I Got Cheated On and Ended Up in A Beast World

Chapter 168: Chapter 168

Three hours later, the mountain storm had completely cleared, leaving behind a cold, crisp night.

The thick gray fog that had covered the river banks for hours rolled back into the deep valleys, leaving the sky wide open.

Thousands of distant, tiny stars blinked down from the darkness, cold and entirely uncaring of the small, bloody dramas playing out on the dirt below.

Wei Xiang lay flat on his back against the rough gravel of the far bank. He had not moved an inch since the crushing weight of Cassian’s pressure had finally vanished from the canyon. The silence around him was heavy, broken only by the continuous, angry rush of the gray river water splashing over the sharp rocks just a few feet away from his boots.

His body was completely numb. The green travel tunic he wore was entirely ruined, soaked through with freezing river water, black mud, and streaks of his own dark blood.

Every single breath he forced into his lungs felt like a jagged piece of glass sliding through his chest, hot and sharp.

But the intense physical pain in his broken body was nothing compared to the hollow, tearing agony inside his spiritual core. He had been so close.

He had crossed worlds, tracked her energy frequency through the lower valleys, and held her in his arms. Yet, in the end, he had been entirely helpless.

He had watched her get dragged backward through the sky, her small hands reaching out for him, while he was pinned into the mud like an insignificant insect.

Step.

Step.

A soft, heavy sound cut through the quiet murmur of the river, the loose pebbles on the upper path crunching beneath a heavy weight.

Wei Xiang slowly, painfully lifted his head. His vision was heavily blurred, swimming with a mixture of sweat, dry dirt, and red blood that kept leaking from a deep cut near his eyebrow. He braced himself, expecting to see the glowing crimson eyes of a returning shadow hound sent to clean up the remains, or perhaps the long iron spear of a palace guard coming to finish Cassian’s demand.

He gripped the wet gravel with his fingers, refusing to close his eyes before the end.

Instead, a tall, towering figure stepped out from the deep shadow of the western crags. The figure stopped right at the very edge of the rocky bank, just five paces away from where Wei Xiang lay bleeding.

The male was tall, his broad shoulders instantly blocking out a large portion of the starlight. He had long, black hair that fell over his chest and back, gleaming like pure, polished moonlight in the cold night air. He wore thick, heavy armor plates of dark steel, lined around the collar and shoulders with the pure white fur of a tiger. A large silver sword, its hilt wrapped in dark leather, was strapped securely to his waist.

But it was his eyes that made Wei Xiang’s breath catch sharply in his throat. They were wide, round, and burning with a savage, predatory intensity that had absolutely nothing to do with the human cultivators or the cold luxury of the manticore lords. They were the eyes of a true king of the wild—fierce, unyielding, and completely golden.

It was Wang.

Wang did not move for a long moment. He stood at the edge of the water, his chest heaving with slow, deep breaths. His nostrils flared slightly as he inhaled the freezing night air, scanning the scents left behind in the canyon. The path was a total mess.

There was the heavy, unmistakable stink of winter frost and dark manticore ozone that always followed Cassian, but beneath that suffocating layer, Wang’s senses locked onto something else.

A tiny, delicate trace of jasmine. It was fading rapidly in the cold wind, but it was there, clinging weakly to the torn grass and the damp mud near the bank. And right in the center of that fading scent lay the bleeding male.

Wang walked over slowly, his long leather boots making a sharp, heavy crunch against the loose gravel with every step. He stopped right beside Wei Xiang’s head, looking down at the broken human male with a cold, piercing glare. He did not offer a hand to help him up. He did not ask if he was alright.

Instead, Wang simply knelt down on one knee. His movements were fluid and heavy, the steel plates of his leg armor clanking softly against the rocks. He reached down with his large, broad hand, his thick fingers tightening around Wei Xiang’s green collar in a vice-like grip.

With a single, effortless lift of his strong arm, he hoisted the wounded cultivator completely off the wet ground, pulling him up until their faces were just inches apart.

"Where is she?" Wang asked.

His voice was not a shout, but a low, terrifying growl that came from the absolute depths of his chest.

The sheer vibration of his words was so powerful that the loose gravel beneath them seemed to rattle against the stone.

"Speak," Wang commanded, his golden eyes narrowing into dangerous slits as he stared into Wei Xiang’s face. "You carry her scent on your clothes and the fresh marks of a royal beast. Tell me what happened here. Did he take her with him?"

Wei Xiang looked back into the fierce, burning eyes of the tiger sovereign. A bitter, bloody smile touched his pale, dry lips, the red foam at the corner of his mouth dripping onto his chin. He felt no fear looking at this man in front of him.

He hadn’t cared about the repercussions of Cassian’s anger, and he didn’t care if Wang decided to snap his neck right here. He had already lost the only thing that mattered to him. He had failed her, and that failure was a far worse punishment than death.

"He took her," Wei Xiang whispered, his voice thick, raspy, and completely broken by defeat. He had to gasp for air between his words, his chest hitching painfully. "Cassian... he was too fast, I tried to jump the water... we were right at the edge of the neutral territory. But his shadow hand... it reached across the canyon. It dragged her straight out of my grip."

Wang’s large hand tightened even more around the green fabric, his knuckles turning bone-white as his breathing grew twice as heavy.

"You could have Faught harder?" Wang growled, a dangerous silver light beginning to ripple across his dark steel pauldrons. "Why did you let him touch her?"

"Fight?" Wei Xiang let out a weak, coughing laugh that forced more dark blood past his teeth. "I wish I had more strength to battle that monster to the dust, to trample him beneath my feet, and crush his bones to death, if only I could... Now, He has Wanwan back in the high citadel now. He wove his personal royal mark directly into her soul... it acts like an iron anchor. I used my best talismans, I tried to wash her energy clean, but I couldn’t break the chain. Every time she tries to run, his mark tears her apart from the inside. She fainted in his arms before they even left the woods."

The words hit Wang’s chest like a physical hammer.

The image of Lin Wan, her soft, fragile human frame getting dragged through the dirt, her spirit getting crushed by the heavy, dark marks of the manticore crest, flashed through his mind with absolute clarity. The thought of her locked inside that dark jade room once more, weeping in the dark while the king stood over her like a master, completely destroyed the last remnants of his control.

"Ahhh!"

Wang roared, a primordial, world-shaking sound that tore from his throat with enough physical force to send a wave of ripples across the rushing river water.

His grip on Wei Xiang’s collar became so tight that the heavy green travel fabric tore completely open down the middle, the threads snapping like dry twigs.

He released his hold, letting the wounded cultivator drop heavily back onto the gravel path.

Wang scrambled back to his feet, drawing himself up to his full, towering height under the cold starlight. His long black hair whipped wildly around his face as a massive, ethereal silhouette of a roaring white tiger materialized in the air behind his shoulders, its golden eyes reflecting his own fury, its silver fire illuminating the entire dark canyon.

ROAR!

The beast roar bounced off the steep rock walls, echoing down the river valley until the thick pine trees on the upper ridges began to sway and drop their needles. Wang turned his body completely away from the river, his face lifting toward the high, distant northern peaks that rose into the sky far beyond the tree line.

High up there, hidden behind layers of ancient protective arrays and heavy cloud rings, the golden lights of the Supreme Sovereign’s citadel shone through the dark night like a row of malicious, mocking stars.