"Shh—keep your voice down! Aren't you afraid that Situ Xuelian will hear it and beat you to death?"
"Oh, what are you afraid of? I'm telling the truth..." His tone sounded nonchalant, but in fact his voice was getting lower and lower. The man muttered casually, "That Situ Xuelian is so cruel that she actually turned her own brother Situ Lianzi into a puppet. If a newcomer falls into her hands, he will definitely be worse off than a puppet!"
"Yeah, everyone in this living city is crazy. If I live here for too long, I don't know what I'll become..."
"Come on, stop flattering yourself. I heard of your reputation before I came to Living City. To cultivate your magic, you sacrificed the blood of babies from an entire city. The people in the city cried together, begging you to spare the children, offering themselves in their place. But you cruelly killed those babies right in front of them, using the resentment of the living and the dead to practice your magic, and then killed everyone in the city..."
"Nonsense! I silenced all the witnesses... How do you know this?"
…
…
Lan Tiao didn't know how bad the reputation of the "Thunder Lotus Team" was, and he thought that the people in the team had good personalities. Before he joined the team, Situ Lianzi even disliked him, but when he passed the so-called "team assessment" and joined the team, Situ Lianzi's attitude improved significantly.
On the way to Ciguang Swamp, Situ Xuelian and her brother were very quiet all the way, and the team leader Lei Zihe was even more so. Only the ugly middle-aged man was a chatterbox and kept talking all the way. But no one mind him for being talkative, because the ugly uncle was talking about the general situation of the swamp, and the three newcomers were eager for him to say more.
"The Ciguang Swamp is a vast area. It contains not only swampland but also a miasmic forest. The forest surrounds the entire swamp from all sides. Many magical and poisonous herbs grow in the swamp, and numerous insects, ants, birds, and beasts live there. These beasts have been inhaling miasma year-round and have become poisonous themselves. Be careful not to be bitten by them."
"The map of Ciguang Swamp is relatively simple. Besides the forest and the swamp, there's nothing else. The scariest place in this living city is the Misty Forest. This forest is incredibly large and is said to contain many divine treasures. However, it also houses a particularly terrifying creature called the Misty Beast. This Misty Beast looks like an ant, but is about the size of a lion. Anyone who encounters it is essentially dead."
"We know about the existence of the Mist Beast because a hundred years ago, a group of thousands of people entered the Misty Forest, but only two escaped."
"It was these two who mapped a portion of the Misty Woods. They said that the woods contained not only trees and lakes, but also an altar, vast plains, and endless ant colonies."
"These two were able to escape because they repeatedly used the life-burning spell to increase their speed. After they emerged, they each had only half a month left to live. They looked old and their breath was weak. They had hoped to exchange the map they had drawn and their accumulated savings for longevity pills, but their enemies came and surrounded their house, cutting off their access to the pills... Not long after, they both died."
The ugly uncle was talking until his mouth was dry. He turned over his palm and a cup of water appeared in his palm. The hot tea in the cup was curling up and the fragrance of tea was everywhere.
The ugly uncle didn't mind the heat. He tilted his head back and drank it all in one gulp, chewing and swallowing the tea leaves. He said, "I haven't introduced myself yet. My name is Hot Tea. What are your three names? How long have you been in Living City?"
The name hot tea sounds strange, like a pseudonym.
"My name is Chu Zhuzhu..." one of the new female recruits said shyly. She had ordinary features, with a few freckles on her face. She clutched a kitchen knife tightly in her hand, and it was obvious that she was very nervous. She said, "I've been in Living City for ten days. I used to be a maidservant for a young lady from a wealthy family...but then the young lady's family met with disaster, and I was the only one who escaped with this kitchen knife. I hurriedly came to Living City, and I...I actually wanted to leave. But who knew that although entrance to Living City is free, leaving requires a thousand spirit stones...I...I don't have a single spirit stone on me, so I have no choice but to stay here. I'm a weak woman, and I don't dare to kill anyone. I don't even know if I can survive in Living City..."
Speaking of the latter part, Chu Zhuzhu felt very aggrieved, as if she was really not used to the environment here.
In fact, she got this evil kitchen knife by chance and killed the young lady's entire family.
The kitchen knife absorbed the blood of an entire family, which led to the advancement of Chu Zhuzhu's cultivation and made her a cultivator in the early stage of the Young Yuan Realm.
But Chu Zhuzhu was not satisfied with the status quo and wanted to kill more people.
The murder in Miss Naihe's home alarmed the government, who quickly sent practitioners to investigate. Chu Zhuzhu had no choice but to escape and eventually came to the Living City.
Another newcomer said, "My name is Lei Fenfei, the same as the captain's last name..."
Lei Fenfei glanced at the captain with a flattering smile on his face, as if he wanted to establish a relationship with him, but there was no expression on Captain Lei Zihe's handsome and cold face. His eyebrows and facial features were as sharp as knives, and he looked very cold.
Lei Fenfei could only look away awkwardly and said, "I'm from the Great Rui Kingdom. I was originally a disciple of Baishan. One day, I was sent out by the sect on a mission that was supposed to take a month. However, just a few days after I left the sect, I learned that the entire Baishan had been burned... My fellow disciples in the sect were also burned to ashes. The court took the opportunity to send people to hunt down any escaped disciples in the sect. I didn't dare stay in the Great Rui Kingdom, so I used the teleportation array to escape here."
Hearing this, Lan Tiao raised an eyebrow slightly. He hadn't expected to meet a fellow countryman here. However, this Lei Fenfei was clearly from the Demon Sect, a remnant of the Tianbai Sect. Lan Tiao didn't intend to get too close to him. When it was Lan Tiao's turn to introduce himself, he said, "My name is Lan Tiao. Lan stands for blue, and Tiao stands for a thousand miles away."
The pseudonym he chose, "Lan Tiao", has the same pronunciation as his real name, except for the different characters.
When out and about, one always had to be extra cautious. He would give a pseudonym that sounded the same as his own. That way, when someone called him, Lan Tiao would habitually respond without being exposed. But what if he gave "Yuan Zhan" as a pseudonym, and someone called him "Yuan Zhan" and he didn't react and forgot to respond? Therefore, giving "Lan Tiao" was the most appropriate. It wouldn't affect others calling him by his name, and it would also prevent them from cursing him by his name.
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