Chapter 397

Chapter 397: Qing Yan, You Ruined My Plans Again
Things really did develop the way Abbot Jie Tan had expected.

With Master Qing Yan around, the other Sect Masters more or less had to show some respect.

Even if Master Qing Yan did not say a single word and only stood to the side like a decoration, his presence alone was enough to give people a strong sense of pressure.

After giving out four more classic Wooden Alms Bowls, Yu Zhao and Abbot Jie Tan checked the number of spirit cores they had gathered and sat facing each other in worry.

They had gone through all the Seven Great Sects, using every method they could think of. They even forced Sect Head Chong Yang of Heavenly Sword Sect to personally go out and search for spirit veins, yet they had only managed to gather forty-one spirit cores.

They were still eight short of their goal.

Yu Zhao sighed and kept sneaking little glances at Abbot Jie Tan.

Abbot Jie Tan rubbed his smooth bald head.

His look clearly said: Don’t look at me. I have no ideas either.

Pushed to the side by the two of them, Master Qing Yan watched their worried faces. His brows drew together, and his voice came out proud and domineering: “It is just a few spirit cores. I will go and ask for them.”

There were countless sects in the cultivation world. It was not only the Seven Great Sects that controlled spirit veins.

Just the ones Master Qing Yan knew about already numbered seven or eight.

If he went out for one trip, he could gather enough spirit cores.

“Absolutely not!”

Abbot Jie Tan quickly stopped him.

“Master Qing Yan, it is wrong to judge other people’s hearts by your own way of thinking.”

To Master Qing Yan, spirit cores were just things outside the body. But sects that depended on spirit cores to survive would not think like that.

Take Lin Shuang, whom Yu Zhao had met at Dragon Pool Mountains, for example. Her sect had been destroyed because their spirit vein was cut off.

Without spirit cores, they had no resources to cultivate with, which was the same as cutting off their path of cultivation.

Even if those sects did not dare refuse him in public, in private they would definitely hate Master Qing Yan to death.

Abbot Jie Tan could not sit by and watch Master Qing Yan force other sects into a dead end and create more karma.

Yu Zhao frowned, clearly also feeling that Master Qing Yan’s idea was terrible.

If it were really that simple, she and Abbot Jie Tan would not have to worry so much.

Master Qing Yan took Abbot Jie Tan’s words to heart, but his face grew even colder.

Yu Zhao looked at his gloomy, world-weary face and secretly complained in her heart. [No wonder he has enemies everywhere. Even demonic beasts do not like him.]

Wait. Demonic beasts?

Yu Zhao’s eyes lit up.

Right, how could she forget Nine-Tails, Bai Ling and the others!

The senses of demonic beasts were sharper than those of cultivators. They were also better at finding spirit veins.

Races like the White Peacock and the Nine-Tailed Fox, who had a long heritage, definitely held several spirit veins in their hands.

And if she remembered correctly, Master Qing Yan had also formed grudges with the Heaven-Devouring Rat and the Moonshadow Rabbit. If they took the chance to go to their doors and demand a bit of compensation, that would seem quite reasonable, would it not?

Yu Zhao’s eyes flashed. [Should we return to Chaozong Gorge first, or go stir up trouble with the Heaven-Devouring Rat and Moonshadow Rabbit?]

…

Deep underground.

Inside a wide, empty cave.

An ordinary-looking man sat cross-legged. Around him lay several dim stones that looked very unremarkable.

If Yu Zhao were here, she would recognize these stones as the spirit cores she thought about day and night. But all of them were waste spirit cores, emptied of their spiritual energy.

Suddenly, the earthen wall in front of the man began to twist in a strange way.

Two men who looked exactly like him stepped out from inside the wall. They sat down not far from him. A ball of spiritual light slowly floated up from above the palms resting on their knees.

Then, as if being guided, the light sank into the man’s head.

After a long moment, he opened his eyes. A violent, brutal light burst out of them.

“Qing Yan, you ruined my plans again!”

He had prepared the plan to attack the Five Elements Dao Sect for two hundred years. Just when victory had been within reach, Master Qing Yan had broken it, forcing him to move from the open into the shadows.

And now he had ruined his plans again!

Fierce killing intent surged in Lei Nuo’s chest. A muffled sound like thunder echoed through the cave.

After a long time, the sound faded. The wild aura around Lei Nuo slowly calmed down.

He clenched his fists hard and forced himself to endure.

It was not time yet.

Once he devoured a few more spirit cores, the entire cultivation world would become his hunting ground.

Soon.

Very soon!

…

“System, did you hear a strange sound just now?”

In another cave a thousand miles away.

Ye Cong Xin looked around in panic, still pinching a Fleetfoot Talisman in her hand, as if she might run for her life at any moment.

Only when she heard the System’s prompt that nothing unusual had been detected did she finally let out a long breath.

But the next second, her expression turned angry. She pounded hard on the ground beneath her and her eyes filled with hate.

How much longer did she have to endure this life of hiding and running?

So what if a few people had died? Did that really justify putting a Kill Order on her head, and the highest-level Kill Order in the whole cultivation world at that!

The people hunting her were at least Nascent Soul and at most Divine Transformation.

If it were not for the System helping her, she would have been hacked into pieces long ago.

She was scared out of her wits and did not dare show her face at all, yet the System kept urging her to collect Favorability and Plunder Fate points.

[It is not that I do not want to. I simply cannot get out!]

“Ding. Host’s current Luck Value is low. Please begin your strategy as soon as possible!”

Ye Cong Xin had barely finished complaining in her heart when the System started broadcasting again, its speed even faster than before.

“It is not that I do not want to go and ‘conquer’ people. It is that now they are all on guard. I, Ye Cong Xin, have become like a rat crossing the street. Everyone wants to beat me. How am I supposed to ‘conquer’ anyone like this?”

After Elder Oblivion died, the Five Elements Dao Sect had exposed her past and everything she had done in Master Qing Yan’s name.

Now everyone in the cultivation world was terrified. No one dared interact with strange cultivators. She could not even find a chance to start a conversation, so how could she possibly “conquer” anyone?

The System did not listen to her excuses and kept broadcasting in her sea of consciousness on a loop.

Ye Cong Xin covered her ears and pretended not to hear it.

She was only one step away from the Nascent Soul stage now. Since she could not gain Luck Value, she wanted to use this time to calm down, go into closed-door cultivation, and form her Nascent Soul by relying on her own strength, to prove she was not worse than anyone.

Hiss.

A soft snort sounded especially clear in the cave.

Ye Cong Xin’s eyes dimmed slightly, but she pretended to be puzzled on the surface and said: “System, were you laughing just now?”

The System stayed silent, as if denying it, but also as if admitting it.

Ye Cong Xin bit her lower lip. A stubbornness that did not match her weak outer appearance flashed across her face.

She could do it.

She was no longer the frail Ye Cong Xin she had been at the beginning.

Yu Zhao had become a Nascent Soul cultivator.

Why could she not do the same?

Ye Cong Xin took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She was just about to clear her mind and enter meditation to cultivate when the System’s voice suddenly sounded again in her sea of consciousness.

Before this, she had always felt that the System’s voice had no emotion, cold and mechanical like a dead thing.

But this time she clearly heard malice toward her in the System’s voice.

“Ding. Fortune Host’s Luck Value is too low. Now automatically stripping the Host’s Affinity Halo, 5 Stamina Points, and 5 points of comprehension… to maintain System operations. Host, please begin your strategy as soon as possible!”

Ye Cong Xin could no longer control her expression. Her face twisted with rage as she roared: “What right do you have to take away my comprehension points! They are mine! I paid for them! I… mine…”