Chapter 31
Chapter 31: I Want It! I Want That Too! I Want More!
Shao Heng’s thoughts churned.
Zhu Wu Shuang didn’t look older than her. Yet she spoke of stalling a snake on the verge of late First Realm with the ease of someone who’d done it before. That meant she was at least mid-stage First Realm—and not the kind who’d barely scraped there. She must have started cultivating as a child, with family resources or sect backing.
No Lower Grade aptitude climbed that fast without something more.
“Well, Sister Yan Ning?” Zhu Wu Shuang prompted, smile still bright.
Shao Heng let envy show on her face, the kind that came easy when there was truth behind it. “I never expected Fellow Cultivator Wu Shuang to be only a little older than me and already mid-stage First Realm, with the strength to duel a Snake Demon. That’s truly…”
She bit her lip, hesitated just long enough to look torn, then nodded.
“Thank you for thinking highly of me, Fellow Cultivator Wu Shuang. I’m willing to do what little I can.”
Zhu Wu Shuang looked satisfied, as if the answer were a reward. “Good. The snake den is on this mountain.”
She spoke briskly now, laying out her plan like someone who’d rehearsed it. “Even after becoming a demon, snakes don’t lose their hibernation instincts. Lately that white Snake Demon has been sluggish. When the jade fruit ripens, I’ll lure it away. It won’t suspect a diversion so easily. You seize the chance, take the fruit, and we’re done.”
A Second Grade treasure herb was worth more than 10 times a First Grade one, and rarer by far.
Shao Heng nodded. “All right.”
She added, warm with just the right amount of admiration, “Fellow Cultivator Wu Shuang has planned everything so well. We’ll succeed for sure.”
Zhu Wu Shuang’s expression pleased itself, her smile deepening without her noticing. “Then I’ll take you there now. The jade fruit should ripen in about half a day. I couldn’t find anyone I trust to help on short notice, but you and I hit it off the moment we met. So I asked you.”
Shao Heng offered no objections.
They moved through snow like wraiths, concealing their auras and stepping where wind had already scoured the ground clean, leaving no tracks behind them. After about a quarter-hour, Zhu Wu Shuang slowed and pointed.
A cave mouth lay half-hidden beneath withered grass and a thin layer of snow. From a distance, it was almost indistinguishable from the surrounding rock.
Shao Heng scanned the area, spiritual sense stretched taut. Nothing seemed off.
No rot stench drifted from the entrance. Instead, a faint, elegant fragrance lingered in the air—cool and clean, threaded with something sharp enough to make the mind alert.
It matched what she’d read: Bone-Shedding Scarlet Flower had eight lotus-shaped petals and a clear scent that could spread for a mile.
Zhu Wu Shuang, dressed in plain white, blended into the snow as she sent a voice transmission. “The Snake Demon is inside. Demon Clan bodies are strong, but their souls are weaker. At the same realm, their spiritual sense is far inferior to Human Clan cultivators. As long as we hide our auras well, we probably won’t be noticed.”
Her gaze flicked toward the cave entrance. “This fragrance is from the scarlet flower. It’ll grow fainter and fainter until it vanishes. That moment is when the flower withers and the fruit forms. I’ll time it, draw the Snake Demon out at the critical moment, and then you go in.”
Shao Heng nodded once and settled into stillness beside her.
[Once I get the jade fruit, refining a Second Grade treasure herb will push my cultivation further. I’ll condense 600 furnaces of spiritual power and break into late First Realm. Then, when I enter the Mystic Moon Secret Realm, my odds will be much better.]
Time crawled.
When the fragrance suddenly began to fade—fast, like a candle snuffed—Zhu Wu Shuang moved.
She burst straight into the cave.
The moment she acted, concealment became meaningless. Her spiritual power flared, and Shao Heng sensed it clearly at last.
More than 580 furnaces.
Shao Heng’s fists tightened. Her whole body felt like an arrow drawn to breaking.
A muffled impact sounded from within.
Then a hiss, violent and enraged.
A white blur shot out of the cave after Zhu Wu Shuang.
The Snake Demon’s true body was enormous—over 10 feet long, closer to a python than an ordinary snake. Its scales were dense and pure white; against the snow, it almost vanished, leaving only the black slit of its pupils and the blood-red tongue that flicked out again and again, like a threat you couldn’t look away from.
Its tail was bound by a strip of blue silk, the other end clenched in Zhu Wu Shuang’s hand. No matter how it twisted, it could only be dragged.
And it didn’t dare fight with full abandon. The jade fruit was forming. A reckless clash at the mouth of its den might ruin what it had guarded for years.
Zhu Wu Shuang hauled it farther out, breath steady despite the strain. The moment she saw a figure slip into the cave, her brows lifted and a cold sneer curved her mouth.
“Perfect,” she whispered.
Inside the cave, Shao Heng sprinted.
Thirty-six slender jade-white needles floated around her like pale moths, poised to strike. The air was damp and cold, the stone slick beneath her boots.
At the far end, blue crystals embedded in the rock wall cast a dim glow. Above, a jagged hole opened to the sky, letting gray daylight spill down in a narrow shaft.
She followed the fading scent to its source.
A red flower grew from a crack in the wall, its last petal trembling on the verge of falling. In its center hung six pale pink fruits, clustered like berries.
The petal dropped.
In the same breath, the fruits shifted, their color warming into orange-gold.
Shao Heng took a step—
Three white shadows launched at her.
At the same time, three foul jets of liquid shot straight for her face.
The Jade Bee Needles flashed. They struck the venom midair, shredding it into scattered droplets that hissed as they hit stone.
Shao Heng’s body blurred. Her movement technique burst to life, and she flickered sideways, distance opening in a blink.
The Thousand-Strike Bow was already in her hand.
She drew with three fingers, condensing three arrows of spiritual power at once, and loosed them.
The arrows hit cleanly.
The white shadows—thin white snakes, clearly the offspring of the larger Snake Demon—screeched as they were pinned to the wall, bodies twisting in agony.
Shao Heng didn’t hesitate. She triggered the arrows.
Three explosions, one after another. Flesh and blood splattered the stone.
“Hmph.”
She’d known it wouldn’t be that simple.
These three Snake Demons were weaker than the one Zhu Wu Shuang fought outside, but each was still early First Realm. Against an ordinary cultivator at the same stage, three of them together would’ve been a death sentence.
But Shao Heng wasn’t ordinary.
She reached out with spiritual power, plucked the six orange-gold jade fruits from their stems, and dropped them into a jade box already waiting in her palm. A sealing spell snapped shut, locking the medicinal aura inside. Then the box vanished into her ring.
Bow in hand, she sprinted back toward the cave mouth.
Outside, Zhu Wu Shuang was still fighting the white Snake Demon, rainbow light shimmering around her as she lashed with the silk ribbon. The Snake Demon retreated again and again, pressed by a strength that made a mockery of her earlier claim that she could only “stall it.”
Shao Heng raised her voice and called from afar, bright and clear.
“Don’t worry, Fellow Cultivator Wu Shuang! I followed your plan, killed all the little Snake Demons in the cave, and took the jade fruit. Now all that’s left is for you to finish off that white Snake Demon too!”
The snake’s pupils narrowed to knives.
A beast that awakened into a demon gained intelligence. At First Realm perfection, it could refine a throat bone and speak. At Second Realm, it could take human form. Even now, its understanding was near human—and it grasped Shao Heng’s meaning instantly.
A howl tore from its throat. It threw itself at Zhu Wu Shuang with desperate ferocity.
For the first time, Zhu Wu Shuang’s composure cracked.
Shao Heng watched her panic flash, and a cold snort rose in her chest.
Zhu Wu Shuang knew there were six jade fruits. She must have entered the den before. She must have known three offspring were hidden inside—yet she’d never mentioned them.
The fruit cleansed tendons and bones. The Snake Demon had likely saved it for its young.
Zhu Wu Shuang could handle a mid-stage First Realm Snake Demon, but she couldn’t spare attention to stop the little snakes from devouring the fruit. So she needed a second person.
Someone just strong enough to be held in place by the three offspring.
Someone who would die in the den—quietly, conveniently—while she finished the larger prey outside.
Wasn’t that exactly what she’d tried to make of Shao Heng?
Shao Heng lifted her bow toward Zhu Wu Shuang’s back, calm as still water, and began to condense an arrow.
Let mutual destruction be between that white Snake Demon and Zhu Wu Shuang.
Six Bone-Shedding Jade Fruit—she wanted them.
The materials from a mid-stage First Realm Snake Demon’s corpse—she wanted those too.
And the treasures on that cultivator surnamed Zhu—
Shao Heng’s eyes cooled.
She wanted those most of all.