Chapter Forty-Four: Wujia Luoluo

The moment their eyes met, the battle had already begun.

For the Wu clan—a family of assassins bred for violence—this was a truth as fundamental as breathing.

The hooded girl, her beautiful long legs bound with bandages, shifted instantly from a leisurely stroll to a full sprint. The explosion of force surpassed the limits of human physiology; it was an acceleration so brutal that a mass of at least a hundred pounds leapt from one meter per second to ten in less than half a second. Most striking of all, there was not the slightest sign of muscle coordination on her body during this burst—her perfectly proportioned, muscular legs drew a crescent arc through the air as she charged.

Her kick, accompanied by a slicing roar far beyond anything Taijie’s fists could muster, sliced toward Byakudo Kyou’s neck. That whistling strike was powerful enough to bend not just a human spine but a solid steel pipe. It was an attack meant to kill.

Yet, as their gazes locked—her eyes black with stark white pupils—Byakudo Kyou clearly saw the gleam of excitement and amusement. So, even when playing, she harbored murderous intent. Fail to keep up, and you die? He could only sigh inwardly at the unique upbringing of the assassin clans.

Because she obsessively pursued perfection in her moves, the girl kept her angular velocity constant; the longer the path, the greater the linear speed. She was determined to land the most damaging point of her foot on Kyou’s neck. Thus, Kyou didn’t even need to move his feet—he simply leaned back at the last instant, letting her toes slice through the air just in front of his throat.

Missing her mark, the girl couldn’t use the recoil to regain her balance. At that moment, she saw the corner of Kyou’s mouth lift in a faint smile.

“Not good!”

A chill of foreboding swept through her. The boy, who had just been leaning back, vanished abruptly from her field of vision—just as she had with her initial burst, with no visible sign of muscle movement.

Her training kicked in before she could think. Using her shifted center of gravity, she leapt back, narrowly dodging Kyou’s livershot punch as he lunged low.

“You—”

Kyou started to speak, but the hooded girl ignored him completely, charging in again with renewed ferocity.

Tsk… This fight-first, talk-later attitude—truly the mark of the Wu clan.

Abandoning any hope of conversation, Kyou focused. Power rose from the ground, his waist and legs moving as one. A straight punch, so swift it left no trace in the air, tore forward.

Short, hard, and snappy—if that blow landed, the target would probably explode like something out of a comic book, clothes and flesh bursting apart. But the hooded girl was no mere martial artist; she was a prodigy, cultivated by her assassin family.

In a flash, her hands coiled around Kyou’s powerful fist, and her athletic body twisted, landing gracefully atop his arm. Suddenly, her muscles tightened; he could feel their lines through the skin of his forearm.

A triangle choke.

Even with only a basic, level-two knowledge of competitive judo, Kyou recognized the technique instantly. Before she could lock it in, he swung his arm—girl and all—into the corridor wall. But she had anticipated this, sliding like a serpent from his raised arm onto his broad back.

Her feet locked inside his thighs, levering outward to rob his lower body of strength. At some point, her bruised arms snaked from behind, locking around his neck.

From triangle to rear naked choke.

And unlike the triangle, the choke was complete in an instant—against anyone else, the contest would already be over. The power of such holds lay in their disregard for raw strength; as long as the opponent’s body was still human, brute force would only serve to injure oneself.

Unfortunately for her, her opponent was Byakudo Kyou.

His hand calmly gripped the bruised, vein-bulging arm around his throat. It was as if the cerebral hypoxia from the compressed carotid simply didn’t exist.

No—it truly didn’t.

The girl’s black-and-white eyes widened in shock. The muscles on the boy’s back seemed to come alive—writhing, surging, laughing maniacally.

A moment later, her sensitive skin realized—what she was pressing against was not a back, but a raging demon.

The struggle of their muscles grated with a nerve-jarring creak. Incredibly, the boy beneath her was resisting the unleashed power of the Wu clan’s arms with nothing but the slender muscles of his neck!

No matter how violently the veins pulsed on her bruised arm, she could not squeeze further. In fact, in that brief moment, Kyou’s hand had already pried her arm from his neck with ease. His other hand, in turn, pressed lightly against the nape of her neck—turning the tables.

With a physique like his, crushing a neck would be no harder than breaking a biscuit.

“This is enough, miss. If we continue, things will get ugly,” Kyou said, his tone as calm as if their whirling clash had never occurred.

And yet, the girl—her neck at his mercy—suddenly giggled.

She relaxed entirely, her body pressing against Kyou’s back, her cheek close to his ear. Her scent filled his senses. At that moment, the pair could have been mistaken for playful lovers, the girl clinging to the boy’s back.

“I’ve decided! Let’s get married!”

“…”

“What?!”

Startled, Kyou’s hand slipped from the girl’s neck. She made no move to retake control; instead, she relaxed further, cuddling him like a koala.

“You’re so strong! Not just this movement technique I only managed to imitate after studying it for ages, but your physical strength too. If we get married, we’ll definitely have the most outstanding children!”

Kyou could only hold his forehead, exasperated.

“You can replicate a technique just from hearing about it… I’d heard of the Wu clan’s obsession with selective breeding, and it’s clearly been a success. But… are there some issues with your family’s education?”

For the first time—even in battle—Kyou’s expression showed genuine distress.

Now that he no longer cared about the training benefits of chastity, he might have been tempted by a mature woman—someone clear-eyed, detached, with whom even Saeko wouldn’t mind a casual, ongoing ‘friendly’ relationship.

But if the other party was clearly a high school girl his own age… If he didn’t intend to take responsibility, it was best to refuse.

“I must decline your offer.”

“Eh? How come? Is Garuda not cute enough?”

No, she was too cute! Her flowing, beautiful muscles and proportions, her lovely face and long straight hair, that touch of nervous energy… She was the very picture of his ideal.

But precisely because there was a chance of genuine feelings, not just a physical relationship, he dared not accept.

“…”
“Won’t you even answer?” Wu Garuda widened her eyes in wounded confusion, as though she’d just had a confession rejected.

“Oh well,” she said, flashing an adorable smile. “Looks like I’ll just have to use force—”

PS: Many thanks for the reward from QQ Reading. By the way, these don’t show up on the author’s dashboard at all—I only saw them when I checked the Writer’s Assistant app.