Book 22 Chapter 20

Hindsight is 20\/20

-Hell's Animal Testing

It's hard to believe now, but the snow-white tiger who now reigns in Amishan was once a very weak tiger. There was a time when she was just a little girl. She wasn't very big, and she wasn't very strong. And above all, she was a female. The world of tigers is a world of males, in which females are looked down upon. In a world of predators, weak females are merely playthings and errand boys, providing entertainment and food for the males who play and eat.

It was the poor little white tiger's job to bring the males dinner. The lazy males stayed in their caves. They believed that because they were strong, everything could be tolerated and forgiven. In such a world, she, a female, could only be looked down upon. Even if she was called Baemyo instead of Baemu Hu, she had nothing to say.

One day, this weak and vulnerable-though that's a very relative term-white tiger set out to hunt for food to fill the stomachs of the lazy males. Luckily, it didn't take her long to find her prey. It was an old man with snow-white gray hair. But the quality and color of her fur was far superior to his: her dazzlingly white coat was one of her few bragging rights. In the old man's right hand was a flask of wine, which, though a bit worn with age, looked surprisingly fleshy. The meat soaked in alcohol must have been yardage. Even if it only brought her dregs.

The unfortunate thing was that the gray-haired old man was, by human standards, quite a bit out of shape. And to make matters worse, the old man was getting very bored with nothing to do. But even bored, he wasn't kind enough to let the beast that had come after him get away with it.

The old man was not about to let a beast with such a nasty temper eat him for dinner. Grudges and enmity are always returned a hundredfold, that was the old man's theory. It didn't matter if they were female or male. That was enough for him to define his opponent. That day, the black and white tiger was completely fucked.

"The opponent was bad!"

The old man said something in an emotionless voice, then threw up his hands.

"A fur whiter than snow. Sell it for a very high price……."

The old man paused with his outstretched hand and carefully examined the white tiger, stroking its fur, touching it, plucking it, and holding it up to the sunlight. There was a faint trace of admiration in his eyes. What on earth does this old man want? The question was soon answered. The old man spoke up.

"Oh, what a white coat, what's your secret to maintaining it?"

Well, I thought no hair surpassed my white hair……. The old man's voice held a trace of admiration and a little jealousy.

She felt a little smug. She, too, was proud of her white fur. Of course, she took great care of it with a special recipe. The old man was the first male who had ever appreciated her desperate efforts. He wasn't like the savage, crude males who would leave the red blood of their prey alone until the rain washed away the marks, but he couldn't help but like it. Surely this old man was going to strip him of his fine fur and turn him into a hide, and his proud mood quickly turned to depression. Then the old man spoke again.

"I could skin you, but that would be too much of a waste. Very well. I'm sorry you attacked the old man, but I'll do you a special favor: I'll spare your life if you tell me the secret to caring for that fur!"

It was the only way to survive death's door, the old man had said, and she didn't need to understand human speech for that. She nodded quickly. First you live, then you have fur. She wasn't happy about leaving pelts behind when she died. It was a tragedy, indeed, that her secret recipe for bleaching her white pelt had fallen into the wrong hands, but if she could live with it, it was not a losing trade.

"Oh, good, you're smart about beasts."

The old man shook his head in satisfaction.

"Hmm, but what can I do, it looks like he's already injured to the bone, his guts are all messed up, and…… this is a problem. I thought I was being gentle, being gentle……. Hehe, how did you get into this mess?"

He was right in front of her, but her feral instincts told her she didn't dare answer the question.

"You know the drill."

The old man seemed to like her even more.

"Hmm, let's see…… should I put the beast on this side……?"

The old man moved his palm around, pressing here and there on her stomach. He seemed to be searching for a location.

"The odds are 50\/50, but it's better to try…… than not to try. If you die, I won't be able to figure out your beauty secrets…… and then I'll be in trouble."

The old man's hand, resting on what seemed to be the center of his body, began to glow an auspicious golden color. He didn't know it then, but it was the Yun Gong Technique, the use of one's own internal energy to heal one's opponent's wounds. But it was probably the first time in the history of the Wu Clan that it had been cast on a beast like her. And the gamble paid off. The old man who had saved her life then said, "I'm glad you're alive.

"Huh? It works?"

But her narrow escape from the brink of death has one side effect.

"Hmm, I didn't know that even the color of the pupils would turn golden……."

Even for an old man, it was unexpected. It was the result of injecting a considerable amount of hollow to heal his wounds. He'd injected the lifeblood of an inanimate object into a beast that had attacked him, just so he could learn how to take care of himself. It was an act that deserved to be called an atrocity, not a stunt. But that wasn't the end of the old man's misdeeds.

An old man, bored out of his mind, comes up with an idea that is both groundbreaking and revolutionary. When it was proven that the energy that humans accumulate works on animals, the old man had the following idea.

"Huh? It works, that's interesting, hmm, so maybe tigers can accumulate chi too?"

Until then, no one really knew where the tiger's end was.

"But technically, aren't humans and tigers the same animal?"

It's just a matter of being able to recognize it or not, the old man thinks. After all, chi is an energy that is abundant in nature; humans can only accumulate and control it in an artificial way. Besides, the old man thought, she seemed very intelligent and could be taught. He was bored out of his mind. The old man began his experiment that day.

An animal experiment on a giant white tiger has begun. The test subject, of course, was a poor little female white tiger, who had already been imbued with the powerful energy of the old man during her feng shui sessions.

All the old man had to do was run it through her veins to help her recognize it as such. He couldn't teach her in words, but he could make her feel it in action. The problem was that a tiger's veins and a human's veins are located quite differently. The old man decided to give it a try.

I poked at it with my needle or poked at it with my finger to see if it was working, and I traced imaginary veins. I did this because I had nothing better to do and I was bored. Sometimes I'd hit the wrong vein and twist a limb. I felt sorry for the white tiger, who couldn't say a word in protest. But the old man didn't give up. Failure is the mother of success, he said. "Give up," the white tiger shouted, but it was only a dull grunt in the old man's ears. And so the experiment continued, despite the endless failures.

And finally, after much trial and error, she, the mute beast, was finally able to feel the presence of the chi within her body and gather it into one place. She had succeeded in accumulating the chi in a single, random cell somewhere within her body. It was the ten thousandth time.

To the bored old man, nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine failures were not failures, they were just steps on the way to the ten thousandth success, and they were a great time killer. You might question whether he really did try a million times, but it was a fact.

"Oh, it's a shame it only took ten thousand tries!"

When the experiment finally succeeded, it was not an exclamation of joy that came out of the old man's mouth, but a lament for the loss of further boredom. She understood the words, and she was horrified, and she had to thank God that the experiment was over for the tenth time, because otherwise it would have continued for the twentieth and thirtieth time.

Reaching a milestone is satisfying for some, while for others, it inspires them to dream of greater heights.

更上一層樓(更上一層樓)!

To climb farther, it was necessary to climb another story higher, and the old man was not the former, but unfortunately-especially for her-the latter. As the old woman spent another few days in a daze, bored and discouraged by her lack of success, an idea flashed through her mind like a meteor.

"What a waste of energy to have all this energy and not use it!

Once you had the ability to do something, it was only meaningful if you used it. If you don't use it, you don't have it. It was the same reasoning that if you know how to collect money, you must know how to spend it, and if you don't express your infinite possibilities, they will be wasted. So the old man began to think about how to utilize the chi that had accumulated in her short life. But rather than thinking about it, the old man preferred to try this and that, and to go through the process of failure and deliberation, step by step-or, in the words of the white tiger, trudging along.

"Well, you'd do well with a tiger, after all, and there's a martial artist named after him."

There was nothing more to it than that. A tiger couldn't possibly fight with a sword or spear. Besides, tigers have a natural weapon in their arsenal: their sharp teeth and claws. The first goal was to coat the claws with sword energy.

"Great, I have a new goal, great, great!"

Best of all, he now had a means of passing the time again. Fueled by a more enterprising scholarly spirit, the old man once again tried new experiments, and the ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine failures that awaited him were only a welcome hassle for a bored old man. And the result was that Yeonbi was exactly as you see it now.

Once I laid the groundwork, it didn't take long for my internal energy to gather and become stronger. Moreover, since she was able to manipulate her chi and use her hojo, she was much faster at beating the moon. Out of curiosity, she began to teach herself kung fu, and the wind began to catch up with her. She was already faster than a horse, but she became even faster, so she was called the White Thunderbolt by those who saw her from afar. Then she defeated all the males and became the ruler of Amishan. From then on, the males had to bring her dinner, and she has reigned as empress of the beasts of Amishan ever since.

"But don't get cocky when you realize you can use a sword, or you'll get yourself in trouble."

Yunbi said in a quiet voice, holding the black umbrella like a sword.

"They take you a little more seriously."

The play was over. Yeonbi's eyes said so.

Crrrrr!

Bai Muhu purred low and menacingly. She crouched down once more. She had the natural strength and power that nature had given her. There was no way he could be defeated by a woman who could wield qi.

Kahhhhhhhhhhhhh!

The pure white energy emanating from Bai Xiaochun's entire body became more intense. Bai Xiaochun unleashed all the power he had stored up in an instant and charged.

The hojo sprouted four swordlike stalks and flew down to tear Yanbi's body apart. Yan Bi quickly raised her umbrella to meet the terrifying blow head-on.

Boom!

A tremendous force clashed, kicking up a cloud of dust. Bai Muhu didn't have the slightest doubt that her strike would be successful, but she was wrong. Bai Xiaochun's claws were now blocked by Yunfei's black umbrella. Her glowing claws had failed to penetrate Yunfei's defenses.

"This is a specialty item, and it's tougher than you think."

Yeonbi laughed. Seeing that, the tail of the white-haired man stiffened.

"Okay, so now we have to pay the price of failure, right?"

Before Bai Muohu could regroup, the fuel was already in the next number of preliminary moves.

The full power of the Three Furies is unleashed!

Ultimate Kill (末殺技)

(覇拷稗苦膜敗叩).

"Pasha!"

Shen Tianlin turned into a black thunderbolt and rushed towards the pure white tiger's entire body. Terrifying speed, terrifyingly fast.

Pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah-pah! Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk!

It was the ultimate in bloodless, tearless, unorthodox killing, a slap in the face, an excruciatingly painful pummeling, a kicking and pounding. There was no escape from this unrelenting onslaught of death, which rained down like a downpour.

Bam! Bam!

It was the first time Baek Mu-hoo had ever seen the stars so close.

She saw a beautiful river with yellow flowers in bloom. On the other side, someone was waving to her. The years began to flash by her like a jogging lantern.