It’s Not Okay to Kiss Me as Soon as We Meet (ABO) - Chapter 16

Lin Huaiyi saw the whipping leg Tsuna Yamamoto swept toward her and chose not to dodge. Instead, she charged straight at it. Both alphas leaped up for a kick, and their legs met in the air with a thunderous crash.

Tsuna Yamamoto immediately felt a massive force transmit from his calf, numbing his entire body. He had a premonition that if he hadn’t shifted back to dissipate some of the force at the last moment, this leg of his might not just face a fracture—it could very well snap right in half! He had completely underestimated Lin Huaiyi’s power.

Tsuna Yamamoto instinctively curled up and tumbled backward several times, managing to dissipate most of that massive force. The remaining impact he couldn’t avoid—it transmitted straight to his organs, making him spit out a mouthful of bl00d.

“Ah!! Brother’s hurt!” Mieko Yamamoto cried out from the sidelines. If she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, she wouldn’t have believed the scene before her. Tsuna Yamamoto had always been a standout in martial combat within the Yamamoto family—how could he get injured under the leg of that skinny, weak-looking female alpha?

Lin Huaiyi was clearly surprised by the power of her own body too. She hadn’t gone all out in her counter—just used about fifty percent of her strength. Seeing Tsuna Yamamoto retreat repeatedly, Lin Huaiyi felt satisfied with her performance. It seemed that differentiating into a top-level alpha had indeed greatly improved her physical qualities.

Lin Huaiyi gave Tsuna Yamamoto no chance to catch his breath. The instant he landed, her lightning-fast punch chased after him, aimed straight at his chin. If this punch landed solidly, knocking Tsuna Yamamoto out cold wasn’t out of the question.

AO physical qualities had evolved so much compared to undifferentiated humans. A one-punch K.O. from the King of Fighters game might seem like just a game mechanic in the world Lin Huaiyi had lived in before, but in this ABO world, it could happen for real.

Tsuna Yamamoto naturally knew how devastating the punch before him was. He often participated in martial combat matches too, and an S-level alpha’s reaction speed was no slouch. He barely tilted his head away just as Lin Huaiyi’s fist wind was about to graze his cheek. But Lin Huaiyi’s punch was too fast—Tsuna Yamamoto’s face still got brushed by the tail end of the fist, leaving a fresh red gash.

After two exchanges, Tsuna Yamamoto was already covered in wounds. In contrast, Lin Huaiyi looked as calm and composed as when she had first entered the field, not a single strand of hair out of place behind her head.

The cat-and-mouse playtime that Tsuna Yamamoto had initially anticipated was completely gone now, replaced by a reassessment of Lin Huaiyi’s strength. As an S-level alpha, Tsuna Yamamoto knew the astonishing power and reaction speed Lin Huaiyi had shown couldn’t possibly be below his own. He had originally thought this Lin Huaiyi was just Shen Li’s translator or secretary and couldn’t possibly match him in combat, someone who had trained in martial arts since childhood. But the situation on the field now slapped him hard in the face—this Lin Huaiyi was not to be underestimated.

Tsuna Yamamoto tilted his head, wiped the bl00d from the corner of his mouth with his hand, and revealed a sinister smile again. “Ha, so what if you’ve got pure brute strength? Backwater hick, now witness the Yamamoto family’s secret art—Flying Flower Technique.”

Mieko Yamamoto’s face showed shock when she heard Flying Flower Technique, and she murmured, “Why does brother have to use Flying Flower Technique? Is winning this fight that important to you?”

Shen Li sensed something off from the side. “What is Flying Flower Technique?”

Mieko Yamamoto had a simple nature and was young, rarely involved in the Yamamoto family’s struggles. In the Yamamoto family, she had always been raised as Yamamoto Daisuke’s precious pearl. When she heard Shen Li ask what Flying Flower Technique was, she didn’t hold back and explained it all.

Mieko Yamamoto: “Our Yamamoto family’s ancestors were samurai, so we inherited many ninja techniques. Back then, those ninja techniques were basically just illusions to us now. But ever since humans evolved and some differentiated into AOs, with the addition of pheromones, our Yamamoto family tried combining pheromones with the ancestral ninja techniques. Flying Flower Technique is the most successful one from our family’s experiments. Flying Flower Technique has very high requirements for the user’s pheromones—the user’s pheromones must be mandala flower. Mandala flower has hallucinogenic effects, and combined with the family ninja technique, it puts the opponent into a dreamlike trance. In that dazed state, it’s easy to defeat the opponent.”

Mieko Yamamoto gazed at Tsuna Yamamoto in the dueling ground. “And my brother’s pheromones are just right—mandala flower.”

Shen Li felt shocked and furious. “Tsuna Yamamoto is openly breaking the duel rules—make him stop!”

Tears welled up in Mieko Yamamoto’s eyes. “It’s no use. Once Flying Flower Technique is activated, it can’t be stopped unless one side is defeated. If you force an interruption, both sides could die!”

Shen Li clenched her fists in fury and stood up from her seat, making as if to rush into the dueling ground, but the referee at the edge reached out and blocked her. Shen Li was frantic and told the referee in English that Tsuna Yamamoto was violating the rules and demanded he end the match. But the referee’s explanation matched what Mieko Yamamoto had said—once Flying Flower Technique was activated, it couldn’t be stopped without a winner.

Shen Li gripped the dueling ground’s railing tightly with her hands, her eyes fixed unblinkingly on Lin Huaiyi in the field.

Lin Huaiyi suddenly felt a strange fragrance and opened her eyes to find herself waking up in the room from her previous life. Sunlight streamed into the five-meter-high floor-to-ceiling windows, and her favorite enamel cup sat on the coffee table, gleaming with warm light at that moment. She felt a bit puzzled, as if she had forgotten many important things, but everything before her seemed so reasonable, with no apparent oddity. What time was it now? Lin Huaiyi lifted her wrist to check, but found it bare—where was her watch? Where had she put it? Lin Huaiyi racked her brain to recall, but nothing came up.

Shen Li stood outside the field, her eyes already reddening. She blamed herself for so rashly agreeing to Tsuna Yamamoto’s demand. If something happened to Lin Huaiyi here, she could never forgive herself in this lifetime.

At this moment, Tsuna Yamamoto had already gathered his fist wind, preparing to strike at Lin Huaiyi.

Mieko Yamamoto sighed. “Unless she wakes up on her own, she’ll just collapse in a sea of illusions.”

Everyone present knew that using pheromones in a duel was against the rules—a behavior everyone despised. And once pheromones came into play in a duel, it meant this fight was to the death.

Some people in the audience had already closed their eyes in reluctance—they couldn’t bear to see such a good-looking alpha meet her end here today.

The anxiety in Shen Li’s heart had peaked. She shouted toward the dueling ground heedless of everything. “Lin Huaiyi, wake up! Lin Huaiyi! You promised me—no accidents!”

She called out again and again. Shen Li’s throat had gone hoarse, her voice laced with sobs. She pounded on the railing with both hands, but her whole body was on the verge of sliding to the ground.

Lin Huaiyi was still lost in the illusion—the scene before her was clearly in her most familiar room, but why did a sense of unease gather in her heart? What exactly was wrong? If she listened carefully, it seemed like a voice was calling her, and this voice sounded so familiar. Why did it sound like it was calling her while also carrying a sobbing, whimpering tone? The voice wasn’t clear, but the cloying floral scent kept drilling into Lin Huaiyi’s nose. She frowned and tried to discern it carefully.

!!!

Shen Li. It was Shen Li calling her!

No! She had been with Shen Li before this—she should be on the Yamamoto family’s dueling platform, so why was she dreaming?

The aura around Lin Huaiyi began to swirl rapidly, and the scene before her collapsed into a black point in an instant. Lin Huaiyi realized she had entered a dream—the Flying Flower Technique lost its effect. The pheromones in Lin Huaiyi’s body sensed an attack from another pheromone and automatically released a large amount of Matsuyama Silver Needle pheromones.

In no more than a few seconds, the scent of Matsuyama Silver Needle overpowered the cloying mandala floral fragrance and rapidly spread outward.

When the concentration of Matsuyama Silver Needle in the entire venue reached its peak, Lin Huaiyi suddenly opened her eyes—bright and sharp as lightning.

Tsuna Yamamoto had known from the moment the Flying Flower Technique broke that he had lost this fight thoroughly. After smelling the Matsuyama Silver Needle pheromones, he was crushed to his knees by the top-level alpha’s presence, unable to move.

Lin Huaiyi mustered all her strength and threw a punch. Tsuna Yamamoto’s heavy body was hammered skyward, then fell back to the ground like a ragged sack, his eyes rolling back as he lay there, life or death unknown.

All the alphas in the venue went mad, pinned down by Lin Huaiyi’s aura and unable to stand. Some even knelt on the ground and started vomiting.

And the venue’s only two omegas, Shen Li and Mieko Yamamoto, weren’t faring much better. Mieko Yamamoto was just an A-level omega—exposed to such high concentrations of Matsuyama Silver Needle, her face was flushed red. Though she desperately wanted to get closer to the source of the pheromones, her legs were too weak to straighten up, leaving her to slump over the front-row seats and pant slightly.

Shen Li had only recently undergone a temporary mark with Lin Huaiyi, and though an S-level omega’s endurance far exceeded Mieko Yamamoto’s A-level, her earlier screams and shouts had already drained a lot of energy. She too slumped to the ground now, desperately pinching her own thigh to stay rational.

Seeing the scene on the verge of descending into total chaos, Shen Li used her last bit of strength to crawl to the alarm and pull it. Beta security personnel flooded in, activated air purifiers, and began evacuating everyone from the venue one by one.

Of the two in the dueling ground, one lay gravely injured and unconscious, the other fainted from pheromone overuse—an ambulance had been waiting outside and wailed straight to the hospital.

In the ambulance, Shen Li’s face was deathly pale. When the medical staff asked her questions, she could only nod or shake her head mechanically. When they weren’t asking her anything, she silently gazed at Lin Huaiyi.

The unconscious Lin Huaiyi looked exceptionally fragile, her long lashes drooping down, making it hard to recall how punchable and infuriating she looked when she grinned.

Shen Li said sorry ten thousand times in her heart. She hadn’t known that fights between alphas could get this bloody. Tsuna Yamamoto’s unreasonable demand had indeed humiliated her, but to get through this crisis, she didn’t care about her own face at all. She had thought the worst outcome of accepting the challenge would be marrying Tsuna Yamamoto—even if things developed that far, it would be her own choice, and she could accept it. But she never imagined this duel would drag Lin Huaiyi’s life into it. If something really happened to Lin Huaiyi, she didn’t want to live either.

When people were in a self-destructive mood, their thoughts inevitably turned extreme. Shen Li’s life had always gone smoothly—she had been spoiled by good luck, which was why she had taken such a big fall here. Her gaze turned icy cold, and she swore to herself that she would make the Yamamoto family pay the proper price.

Special Assistant Yang paced his office like a headless fly. It was already four in the afternoon, and still no news had come. A flight from Japan to A City took over three hours, and with only eight hours left until Shen Li’s promised three-day deadline to deliver a solution, time was running out.

The office phone rang abruptly. Special Assistant Yang jumped at first, steadied himself, checked the caller ID, and quickly picked up. “Little Yang, still no word from Li Li?”

Shen Jun’s voice carried unmistakable weariness—he had been rushing around these past few days too.

Special Assistant Yang: “General Jun, yes, I still haven’t heard from CEO Li. Don’t worry—with CEO Li’s abilities, she’ll definitely pull it off.”

Shen Jun knew Special Assistant Yang was just comforting him. He let out a heavy sigh.

Shen Li had been headstrong from childhood, and Shen Jun had only this one daughter, so he inevitably indulged her in everything. Shen Li was excellent, with strong work abilities too—if it were out in the open, he wouldn’t worry about her at all. But this time, it was clear someone was scheming in the shadows, and with Shen Li still so young, it made Shen Jun anxious that she might fall into someone else’s trap in the dark.

Shen Jun: “Mm, I get it. If Li Li contacts you, pass on a message for me—tell her to be careful with everything. Even if it doesn’t work out, it’s fine—I’ll have her back.”

Special Assistant Yang hung up and glanced at the clock on the wall. In his heart, he prayed Shen Li could catch the flight he had booked before eight that evening—otherwise, it really would all be over.