Story 8 - Tribulation Trepidations (17 ?)
Clear Eyes and I used obfuscation tokens to blur our silhouettes from the few assassins still looking for us. This allowed us to avoid running into fights we couldn’t handle. It still took us half a day to reach a small grotto near a few thinner trees, the secluded rendezvous point I set up with Little Spring.
After waiting for a few more hours while setting up a defensive formation, the kid finally arrived. His hair was down and he carried a massive egg. He also was wearing brand new clothes and looked suspiciously clean. Like he was trying to get rid of evidence.
I removed my pendant and stepped out of the cave.
“Sister Lin!” He grinned.
It lolled its tongue and barked. “Arf!”
No… The beast inside that egg couldn’t be normal. Right?
I stepped close to the puppy and held out my hand. If it was a spiritual beast, it would growl and bite . Instead, the canine sniffed my palm, then licked it. I quickly moved my hand back and cast a cleaning technique. It didn’t seem to bother the creature. In fact, the fur beca even fluffier.
Could it be a shape-shifted Ascendant beast?
I scanned it with my divine sense and examined it with my spiritual energy. All I picked up was a goddamn mundane puppy of an indeterminate breed.
It wasn’t even a wolf-type beast.
But it couldn't be a normal dog! Shit like that didn’t happen to Xianxia protagonists! Right?
Clear Eyes Mad Tongue said sagely, “That’s a very nice… pet you have there.”
Little Spring hugged the dog. “I’m going to na it Xiao Bai.”
H-he nad it a classic generic pet na…
Was it possible that there had been a different creature in the egg? Actually, since we were in Tiger Head Misty Forest, what if this was originally the egg of that white tiger Ascendant beast? Maybe that creature was the actual inheritance of the maze. Could it have beco impatient while waiting? Then, in desperation, it switched places with a nearby animal?
Okay. I was grasping at straws here. But Ascendant beasts had above human intelligence before birth. So, while not likely, it was possible.
Or, this creature could be a white tiger shape-shifted into a dog.
“Arf!” The puppy jumped out of the kid’s arms. Its little blue eyes noticed the fluffiness behind it. It tried to bite it and failed. Then the white ball of fluff vigorously started chasing its own tail.
This thing did not have human intelligence.
I cleared my throat. “This is a precious puppy. Raise it well.”
The kid nodded.
“I’ll feed it the best spiritual dishes I can make.”
“Can a mundane pet even eat those?” Clear Eyes asked.
“It might be possible.” It probably shouldn’t work, but I’d never tried it. If I had to guess, it would either be a waste of expensive food or it would cause its head to burst.
The kid pulled out a piece of spiritual jerky and fed it to the puppy. It gobbled it down ravenously... and it didn’t explode.
Maybe it wasn’t a dog, but an experint?
“How did you find it?” Clear Eyes asked.
“At first, I had been in too much pain to move. Then Sister Lin walked through healing myself.”
Nice rembering the story, brat. I secretly gave him a thumbs-up.
“And afterward?”
He scowled. “I had to run through maze-like tunnels solving a bunch of puzzles similar to the things you taught before.”
Thanks to , the brat had a well-rounded education that included language, math, and even puzzles. While that last subject might not be life and death to know for a regular child, every good Xianxia protagonist needed to learn how to decipher them if they were going to survive.
“When I reached the end of the trials, I was trapped, but I rembered what you said about inheritance spaces being made by soone, which ant that they could be taken apart by soone.”
I nodded and prepared myself for him to tell that the whole labyrinth collapsed.
“So I started taking the room apart and found a hole.”
Okay, I know that I’d said that, but a Qi Condensation cultivator shouldn’t be able to take an inheritance space apart so easily. How the hell did he do it?!
“I eventually ended up in a dead end that had a ga. Once I won, a pedestal appeared with this egg.”
I noticed that he specifically ntioned nothing about the ga’s details. It was probably where he beca injured. “Okay. So, you ended up in a labyrinth-style inheritance. And the treasure you found was this egg that had a mundane dog in it?”
He nodded.
I rested my hand on the kid’s shoulder and squeezed. I felt bad for him. Usually, Xianxia main characters find the best treasures under the heavens, but, for once, this kid’s protagonist’s luck didn’t work out for him. “You must have ssed up solving the puzzles and retrieved the wrong treasure.”
Well, I still hadn't entirely ruled out that this puppy was sothing weird but it was obviously the little protagonist's pet. It shouldn't be harmful to keep it around for a while.
His mouth opened in shock. “Then should we go back?”
I waved my hand away. “I’d rather sell Shadow Gopher the information since this labyrinth might contain what the sect is looking for.”
The two nodded their agreent to my proposal.
Technically, I could visit the maze myself and see if I could win an inheritance, but I wasn’t that interested in risking my life for a treasure when I could create my own.
Now that I had my tree and had killed off the assassins that needed to die, I was ready to leave.
***
Soon after I contacted the Nascent Soul beast tar, he arrived with his hair windswept and his robes disheveled like he’d traveled here as fast as he could. “Where is it?”
Little Spring gave him directions.
He nodded and handed a large stack of expensive, high-quality talismans that he promised in exchange for the information. Thirty of them were Foundation-Establishnt-level Blazing Fire spells, six of them were Golden-Core-level Dancing Star spells and three were Colden-Core-level protective talismans. I split them three ways.
He also agreed to escort us back to the sect once he was finished.
This was actually better than what we had asked for. Shadow Gopher was a good guy. Too bad he was a beast tar or I could help him out a bit more.
***
After several hours, Shadow Gopher returned with a massive grin.
“Did you find sothing that would bring the group back together?”
He shrugged. “The diviners hinted that the treasure would take the form of a beast. They didn't say what it was. They ntioned that it would be found during the next three days and that our sect couldn’t allow anyone else to get their hands on it.”
“Co on. Show your martial aunt. I don’t steal from my juniors.”
Awkwardly, he held out a silvery-orange statue of a tiger.
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