Chapter 172

Chapter 172: Rong Shu Gets Angry

[Three Foundation Establishment Stage cultivators… that will be hard to handle.] Rong Shu weighed her own strength and decided that if she faced the three head-on, she would likely have to trade injury for injury. [Not worth it, not worth it.] She had come to the secret realm to seek fortune and temper herself; brawling all day was hardly ideal. [Cultivation is for longevity and carefree wandering, not for fighting to the death.]

[Brother Yun, rest easy on your way; I will draw a circle every day and curse them to kick the bucket sooner.] Rong Shu mourned Yun Gao Fei for one second in her heart, then turned again to leave.

Su Hua, however, grew more spirited the more he spoke, rattling on without pause: “If we had known, we should have acted as soon as we entered the herb garden; that brat wouldn’t have lucked out and slipped away.”

Su Meng raised a doubt: “Don’t you think it’s a bit suspicious that Lin Bu Fan got lost inside the herb garden?”

“Who cares whether it’s suspicious.”

“If I run into that brat again, I’ll rip his Exotic Flame out of him!”

“Just thinking that the brat actually has an Exotic Flame, and that he got it with our help, makes me furious. Don’t you feel it’s a waste?”

Overhearing they meant to rob her Exotic Flame, Rong Shu remained outwardly calm: [Makes sense. Exotic Flames are like that. Those who cannot fuse one will envy those who can.]

[And I truly understand the ache of wanting what you cannot have, the way I stare at the Scripture Tower longing for those sixth- to ninth-grade pill recipes I cannot touch.]

“Right, it’s not only the Exotic Flame,” Su Hua went on, “there are also those Scripture Tower books and pill recipes we handed to him for free, plus the spirit herbs in the herb garden and the pills he refined… A mere third-layer Qi Refining good-for-nothing, and when given benefits he actually had the gall to accept them?”

“The Scripture Tower’s pill recipes are indeed important. If we get the chance, we should take them back,” Han Cheng Yun added in agreement.

Rong Shu, still eavesdropping, showed little reaction—until someone insulted her Little Hamster. At once she could no longer sit still. The Little Hamster stood up from her palm, cheeks puffing in anger, tiny paws swiping toward the three.

Rong Shu smiled and stroked the bristling Little Hamster. [It’s just pill recipes, just spirit herbs, just pills.]

She was about to soothe the Little Hamster in a whisper when Su Hua kept blathering: “I’ve disliked that Lin fellow from the start. Thinks being an alchemist makes him a big deal? Once we catch him, I’ll slice him over and over and bleed him dry. Isn’t he a third-grade alchemist? I suppose he’ll have healing pills for his wounds, hahaha…”

“Drain him, then chop off his hands and feet, and finally bury him under the medicine fields as fertilizer…”

The Little Hamster grew even angrier. In a flash it sprang from Rong Shu’s palm; thankfully she was quick of eye and hand and scooped it back.

“It’s fine, it’s fine, let’s not be angry,” she murmured by the Little Hamster’s ear to comfort it, “if we start a fight we will get hurt, and that hurts.”

But Su Hua was getting more and more carried away, and even Su Meng couldn’t help chiming in: “That brat keeps a hamster. I laughed when I saw it. I thought it was some spirit beast, but it turned out to be an ordinary hamster.”

“When we crush that mouse to death right in front of Lin, what do you think he’ll do? Hahahaha,” Su Hua roared with laughter.

Rong Shu’s hand, which had been stroking the Little Hamster’s head, slowly stilled. The composure on her face faded into a blank expression. She shifted her gaze to the stand of trees opposite the three, then lowered her eyes slightly in thought.

[A year ago I dosed Han Cheng Yun and the others. By now the medicine has likely worn off or weakened. If I use it, I might not kill in one blow and would only alert the snake in the grass.]

[If I remember right… in the notes I saw back in that cave-dwelling there was a map. It said quite a lot of Wind Fiend Purple Coat Grass grows in this area.]

Wind Fiend Purple Coat Grass counted as a spirit herb, yet it had no positive effect on a cultivator’s practice, because it was a poison grass. Aside from a thin air-bladder sheath on the outside, the entire plant was toxic. When it met fire, the high temperature caused its air bladder to shrink and open pores, releasing a purple poisonous mist that could claim a life.

[Inhale more than three breaths of this purple mist and within half a quarter hour there is no medicine that can save you; your breath ceases and you die.]

[A Nascent Soul cultivator might hold on a little longer.]

[But this is a secret realm that only permits Foundation Establishment Stage cultivators to enter, which makes it a nearly unsolvable poison.]

An idea took shape in Rong Shu’s mind. [Even if it fails, with Little Hamster here and with all the darling treasures for escape inside the Han Chuan Cosmos Pearl, I can still get out in one piece.]

…

On the other side, Su Hua finally finished talking. As the three were about to leave, Su Meng caught a flicker of movement at the edge of his vision: a figure darted into a nearby stand of trees.

“It’s Lin Bu Fan.” He glanced at the other two, eyes asking a question: “He doesn’t seem to have seen us. Do we tail him?”

“Well now… a fat sheep delivered to the door. No sooner did we mention that brat than he shows up,” Su Hua said, excited.

Han Cheng Yun frowned and looked in the direction where Lin Bu Fan had vanished.

“Go, go, go! If we don’t hurry he’ll run off,” Su Hua urged impatiently. “Han Cheng Yun, are you coming?”

Han Cheng Yun withdrew his gaze and nodded: “Then let’s go take a look at his situation.”

A mere third-layer Qi Refining cultivator, no matter how he flipped the heavens, could never be a match for three Foundation Establishment Stage cultivators. The trio decided and gave chase at once.

Within the dense forest, they swept their eyes around, hoping to spot Lin Bu Fan quickly. But the deeper they went, the less trace they saw.

At last they stopped on a patch of purple grass. Purple grass was rare; the light forest breeze stirred the delicate, harmless-looking blades.

“Where is he? Why is he gone?”

“Careful, don’t step on this grass. Judging by the looks it’s a spirit herb. Even if we can’t find him, we can at least pick these.”

They were still debating which way to search when a fireball suddenly shot from the dark, streaked to explode above their heads like a firework. Sparks drifted down and fell into the purple grass.

“It’s the Fireball technique!”

Before they could find who had cast it, more flames stirred in the woods—more precisely, Fire Puppets. They did not attack the three, but sent flames to burn the grass around them.

By then the purple grass had begun to exude threads of purple mist, which the three inhaled into their lungs.

“Cough, cough… what smoke is this?”

“It’s coming from the spirit herbs… cough, cough!”

Very quickly the poison took hold. Dizziness, parched mouth, coughing, spinning vision, limp limbs, as if a knife had been driven into their five viscera and six bowels and then ruthlessly churned to pulp.

“This is… what is this… heh…”

“Fire… Fire Puppet? Whose…”

A name that should not have been possible flashed through Han Cheng Yun’s mind; he glared around with bulging eyes and shouted into the trees: “Come out!”

“Stop skulking!”

“You’ve succeeded with your scheme, so what? Now you still… heh… don’t dare come out?”