Chapter 025 – One Fierce Woman
Outside Li Yuan’s house, a dark figure scaled the fence and reached the front door. Without even bothering to knock, he gave the door a push, apparently assuming it wasn’t locked.
Just then, the intruder felt a sudden chill, looked off to the side, and froze. Under the pale moonlight, a tiger with a striking, brindled coat was hurtling through the air, leaping over the fence.
The sight nearly made the man’s knees buckle in terror, and an involuntary cry of fear escaped his lips.
In a desperate bid to block the tiger’s path, he flailed forward with both hands, only to find that Li Yuan’s door really was unlocked. It swung open, and he darted inside, hoping to slam it behind him. Surely the tiger couldn’t break down a door, right?
But the beast moved with lightning speed. Before its paws even hit the ground, it pounced again, covering several dozen feet in a flash and circling around behind him. With a lunge, it clamped its jaws onto the back of his neck. The man toppled with a blood-curdling scream for help.
Locked onto his throat, the tiger dragged him backward, heading straight toward the trees. The intruder’s shrieks rang through the night, rousing the neighbors.
Auntie Wang, alarmed by the uproar coming from Yan Yu’s place, grabbed a kitchen knife and peered out her window. One look was enough to make her go pale as a ghost.
“T–tiger...! A tiger’s in the village!”
Meanwhile, the tiger kept pulling its prey across the ground. From his vantage point near the woods,
Li Yuan finally got a good look at the intruder’s face, the same troublemaker who’d once lost to him in an arm-wrestling contest. The man had injured his wrist that day and ended up dodging the draft. A month had passed since then; his hand must have healed.
With the county troops defeated, half the bailiffs dead, and the captain of the guard gone, law and order had all but collapsed. Realizing no one was around to stop him, the scoundrel decided to break into Li Yuan’s home by night, planning to assault Yan Yu—revenge of the worst kind.
A surge of cold fear flashed through Li Yuan as he realized how close Yan Yu had come to harm. His face went grim.