Chapter 356

Chapter 356: Steal His Beast and Ask Him How to Raise It?

The man shook his head in a panic and blurted out: “I’m not acting-I truly feel sorry. And before this, I absolutely didn’t know what my son did. If I had known, I wouldn’t have come to you.”

Yu Zhi Yi’s red lips curved as she asked with a light smile: “Tang Ming Xuan and the others-were they captured by you?” Tang Ming Xuan was Marquis Wu’an’s heir apparent.

She spoke calmly, step by step: “Right around the day I killed Ji Guang Dai, you arrived at Juxian Manor. Your first plan was to kill me and avenge your son. But then you discovered I was stronger than you, so you didn’t dare fight me head-on. You set traps and lured me in.”

She tapped the table with a finger and explained: “That’s also why I didn’t see death aura on Marquis Wu’an’s heir apparent and the others earlier, yet they were still trapped-because the demonic cultivator’s father came to take revenge for his son.”

Her tone stayed even as she laid out his thinking: “After you locked Marquis Wu’an’s heir apparent and his group away, you felt that chip might not be enough. On the surface, they’re only my bodyguards. Usually employers and bodyguards sign waiver contracts. If bodyguards die to save their employer, or if they get in trouble because of the employer, the employer has no duty to rescue them.”

She looked him in the eye and added: “As long as you pay the bodyguards’ families afterward, you think the matter ends. In your eyes, life is cheap. Hired bodyguards are even lower in status and not worth much.”

She continued: “To be safe, you changed a stretch of forest near Juxian Manor with an illusion formation, making people think the forest turned into a wasteland overnight, so they’d walk in.”

Yu Zhi Yi sighed and admitted without hurry: “Your skill with formations is high, and I’m not truly expert at formations, so I didn’t catch it at first. You also bribed people to spread the rumor that the forest became a wasteland in one night. You wanted to deepen my impression so I wouldn’t suspect the ‘wasteland’ itself was a formation.”

Her gaze cooled: “At the beginning I did fall into that trap. Their disappearance was strange, and there are formations on Juxian Manor itself, so it was reasonable to think that forest was also a formation.”

She tipped her head slightly: “Everything that came after was set to take my life. The fruit grove in particular-besides the wedding illusion that just made me think I was getting married-that grove was the most dangerous of all your arrays.”

The man could no longer pretend. He stared at Yu Zhi Yi, hatred burning in his eyes, and admitted coldly: “You’re smart. You even guessed that.”

He let out a breath and said through his teeth: “Those fruits are called Boluo Fruit. It’s a poison that kills fast once it touches blood. Not only the flesh is toxic-the scent carries poison, too. As soon as you smell it, a cultivator’s spiritual energy will be sealed.”

His mouth twisted with grim pride as he described his “perfect” killing move: “A starving, thirsty person steps onto green grass and the first thing they see is bright red fruit. It even looks familiar-just like apples you see everywhere in the mortal world. It’s hard to resist. Even if someone is careful, they’ll probably pick one up and touch it. The moment she brings it to her lips, she breathes in the scent. At that point, whether she eats the fruit no longer matters.”

He snorted: “That’s why Jinlin rushed over when it saw you give up on picking the fruit-we never expected you to eat it. We only wanted you to smell it.”

“As for that lovely place with clear mountains and water and thick spiritual energy,” he went on, “the real trap there was the ‘pit’ made by the overly rich spiritual energy. No matter how pure heaven-and-earth spiritual energy is, it still has impurities. During normal cultivation, people draw spiritual energy into the dantian, expel the impurities, and keep the pure part.”

He spread his hands and confessed the trick: “Most people don’t think about what the ‘impurities’ could be. I laced the air itself with poison. No cultivator can refuse thick spiritual energy. Who wouldn’t be tempted to take advantage of it? If you sat down to absorb it, you would’ve been poisoned.”

He grimaced, remembering the scare: “Too bad you didn’t fall for it. You even wanted to drain the lake. The lake water was only a cover. I hid spirit stones under it to make the spiritual energy rich-eighteen stones in all! If you had really taken those spirit stones, I would’ve spit blood.”

“So I hurried to use my ultimate move. I’m best at building illusions from whatever a person longs for inside. My illusions don’t just look real-they shake the mind. That’s why you felt hungry and thirsty: the formation was tugging at your heart.”

His eyes darkened as he described the last trap: “In the final wedding illusion, the moment you walked in, your mind was influenced. You forgot who you were and thought you were a bride-to-be. The pit there was the cup of nuptial wine. The cross-cup wine was poisoned. Once you drank, you would die.”

He ground out, bitter and unwilling: “I never thought you’d wake up so fast and pour the wine down my throat. So even if you hadn’t fed me soft-bone powder, I would’ve soon lost my strength from the poison.”

Then he exploded in rage, spitting out his contempt: “You’re a woman and you don’t long for a perfect wedding-are you even a woman!?”

[A summer insect can’t talk about ice.] Uninterested in explaining morals to him, Yu Zhi Yi simply slapped a truth-telling talisman onto his chest.

He recognized it at once. His pupils shrank and he clenched his jaw hard. It was useless.

Yu Zhi Yi asked coolly: “That snake-like thing-what is it?”

The man shook his head wildly. He must not say! But his mouth ignored his will and answered on its own: “It’s called Jinlin. It’s a spirit beast cub.”

“Oh? How strong is it?” she asked.

Still fighting and still failing, he answered stiffly: “At its strongest during the cub stage, a Jinlin can match a late-stage Foundation Establishment expert. As an adult, it can kill a Nascent Soul Realm expert in one strike. Right now it’s newly born, only about as strong as a human cultivator at mid-stage Qi Refining.”

Yu Zhi Yi’s heart gave a small jump: [That strong?] A cub that could reach late-stage Foundation Establishment was a fine helper. If she raised it to adulthood, it would be a terrifying asset.

“Second question,” she said without pause, “what does Jinlin eat?”

He went stiff as wood as the truth spilled out: “Meat from spirit beasts and demonic beasts.”

Yu Zhi Yi fell silent: […And where am I supposed to find those?] So she followed through at once: “Third question: where can I get spirit beast and demonic beast meat?”

“Don’t go too far!” the man snapped, eyes blazing. He was about to collapse from frustration. In his mind he raged: she wanted to snatch his beast and still make him teach her how to feed it?

…