Immediately after her words fell, Proto realized that there was something wrong with his body.
He felt weakened; as if the power he used to carry had been largely diminished. If he threw a punch now, perhaps he wouldn't even be able to harm his opponent.
"You…what did you to do me?" He questioned with a wary look on his face.
"Oh, you finally noticed? It's just a bit of preparation for what's to come, of course."
"What's to come? Whatever, shut up and fight me properly, slut."
"That's what you want? Then okay! Come at me! I'll let you have the first move."
Qing Tan cheerfully accepted his challenge. The gleam in her eyes was full of mischief as she waited to see how he would embarrass himself.
Proto still felt that there was something wrong, but he didn't pay it much mind. He had come here to fight, and the slut he was looking for was standing in front of him. There was nothing else to think about besides victory.
He charged once again at the enemy, pushing his mana to increase his speed. However, it seemed like no matter how far or how fast he moved, he wasn't getting any closer to the woman in front of him.
"What's this?"
It was like his feet were submerged in quicksand, dragging him down the more he tried to struggle. When he looked up at Qing Tan, he finally noticed the smirk on her face.
"You see," she said as she started to walk forward, "there was never any fight that was going to happen here. From the second you stepped into the forest, the only outcome was death. What gave you the courage to charge in here after seeing the deaths of your comrades? Did you think you were special?"
Qing Tan wasn't even trying to provoke him at this point. She was genuinely curious how someone with so much power could be such a dunce.
"Of course I'm special! Those trashes lost to a slut like you, so they're nothing! However, do you think you can hold me down with just this little trick?! Think again!"
Proto roared a battle cry and pulled his body up. His muscles flexed and struggled, and even his veins started to surface on his skin.
"Haaaaa!"
With a spirited shout, he leapt into the air and escaped the quicksand-like ground. Or at least, that's what was supposed to happen. Regardless of how he struggled, Proto couldn't leave the confines of the marsh. In fact, his body had already been submerged up to his knees.
"Are you done yet?" Qing Tan smiled as she reached the edge of the marsh.
"Well, I don't care either way. I'm really itching to start the treatment!"
"What treatment?" Proto growled. Even now he hadn't stopped struggling to get out of his predicament.
"Of course, it's attitude adjustment! I, the kind and gracious Qing Tan, will be your instructor for today's course! Using my handy dandy attitude adjuster, I'll turn you into an upstanding citizen!"
Qing Tan formed a large knife out of shadows as she spoke. It was the attitude adjuster she had been speaking about.
After she formed the knife, she walked forward once more. Her body easily walked across the dark quicksand as if it didn't exist at all and arrived in front of Proto.
"Are you ready to start the course?"
"Shut up bitch!" Proto roared. This overconfident slut had entered his strike range of her own free will. Although his legs were tied, his arms were completely free.
An extremely fast and ruthless punch cut through the air, aiming to blow off Qing Tan's head in one blow.
"No, no! Bad boy! Using fists to solve your problem isn't good! Time for an attitude adjustment!" Qing Tan muttered.
Her finger glided through the air and tapped, causing Porto's fierce punch to immediately halt. The bundles of shadows that had already corroded Porto's dark material clung to his arm and didn't allow it to move forward even a single inch.
Crack!
The bones in his arm shattered from the sudden shift in momentum.
"Ugh…" Proto let out a mutter of pain, but Qing Tan wasn't even close to done yet.
Swish!
The winds whipped lightly as Qing Tan's knife slid through the air. In the next instant, both of Proto's arms fell to the ground and sunk into the marsh.
"First lesson! Solving problems with violence is wrong! Since you use your fists to talk, the solution is to make sure you don't have fists anymore!"
"You—"
Proto was about to yell again, but a bundle of shadows crawled up his face and wrapped around his mouth, preventing him from saying anything.
"Save your questions until the end, please! Say, I have a question for you! Why are you so high and mighty about the fact that you're a man? Could it be that you're hiding some sort of insecurity?"
Qing Tan slyly grinned as her knife moved again. Proto suddenly felt that his lower body had become slightly lighter.
"As I thought! There really is nothing there!" Qing Tan snickered.
Proto's face went red in shame as he realized what she meant, but the tight binding around his mouth didn't allow him to rebut.
"Anyway, this thing doesn't matter much. Even if I wanted to cut it off, there's nothing much to cut. Instead, let's move on to lesson two! Treat women with respect! Since you love to molest women with your eyes, your kind and merciful teacher has decided to help you!"
Qing Tan's knife went to work again. The surrounding forest was soon filled with the muffled cries of a man, but there was nobody around to hear them. Even Feng Qing'er was too far away to notice.
When Qing Tan was done, there were two eyeballs coated in mana floating in the air. Tears of blood were streaming down Porto's face endlessly from his now empty eye sockets.
"You know, I thought I'd be satisfied with just this much, but it turns out it isn't enough at all. Hmm, let's have a spontaneous third lesson! Since your mouth loves to use such vulgar words like 'slut' and 'bitch', why don't I let it experience something new?"
A small hole appeared in the middle of the bindings around Proto's mouth, but he still couldn't talk since his lips were sealed. If he still had eyes, though, he'd be gazing at the current scene in horror.
Qing Tan looked at the two floating eyeballs with an eerie smile. In the next instant, the two balls shot through the hole in Proto's bindings. The hole closed soon after.
"Now, chew."
Qing Tan's hands wrapped around Proto's chin and forcefully moved it. His mana had already been locked and his dark material had been corroded. With his legs trapped and his arms cut, Proto could do nothing besides weakly resist like a child who didn't want to eat his vegetables.
But how could a child compare to an adult? Soon, gruesome crunching sounds echoed through the forest just like those muffled screams had only a few moments prior.
Qing Tan watched the whole process with a wide smile. It was a smile that hadn't faded ever since she had first started her attitude adjustment course.
Unfortunately for Proto, the night was still young.
And until the hazy light of dawn broke the cold of night, muffled screams and other gruesome sounds could faintly be heard from a certain forest within the Trial World.
