Chapter 102

Chapter 102: The Evil Cultivator’s Mark

The group had been on edge for three days. Now they finally entered Wan Ruo City. The first thing they did was rent a small courtyard. Each person took a room and started to rest.

After Yun Xi opened the isolation formation, she took out her own formation plate and activated it. During her time away from the sect, she had used this formation plate more than anything else, and it made her truly understand how important a high-level formation plate was.

She planned to learn how to carve formation plates once she got back to the sect. The path of formations was vast and profound. Used well, it could stand against an army.

Only then did Dian Dian crawl out from Yun Xi’s chest. Its little nose twitched, and it sent a voice transmission, “Master, after you fought the bad things, you got marked.”

Yun Xi’s hand froze as she sorted spirit stones. She immediately yanked Dian Dian out of her robes and asked, “Dian Dian, did you smell something?”

Dian Dian’s black ears twitched. It gave a small nod. “Yes, Master. That smell is awful.”

It sniffed again as it spoke.

“Can you smell where the bad things’ mark is?”

Dian Dian gestured for Yun Xi to put it down. Then it circled its master once. In the end, it pointed a little paw at Yun Xi’s boots. “Master, it’s here.”

Yun Xi swept with her divine sense and found a black dot the size of a mung bean stuck to the bottom of her boot. If she didn’t deliberately scan with divine sense, there was no way to notice it.

Even if she did notice, she’d probably ignore it – unless she walked without touching the ground.

“How unlucky!”

Yun Xi couldn’t sit still anymore. She stuffed Dian Dian into her robes and went out alone, heading straight for the Treasure Pavilion in Wan Ruo City.

When an attendant came up to greet her, Yun Xi said, “I want to buy a pair of boots.”

“This way, Fellow Daoist.”

The attendant smiled and raised a hand, leading Yun Xi into a small private room. After a moment, he carried in three pairs of boots.

“Fellow Daoist, these are the boots in the Treasure Pavilion that suit you best.”

Then he introduced each pair, from appearance to refining materials to effects. He even thoughtfully described each pair’s small flaws.

Yun Xi took a liking to the Ru Yi Boots. They were refined from the silk of a ghost-faced spider. Besides the basic functions of repelling dust and resisting water and fire, the boots could also change color to match the appearance of the robes their owner wore.

They also increased speed by twenty percent. The only drawback was that the boots looked ordinary, just the most basic style of women’s boots, with no decorations on the surface at all.

“Fellow Daoist, don’t let the plain look fool you. These boots are very cost-effective. One pair can match any robe. They’re well worth buying.

“For cultivators, these things are only support. There’s no need to make them fancy and showy.”

The attendant really knew how to sell. What he said hit Yun Xi right in the heart. She had wanted to keep a low profile in the first place.

These boots fit her needs. After asking the price, she spent the two thousand low-grade spirit stones she had gotten from the evil cultivators’ pouch. Then she put on the new boots on the spot and waved for the attendant to deal with the old pair.

Her original boots had been issued by the sect, with only the basic dust-repelling function. She didn’t feel bad tossing them. She was mainly doing it to get rid of the mark.

After adjusting the new boots to a light gray to match her robes, she returned to the courtyard. Then she had Dian Dian sniff again. Once she confirmed the smell was gone, she finally relaxed.

“Dian Dian, only Senior Sister Mu and I stepped out of the formation at the time. Was that when I got marked?”

“Probably.”

“The methods of these evil cultivators are really creepy,” Yun Xi said with a frown.

“Master, tomorrow it’s best to let Dian Dian sniff that Senior Sister Mu. What if she got marked too? You travel together. Even if you remove your mark, it’s useless. Those bad things can still find you.”

Dian Dian swished its tail.

“You’re right. Being careful can’t hurt. But I think the two from the Hundred Flowers Pavilion are probably in danger.”

Yun Xi felt the odds of them being marked were even higher. They had fought the evil cultivators for so long, especially Liu Hao Tian, who had been injured by them. That made it even easier to track him.

They weren’t close, but they were still righteous cultivators. Yun Xi took out her message talisman and warned Yu Qing Cheng. Whether the other side believed it or not wasn’t her problem.

Yu Qing Cheng froze for a moment when she received Yun Xi’s message talisman. She hadn’t expected Yun Xi to send a message right after they separated. After listening to the content, her face changed, and she immediately knocked on Senior Brother Liu’s door.

Liu Hao Tian had just forced that trace of sinister qi out of his face, swallowed a spirit-replenishing pill, and was refining it. When the formation was tapped, he stopped cultivating and opened the door to see his junior sister’s grim expression.

“Junior Sister Yu, what is it?”

“Senior Brother Liu, we need to leave Wan Ruo City as soon as possible. It’s best if we take the teleportation formation straight back to the Hundred Flowers Pavilion. We might have been marked by evil cultivators.”

“How could that be? I’ve already forced the sinister qi out of my body,” Liu Hao Tian frowned.

“It was the fellow Daoist from the Hao Ran Sect who sent me a message. She said her boot soles were marked by evil cultivators. If it weren’t for her spirit pet’s sharp nose, she wouldn’t have even noticed.”

“The bottom of her boots?”

After hearing that, Liu Hao Tian instinctively lifted his own boots and scanned with divine sense, but he didn’t find anything unusual.

Yu Qing Cheng said, “Senior Brother Liu, evil cultivators have strange, unpredictable methods. We fought them for so long. There’s no way they didn’t do something to us.

“Do you remember? We used a Random Teleport Talisman to shake them off, but the next day they caught up again. That couldn’t have been coincidence.

“And the evil cultivators chasing us kept getting stronger. In the end, they even switched to late Foundation Establishment cultivators. It was obvious they wanted to capture us alive.”

Liu Hao Tian’s brows furrowed too. He naturally trusted his junior sister. If not for her protecting him with her life, he would have been taken long ago. So he said decisively, “Let’s go now.”

After the two checked out, they went straight to Wan Ruo City’s Teleportation Hall. This area was not far from the Bao Hua Mountain Range, so the nearby cities all had teleportation formations.

On top of that, the Bao Hua Mountain Range had shown strange signs before, so a large number of cultivators had rushed over. The teleportation formations had been busy for a while, and even now cultivators were still coming.

But few cultivators were leaving, so Yu Qing Cheng and Liu Hao Tian didn’t wait long in line. They entered the Teleportation Hall, paid spirit stones, and teleported to the city closest to the Hundred Flowers Pavilion.

Not long after they teleported away, two black-clad cultivators chased to the Teleportation Hall, but they were one step too late.

“They got away!”

“Xue Ao said they ran into help, but he already marked them. Do we chase?”

The other man hesitated, then said, “The other side has a Nascent Soul Stage cultivator guarding them. We’d better not expose ourselves. As long as that little disciple is still out training, we’ll be able to find her trail.”

“Yes!”

The other man was clearly unwilling. The fat sheep that had been right at their lips had run away like that, and they had even lost three late Foundation Establishment cultivators. Just thinking about it made him feel stifled.

In the end, the two left the Teleportation Hall with dark faces.

On the other side, Yun Xi had already brought Dian Dian to visit Mu Ning Zhu, and they found an evil cultivator’s mark on her as well.

Only this time, the mark was in Mu Ning Zhu’s hair, and it made her face turn green with anger.