Chapter 2756: Witch’s Familiar

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Zhongguo (China), Liaodong Province, Shuntian Prefecture, Shenyang City

Captain Cheng grimaced as he looked down at the melted golden silk fabric fused to his burned skin. Even the faintest passing breeze made him wince in pain. And he had only been inside that strange atmosphere for less than a fraction of a second, yet the burns were already this severe.

Thinking about what would happen had stayed any longer made his expression darken. If he had pushed forward instead of retreating, he could easily imagine the outcome. Most likely, he would have been reduced to ash before he even reached the princess freak.

Understanding this, a quiet sense of dread settled in Captain Cheng’s heart as he looked at them with new solemnity.

At the same time, a small part of him felt an unexpected relief. Jiangya had not died at the hands of some insignificant nobody after all. Even if the fight had ended quickly, it had not been meaningless. Their opponent was both powerful and frighteningly clever.

While fighting for her life, the princess freak had managed to analyze his greatest advantage and construct a perfect counter to it. By turning the air itself into a trap, she had forced his own speed to become a liability. Now, Captain Cheng no longer dared to rush at her blindly.

"Captain Mo, she’s unexpectedly strong and quick on her feet. We cannot underestimate her. Let’s take her together," Captain Cheng requested, calling on his older colleague to help deal with them, fully aware of his own limits.

His eyes never left the blood-covered figure standing across the corridor. Inwardly, he couldn’t help but think, ’She is worthy of the name... Corey the Second.’

"Under normal circumstances, I would never agree to the two of us ganging up on a young girl. It wouldn’t be fitting us imperial guards," Captain Mo said calmly. "But fulfilling our duty to His Majesty comes first."

He paused before adding, his tone turning firm, "However, I have one condition. We do not kill her. We capture and present her to His Highness. She carries imperial blood. Judging or punishing her is far above our pay grade."

With that, Captain Mo made it clear that the princess was to be taken alive.

Nodding in agreement with Captain Mo, Captain Cheng stared at the blood-soaked figure of the princess freak. His gaze followed hers when she glanced past them toward the entrance of the Imperial Palace’s royal court. What angered him was that she barely spared them a look. Even in the middle of their fight, she seemed more interested in what lay behind them than in the two Imperial Guard captains standing before her. To Captain Cheng, that casual distraction felt like a slap to the face. He felt deeply disrespected.

What Captain Cheng didn’t know was that Corey the Second was not a single person. He believed he was fighting one opponent. In truth, he had been fighting two the entire time. Coryn was the brawn, the one standing in front of him in their conjoined bodies, exchanging blows with them without hesitation. Reven was the mind behind it all, calculating, observing, and guiding every move from within their conjoined bodies. That was why Coryn could afford to look distracted even in the middle of battle. She trusted that while she fought, Reven was already thinking several steps ahead.

"Alright. How do we go about this?" Captain Mo asked, drawing his jian, the straight, double-edged sword sliding free of its scabbard with a quiet metallic whisper.

"You’ll need to help me distract her and stop the molecular turbulence around her so I can finish—" Captain Cheng stopped mid-sentence. He slowly looked down feeling a sharp pain in his chest. The tip of Captain Mo’s jian had pierced straight through his back , the blade emerging from his chest in a thin line of steel darkened by blood.

Captain Cheng slowly turned his head toward Captain Mo, who was still standing several feet away from him. Yet the jian in the older captain’s hand had pierced straight through his chest.

Only then did he notice the distortion in space between them. A narrow tunnel had opened in the air itself, no wider than the sheath of the sword. One end hovered in front of Captain Mo’s jian, while the other appeared directly behind Captain Cheng’s back.

The blade had simply passed through the tunnel. It entered from the opening behind him, drove through his back, tore his heart to shreds, and burst out of his chest in a spray of blood without even him realizing.

In the final moments of his life, Captain Cheng finally understood. Since the beginning of the fight, that traitorous old bastard had been subtly helping the princess freak. Adding to his grief of losing his friend, it was Captain Mo’s constant nagging and drawn-out conversation that had distracted him. Because of it, he never noticed that she had come back from death and was quietly healing her wounds behind them, before standing back up on her feet.

Captain Cheng glared at the old traitor, fury blazing in his eyes as if he meant to drag him down to hell with him. But before he could act, the rear opening of the space tunnel behind him shifted. The narrow aperture tilted upward and downward in a rapid arc. The jian blade followed that movement through the tunnel. In a single, brutal sweep, the blade carved through Captain Cheng’s body, slicing him cleanly into two equal halves.

As Captain Cheng’s two halves collapsed onto the floor, Captain Mo lowered himself onto one knee before Coryn. He bowed his head deeply and raised his jian horizontally above it in a formal gesture of respect. Speaking perfectly in her native tongue, he introduced himself with careful humility. "This humble one, Mo Ming, a loyal familiar of Her Highness Corey the First, pays his respects to the young lady... Her Highness Corey the Second."

"Your Highness, if you will accept me," Mo Ming continued, still kneeling with his head bowed to his previous master’s daughters, "I will serve you loyally with my life, just as I once served your mother."

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