Chapter 870: Chapter 870 For these Four. There is Only One Way To Skin a Snake
The argument between Xiang and Yang continued for quite some time before it ended. It didn’t end with a real consensus or slowly wind down. No the only reason it stopped at all was Yang, and perhaps Xiang as well, found something else to be annoyed about. See, the argument had been going on for half an hour when Kat and Lily decided they really wanted no part in it. Sure there ears were good enough that they’d need to put quite a distance between them and the cultivators, but any distance was a nice drop in volume for the lounging pair.
Kat carefully used her fans to cut their small seat off from the rest of the ice chunk, which had already started to melt, then started to float away. Now, with no real currents Kat was forced to use her tail as a bit of a rudder. Kat kept the speed down, wouldn’t do to be noticed after all. They managed to get a fair bit away before they were noticed, and even then it wasn’t actually them that was noticed first.
See, Kat was floating away, and of course, she was no longer in contact with the main chunk of ice, or providing it with energy demonic energy to keep it frozen. Kat did pump in a good 50% of her reserves into it before they floated away, but apparently that was only good for an hour or so. Horribly inefficient to throw it all away at once. Though really, with Lily’s reserves Kat used closer to 25% of her real total.
Anyway, the point was that while the ice remained frozen for quite a while, it didn’t remain frozen forever without Kat’s assistance. Eventually, while it hadn’t melted completely, it had lost a lot of its stability. So when Yang shifted, massive club and all, to a different position to further her argument the whole thing tipped over. Neither of the cultivators were happy about it.
So off they went on another argument, after ‘convincing’ Kat to come back and reform the platform. Apparently the chill was one thing but the poison was another. So Kat just shrugged, ignoring the fact that they could have used the snake as a place to have their arguments and not be reliant on her for their platform. But what did Kat no? Nothing apparently if all the arguing going on said anything.
Kat just let it all wash over her. She just couldn’t work up the energy or frame of mind to care. They’d already spent over an hour yelling and screaming at each other for something neither of them could control all while Yang tried to ignore the reality of the situation and Xiang, eventually, started questioning Yang’s intelligence and breeding instead of just letting the argument wind down.
So now that they were both yelling at Kat, Yang for the damage done to her appearance mostly, and Xiang for the potential risk the poison posed... well Kat just didn’t care. She simply reacted with different changes in her facial expression every time one of them finished the sentence. She wasn’t even paying enough attention to know how applicable those changes were. It was mostly just a trick to make them think she was paying them at least some attention.
.....
Lily had, after making sure it was ok with Kat, returned to sleep. It was a bit hard with all the yelling but she was part cat, so it was possible after all. Kat was thinking she had the right idea not longer after Lily had taken leave of her conscious. *How much time are they willing to waste here? No wait. Don’t ask that... especially not out loud. That’ll just set off another argument. Probably.*
Kat wasn’t willing to test her theory. Even as the sun made its way across the sky and it was looking increasingly likely that they’d be staying at least one extra day in the swamp. Almost certainly slower than the bypass now. Granted, the snake was a nice prize so the delay wasn’t completely unreasonable. The issue was of course, the fact that most the money would be from the fact that it was large and the scales were sturdy. Just the head, while likely worth quite a lot, would be at most 20% of the total value. At absolute most. Probably closer to 10 or 5%.
Eventually, Kat asked if they could get started on the head and decide what to do with the rest of it after. It was mostly just a throw away thought but Xiang and Yang jumped on the idea like starving hyenas. So they got to work. It... wasn’t pretty. See, the scales were quite hard, but with some effort you could dig under them into the muscles. Of course, you had to be aware of the extra backup scales underneath that... but if you were careful it wasn’t too bad.
Lily was having a great time. Napping on the snake’s nose. Everyone else. Not so much. See, Kat was the only one who could really do anything. Yang’s weapon didn’t lend itself to cutting or slashing, so she spent most of her time trying to pry up the edges of the scales for Kat. The cuts Yang accumulated doing such a thing were quite frequent until Yang just ripped off her, admittedly dirty, sleave and used it as a set of makeshift gloves.
For Kat... it was hard work. She had to carefully cut the muscle, and only the muscle. Dragging the edges of her fans around the extra scales, which weren’t always where they should be, especially if you assumed even space. It was also taking forever. Kat wasn’t really paying attention to the time, but it took large amount of it, and effort, as well as a bit of demonic energy to dig deeper into the snake’s muscles.
Xiang... well... he was probably the worst off. He had insisted he could help Kat. That he was capable of cutting through the snake without issue. He was wrong. His sword wasn’t up to the task. He managed to dig into the snake and make a very noticeable chip in the blade. Xiang’s face when he saw the missing bits of metal heralded horrible things for the snake if it was still alive.
Regardless of Xiang’s rage, the fact of the matter was that his sword wasn’t good enough. Kat ended up handing over her second fan temporarily so he might help out. Kat had taken to using just the one with two hands. It was more efficient then only paying half her attention to both hands. Sadly... Xiang wasn’t really strong enough even with a better weapon. Kat’s fans weren’t really meant for this kind of prolonged slicing. They were made up of multiple individual pieces of metal that folded and unfolded. The edges were sharp yes, but it wasn’t one continuous edge.
Xiang found himself... rather useless in the long term. It took him an age of sawing away at the muscle to make any progress at all and really only kept up with the work because he didn’t want to be the ‘only’ person not working. Kat wasn’t quite sure what to make of that statement when he said it. On the one hand, she was quite glad they didn’t force Lily to help. She wasn’t strong enough for this type of work and likely wouldn’t be able to help... but on the other hand... it seemed like in Xiang’s frustration he’d overlooked Lily completely and Kat really wasn’t sure how to feel about that part.
The spine wasn’t an issue. Kat wasn’t sure if it would be or not, but it turned out that the ligaments that held the thing together weren’t really up to standard. A swift cut was all that Kat needed to separate the two pieces of spine she was working with. It was the final task before the snake’s head was separated from the rest of it. Kat let out a long breath of air as she stretched to work out the non existent kinks in her body. Sure she didn’t really have any, but her mind told her she SHOULD and stretching felt nice so really who was to complain.
It was very late in the afternoon at this point. The sun was most of the way down and Kat couldn’t help but sigh. “I guess we’re camping here for the night?”
Xiang scowled at the question but nodded. “Yes... it the snake can provide us with a... nice enough place to rest. Not cold like the ice and not as likely to give us splinters like the trees,”
“You got splinters from that? I thought you were tougher!” sneered Yang.
Xiang glared her down. “No of course not, but the risk is there and I don’t exactly enjoy having bits of wood sticking into me,” Xiang bit down on the ‘unlike the one that seemed to be stuck up your ass’ he wanted to add.
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