembled violently. Who could’ve fed it right under my nose?
After a moment of thought, a chill ran up his spine.
He recalled the missing pastries from the kitchen—and the vanished strips of dried meat.
Someone had stolen the food, fed the tiger demon, and even undone the chains.
And that person—he couldn’t see at all!
A high-level concealment technique?
He glanced out of the corner of his eye at the demon-binding chains, and his heart pounded furiously.
When he entered, he had noticed the chains—they’d been perfectly intact. Yet in just a short while, someone had undone them.
And he hadn’t sensed a thing.
That could only mean one thing: the invisible cultivator possessed terrifyingly deep cultivation, with unfathomable Divine-Sense and inscrutable methods.
And at this very moment—that terrifying cultivator was in this very room!
Perhaps even now, he was watching with amusement as the fat cultivator struggled against the tiger demon.
Cold sweat poured down the fat cultivator’s back.
He had to run.
If he didn’t, he’d die.
Making an instant decision, he dodged a swipe of the tiger demon’s claws, turned on his heel, and bolted for the door.
But it was already too late.
From the corner of the room, Mo Hua stretched out a small, sinister hand and lightly clenched his fingers.
Spiritual power surged forth, coalescing into several chains that wrapped around the fat cultivator layer by layer, binding him tightly in place!
He froze as if plunged into an ice cellar, face pale as death.
What kind of spell is this?!
What the hell kind of spell is this?!
Before he could think further, the tiger demon lunged and bit deep into his shoulder.
He struggled desperately, still trying to crawl toward the door.
But a second Water Prison Technique locked him in place—he couldn’t move at all.
The tiger demon opened its jaws again and bit straight through his neck.
The fat cultivator knew then—he was doomed.
A powerful enemy lurked unseen in the shadows, a savage beast attacked from the front, and he was caught right in the middle.
All his life, he had schemed against others—this was the first time he’d been schemed against himself.
And just this once—it cost him his life.
With stiff effort, he turned his neck toward the corner, wanting to see who had trapped him.
But the corner was empty—not a single shadow in sight.
He knew someone was there, yet he couldn’t see them.
He spat a mouthful of blood and died, eyes wide open, unwilling.
Even in death, he didn’t know whose hand had ended him, nor what his killer even looked like.
The tiger demon tore into the fat cultivator a few more times to make sure he was dead, then tossed the corpse aside with apparent disdain.
It didn’t eat the man’s flesh—and even spat out the blood it had bitten.
Mo Hua found this curious.
This big tiger doesn’t eat people?
Was it disgusted by how the man tasted—or by how vile his heart was, making his flesh unclean?
Mo Hua pondered it briefly but couldn’t figure it out. He decided to ignore it—there were more important matters at hand.
Still concealed, he stepped up to the fat cultivator’s body, opened his storage pouch, and took out the jade pendant that Kong Sheng had given him.
He didn’t touch anything else, to avoid raising suspicion.
But this jade pendant—only Kong Sheng and the fat cultivator knew about it. Even if Mo Hua took it, no one would ever know.
He tucked the pendant into his own storage pouch.
The pendant was quite valuable—according to Kong Sheng, worth over five hundred spirit stones.
But Mo Hua didn’t plan to sell it.
It was an item of the Kong family’s direct lineage, inscribed with the character “Kong.” Mo Hua intended to keep it; it might come in handy someday.
After putting it away, he noticed the tiger demon staring at him.
Or perhaps not staring—the beast couldn’t see through his concealment technique, but it could sense his aura and was looking in his direction.
And it didn’t seem hostile.
Mo Hua found that strange.
Could it be that it’s grateful I fed it?
That didn’t sound like something a demon beast would do.
According to the veteran demon hunters, demon beasts were born to hate humans—if they didn’t eat them, they’d still try to kill them.
Mo Hua studied the beast’s gaze again and suddenly froze.
“It looks like…it recognizes me?”
He released his concealment slightly—since no one else was around—and revealed his figure for a moment.
When the tiger demon saw him, its eyes brightened, and it let out a low roar.
That roar sounded somewhere between a “roar” and a “meow”—part tiger, part cat.
Cat?
Mo Hua blinked, staring harder at the tiger demon. The more he looked, the more familiar it seemed—until realization struck him.
“Could it be…that little cat demon?”
Uncle Chu had once trapped a young cat demon; Mo Hua had fed it dried fish and practiced footwork with it before setting it free on Black Mountain, even warning it, “Don’t eat people.”
He hadn’t expected that little cat demon to actually be a tiger demon—and to have grown so large!
It now looked fully like an adult tiger—though its appearance was peculiar, somewhere between cat and tiger. Mo Hua had never seen such a breed in Black Mountain before.
He wanted to greet it, but then remembered—it was still a demon beast. It probably couldn’t understand him.
And demon beasts were notoriously temperamental. Just because it seemed docile now didn’t mean it wouldn’t snap one day and swallow him whole.
Mo Hua sighed softly, thought for a moment, and took a few strips of dried meat from his pouch, tossing them to the tiger demon as a sort of “meeting gift.”
The tiger demon held the meat in its claws and began munching with content snorts.
Maybe demon beasts truly couldn’t understand human speech. Whether it refrained from eating people because it remembered his old warning—or because its nature was different—Mo Hua couldn’t tell.
Just as he was about to say something, his expression shifted—he sensed people approaching.
The fat cultivator’s death struggle with the tiger demon had drawn attention.
Several evil cultivators were on their way.
Mo Hua quickly used his concealment art, stepping lightly up along the wall until he silently crouched atop a beam.
The tiger demon, sensing the same, gulped down the last of the meat, then calmly walked back to its spot—going so far as to slip its paw back into the chain’s loop.
Then it lowered its head and lay down, looking listless and harmless.
Mo Hua was stunned.
This tiger’s practically a spirit already!
How’s it so clever? It acts better than I do!
Before long, two evil cultivators—one tall, one short—entered the room.
The moment they stepped inside, they saw the blood on the floor and the fat cultivator’s corpse nearby.
The short one said casually, “Nothing serious, just a dead guy.”
The tall one kicked the corpse and frowned. “How’d he get bitten to death by the tiger?”
“Newcomer. Probably got careless.”
“What a useless idiot.”
The tall cultivator looked around, puzzled. “Wait—that tiger’s chained up, can’t move. How’d this fat guy die so far away?”
“Probably got bitten while feeding it, then crawled away bleeding. Messed up the whole place.”
“Damn it. Can’t even die neatly—now we’ve got to clean up all this blood.”
The tall one cursed, then asked, “So what now? Should we just kill the beast?”
The short one snorted. “You dare?”
“What? We can’t kill it?” the tall one asked, startled.
The short one shot him a glance and said coolly,
“This beast has a special bloodline. The Fourth Commander keeps it to drink its blood. If you dare kill it—he’ll kill you.”
(End of Chapter)