Taoist priest goes to America

Ang Lee stood in the floodwater, looking at the Japanese girl who had "come back to life." The girl's face, covered in pink new flesh, wore a sincere smile. Her soaked clothes clung to her body, and the wound on her chest was faintly visible beneath the fabric.

"Then I'll just kill you."

Ang Lee's tentacles straightened again, their tips aimed at Yuzu's newly healed head: "Anyway, I have plenty of ways to get information from you. I'm good at getting things out of dead people."

Yuzu pulled her face back from behind the bed, pouting like a wronged little girl.

But she didn't panic, her tone remaining light: "That's right, you're right. How about another condition? For example—I'll help you take them out."

Ang Lee frowned, his tentacle still pointing at her: "Why did you kill them?"

"Because they are all the right-hand men of my organization's boss." Yuzu used her only remaining left hand to brush away the bangs that were stuck to her forehead, revealing her smooth forehead.

She didn't look like someone who had just had their head smashed; she looked more like an ordinary girl chatting and flirting in a coffee shop.

"For personal reasons, I want to take down my boss, so of course I have to take down his right-hand men first, otherwise I can't beat all four of them at once."

Ang Lee suddenly laughed, looking at Yuzu with undisguised sarcasm: "So you want me to be your pawn? If you want to kill someone, do it yourself, don't drag me down with you."

"I didn't drag you down with me," Yuzuo said, looking at her severed right wrist. A tiny new hand was already wriggling and protruding from the break. She winced as if in pain from the new hand, but still managed to finish her sentence:

"I was just going with the flow. And as I said before, you killed Chigur, so you've already made a name for yourself in the organization."

Yuzu's smile became meaningful, with a hint of amusement at watching a good show.

"Do you know how many years Qiguer has been in the organization? Nine years. In those nine years, he has taken on hundreds of missions, and the number of failures is zero."

"His ability to split flesh and blood allows him to roam freely in the assassin world. He is unkillable and untouchable. Any wound can heal, and severed limbs regenerate faster than food."

"People in the organization call him 'the immortal Qigur'."

"Then you appeared and caused him to lose one of his five carefully nurtured clones, which he had spent several years cultivating."

"If you take down one of them, you're essentially destroying years of hard work."

Yuzu emerged from behind the bed, the tentacles following her movements, adjusting their angle to always aim at her vital points, but she paid no attention.

"So what's the situation in the assassin organization now?" Yuzu gestured with her left hand, as if drawing a pyramid shape. "Those usually arrogant and powerful individuals are all acting like they've been injected with adrenaline."

"If Qiguer has fallen into your hands, then whoever can take you down is the one with stronger business skills than Qiguer."

"Within the organization, they're already holding competitions to see who has the highest performance this month and who kills the most people. Whoever does that gets priority to challenge you."

She lowered her hand, looked into Ang Lee's eyes, her smile faded, and her tone became serious.

"You're already in the game, Mr. Ang Lee."

"From the moment you killed Chigur's clone, you were already on the organization's kill list."

"This isn't about whether you're willing to be used as a pawn or not; it's about the people outside already lining up to come to you, whether you like it or not."

"Starting from the beginning of next month, either Fujiwara no Sakuin or Ise no Kibō will come to visit, or perhaps it will be Kigur himself, whom I don't even want to face directly, with his remaining four clones."

"But they will come no matter what."

Li An fell silent. He knew that there was something fishy about what Yuzu said. A top assassin from an organization wouldn't be so bloodthirsty as to come looking for him to kill one by one when he had nothing better to do. She was probably exaggerating the external threat to increase her bargaining power.

Her rhetoric was not clever, and could even be described as quite foolish, but he couldn't refute the core facts.

Ang Lee did kill Chigur's clone, which will draw the attention of the assassin organization. Especially after Chigur's reputation for "never failing" was shattered, it will inevitably trigger a chain reaction.

He has humiliated the organization, and the management will definitely send a strong person to get revenge on him.

Therefore, the person named Fujiwara no Sakuin or Ise no Kibo, regardless of whether their motivation is simply a desire for challenge or to complete a mission, may indeed already be on their way.

Seeing that he didn't immediately refute her, Yuzu pressed her advantage and added, "So you see, we have the same goal."

She extended her left hand. "I need to weaken my boss's power, and you'll have to deal with the upcoming pursuit. So why can't we form an alliance?"

"When those idiots come to us individually, we'll devour them one by one."

"Let's work together. My lightning can suppress them, your flesh and corpses can fight and withstand attacks, and I can also provide intelligence to help you deal with them."

"It's much better for us to join forces than to fight alone."

"Of course," she withdrew her hand, revealing her pure and lovely smile again, "If you still want to kill me after hearing all this, you can do that too."

"But I have to say this in advance: superhumans like me have a backup plan. I can reverse the flow of my energy, compress all the energy in my body into a single point, and then release it directly."

She made an explosion gesture with her left hand over her chest and imitated a "bang" sound.

"The effect is like a powerful bomb. It might not kill you, but it will definitely not make you feel good."

But what really bothered Ang Lee wasn't her threat to self-destruct. It's not unusual for a professional assassin to reveal a suicide threat in a desperate situation; such words are somewhat threatening.

He was more concerned about something else.

"Why should I be able to guarantee that you won't kill me with lightning at some point?" Ang Lee asked. "Your abilities completely counter mine. Cooperating with you is like constantly putting my life on your shoulders."

"Sigh—" Yuzuo drawled out the last syllable like a Japanese idol, "Kill you?" She blinked, revealing a hurt expression, "Big brother, I never thought of killing you."

"I've only heard of your reputation and think you've become quite famous in the organization lately, so I wanted to come and test your abilities to see if we can cooperate."

"If you beat me, I'll cooperate with you; if you can't beat me, then..." She gave a knowing look.

"But I lost. You smashed my head and chopped off my right hand, so by my standards, you've passed."

"Then you still haven't answered my question." Ang Lee's tentacles were still hovering near her vital parts. "How can I guarantee you won't turn on me during the collaboration?"

Yuzu sighed, as if she were dealing with a particularly difficult customer.

"You saw me regenerating, didn't you? Even if you smashed my head, it would grow back. It'll only take a little time for a broken hand to grow back."

"However, there is a problem," she pointed to the cross-section of her severed right arm, "Regeneration requires a lot of energy, and if I use lightning power during the regeneration process, the two energies will conflict with each other."

"Simply put, I won't be able to discharge electricity when my hand grows back."

Yuzu lowered her right arm and looked into Li An's eyes.

"So all you have to do is wait for my new right hand to regenerate a little, and then you can cut it off."

"Then my hand keeps regenerating, and you keep cutting it. As long as my right hand is constantly regenerating, I can't use my lightning abilities. That's how you control me."

"No." Li An narrowed his eyes, his tentacles stretched forward, and suddenly stabbed into Yuzu's left shoulder.

Yuzu didn't dodge this time, and the fleshy tentacles injected something into her body with a gurgling sound.

A dark red thing rose on her fair, snow-white shoulder, gradually swimming from her left shoulder to her left chest, and finally settling in the heart of Yuzuo.

"Although you can regenerate, this thing can assimilate your flesh and blood, disrupting your regeneration."

"If you don't cause trouble, you'll live in peace with it, and it can actually become the locator I planted for you."

"But if you don't behave... then try to see if you can beat me without a heart."

Ang Lee retracted his tentacles, walked to her severed hand, and bent down to pick up the samurai sword from the puddle.

The electric sparks on the blade had long since died down, and the silvery blade reflected the water from the fire sprinkler overhead. Li An held the knife in his hand, not returning it to her.

"You said we should talk in another room." Li An turned and walked towards the door, resting his hand on the door frame as he glanced back at her.

"Didn't you just order the people in this hotel to go out and find a clean room, take a shower, change your clothes, and sit down to discuss your alliance terms?"

Yuzu looked down at her soaking wet waitress uniform with a large gash in it, then touched her snow-white chest with her undamaged left hand. The touch caused her to hiss in pain, but the smile on her face only widened.

"Okay, I'll have them book a couples' suite. Anyway, the hotel owner can't afford to mess with our organization, so he won't dare say anything."

She turned her head and glanced at Li An outside the door. Her round eyes swept over his naked body, and her gaze lingered between Li An's legs. The corners of her mouth turned up even higher.

"Young man, you should put on some clothes too. Although I don't mind you talking to me like this, there are security cameras in the hallway."

"It wouldn't be good for you to go out and book a room with a beautiful girl like me, looking like that."