Li Ban clenched his fists. He stood right where he was, fighting to suppress a heart that was pounding wildly from tension.
"Ask," he said.
"You saw the blood on the grass just now. You didn't say anything, and you just turned to run."
Clearly, the Cat Girl had seen every little movement he made from beneath the soil.
"Were you scared of the danger and didn't dare say a word, or did you go soft-hearted and want to let us go?"
"I wanted to let you leave," Li Ban answered immediately, his face ice-cold.
"Pfft!" The Cat Girl flashed a brilliant smile, doubling over in laughter. "Little liar."
Yet a second later, her hunched figure suddenly lunged at him.
A jolt of terror ran through Li Ban, and he immediately raised a palm.
Before the pain even registered, his right arm went dead, refusing to lift.
He threw a left hook, but the Cat Girl simply slipped past his right side and circled behind him.
She cradled the back of his head with one hand.
An instant later, a sharp swish rang out.
Five nails stabbed forward once more.
Li Ban's body instantly froze in place.
The Cat Girl's five nails had stabbed out practically flush against his scalp.
A few strands of hair drifted to the ground.
Had she adjusted the angle of her fingers even slightly, those nails would have pierced his skull instead.
Even so, Li Ban was not in a good spot.
His head was effectively caged. No matter where he looked—up, down, left, or right—all he saw were those lethal nails.
"Don't move, and don't breathe fire. Otherwise, I'll instantly carve five holes into you."
The Cat Girl retracted the hand she had used to pierce his shoulder and pressed it firmly against the center of his back, right over his heart.
Perfect. Now both his vitals were in the palm of her hand.
The Cat Girl leaned in close. Her breath washed over the back of his head, raising a patch of goosebumps across his nape.
"Are you... a Wizard?"
A Wizard?
Li Ban had braced himself for her to figure out he was a mole, but he never expected her to bring up Wizards.
According to Uncle Qin, the only identity capable of reaching the 10th Tier... was a Wizard?
"Quite the act. I really thought you were just a clueless little idiot."
"If you don't leave right now, Zhang Baishan and his men will catch up," Li Ban said through gritted teeth. "With those Obscuring Sun Locks on you, you'll never get away."
He offered no explanation, perfectly willing to let her keep misunderstanding him.
"Zhang Baishan wouldn't dare step out and leave the heavy-hitters in the Death Prison unguarded. So, are you one or not? And if you are, why disguise yourself as a slave?"
"If you don't want trouble, don't ask." While Li Ban stalled the Cat Girl, he desperately tried to fuse his fourth element, Silver Kingfisher.
He had no idea what Silver Kingfisher could even do, but he had completely run out of other options to deal with her.
Just then, the Cat Girl leaned in even closer. Before Li Ban could react, she suddenly darted her tongue out and licked the spot right behind his ear.
A jolt shot through him.
Li Ban felt every single hair on his body stand on end.
'Does she want to eat me?!'
Images of the Cat Girl swallowing mimic rats whole instantly flashed through his mind on repeat.
"Don't turn around."
Li Ban could feel the skin and muscle all over his body aching in phantom pain.
Yet a second later, the warmth completely vanished from the back of his head and his spine.
All that remained was a fading voice.
"Watch out for Liu Mu and Gu Yueqi."
Li Ban stayed rooted to the spot for a while longer. Only when total silence fell behind him did he slowly turn around.
The woods were empty.
Only a headless corpse remained on the ground.
Number Fourteen's half-charred head, however, was gone.
Li Ban swayed, nearly collapsing to the dirt.
He took a few deep breaths to steady himself, then straightened his back and walked over to the corpse.
The wound on his shoulder wasn't deep, and it had already stopped bleeding.
It seemed the Cat Girl had only injured him to keep him from making any sudden moves.
Though he had no idea why the Cat Girl had spared him, Li Ban wasn't about to spare this corpse.
He wanted to see if he could extract an element from the body.
Even a waste element from a failed extraction would do.
Having just fused a third element, he was in desperate need of more experience packs.
Unfortunately, luck was not on his side this time.
He didn't manage to pull out anything at all.
Perhaps the Cat Girl unexpectedly sparing his life had drained all his luck for the day.
And since Number Fourteen was a prisoner, he didn't have anything of value on his person, either.
In other words, this kill had yielded zero loot drops.
Not to mention it had cost him his progress in absorbing spiritual rhinoceros.
"Sigh." Li Ban let out a heavy breath. He grabbed the corpse by both hands and began dragging it back.
The body had to be handed over to Chief Du.
So, headless or not, Li Ban still had to haul the man back.
The corpse left a thick trail of blood along the way. Only when he finally dragged it to the entrance of the Death Prison did the bleeding begin to taper off.
Just then, a figure suddenly stepped out from beneath the peach trees.
It was Huo Jiang, who had chased out after them earlier.
"What took you so long to..." Huo Jiang cut himself off halfway, spotting the corpse on the ground.
His pupils shrank rapidly, and he froze for a second.
"Did you... did you kill an escaped prisoner?"
"I didn't kill him," Li Ban said, panting heavily. "It looked like the escapees had a falling out, so I just grabbed the body. The Cat Girl got away, though."
By taking Number Fourteen's head, was the Cat Girl also helping him cover up the traces of his Blazing Flame Art?
Huo Jiang stepped forward and grabbed the dead prisoner by the belt. "Let's head back and report to Head Zhang."
Relieved, Li Ban shook out his sore arm and followed Huo Jiang down into the sinkhole.
The bodies of the slaves in the sinkhole had already been cleared away.
Or perhaps they had become the treant's dinner?
Huo Jiang led Li Ban all the way to the area between the entrances to the third and fourth levels.
Zhang Baishan stood there, leaning heavily on his saber.
Beside him stood the handyman Wang Hua, hunching his shoulders and tucking his hands into his sleeves in fright.
"Boss," Huo Jiang said, dropping Number Fourteen's headless body onto the ground. "Li Ban brought this back."
Zhang Baishan's hardened expression gave way to surprise the moment he saw the corpse.
He crouched down to examine the fatal wound. "This isn't a clean cut from a dagger."
Huo Jiang nudged Li Ban's shoulder.
Taking the cue, Li Ban spoke up. "The Cat Girl killed him. I don't know what kind of history they had, but she struck him down and immediately took off."
Zhang Baishan looked up, noting the cold sweat dotting Li Ban's forehead. "Why didn't she kill you?"
"I have no idea. Maybe she just couldn't be bothered with a lowly handyman?"
He finished speaking and stared at Zhang Baishan with urgent panic, terrified the man would think he was in cahoots with the Cat Girl.
"My Lord, I didn't let her escape on purpose! I really... I really just..."
Liu Mu, who had been resting in his room, hobbled out with great difficulty to speak up for Li Ban.
"Lord Zhang, when Li Ban worked as a handyman, he never tortured the prisoners. He even brought the Cat Girl meat a few times. That might be why she spared him."
The bandages around Liu Mu's stomach had been changed, clearly indicating he had received fresh medical treatment.
His face was deathly pale, but he was no longer in any mortal danger.
Zhang Baishan's expression finally softened. He stood up and rounded on Huo Jiang. "Even Li Ban managed to track down the Cat Girl. How did you run around out there and see absolutely nothing?"
Now it was Huo Jiang's turn to squirm.
"Boss, I... I thought they would make a run for it. I tracked them all the way onto the official road and chased them out quite a distance. I only came back when I couldn't find a single trace."
"Then how did you realize they were still nearby, Li Ban?"
Li Ban quickly replied, "If they ran far, I knew I'd never catch up. So I remembered what you said about tracking signs, and I kept my eyes on the footprints on the ground. Later, I spotted a few drops of blood. I followed those tracks all the way to the official road, and that's where they disappeared."
"Without any tracks, I had no idea which way to go, so I just searched the woods randomly. Sure enough, I found another patch of blood. The two escapees realized they'd slipped up and jumped out to kill me, but then the Cat Girl suddenly turned on the bleeding prisoner, killed him, and bolted."
Li Ban looked up, pushing his theory earnestly. "Do you think she realized that dragging Number Fourteen along was leaving a blood trail, so she just killed him to silence him? After all, if someone like me could track them, someone of your caliber would have definitely found them, My Lord."
He slipped in a seamless bout of flattery.
Whether Zhang Baishan bought the flattery or not was hard to say, but he didn't press the issue of why the Cat Girl hadn't killed Li Ban.
And Li Ban hadn't actually lied; he merely glossed over the part where he fought the prisoner.
Still, the back of his right ear felt like it was burning.
Uncomfortable, Li Ban raised a hand and scratched at it.
That Cat Girl was always eating raw meat. There was no way her mouth was clean!