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Translator: Truth
Editor: Dhael Ligerkeys
By the time Lu Ye was finally finished with the tasks at hand, it was well past midnight already. He was just wondering if he should stay the night at the Divine Trade Association after all when he suddenly felt something from his Battlefield Imprint. It was a message from Kitty Shen, and her tone was incredibly urgent. “The Arcane Glade is in danger! Come back quick!”
Lu Ye hurriedly sent a reply but received no response from Kitty Shen. Realizing that the situation was bad, he hurriedly exited the hotspot and took to the sky on his Spirit Boat.
An incense stick later, Lu Ye finally received a reply from Kitty Shen. He was stunned after briefly conversing with her and figuring out roughly what had happened at the Arcane Glade. He had imagined countless scenarios in his head, but reality still found a way to surpass his expectations.
Lu Ye did not stop flying until dawn broke, and he arrived at the location where he and Kitty Shen had agreed to meet up with each other. However, the woman was nowhere to be seen. She did not respond when he tried to message her either.
He searched around for a bit and saw a few drops of blood on a tree leaf. He knew then that Kitty Shen was probably in a bad spot.
Lu Ye was scrounging for a way to locate Kitty Shen when Amber abruptly jumped down his shoulder. It then started walking down a certain direction with soundless footsteps. Lu Ye hurriedly followed behind the white tiger.
A while later, Amber stopped in front of a small, pitch black cave and let out a cute growl. Lu Ye had to bend down and walk all the way to the end of the cave. As the thick stench of blood wafted against his nostrils, he saw a voluptuous figure lying on the cave floor and a pool of blood. Her face was deathly pale, and her breathing was shallow.
The woman was Kitty Shen, of course. No wonder she hadn’t responded to his message earlier. She was hurt so badly that she had fallen unconscious.
Although she was unconscious, Kitty Shen still sensed his approach and woke up immediately, or at least she tried to. Her eyebrows wrinkled as if she was trying to open her eyes, but she was ultimately unable to wake even her own consciousness. Her features were scrunched up in deep pain.
Lu Ye frowned deeply as he briefly inspected her injuries. She definitely wasn’t faking it. At this rate, the likelihood she would succumb to her injuries was pretty high.
He immediately produced some healing items from his storage space while saying, “Treat her please, Yi Yi.”
“Okay.” Yi Yi appeared from Amber’s body and began working immediately.
While Yi Yi was working, Lu Ye exited the cave and began setting up some wards. Suffice to say, last night’s events had gone almost entirely different from his expectations. It was supposed to be a quick and uneventful trip, but not only had they lost their Arcane Glade, Kitty Shen was injured so severely that she could’ve been dead. She would be if she wasn’t as alert as she was.
Lu Ye had learned the outline of what had happened during his brief interaction with Kitty Shen, but not the details. From the looks of it, he would have to wait until she was awake before he could ask her about it.
Right now, one question occupied the forefront of his mind: how on earth had that person gone around the Sacred Pact? Were the terms and conditions not as airtight as they thought it was?
After setting up a simple alarm and concealment ward, Lu Ye sat at the cave entrance and took out the Sacred Pact. He then went through each and every line as carefully as he could. He was unable to find a single flaw in the pact, however. It had been prepared by Kitty Shen, and it showed that she was a meticulous woman. The terms and conditions were well-woven, well-organized, and extremely logical. He just could not find that loophole that his enemy had apparently exploited.
It was an eye-opening experience. When he was at the Spirit Creek Battlefield, most matters could be resolved with martial might alone. He rarely had to contend with schemes and intrigue. Unfortunately, that was no longer the case.
After Yi Yi appeared from the cave, Lu Ye put away the Sacred Pact and asked, “Will she live?”
“I think so. It’ll take her at least ten days to return to full health though, if not half a month.”
“That’s not a problem,” responded Lu Ye with a nod.
By now, the sky was completely bright. Lu Ye ate some food before pulling out a White Amulet and crushing it between his fingers. If there wasn’t the urgency to increase his cultivation level before, there was now.
After Lu Ye used up all of the White Amulets and a Green Amulet, he felt his river of Spiritual Power shaking a little as if it had broken through some sort of limit. Not only did it grow a size bigger, it also flowed faster than before. For a moment, Lu Ye basked in an indescribable sense of comfort and release.
Frankly, cultivation at the Cloud River Realm wasn’t easy at all. At this level, a cultivator’s goal was to increase the volume of Spiritual Power within one’s body. When the river had reached a certain limit, the cultivator would feel like their Spiritual Power was threatening to burst out of their body until they surpassed their limit and entered the next minor realm. Only then would the tension vanish like it was never there.
This relieving state wasn’t going to last, however. After all, this was hardly the end of Lu Ye’s cultivation journey. This state of affairs would continue until he had entered the Real Lake Realm.
With this, Lu Ye had officially entered the Second Order of the Cloud River Realm. This was easily the fastest he had broken through to the next minor realm.
Back when he was still a Spirit Creek Realm cultivator, it usually took him two to three months to enter the next minor realm. In fact, it took him over three months most of the time. On the other hand, it had only been half a month since he ascended to the Cloud River Realm, and he was already at the Second Order! Assuming he could ascend the rest of the levels at the same pace, he could reach the Ninth Order in less than half a year!
Of course, the assumption was both unrealistic and dangerous. The main reason he was able to reach the Second Order so quickly was thanks to the Amulets. Not only did they drastically shorten his cultivation period, Lu Ye’s main method of cultivation was his pills, not World Spiritual Qi. That was why he was able to accomplish the miracle that was entering the next minor realm in half a month’s time.
Currently, he still had one Purple Amulet, two Blue Amulets and five Green Amulets. He did not think they would be enough to push him all the way to the Third Order, however. Yet, he was still excited from his ascension, and there was nothing to do while waiting for Kitty Shen to recover. He decided to continue his cultivation.
Three days passed in the blink of an eye, and Kitty Shen had barely recovered from her ordeal. Although her injuries weren’t healed yet, she was no longer in danger of dying. She was also capable of speech now.
Lu Ye had used up all of his Amulets as a matter of course. As expected, his Spiritual Power hadn’t grown enough to enter the next minor realm, but he had made great strides in the Second Order and saved himself a lot of time.
In the cave, Lu Ye was sitting crosslegged in front of Kitty Shen. He did not notice that her face was red because the cave was dark, and her head was lowered.
Why was Kitty shen blushing? It was because her clothes were changed, and her body was carefully balmed and bandaged including her private parts. She thought that Lu Ye was the only person here, so naturally she thought that he had seen everything…
She could not bring herself to criticize him or even think badly of his actions, however. After all, he had done it to save her life. That said, she could not stop herself from thinking about it no matter how many times she told herself that cultivators were above such trivial matters.
Lu Ye carefully fed Kitty Shen a few mouthfuls of water. Then, he passed her a piece of jerky. Kitty Shen took her time to eat her food.
A long time later, Lu Ye finally asked, “Can you tell me what happened?”
Kitty Shen recalled the night’s events and uttered through gritted teeth, “Ruan Qingzhu had planned this from the beginning!”
That night, when Lu Ye was participating in the Amulet auction, he had messaged Kitty Shen and checked if everything was alright at the Arcane Glade. At the time, everything was still as fine as rain. It wasn’t until past midnight when Kitty Shen suddenly sensed a disturbance and exited her cultivation state. Before she could even exit her house and check what was going on, two strangers abruptly rushed in and engaged her in combat.
None of her enemies were small fries, and she was fighting one against two. She eventually suffered serious injuries and was forced to flee. Worried for Ruan Qingzhu, she had called out to her companion the second she escaped into the open only to find her watching her quietly from her doorsteps. There was a third stranger standing next to Ruan Qingzhu as well. He joined the fight as soon as she saw her. She would’ve died if she didn’t have a life-saving trump card that she had saved for crises like this.
After that, Kitty Shen escaped all the way to this cave and hid her tracks as well as she could. She fainted almost as soon as she had messaged Lu Ye using the Battlefield Imprint. The next time she woke up, her wounds were already treated, and Lu Ye was right beside her.
Kitty Shen was certain that Ruan Qingzhu and the three strangers were in cahoots. The woman hadn’t attacked her because of the Sacred Pact, but she was definitely the one who let the strangers in since she was the one holding the Control Gem and keeping watch after midnight. Otherwise, there was no way the trio could’ve made it all the way to her house without alarming her.
“The only thing I still don’t understand is how Ruan Qingzhu managed to circumvent the Sacred Pact and contacted her allies.”
It was clearly stated in the Sacred Pact that none of them was allowed to leak the existence or location of the Arcane Glade, and yet somehow Ruan Qingzhu had done the seemingly impossible.
Lu Ye had been thinking about this for the past few days. In the end, he was able to arrive at one and only one possibility.
“You said she had planned this from the beginning, and you were right,” he started. “It is true that she was unable to leak the Arcane Glade’s location after signing the Sacred Pact, but what if she had leaked it before she signed it?”
Kitty Shen’s mouth fell open. “Are you saying…”
“Remember the first time we met her? She was clasping her hands in front of her, and they were hidden within her sleeves. I bet she was already contacting her allies using her Battlefield Imprint then. The reason she waited so long to act was because she was waiting for a suitable opportunity, and my absence was exactly that.”
Lu Ye had set up many wards around the Arcane Glade, so Ruan Qingzhu knew him as an expert ward cultivator. With him gone, the wards he left behind weren’t nearly as threatening as they could be, meaning that the only threat they needed to deal with was Kitty Shen.
The plan was honestly perfect. The only mistake they made was underestimating Kitty Shen. If they hadn’t, the poor girl would have died three days ago.
“That cunning bitch!” Kitty Shen swore even as a wave of lingering fear washed over her. She recalled every interaction she had had with Ruan Qingzhu for the past couple days and could not find a single flaw in the woman’s acting at all. It honestly frightened her how the woman could call her “Sis” and smile to her face while plotting her death the whole time. Forget Lu Ye, even she, a veteran of the Cloud River Battlefield, had never encountered such deviousness until now.
Ruan Qingzhu had taught them both a lesson in regards to the ugly side of humanity.
