Chapter 343: Acts of Violence sometimes have good reasons
Much to the chagrin of the man being sat upon by Tiny the hippo, Zhen Liu did not immediately ask her to get off of him, but instead began to look around him for some reason.
Maybe he was trying to find a way to pull me out, the man thought to himself… moments before lashing out in annoyance.
“Oi! Are you going to get your fucking hippo off of me or what?! I got places to be, you bastards!”
“Calm down, mister…”
“Afnac! Victor Afnac! And I’d appreciate if the oh so magnanimous Zhen Clan would get their hippo off of me!,” he shouted out of frustration. As he did though, a lot of the bystanders couldn’t help but to stare at the man’s gnarly teeth. They weren’t sure how he could talk so much despite his teeth being so ganky.
Zhen Liu merely rolled his eyes at the man’s outburst before continuing his inspection, only to pause for some unknown reason.
“Hmmm.”
Zhen Liu returned to his original position and stood right in front of Victor Auradies. Evidently, the latter was so flippant and cranky, that he failed to notice the former’s expression going from curiosity to animosity.
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=Well… whenever he is alone or with people of ill-intent he has a tendency to do the “devil schtick”, but family is present as well… I’m going for the second.=
[Maestro’s gonna kick it.]
[Our lord’s not much for brutal violence, I think he’ll talk.]
[I…say…. stomp.]
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“Oi!,” Victor shouted, “are you gonna get your hippo off me or-”
*POW!*
“GUGH! MY TEETH!”
“WHOA!”
“XIAO LIU! WHAT THE FUCK?!”
“Ahhh, I can hear the teeth breaking from here.”
Before Victor could finish his next bout of shouting, Zhen Liu literally kicked him in his messed up teeth and knocked several of the pearly whites loose and into the air. Among the flying white sharapnel, Zhen Liu grabbed one midflight.
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=Well damn. That was brutal.=
[Hahah! Kicked him like a Rockette!]
[Oof! That looks painful.]
[Scary…when…angry…]
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“Zhen Liu!,” Zhen Yan shouted in preparation to reprimand his son, “what are you-”
*Crack!*
*FWOOM!*
“What the…”
Zhen Liu crushed the tooth he kicked into the with his bare hands, causing an explosion of smoke and unfamiliar aether to fill the air.
The smoke began to swirl around for a few moments before settling down on the ground and dispersing, leaving behind one very confused baby Rajin hippo with a pumpkin pastry in it’s mouth.
Mini’s head darted left and right in confusion for a moment before seeing Zhen Liu and her mama, Tiny.
“Kuu!”
Elated by the sight, Mini proceeded to run over where Zhen Liu and rub her head against his leg for a moment, before running over to Tiny and settling on top of her head. All while keeping the pastry in her tiny mouth.
Evidently, everyone was so enamored by the sight of a baby hippo being adorable, they didn’t notice Victor going pale and quiet the moment Zhen Liu broke his teeth not once, but twice.
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Meanwhile, back at the estate.
Stablemaster Ricardo was ripping through the area in an attempt to locate Mini the hippo. It was during this search based rampage that he ran into Aranea, who was in the middle of teaching some of the young children how to weave…something.
“Miss Aranea!,” Ricardo called out in a worried voice, “I need your help! Its-”
“Mini the baby Raijin Hippo is missing from the stable after you had left in order to get her treat?”
“I-yeah! How’d you-”
“Do not worry Mister Ricardo. Young Master Zhen Liu has contacted me that he has already apprehended the criminal and is dispensing some ‘frontier justice’ as it were. Miss Lucille is off to retrieve her as we speak.”
Relief washed over Ricardo as he was given the news about Mini’s status, but he was also tad confused as to how it was handled so quickly. This conflict of feelings caused Ricardo to feel a bit weak in the knees.
“Do you mind if I sit here for a moment?”
“But of course Mister Ricardo. Feel free to listen to the class as well.”
“Thanks.”
“Okay young ones, now back to the lesson. Now if you twist the weave like so, you can cut through a man’s nerves without him being able to react in time, at which point…”
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All of the people present for this moment were very confused as to what just happened. Luckily for them, Zhen Liu wasn’t going to leave them in suspense for long.
“Spatial Tooth Beavers,” Zhen Liu suddenly said aloud, “Ever heard of them?”
“Spatial Tooth Beavers?”
Neither the main clan nor branch clan members knew what a Spatial Tooth Bever was exactly, althought the latter had a partial idea.
“Are they related to Log-Pocketing Beavers?,” a branch member asked.
For context, a Log-Pocketing Beaver was a 1st grade aether beast characterized by it’s ability to store logs of wood and nothing else in a special pocket dimension in their cheeks. Normally they use it for construction purposes, but in times of danger, they can launch the logs in their cheeks like high speed ballista bolts. A lot of aether beasts can survive a falling tree, but not a high speed log to the head.
“Actually, yes,” Zhen Liu answered, “Spatial Tooth Beavers are the ancestors of Log-Pocketing Beavers. Unlike their modern counterparts that have this specialized organ, Spatial-Tooth Beavers have pocket dimension arrays established on their teeth. This gave them the ability to eat through anything and also store a whole mess of stuff other than wood. Rock, metal, people, granted their ability to store stuff was dependent on each individual beaver.”
“Does that mean somebody could use their teeth to make spatial storage treasures?,” a member of the main clan surprisingly asked. Perhaps they were caught into the rhythm of Zhen Liu’s explanation, or they saw this as an opportunity to make a lot of money. Spatial treasures were rare and making them from beaver teeth sounded a lot easier than Dimension Marble.
“Yes, but good luck trying to find one on the continents. A lot of them got hunted to near extinction with the rest having fled to wandering ruins,” Zhen Liu answered.
“Was it for the teeth?”
“Weirdly enough, no. They got hunted down for their castoreum. Apparently it was used to make really high grade perfume if you can believe it.”
“What the fuck?”
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‘Did I miss any details in regards to those beavers?’
=Well, you didn’t mention the fact that their teeth are ten times harder than diamonds, but I don’t think that’s relevant right now.=
‘Wait, they are?’
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“Yeah, but back to our friend here,” Zhen Liu directed his gaze down at Victor, who over the course of Zhen Liu’s explanation was looking more and more uncomfortable by the second, “Mister Afnac here appears to be a rare bloodliner of Spatial Tooth Beaver descent who’s been using his skills to steal stuff left and right , and judging by how squirmy he’s getting, I didn’t seem to get anything wrong, did I?”
“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Victor denied in a distinctively more servile-sounding tone.
“Hmmm.”
Unamused by the denial, Zhen Liu picked up two of the teeth that had fallen from the man’s mouth from his earlier kick and picked it up.
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=Copying array for future usage…complete. [Spatial Tooth Array] has been registered.=
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Zhen Liu palmed the teeth for a couple seconds before, breaking them like the one before it.
However, unlike before when a baby hippo appeared from the resulting smoke, this time it was a whole pot of wine and a crate of weapons.
“Wait a minute…I recognize that label! That’s a medicinal pot from the Corradas.”
“And that’s a crate of weapons from the late Wolfe Family…well they ain’t using it anymore, dibs.”
“Bruh!”
“Okay, so we have basically established that you’re some kind of kleptomaniac with magic teeth and by all rights I should probably have Tiny roll over and pop your head like a grape what with you delaying this trip of ours and attempting to kidnap my friend’s baby,” Zhen Liu informed with Victor with a deliberately manic looking face, “but at the same time I’m feeling generous. So how about this, little sneak thief…”
Zhen Liu squatted down and proceeded to lift Victor’s chin so that he could stare him in the eyes.
“How about you handover everything you stolen in the past…let’s say two weeks? And if you do, I’ll let you go.”
“A-and if I don’t?”
When asked this, Zhen Liu simply gave a surprisingly wide smile and answered in the sweetest voice possible.
“I suppose we can bring you along and I can practice my dentist work by ripping your teeth out one by and one and seeing what kind of prizes are in them. So what do you say?”
While what Zhen Liu said didn’t sound threatening in a traditional sense, the delivery was enough to cause everyone to simultaneously gulp.
Well…anyone who wasn’t his family that is.
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=First the deal maker shtick and now this…mad man schtick.,=
=What’s the difference.=
