Twigs and branches twisted and twined around each other, forming a thick overhanging foliage in the woods. At the same time, beams of sunrays peeked through the complex canopy of branches, dotting the ground with marks of light and faintly illuminating the forest trail, bringing a sense of warmth and life to this otherwise serene and tranquil realm. Walking along the forest trail strewn with dried leaves and listening to the crisp chirps of songbirds would bring calm and peace to anyone’s heart.
Even though they intended to hunt for some wild game, Jun Xiaomo felt that leaving the toxic people from Dawn Sect behind and simply walking along this forest trail and taking in the sights and sounds around them wasn’t too bad either.
“There’s a wild boar ahead. Do we want to consider that?” Ye Xiuwen suddenly asked, breaking the silence around them.
“Where’s the wild boar?” Jun Xiaomo looked ahead, but she could not see where the wild boar was.
“It’s some distance ahead of us. I’ve discovered it using my divine sense.” Ye Xiuwen calmly said. But as he thought about how dirty the wild boar looked, Ye Xiuwen could not help but knit his brows together.
Jun Xiaomo pouted her lips. She had just been reminded that with her first level of Qi Mastery, the range of her divine sense could hardly hold a candle to Ye Xiuwen’s divine sense from his cultivation at the twelfth level of Qi Mastery. There was a good chance that Ye Xiuwen had always been using his divine sense to probe about their surroundings to ensure their safety, and he had also discovered the presence of that wild boar inadvertently.
At this moment, Jun Xiaomo could not help but smack her lips as she thought about the different ways of preparing wild boar meat. Then, she looked at Ye Xiuwen with a glimmer in her eyes, saying, “Brother Ye, then let’s go catch it right now, shall we?”
On the other hand, Ye Xiuwen absolutely did not face the same temptation that Jun Xiaomo had experienced because he felt repulsed by the dirty looks of the wild boar. However, seeing Yao Mo’s gluttonous look at this moment, he could not bring himself to reject that young man either.
Ye Xiuwen sighed in exasperation, patted Jun Xiaomo’s shoulder and then instructed, “Follow me closely, and don’t fall behind.” As he said that, he forged ahead, leading the way.
Jun Xiaomo flourished a smile as she followed closely behind according to Ye Xiuwen’s instructions.
Shortly after, Ke Xinwen and his martial brothers arrived at exactly where Ye Xiuwen and Jun Xiaomo had been just moments ago. Furthermore, Ye Xiuwen and Jun Xiaomo had earlier been taking a leisurely stroll through the forest trail, so it did not take Ke Xinwen much effort to catch up to them.
“Huff…martial brother Ke, didn’t you say that there would be more prey for us to hunt over here? How come we haven’t seen a single one after walking for such a long time?” Ke Xinwen had walked very quickly in order to catch up to Jun Xiaomo and Ye Xiuwen earlier, and his martial brothers naturally had to keep pace with him. Right now, the weakest one was even panting hard and trying to catch his breath.
“Hang on a minute.” Ke Xinwen told them to stay patient as he took out another Dowsing Talisman. After making a few hand seals, the talisman lit up and pointed out a certain direction to him.
Ke Xinwen thought for a moment, before releasing his divine sense in the direction pointed out to him. His cultivation level was currently the same as Ye Xiuwen, at the peak twelfth level of Qi Mastery, so whatever Ye Xiuwen could detect with his divine sense, Ke Xinwen could do the same.
So, they’ve gone to hunt a wild boar, have they? Ke Xinwen squinted his eyes as they were immediately filled with a scheming intent.
Even though Qin Lingyu had only instructed Ke Xinwen to “give them some trouble”, both Ye Xiuwen and Yao Mo were Ke Xinwen’s prime targets, and he certainly had no reservations tearing them into pieces and eliminating them from existence. And now that he was presented with an excellent opportunity, what was there to stop him from scheming against his targets?
Qin Lingyu had lost to Ye Xiuwen several times during the Sect Ranking Compet.i.tions in the past. Therefore, Ke Xinwen had a good reason to believe that Qin Lingyu also wanted to deal with Ye Xiuwen and wipe him off the face of this earth.
If this is the case, perhaps Qin Lingyu would not mind it one bit even if I killed Ye Xiuwen and Yao Mo. Ke Xinwen thought to himself.
Having made up his mind, Ke Xinwen turned to the martial brothers around him, saying, “You guys wait here for a bit. I’m going to go forward and use my divine sense to check if there are any preys around us. If there’s nothing around us, then we’ll go to another place.”
Ke Xinwen’s cultivation level was higher than these other martial brothers following him, and his divine sense could naturally cover a greater distance. Therefore, they did not suspect that Ke Xinwen would have any other ulterior motives at all, and they all immediately agreed.
Ke Xinwen imbued himself with his wind-based techniques and swiftly sped in the direction that Jun Xiaomo and Ye Xiuwen had headed towards. As he neared their location, Ke Xinwen cautiously stopped, hid behind a large tree and concealed the aura from his body. Then, he retrieved a packet of tightly sealed medicinal powder from his Interspatial Ring.
In reality, Ke Xinwen was still quite some distance away from Jun Xiaomo and Ye Xiuwen. There was no way Jun Xiaomo would have spotted Ke Xinwen with her eyes. Given the extremely limited range of her divine sense, there was also no way she would be able to discover his presence around.
On the other hand, Ye Xiuwen was so focused on catching the wild boar that he did not realize Ke Xinwen had drawn so close to them at this instant.
The bag of medicinal powder that Ke Xinwen had retrieved from his Interspatial Ring was the same type of medicinal powder that he had used in his schemes against Ye Xiuwen before. It was a bag of Frenzypani Gra.s.s ground to dust – colourless in nature and odourless to humans. Yet spirit beasts would immediately enter a frenzied state at the tiniest whiff of this substance.
Furthermore, this bag contained more Frenzypani Gra.s.s than Ke Xinwen had used the previous time, because Ke Xinwen had hoped that it would attract an even stronger spirit beast to deal with his targets.
Then, with a wicked smile plastered all over his face, Ke Xinwen tossed the medicinal powder into the air and casted a wind-based spell to sweep the medicinal powder in the direction where Ye Xiuwen and Jun Xiaomo presently were.
The gentle breeze that was sweeping through the forest at this moment was coincidentally also an east-blowing wind, and together with Ke Xinwen’s spell, the medicinal powder very quickly found its way to Ye Xiuwen and Jun Xiaomo’s location. At the same time, Jun Xiaomo and Ye Xiuwen remained oblivious to the presence of the Frenzypani Gra.s.s because of its odourless nature.
On the other hand, Ke Xinwen had cautiously maintained a thin layer of wind circulating and s.h.i.+elding his body so that none of the medicinal powder would land on his body at all.
“Ahaha, enjoy this gift of mine!” Ke Xinwen chuckled coldly as he crushed the empty bag in his hands and tossed it onto the floor.”
As Ke Xinwen thought about how Yao Mo had tripped him up so terribly using his formation arrays and forced him into the current predicament, he reveled in every moment of his vengeance right now.
After doing all these things, Ke Xinwen patted his hands, turned around and left. He had used so much Frenzypani Gra.s.s this time, and he firmly believed that even if Yao Mo and Ye Xiuwen were lucky enough to escape with their lives, there was no way they were going to come out unscathed.
At this moment, he relished in the thought of how he was going to enjoy seeing Ye Xiuwen and Jun Xiaomo returning to the campsite a few hours later, completely bloodied and in a sorry state. Of course, it would be even better if they had perished and returned as nothing more than corpses.
On the other side, Ye Xiuwen was dealing with the relatively large wild boar while using his divine sense to check his surroundings for danger, but he did not sense anything out of the ordinary.
However, what he did not expect was for Ke Xinwen to have used a talisman to conceal his own body’s aura. Since Ye Xiuwen and Ke Xinwen were at the same cultivation level, there was no way that Ye Xiuwen would be able to detect Ke Xinwen’s presence in the first place.
All this while, Jun Xiaomo stood silently at the side watching her martial brother as she knew that she would only cause more trouble for him if she intervened. In any event, given her martial brother’s cultivation level, subduing a normal wild boar was not a difficult task.
And as expected, Ye Xiuwen managed to subdue the wild boar in no time at all. All it took was one Wind Blade that sliced straight through the wild boar’s artery, spilling its blood all over the floor. Then, after the wild boar took as few more steps, its entire body flopped lifelessly on the floor as it yielded up its life.
It was so effortless that Ye Xiuwen did not even need to unsheathe his sword to accomplish all this.
“Let’s quickly clean up the mess and bring this wild boar away.” Ye Xiuwen turned around and instructed Jun Xiaomo as she continued to watch from the side.
Even though he had just killed the wild boar, it did not change the fact that Ye Xiuwen was almost obsessed about his own cleanliness, and he did not want to have any physical contact with this wild boar at all.
“Ha-?! Bring the whole wild boar away?!” Jun Xiaomo asked, completely flabbergasted.
“That’s right. We’ll bring the whole wild boar away, then find a water source to clean out this wild boar. Otherwise, the scent of blood will attract fiercer wild beasts our way.” Ye Xiuwen calmly explained.
In the past, he had come to these woods to practice his sword arts before, and he naturally knew that there was a small stream nearby, and it would not be difficult to locate that stream again.
While Ye Xiuwen was still confident of dealing with stronger wild beasts, things might be much more problematic if multiple wild beasts attacked at the same time. Furthermore, Ye Xiuwen could not be certain that there were no spirit beasts in this area. If the stench of blood attracted strong spirit beasts, then he and Yao Mo would be in deep trouble.
Jun Xiaomo opened her mouth, intending to tell Ye Xiuwen that she could set up a formation array to prevent the stench of blood from spreading to the surroundings. But then once she thought of the number of spirit stones she had left on her, she hesitated.
Formation arrays required various kinds of resources to be set up, and spirit stones were the life blood and sustenance of these formation arrays. Right now, she no longer had any reliable source of spirit stones at all!
I’ll have to use my spirit stones more sparingly. Jun Xiaomo thought to herself helplessly.
Jun Xiaomo turned around to look at Ye Xiuwen, sizing up her martial brother dressed from top to toe in white as though a deity, before concluding that it was truly beneath Ye Xiuwen to be touching this wild boar with his own hands.
Fine. This is not the first time I’m hunting outside anyway. Even though the wild boar is a little bit dirty, but I can always use a Cleansing Talisman to purge my clothes of any stains. Jun Xiaomo was resigned to her fate as she walked over to that dirty wild boar lying on the ground a distance away.
Suddenly, a shuffling sound rang out, followed by the rustling of the dead leaves on the floor. Then, an enormous Green Elder Python instantly appeared out of nowhere, opened its mouth wide and lunged towards Jun Xiaomo with immense speed! Its eyes were completely bloodshot, indicating that it was in a frenzied state!
Jun Xiaomo reflexively dodged backwards; but how would a Green Elder Python let its prey get away just like that?
The Green Elder Python’s movements were extremely swift, and it closed in on Jun Xiaomo in the blink of an eye. A vile, noxious odour emanated from its mouth, and its two sharp fangs were coated in a viscous, black poison that gleamed coldly under the sun.
Jun Xiaomo’s pupils constricted – she knew that there was no avoiding it this time.
If this Green Elder Python bit down on her right now, she would be severely wounded, if not dead!