Chapter 182 Broken Walls, Red Eyes
Looking for a person in the desert?
The young Bushman sheik looks around and avoids eye contact. He doesn’t want to go at all.
They have to take the sheik with them, and that means they have to take Barney as well. Lin Luoran can tell that the former is unwilling to go with them and the latter is unwilling as well.
For Baojia’s safety, Lin Luoran cannot wait at all. She moves her fingers and cleaves the ground with a golden light. The ground splits up as if it is chopped by a sharp blade. The crack she made is about eight-meters deep and Lin Luoran actually controls that. The sheik and Barney are greatly shocked.
The sheik bows down to the sky and grants her request with the look of “I know I’ll die a heroic death but that’s fine”. His only request is very simple: leaving people of his tribe alone.
Lin Luoran is surprised. She just wants to show them that she can protect them all, but the sheik obviously misunderstands her — if Lin Luoran is not worried about Baojia, she will find it very funny.
However, she doesn’t explain anything as she has got what she wants.
Wen Guanjing, on the other hand, becomes the “good cop”. He promises to Barney a lot of benefits. Barney, the skinny Bushman, cannot resist the temptation despite being still shocked.
The feeling of mixed terror with temptation is quite intriguing.
Wen Guanjing takes the photo out again. This time, the sheik doesn’t pa.s.s out. However, the message they get through Barney’s translation is not a good one.
In the legend of the Bushmen, the mural of cultivators flying towards a halo first appeared a thousand years ago and a lot of people had seen it. What makes the sheik terrified is that, even though those who had seen it could make it out of the desert and tell others about the mural, they died quickly after that in a horrible way…
The message makes Lin Luoran feel stressful. She would never believe in some “power of a curse” before, but after she became a cultivator, she knows that there is a lot of secret power in this world and there are a lot of things that cannot be explained easily.
The most troublesome thing to Lin Luoran and Wen Guanjing is not that they have no idea of where the “curse” comes from, but that according to the sheik, the rock with the mural on appears at different places every time… Even though they know the direction, it will still be very difficult to find a rock that looks just like other rocks in the desert.
The sheik stops talking, being afraid that the two “demons” will kill him if he tells them everything. This young sheik, who looks very guileless, holds something back. Lin Luoran and Wen Guanjing, however, never think that he will hold anything back, so they don’t ask anything else.
Lin Luoran clenches her fists.
She asked Baojia to come with her, so she has to find her.
*******
Four people are now walking with difficulty in the light of a flashlight in this desert full of sand, stones and rocks.
Dust is everywhere in the air. The flashlight is not useful in such weather and it is just enough for Barney and the sheik. The sheik’s name sounds like “Yakee” and Lin Luoran doesn’t ask how to spell it. Anyway, she is now a “demon” in Yakee’s eyes and Yakee doesn’t even talk to her.
“It’s been two hours. Let’s stop here and drink some water.” Lin Luoran proposes. Barney is happy to hear that. Lin Luoran takes out four bottles of water, one for each. She and Wen Guanjing has prepared enough food and water so they drink freely and almost finish half the bottle. Barney and Yakee just take some sips according to their knowledge of the desert. They hide the rest of the water with them.
A slight sound appears in front of them and Wen Guanjing cracks the rock with a fire spark — it is just a desert lizard.
Lin Luoran closes her eyes and spreads her spiritual mind.
There is indeed something wrong with the desert. The deeper she goes in, the more suppressed her spiritual mind is. She can normally cover a range of several kilometers, but now she can cover a range of less than one kilometer.
Wen Guanjing feels even worse. He is still in the level of Training Qi, so his spiritual mind cannot be compared to Lin Luoran’s at all.
Every once in a while, Lin Luoran stops and explores with her spiritual mind. She has to prepare for the danger and she wants to find Baojia. However, she gets nothing.
After a long time of trying, she still gets nothing.
Finding out that it is only a lizard, Lin Luoran and Wen Guanjing are not paying attention. Yakee, however, catches the lizard. He kills it and hangs it at the waist. After that, he seems to be more confident when facing them.
Barney explains that with this lizard as a food supply, Yakee believes he can leave the desert even if Lin Luoran and Wen Guanjing leaves him.
Seeing that the teammate doesn’t trust them, they have no alternative but continue going. The wind and sand cover the footprints of all creatures. They walk for another two hours and the dawn comes.
It’s been a night…
It is cool in the desert at dawn and they decide to explore more places before it gets hot. Last night they have searched a lot of places and they have seen a lot of rocks with murals on them. It seems that the Bushmen have recorded their life on every rock in this desert.
According to Yakee, murals are like their diary, through which they record their life. Lin Luoran and Wen Guanjing are suspect about this as the story of cultivators flying towards to the halo in the desert is a great secret for many centuries in the cultivation world. Lin Luoran believes that the mural will not be easy to be found by her and Wen Guanjing, so she holds back her divergent thinking.
Having walked all night, Lin Luoran and Wen Guanjing feel hungry. Barney and Yakee, however, are still energetic. If they were not cultivators, maybe they would do much worse than the Bushmen.
They have jerky bought by Wen Guanjing for breakfast. Lin Luoran and Wen Guanjing find it hard to swallow so they drink a lot of water with the jerky. Yakee, however, is like eating something extremely delicious and he is eating it with a devout expression.
After breakfast, they continue walking.
Before it gets extremely hot, they find a relic.
The broken walls have changed shapes influenced by the wind and sand. However, from the places that are not buried by the sand, they can tell that there is a square composed of stones. With some stone pillars around, Lin Luoran has reason to believe that there was a man-made architecture here in the past.
The sun is getting higher. Barney and Yakee are resting in the shadow, restoring strength.
Lin Luoran decides to check here thoroughly.
Just like what they did in the underground palace, Lin Luoran and Wen Guanjing check this place carefully. To their disappointment, they find nothing.
Hidden in the shadow, Barney is looking at these two people from the East and calculating his gains and losses from this trip. They are not only wealthy but also very powerful. Barney is worried that he may not get paid after going back. Yakee is whispering on his own, talking about Barney gets him into trouble.
Barney ignores him and picks up a stone with holes all over it. He puts the stone next to his mouth.
Barney tries a few times and he plays a piece of music on-and-off with the stone.
Yakee becomes quiet. Lin Luoran and Wen Guanjing relax down a bit as well.
They don’t notice that the color of Yakee’s eyes is changing. Red blood streaks appear in his eyes…
“Sister Lin, we cannot search aimlessly like this. We are being too slow… Why not search on our swords?”
Wen Guanjing frowns and proposes. Not surprisingly, Lin Luoran rejects his idea.
“Riding on swords is indeed fast, but it is a way too fast and it’s easy to miss trace of Baojia or clues to the mural.” Lin Luoran feels lucky that she gave the Universal Sack to Baojia as food and water inside is enough for her for a long time as long as the Universal Sack is still with her and she doesn’t come across any other dangers.
Wen Guanjing cannot propose anything more. Both of them have no idea what will happen in a weird desert. Walking is good as it can conserve Reiki.
He hands her a bottle of water and Lin Luoran shakes her head. When she is about to say something, they hear a scream. They turn around and see Barney seizes Yakee by the throat. The stone he used as an instrument is now covered by the blood.
“Barney, what are you doing?”
Lin Luoran casts a spell and uses the wind to separate the two.
Wen Guanjing swoops towards them and controls Barney, but Yakee comes to beat him.
Wen Guanjing kicks away Yakee, who is very thin and short. However, Yakee comes again and the Bushmen have changed their target and fight Wen Guanjing together.
They are not just ordinary, but their guides, so he cannot truly hurt them. Slowly, Wen Guanjing becomes furious.
He feels that a brutal feeling appears inside him. It makes him want to tear these two short, thin, ordinary people apart…
A refres.h.i.+ng wind calms him down — Lin Luoran throws two water ropes to bind the two crazy people. Wen Guanjing feels less furious and he hears Lin Luoran saying,
“Look at their eyes!”
Barney and Yakee, bound by water ropes, are now looking at them full of hatred with their red eyes. Even Wen Guanjing, who is always steady in mind, is made angry by the two who have gone into madness suddenly.
Lin Luoran hesitates and says, “Your eyes…”
She finds that there are red blood streaks in Wen Guanjing’s eyes and they are taking over the white of his eyes…
No! There is something wrong here! Lin Luoran decides to take them away from this relic. Suddenly, the sand is blown into the sky and some changes happen in this peaceful and quiet relic…