Chapter 30: Offense and Defense Have Changed
"I've been so good to you, how dare you join others in plotting against me?" he said angrily.
Jiao Ran smiled and said, "You're good to me? I'm telling you, I was merciful by not stabbing you. You've hit me time and time again, and my back and abdomen are covered in bruises. If I ever become a master of martial arts, I'll pay you back a hundredfold, trample you under my feet, and make you cry to me every day."
Chai Hui smiled coldly, wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and said, "A dog bites Lü Dongbin, unaware of a kind heart. Let me tell you this, my father is the only one in the world who knows how to open the mechanism of Gao Shan Shou. Do you think your sneaky skills can unlock all the mechanisms?"
Jiao Ran didn't get angry, instead he said calmly, "Thank you for reminding me. I will be very careful when I go in."
Chai Hui saw them leaving and tried to stop them, but Chai Lie quickly stopped him. He shook his head and said, "Let them go. They will all die in there."
“Big Brother——”
Chai Lie knew his own limitations. The two men's martial arts were not inferior to theirs. Even if they fought, they would probably both suffer losses and die together in the end. The Dragon Locking Cave was full of traps. No one except the Chai family had ever come out alive. In addition, they were surrounded by soldiers on all sides. They would surely be trapped to death.
Chai Hui was so angry that he was fuming. The blood at the corner of his mouth had not yet dried. Chai Lie saw this and felt very distressed. "Why do you always disobey me? Go back!"
"No."
"When Archer comes, don't say I didn't warn you. If he sees you making trouble, he'll definitely scold you."
Chai Hui was reluctant and secretly resentful. He decided to let them go. It was up to her to die there.
Under their cover, Jiaoran had just opened the lock of the armory and entered the secret room, and Fenghuangchu followed closely behind.
"How are you?" he asked the companion who had been following Jiaoran.
The man shook his head and said nothing more. He seemed to be a very silent person.
The armory is located in a bottomless cave, hidden among the mountains.
After entering, the three of them had only walked a few dozen steps when a man beside them reached out his hand and put it on Jiaoran's shoulder. Jiaoran was thrown up like a light hydrangea. The next moment, in the blink of an eye, seven or eight spears flew towards them. Jiaoran suddenly felt her body lighten again. The man grabbed her collar, gently lifted her up, and then gently put her down. There were hidden weapons all along the way, but she was unharmed.
Phoenix Chick stepped forward, covering his arm that had been pierced by the puncture. "Is this thing poisonous?"
Jiaoran spread his hands, "How should I know?"
The man nodded.
Fenghuangchu pushed Jiaoran away with a palm and groped the man's body, but was pushed away by him. Then he threw a white jade bottle to him. He opened the lid and swallowed it.
The Governor's Mansion also hid poisoned hidden weapons. Jiaoran was secretly frightened. If this person hadn't helped her, she would have been stabbed into a hedgehog.
This grotto looked like an ancient tomb, with countless forked paths. If it weren't for Fenghuangchu and his friends leading the way, Jiaoran would have found it difficult to find the right path even if he had sneaked in.
Walking further in, I could gradually see a ray of light.
It was still chilly in the cave even in the hot summer. It was so hot outside that people were feeling uneasy, but Jiaoran was shivering with cold inside. He could even hear the faint growl of some wild animal.
She was a little scared, so she shrank to the side and walked slower.
"How long will it take to get there? Why does this road seem to never end? Is it the road to hell?" Jiaoran joked.
The Phoenix Chick avoided her gaze and ignored her humorous joke, waving the torch in his hand.
The stone wall is covered with countless mosses and grasses due to the passage of time. After walking a few steps, you can hear the sound of dripping water.
After walking for a long time, Jiaoran felt that she was about to freeze into an ice cube. She saw something sparkling in front of her, like a river.
As they approached, Jiaoran was startled to discover a bottomless pool of mercury nestled within the grotto. No wonder it looked like a river from afar. Mercury flowed in all directions, slowly swaying near the corners of the chamber. They hadn't seen it clearly from such a distance, but now, as they drew closer, Jiaoran knew it was poisonous and quickly covered his nose.
The water in the pool was emitting a cold silver light. After waiting for a while, a jade platform rose in the center of the pool. Several people looked up and saw several glowing stones embedded in the star disk above the pool. They were of different colors, and the most magical one emitted a strange red light.
"Where is "Gao Shan Shou"? " Jiaoran looked everywhere.
Could it be at the bottom of the pool? This thing is quite poisonous. If she dives in, she will die.
During his journey, Phoenix Cub found many secret books hidden in the armory. He stole them whenever he saw them, and now his arms are full of them.
Jiaoran knew that she couldn't achieve anything, so she didn't care about those secret books. In her eyes, they were just waste paper.
Phoenix Chick's friend stood near the pond and looked up at the star map above his head for a long time. I don't know what he was looking at.
Jiaoran looked closely and found that there seemed to be a dim square in the star map. The light from the stones obscured the square. She looked more closely and found that it seemed to be a box.
At this moment, the man suddenly took out a green stone from his sleeve and threw it towards the star plate.
"Mars guards the heart, and each is divided into two." The phoenix chick saw the place where he hit and murmured in a low voice.
The star disk was indeed divided into two parts. The middle piece broke off, and the remaining half remained on top, floating in the middle of the pool of water. Even faster than that was the green stone he had just thrown out.
The stone plopped onto the surface of the pond, creating silver ripples. Jiaoran took a closer look. Huh? A jade ring.
She suspected she had seen it wrong.
But the ring did not fall into the water, but floated on the surface. She walked closer to the silver water, squatted down and looked at the ring carefully.
After looking for an unknown amount of time, Jiaoran stiffened, turned around with his mouth slightly open, and his eyes were dull.
The moment the star disk fell on the water, he also took off the human skin mask on his face.
Her blood turned cold in an instant, colder than the breath exhaled in the cave.
Jiaoran looked at him.
He looked at her too.
They had never stared at each other for so long in these days.
When he looked at her, she just avoided his eyes or pretended to do something.
It was just a glance, but Jiaoran felt as if a long time had passed.
It was just this one glance that made her react immediately.
Mu Jin was not as simple as she thought. He had known their plan for a long time, so he was involved in it today.
So why did they bring her here?
She was just an ordinary girl, neither good at literature nor martial arts, and even if she sold herself she wouldn't get a good price.
This is a trap!
By the time she realized it, it was too late.
And she couldn't understand how she became the prey in the trap.
Mercury gradually spread upwards and filled the grooves of the star disk, and the flowing water replenished the depressions of the star disk.
The colored stones changed their positions in the blink of an eye. The red stone had now moved to the position of the purple stone.
Only the box engraved with strange runes remained in the middle, and there was a circle of deep grooves around it waiting for something to be filled in.
Almost at that moment, Jiaoran became frightened and ran outside in a hurry.
However, the hunter had already begun to close the net. Phoenix Chick ignored her panic and pulled her onto the platform in the middle. She could hardly stand and almost fell into the mercury pool.
The platform was only as big as a blanket, and with two people standing on it, it was shaking.
Jiaoran turned around and looked at Mu Jin's eyes, which were usually as warm as the breeze, but now they were as cold as the rock under his feet.
She didn't dare to move, for fear of falling into the pool of water, which was extremely poisonous.
"Why do you do this?" At this time, Jiaoran remembered to ask Fenghuang Chu and Mu Jin. The original plan was for them to take away "Gao Shan Shou", why did it turn out like this in the blink of an eye.
"Little girl, you are such a fool. Can't you see that we need your life?"
"What do you mean?"
"The key to unlocking this box is you."
Jiao Ran looked at the box embedded in the stone and said, "So you and he were in cahoots. You planned this long ago, before I entered the mansion, and before you went to find A Niang?"
"It's too late to know now."
"Aren't you afraid that my mother will find out and kill you?" She still pretended to be calm.
"Anyway, you're going to die here today. No one knows except Mu Jin and I. Do you think Bu Yue and the others can find this place? When we get out, I'll meet your parents and tell them that you took the Gao Shan Shou and ran away. There's no good end for those who betray Hui Ying Sect. Just wait for your fellow disciples to hunt you down to the ends of the earth."
"Will they believe you?"
"Whether they believe me or not, I don't know, but you've probably never heard that 'Gao Shan Shou' is only the first half of 'Gao Shan Chou'. I also have the second half, 'The Secret of Immortality'. I'm going to trade it with your mother. Do you think she'll ask about your whereabouts or will she just accept the 'Secret of Immortality' she finally got?"
"Mother will definitely kill you."
"Why are you still so naive? Hahahahahaha..." He held her chin and forced her to look at the man on the shore.
"You fell into his trap. If you want to hate someone, blame him instead of me."
Jiaoran met Mu Jin's eyes, praying to see mercy in his eyes, but that man was no longer the person she knew.
Perhaps she never knew him.
What he showed himself to be was just an illusion, everything was fake. His smile, his gentleness and tolerance were all disguises. He acted out whatever others wanted to see. Under the human skin, he was actually a beast.
Jiaoran struggled. Even if she was going to die, she wanted to drag Fenghuangchi to be her scapegoat. Even if the star map was turned upside down, it would be the bodies of both of them that would sink in the poisonous water.
Unexpectedly, the Phoenix Chick easily enlightened her on the way.
He knocked Jiaoran down and rubbed her wrist back and forth, looking for an incision. "I'm sorry, if I knocked you out, you wouldn't be in so much pain, but I have no choice but to use your blood when you're awake."
Jiaoran was pricked with blood and could only watch him cut his wrist with a knife. The cut was very deep, and it looked like a red chicken blood stone bracelet was on her wrist, and blood was all around. Jiaoran was extremely terrified. The sound of flowing blood was very clear in her ears, and this sound intensified the terror in her heart.
Jiaoran couldn't turn her head, otherwise she could see what Mu Jin was doing. Was he laughing at her stupidity?
It turned out that he had taught her the phrase "luring someone into a trap" before, and it was used at this time. Jiaoran found it extremely ironic.
Her blood slowly seeped into the box, and soon the box became loose.
Fenghuangchu tried hard to open the box, but not enough blood flowed out, so the box could not be completely removed. He waited quietly for the blood to flow out of Jiaoran's wrist.
After waiting for a while, it wasn't enough, and Phoenix Chick stepped forward and prepared to cut her neck.
The man on the shore said in a deep voice, "The gushing out of hot blood will only make the three stars lock tighter. Besides, keeping her alive is more valuable than leaving her dead."
Phoenix Chick went to see the other gems on the star disk, and indeed, they were glowing faintly. So he didn't dare to act rashly. He retreated to the shore and said, "You go and see what to do. We can't just wait forever."
Jiaoran's strength slowly faded as the blood flowed out. She even lost the strength to speak. Unable to move, she thought of Uncle Li, the butcher in the small town. Now she was like a fat pig waiting to be slaughtered.
Mu Jin came to her side, leaned over and said, "You and I are even."
Jiaoran bit her tongue to force herself to wake up. She said with difficulty, "Go... go to hell, I never... thought of killing you."
He said, "But you still took advantage of me. Why didn't you tell me the truth when I asked you? I gave you so many chances. If you had seized even one of them, you wouldn't be in this situation today."
She was almost killed by him, and he was only now coming to settle old scores with her. Jiaoran felt extremely helpless. This man was really vindictive. If she owed him a penny, he would get it back ten times as much.
Jiao Ran endured the pain and said, "You... I will remember you. Don't let me find you, or I will definitely... kill you."
Two people who were so close to each other, now became like shouting for war and killing. Mu Jin laughed sarcastically, "When you can still survive today, come and settle the score with me."
Jiaoran lost so much blood that his face was almost invisible.
He sighed deeply, moved closer, and said, "How about you cry a little, shed a few tears, and see if it will hurt me. That way you might still have a chance of escaping."
The cold and piercing words fell into Jiaoran's ears, and she felt extremely regretful. Why had she never known his true face and never doubted him?
The world was spinning, and everything turned into a blur of ink in her eyes.
The pain eventually became numb, but she could no longer open her eyes. Everything was over.
He looked at Jiaoran, who was as pale as paper, and remembered how she once ran over to him, skipping and handing him the crabapple flowers.
Phoenix Chick got "Takayama Shou" and the two prepared to leave.
Although I took a few wrong steps on this trip, I have finally completed it all.
As the two were walking forward, the young phoenix told him about the future.
Later? Later.
After Mu Jin recited two sentences, he suddenly turned around resolutely and ran towards the pond.
He regretted it. If there was no Jiaoran, would there still be Zhang Ran, Zhao Ran, and Li Ran? Perhaps there would be, but none of them were Jiaoran, and no one was his Jiaoran.
There is only one Jiaoran, and no one in the world can replace him.
He wanted to take her away. No matter what, he couldn't let her stay here and die.
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