Chapter 80: Why Do You Look So Guilty?

Description

By the time they left the Stone Forest, the sky had already begun to darken.

The sea of clouds seemed to mirror the scenery of the Stone Forest and looked thoroughly dim.

A warm yellow sun slanted downward; under its scattered light, people inexplicably felt a few extra degrees of languor.

On a narrow path lined with locust blossoms, the locust trees on both sides rustled, white floss drifting through the air.

Four girls of different appearances, yet equally stunning, strolled among them.

Whether this beautiful scene was beautiful because of the people, or the beauties added color to the scene, was hard to say.

Only, these girls had been targeted by the surrounding demon beasts.

The tallest, a cold and alluring beauty, drew her long sword and stood guard in front of the others.

Ink-black hair and long robes drifted; sword light was piercing as frost.

She weaved through the demon beasts like wind, like bamboo, thrusting left and darting right.

In an instant, blood bloomed like plum blossoms for a fleeting moment.

“Senior Sister is mighty!” “Senior Sister is so strong!”

From behind rose cheers and worship packed full of emotional value.

Those belonged to Chu Yao and Yun Li.

“Enough… hurry up and collect the demon cores.

Once the sun sets, those powerful demon beasts will come out to hunt,” Su Zhan sighed helplessly.

It was not that she enjoyed listening to these two’s slightly forced cheers; she had simply been forced to get used to them.

After walking out of the Stone Forest they headed all the way toward the very center of the secret realm.

Shen Zhi led the way.

She said that in order to thank Su Zhan she would take her to see something good, and was being all mysterious about it.

Along the way the two girls seemed to be competing.

Whenever Su Zhan slew a demon beast they would timely cheer from behind, displaying a rather eerie tacit understanding.

After cheering they would take the initiative to crowd forward and start scavenging treasures from the demon beasts’ bodies, looking rather like they were having a picnic and dividing the spoils.

It was only because Shen Zhi had thin skin that she did not join them in the nonsense.

She merely followed silently behind, holding a strangely shaped bone whistle in her hand and blowing it from time to time.

She had refined that Howler Bird into an artifact.

So long as spiritual power was poured in, it could attract nearby demon beasts to approach.

When the bone whistle was blown it emitted a low-frequency sound wave humans could not hear, yet demon beasts would fall into a frenzy, which greatly convenience Su Zhan.

The party of four thus chopped through everything in their path like slicing vegetables and could be called richly rewarded.

Because the Howler Bird’s own rank was not high, the strongest demon beasts it could attract were only at Golden Core.

In a frenzied state these demon beasts would not deliberately protect their weak points at all.

Therefore Su Zhan, relying on her extremely fast attack speed, almost always needed only a single move to cripple these demon beasts, or even kill them.

At first Chu Yao watched from behind with repeated exclamations of amazement.

In the beginning she would still clap, but now her hands were a little numb from slapping and she somewhat regretted it.

She was probably starting to envy the prestige of sword cultivators.

To be honest, sword cultivators were indeed the most unrestrained and best-looking path.

Chu Yao could also slightly understand why that flat-chested girl Meng Yu, who was clearly not a sword cultivator, still always wore a mystic sword at her waist.

Yun Li’s reaction to this was not particularly strong; she only focused on collecting treasures from the demon beasts’ bodies.

She could look at her own senior sister whenever she wanted.

These treasures would not grow legs and run into the storage pouch on their own.

Looking at the storage pouch stuffed full of demon cores and exotic demon-beast bones, the girl felt incomparably satisfied.

She obediently and cleverly sidled up beside her senior sister and held it up for Su Zhan to see.

“Senior Sister is so amazing.

Our storage pouches are almost too full to hold any more.

We can exchange them for so many points!”

The girl’s words were full of delight as she spoke slightly exaggerated lines with curved brows and smiling eyes.

“With you here, this is the inevitable result,” Su Zhan said mildly. “If it were only me alone, collecting these would probably be extremely difficult.”

After all, Yun Li was the female lead, blessed with fortune.

With her at one’s side, this kind of thing was no different from walking right up to the door on its own.

Think of what she had encountered whenever she went out alone until now.

By comparison, accompanying Yun Li into the secret realm was truly like a spring outing.

“Senior Sister, you’re talking strangely again. Hmph.”

Yun Li pursed her lips.

It was not just the two of them now.

How could she still say such embarrassing things?

It made one feel awkward if others heard.

The girl lightly coughed twice and changed the subject. “Senior Sister, I noticed that whenever you meet an enemy whose strength is a bit higher, you hold back?

Besides the demon beasts, it was the same when you fought those two bad senior sisters from Zuo Lan Sect earlier.”

Su Zhan fell silent and did not answer.

It was also hard for her to answer.

Was she supposed to tell her junior sister outright that it was not holding back, but that she could only do that much?

She silently cast her gaze toward Chu Yao.

Yun Li had stayed with her for so long before and had never asked this kind of question, yet now she asked.

Clearly someone had brought it up.

Chu Yao rather guiltily looked away.

She had only mentioned it in passing and had not expected Yun Li to remember it.

“Senior Sister is probably practicing Cultivation Restraint?” Shen Zhi guessed.

“What is Cultivation Restraint?” Yun Li blinked.

She had clearly never heard the term.

“Cultivation Restraint means a cultivator deliberately suppresses their own cultivation at a certain stage and only uses the power of that stage,” Shen Zhi explained. “That way the cultivator can control their spiritual power and techniques even more finely, thereby raising their own strength and achieving the effect of one force overcoming ten techniques.”

Su Zhan slightly raised a brow.

It could actually be explained this way?

Yet it was indeed as Shen Zhi said.

She had always been suppressing her own cultivation, so it looked the same as this method of practice.

Yun Li and Chu Yao both revealed expressions of sudden realization.

A decent answer, both impressive and fitting her identity.

She liked it.

Su Zhan noted this down, planning to use this answer to gloss things over whenever someone asked later.

After obtaining an answer, Yun Li asked no more and started fooling around with Chu Yao again.

Because they were not flying on swords, the four of them did not travel quickly.

Only after killing two more waves of demon beasts did they finally walk out of the woods.

One after another the four of them sensed powerful fluctuations of spiritual power not far away.

The center of the secret realm was a plain.

Shen Zhi put away the bone whistle.

The plain that should have been quiet and still had at some point been enveloped by wave after wave of spiritual power.

Nine human figures were scattered around; formation diagrams surfaced, and lightning flashed as well…

“Senior Sister, it looks like we’ve arrived,” Shen Zhi let out a breath and said.

Judging by the auras, the cultivation of both sides in the confrontation was not low.

They seemed to have come with the goal of crippling the other party.

“Where’s the good thing?” Yun Li stood on tiptoe and looked around.

Since people had already started a dispute, that meant there really was some treasure here and they were fighting over it.

“It hasn’t appeared yet.

It’ll probably have to wait until night,” Chu Yao smiled mysteriously.

“If these two fools like to fight, let them fight.

We’ll watch the show.

When they have no strength left, we’ll conveniently reap the fisherman’s profit.”

“Snatching other people’s storage pouches isn’t good,” Yun Li furrowed her brows.

She did not want to be the bad guy.

Chu Yao was disdainful. “What good thing is a storage pouch?

Just wait a bit.

In a moment you’ll know.

I bet that even Senior Sister Su will be tempted when that thing appears.”

“Tempted? Don’t tell me it’s a woman?

Senior Sister Chu, aren’t you afraid Senior Sister Tang Zhi will strike you down without mercy?”

“Don’t talk nonsense.

Ahem.

Anyway, just wait and see!”

“Senior Sister Chu, why do you look so guilty?

That’s not very convincing at all.”