Ch 75: The Cannon Fodder Won’t Play Along Anymore [QT]

ARC 5: The Chosen Beauty

“Three days have passed! Since you still refuse to hand over that traitor Chu Xu, then I will use the blood of your clansmen to appease our little prince’s spirit in heaven!”

“From today onward, for every day you don’t hand over Chu Xu, I’ll kill one of your people! Let’s see how long your Jiao clan can endure!”

Mu Xing, half-conscious, felt himself held tightly in someone’s arms.

He was unbearably thirsty, his whole body burning as if on fire. His eyelids felt like they weighed a thousand catties—no matter how he struggled, he couldn’t open them.

All around, people were crying. Somewhere nearby, someone was dragged away, followed by a scream of unbearable agony.

The arms around him tightened further. Already uncomfortable, now he couldn’t even breathe. His mind sank into darkness, and he fainted completely.

When he came to again, someone was feeding him water.

Cool liquid wetted his parched lips. He let out a sigh of relief and, with great effort, finally opened his eyes.

The surroundings were dark—but strangely, his eyes could see even through the blackness.

Sensing his awakening, the one holding him let out a short gasp of joy. Others gathered closer, their voices full of relief and happiness.

Mu Xing looked up at them, and in that moment, the pitch-dark cell seemed to blaze with light.

There were fifty or sixty people crowded in this underground prison. Their forms made it hard to tell male from female, but without exception they all possessed exquisitely beautiful features and waist-length hair the color of the deep sea.

Yet their condition betrayed their suffering: lips cracked from thirst, once-silken blue curls now dull and lifeless.

Where was this place?

Mu Xing realized, faintly, that he must have been reborn again.

But the timing was cruel. He had just passed his tribulation and ascended, without even glimpsing the Immortal Realm—only to awaken here.

“Little Xing has woken!” a voice beside him said, clear and ethereal like the song of heaven.

The words seemed to unlock a floodgate in his mind. Memories surged forward like a tidal wave.

This body’s name was Xing, a seventy-year-old child.

Not human—he was Jiao, a child of the merfolk clan.

Favored by the Sea God, the Jiao possessed beauty and enchanting voices, with lifespans stretching for millennia. Their tears turned to pearls.

Ordinary Jiao could live a thousand years, reaching adulthood at a hundred. Seventy-year-old Xing was still just a child, barely the height of an adult’s chest.

But this reincarnation was different from before. In his inherited memories, he saw only Xing’s carefree life in the deep sea—no memories beyond.

Because this child was fated to die soon.

He, along with his clansmen, had been trapped here through someone’s schemes. One was killed each day. Within days, it would be his turn.

The Jiao were few in number. The fifty or sixty captives here were nearly the entirety of the clan’s young warriors.

The people loved by the Sea God, reduced to this slaughter—on the brink of extinction.

And all of it, because of one outsider.

At that moment, the familiar glowing orb arrived late as always, pouring a hidden layer of memory into Mu Xing’s mind—memories unknown to Xing and the others.

The story’s true protagonist was named Ying Luo, so called because he had been born when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom.

The Jiao named their children casually. Xing, for example, had been named because the stars shone unusually bright on the night of his birth.

Ying Luo was the cleverest and most mischievous of his generation. After reaching adulthood, he grew restless with life under the sea and secretly ventured onto land.

The Jiao, though beautiful and long-lived, were more than that: they possessed tremendous strength. Their slender bodies held immense power, their nails could slice through metal with ease, and in the ocean they could command the very waves.

In this low-magic world where humans could not cultivate, the Jiao stood unchallenged at the top of the food chain.

But they had weaknesses. They could not stay long away from water, and their strength diminished greatly on land.

Ying Luo, chosen by the clan’s sacred relic as their next leader, found the ocean dull. He slipped away to the continent—where he met the second protagonist: Chu Xu, a fallen prince of a ruined dynasty.

Chu Xu was strikingly handsome, but his soul carried the weight of blood-deep vengeance. Cold, brooding, cruel—Ying Luo had never seen anyone like him, and at first sight, his heart was captured.

Chu Xu, hardened by hatred, at first dismissed him. But Ying Luo’s innocence, his pure kindness, and his devastating beauty… made indifference impossible.

Yet Chu Xu’s life was filled with enemies, every path shadowed by hatred.

And Ying Luo, dazzling and heedless of danger, drew every gaze upon himself without realizing it.

For a while, they lived in joy.

Until calamity struck. Chu Xu killed the only son of Prince Ding, the emperor’s younger brother. In his fury, Prince Ding unleashed soldiers to hunt them down.

Though both Chu Xu and Ying Luo were strong, they were hopelessly outnumbered. Chu Xu was grievously wounded.

Desperate, Ying Luo used the clan’s forbidden secret art to summon aid.

This technique was reserved only for life-and-death crises. But Ying Luo’s identity was extraordinary, and when the call reached the ocean, nearly all the young warriors of the Jiao left their home waters to come to land.

As for Xing, not yet of age, he had secretly followed the warriors out of curiosity. By the time they discovered him, he was already far from the sea. Helpless, the clansmen could only bring him along.

The Jiao followed the trail of aura and found Ying Luo and the wounded Chu Xu.

But along with those two came several thousand pursuers.

Ying Luo fled with Chu Xu ahead of time, believing that his clansmen, with their keen senses, might not win but would certainly be able to evade capture.

He forgot: this was not the sea they knew.

These clansmen, stepping on land for the first time, couldn’t even walk steadily. They had no knowledge of the terrain—how could they possibly escape?

Worse, Ying Luo had been far too ostentatious on land. Keen-eyed enemies had long since learned who he was, his habits, and had even devised ways to counter the Jiao.

The fifty-odd Jiao hid in the mountains but were driven out by fire.

The soldiers of Prince Ding’s household found only the Jiao—not Chu Xu.

And so came the scene Mu Xing had just witnessed: the enemy threatened to slaughter the Jiao one by one each day unless Ying Luo handed over Chu Xu.

Ying Luo never appeared.

Carrying the unconscious Chu Xu, he had already fled far away. On hearing the ultimatum, he stubbornly convinced himself it was a lie: How could my clansmen, so powerful, be captured so easily?

Most of the Jiao perished there.

The survivors had their nails ripped out, were shackled with special chains, and locked in cages of gold—becoming the dynasty’s most expensive slaves.

Xing was among those who died.

And after that, most of the story revolved around Ying Luo and Chu Xu’s entangled love and hatred. The enslaved Jiao languished in the capital, worse than dead, but Ying Luo’s greatest torment seemed to be his relationship with Chu Xu.

He even infiltrated the sacred grounds to steal the clan’s holy relic and cure Chu Xu’s poison. That relic had sustained their island home, making it forever in bloom, rich with spiritual energy. Without it, storms descended and vegetation withered.

At last, Chu Xu rallied the remnants of the fallen dynasty and reclaimed his throne. Ying Luo, though male, became his empress. The Jiao, tortured beyond recognition in cages, finally found release in death.

In the whole tale, little was said of the Jiao.

In Chu Xu’s story of restoration, the Jiao were but a backdrop. Their tragedy served only to render his romance with Ying Luo more heartrending, more moving. Translated on hololonovels.

Mu Xing was dumbstruck.

This kind of person, fit to be a clan leader? The Jiao holy relic must’ve gone blind with age.

At that moment, the glowing orb appeared again—but this time the voice was different. A rasping, alluring woman’s voice whispered in his ear:

“How pitiful. The Jiao, already so few, were slaughtered like this for a stranger. And you—destined for a thousand years of life—stabbed through the heart before even reaching adulthood. Such is your fate…”

As she spoke, invisible black mist spread from the orb. The mist writhed like living tendrils, creeping toward Mu Xing’s spirit.

In an instant, a wave of resentment and fury erupted from him.

His gaze clouded; dark mist flickered in his eyes.

But then he shook his head, muttering, “Why do I feel a bit dizzy?”

The orb: …?

It stared as the boy sat cross-legged, face stern, glaring at it.

“You’re at it again. Don’t drag me in here to say these strange things. I don’t like it.”

“I’m leaving. Don’t come bothering me for nothing.”

The orb could only watch as the little youth’s spirit flared with light—and vanished.

Darkness and silence swallowed the space.

After a long time, the woman’s voice murmured, hollow with disbelief:

“…Impossible. How is he completely unaffected? No wonder…”

No wonder the last one failed and shut themselves away.

---

When Mu Xing’s awareness returned, he had only drunk a little water, but already felt much better.

Around him, his clansmen whispered:

“Humans are terrifying…”

“Where is Ying Luo? Those men said if we hand over Chu Xu, they’ll let us go.”

“We should fight our way out!”

“But I have no strength left…”

“Me too. Three days without water, my scales are falling off… it hurts, I want to go back to the sea, wuu…”

Clink!

Something fell to the ground, ringing clearly in the darkness.

A teardrop—transformed into a pearl.

Mu Xing snapped fully awake. The situation was dire.

The Jiao were mighty in the sea, with no natural predators. But precisely because of that—and because they had no creatures to truly communicate with—they were all, to put it bluntly, beautiful fools.

In this situation, none of them could be relied on.

He coughed weakly twice, then said, “We need to find a way out of here.”

The others, oddly, didn’t question him. One said, “But we have no strength.”

“Yes… better to wait for Ying Luo to bring that human back.”

Mu Xing pressed his aching chest and said, “Ying Luo won’t bring that human back. And even if he did, they still wouldn’t let us live.”

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