Chen Yan thought these thugs were surprisingly valiant, and probably had their own stories.
She didn't know what to do. She did not kill anybody, nor did she have the intention to. That was all on Xiaohei. She was not really scared, just shocked by his actions.
They were no strangers to death in their neighborhood, as there were many around here who were hounded by loan sharks or debtors or thugs. There were also some ruthless people here too, so sometimes people might disappear or a dead body might turn up. The police don't do anything mostly because they can't. There was an underworld influence here that was too troublesome for them to deal with.
She just didn't know if she could support Xiaohei's ruthlessness, as she hadn't personally killed anyone before, and she didn't know if he was in the right.
To be truthful, he probably wasn't, as they just came here with the intention of extortion to them, not to kidnap, beat, or kill anyone. But now there were bloodthirsty thugs with a lust for vengeance, but that was technically her side's fault, as Xiaohei here murdered two of their buddies.
As she was conflicted the lead blondie pointed his sword at her.
"We will offer tribute to their families with your blood! Prepare to die!" With that, all five rushed up at once, and swung their blades.
Their technique was the Shark Tooth Rippling Sword, and every wave of their swords held mysterious movements, yet were sinister and vicious, like a swimming shark. Blue light followed their blades as the acted in unison, with proficient teamwork, as even with five of them in a small room, they did not interrupt each other's movements. One could tell they were good friends from how well they worked together.
As she wasn't an idiot, and knew there was no turning back now, and no way to explain to them. What would she tell them, the cat did it by himself? How ridiculous does that sound.
Chen Yan summoned her soul bound weapon, the Crystal Melody Harp, and plucked the strings rapidly, yet with an unmistakable grace that reflected the time and effort put in to cultivate it.
As they all had the same or lesser cultivation as herself, and did not cultivate any soul arts, their souls were a level weaker than hers, and were heavily affected by the Seven Soul Notes, their souls were weighed down and ripples with pain.
Unfortunately she had yet to cultivate the Seven Soul Notes to the 3rd note, where she could learn some soul attacking spells, so she could only suppress them as she was.
She was not good at martial arts of any kind, and wouldn't dare approach them if they could move, but they were immobilized, so she went up to the blonde guy in front and directly kicked him in the balls. He instantly hunched over as a natural reaction to the damage of an important part of his body, but when he did, Chen Yan slammed the harp on his head as hard as she could before running to the back of the house to take Chen Ling and escape. She was unable to hold 5 people for a long while, and did not think she could incapacitate all of them in that time.
"Boss!" Shouted the grunts. Their eyes grew redder from another casualty. With pure willpower, one of the grunts let out a fierce roar as veins swelled from his neck, chest, and arms as he began to slowly but surely. His blade raised in the air, and despite still trembling from the soul suppression, threw the Shark Tooth Sword with all his strength before collapsing from forcefully resisting the soul lock.
Right as she turned to Chen Ling's door, she heard a splitting of air, and instinctively ducked her head and raised her harp to block it.
But it was still a harp and as they were both soul bound weapons, the sword was naturally superior in toughness. The spinning blade was indeed obstructed, but at the price of one arm of the harp broken and half of it's strings severed.
With the harp gone, she was unable to maintain the soul locks at the same strength as before.
The thugs gradually got up, including the blondie and the man who collapsed from throwing his sword. The grunt had apparently powered through the pain with their burning desire to kill her, while the blondie was not harmed too bad, as his cultivation focused on his body, so a young girl trained in soul techniques couldn't do much damage to him. Though he still walked awkwardly from the damage to his manhood, he would not let it stop him from avenging his brothers, and instead would only add one more brother to avenge.
Chen Yan has already been pushed to a wall from the flying sword, which was soon retrieved by the grunt. Using her Seven Soul Notes made her heavily fatigued, and the backlash to her soul from the damage to the Crystal Melody Harp made her lose most of her energy. As of now, she could barely stand.
"Ling'er! Leave through the window, don't look back!" She used the last of her energy to call out to her sister.
Instead the door slammed open, and happened to hit a grunt in the nose, causing it to bleed.
"Stop bullying my sister! Or... or else!" Chen Ling bravely stood before her sister, valiantly standing up to the murderous thugs.
"Ling'er...! Quickly... leave...!" Chen Yan said with tears in her eyes.
"Or else what?! Don't get in the way kid, we won't hurt you, we've got a code against hurting kids. We'll only kill your sister to avenge our brothers. But if you insist on getting in our way, then don't blame us if you get hurt!" One of the grunts said to Chen Ling with a toned down voice. They surprisingly had some morals. But even then, they would not let her go if she got in their way. Chen Yan could only look on with despair
"Kyuu...!" Chen Ling growled and narrowed her eyes.
"... Xiaohei!" And all the thugs turned wide eyed as they only now remembered the tiger they overlooked before. They had subconsciously refused to acknowledge this little tiger cub was capable of killing their brothers before. And their rage and fear made them change the target of their anger to Chen Yan.
"Xiaohei! K-k-kilth them!" She had bit her tongue using the new word she had just learned to use.