The Handbook for Completing Demi-Human Girls

Chapter 459: Tao

Watching Fisher's body drop little by little toward Bing's head on the ground, Tao's pink eyes abruptly narrowed. She probably indeed hadn't expected that the few small fry Transferred Persons before her would be so audacious, going all out in a desperate struggle to destroy Bing's corpse.

In fact, Lord Tao's attack on Fisher's group just now was already very light. To the point that the control effects of those attacks were actually far greater than their lethal effects. Exactly as Fisher accurately deduced, she had to preserve the integrity of Bing's corpse, otherwise he wouldn't be able to reincarnate. And as one of the three children who once received blessings from Mother, Bing's death would definitely incur the World Tree Mother's wrath, perhaps even more severe than her losing the Loom of Fate bestowed by the True God.

Lord Tao was the Elf among the three children who was clearest about the past, but she didn't know that the past would hide secrets from its observers. When she tacitly regarded the several Transferred Persons as small fries trapped like turtles in a jar, she hadn't anticipated their audacity to use her younger brother's head to threaten her.

It was exactly like an annoying mosquito buzzing constantly over a fragile infant's head, and as an adult, even possessing immense strength, you would hold back out of fear of hurting the infant...

But, for Lord Tao, it was only just that.

"Enough."

After completely figuring out what this group of humans before her wanted to do, she had already defaulted to these actions being their final madness, merely the last attempts of desperate lunatics at the end of their ropes. Facing her, even if their entire group consisted entirely of Fifteenth-Tier Mythical Species, it would be of no avail; they couldn't escape.

Thinking of this, Lord Tao spoke indifferently. Subsequently, with a slight flick of her fingertip, Bing's head resting on the ground abruptly stalled slightly. Then, countless thick peach blossom branches grew out from the ground, firmly wrapping Bing's head and causing Fisher's smashing plan to fall completely short.

Fisher's body, whose right arm and back were covered in fresh, bloody peach blossom branches, smashed onto the peach blossom cage without any effect. Yet Fisher seemingly still didn't give up, gripping the Fluid Sword in his left hand as if wanting to split the cage open and hack the head within.

But Lord Tao didn't give Fisher even the slightest slice of opportunity. With a slight pull of her fingers, the peach blossom cage wrapping Bing violently jolted toward Fisher. Amidst a "crack" sound that sounded incredibly painful, Fisher's entire body was bounced and sent flying into the distance."Rumble!"

"Teacher Fisher!"

The surrounding violent wind remained frantic. Fisher's body flew a great distance like a kite with a broken string. Asuka Karasawa roared loudly, her eyes wide with rage, while Lord Tao, having safely retrieved Bing's body, completely lost all worries.

It's over.

Lord Tao coldly placed Bing's head in her hands back onto Bing's body. She slightly raised her eyes to look at Fisher flying further and further away, but closely following, she seemingly saw a trace of a smile on Fisher's face, as if expressing joy at some scheme succeeding.

Lord Tao furrowed her brows slightly, but in the next second, she saw Fisher's backup plan.

As it turned out, the extended blade of Fisher's Fluid Sword wasn't aimed at Bing's head protected by the peach blossoms at all. Or rather, Fisher's original goal was never to smash Bing's head; he merely used Bing's head as a diversion to attract Lord Tao's attention. From beginning to end, his true goal had only ever been one: to escape.

Even heavily injured, Fisher borrowed the power of the sweeping violent wind to rush rapidly toward the outside of the spatial rift, toward the sea surface featuring the illusory shadow of the World Tree. At the same time, the extended blade of the Fluid Sword also quickly wrapped around the bodies of Mikhail and Asuka Karasawa, whose status of life or death were unknown on the ground, pulling them rapidly from their positions and fleeing wildly toward the sea surface outside the World Tree with him.

Fisher's back and right hand hurt terribly, but his eyes remained deadly fixed on the distant sea surface. He had to reach the location of the sea surface; this was the second step of the plan.

Accelerated by Asuka Karasawa's wind magic, their speed was astonishingly fast. Borrowing the wind's power, they were about to cross the edge of Jianmu Palace and reach the sea surface almost in the blink of an eye. Lord Tao behind them also seemed to be getting further and further away, as if she were about to be completely shaken off by them...

"It feels... as if I'm being looked down upon by you, this small fry? Playing your tricks time and time again, thinking you can escape like this? But you, this small fry, miscalculated one thing, which is that you absolutely shouldn't have returned Bing's head to me under any circumstances..."

But right at the same time, Lord Tao's mature, charming yet freezing voice abruptly drifted over from afar. Evrey word and sentence seemed like an unstoppable meteor smashing from the starry dome into Fisher's soul. Just hearing her words made Fisher feel dizzy and nauseous.

But how could Fisher not know the risk of returning Bing's head to Lord Tao?

Once without Bing's head holding her back, it meant the Nineteenth-Tier Lord Tao was about to unleash full firepower on them without any scruples. Fisher had never previously fought against a truly rational Mythical Rank existence, much less one like Lord Tao, who was the cream of the crop among the Nineteenth-Tier.

But Fisher had no choice. If he didn't return the head, he would never have the opportunity to put distance between himself and Lord Tao and reach the seaside. And if they couldn't reach the seaside, they would definitely die.

This was a high-stakes gamble, and the wager was Fisher's life.

Hearing Lord Tao's voice from behind, Fisher's vision almost went dark, but he didn't dare turn back. He merely continued sprinting wildly toward the seaside as if his life depended on it, attempting to reach the edge of the ocean.

Even if... only one person can escape, that's fine too.

Fisher thought this to himself.

But very quickly, he would soon learn that he underestimated Mythical Species far too much, and underestimated Nineteenth-Tier existences far too much.

"Ding ding ding~"

In the horizon, a crisp sound of earring bells, sounding as if coming from the sun itself, abruptly rang out. Closely following, everywhere within Fisher's line of sight—walls, buildings, the ground—boundless peach blossoms abruptly sprouted.

That sky-filling, lethal pink seemed as if it wanted to surround the entire world, and also seemed as if it wanted to completely replace everything.

Objects were peach blossoms, life was peach blossoms, space was peach blossoms, and time was also peach blossoms...

Everything was peach blossoms, and peach blossoms were everything.

And Fisher, who was sprinting wildly, abruptly noticed that the howling, magic-induced violent wind around him seemed to suddenly stop. But Fisher still refused to stop, running toward the direction of the ocean as if his life depended on it.

Ten steps, nine steps, eight steps, seven steps, seven steps, seven steps, seven steps...

Fisher was still sprinting madly through the pink world with Mikhail and Asuka Karasawa. Seeing that he was merely inches away from that ocean, no matter how he ran, he couldn't advance a single step further.

"Ha... ha... ha..."

He was still running, but seemed to notice something. He looked back somewhat in disbelief, thus witnessing a scene he would never forget.

He saw his running motion remain the same, but his figure had already stalled in place. However, from behind him, another Fisher ran out backward.

That Fisher seemed to be him from the previous second, seemed to be that human looking ahead and wanting to lead his companions to escape with their lives in the previous second.

He was also running, and so in the next second, from behind that "Fisher", another Fisher also ran out backward. That seemed to be the Fisher from the second before the previous second, and he was also still running...

Thus, amidst these sky-filling peach blossoms, Fisher, who was desperately running forward, continuously "ran backward." All the "Fishers" seemed linked together, forming an endless line of Fishers like a chain, continuously running backward from Fisher's final stop just seven steps away from the ocean toward Lord Tao's direction.

Eventually, other Fishers also seemed to appear in that long running line of Fishers.

There appeared Fisher wearing the suit Renee bought for him when he had just crossed over; Fisher wearing Northern Border attire while working alongside Valentiina; Fisher wearing the Sardin Woman's Country sailor uniform beside Alagina...

Those continuously retreating Fishers were like a long river, presenting every single moment of Fisher from the past, continuously running back to the starting point amidst the sky-filling peach blossoms like a continuous chain.

The gentleman wearing a black suit riding a horse carriage in the Southern Continent; the gentleman wearing a Schwari suit constantly crossing the Kadu border; the elegant young master wearing formal attire moving with ease at the birthday banquet by Nari Lake...

Yet the figures flowing backward still hadn't stopped. Following were him wearing scholar robes, him wearing Church attire, him in the Church orphanage.

As Fisher's figures continued further and further back into the past, the appearance of those figures grew younger and younger, even his height shrinking little by little.

He went from a cold-faced gentleman back to being green and unseasoned, from remaining calm under pressure back to the shyness of young love, from a robust adult back to tender youth, from reliable to frail.

"Waa! Waa! Waa!"

Until the Fisher in that continuously backward-running Fisher line slowly reverted back to that crying, mixed-blood infant whose parents—a Kadu and Nari couple—were unknown, born stark naked into the world. He finally stopped running, stopping before Lord Tao, who at this moment seemed like the most terrifying existence in the world.

Her expression was indifferent as she looked at the infant floating in mid-air who had finally stopped running, like a god. At the same time, she also looked at the Fisher on the other side, at the end of this long "Fisher line," and slowly reached out her palm.

"Die, small fry."

The Fisher at the front still hadn't stopped his movements. He couldn't move his body even a single step, yet he still exhausted all his strength to violently fling the Fluid Sword in his hand, throwing the Mikhail and Asuka Karasawa entangled on the blade with all his might, wanting to throw them out into the ocean.

As long as they leave the Tree Continent...

But in the next second, the event that brought him to near despair still occurred.

The Asuka Karasawa and Mikhail he threw with all his might also abruptly stopped in mid-air. Then, just like Fisher, the kinetic energy of them being thrown seemingly miraculously acted upon time. Thus, from behind them, countless identical "Asuka Karasawa lines" and "Mikhail lines" continuously linked out, extending backward toward Lord Tao.

The Asuka Karasawa wearing bear underwear extended backward little by little. Thus appeared her wearing the white robe, her wearing a High School Girl uniform, her wearing a kimono, her wearing a hospital gown, her wearing a set of crude children's clothes, sallow faced and emaciated...

The Mikhail whose status of life or death was unknown also extended backward little by little. Thus appeared him perfectly intact, him wearing a set of strange synthetic clothing, him wearing Novosibirsk Wind employee attire, him wearing a set of worn-out burlap peasant clothes. As that long line expanded backward, those miraculous implants on his body also vanished little by little, reverting to his childhood appearance when his entire body was "original parts"...

But Lord Tao didn't want to wait until the lines of those two reverted back to fragile infants. She could tell that among these people, only the Transferred Person named "Fisher" before her needed attention.

She was going to completely erase this guy first.

At this moment, even though the other party was merely a Fourteenth-Tier existence, Lord Tao still attacked with her full strength.

From her slightly raised palm abruptly bloomed a fear that made one shudder. In Fisher's surprised gaze as he looked back, his pupils shrinking slightly, he seemingly felt everything around him fading in color, as if all time around him had stopped.

The color of the sky-filling peach blossoms falling in profusion also suddenly contracted towards Lord Tao's direction, as if before Fisher's eyes, the only thing that still retained color was Lord Tao with her raised right hand.

His completely sluggish consciousness at this moment seemingly realized that Lord Tao's merciless strike was meant to completely erase everything about him—his life, his soul, and even his destiny. But of course, Fisher likely couldn't use words to describe the specific differences within, it was nothing more than...

Death!

"Buzz, buzz, buzz!"

Absolutely everything had completely come to a halt. Absolutely everything seemed to have turned black and white, like a prisoner under the tiger guillotine powerlessly awaiting the executioner's blade.

Perhaps in this second, thinking about the people he loved was the correct choice?

Just as he looked somewhat mockingly at Lord Tao's gently raised strike—which seemed to merely be a wave of her hand—within this black-and-white, deathly silent world, a faint glimmer of light abruptly lit up, shining upon the side of Fisher's cheek.

Like the morning sun at eight or nine o'clock, that newborn morning light crossed the boundless sky dome, appearing far away on the other side of the horizon.

The surrounding black and white remained the same; the only addition was that Angel wrapped in a suit of morning light, with illusory wings on her back and a halo hanging crookedly over her head, who fiercely blocked the path of the wailing infant Fisher suspended in mid-air.

The mischievous smirk constantly hung on that Angel's face had now completely vanished. On her stunningly beautiful face, a pair of scattered blue-gold pupils deadly fixed upon the Lord Tao before her, who was indifferent as a heavenly chasm.

Her energy had already reached its peak, like a slowly rising, warm sun, confronting those boundless peach blossoms...

"Crack, crack, crack!"

And in the next second, Lord Tao's strike arrived.