Li Yang glanced back at the faint outline swinging around behind him, the corners of his mouth curved up in a pleased arc. This was the first time since it popped up back in the sparring match that he brought forth this illusory tail, and now that he made it stick around for a bit he could more clearly sense how it increased his strength. He could even move the tail a little if he put his mind to it, but the motions were so slow and stilted that he couldn't see a single use for it at the moment.

Li Yang turned his gaze back onto the three-metre long black mole that had burst out from the earth a few metres ahead of him, a faint smirk on his face as he stretched his arms and started to head for the enemy. Strangely enough, the large mole actually shrunk back somewhat as Li Yang approached, the brown fings tucked away within its fur protruding and vibrating as if the beast wanted to make itself seem larger.

"Come on now, acting scared despite being the one that snuck up on us?"

Li Yang finished stretching his arms as he spoke and then stepped forward, shooting at the beast like an unleashed arrow. The distance between the two was short to begin with so Li Yang reached the face of the mole in practically an instant. He reached it first but wasn't actually the one to throw out the first attack, the mole quickly sweeping out with its left front leg when it noticed that Li Yang didn't launch an attack straight away.

But this was exactly the response Li Yang had tried to coax out from the beast, his right hand clenching into a fist that he smashed upwards at the incoming clawed-paw. His fist crashed into what should be the beast's wrist, the dirty black fur there actually feeling like solid leather, the beast's bones and flesh as solid as stone.

Demonic beasts were often mindless and savage, especially the weaker ones that were stuck at a lower level of strength. But while the heavens hadn't granted them the early intelligence that humans enjoyed, beasts had been blessed with terrifyingly strong bodies and innate abilities. Even beasts that had merely mutated from immense amounts of Qi generally had bodies that were far stronger than cultivators of the same rank, that was what made Demonic beasts so fearful. And there was no need to even mention the even stronger Divine Beasts, which could only be considered unfair beings blessed with the body of a Demonic beast and the mind of a human, they were truly horrifying monsters.

But the toughness of the beast's body didn't matter at this moment, even if he could, Li Yang's intention right now wasn't to merely shatter the beast's paw. He drew upon the energy from his three force runes and his four gravity runes, the Force Qi gathering up the energy that entered his arm from the collision while his Gravity Qi acted upon the beast itself.

Gravity on the beast's left side was reversed drastically for a single second, coupling together with the punch to actually lift the entire beast's side up into the air. The sudden change caught the beast off-guard, Li Yang immediately grasping the opportunity to send a sideways kick at the beast's other front leg, kicking it out from underneath its body. These two attacks coupled together to actually flip the large beast onto its back, the reversed gravity acting upon the left side of its body returning to normal just as the beast finished flipping.

And this was exactly what Li Yang had been aiming for, to push the beast into a defenceless state to quickly finish it. And he didn't waste a single second, his right leg rising as high as he could bring it before he brought it smashing down. As his heel approached the underside of the mole's head, he transferred all the energy his Force Qi had gathered up earlier and sent it into his foot. He then supplemented that energy with more Qi from all three of his runes, which were all currently strengthened thanks to the illusory tail waving around behind him.

And in that state, his heel collided with the underside of the mole's head and unleashed all the power gathered in it. Li Yang felt a somewhat sickening crunch beneath his foot before the head of the beast gave out under his heel and cracked apart, his foot barreling through the beast's head until his sole touched the earth again. With a foot having passed through its skull, the beast inevitably turned limp, Li Yang exhaling a long breath that caused the illusory tail behind him to dissipate.

"No wonder most people prefer to use weapons. Shame that it's not really my style."

The sickening crunch he felt under his foot as the beast's skull collapsed had practically embedded itself in his mind, a constant reminder of his first kill. And if it was going to be that sickening every time he used his fists or feet to kill something then he could somewhat understand why people would choose to use weapons. But using weapons wasn't quite his style so he spat out another breath and then stepped back, dragging a bit of blood and brain with him as he pulled his foot back.

He looked at the ruined head of the mole with slightly narrowed eyes, unable to deny that he was surprised at just how easy it had been to crush the beast. This monster was on the more mindless and savage side of Demonic beasts, there was no fun to be had in teasing and taunting it while they fought, it would just end up being a boring fight.

As such, he decided that this was an excellent opportunity to test out his force runes, the illusory tail, and the strength of his hands and feet after he strengthened them using the Heavenly Queen's 1st Star. And the result was more than pleasantly surprising, by pushing his strength to its limit he was able to quickly and decisively crush a Demonic beast that was one or two small realms above him.

He wiped away some of the blood staining his foot by using the surrounding grass, chucking the beast's corpse into his interspatial ring before he turned around. And the first thing that greeted him was the narrowed eyes of Mei Kongxu, a somewhat confused and lost expression lingering on her face.

"That tail... What was it? Where did you learn about it?"

She pushed her face uncharacteristically close as she questioned him, her warm breath practically tickling the tip of his nose. Her current expression was more in tune with some of the expressions she had when they first met and engaged in the betting matches to ask each other questions. The questions back then had been strange, and even she seemed to be at a loss, confused even, when it came to some of them.

Some might be slightly caught off-guard, maybe even charmed, by the difference between these expressions and the usually cold one that Mei Kongxu wore. But Li Yang was not one of those people, all he saw in this situation was a good chance to fluster her to see even more expressions. And he did just that, taking advantage of the fact that she had unconsciously stepped so close to softly lift her chin while leaning his own face closer, whispering sensually before she had the chance to react.

"Would you believe me if I told you that I have no idea what it was? And what if I told you that I only heard about it randomly?"

His answer was actually the truth, he didn't have a clue what the tail was, and he had only heard about it randomly from the voices in his head. But whether or not Mei Kongxu actually believed him, that wasn't something he knew. As for Mei Kongxu, an endearing blush ran across her face for a short second when Li Yang's voice tickled her ear.

But that blush vanished practically as soon as it showed up, her expression returning to normal as her fist shot forward to push Li Yang back. He swiftly stepped back and twisted his body to dodge the fist, raising both arms in apparent defeat while smirking faintly.

"Woah, woah, easy there, easy. I just thought that you wanted to get a bit more... intimate, since you took the initiative to get so close. And with a Fairy Sister like you taking the initiative, how could I possibly turn you down?"

Mei Kongxu's expression cracked slightly again under Li Yang's smirk, the fiend in front of her seemed to have more than just a knack for cracking the expression she had worn so naturally in front of others. She sucked in a quick breath to return her expression to normal, not indicating her stance on whether or not she believed his earlier words as she changed the subject.

"The box, the reward you chose for our bet. You said you would give it to me if I just asked, so would you hand it over now?"

She might not be showing her stance on whether or not she believed him, but just the fact that she changed the subject like this so quickly made it clear to Li Yang that she thought that he was most likely just playing with her. So since she couldn't get an answer to the more urgent questions in her mind, she probably decided to see if she could get an answer to a different question.

Li Yang wasn't bothered about her not believing him, it was the same as when he told the others in the sect that he heard voices and saw a pair of eyes looking at him whenever he closed his eyes. They weren't words you could just believe like that, if you told someone something like that then it was more likely that they'd look at you as if you were mentally deranged. But being believed didn't really matter much to Li Yang, the faint smirk remaining on his face as he swiped his interspatial ring and tossed Mei Kongxu the burnt wooden box.

"Of course I would. I may be a jokester, but I take my own word very seriously. If I say I'm going to do something or if I promise something, then I'll go through with it no matter what."

Mei Kongxu caught the wooden box, tracing the scorch marks that resembled lightning. Holding the wooden box magnified the familiar and dear sensation she had felt when she first laid eyes on it. It felt less like she was holding a simple box and more like she held a memento left behind by a family member or dear friend. She didn't immediately open the box, tilting her head somewhat curiously at Li Yang.

First there was his ever-present calmness yet joking nature that aroused her curiosity, then his seemingly familiar fighting style, then the tail he just showed off again, and now finally the box. Everything he showed aroused her curiosity and interest more and more, especially all these things that felt so familiar to her, so while she at first only had a passing interest in him, she now couldn't help but be actually curious about him.

But she didn't state that, she had seen enough of his personality to know that he would definitely take advantage of something like that. So she just quietly looked at him, her pitch-black eyes seemingly trying to peer into his true nature. But Li Yang's expression didn't change even under the intent gaze of a girl as beautiful as Mei Kongxu, who pulled back her gaze after a few seconds and opened the wooden box.

A trace amount of energy burst out from the box when she opened it, the energy carrying a different feeling from the box but still feeling incredibly familiar. And lying within the box was a circular jade disk covered in small array runes, the light of the sun dancing across the surface of the green disk. Mei Kongxu was fairly familiar with jade disks like this one, they were mostly used to store images depicting the more complex movements needed for some cultivation techniques, her sect had more than a few of them.

She eyed the disk with a sliver of a gleam in her eyes, could she maybe find out why the box and the energy felt so familiar by studying what was hidden within the disk? She held the box with one hand and placed the other on top of the disk, closing her eyes as she sunk her mind into it, her heart practically hammering from hopefulness. But that hammering stopped almost instantly when she studied the contents of the disk, her eyes shooting open after merely two seconds.

Li Yang had walked up to her while she studied the contents of the disk, the smirk on his face now a great deal larger. Mei Kongxu's expression twitched uncontrollably, her usual cold demeanour nowhere to be seen as another rare blush showed up on her face.

"Now that's just nasty. Aren't you worried that the others are going to beat you up if this gets out?"

Her voice was somewhat low as she spoke, but Li Yang didn't fail to notice the hint of interest and amusement buried within it. She called it nasty, enough to make her blush, but he could tell that the thought of what the end result might be had actually amused her at least slightly. His smirk grew a touch wider as he accepted the box that she handed back to him, every inch of his being exuding boundless confidence.

"Worried? They're free to come all at once if they want to, I'll take em on and embarrass them. And besides, they're the ones who took something I so labourously and intimately prepared for my future wife, justice is on my side even if I get a bit rough with them for being so... undeservedly angry at me."

The corners of Mei Kongxu's lips twitched a bit at Li Yang's shameless statement, it seemed as if she wasn't sure if she should be angry, flustered, or amused. She opened her mouth to speak, but her gaze sharpened dangerously before she managed to get out any words. She reached out and pushed on Li Yang's shoulder while kicking his feet out from underneath him, her law of twisting causing him to spin in the air while she herself leaned to the side.

A small dart covered in a dark yellow liquid whizzed past the spot where Li Yang's neck would have been, also missing Mei Kongxu as she had leaned to the side in time. Li Yang's feet touched the ground again, shaking his head for a short second while making a snappy remark that Mei Kongxu ignored as she gazed past him and called out to their hidden assailant.

"Oh, rough and unexpected, I might just like that."

"Hiding further is pointless, show yourself!"