Chapter 185

Chapter 185: Staying in the Space for Now

“Fei Xia, how is it outside? Are there still any cultivators who haven’t left?”

As Fei Xia received Yun Xi’s voice transmission, it flicked its butterfly wings once and replied, “Master, most people outside have already left, but there’s someone you wouldn’t expect standing guard here.”

“Who?”

“Li Chang, the cultivator who ambushed the four of you at the border of the mortal world.”

When Yun Xi heard that, her brows knitted tightly. That City Lord Li really was like a lingering ghost. Last time, he had been scared off by Liu Hao Tian’s master, True Lord Qing Zhu, so why was he showing up at Yan Dang Mountain again?

“Master, I suggest you don’t leave the space for now. That guy is hard to deal with. I don’t dare get too close to him. You should wait a bit longer.”

Yun Xi was also speechless. She seemed to attract people like this. Demonic cultivators, or those close to them, were like annoying flies. The moment she appeared, they swarmed her. And the demonic cultivators she ran into were always stronger than her, forcing her to lie low. It was suffocating.

“Fine. I get it. I’m not a match for True Lord Li Chang, so I’ll hide for now. I just hope I won’t miss the sect tournament. Fei Xia, you should stay farther away too. Don’t let him spot you. As long as I don’t summon you, you don’t need to contact me on your own. Yan Dang Mountain is a nice place – you can move around freely.”

After one person and one butterfly finished communicating, they cut off contact. Fei Xia worried that if it exposed itself, it would make that human cultivator suspicious. It flapped its wings once and flew away.

Li Chang’s divine sense caught the Fei Xia butterfly leaving, but he did not move at all. That Fei Xia butterfly had lingered nearby for a while. After he arrived, it retreated even farther away. Now it flew off entirely, which likely meant its master had completely given up.

Yet he had a gut feeling that the strange flame was still nearby, only hidden. So he chose to keep waiting here.

Someone had informed him to look for the Profound Thunder Violet Flame, but by the time he reached Yan Dang Mountain, it seemed he was already too late. He heard that a Nascent Soul True Lord had swept up the Hao Ran Sect disciple who last touched the strange flame and left. The man was probably planning to take both the strange flame and the cultivator in one go.

He could not squeeze out any more details, so Li Chang decided to stay.

Ever since his son had activated the Nine-Wheel Sacrifice Formation ahead of time to revive Qiu Shui, he had known his dealings with demonic cultivators would be exposed sooner or later. To protect himself, he had not hesitated to execute his son in public. For Minor Ascension, he had already paid too much.

After losing his son, he had been ready to fade from everyone’s sight and wait until the matter was forgotten before acting again. But those demonic cultivators came to him and told him they had a way to revive his son. He believed them.

He then took his son’s corpse to the mortal world. When he learned they planned to refine his son into a zombie, he hesitated. But in the end, his guilt toward his son overcame a cultivator’s principles. He wanted his son to live again, even if it took such a cruel method.

After that, everything went smoothly for a while, until a group of cultivators who accidentally ended up in the mortal world shattered his hope.

They actually summoned Nine Heavens Profound Thunder to destroy the corpse-nurturing ground, and it was Three-Nine Tribulation Lightning at that. That was Nascent Soul Thunder Tribulation. When he rushed over to investigate, he sensed a powerful Divine Transformation Stage divine-sense pressure. It forced him to back down.

But after leaving the mortal world, he still refused to accept it. He wanted to know who had completely ruined his son’s chance at rebirth, so he waited at the border between the Cultivation World and the mortal world. He ended up encountering one Golden Core cultivator and three Foundation Establishment cultivators.

He planned to kill the three Foundation Establishment cultivators, then capture the Golden Core cultivator alive. He wanted to force out everything that had happened in the mortal world. Unfortunately, that Qing Zhu bastard appeared again, and his plan failed once more.

After Qing Zhu took those four people away, he returned to the mortal world to see whether the corpse-nurturing ground could still be salvaged. But it had been set with formations and had completely lost its function.

Just as he was about to contact the demonic cultivators, another group of cultivators entered the mortal world. The leader was actually Qing Zhu again. This time they did not enter to search for him. Instead, they stationed cultivators in cities all across the mortal world to watch for disturbances.

To avoid panic, the cultivators disguised themselves as mortals and mingled in the marketplaces. They called it “entering the world to train,” but it made the demonic cultivators lying low in the mortal world even less willing to act rashly. They all tucked in their tails.

And the Cultivation World did not send only this one group. They sent them long-term, using a five-year assignment cycle.

The first batch of cultivators who entered the mortal world understood clearly: they were dispatched because demonic cultivators had been discovered here. So they kept their eyes wide open and frequently released their divine sense to search everywhere, afraid they would miss a demonic cultivator and lose their chance to earn sect rewards.

Because of this move from the Cultivation World, the demonic cultivators who had been hiding in the mortal world had no choice but to abandon their plan to kidnap people and raise them as furnaces. Some demonic cultivators even took a detour and returned to the Lofty Spirit Realm.

Without realizing it, Yun Xi and the others had ruined the demonic cultivators’ plans again.

And as an ally of the demonic cultivators, Li Chang suddenly had a use. This deal to search for the strange flame had also been proposed by them.

Li Chang did not know what they wanted to do, but the demonic cultivators promised that as long as Li Chang obtained the strange flame, they would take him through another passage to the Lofty Spirit Realm.

Li Chang knew exactly what he wanted. The cultivation environment in the Upper Realm was better, and it would definitely let him reach the Divine Transformation Stage sooner. So he came.

If Li Chang ever found out that the one person who had made him fail again and again from start to finish was Yun Xi alone, he would probably want to carve Yun Xi alive.

But right now, with a space separating them, Li Chang did not know the culprit he had been hunting was right here, and the strange flame he wanted had already recognized Yun Xi as its master.

Yun Xi stayed hidden in the space and did not dare make any reckless moves. Aside from cultivating, she drew talismans. After using up all her blank talisman paper, she took out the Purple Jade Coiling Dragon Cauldron and prepared to have Zi Yan work with her to refine pills.

But when she summoned Zi Yan out of her dantian, it looked down on the Purple Jade Coiling Dragon Cauldron.

“This little cauldron won’t survive my burning. If the pills fail, the pill cauldron will end up scrapped instead.”

Yun Xi pressed her fingers to her forehead. Ancestor Feng had already told her about this. She had planned to visit Artifact-Refining Peak after returning to the sect and add materials to upgrade the Purple Jade Coiling Dragon Cauldron, but she did not expect Zi Yan to bring it up first.

“That will have to wait until I’m back at the sect. Your master doesn’t have suitable materials on hand right now.”

Zi Yan flickered once and asked, “Didn’t you take Lei Hong Xuan’s storage ring? Search it.”

Yun Xi spread her hands. “The resources inside were already used up by him. There are only two jade slips with cultivation arts, some empty pill bottles, and a black lump that I can’t tell what it is…”

Zi Yan said, “Master, take that black lump out and let me see.”

“Oh, okay!”

Yun Xi brushed her hand over the storage ring and took out the black lump.

Zi Yan instantly wrapped around it. After burning it for a quarter of an hour, Zi Yan returned to Yun Xi’s palm as a flame and gave her good news.

“Master, you’re lucky. This is a thousand-year Purple-Gold Meteorite Iron Stone that Lei Hong Xuan found.”