Chapter 2 The Dragon's Secret Realm (Part Two)
The fluctuations in spiritual energy outside the carriage caused a slight jolt, and the young man who had been dozing slowly opened his eyes.
"Master, we'll reach the entrance to the Chaolong Secret Realm in half an incense stick's time." The one who spoke was a palm-sized spirit beast with a cat-like face, drooping ears, short and thick limbs, and sharp, gleaming teeth. It was playing with a crystal-clear luminous pearl in its two paws, and as it spoke, it nudged the slender hand with its nose. "This ring is so ugly, it's not worthy of you, Master."
In other words, the manager of Jiaolong Auction House was shameless and insisted on giving it away, even though it was so ugly that Jiaolong almost crushed it.
Jiang Gu pinched its paw, which was trying to step on the ring, and said with his eyes down, "It's worthless stuff. You can step on it whenever you want after you've used it."
“Master, don’t be afraid, I can carry you on the water.” Wu Tuo happily wagged its fluffy tail and raised its two chubby little front paws to try to lie on his lap, but Jiang Gu ruthlessly pushed it away by pressing a finger against its forehead.
The young man casually toyed with the ring. His red-gold twill collar was slightly open, revealing a black scar that stretched from behind his left ear to his right collarbone. He had excellent bone structure, with a stern and aloof expression that seemed to encompass mountains and rivers, and a sharp and smooth jawline. However, he always looked down at people with his eyes down, exuding a cold arrogance from the bottom of his bones, making him very unapproachable.
He glanced at the furry little thing with disdain. "You shed."
And he has a terrible personality.
Fortunately, the little guy was very aware of his role as a spirit pet and decisively skipped over the topic, saying, "Master, the scar on your neck seems to have faded a bit."
Jiang Gu frowned slightly and reached out to touch the hideous, dark scar on his neck. This scar had been there since he was born, and its color had deepened with age. Although others were terrified, he did not think it was a bad thing. He even vaguely knew that it should be a seal, but he had tried countless methods to break it.
"Did you encounter anyone just now?" he asked the guard outside the carriage.
"Young master, those were just disciples from minor sects and minor factions; there were no outstanding individuals among them," the guard replied truthfully.
Jiang Gu patted the dozing Wu Tuo and gave a nonchalant reply. Suddenly, he remembered the boy who looked up when they passed the carriage; his bright eyes were quite striking.
But all that's left are the eyes.
——
The entrance to the Chaolong Secret Realm is located on a sheer cliff. This protruding rock face stands upright like a giant shovel driven into the soil. The cliff is covered with moss and lichen, and the forest below is lush and verdant. Under a thousand-year-old cypress tree, a crowd of people gathers, which is the magic array that was teleported from Jiaolong City.
When Wei Feng emerged from the magic array, it was already past midnight. The moon was shrouded in a hazy glow. He carried his sword and looked up at the stone wall that stretched straight to the sky. He could vaguely sense the surging spiritual power overflowing from it, and an oppressive aura came from all directions, causing the spiritual energy in his dantian to surge uncontrollably.
He was only at the mid-stage of Qi Refining, and it would be unwise to rush in, but his increasingly hot fingertips urged him to find the Divine Kite Shark Scale as soon as possible.
A slender, green figure suddenly caught his eye.
Wei Feng felt a chill run down his spine. Without further hesitation, he made a hand seal and flew straight into the entrance to the illusion on the cliff.
"My goodness, did a minor Qi Refining cultivator just go in?" The cultivator below the cliff stared in shock.
"Are you out of your mind?! Whose child wasn't being watched properly?!"
"Fine, since there are no cultivation restrictions in the Chaolong Secret Realm, going in is just suicide. Even the Yanghua Sect and the Queyuan Sect brought cultivators at the Golden Core stage or higher this time..."
Just as a group of cultivators were shocked that this ignorant Qi Refining cultivator dared to enter the secret realm, a green figure silently climbed up the cliff.
“He has my pollen on him, he can’t have gone far.” Xunlu lit the communication talisman in her hand and whispered, “Besides, he’s now in the Chaolong Secret Realm, he’s doomed.”
"I want to see him alive or dead."
"Yes, I understand." Xunlu waved away the ashes left after the talisman was burned and mingled into the crowd before entering the secret realm.
As soon as Wei Feng entered, he was knocked over by a flurry of fireflies and crashed into a tree trunk. Before he could get up, he coughed up a mouthful of blood.
He quickly swallowed two blood-replenishing pills, then pulled a dented wooden plaque from his worn-out storage bag. Pointing it at the swarms of fireflies, a line of text slowly appeared on the plaque:
[Blue-winged Firefly, Level 1 of Foundation Establishment, prefers blood and flesh, and builds its nest on decaying bones.]
Wei Feng gripped the wooden plaque and swallowed hard. The swarm of fireflies seemed to have figured him out as an easy target, and buzzed as they flew toward him, flapping their wings.
"..." Wei Feng cursed under his breath, ignoring the fact that his clothes were torn by tree branches, and got up and ran away.
A swarm of blue-winged fireflies pursued him relentlessly, with several even clinging tightly to his shoulders and the back of his neck, their sharp, fine teeth piercing deep into his flesh. But Wei Feng had no time to care; his hands were frantically rummaging through his storage bag for any usable magical artifacts. Finally, he pulled out a high-level fire talisman, painstakingly infused it with a meager amount of spiritual energy, ignited it, and then hurled it backward.
boom--
The raging fire swept over the swarm of fireflies, and the insects paused eerily for a moment. Before Wei Feng could even show his joy, the fireflies, which were originally the size of a thumb, instantly swelled to the size of a fist and rushed towards him at several times the speed before. When Wei Feng turned around, he was met with countless gaping maws.
His face turned pale, and he used all the strength he had ever had to sprint forward.
Xunlu, who had been tracking them, watched the boy being chased half to death by a group of low-level alien beasts and expressionlessly put away the flower stamen from her fingertips.
Blue-winged fireflies naturally love fire, yet this fool still used fire to attack them; it's rare to see someone so stupid.
Xunlv followed the fireflies at a leisurely pace and soon saw the blue-winged fireflies gathering and pausing in a bush to gnaw on a corpse. Xunlv then flew over to retrieve Wei Feng's body and return to report.
But as soon as she reached the top of the bushes, she sensed something was wrong. Upon closer inspection, she discovered that the fireflies' tails were entangled by countless transparent threads, and they were gnawing on the threads that had bound their tails.
"Not good!" Xunlu's expression changed and she turned to leave, but the transparent net blocked her way from all sides, binding her firmly in the center. Even her magic was rendered ineffective while she was inside.
"My apologies, I've frightened you, sister." The red-clad youth hooked his legs around the tree trunk and hung upside down, waving at her with a smile. "But since you're so eager to become my Daoist partner, tell me who sent you, and I'll spare your life, okay?"
Xun Lü smirked, "A mere Qi Refining cultivator dares to scheme against me—"
Before she could finish speaking, Wei Feng took out a whole bucket of corpse oil from his storage bag and poured it over her, drenching her completely. Xun Lü had never suffered such humiliation. Huge roots sprouted from her feet and burrowed into the soil, but the threads were strangely strong. Even though Xun Lü was rooted in the earth, she couldn't break free. She angrily shouted, "What is this thing?!"
"Naturally, it's something to save your life." Wei Feng smiled and threw the fire talisman in. The poured oil instantly burst into flames, and the blue-winged fireflies swelled several times their original size, desperately opening their dense teeth towards Xun Lü like moths drawn to a flame.
"Wei Feng!" Xun Lü's pupils suddenly turned bluish-green, and countless yellow flower stamens rushed towards Wei Feng from the gaps in the silk threads.
Wei Feng swung the longsword on his back, mumbled the flight spell, and nearly got stabbed in the back of the heart by the flower stamen when he jumped onto the sword, but luckily he was a step ahead.
“…Clear mind and pure qi, flow great, no, operate great, great what was it again?” Wei Feng forgot to speed up the incantation halfway through reciting it, and the flower stamen that he had left behind had already climbed onto his back.
Wei Feng gritted his teeth, swallowed a handful of pills to increase his spiritual power, and his flying sword shot out. The soft flower stamens tore through the flesh on his back, and the excruciating pain made him howl in the wind.
"What's that sound?" Jiang Gu paused slightly.
Utuo, with his short legs, tilted his head back and said, "It sounds like a dog barking."
A hint of disdain flashed across Jiang Gu's face as he lowered his eyes to look at the direction of the golden patterns on the ring. "The Divine Kite Shark Scales are in the southeast direction."
"Master, will the seal on your neck be broken with the Divine Kite Shark Scale?" Wu Tuo asked.
"I don't know," Jiang Gu said, "but the Jiang family has issued a bounty, so what they want must be something good."
"..." Wu Tuo raised his paw and wiped his face. "If we find the Divine Kite Shark Scale but it's useless for the seal, can we hand it over to the Jiang family?"
Jiang Gu glanced at it expressionlessly, "I'll keep it as a chew toy for you."
Utuo immediately bristled with disgust, "This stuff sounds fishy, and it's all sticky and gooey, I don't want it, ugh~"
"The Divine Kite Shark is a hybrid born from the union of a kite bird that has cultivated to human form and a merman in the Mahayana stage. Only one such creature appears in the cultivation world every ten thousand years. It is said that the Divine Kite Shark's protective scales can cure all poisons and expand one's sea of consciousness." Jiang Gu said, his hands behind his back. "If you eat it, you can advance in cultivation, and its fur won't be so prickly."
"I'm not prickly!" Wu Tuo exclaimed anxiously, jumping up to Jiang Gu's calf and bumping his knee with his head before falling down, huffing, "My fur is the softest of all!"
Jiang Gu ignored him and kept walking forward, quickly creating a large gap between them. Wu Tuo hurriedly chased after him, calling out, "Master! Master! If you don't believe me, touch me again—"
Before it could finish speaking, it suddenly felt a darkness above its head. In the next instant, Jiang Gu flicked his sleeve and swept away what had appeared above its head. The blood-like thing was slammed heavily to the ground, curled up into a ball, twitched twice, and then became completely still.
Wu Tuo was so frightened that his eyes turned into vertical pupils. He scrambled and hid behind Jiang Gu's ankle, whispering, "Master, what is that?"
Jiang Gu glanced at it indifferently, casually brushing off the bloodstains that had accidentally gotten on his sleeve. "Person."
However, his cultivation level was extremely low, even lower than that of the spirit beasts that occasionally passed by. His spiritual energy was almost non-existent, so it's no wonder that neither he nor Wu Tuo paid any attention to him.
"Master, shall we go take a look?" Wu Tuo tentatively took a step with his short legs, but before his paws could touch the ground, he was grabbed by the back of his neck and lifted up.
"Don't pick up things randomly on the roadside." Jiang Gu didn't even glance at the bloodied man before picking up Wu Tuo and leaving without looking back.
Neither the human nor the beast noticed that the blood mass behind them stirred slightly and opened its blood-covered eyes.
However, they don't need to pay attention to something that's not much stronger than an ant.
First, the flesh on his back was torn off by the green-seeking flower stamen. Then, he almost exploded and died because his sea of consciousness cracked due to consuming too many pills. He was also unlucky enough to encounter a one-legged spider in the Golden Core stage. He never thought he would still be alive.
Wei Feng covered his mouth and coughed up a pool of shattered internal organs and flesh, staring intently at the tall, slender figure in front of him—the ring on his hand.
We must find a way to kill this person and then take the ring.
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