CH 272

The reason Lu Ye had purposely informed Ju Jia about the imminent danger before withdrawing was because he didn’t want to be killed by the House of Wintry Blossoms. ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’s sort of thing, not to mention that his impression of Ju Jia was way better than Sima Yang’s.

He tried to console Ju Jia, “The dead cannot come back to life, but the living can take revenge against those who wronged them. It so happens that I have a grudge to settle with the House of Wintry Blossoms too, so if you don’t mind, we can work together.”

The body tempering cultivator continued with his head bowed and maintained his silence, though. It was impossible to say if he heeded his advice.

The moment of peace didn’t last long. Lu Ye sensed a stir of Spiritual Power from nearby and looked up just in time to see a Thousand Demon Ridge cultivator staring at them from a rooftop. The moment their eyes met, the man shouted, “Lu Yi Ye is over here!”

Lu Ye launched a Fire Dragon straight at the crier. The technique was so hot that it distorted the air around it.

The cultivator’s expression changed as he attempted to dodge out of the way. However, Lu Ye easily changed the direction of the technique and scored a perfect hit. The man screamed as he fell off the rooftop.

“We need to go!”

Lu Ye took off once more while Ju Jia followed closely behind him. Both of them could sense the unnatural fluctuations of Spiritual Powers behind him. They obviously belonged to Thousand Demon Ridge.

Despite their best attempts, they were unable to shake off the tail behind them. Not only that, the tail was growing longer and longer.

Escape wouldn’t have been a problem if Lu Ye was alone. The chances of them catching up to him while he had Windwalk was almost zero.

Ju Jia was a different story though. The big guy wasn’t slow, but he sure as hell wasn’t fast either. His injuries were pretty bad as well.

Ideally, he wanted to find a place where Ju Jia could recover, but with this many pursuers on their tail his dream was just that, a dream.

He mulled it over for a moment. In the end, he could only think of one place to go.

A while later, Lu Ye had led Ju Jia through a couple more streets. They had just arrived at the entrance of a compound when a group of Thousand Demon Ridge cultivators appeared behind them. Chu Qing and Ruo Yan were among them as well. They were both moving at top speed.

Their eyes grew bloodshot when they saw their sworn enemy. They saw him taking a moment to straighten his clothes before pushing open the door to the compound and stepping in.

“Surround the place!” Chu Qing yelled. There were now around eighty people strong; a mix of the remnants of the House of Wintry Blossoms and some Thousand Demon Ridge independent cultivators. Their numbers weren’t huge compared to what they were at the beginning, but even so, it should be more than enough to overwhelm Lu Yi Ye and the Xianyuan City Watch, not to mention that she hadn’t seen the latter at all up until this point.

Swoosh swoosh swoosh! A group leaped onto the walls and surrounded the entire compound in no time.

As for Chu Qing and Ruo Yan, they stepped through the main entrance with twenty people behind them.

There was a swing in the compound and a woman in a red dress facing away from them, and Lu Yi Ye was standing not far away from her. Normally, the man was so arrogant it was as if the concept of humility did not exist to him. Right now though, he was saying something she couldn’t hear to the strange woman in a surprisingly humble manner.

The House of Wintry Blossoms was well aware that special apparitions existed within the Lost City of Xianyuan. In fact, they had encountered a few of them already. However, they had killed them all because these special apparitions usually made strange demands that they weren’t equipped to fulfill.

If the request was resolvable, then of course they were willing to settle things peacefully. Otherwise, the only way out was to kill them.

Chu Qing knew immediately that the woman in red dress was a special apparition. At first, the realization did not trigger a red flag. Then, she noticed that she couldn’t see the apparition’s aura.

Unfortunately for her, Ruo Yan wasn’t as perceptive as her. The petite woman glared daggers at Lu Ye and yelled, “This is the end of the road for you, Lu Yi Ye!”

Lu Ye was still speaking with the woman when he heard this. He immediately pointed a finger at them and said, “It’s them! They’re the ones who keep chasing me and stopping me from looking for Tang Yuan!”

The swing stopped without warning, and every hair on Lu Ye’s body abruptly stood on its end. At the same time, Ju Jia let out a guttural growl, grabbed Lu Ye’s shoulder, and pulled him behind his back. The young man stared at his huge, wide back in astonishment.

“Retreat now!” Chu Qing realized their mistake and cried out immediately. Unfortunately…

Boom!

The door closed, and cries of surprise erupted from everywhere. The Thousand Demon Ridge cultivators who were standing on the walls suddenly found themselves falling into the compound.

While the walls weren’t nearly big enough to kill a cultivator, it certainly made them look foolish.

The compound wasn’t particularly huge to begin with, and now it almost looked crowded.

At this point, Chu Qing’s expression was grim enough to be a permanent fixture on her face. It was because she had lost control of her Spiritual Power exactly as Lu Ye back then. Worse, it looked like Lu Yi Ye was in cahoots with the strange woman!

Speaking of Lu Yi Ye, the bastard was currently making faces at her with a pleased expression on his face. It immediately made her feel worse.

She had encountered plenty of dangers in her cultivation journey, but none had ever been as despairing as this one. She knew they had fucked up the moment the compound suddenly turned into a no-Spiritual-Power zone.

The woman in the red dress was powerful beyond imagination. There was no way Spirit Creek Realm cultivators like them could hope to resist her.

Was she the reason Lu Yi Ye could control the Xianyuan City Watch?

That would explain why the bastard had come here…

Chu Qing was mistaken though. Lu Ye’s ability to control the spectral sentries had nothing to do with the woman. Even the reason he came here was because this was the only place both him and Ju Jia could find refuge. He wasn’t willing to ditch the body tempering cultivator unless he had no other choice.

He was very satisfied with the current situation. If the woman in the red dress would get angry and take out the dozens of Thousand Demon Ridge cultivators in this compound, then even better.

“Have you seen Tang Yuan?” The woman in the red dress asked, suddenly.

The pleased expression on Lu Ye’s face was immediately replaced by a frown. This was… not how he expected things to go.

Chu Qing was also frowning as the massacre she had anticipated did not arrive. Sensing a sliver of hope, she recalled her previous encounters with special apparitions and Lu Ye’s strange mention of Tang Yuan earlier. Finally, she replied cautiously, “No, we have not.”

“Will you find Tang Yuan for me?” The woman in the red dress asked again.

Lu Ye sighed knowing that his ploy had been foiled. He was hoping to use the woman in the red dress to slay his enemies, but it would appear he had underestimated her. Or rather, killing the cultivators had never been her goal. All she wanted was to find that cat named Tang Yuan. Naturally, the more helpers she could find, the faster she would be able to find her cat.

“Of course,” Chu Qing responded.

Immediately after she said that, she felt her Spiritual Power returning to her body. The omnipresent pressure pressing against her body had disappeared as well. She let out a huge sigh of relief knowing that they had escaped danger… for now.

She thought for a moment before whispering something to Ruo Yan. Soon, Ruo Yan and most of her men backed out of the compound and surrounded the place from outside. They were obviously planning to catch him as soon as he set foot outside the compound.

As for Chu Qing herself, she stayed behind with just a few men to keep an eye on Lu Ye and prevent him from doing something unexpected.

Lu Ye knew what she was planning, but could not think of a way out of this. While he was strong enough to take out Chu Qing and her small group, it would be unwise to do so after what the woman in the red dress had said. At the very least, fighting in front of her felt like a folly of the highest order.

‘But… what if I just sound out her limits?’

He was just thinking this when he saw Chu Qing walking straight toward him.

Lu Ye immediately tightened his grasp on the Inviolable, killing intent rising. If the woman dared to enter within sixteen meters of him, he was certain he could kill her in three strikes.

However, he felt a prickling sensation on his back the second his killing intent surfaced. He knew immediately that it came from the woman in the red dress.

Moreover, the greater his killing intent became, the worse the prickling sensation became. At a certain point, he actually felt like he was about to be pierced by tens of thousands of needles.

Chu Qing was feeling more or less the same. Her footsteps grew slower and slower until finally, she could not take a single step toward Lu Ye. Her forehead became covered in cold sweat.

In fact, she had arrived at the same thought as Lu Ye. She too wanted to sound out the apparition’s limits.

The next moment, Lu Ye let go of his weapon and put away his killing intent. The feeling immediately subsided.

He then strode toward Chu Qing and caused her to finch in fright.

“What are you doing?” Chu Qing couldn’t stop herself from backing away from Lu Ye. Those who didn’t know better might think that she was a fragile woman being pressured by the local bully. This continued until her back was literally against the wall.

Then, Lu Ye raised his hand and slapped it on top of her head. He then rubbed it vigorously until it was a complete mess.

He said expressionlessly, “Do your best to find Tang Yuan, you hear? Tang Yuan is very important! You won’t be eating dinner tonight if you don’t find it!”

The few Thousand Demon Ridge cultivators accompanying the woman could only stare at this in shock. They looked like they wanted to laugh but didn’t dare to.

In fact, they had tried to stop Lu Ye from approaching Chu Qing multiple times. Every time they tried to take action though, an inexplicable sense of crisis would befall them and prevent them from acting.

Lu Ye turned away and left after that, leaving behind a stunned and messy-haired Chu Qing.

Lu Ye hadn’t attacked her, nor had she suffered any physical harm during that interaction. However, she felt worse than if he had just killed her. Her sister’s killer was standing right in front of her, but not only couldn’t she lift a finger against him, the bastard had made a fool out of her by messing up her hair!

Tang Yuan! What the fuck’s a Tang Yuan!?

She forced herself to take a couple of deep breaths. It was only after a while that she succeeded in pushing down the boiling anger and murderous intent inside her heart.

Meanwhile, Lu Ye had strode to the middle of the compound where Ju Jia was sitting cross legged. The body tempering cultivator had left the apparition’s side even sooner than Lu Ye. He might be extraordinarily tough, but even he didn’t feel safe beside her. Right now he was staring at Chu Qing with bloodshot eyes, although there was no killing intent behind them.

Lu Ye hadn’t illuminated him on the mysteries of this compound, but he didn’t need to. He had figured it out faster than Lu Ye had the first time he came here. Simple-minded, pure-hearted people like Ju Jia generally possessed a kind of animalistic instinct. He might not know what was going on here, but he knew how best to act to avoid danger.

Lu Ye gulped down a couple of Spirit Pills before sitting down on a jagged piece of rock beside Ju Jia. Then, he passed the body tempering cultivator a bottle of Spirit Restoring Pills and Healing Pills.

Lu Ye noticed from the start that Ju Jia did not have a Storage Bag. Naturally, he did not have Spirit Pills he might consume to recover his strength.

Ju Jia did not turn down Lu Ye’s kindness. He accepted the first bottle and swallowed all the Spirit Pills in it in one gulp. He did the same with the second bottle.