Empress of Beasts

  With another painful groan, she slowly opened her eyes and found herself lying on an unfamiliar bed with a confused-looking Malleus staring down at her. 

  "Are you all right? You seem to be in pain." Malleus pointed out with a frown. 

  "That's-" She slowly tried to sit up but another painful wave hit her as she crumbled onto her side again and clutched her belly painfully. 

  "I'll call a nurse." Malleus suggested with a deep look of concern. 

  "No!" She shouted irritatingly before grabbing his arm with a glare, "It'll get better in a week anyway. You should have the others focus on the fairy gala."

  "A week?" Malleus questioned in confusion, "Why so long?"

  "Cause a certain person knocked away my pain killers, didn't they?" Lotus huffed in disdain. 

  "Just what ailments require such a strong dose of pain killers?" Malleus frowned. 

  "Someone who is naturally resistant to them." Lotus scowled angrily before noticing her strange environment, "By the way, where is this?"

  "You're in Lilia's room." Malleus responded having given up on his plans with her hostile nature, "Your retainer is now inhabiting your quarters. Lilia is watching over him."

  "I see." Lotus sighed in dismay. 

  "Are you not worry he would reveal your truth?" Malleus questioned curiously. 

  "Hardly." Lotus shook her head, "If he was so loose-lipped, I would not have kept him alive to begin with."

  "So that part about him defecting to you was true."

  Lotus sighed as she hugged the thin blanket over her stomach, "That's right. That guy is from a sect from my society. The organization is similar to that of a mafia rather than a guild. While most are rather isolated or peaceful organizations that may even nurture a number of families from within their ranks, the one Huo Wei comes from is an assassin sect. They kill for a living and threaten others to join them. For Huo Wei, he was threatened with poison as are most in his sect. Most are like him. They were blackmailed by the sect and forced to work with them for a weak suppressant."

  "So, they could continue to utilize those people to their fullest without worry or betrayal." Malleus concluded with a frown, "This is really a despicable organization. But why hasn't anyone done anything?"

  "The society is based on the survival of the fittest." Lotus clarified with a scowl, "Naturally, they must've survived this long due to their ability in poison. Unfortunate for them, that man-made poison isn't as complex as they thought it was."

  "How did you solved it?" Malleus questioned curiously. 

  Lotus hesitated before she sighed and threw down an array stone setting up another array. Malleus scowled but didn't say anything as she continued, "Remember my words, Malleus. If you ever run into cultivators who utilizes poison, it will aid you in some form or manner in the future. There are a numbers of ways to remove poison from the body. One is to create an antidote from the poison. This is often used by people. The others is to physically remove the poison from the body. This is what I did for Huo Wei as the poison had seeped into his body too deeply to be cured with just an antidote. Then I created an antidote once the amount in his body has reduced. When that is finished, I've given him a potion that could strengthen and recover his body at a faster pace. Then, there is the third and final method."

  "A third method?" Malleus questioned curiously. 

  Lotus nodded, "You remove the infected part of the body completely."

  Malleus raised a brow, "Won't you die from blood-loss if that method was applied?"

  "Between blood-loss and poison, which of the two would you have chosen?" Lotus responded with a sigh. 

  "Have you done it before?" Malleus frowned. 

  Hearing this, Lotus paused as the memories of the past came rushing back to her. She did do such a thing to herself once and she nearly became handicapped because of it. After all, it was well-known no matter how strong they were against poison, her kind always has a weakness and, for her, that weakness was severe cold type poison. Once, the beastman in her world had stumbled upon this truth and decided to use it to hunt her down and consume her core. During then, she tore apart her dress and used the cloth as a gag as she braced herself slicing away the poisoned area of her calf. When Mo Li found her, she didn't hesitate to seek aid from the eldest even if that means being forced to make more of those classes she disliked very much. The eldest was furious and sent the second to go see her in her place while the eldest went out with her people to bring down the entire clan that tried to kill her. 

  Mo Li... 

  That was the first time Mo Li had ever saw her in such a bloody state before...

  Bloody with her own blood stained on the clean white dress. Since Mo Li had been out in the world more often than she had, she felt that the child would have experienced times where blood was spilt, but perhaps she was wrong. Maybe that innocent child had never seen blood spilt before till she was the first the child's life. For the older sisters, it was not an old sight but she knew it was an unwelcoming one since it would mean that they would be apart from her side for a long period of time as they went to catch the perpetrator while she went to go face against ignorant nobles who thought less of her. Mo Li was there as well after her arrival into her world. It was difficult to say if she had known about such treatment. Otherwise, why would the eldest sent the second after her appearance? After many years, she had long forgotten such an event. She had even forgotten how panicked she looked when she hurried back to the palace in her dragon form, which the eldest had forced her to remember not to do in according to her etiquette class. 

  Seeing her quiet image, Malleus was compelled to keep quiet even though his mouth was itching to open up. However, every time he did, she was always in such a bad mood and ends up throwing him out in random places that even includes the headmaster's office. It was difficult to lie to him that he was teleporting to random places on purpose just to keep her secret. If she hadn't threatened him, he would have easily dealt with the matter from the start. However, if she didn't do it, she would have gone deeper into why peeling off one's own rotten flesh would be better than bleeding to death. He has spent enough time with her to know at least that much about her. Then, with the fact that she was so much more upset today and injured, he didn't dare to probe her nerve any further. He then sighed and pointed at the stone she smashed on the ground, "What is that?"

  "That?" Lotus huffed in pain, "It's a dragon illusion array?"

  "A what?" Malleus looked to her in confusion.

  "A dragon illusion array." Lotus stared at him in dismay and irritated, "I don't want to hear about it, but Loongs are considered to be dragons in our culture."

  "But-"

  Lotus glared at him to shut up as she was clutching tightly to her blanket, "There are few who are powerful enough to trap dragons. So, to aid them in this endeavor, they created arrays, or magic circles in your term, to help them. Amongst them, two such arrays were widely known and is the most difficult to pull of successfully. The first is the dragon entrapment array that traps a dragon in a certain area for long periods of time. The second and easier one is the dragon illusion array that can lure dragons into traps for ambush. However, both were still considered difficult to pull off and mostly because dragons in our culture are extremely powerful and those who don't manage to do it successfully are either killed or eaten alive. When the Empress of Beasts discovered this, she took part in a war that lasted for five hundred years against the humans out of pure rage. Even the emperor didn't dare to stop her and joined by her side in the front lines. Since the peace treaty, the array was then destroyed and the beastmen empire at the time only allowed for the art to be recorded on a number of records. I had to spend 6 years before I could get it down and use the knowledge of this to gift granny. Needless to say, when I shared this art to her and the way to break it, she was already unhappy that such an art even dared to exist."

  "So, grandmother knows of this as well." Malleus sighed not wanting to fight anymore only to notice something more important, "Wait. You know about the Empress of the Beasts?"