Chapter Ninety-Five: All’s Fair in War

Standing before the illusionary mirror veiled in tangled leaves and blossoms, Feng Keer frowned as she looked at the two fish monsters kneeling on the ground. She had never even heard of anything called the Spring-Return Art. The vines and tendrils inside and outside the cave were nothing more than phantoms formed by leaking wood spiritual energy. And, alas, she had only just reached the third level of the Heart-Calming Incantation; she was still far from skilled, and her control over the amount and flow of spiritual energy was rather poor, so she had wasted a great deal of wood spiritual energy for nothing.

Her heart ached at the loss. Just as she was about to cease her work, she caught the fish monsters muttering to one another. That was the end of it. The two fellows insisted she must be a rare ice-spirit cultivator and were clearly scheming against her.

They seemed to be demon cultivators on the verge of ascending into the immortal realm. How could she possibly defeat them? In her panic, she simply improvised and, following their misunderstanding, forced the wood spiritual energy within her body to complete one more full circulation. Unexpectedly, that drew out countless blossoms! Not only the two old monsters outside, even she herself was startled.

Unfortunately, these were boss-level demon cultivators who had trained for nearly ten thousand years. Weathered by endless experience, they were not the sort to be frightened by a little surprise.

And now they were challenging her at the cave entrance.

Given those two old monsters’ keen eyes, the moment Feng Keer spoke, she would surely be exposed. Why? In general, a cultivator in her present situation should mingle true essence into the voice to reveal his or her cultivation and intimidate the opponent. But her cultivation was only at the mid-stage of Foundation Establishment. Even with the boost from the concealment talisman, at most she could pass for a Nascent Soul cultivator. So whether she spoke or remained silent, the outcome was effectively the same. This time, she was truly caught riding a tiger and unable to dismount.

After ten breaths passed with no sound from within the cave, the two old monsters lying prone on the ground grew bolder in their thoughts. Old Ghost Huang shot Old Monster Silver a covert arch of the brow, his smug eyes gleaming. Feng Keer saw it clearly through the illusionary mirror; that old fellow was plainly saying, Sweetheart, I was right, wasn't I? There is a trick in the cave.

Better safe than sorry. Old Monster Silver shot him a sharp look, then silently clenched both hands into fists. Taking a deep breath, he once more announced in a loud voice, "This little demon greets the immortal master!"

She could not drag this out any longer!

Driven to the brink, Feng Keer hardened her heart and sent both hands flying, pouring out all her power. "Great Hand Seal!"

Boom!

Rocks and rubble flew everywhere as the cave entrance burst open.

A frigid wind rose at once, and a gigantic hand wrapped in ice and snow appeared in midair. Its target was Old Ghost Huang, who had just been quietly gloating.

But Old Ghost Huang only laughed. With this palm force, the young woman inside was at most at the peak of the Nascent Soul stage. Little thing, it was not that he feared her; he only feared that if he made one careless move, he would smash her into powder and destroy that precious ice-spirit root.

At once, he rolled aside on the spot, choosing to evade the blow. At the same time he shouted, "Old Silver, do not injure her. Take her alive!" A spirit root plucked out alive retained its spiritual energy without loss and gave the best result.

"No need for you to say it," Old Monster Silver said, rolling his eyes. The tension that had been lodged in his throat finally sank back into his belly. Even without the ice-spirit root to tempt him, he would absolutely have handled her with utmost care. He strongly suspected the person inside possessed some kind of immortal artifact; otherwise, how could a mere Nascent Soul female cultivator have such formidable ability? Had she nearly fooled the two of them, seasoned demon cultivators that they were?

The two of them released the pressure of a sixth-rank aura together, enough to deal with the little girl inside. More than enough. They seemed to already see her being crushed flat in agony, unable to move. They could not help but feel wildly triumphant.

Ah ha, the concealment talisman was indeed mighty. What she feared least was pressure and the like!

Feng Keer let out a breath of relief. Seeing Old Ghost Huang dodge, she immediately withdrew her right palm and lifted her left hand. "Ten-Thousand-Needle Art."

This time, she used less than twenty percent of her strength. Her earlier suffering had not been in vain. She found that her spiritual sense had grown much stronger. With a mere shift of thought, she could control spells with ease, releasing and drawing them back at will, and using them with remarkable smoothness. If not for her cultivation lagging behind and her spiritual power still too weak, these two old fossils would not have been nearly enough for her to play with.

Whoosh. Tens of thousands of silver needles, fine as cow hair, drifted down from the sky. The clear blue sky above the two old demons instantly turned into a glittering expanse of silver light.

This girl really had a mind full of tricks! Fearing that hidden poison might be concealed among the flying ice needles, Old Monster Silver gave a soft exclamation and decisively retreated several steps, choosing once again the tactic of avoidance. Indeed, this young girl had an extraordinary treasure on her person! Still, he refused to believe it. With four ranks separating them, the two of them together could not possibly fail to capture a mere Nascent Soul female cultivator.

Thus, an opening appeared at the cave entrance.

"Wind-Cleaving Art!"

Feng Keer immediately made herself scarce and shot out of the cave like a rocket. Yes, that was exactly her plan: the finest strategy of all was to flee.

Plop!

She plunged headfirst into the sea.

By the time the ice needles had dispersed, three breaths had passed. Yet between sea and sky, where was Feng Keer’s shadow?

"After her!" Old Monster Silver bared his steel teeth and sprang into the sea first. Old Ghost Huang followed closely behind. Though the silver needles had been denser than falling snow and visibility was poor, the two of them had heard it clearly: the little female cultivator had clearly leaped into the sea, attempting to escape by water. Hmph, let her be smug for a moment. They were the old ancestors of this eastern sea coast; let’s see where that brat could run!

Soon, the seashore returned to its usual calm. Beneath blue sky and white clouds, the waves gently lapped the silver beach.

Cough, cough, cough!

Feng Keer poked her head out from beneath a large reef, wiped the seawater from her face, and jumped up onto the rock. After swallowing a hasty bite of roasted golden-cashfish, she cast the Wind-Cleaving Art and made a triumphant escape toward the inland southwest. At Qingyun Sect, she had once heard that in that direction lay the Sea of Obstruction, where all sorts of monsters abounded, and ordinary cultivators would not dare to go. Right now she was extremely weak and urgently needed a place crowded with monsters and sparse of people, somewhere she could quietly replenish her various kinds of spiritual energy.

Very well. A wise man does not fight when the odds are against him. Revenge may wait ten years without being too late. Anyone who dared set their sights on her would one day receive twice the return!

In truth, Feng Keer had not run far at all earlier; she had merely hidden beneath the giant reef. With the Phoenix Blood Crystal in her hand and the powerful concealment talisman covering her, how could two sixth-rank demon cultivators possibly detect her?

Military stratagem is never too many. These were the tricks sages and generals had long since played to exhaustion. Feng Keer merely borrowed them at a whim. This was called wisdom! Compared with more than five thousand years of civilization, those two old demons had merely lived in vain for nearly ten thousand.

Old Monster Silver and Old Ghost Huang chased after her for several hundred li before they finally realized something was wrong: could a Nascent Soul female cultivator really run this fast? Their cultivation surpassed hers by four ranks, yet after pursuing her this far, they still could not see a trace of her?

"Damn it, we were tricked!" The two of them slapped their foreheads and hurried back at full speed.

This round trip covered well over a thousand li. Feng Keer's Wind-Cleaving Art was not to be underestimated either. Ordinary Nascent Soul cultivators truly could not catch up. On top of that, she was fleeing for her life. The very thought of the words "pluck out the spirit root alive" made her back go cold, and all her latent potential was driven out. Her speed was actually nearly on par with the two of them. Thus, by now, Feng Keer was already a thousand li away, just beyond the range of their spiritual sense.

The two old monsters could never have imagined that they had met such an anomaly. They were still regretting things bitterly: it was all the fault of underestimating the enemy. Humans were far too treacherous!

Standing on the sea rocks, one facing east and the other west, the two of them looked like twin searchlights. Their spiritual sense swept back and forth in relentless search. Together, within a radius of more than a thousand li, every ditch and hollow lay clearly within their sight. That little thing must be relying on some kind of obscuring treasure to hide from their eyes. But one could hide for a while, not for a lifetime. Treasures required spiritual power to sustain them. They did not believe that little thing could go without replenishment. They would see how long she could endure.

So they held their ground.

Of course, they did not hold it for long. Ten days later, in the dead of night, thunder rumbled on the eastern horizon. Soon after, thick, black clouds rolled across the sky like spilled ink, instantaneously veiling the brilliant starry heavens as dark as a cauldron’s bottom. Along the shore, the wind howled, and waves rose for no reason into a thousand surges.

A strange change in the heavens! What had happened? The two old monsters stood against the wind, exchanging glances.

Crack!

A flash of brilliant lightning tore open the dark curtain of night and struck down toward the pair of them.

This was not heavenly punishment, nor tribulation lightning. Could they have been discovered by an immortal master?

"Bad!"

The two cried out in alarm and sprang upward together, trying to dive back into the sea.

Unfortunately.

Too late.

Crash!

The two of them were struck by the lightning at once, and together with the giant reef beneath their feet, instantly turned to dust.

"Ninth, your anger has been vented. Let us go. If we do not leave now, it will be too late." The Old Phoenix Lord sheathed his sword and looked at Feng Nine, who refused in life and death to board the flying carriage, his eyes full of helplessness. He could no longer remember when he had last drawn his sword. He had never expected that his first strike after so long would be to kill two sixth-rank demonic beasts from the lower realms. It was truly a humiliating affair.

Yet Feng Nine still refused to be appeased. He flapped his wings, wanting to spit out a ball of fire. If not for those wormlike cowards stirring up trouble, that wretched girl would surely still be safely secluded by the seaside. How could she have been forced into flight? And if she had not fled, how could that old scoundrel Hua Taiyi have deceived him out of his blood crystal and attempted to use the Phoenix-Tail Bird to hunt her down? He had merely contacted someone to warn them, but that person not only immediately severed their pact, he also refined away the Phoenix Blood Crystal. As a result, for these past days, he had completely lost contact with that girl.

It turned out that in order to capture the female Nüwa who had descended to the lower realm in rebellion, the Divine Realm Alliance had issued orders to temporarily close the heavenly ladder between the lower realm and the spirit realm. After receiving Hua Taiyi’s message talisman, the Old Phoenix Lord feared Feng Nine would get involved again and suffer some misfortune, so he requested the lower-realm golden token from the Heaven Lord of Seven Nights and personally came down to bring him back.

As expected, after searching for more than three months without finding any trace of Nüwa, and after losing all news of Feng Keer, Feng Nine naturally refused point-blank to return to the divine realm.

The passage was about to close. Seeing that even after slaying those two little demons, Feng Nine was still not satisfied, the Old Phoenix Lord had no choice but to knock him unconscious with a knife-hand strike, lift him onto the flying carriage, and bark, "Rise!" Without the aid of the concealment talisman, this child could not even maintain his transformed form. The lower realm was becoming more and more complicated, more and more dangerous, a place of chaos and turmoil. What good could possibly come of his being stranded here?

Rumble.

The golden light at the mouth of the passage gradually faded.

From the billowing black clouds emerged two figures, one after the other. The one in front wore her jet-black hair coiled high, her figure graceful and her face exquisite, a beautiful young woman in a plain white robe. Closely following behind her was a middle-aged man. His hair was gathered into a glossy topknot, and he wore black martial garb, yet his bronze chest remained bared, muscular and powerful. A pity that on his knife-carved handsome face, one eye had been gouged out, leaving a hollow socket and robbing him of all beauty, so frightening that one could hardly look at him.

"Sister Nuwa, why did you just hide? You even concealed your tail and dressed like this. Clearly, you wanted to see him." Seeing the woman stand silently in place, the man was very puzzled.

The woman in white let out a long sigh, waved a hand, and left without turning back. "It is in the past; all of it is in the past. The person of yesterday is no more. What would be the use of seeing him again?"

She was none other than the Nuwa Feng Nine had been desperately searching for all this time. And the black-robed man was the one-eyed dragon, A Long.

At this, A Long scratched his head and chased after her, asking, "Does that wretched girl the fire phoenix keeps talking about have some great background? It seems that the Hua family boy was going to great lengths to capture her alive."

Nuwa swept her sleeve, and her lofty hairdo dispersed, revealing her true form. Her long, sapphire-blue hair fluttered lightly as she flicked her long serpent tail and gave a cold laugh. "No doubt he wanted this for me. He was trying to help me find a body I could possess. Perhaps he took a fancy to that girl."

A Long frowned. "Isn't she quite beautiful?"

"Exactly. Hmph, as if I would care!"

...

The two gradually receded into the distance.

How wonderful it would have been if Feng Keer had been able to hear this conversation. After receiving Feng Nine's warning, she truly could not make sense of it no matter how hard she thought: why would a lofty immortal master suddenly stoop to entangling himself with her? Could it be that the sacred halo of the transmigrated heroine was at work? Hah, even if that girl had fallen in love with someone else, she did not want it! Hmph, that kind of fair-faced pretty boy was not her cup of tea.

So Feng Keer immediately dissolved her equal pact with Feng Nine, then painfully refined the Phoenix Blood Crystal, and afterward decisively hid herself within the boundless Sea of Obstruction. From then on, the Phoenix-Tail Bird could no longer find her. Let that immortal master search slowly, to the ends of heaven and earth.

Speaking of which, the Sea of Obstruction was truly a wonderful place, with an abundance of monsters of all kinds...

To be continued.