The river seemed to have a life of its own, as if it wouldn't allow anyone to approach.
Wu Hua told Qin Luo her thoughts and then released her aura.
Holding Qin Luo's hand, they approached the river step by step.
The forty-meter-tall palm tree floated upside down in the torrent.
The humus remaining from the roots dispersed into a black mist on the crest of the wave.
The air was thick with a rusty, metallic smell, the distinctive odor of desert torrential rains washing over red rock veins.
The sour stench of rotting reeds ferments at 70 degrees Celsius, producing a dizzying toxic gas.
Wu Hua waved her hand, casting a protective shield around Qin Luo. Qin Luo turned to look at Wang Yue, who hadn't even given him a disposable mask.
Thinking about what might happen if some unknown creature appeared later, he wondered if he would be knocked unconscious by the poisonous gas.
I'd have to knock him unconscious myself anyway; protecting him would be pointless.
The water, illuminated by the midday sun, shimmered with an eerie bronze hue.
Wu Hua used the hurricane Wen Ling gave it, whipping up a sand wall that swept across the river.
The moment millions of grains of sand plunged into the raging torrent, the entire river suddenly emitted a sharp sound like shattering glass.
The commotion startled the sand lizards on the shore, causing them to burrow into the sand. Wang Yue was also startled and took a few steps back.
Seeing Qin Luo and Wu Hua still walking forward, he mustered his courage and followed closely behind them.
The three walked all the way to the riverbank, and the strange events from before did not recur.
Qin Luo looked into the water, and suddenly a bird's head with an eagle's beak emerged from the surface.
Startled, she immediately pulled Wu Hua back several steps.
Wu Hua sensed the presence of someone of her kind and knocked Wang Yue unconscious with a wave of her hand.
I thought he'd be poisoned, but this guy probably drank too much of the spatial stream water.
Apart from being a little confused, nothing else happened.
After Wang Yue collapsed, Wu Hua pulled Qin Luo back to the shore.
"Whirling Turtle, is that you?"
Seeing that they had returned, the turtle immediately crawled out of the water and onto the shore.
"It's me, it's me! Kang, you fell around here too?"
"No, I was on my way to the Kingdom of Xiyou with the human beast sister, and we just happened to be passing through here!"
"Beast Sister?"
Xuan Gui carefully examined Qin Luo before greeting her.
"Hello, Sister Beast! I'm the Whirlwind Turtle Beast!"
Qin Luo also responded politely.
"Hello, Xuan Gui, my name is Qin Luo!"
After the two introduced themselves, Xuan Gui looked at Wang Yue.
"Was he poisoned by my gas? I'll wake him up right away!"
Wu Hua immediately stopped it.
"You didn't poison him, I hit him. He didn't know I was a beast, and I was afraid he wouldn't be able to accept it. I also thought it would be too troublesome to explain, so I just knocked him out to save trouble!"
The tortoise nodded its bird-like head in understanding.
"That's true. By the way, have you encountered any other beasts?"
After Wu Hua nodded, she took the pineapple out to show it to the creature, then put it back in her spatial dimension.
Pineapple was so confused that she thought she was dreaming for a moment.
Wu Hua took out some more fruit and handed it to Xuan Gui. The two beasts ate and chatted.
"Not only Wind Fox, but many others are with the Heavenly Dao. Do you want to go? I can take you there!"
The tortoise didn't answer immediately, but stared at the murky river water, its face full of confusion.
Seeing that it remained silent, Qin Luo stepped forward and asked...
"Are there other beasts in this water?"
Xuan Gui looked at her, then at Wu Hua, and asked the two of them with some concern.
"They are all my friends, can you please not hurt them?"
Qin Luo and Wu Hua nodded in unison and assured each other, "Absolutely not!"
Having received assurances from the two men, Xuan Gui's mood improved.
"They can't come out now, but I'll introduce you to them tonight. And let me tell you, they were so kind to me back when I was still an egg..."
Upon hearing that they were nocturnal, Qin Luo and Wu Hua roughly guessed that their companions in the river were a group of ghosts.
Neither of them showed any unusual reaction; they simply listened quietly as the spinning turtle recounted what had happened after it fell.
It was also thrown down by the clan elder; when it fell into the Moshan River, its egg-like body was almost petrified.
It was the ghosts at the bottom of the river who placed it on the sacred stone at the bottom of the river.
It slowly absorbed the divine stone before hatching and being born, treating the ghosts as its family.
The ghosts treated it like their own child!
They lived together here for two years, during which time people would often throw corpses into the river from the riverbank.
That's why the Xuan Turtle set up a formation along the riverbank; if any humans approach within a certain range, the riverbank will collapse.
Gradually, no one threw bodies into the river anymore!
Today, Qin Luo and Wang Yue broke in, and the riverbank collapsed, but no bodies fell down.
Xuan Gui found it strange and, fearing he might accidentally harm an innocent person, came up to investigate, just in time to sense Wu Hua's aura.
After listening, Qin Luo and Wu Hua were filled with emotion.
I had only heard Wang Yue mention before that this place is near the border of three countries, so it's normal for it to be a bit chaotic.
But the place that regularly dumps corpses into this river must be the black market he mentioned.
It doesn't look like there are any good people there! The mountain spider is just a little spider, maybe even wandering around there all alone!
I don't know what happened to it. Did it hide away on its own, or did it meet someone destined for it, or perhaps it encountered those murderous maniacs?
The more they thought about it, the more panicked they became. They shouldn't have lingered in Liyou City for so long...
Xuan Gui and the others looked unwell and asked with concern.
"Sister Beast, Dang Kang, what's wrong? Why are you frowning?"
Qin Luo sighed, and Wu Hua told it about the mountain spider.
The tortoise felt a pang of heartache upon hearing this and wanted to use its snake tail to whip Wangyue a few times.
If Qin Luo and Wu Hua hadn't stopped him, Wang Gao would have surely died here.
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