Beauty and the Beasts

“He… he died!”

Someone finally found his voice and stumbled to his feet, wanting to run away. But he had only taken two steps when he tripped over himself and fell unconscious on the ground.

Curtis: “…” Seems like he had overestimated the humans’ stamina.

Bai Qingqing was also startled by that scene and only snapped back to her senses then. She shouted, “Curtis, don’t do this!”

Curtis looked up at her, heartache flashing across his eyes. In the next moment, though, the heartache transformed into flames of fury.

Just as Bai Qingqing had said, Winston would at least listen to her, but Curtis wouldn’t.

With a sweep of his tail, Curtis toppled all the humans trying to flee. The slim trees in the forest were no obstruction to his tail at all, and they were chopped at their trunks as collateral damage.

After several cries of agony, tranquility was restored to the forest, which now had a ring of toppled trees. Looking from above, the green and lush forest looked like an old grandpa with a bald spot. On the yellowish-brown soil ground, a giant snake had half of his body perched upright, raising his head and looking at the girl on the crown of the only tree standing upright on the barren land.

“Curtis…” Bai Qingqing didn’t dare to look at the corpses strewn all over the ground as she helplessly called out to him.

Curtis transformed his upper body into a human and raised both arms. “Come down. I’m here.”

Bai Qingqing looked down. A gust of wind blew by, causing the tall tree crown to shake violently, as though the wind was going to snap it.

Startled, Bai Qingqing hurriedly hugged the tree trunk tightly. “I can’t.”

Curtis was both speechless and amused. He moved closer to her and said, “Jump down, I’ll catch you.”

“Mm.” Bai Qingqing took a deep breath, sprang against a tree branch, and leaped into Curtis’s embrace.

After steadily catching hold of his mate, without even glancing at the corpses on the ground, Curtis shook his tail and speedily slithered away.

He didn’t want his Snow to see such filthy corpses.

Feeling incredibly uneasy, Bai Qingqing put her arms tightly around Curtis’s neck for security.

“What should we do? You’ve killed those people. In our world, killing is forbidden,” Bai Qingqing said in a choked voice.

Curtis said, “No one saw it.”

Having watched one too many detective movies, Bai Qingqing declared with conviction, “Justice has long arms. There are no culprits that cannot be caught.”

“Is that so?” Curtis remembered something and said, “The shop owner at the entrance of your school has killed someone. But nothing seems to have happened to him.”

“…” Bai Qingqing: “You’re bluffing me.”

“I sniffed human blood. When I sent lunch to you I sniffed the same bloody odor in the derelict building. There’s even a corpse smell. If you don’t believe me, I can dig it out for you to see,” Curtis said in all seriousness.

Bai Qingqing quickly shook her head. “No, no, no. No need for that.”

She really hadn’t expected that the friendly and amicable-looking uncle was actually a murderer. She wondered how many sins were hidden in this world.

As they were speaking, Curtis carried Bai Qingqing to a natural hot spring. The temperature was just nice, and white air was floating above the water surface, exuding a celestial vibe in this desolated mountain forest.

Curtis licked her face which had been scraped by a tree branch and said, feeling heartache for her, “You’ve suffered.”

Then, his voice started getting sinister again, a cold glint flashing across his blood-red vertical pupils. “They got off too lightly by dying so easily!”

Bai Qingqing glared at him and felt vexed as she removed her clothes and entered the water.

Screech—

A clear and loud eagle screech sounded. Soon, accompanied by the rustling of the wind, a gigantic black eagle landed next to the hot spring. He transformed into a muscular man on the shore, jumped into the water with a loud splash, and tightly hugged Bai Qingqing.