Chapter 78
Chapter 78: Meeting an Acquaintance
Oppressed to the point of speechlessness, Gao Zheng’s four could only obey. Once she had the spoils, Rong Shu let them go.
Only after the four slunk off, tails between their legs, did Cheng Bu Fan find a moment to thank her. He said: “Thanks a lot. I am Cheng Bu Fan. What is your name? How about being friends? You—”
Rong Shu cut him off and said: “Pay up.”
“Ah?” Cheng Bu Fan blinked.
Rong Shu smiled and held out her hand for payment. With this face on, she could not possibly reminisce with Cheng Bu Fan. Better to take the money.
In the end, she took a single Seven Illusion Azure Lotus from Cheng Bu Fan’s hand and, under his dazed gaze, drifted away. If not for the fact that he had a task requiring a breakthrough to the Foundation Establishment Stage, she would have taken at least two.
After solving Cheng Bu Fan’s trouble, Rong Shu moved on. “Where to next?” she wondered. The area she was in now was not the western region where she had encountered the giant beast and the Little White Tiger. The monsters in the west might be that giant beast’s underlings. She did not have the face to go over there and take advantage.
So she came to the eastern region instead.
She wanted to harvest some leeks, but every disciple she met on the way was extremely wary. From far off, the ones with lower cultivation saw that she was a woman and ran. After several tries, she had no gains at all and had to set aside her main business of sparring, turning to the side business of picking herbs.
She wanted to find Qingyang Grass to refine a Foundation Establishment Pill. On the way, if she saw herbs of only ordinary quality, she skipped them to save time.
“I remember Qingyang Grass likes shady places, especially tree hollows, caves, even inside animal corpses…” she murmured.
She searched for several days. Whenever she ran into monsters blocking her path and judged she could win, she drew her blades without politeness. Through fight after fight, she slowly formed a personal style and battle sense. When danger loomed, muscle memory triggered and her blades were already up to meet it.
As the battles piled up, she felt a faint loosening in her dark attribute cultivation. The fighting factor in her body had been awakened; her comprehension of the dark attribute deepened with each tempering.
Though she had never learned any darkness arts, she used her rest breaks to devise new applications for dark qi. Thinking it over, she actually worked out a little.
[Concealment]: hide one’s entire form within shadows and wait for the killing moment.
[Stealth]: wherever there is a shadow, move freely through it.
If the opponent lacked means to counter it, so long as shadows existed nearby, Rong Shu could take her stand in the shadows and remain invincible.
On the seventh day, she finally found Qingyang Grass. Unfortunately, a fourth-rank Gold Armored Serpent had claimed it.
As the name implies, a Gold Armored Serpent was sheathed head to tail in something like golden armor, extremely hard, nearly immune to ordinary blades. Fortunately, it was not venomous, merely hard-headed.
Rong Shu first studied the terrain. This patch of forest was thickly grown. Sunlight fell in shafts, laying a lattice of tree shadows on the ground. With a plan settled, she waited for the serpent to doze, then slipped soundlessly into the nearest shadow.
Borrowing the links between each patch of shade, she crept to the serpent’s side. The Gold Armored Serpent seemed to sense an intruder’s presence and grew agitated, but, seeing no one, it could only circle in frustration.
Rong Shu seized the moment. She burst from the shadow, Twin Blades stabbing straight for the serpent’s seven-inch point.
“Hiss!” Struck at its seven inches, the serpent screamed and whipped its head toward the human who had suddenly leapt out. But that blow alone did not end it. Its whole body was tough, and her Twin Blades were not of particularly high grade; she could not kill in one strike.
“Fire Snake,” she whispered. Flame poured over the blades. Like two nimble serpents of fire, it coiled around the Gold Armored Serpent.
“Hisss!” The snake lashed its tail in fury, trying to pancake her. Rong Shu spun up Gale Step beneath her feet and, instead of retreating, darted forward, skimming past the sweeping tail by a hair.
Then she flicked her wrist. The tips of the Twin Blades drove into the serpent’s eye.
Hissing rose in a frenzy. She split her focus, carving new wounds while stoking the flames, roasting the snake from head to tail. The serpent might scoff at blades, but at the fourth rank it could not withstand fire.
In the end, her fire-attrition tactics wore the Gold Armored Serpent down to death.
As it died, Rong Shu felt her dark attribute cultivation rise.
She muttered under her breath: “I am a good person, I am a good person, I am a good person. I am a good cultivator, I am a good cultivator, I am a good cultivator,” and set about, quick and clean, peeling the serpent and taking the bones. Demon Core, snake skin, snake gall—she grew happier the more she harvested. These were all treasures she could trade for Spirit Stones.
With the Qingyang Grass in hand, she did not rush to refine a Foundation Establishment Pill. She had only one Pill Furnace; she did not dare use it again lightly. If it exploded one more time, she would be out of furnaces.
Having found the Qingyang Grass, she felt this secret-realm training run had gone splendidly. Enough time had passed that her devilish persona ought to be put away, and the real “Rong Shu” should come out for a stroll.
However, less than a day after she restored her true appearance, Yu Ruan Ruan found her. Yu Ruan Ruan ran over with bright enthusiasm and said: “Junior sister, I finally found you!”
Rong Shu blinked and began: “Senior Sister Yu, you—” when a scream cut her off.
“Help!”
She turned and saw a chubby young man sobbing loudly as he ran toward them, a swarm of Poison Tail Bees behind him in a berserk state. Rong Shu registered his face.
Oh. An “acquaintance.”
She had met this particular acquaintance in the secret realm. She had robbed so many times that, out of caution, she had almost never overturned. This seemingly noisy little fatty had only the fourth layer of Qi Refining, and yet he had wanted to engage in friendly sparring. Who would have thought he would pull out one flashy treasure after another—Defensive Talismans, defensive formations, defensive magical tools—spending as if Spirit Stones were nothing.
Such a tycoon’s fighting style left pauper Rong Shu stunned. In the end, the stone was too tough to gnaw and she gave up, which made him memorable.
“Help!” the little fatty was still shouting. Rong Shu lifted a hand, gathered a ball of flame, and hurled it behind him. Poison Tail Bees feared fire; the glare and heat made them break off the chase.
Saved, the little fatty blew out a breath and hurried over to thank her. He said: “Many thanks, young lady, for saving my life. I cannot repay you properly. Here are 500 Spirit Stones as a small token.”
To Rong Shu’s astonishment, he handed over 500 Spirit Stones on the spot, so readily and generously that even Yu Ruan Ruan, standing to the side, failed to react for a moment.
Yu Ruan Ruan could not help asking: “Junior sister, do you know this fellow disciple?”
Rong Shu shook her head and said: “No.”
The little fatty chimed in, utterly at home: “Then we know each other now!”
Rong Shu: ah, this…
Just then, the System in Yu Ruan Ruan’s mind spoke up: [This little fatty has pretty good fortune.]
Yu Ruan Ruan’s eyes lit. “Truly?”
[Much higher than the average person.]
With that confirmation, her thoughts turned, and she tried to cozy up to the little fatty. It backfired. He had little interest in Yu Ruan Ruan and preferred to stick close to Rong Shu.
With an outsider present, Rong Shu did not show off. She traveled quietly. During brief rests, she took out some ordinary herbs and processed them on the spot into little snacks.
At those times the little fatty would sidle over, asking with curiosity: “Can this be eaten?”
She answered: “Yes. Try it.”
“Wow, it really is edible. Sweet and sour,” he said. “And this one…”
When he asked where she had found so many odd herbs, Rong Shu slipped out the cover story she had prepared: “I stumbled on a patch where the herbs were special and tasted great. I stayed there for almost two months.”
“So that is how it is!” the little fatty said in sudden understanding.
Rong Shu then asked how he had provoked the Poison Tail Bees, and with so many treasures on him, how he had ended up chased so far. He explained: “I wanted to sneak a taste of their honey, then they chased me… I do have treasures for self-defense, but since I was stealing honey, beating them up felt a bit immoral, hehe.”
While Rong Shu and the little fatty chatted away, the Feng family siblings tasked with protecting Yu Ruan Ruan sensibly kept their distance. So long as she did not need anything, they did not crowd her and invite boredom. In the end, it felt like Yu Ruan Ruan was the one everyone ignored.
She tried more than once to join the conversation, but failed each time. The little fatty even turned to her with a look that said she was strange and asked: “Do you need something? If not, please do not interrupt, all right?”
Yu Ruan Ruan: …
Ahhh. This little fatty had no sense of romance at all. His eyes held only eat, eat, eat. Serves him right that he is chubby.
On the last day of the secret-realm training, Rong Shu’s party arrived early at the designated site, waiting for the elders outside to open the exit. An hour later, the exit opened.
As Rong Shu neared it, Yu Ruan Ruan asked the System in anxious urgency: “What do I do? I still never had a chance to act…”
These past few days, the little fatty had stuck to Rong Shu like glue. She could not make a move. Though his cultivation was low, his body bristled with treasures, and Yu Ruan Ruan could not be sure she could eliminate the two of them without leaving any trace.
[Idiot,] the System snapped. Yu Ruan Ruan seethed but did not dare show it, waiting for the System to offer a plan.
[There is a long road ahead. Rong Shu is only at the Qi Refining Stage. Break through to the Foundation Establishment Stage as soon as possible, suppress her completely, and weaken her fortune,] it instructed.
Yu Ruan Ruan clenched her palm and said: “All right.”