Volcanic Age

Wang Ba was a commoner who used to fight in the streets. His main source of income had come from the pockets of other commoners.

However, that had only been for a short while because he had messed with the family of a government official.

Fearing the consequences, he fled, and after wandering for some time, Wang Ba ended up taking refuge in the Great Tiger Stockade.

Unfortunately, his life there was far from satisfactory.

Though Wang Ba was somewhat skilled with his fists, there were countless people like that in the mountains. It wasn't called the Nine Forest Gangs for nothing.

Even after two years, Wang Ba had just barely risen out of the lowest ranks, and his treatment was average.

Even if he wanted to rape the women who were kidnapped, his status was so low that it was impossible. Moreover, he didn't have much money or alcohol at his disposal.

"Fucking shit, how long do I have to live like this?" Wang Ba complained, muttering vicious curses.

"E-eeeek!"

The people crouching inside the iron bars flinched at Wang Ba's shout. Watching them hugging each other and trembling would make anyone sad.

Growl!

A skin-crawling cry echoed from a corner of the prison.

The people trapped in the prison trembled like aspen trees at that cry, terrified.

"Fuck, how long do I have to attend to this shitty beast?"

The Great Tiger Stockade raised tigers.

They don't have one or two, but fifteen.

The amount of food that the tigers consumed was extraordinary. The bandit's backs were bent from the burden of just trying to get all this food.

While it would be impossible for a small or medium-sized mountain den, the Great Tiger Stockade, one of the Nine Forest Gangs, had somehow managed to handle it.

"I should complain now while no one's around. After all, if I do it on a regular day, I'll get thrown into their cages as food, right? Ptoey!"

The Great Tiger Stockade Boss liked to throw people at the tigers, which now had a taste for human flesh, and watch them.

Growl—!

It was so loud it sounded like thunder. That was how loud and shocking the tigers' growls were. The sound alone would make one's body stiffen.

"Sob, sob…"

A terrified cry could be heard from the prison.

"Damn it! You've started again because you're hungry!"

Wang Ba frowned and got irritated. It had almost been a year since he started this job. It annoyed him every time he heard that sound.

While he couldn't talk to tigers, he could still distinguish some of their cries.

"Let's see, which one should I choose…"

Although he may have been one of the lowest in the Great Tiger Stockade, to the kidnapped people, Wang Ba was the King of Hell who held their lives in his hands.

"Sob, sob!"

"Kya!!!"

The people inside the prison crouched as much as they could, clinging to the walls as if they had seen a ghost.

"Have these things gone insane? Why are they making such a fuss today?"

Normally, when it was time to feed the tigers, the prisoners became quiet, preferring not to draw attention to themselves.

Crunch!

"Huh?"

Wang Ba's eyes widened as if they were going to pop out.

Suddenly, his vision spun ninety degrees. His body went horizontal as if he was lying on the floor. However, his body didn't drop to the ground but was floating in the air.

Confused, he tried to comprehend what was happening, but a groan escaped his lips as excruciating pain shot through his waist.

Crunch!

"A-AGHHH!"

The immense force of a jaw clamped down on his waist. The fangs pierced his skin, making way for the tiger's gullet to swallow his insides.

As he struggled, the tiger's heavy forelegs crushed his bones and pulverized his body.

Crunch! Crunch!

A creepy and eerie sound filled the inside of the prison. It took only a moment for Wang Ba to turn into a piece of meat.

The prisoners hugged each other, their mouths tightly shut and their bodies trembling.

Huff.

The tiger, whose mouth was covered in blood, raised its head. Its eyes that overwhelmed the surroundings glowed fiercely with hunger. The tiger stared through the iron bars filled with food.

It recognized what that narrow and unpleasant place was. After all, wasn't that where it had been imprisoned?

It struggled incessantly to try to open it, but no matter what it did, it couldn't get the bars to open.

Even if there was food to fill its stomach, the tiger couldn't get it out.

Unfortunately, it had no choice but to move to another place. After all, there was food outside.

After stuffing a human whose face it didn't even know into its jaws, the tiger headed upward.

"Sob, sob!"

"Sob!"

"Wahhhhh!!!"

As the tiger retreated, the prisoners finally felt relieved and belatedly burst into tears. However, that was only for a moment. When the ceiling collapsed, and a shadow jumped out, they all closed their mouths again.

"Don't worry. I'm here to save you."

****

Ring! Ring!

Alarm bells rang throughout the Great Tiger Stockade. One ring meant alert, and two rings meant something serious had happened inside. The forest bandits who had been spending their time leisurely drinking came out in a panic.

"What the fu—agk!!"

One of the forest bandits, who had just come out of the door, screamed as a tiger lunged at him from the side, biting into his neck.

"W-what the hell?! It's the Boss' pets!"

"Agh!!!"

"Just how many of them escaped?"

Screams echoed everywhere. The center of the mountain den was already strewn with corpses.

A tiger the size of a house glared fiercely as it went hunting. The mountain den was filled with a thick scent of blood.

Several forest bandits attempted to subdue the tigers together, but it was futile. Each time the tigers swung their powerful paws, two or three bandits fell.

"Agk! Hurry up and call the keeper!"

"He's dead!"

Some of the tigers were so hungry that they couldn't see anything other than blood. However, there were also some who had been successfully trained but had great difficulty.

However, for some reason, they couldn't be controlled. They all seemed electrified, as if they were all starving.

The Great Tiger Stockade was instantly thrown into chaos by the tigers that had escaped from their cages.

They were all pets that the Great Tiger Stockade Boss cherished, which meant that they couldn't just carelessly hurt them.

In the past, one of the forest bandits had accidentally stabbed a tiger in the eye while trying to tame it and was torn apart as tiger food.

The forest bandit, who was looking down on the hell unfolding in the stockade from the watchtower, rang the alarm bell and hoped that their boss would answer.

Fortunately, his wishes were heard by the forest bandits who were guarding the boss' room.

"Boss!"

"You idiots! Can't you even manage that properly?"

When he heard the news that a tiger had escaped from the cage, his anger flared. He contemplated how to kill the person in charge.

However, when he heard that it wasn't just one but several of his tigers that had escaped, his expression hardened.

"What's going on?!"

Since ancient times, innocent people had been captured and imprisoned in the bandits' dens. Most of them were brought there by force.

Considering this was the Great Tiger Stockade of the Nine Forest Gangs, it was a given that they, too, would have done the same.

She assumed that there would be quite a few people who were imprisoned by them.

Thinking of them, she knew that she couldn't use poison to her heart's content. If she wasn't careful, even innocent people would be poisoned.

However, there was an alternative.

After all, who was she?!

She was the direct successor of the Tang Family, the Poison Phoenix!

Her fame wasn't bought with money.

She had knowledge of countless poisons, including rare poisons whose names even she didn't know.

"Ha…"

Zhou Xuchuan, who had calmed down the prisoners, stuck out his tongue at the scene that unfolded the moment he stepped outside.

"Since she called it the Hungry Monster Poison, while I don't know about humans, it seems to be really potent against hungry beasts."

As its name suggested, the Hungry Monster Poison caused insatiable hunger.

However, it wasn't as useful as most people thought, considering the amount required for it to be useful was too high.

The main problem was that it took three or four jin to poison an adult, and its effects were minimal.

All it did was leave a man starving, driven mad looking for food, and drained of strength. One would have to actually consume at least a few jin for it to actually make them lose their humanity and go insane.

While the ingredients for the poison weren't that rare, the poison itself wasn't useful enough to warrant such effort.

It would be faster to use poison that caused mental abnormalities or use the witchcraft of the Southern Jungles or the Blood Sect.

However, this Hungry Monster Poison had one very crucial effect. While it wasn't effective on people, it had an unusually potent impact on animals.

Even the beasts that had been trained for a long time at the Great Tiger Stockade lost their reason and went wild because of the Hungry Monster Poison.

When the night passed, and dawn broke, Zhou Xuchuan received the Hungry Monster Poison from Tang Hui and snuck into the Great Tiger Stockade.

He was able to enter without being detected, thanks to the Phantom Divine Art, and after sneaking in, he sprayed the Hungry Monster Poison everywhere as he searched for the prison.

Not forgetting to ensure the safety of the people, Zhou Xuchuan opened the cage as soon as he was ready.

"Who are you?!"

Taking advantage of the confusion, he ran into a forest bandit while heading to the main gate.

"Zhou Xuchuan!" he answered honestly and moved forward.

Although the forest bandit quickly drew his sword, it was already too late.

A dagger slid from Zhou Xuchuan's sleeve and shot forward.

"Ugh!"

The forest bandit's head snapped back as if it was being bent. The dagger, which had shot out like an arrow, was lodged in his neck, silencing him before he could even scream.

"Intruder!"

Zhou Xuchuan looked up at the voice from above.

He spotted a watchtower and an alarm bell installed near the main gate. The forest bandits were making noise in two places, not just one.

Zhou Xuchuan rolled his eyes and looked around. He could see a forest bandit drawing a bow on the wall connected to the main gate.

"You dare!"

He kicked off the ground and changed direction just as an arrow whizzed past, striking the spot where he had just been standing.

Zhou Xuchuan swung his left arm in the direction the arrow had come from, and a dagger shot out.

"Ugh!"

The forest bandit fell forward, clutching his bow. His fear of falling was greater than the pain of the knife embedded in his chest.

As soon as Zhou Xuchuan saw the bandit fall, his heart raced. He injected qi into his Yongquan Acupoint[1] to increase his speed. Fortunately, he reached the falling bandit just in time.

"Whew!"

He inspected the bow he had barely caught.

Of course, there was no way that he had sped up because he was worried about the forest bandit, who had just died.

Zhou Xuchuan drew an arrow out of the quiver and roughly nocked it onto the bow.

Twang!

The arrow rippled like a wave as it left the bow. Thanks to the qi imbued into it, it experienced less wind resistance than a normal arrow.

Even though Zhou Xuchuan hadn't concentrated all that much, the path of the arrow was so accurate and precise that anyone who watched would let out a gasp.

"Ugh!"

Zhou Xuchuan hit the forest bandit who was standing on the right watchtower.

"Die!"

Zhou Xuchuan could feel bloodlust from the left watchtower. He turned to the side, only to see an arrow flying toward him.

Zhou Xuchuan didn't panic and kept his composure, firing one arrow and then multiple others in quick succession.

Twang!

The arrow slanted upward from below before colliding with the arrow shot downward.

"Impossible!" the forest bandit gasped.

Although he had shot his arrow as a surprise attack, his target had blocked it with another arrow. It looked like the Divine Archer from legend.

However, his surprise was short-lived.

The bandit fell from the watchtower with a scream as arrows rained down on him.

After confirming that there were no more guards in the watchtower, Zhou Xuchuan opened the main gate.

"Let's go!"

As soon as the gate opened, Zhang Hong, who was in the lead, jumped out, and the punitive force followed him into the mountain den.

Behind him were the warriors of the Mount Hua Sect, the Gold Will Sword Sect, and the Tang Family.

"Gold Will Sword Sect, go rescue the hostages!"

Chu Lian led the warriors of the God Will Sword Sect and dispersed.

"The Mount Hua Sect will advance!"

Zhang Hong and Zhang Xuen skillfully took command. As Zhou Xuchuan and Luo Xiaoyue's seniors in the gangho, they learned many things during the training.

While Luo Xiayue wasn't bad at taking command, she didn't feel the need to lead and instead focused on swinging her sword.

"Agh!!!"

"I-intruders!"

From the Great Tiger Stockade's perspective, it was already a difficult situation, and now, intruders had appeared.

"The Tang Family will clean up the surroundings."

Tang Hui glanced around with cold eyes. What was in her gaze was a hungry tiger.

Strangely, the tiger did not approach the punitive force. Even if it were nearby, it would sneakily avoid them.

From the moment they had used the Hungry Monster Poison, Tang Hui had prepared by applying a foul-smelling powder to protect the punitive force from the beasts.

"Let's go—!"

ROAR!!!

1. The only acupoint on one's feet, the direct opposite to the Baihui Acupoint, which is on the top of one's head. ☜

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