Chapter 184: Preparing for the Hunt
“Brother Wang, what did you talk to them about just now?” Pei Ziao hadn’t followed Wang ng over to talk with Yun Ruoyao and Yi Qianying, so he was curious as to what they had discussed.
“I invited Yun Ruoyao and Yi Qianying to form a group with us.” While Wang ng didn’t hide anything from Pei Ziao, the fact that he’d advanced such an invitation without discussing it with Pei Ziao beforehand made him very uncomfortable.
Furthermore, Pei Ziao didn’t want to interact with Yi Qianying more than was necessary. “Why can’t it just be the two of us? What’s the point of inviting them, too?”
This seemingly innocuous question stumped Wang ng. The advantage of forming a team was to benefit from everyone’s diverse skills, cooperatively take down higher-rank foes, and adventure together in more dangerous locales.
On the other hand, forming a group was a serious investnt of trust: everyone had to be confident that their team mbers would be there for them in ti of need, and that there would be an equitable partition of the spoils.
Yun Ruoyao’s own cultivation wasn’t too bad—she was a peak fifth-rank blademaster—but Yi Qianying’s cultivation was considerably lower in comparison. Bringing her into the team wouldn’t increase the team’s fighting capabilities, and Pei Ziao couldn’t bring himself to trust Yi Qianying at all.
Wang ng’s hesitation left Pei Ziao more and more concerned that there was sothing his newfound ally was keeping from him. Eventually, Wang ng laughed sowhat embarrassedly. “To tell you the truth, Brother Pei, I’ve been interested in Miss Yun ever since I first t her. I’m trying to take this opportunity to get closer to her.”
Wang ng’s words were rather surprising to Pei Ziao, but it did serve as a reasonable explanation for his actions. Although Wang ng and Yun Ruoyao hadn’t interacted with each other in the past, they were a good fit in terms of both appearance and status.
“Originally, I only wanted to bring Miss Yun along, but Concubine Yi was already paired up with her. I had no other choice but to invite her as well,” Wang ng volunteered, clearly having noticed Pei Ziao’s distaste for Yi Qianying.
“I hadn’t expected you to be interested in won, Brother Wang.” Pei Ziao had ssed around with Wang Kuang in the past, but had had relatively few interactions with Wang ng.
This ti, when Pei Yingxiong found out that Wang ng would be participating in the trial with Pei Ziao, he had prepared a hefty gift and asked for Wang ng to take good care of his son. To Pei Ziao, Wang ng seed like a studious cultivator who was wholeheartedly focused on pillmaking, so it ca as a surprise that he had developed feelings for Yun Ruoyao.
“Quite honestly, I’m not fond of won in general, but I feel particularly attracted to this Miss Yun,” Wang ng replied, quite politely.
It was indeed a high honor for soone lauded as a genius like Wang ng, whom even Pei Ziao’s father himself addressed as ‘Brother’, to call Pei Ziao ‘Brother Pei’. Faced with this treatnt, Pei Ziao naturally found it difficult to refuse Wang ng.
Although Yun Ruoyao and Yi Qianying hadn’t yet accepted his invitation, Wang ng was quite certain that they would do so. After all, Yun Ruoyao was determined and ambitious, and the group she was currently with was full of useless nobodies. Wang ng was certain that, by the next day, he would find Yun Ruoyao and Yi Qianying outside his camp.
Zhuo Yifeng woke Yun Ruoyan up seemingly not long after she fell asleep.
“Wake up, wake up,” he hissed, his voice low but anxious. “The water demons are trying to launch a sneak attack on us.”
Yun Ruoyan sat up imdiately. Following Zhuo Yifeng’s gaze, Yun Ruoyan could see a few tentacles extending out of the surface of the water. Those tentacles were slowly extending toward their bedrolls, as though they were trying to sneak up on them.
Yun Ruoyan imdiately jostled Lin Qingchen and Lin Qingxue awake. By the ti they woke up, those feelers were almost by their face. When Lin Qingxue opened her eyes blearily and saw those thick, black, and sticky tentacles waving right in front of her face, she almost scread out loud. Yun Ruoyan clutched her mouth and motioned for her to be silent.
The four of them took out their weapons and stooped where they were, trying to hold their breath and making as little commotion as possible.
The surface of the lake was smooth and clear, and there was no sign of the eight-legged evil spirit’s body. However, as if those tentacles had eyes, they honed in on the location of the four youths without hesitation.
“Chop!” Yun Ruoyan shouted loudly as the tentacles finally reached them. Following her orders, Yun Ruoyan’s group imdiately waved the weapons in their hands, chopping off the tentacles in front of them.
The thick tentacles spasd as they fell to the sandy ground. At the sa ti, a frenzy of bubbles erged from the bottom of the lake, as if the lake were boiling. With her steel sword, Yun Ruoyan chopped at the tentacles once more. Clearly enraged, the eight-legged evil spirit’s other tentacles rushed toward Yun Ruoyan like whips.
Yun Ruoyan imdiately stepped back, and Lin Qingchen and Lin Qingxue stepped forward to help defend her from the onslaught.
On the other hand, Zhuo Yifeng retreated to the back and cocked his bow, prepared to shoot at the eight-legged evil spirit’s head as soon as it was revealed. However, it never did so. Instead, it kept waving around the sa few tentacles around Yun Ruoyan, Lin Qingchen, and Lin Qingxue.
Its tentacles were so nurous and long that the paltry amount that Yun Ruoyan’s group had chopped off was insignificant, and only hurt the beast a little.
Yun Ruoyan’s group hadn’t expected how wily the eight-legged evil spirit was: clearly, it had overheard them underwater as they made plans to defeat it.
That was why it had tried to sneak up on them in the night, but Yun Ruoyan’s group was evidently far more prepared than those youths in the afternoon. Not only did the eight-legged evil spirit fail, it had even been counter-attacked in turn.
Because of how cautious it was, it never revealed its head. In the end, Yun Ruoyan’s group managed to drive it all the way back into the lake.
“Qingxue, don’t keep chasing it!” Yun Ruoyan imdiately shouted, noticing that Lin Qingxue had been chasing a tentacle almost all the way into the lake.
The evil spirit, being an underwater creature, surely didn’t have night vision. Yun Ruoyan suspected that its tentacles possessed so sort of olfactory organ that could track its prey based on breath and sll.
As a result, it didn’t have to reveal its body to pinpoint their location.
If they were to dive into the lake at night, the difference in their limited senses compared to the beast’s would prove far too disadvantageous. As a result, Yun Ruoyan’s group decided to wait for sunrise.
As the group stowed their weapons once more, Zhuo Yifeng glanced at the still-spasming tentacles on the ground. “Well, we’ll have food for tomorrow, at least.”
“What, this?!” Lin Qingxue glared at the tentacles on the ground. “No, no way! I’m not eating this even if I starve!”
That night, none of them had dared to hunt in the forest because they were unfamiliar with the region, so all of them were still sowhat hungry.
After the recent fight, Yun Ruoyan beca even hungrier, so hungry she couldn’t sleep. As a result, she decided to simply take over Zhuo Yifeng’s shift then, preparing to stand guard for the rest of the night.
At sunrise, Zhuo Yifeng woke up. He sliced the thick appendages up and skewered them with sharp wooden sticks, slathered them with seasoning and spices, and began roasting them over a fla. Not long later, the fragrant sll of food began to spread.
“It’s so fragrant!” Lin Qingxue woke up and sat up straight in her bedroll. Even before she opened her eyes, she began sniffing the air with gusto.
By the ti Lin Qingchen woke up, she saw Lin Qingxue with a skewer in each hand, grinning broadly as she scarfed down the tentacles. “Didn’t you say you wouldn’t eat the tentacles even if you were starving?”
“Luckily, I didn’t see Brother Zhuo preparing the tentacles for consumption, or I wouldn’t have been able to eat them. Now that they’re just food, however, I can force myself to eat a little.”
“...”
After breakfast, the group planned out how to kill the eight-legged evil spirit once more. The beast was clearly sly and wily. After last night’s failed sneak attack, and after Zhuo Yifeng made a show of preparing the tentacles by the lake, it was likely very scared of them.
“I’ll head underwater to lure it out,” Yun Ruoyan suggested, “and then Zhuo Yifeng will try to kill it.”
Back in the imperial territory, Yun Ruoyan had even dared to face the high-rank saber-toothed tiger as a fourth-rank blademaster. Now that she was seventh-rank, she naturally didn’t fear the eight-legged evil spirit.
Even if she weren’t able to kill it on her own, it couldn’t threaten her safety.
“Sister Ruoyan!” the Lin siblings imdiately called out in consternation.
“Although the eight-legged evil spirit isn’t a high-rank magical beast, its main body is underwater. No matter how comfortable you are in the water, you still need to breathe. It’ll be really dangerous if you just go down without any preparation…” Lin Qingxue brought up everyone’s concerns.
Lin Qingchen and Zhuo Yifeng frowned as they nodded.
“Don’t worry, I have a plan.” Yun Ruoyan smiled. Her smile was unexpectedly persuasive to the other mbers of the group—after all, even in the imperial territory and afterwards, no matter what they encountered, Yun Ruoyan had been able to deal with it with seeming ease.
Even when they were at their wit’s end, Yun Ruoyan still seed to make the impossible possible.
Faced with her air of self-confidence, the remaining three mbers felt increasingly convinced by her plan.
“Just wait for to lure it up!” Yun Ruoyan smiled once more before diving into the water. As she did so, she imdiately put the serpent-core necklace into her mouth, allowing her to breathe normally even underwater.
She pulled out the dagger that Li Mo had sent her and also held it in her mouth, then dove down into the depths of the lake. After descending about ten ters, Yun Ruoyan began to see the eight-legged evil spirit’s real body, a black mass almost as large as a small mountain. Its eight tentacles waved and floated around its body like massive fronds.
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