Chapter 147: Ling Mo's Dark History

The ape that walked out stood over five meters tall, a true giant among apes. Its entire body was covered in vibrant orange fur, with only its chest and belly exhibiting a patch of pristine white. This color combination made it look remarkably like a large, stuffed toy from a distance, effectively neutralizing the oppressive sensation usually brought on by such a powerfully built physique.

If that were all, it would simply be an unusually strange ordinary ape. However, its accessories were extravagant. Its orange fur was spiked up with hair gel and twisted into a sharp, upward-pointing crest. A pair of black-rimmed glasses perched on its face, and its ears were pierced with studs, giving it a very fashionable appearance. Moving further down, a belt was fastened around its waist, from which hung various biological skulls, imparting a wild, rugged aesthetic. In its right hand, it held a microphone, and in its left, a bass guitar. Combined with its carefree and unrestrained demeanor, it looked precisely like a stray street musician from human society.

Yet, none of these features were as eye-catching as its chest. On its perfect, inverted-triangle torso, two highly prominent, muscular pectoral muscles each bore a scar, forming two glaringly clear words:

"Weak" "Chicken"!

The very first time Catherine laid eyes on this orange ape, her attention was instantly captured by these two massive characters. After all, with such blood-red words inscribed against a pure white background of fur, it was hard to miss, especially the exclamation mark trailing right after the word "chicken"—it was an absolute stroke of genius! The person who carved the characters must have been a perfectionist; having written the word "chicken" too large and realizing there was no space left on the chest for punctuation, they had drawn a curved arrow from the word straight to the orange ape's belly, carving a tremendously thick and crude exclamation mark right there!

She wanted to laugh, but felt it would be entirely inappropriate. Even through her sunglasses, she could discern the fierce, murderous glare in the creature's eyes, as if it wanted to chop her into mincemeat. Combined with its overwhelming fury and an intensely oppressive aura, laughing became completely impossible.

However, Catherine's gaze was far too obvious, and the orange ape noticed anyway. It first glanced down at the characters on its chest, then raised its head and roared furiously at Catherine:

"What? Want to laugh? Go ahead and laugh! This is your master's masterpiece! With just these words, even if I kill you here, it wouldn't be an injustice, right?"

"That's three words. The modern curriculum dictates that punctuation marks count as words too," Catherine retorted instinctively. The moment the words left her lips, she wished she could sew her mouth shut. Wasn't this a blatant provocation?

Sure enough, the bizarre ape before her grew even more furious. It roared and brandished the bass in its hand, seemingly intending to smash it against a nearby tree, but stopped itself at the very last second. Instead, it delivered a heavy punch directly into the trunk of a tree. The battered tree, unable to bear the force, snapped in half with a crisp crack and crashed toward the side! Amidst the groaning sounds of the toppling timber, the orange ape glared with blood-red eyes and bellowed:

"Damn it! Damn it! Like master, like disciple! That bastard back then used to poke people's raw nerves with that exact innocent expression! I'm going to kill you! I'm definitely going to kill you!"

Oh, for goodness' sake, Master, were you really such a menace back in the day? Such thoughts raced through Catherine's mind. However, she no longer had the luxury of complaining about Ling Mo. The moment she saw that massive tree collapse, her heart skipped a beat. One had to realize that the giant trees in the Magical Beast Rainforest were exceptionally tough; even now, having advanced to an Advanced Martial Master, Catherine had no confidence she could snap such a thick tree with a single blow! Yet the orange ape before her had done it, and it clearly hadn't used its full strength either.

Just how formidable was this fellow's true strength?

Catherine cast a pleading look behind her, toward the spot where Vayne and Ling Mo were hiding. She blinked her clear, watery eyes innocently, her meaning crystal clear: Master, this is a legacy issue from your past; you can't possibly expect me to take the fall for this!

"This incident happened fifty or sixty years ago. I honestly thought this monkey was already dead," Ling Mo said with a complex expression, falling silent for a moment before continuing. "It's a 'Goku Beast,' possessing a fraction of the Saiyan-monkey bloodline. Because it belongs to the ape family, its intelligence became exceptionally high after evolving. It admired human culture and gave itself the name 'Goku Beast.' It once pretended to be an ordinary monkey, sneaked into human society, and learned a bunch of bizarre, awkward human arts. Normally..."

"Wait! Something's not right here, is it?" Vayne hurriedly interrupted Ling Mo. "With a build like that, how on earth did it pretend to be an ordinary monkey?"

"Back then, its size was that of an ordinary monkey. This giant transformation is something it learned from me later," Ling Mo replied, sounding slightly displeased at being interrupted, though he still answered her question. "Where was I? Ah, right. Ever since it returned from its studies, its greatest hobby was belting out songs with that broken microphone of its..."

At this point, a look of unbearable recollection crossed Ling Mo's face as he said somewhat frantically, "Do you know? Not only did this damned monkey sing more jarringly than a kitchen knife sawing through a steel pipe, but the lyrics were also utterly repulsive. It was usually something like, *'I am the strooongest Level 6 Magical Beast~~~~ the strooongest~~ oh~~~~'* Stuff like that. My old flame and I were living near the Saiyan-monkey tribe's lair back then. Every time the two of us were hugging and sleeping soundly, we would be rudely awakened at random hours by the Goku Beast's broken pipes, making us want to slaughter it on the spot! It's just a pity I hadn't broken through to Grand Martial Master yet, so I couldn't do much about the monkey."

"On the very first day I broke through to Grand Martial Master, she and I beat the living daylights out of this stinky monkey. Perhaps its terrible singing had already offended too many monkeys in the tribe; until the two of us beat it flat into the ground, not a single Saiyan monkey came over to help. We originally wanted to kill it to vent our hatred, but my old flame said, 'Doesn't it claim to be the strongest all day long? Let's just cripple it and carve the words "Weak Chicken!" onto its chest, and see how arrogant it acts in the future.' So that's what we did. The Goku Beast, branded with those characters, became the laughingstock of the entire Saiyan-monkey tribe and was mercilessly driven out of the clan to wander the wilderness with its whereabouts unknown. I never expected to run into it here, and to top it all off, it's actually become the chieftain of the Dark Apes..."

A cold sweat trickled down Catherine's forehead. The image of the 'master's wife,' whom she had never met, suddenly became crystal clear in her mind. The woman sounded like a formidable troublemaker! She wondered if the senior would approve of her. The mere thought that she had actually tried to flirt with her master during a livestream just days ago made her feel that her future prospects might be rather bleak...

While she was still pondering this, the Goku Beast on the opposite side could no longer contain its impatience. It swung the bass onto its back, and in its free palm, it began to condense a mass of dark energy similar to that of the Dark Apes. Striking a pose reminiscent of the "Discobolus," it hurled the ball of energy directly toward Catherine while letting out a thunderous roar:

"Go to hell! Take this!"

"Dark Necro Ball!!"