Author Note : Holy shit, I did not expect I would get a chapter out this quick (It has been 15 days since I've uploaded Chapter 45). I feel like I may have been a bit too dedicated on writing since I've almost cut off gaming and drawing for the past several days. With those two factors out of my to-do-list and replaced with writing only, I was able to write about 1.5K-1.7K words per day which was three times the amount of words I normally write.

Bruh, just imagine how much stuff I would finish for this story if I actually manage to cut out gaming and my other hobbies and just focused purely on writing on my entire summer holiday XD. Right now, I feel like this story is about 50% done and is missing the other 50% of content before it would be finished.

I also wanted to say that my story passed over 250K words and 60K views! This makes me really happy to see people getting more interested in my story and I will continue working on this story to its end. Additionally, I hope some you guys like the editing and changes I made with the older chapters. Okay, I guess that should be enough of this author note. Now please enjoy the story!

Chapter 46 : A Dangerous Takeback

Few Moments Earlier

Rong and Qiang made their way to outside to the main gate wall as they both start climbing up to the battlement's staircase, reaching up and continued on the crenellations before getting to their destination. At front of them stood a fairly tall great kudu antelope with a heavier muscular build than Qiang's. He wore a traditional gray Chinese armor with gold linings and details around the armor. The kudu seemed to be around in his late forties. The spotted hyena and lynx approached the kudu.

"Lieutenant General Shoushan." They both greeted him with a bow before straightening their pose.

"What can we assist you with?" Rong began.

"Officer Rong and Officer Qiang, I required both of your assistance since me and the other high rankings personnels are going to have a discussion meeting about forging us alliance with another powerful militia group. During our discussion, I won't be able to lead these men to defend the main gate against the furless creature." Shoushan spoke, before pulling out a small green scroll of the pocket of his armor and give it to the spotted hyena. "I have planned and written both the defensive and ambush tactic against it once it walks right at any of the gates or entrances. Now if you gentleman would excuse me, I also have a discussion meeting to attend to." The kudu walked passed the two as he entered the entrance of the battlement.

Before Shoushan could place his feet on the battlement's staircase and head down, he turned and glanced briefly at the spotted hyena and lynx.

"And I will expect no failure coming from you two, understand?" The kudu said, walking down on the stair as the sound of footsteps as disappeared along with his figure is now no longer can be seen.

"Well, you heard what the lieutenant general said, let's get to work." Rong spoke. The hyena removed the scroll lid and took out a rolled paper and started eyeing at the written and sketched contents on the paper. "A very impressive ambush tactics." Rong said, impressed.

"Indeed it is, even if this tactic were to fail, the lieutenant general has already planned a backup plan in case if the furless creature managed to get passed our defense." Qiang smirked, liking the lieutenant general's plans as much as Rong likes.

"Come on, right now we gotta form each of our own group and remember, stick to the formation and plan and I'm sure we'll capture this creature." They both nodded at each other and departed at the different path on the crenellation to form their own group.

It's been around almost an hour of sneaking around in the militarized hamlet and I still haven't found where Tigress is. Just where in the hell did they put her in? It was actually a good idea to reorganize everything in my traveling backpack to lessen the noises that the items within would create before making my way in here.

Jesus Christ, I am getting a little impatient of looking for where she is...

I decided to do a risky move, which I'll try and 'ask' someone for direction. I continued lurking quietly on the streets path until I heard a single pair of fainting footsteps and a whistling sound coming close towards me. I hid at the alley between two houses. Shortly after, when the sound of the footsteps and whistling gotten louder and closer, I saw a brown fox who wore standard guard armor walking by. He also appearEd to be unarmed as well.

At the correct moment when he walked a bit further away from the alley, I sneaked and lunged myself to the unarmed brown fox from behind without making a single sound. I quickly wrapped my arm around his body and held his muzzle down with my other hand, dragging him into the dark alley. The fox was wriggling like crazy, trying to escape my grasp and scream for help, but I tightened my grip on his body and on his muzzle, preventing the brown fox from escaping or screaming.

"If you kept struggling, I'll make this hurt a lot and I know you don't want any of that." I warned quietly. The brown fox soon started to calm himself down a bit and ceased with his struggling.

"W-What is it do you want from me?" The fox asked, trying to remain calm.

"I want you to tell me where do you keep the prisoners at?" I asked. The fox remained silent for a moment.

"I won't tell you." He replied with denial. I then wrapped my arm around the fox's neck, chocking him slightly as he start gagging.

"Tell me." I warmed again, adding coldness to my tone.

"N... N-Never..." He replied gagging.

I growled in irritation and tighten my arm around his neck, now starting the strangle to fox. The fox returned back to his crazed wriggling. He placing his paws on my forearm and started scratching me there with with his claws. I winced and grunted from the pain. I let go of my uninjured arm and performing a quick knifehand strike on the back of his neck, knocking the wriggling brown fox out. I carried his small body and placed him on the corner of the alley, before wiping several tiny drops of sweat from my forehead and temples and let a relief sign.

That could've gone worse if I didn't knock him out...

After I patched my forearm how with bandages along with avoiding a handful amount of guards, I've eventually ended up near at a very wide house with two stories high. There were two bull guards standing next to a double iron doors which I assume it's the prison of this militarized hamlet.

I crouched and moved as silent as I possibly could and hid behind a several random large crates which were stacked tall enough to cover up my whole body. I peeked our and scanned the distance of me and the prison house as I was about roughly more than ten meters away from. I picked up a rather jaggedly shaped pebble from the ground before analyzing the surroundings to choose where to throw it. I soon saw a wooden stand holding some sort of a gong disk.

I have an idea...

I focused my sight on the gong disk, calculating and measuring the distance of the gong stand and how much force and height I need to threw this pebble. Once I'm done calculating everything, I peeked out of the tall stacked crates and threw the pebble as it flew right towards the bronze disk.

A very loud metallic ringing sound has been produced as the flying pebble has truck the gong disk. The loud ringing sound echoed from the gong disk has traveled at quite a far distance, prompting me to cover my ears a bit as I felt my eardrums vibrated, creating a type of itchiness within. The two armed bulls looked around, confused and alerted with their spears raised before they both calmed down as they lowered their spears.

"Oh boy, isn't it that troublemaker Qiang again." The bull spoke with suppressed irritation.

"Yeah, just who in the hell would just rang that gong at the middle of the night?" The second bull said.

Once they're not looking at my direction, I peeked from the stacked crates again and picked up another pebble and threw it, striking the gong disk as it produced the same loud metallic ringing sound once more. The two bull guard now looked pissed.

"Alright, I had it with that fucking cat bastard misusing his rank to annoys and pisses us for his entertainment." The bull yelled. "He's gonna get what's coming for him!" The bull shouted.

"Dude, don't forget that he's a goddamn commissioned officer! He'll can either demote you or court martial you, just let him be." The other bull warned.

"Well there has to be someone in this place to tell him to stop or none of us are going to get any decent sleep! Come on let go."

"But who will stay and watch over the prison house?"

"Are you seriously thinking that here will be someone sneaking in there?" The bull said.

"Yeah, you never know who would." A sigh came from the complaining bull.

"Fine, you stay here and I'll go have a word with Qiang." The bull began walking away from the prison house to somewhere else, leaving the response one to stay and guard the prison house.

Well that distraction I've created was supposed to lure them both away from the door, but at least it made one of them has left. I can noem deal with this without making a racket out of it.

I quietly snuck my way out of the stacked crates and moved around to the side of the prison house. I peeked and saw the bull guard was still on guard. Once he took noticed of me and gasped in sudden surprise, I immediately dashed to him and threw a clean hook punch to his face, knocking him down to the ground unconscious. I dragged his unconscious body to the nearest alley and set him on the ground before placing a nearby blanket to cover his unconscious body. I grabbed the prison keyring hanging from his pants pocket as I unlocked and entered the prison house.

As I entered and continued walking, I could hear voices of the prisoners from their cells, telling me to open up there cells and set them free. I don't feel like a good idea of setting them free. Eventually, I went up to one of the prisoners who looked like a jaguar sitting on the stone cold floor. He is donned in white clothings and white Chinese armor with minor golden details on them. They appeared to be an imperial royal guards. There were a great amount of dust and dirt on his fur and armor. He took notice of me and stood up, approaching me in a hasty manner.

"Please, help us." The jaguar pleaded.

"Before I help you, are you an imperial royal guard?" I asked. He nodded quickly. "What happened and why are you guys locked up?" I asked further.

"Nearly a month ago, me and my squad were tasked to escort a feudal lord from to Beijing and things were going good until these bastards from this group has ambushed us all when we weren't even halfway to Beijing yet, capturing all of us and killed the feudal lord once we got to this shithole. Apparently after hearing these bastard's conversations, the only piece of information I got is that they are a militia group who called themselves the Emerald Claw." The jaguar explained.

"I see," I held the key ring up and try a couple of keys until this I able to use the correct one, unlocking the jaguar's cell as he exited his cell. "then if you don't mind, I'll require your assistance." I gave him the keyring.

"Since we have already failed our task by letting the feudal lord get killed by these militants, our new priority now is to set these people free and safely escort them back to their home." The jaguar said, moving to the other cells as he began unlocking the cell doors, freeing his teammates and the others.

"All of you should wait here, I still need to go up there and find a friend of mine." The jaguar and the rest of the imperial royal guards nodded. The jaguar nodded and threw the keychain back to me. I caught the keychain and proceed to find Tigress.

Making my way up the second floor, the floor was filled with eerie-like silent. I ignored the eerie silence as I refocused back and continued on following the light of these lit up torches on the wall and keep heading straight. Passing multiple empty cell rooms, I approached an iron door instead of a cell barred door. After multiple attempts of trying to open the iron door with the keys, a clicking sound has been made. I gave the iron door a good push, opening it as it made some creaking sounds.

Once I entered the room, it was darker in here. I glanced around, noting that it is quite opaque in here, except only for a small glass lantern with a small candle lit up in it, giving partial amount of light for the room. I grabbed the handle of the small lantern and shined it around The dark room.

The light of the lantern would soon shined on a participle orange figure, causing my eye to widen as the orange figure was a half naked Tigress who looked really haggard. She is currently chained from her neck to her both wrists and ankles and even her tail as well. I refocused myself and noticed that she was in some sort of slumber. I approached her before calling her.

"Hey, Tigress." I whispered. "Hey..." I whispered a bit more louder, leaning closer to her ear. Still no response.

She slowly opened her eyes after I called her name a few more times. After taking less than four or five seconds of her recognizing me, she widened her eyes before calming herself down.

"Your here." Tigress spoke with a fatigued voice.

"Damn, are you okay? You don't look and sound that well." I placed my hand on the cuff of her cuffed wrist and inspected it. These chained cuffs looked familiar to me as... wait, I've been restrained by these cuffs before! This would explains why Tigress couldn't use her monstrous strength or utilize any energy based techniques I've taught her to break free due to these acupunctures of these cuffs were constantly blocking her energy points.. "Wait here, I'll go find something small to pick these cuffs off." She responded by nodding weakly.

After a moment of searching for something small and thin, I came back to the room from my rummage on the first floor after I've found a small object what appears to be a very thin metal rod laying low on the ground. Before I could start picking the lock her cuffs, I tried remembering how Monkey picked the locks of these cuffs off from me.

I walked closer to the chained tiger and start with the cuff on her right wrist. I inserted the thin metal rod in the keyhole of the cuff and start moving it as how I remembered Monkey did it. I started by moving the thin metal rod slowly, and carefully yanking the metal rod in further before turning it.

Moments later, a clicking sound has been created as the cuffs from her right wrist has opened itself. Tigress sighed with relief as she moved her wrist in circular motion before massaging it.

"Finally, out of these cuffs." She uttered.

"Yeah, I know that feeling of being freed from cuffs." I commented. Tigress chuckled with her weakened voice before speaking.

"While you have been restrained by these cuffs for a mere day, I've been restrained here in this dark room for more than two weeks with diminutive amount of food which couldn't keep me at bay and the amount of water were barely enough to keep me hydrated for each day, how would you know that feeling?" She cocked her brow.

"Okay, okay give it a break." I waved my hands defensively.

After finishing picking and removing the cuff from her left wrist, I was going to pick up the cuff around on her neck. Before I could start picking the neck cuff, my eyes suddenly lowered itself as I accidentally stared at the... cleavage on her chest as her chest wrappings were narrowly covering her chest. My cheeks flared up, causing me to shook my head rapidly for staring at the cleavage of her chest.

"Lukas, what's wrong?" Tigress asked, concerned. I scratched the back of my head nervously before replying.

"Well you see, you're kinda ummmm..." I awkwardly motioned my finger around my body, gesturing that she is half naked.

"Just ignore everything and focus on getting the rest of these cuffs off from me." She spoke while blushing.

I inserted the thin metal rod inside the keyhole of the cuff around her neck. While moving the rod, I placed my other hand on the side of the cuff around her neck for more grip. Suddenly, I began to feel the fur around her neck rubbing across my working hand, which kinda start tickling me, but I decided to hold it in and not giggle from the tickling sensation.

Soon, the clicking sound has returned again, causing the cuff around her neck to opened up as I removed it. Tigress took a satisfying and relieving deep breath. After removing the three remaining cuffs from her both ankles and tail, she dashed and gave me a hug, which I returned the hug. When she unwrapped her arms from me, she decided to take her first step, she quickly lost a significant amount of her balance as she stumbled. I reacted and swiftly caught her before she could fall down.

"Can you walk?" I asked, supporting her balance.

"Not completely." She said, slowly letting go as she tries walking without my support. Tigress released a surprised yelp as she tripped, which I reacted fast and caught her by her shoulders.

I carefully set her down on the stone floor while finding something from my traveling backpack.

"I believe you need a drink." I pulled out my water canteen which thank God it still has some water left. "Here." I uncorked the cork from my canteen and handed to Tigress. She took it and start drinking at a fast pace. After she finished downing and emptying the canteen, she wiped her mouth with her forearm and toss the canteen back to me as I caught it. Tigress slowly started standing up on her feet.

"Much better, thanks." She uttered, feeling better after satisfying her thirst. I cleared my throat.

"I would like to ask..." I trailed off. She turned her sight at me and noticed me eyeing at her half naked body. "... where is your clothes?" I awkwardly finished my inquiry.

"I don't know, when I first woke up in this room, I was already like this." She replied. "Though it would be nice if I could get my clothes back on right now, I'm feeling a bit chilly and 'exposed' without them." She glanced away, blushing after saying that. Tigress glanced at my dirtied and racked up attire and noticed I head some bandages wrapped around my certain body parts. "I see you've been busy lately on your way here." I chuckled shortly.

"Yup, indeed I was busy lately." I nodded. "Oh I almost forgot, I was able to get some reinforcements down at the first floor waiting and they are willing to aid us." I gestured for her to follow. Before I could I leave the room, she grabbed me by my forearm. I stopped and turned my head around to her. "What's the matter, Tigress?" I asked, raising a brow.

"Can we trust them?" Tigress asked.

"Yeah, why are you asking?"

"Because you've just freed the prisoners and we might know if they'll turn against us and use us for their escape afterwards."

"Relax Tigress, their just some imperial royal guards and the rest are just fellow commoners who just got captured by this group." I assured. Tigress soon relaxed herself.

"I know, but aside from that, I'm currently feeling... quite uncovered here and I don't want to attract any unnecessary attention from them with my half exposed self." She said, a bit embarrassed while stilling holding her blush.

"Don't worry, I got you covered." I took off my white long-sleeved vest, revealing my gray shirt.

I motioned my hand for her to raise up both of her arms up as I placed my vest on her, which she managed to slip herself in the vest. My white long-sleeved vest has proved to have enough cover for her as it covered her entire torso and arms, and even some part of her lower body as it able to cover her panties and a partial amount of her thighs. It literally looked like she's wearing a shirt more larger than her size and her tail seemed to be sticking out as well. As we started walking, Tigress stopped again. I sighed and turned to check on her.

"Now what?" I uttered. Tigress is currently staring deeply at what looks like some sort of a Chinese cast iron lantern at a corner of the room. It was completely painted with a very dark red color all around it with fancy looking patterns around it along with an intimating demon-like face on the front side of the lantern. "What are you looking at?" I asked. Tigress stood quiet before snapping herself back to reality.

"Nothing, let's move." She replied.

We both made our way down to the first floor from the stone staircase leading down. Everybody down here is seemed to be geared up, armed and readied. Wait... how did they armed themselves with gears and weapons? Never mind.

"Is everyone freed?" I asked. The same jaguar from lately approached me from the group. His white Chinese armor appeared to be wiped and cleaned and he's also has equipped himself with a sheathed jian sword on the side of his waist.

"Yes, I've unlocked everyone's cell. Conveniently, we have also found a weapon stash located at the end of this hallway over there which also contains our weapons and gears." The jaguar spoke. He peeked his head to see who's behind me. "And I see you've found your friend." When he saw whose behind me, the jaguar widened his eyes as he saw a half naked Tigress. "M-Master Tigress!" He quickly turned his viewport back while the rest of the others did the same.

"Sshhh! You'll get us caught with that shout of yours!" I whispered. The jaguar gained his composure back and straightened his posture.

"Forgive me for my outburst, Master Tigress. I never expected you to be in such a state." The jaguar apologized to Tigress. "My name is Zhòng, Second Lieutenant of the Imperial Army and the leader of this escort team." Zhòng then turned to me. "And who might you be?"

"I'm Lukas Gilman, the new member of the Furious Six." I introduced before I placing on a serious face. "So what's the plan you guys have?" I asked.

"We're either deciding if we all should carefully sneak out of here or few of us should make some distraction." Zhòng said to me. Tigress then stood at my side.

"I think a few of us making a distraction should be give us all a better chance of sneaking out of here." Tigress suggested, showing that she's gaining back her strength from recent fatigue.

"Yeah, it does sounds better than the first option, sneaking around all together would increase our chances of getting spotted." I agreed with Tigress's suggestion about going with the second option.

After more than ten minutes has passed, five people among us had volunteered themselves of taking the risk of being a distractor. We all bid them good luck as the five of them silently exited the prison house through the main door. With the five of them distracting the patrols, the rest of us will stay very close in the shadows. Shortly, we exited the prison house and are now moving through in the dark alleys.

During our movements in the dark alleys, it was filled with utter silence as no one has utter out a word aside from our footsteps and faint nervous breaths which I heard from the other who were near me. Our journey to the exit gate was quite hushed and tensed at the same time. Surprisingly, they're weren't that much patrols and guards outside wandering the street in this militarized hamlet, probably those five volunteered distractors out there are doing a great job on their role. Still, we need do need to be careful and always be on our guard.

Alright, almost there...

Not far, me and everyone heard a several pair of distanced voices, yelling and shouting, catching our guard off for a moment. Shit, they must've spotted one of our distractors. I quickened my walking pace and moved closer to Zhòng by his side, tapping his shoulder. The jaguar turned to me.

"Hey, I think we could use some bit of haste here. Our distractors won't be able to distract and hold them off forever." I suggested in a whispering tone.

"Agreed." Zhòng replied back with a nod. The jaguar then raised his paw up and made a gesture, telling the rest of us to start moving upping our pace.

An orange paw had placed itself behind on my shoulder. I turned and saw it was Tigress who appears to have found her clothes back. She handed over my white long-sleeved vest back to me and gave me a small smile.

"Thanks, your vest was quite comfortable and cozy to wear." She spoke.

"Glad you enjoyed it." I replied, slipping my long-sleeved vest back.

Abruptly, a bright projectile has been shot and was flying up to the sky. I instantly recognized what it is as it was the same bright object that was shot up after me and the others had defeated that large groups of bandits at the Valley Of Peace. Before I could warn everyone about it, Tigress's reaction instantly exceeded mine as she began taking action.

"Everyone take cover!" She yelled while pointing her paw at the bright object, causing me and everyone to turned to glanced up with an widened expression on our faces.

Before I could react, she dashed towards me, tackling me down to the ground as we both took cover with our heads facing down with our eyes closed. The bright object in the sky exploded, releasing the same blinding light and ear-piercing sound. Once the blinding light and the ringing in our ears goes away, I opened my eyes and take a look around as most of us were temporarily blinded and dazed by the blinding light and loud sound.

Me and Tigress quickly stood up as various battle cries were heard from a large group of Emerald Claw soldiers ambushed us. They popped out of nowhere and started slashing, stabbing and killing a handful amount of us. Zhòng was one of us who quickly fought through the temporarily blindness and unsheathed his jian sword from his sheath. He killed an unprepared armed bull by stabbing his sword through the bull's chest deeply.

"Dammit, we'll all be outnumbered soon if we keep fighting in this position!" The jaguar quickly turned and blocked a coming slash of a sword from an armed boar with his sword.

Zhòng grabbed the the boar by his wrist with his paw and sent to do a straight heel kick on the boar's stomach, stunning the boar greatly before slashing the boar at the front his neck with his jian sword, swiftly killing the boar as he dropped dead on the ground as a pool of blood began pouring out. The jaguar turned to to me.

"Over there, a clear passage through the alleys. I'm sure it'll lead us to the exit gate!" Zhòng pointed.

The rest of us quickly retreated from the battle with these Emerald Claw's soldiers to the newly discovered clear alley passage. Me and Tigress stood at each other's side as we both cupped our palms, charging a higher concentration of energy into our cupped palms before thrusting our palms with a loud shout.

"HADOKEN!" We both shouted as an energy blast has been expelled and launched from our thrusted palms, hitting the ground as it created an improvised and durable smokescreen.

Before I could move on with the rest, I took one more glance at the dead corpses consisted of soldiers of from the Emerald Claw and some from our group. I clenched my fist while closing my eyes as I held back my emotions for now. I turned around and caught up with everyone as we continued running through the passage.

Moments later, I could hear more running footsteps catching up to us. I turned my head back and saw that group of soldiers again, but they have regrouped and gotten bigger in numbers this time. Soon, arrows began whizzing passEd us as the archers from those group of soldiers has moved to the front of the group and continued on firing arrows at us. One of the arrows has struck one of the imperial royal guards on the back of his neck. His body instantly went limb as he dropped and tumbled on the ground. I stopped and went to the imperial royal guard's corpse and slid out a wide and round metal shield from his motionless forearm.

I sprinted with greater speed as I caught up with Tigress, Zhòng and the rest. A couple of arrows has whizzed pass me and the others. I quickly raised my forearm as arrows began to flies and being deflected upon landing on the round metal shield I'm wielding. After what felt like it was nearly twenty minutes of running and blocking those arrows with the round metal shield I've equipped myself with, I unequipped it once they stopped firing arrows at us. It seems like they have ran out of arrows to fire.

Eventually, we managed to lose that group of soldiers and gotten ourselves out of the dark alley passage and eventually found the exit gate that we were fighting for. It looks like we are about one hundred meters away from it and it also looked to be unguarded with no guards on the crenellations of the wall at all. Without hesitation, all of us began to run towards the exit gate and get the hell out of here.

A whizzing sound with a growing tune can be heard coming closer to us. I followed the sound with my ears and turned my head around, only to see a large ball of red fire, flying intensely towards us. All of us scattered immediately, barely avoiding the red fiery ball as it exploded once impacting on the ground of the streets. As the smoke dispersed, there was a large flaming crater on the ground.

That was not a regular cannonball, this isn't looking good...

The heavy whizzing sounds returned in multiple pairs as several red fiery balls were flying at us, causing all of the fighters In our group to start panicking. Zhòng tries to calm them all down with his assuring words, but they all kept on panicking and scattering. A couple of us tried running through the exit gate, but they were stopped as archer peeked themselves out for the the houses's balconies and roofs, firing arrows at the escaping fighters, killing them. Tigress quickly approached me and kicked a charging soldier who was about to struck me from behind.

"I have an idea on how to minimize the deaths and casualties of pur group." I nodded and quickly gestured for her to go on with this idea of hers. "I think we both should try to deflect those red fiery cannonballs with energized force." She suggested.

"Are you crazy? Those cannonballs are explosive, you can't just simply catch them and throw them back like they're some simple ball that you play with kids, they'll explode within impact!" I spoke loudly, disagreeing with her idea. She growled a bit at my disagreement towards her idea.

"I know that already." She replied back loudly, sending a side punch to an armed crocodile's snout. "But what I'm trying to imply here is that we could use our energy to create a 'repulsive force' without touching the explosive cannonballs, thus pushing those cannonballs back." She fully explained.

"Sounds risky," I pondered thoughtfully before evading a stabbing strike from a spear with a side hop and struck an armored boar with a spinning back kick. "but is the best idea we have at this moment." I began pondering once more. "Okay, let's try that." I eventually agreed with this crazy and currently best idea of hers, which made the tiger smirked at me for agreeing with her suggestion.

As more red fiery cannonballs are being fired from an incredibly long distance, me and Tigress charged energy into our limbs. Once the cannonballs is closing by quickly, me and Tigress simultaneously performed a high-powered jump. We both punched the air, creating this 'repulsive force' that Tigress spoke off. Our repulsive force was strong enough to be viewable to our naked eyes as it create a transparent ripples, especially the one from Tigress as her repulsive force was more clearer than mine as it send the cannonball far more further than mine could. The red fiery cannonballs was reflected backwards, landing on a random building as it broke through the building's walls and exploded, nearly demolishing that house. I then turned to Tigress and began laughing.

"I... I can't believe that actually worked!" Tigress chuckled at my enthusiasm.

"I told you it will work." She then placed her serious face back. "Keep you enthusiasm under control, Lukas. I need you to focus." I then shoved my enthusiasm aside for me to focus and concentrate in this critical moment.

"Yeah."

It has been around ten rough and intense minutes of us both constantly defending Zhòng and the others from those speeding red fiery cannonballs. At this moment, Zhòng and the other fighters has repelled off the group of Emerald Claw soldiers while me and Tigress are standing on each short building's roof, spotting for anymore of those cannonballs. We both haven't been seeing any one of those cannonballs which I'm assuming that they might have ran out of those explosive cannonballs and are now currently searching for more ammunition. Me and Tigress shot a glanced towards each other and nodded our heads, gesturing that we should use this chance to escape. Both of us soon then got off the building's roof and regrouped with Zhòng and the other fighters.

"How's it going down here?" I asked. I looked Zhòng who's armor and jian sword has gotten dirtied once more with some blood stained on it from the battle with the Emerald Claw soldiers.

"We've survived." The jaguar turned around. "Well, not everyone has." He pointed his paw at the a couple of fighters that we still have left. "Anyway, astonishing work at defending us from those red balls of fire, we've owe you two Kung Fu masters a lot." He thanked.

"There's no need thank us Zhòng, it was our duty to protect you and the others." Tigress assured with modesty.

All of us began sprinting towards the exit gate as we stopped and let the unarmed ones to go first and then the rest. Once Zhòng and the rest of the imperial royal guards has left as me and Tigress bid them all farewell, it was now both of our turn to leave this place. Suddenly, I heard the same whizzing sound again and the sound is growing closer within every second. I turned my head around and saw the same red fiery ball, flying intensely and is appears to be traveling rapidly towards us both.

Out of instinct, I instantly pushed Tigress away, standing at front of her as I shielded her with my back from the explosion as the red fiery cannonball struck the wall of the exit gate. A fierce explosion had occurred as I had felt the burning shockwave hitting my whole back and also felt several hot solid object had penetrated through the flesh of my back and some at the back of my upper thighs.

Once the explosion is all over, I stood very frozen still at the same spot, too numb to feel any pain that I've received while looking at Tigress with a complete blank expression before falling face-first on the ground as my vision rapidly had sunk itself into darkness.

The tiger's eyes and jaw widened with a sharp gasp has been released. She saw her best friend fell face-first in the ground unconscious from protecting and shielding her from the explosion of that unexpected red fiery cannonball.

"Lukas!" Tigress cried out, instantaneously stood up and moved to the unconscious human's side.

The tiger began inspecting him as quick as possible, noticing his back got minor burns thanks to him being far enough to the explosion. His traveling backpack also seemed to be roughly damaged and punctured, but it was surprisingly strong enough to not rip off. But the real threat here is that there seemed to be red hot glowing metal scraps penetrated the flesh of his back. While the glowing are still viewable, it seems they haven't penetrated through his back completely as it is possible that his backpack might have minimized the penetration. Not long about a couple of seconds has passed, Tigress's sharp nose has picked up something as it twitched a few times and she began to take several sniffles.

The smell she picked up and sniffed smelled like burning flesh and it was coming from the knocked out human. The sound of his flesh sizzling and is also appeared to be smoking as well. She set her eyes on Lukas and noticed that it was the red hot glowing metal scraps were creating those sizzling sound, the faint smokes and burned smell by burning his flesh from the inside.

Tigress tried to touch the hot glowing scraps, but it was too hot, even if she has very strong tolerance towards many forms of pain. It burned one of the finger of her paw a bit, causing her to winced significantly as she quickly retracted her paw back.

'Dammit...' Tigress cursed under her thoughts.

Eventually, Tigress draw out some Chi energy and covered her whole paw with it. Once she's sure that her whole paw is covered in an energy-like glove, she began by slowly and carefully pulling out the red hot metal scrap, making sure that she won't further damage the tissues of his back. Once she managed to remove all those hot glowing shrapnels from the unconscious human's back and the back of his upper thighs, she removed his traveling backpack wore it on her back.

Before she could pick up the human, she felt like her whole being is being pulled by some unknown force which she can't see. Tigress made a swivel and saw that same lynx who was about to sexually assault her when she was half naked and chained in that dark room. The tiger growled aggressively when seeing him.

Tigress noticed that he's holding that dark red cast iron lantern with the demonic face on it. The dark red cast iron lantern appeared to be opened, revealing nothing but an orange light from it. Tigress felt weaker as she felt on one knee, she then saw golden energy is being 'extracted' from her.

'So that's what Huang is warning me about...' Tigress thought. She gathered up her willpower and start moving away from the range of the cast iron lantern to the unconscious human. After almost reaching her best friend, her body felt weakened even more and as she soon fell on her frontal body. A short laugh came from the lynx.

"Don't think you can ever escape the Gonglu Xishou Lantern!" The lynx said walked closer to the weakened tiger. "Once we captured you and your furless friend, I'll be able to continue on what I was about to do to you tonight. And I'll sure I will make you scream." He said immorally.

"Qiang! How many times do I have to tell you? Don't go near her!" A spotted hyena with average Chinese armor who came with a handful of soldiers. The lynx signed.

"Chill out Rong, she's weakened and won't be able to move that much at all with me holding this lantern near her." Qiang assured. The lynx then glanced the unconscious human. "Her energy appeared to be colored gold, I'm a bit curious to see what color I will extract from this furless ape." He now held the cast iron lantern near Lukas's unconscious body. Shortly, blue energy began drawing out from the motionless human.

"No! Leave him out of this, is me that all of you are after, isn't it?" Tigress yelled, moving herself closer to the unconscious human.

"Aww, I wouldn't imagen that the great and ferocious Master Tigress could be this adorably protective." Qiang taunted. "But nonetheless, we could also use some extra spare energy from your furless friend as well if you don't mind."

Suddenly, the blue energy that the Gonglu Xishou Lantern is extracting has slowly turned darker with a more jaggier appearance. The blue energy soon turned into swirly black and red energy. The lynx noticed this peculiar change and gazed at this new development with curiosity.

"Hmm... interesting." Qiang uttered. As the Gonglu Xishou kept extracting the black and red energy from the motionless human, the dark red cast iron lantern began shaking. "Holy shit... this is quite some power this thing is extracting. Maybe we could use him for-"

The lynx sentence was abruptly cut off as Tigress was able to mustered up enough strength to perform a sweeping ground kick on his ankle, tripping and dropping the lynx as it made him fell on his back while the cast iron lantern flew off from his paw and dropped on the ground. Tigress felt the unknown force that's pulling her being has disappeared, enabling her to move without increased weakness again.

She readjusted the roughly damaged traveling backpack on her back and grabbed Lukas as she hoisted him on her shoulder. Tigress felt some weight from the human, but she shrugged off the weighted feeling as she had already experienced the weight of the almighty Dragon Warrior.

Tigress started running with everything that she could mustered out, evading several hail of raining arrows from the archers with her sixth senses. She eventually ran through the exit gate, finally escaping the militarized hamlet of the Emerald Claw with an unconscious human hoisted on her shoulder while running nonstop at max speed.

Author Note : I hope you guys enjoyed the action I made and the ending as well. I am still surprised at the writing speed I am writing with. I feel I should slow down before I would cause my brain to start overheating itself. Though it was fun, I'm starting to miss gaming and drawing after I literally focused purely writing for the past few days. I will return to my normal writing speed in a matter of few days.

As always, if you feel like supporting or helping the story to grow, please leave a Favorite, Follow and Review. I will greatly appreciate that if you do. If you don't want to, then I hope you are enjoying the story and continue reading it. You can PM me if you don't feel like leaving feedbacks, questions or thoughts with Review and I'll respond to your message as soon as I can.

By the way, I got one little piece of info for y'all. When reading the next chapter, just expect there will definitely be a handful of Tigress X OC moments in it ;). Well then, I bid you all farewell!