A Demon’s Paradise - Volume 1 Chapter 4 Who Are You?

His lips twitched and his face took on a strange tint. A kick to the groin and a knife to the neck on their first meeting….

‘How ruthless!’

Xia Moyin backed away slowly before jumping to the next beam, keeping one eye on the man.

Her gut was telling her that this man was not to be played with, and she would surely get killed if she fought him head on. Her gut was rarely wrong, and even when it was, it was never very far off.

The man muttered to himself for a moment, shivered, looked down, shivered again, then looked at her….and shivered again.

‘Is he right in the head…?’

He was supposed to be fighting her, but he’s just staring at her and muttering to himself a lot.

Xia Moyin backed up even further, looking for a way out. If he started attacking, she would have to leave immediately and risk the guards at the entrances. It would probably be a huge risk, but it was better than facing off with this guy and getting killed.

She currently had two choices to escape, to climb down the curtain and hoof it through the crowd, or take a leap of faith, Creed style, and potentially become a meat patty on the floor.

Both plans had flaws.

If she chose to go the way of the curtain, she would take way too long for a speedy retreat to be successful, and would probably be caught in the crowd or get kicked off the curtain on her way down if the guy was feeling malicious.

She could go the way of the meat patty, but she’d probably end up a blood stain on the floor if something went wrong, and even if she was able to survive the fall, she’d still have to fight her way through the doors.

Either way, she probably wouldn’t escape with her hide intact, and that was if the guy didn’t catch her before her plan started.

As Xia Moyin was distracted, thinking of her next move, the man across from her was pondering his next move as well.

The person across from him was small, almost to the degree of a child. The fox mask concealed his facial features but the robe around him had a low neckline, allowing him to at least see some of his condition.

He looked like he had been starved and beaten to death.

The skin that was exposed near his collarbone was so pale as to be translucent, a sickly white, like paper, and there seemed to be no blood in his body at all. He was so skinny as to be anorexic, the individual bones in his neck and ribs easily visible. Yellowish-grey bruises covered most of the space on his neck, as if he had been repeatedly strangled by someone.

Despite his pitiful appearance, he wasn’t weak. The quick reflexes and strong kick from before showed that not only had he had training, he had killed before. The aura about him was nearly freezing, a mix of anger, hate, and murder that rivaled his own.

The man’s intuition told him that this person was dangerous, and to take caution around him, otherwise he might end up dead. He had no doubt in his mind that not only would this person kill him if he had a chance, he would probably kill everyone in the entire building without batting an eye.

The man couldn’t sense any sort of cultivation but that didn’t stop him from being cautious. One didn’t need to be a cultivation genius to be deadly.

They seemed to be at a stalemate, neither moving forward nor retreating, and the air grew strained.

The man was the first to speak, breaking the oppressive silence.

“Who are you?”

His voice was deep, a baritone, involuntarily sending a spark down her spine. She mentally shook it off and ignored him, instead choosing to keep thinking of a way out. ‘Nothing short of a miracle can help me now..’

As soon as that thought crossed her mind, a commotion broke out in the general area, drawing the attention of the guy across from her.

“…”

‘This is getting really weird, but I have no problems with that, as long as I can get out.’

The people had just realized that the goods that they had traveled so far for were stolen from right under their noses, and they weren’t happy about it.

Throughout their entire exchange, the auction had been underway, most of the goods being sold for sky-high prices. They had just gotten to the last ten products when the man found Xia Moyin watching in the rafters and attacked.

The last three goods, the most valuable goods, weren’t there of course, and the auctioneers had to tell the people, and which was what they were screaming about.

Most were too concerned about their appearances to come to blows, but quite a few were yelling and cursing. Especially the cultivators and crooks who had come for the Moon Silk and Killer Lizard skin, they were kicking up a real ruckus, yelling and demanding to see the owner of the auction house. Some of the guards at the entrances had to leave their stations to help subdue the crowds.

The man’s eyebrows furrowed and he glanced down at the people, displeased at the interruption.

While the man was distracted, Xia Moyin took the chance and unraveled the whip around her waist, wrapping it around the beam near the roof and swinging, Indiana Jones style, from the beam to the floor.

Despite the fact that it looked only about eight feet long, the whip easily stretched sixty meters long, enough for her to safely swing onto the floor even though she was a bit startled. Xia Moyin just wanted to swing to the next beam, not all the way to the floor! But she had no problems with taking advantage of the crowds and distracted guards to slip out of auction house when they weren’t looking.

When he looked back to the beam where Xia Moyin was standing, it was empty….

“…”