Chapter 158 - System vs. System (VIII)
Chi Xiaochi forcefully dragged Yan Jinhua away without looking back.
A true man never looks back at a lost pouch.
061 asked him, “What if the pearl is picked up by someone else?”
Chi Xiaochi said without looking back, “That’s someone else’s chance.”
Chance is about chance and destiny, and when a treasure falls into the hands of a good or bad person, it is all about destiny at that moment. If one knows in advance where another’s chance is, and takes it for oneself, no matter how much one tries to hide it, it is still stealing.
As for Yan Jinhua’s behaviour, it is no longer just stealing, it can be characterised as burglary, and he also molested the owner, eating and taking, which is very shameful.
Chi Xiaochi’s response, to put it simply, is: see this pearl, you can’t even throw it away.
Hearing Chi Xiaochi’s words, 061 gave a hint.
…… Then I’ll give it to Duan Shujue to keep for now.
The Seven Great Formations are gathered in a single mountain, but inside there are three thousand worlds, with endless possibilities for change. The ancestors of Jingxu set up the barriers and the seven formations change every thirty years, each time with seven formations but the barriers are different, so there is no chance of cheating.
Many people are more interested in a sword fight with a master than a sword in stone that they may not even be able to pull out, and will choose to fight directly on the outer edge, often in chaotic battles that can involve the mere passing of a sword.
If you come to join the fun and are not strong enough, then you probably won’t even get the skinny on the second formation, so at best you can do a half-day trip to Jingxu, then you can pack your bags and go home.
The second level is a sword and wind formation, where those with lesser spiritual power and sword skills will be cut down and regretfully break their horses.
Those who have made it to the third level after the great wave are those who have a minimum of swordsmanship skills.
The third formation is a simple maze formation. Some sword practitioners are only drunk on their swords and do not understand the formation, so they can only be trapped in the maze of fog, and are never allowed to enter.
The fourth level is the bamboo forest, which is infested with bamboo beasts that feed on the spirits of heaven and earth, and to cross the formation you need to obtain a piece of scale armour from a live bamboo beast as a lock key.
They were reluctant to have their territory invaded and to be stripped of their scales and armour, so there was some hard fighting in various parts of the bamboo forest.
Chi Xiaochi carries Yan Jinhua from level 1 straight through to level 4.
Yan Jinhua paddled all the way and was gassed.
…… When he came to his senses, it was too late, if not horrified, to discover that the precious pearl he had with him was missing.
He had to face up to a terrible truth: the
Once Duan Shujue is stunned or injured, it would be a fool’s errand for him to get out, let alone get close to the sword in the stone.
However, if Duan Shujue was allowed to break through the barrier, how would he get his own luck? Do we really have to let Duan get away for nothing?
After weighing his options, he still could not think of a good solution. He felt his heart was burning and his anger was rising, but he had to pretend that nothing was wrong, which was really torturous.
It was easy to get past the fourth level, but there were only a handful of passers. Yan Jinhua looked around to make sure no one was there, so he pretended to be tired and stretched out, “Take a break and rest.”
Chi Xiaochi, as he was told, sat down on his sword.
His left arm was cut an inch deep, probably injuring a blood vessel and bleeding a little too much, staining a small part of his arm red
Chi Xiaochi rolled up his sleeves and wanted to tear some clothes to stop the bleeding, but just as he sat down, he noticed an elixir growing under a rock on his right hand side, just the kind he had seen in a medicine book a few days ago.
The convenience of finding a place to rest and lifting your hand to grab a plant is as easy as grabbing a roadside dog’s tail.
Chi Xiaochi exclaims to 061: “Look, it’s really the star treatment.”
061 Instead, he was heartbroken: “Use it quickly.”
After confirming that he was right, Chi Xiaochi plucked the herbs and pounded them, rubbing them on the sword wound.
The medicine had an immediate effect on the wound and the pain subsided as the blood closed up.
Yan Jinhua was still thinking about the precious pearl, and after sitting down, his eyes rolled a few times and said, “Let’s go back, master and disciple.”
Although he had learned from the system that the pearl had been picked up by a man, Yan Jinhua was so distressed by the sudden loss of his treasure that he was unable to sit still.
He had been carrying the pearl for many years, but he had resisted the desire to use it to cause trouble, fearing that people would notice, so that he could give it a go today.
Since the system says that he is an immortal, he must have a bit of a face, so he can just lie and say that this is a family heirloom that he accidentally lost in the sword fight, and he probably wouldn’t dare to take it for himself.
Duan Shujue was a little surprised at his words, “Brother Yan doesn’t want the Sword in the Stone?”
Yan Jinhua looked into his eyes and smiled to hide his anxiety: “I’m afraid you’ll get hurt again.”
Duan Shujue : “I’m not afraid.”
Yan Jinhua : “……”
Duan Shujue looked sincerely at Yan Jinhua: “I would also like to see what the sword in the stone that Brother Yan has been longing for is like.”
Yan Jinhua : “…………”
With these two simple words, Yan Jinhua’s path was blocked.
Before he arrived, Duan Shujue was told in graphic detail about the magic of the sword in the stone, for fear that he would be too accustomed to it to go out into the mountains.
Now that Duan Shujue was determined to see Shi Zhongjian, he could find no decent reason to stop Duan Shujue.
He could have pretended to be injured and asked Duan Shujue to send him down the mountain. He knew what Duan Shujue’s persona was and would have given up the sword meeting and sent him down the mountain if such an accident had occurred.
But Duan Shujue was so determined to protect him that he was at most scratched by the sword wind and the astral energy, and if he were to fall to the ground and play dead and twitch, it would be too fake.
After a short rest, Duan Shujue urged him on his way.
Unable to do so, Yan Jinhua had to dawdle and get up.
Forget it, take your time, the big deal is to wait until you are near the sword in the stone and then find an opportunity to strike.
After the two of them slowly left, the young man in white, whom Su Yun called “Little Uncle” and who had just found the pearl, slowly walked out of the bamboo forest behind them.
Little Uncle was holding an umbrella and the bamboo leaves were like rain, drifting down on the surface with a fine rustling sound.
He kept a not-too-close distance from the pair as they made their way forward.
He passed by the place where Chi Xiaochi had picked the herbs and raised his hand slightly.
In a flash, Chi Xiaochi’s dug-out mound with the remaining half of the herb all dissolved into data and disappeared without a trace.
He took his thumb and brushed it over his palm, losing his smile.
…… isn’t any kind of protagonist treatment, just because you’re the one who gets hurt.
The fifth level is no longer a sword art or formation test.
A long, dark river, about a hundred feet wide and a thousand feet deep, with waves rolling in front of it, lies in front of Chi Xiaochi. A stone tablet stands by the river, stating that the name of this place is the River of Three Extremes, the extinction of fish, birds and people.
Three thousand weak waters, goose feathers sinking to the bottom, can not fly, can not cross, can not swim, not to mention the boats, birds of prey can not fly over the top.
And they have to reach the other side of the river to be considered through.
Chi Xiaochi thought, “Isn’t this a fucking river of quicksand?
After much deliberation, he agreed with Yan Jinhua that he would go into the water first and once he found the way, he would release a signal under the water for Yan Jinhua to come down.
After a brief rest, Chi Xiaochi plunged into the water and was literally sucked to the bottom by the river, unable to move.
If I had to use a metaphor, Chi Xiaochi feels like a bully who has eaten his weight.
According to common sense, ordinary cultivators have neither become immortals nor grown gills, so they can either wait to be soaked into the river or exhaust all their spiritual power to get out of the water, but once they do so, their power will be exhausted and it will take a lot of time just to recover.
Chi Xiaochi looked around in the murky water for a while and found that there was complete darkness all around, so he could not see anything.
A normal person would have panicked by this point.
Chi Xiaochi’s heart is in the right place.
With his left hand he wrote in his right palm, “Go.”
Inside him, Duan Shujue writes back to him with his right hand on his left: “Which way?”
Chi Xiaochi replied, “There is no way.”
Duan Shujue seems to have come to an understanding.
Chi Xiaochi goes on to write, “If there is no way, make a way.”
The inner and outer duo reached a consensus.
Duan Shujue’s fingertips lit up with shark fire, reflecting the surface of the water and sending out a signal, and the moment Yan Jinhua entered the water, he drew his sword and used all his spiritual energy, but instead of leaping upwards, he smoothed his finger onto the blade of his sword and then swept the magnificent sword qi covered with a layer of pure blue shark fire down the water, slashing straight down at his feet.
At once, the earth’s crust bloomed and cracked.
Beneath the chipped earth, there is actually a heavenly light buried.
In another flash, they were standing on the land across the Blackwater River.
Yan Jinhua was soaked to the skin, while Duan Shujue was dry and hadn’t even gotten his lapels wet.
Yan Jinhua didn’t think otherwise, but assumed that Duan Shujue had opened the door to life and that he would therefore be given special treatment, and that he was just a dabbler, so he had no choice but to get into this mess.
The river itself was odd and the cleansing spells would not work, so he had to walk along, forcing the strong watery smell from his body and trying to rip off the sticky, rotting algae from his head.
Chi Xiaochi walks ahead to open the way.
061 His heart was full of admiration and fondness, and a smile followed in his voice: “How did you come up with the location of the road?”
”It’s not that simple.” Chi Xiaochi said, “You’ve seen Journey to the West, right, and you haven’t heard that song?”
061 : “……”
Chi Xiaochi sings, “Dare to ask where the road is, the road is beneath your feet. The road ~ is under – the – feet.”
Duan Shujue : “…………”
Duan Shujue froze for a long time, trying to find a realistic basis for the existence of such a song in the tonal structure he had already learned.
But 061 is unexpectedly not too bad.
I don’t know if it’s because I’ve heard Chi Xiaochi humming too much, but now that I’ve heard him sing, 061 thinks it’s cute.
A little further out, the pair came across a clear stream.
Yan Jinhua couldn’t stand the stench of the water, so he took off his clothes and went to bathe in the river.
Chi Xiaochi leans his head against a tree and rests with his eyes closed.
061 There was a little doubt in his mind, but he knew it was not the right time to ask the question, so he swallowed it down and made the garment on him as dry and soft as possible.
Chi Xiaochi, however, as if she had an insight into his mind, closed her eyes, tilted her head slightly and asked, “Teacher Six, do you want to ask me something?”
061 Say, “No.”
Chi Xiaochi said, “You want to ask me why I didn’t drown Yan Jinhua under the water?”
Just now, at the bottom of the Blackwater River, all he had to do was to release the Sailor Fire without opening the Birth Gate, and he would have been 80% sure of drowning this punk in the water.
It is said that it takes ten to fifteen minutes for a person to drown, and as long as Yan Jinhua remains conscious during this time, standing in front of him and watching him die, it is definitely enough to make up the amount of remorse needed to “make him regret meeting Duan Shujue”.
The pool was deep enough to sink a goose feather, and there were so many casualties at every sword meeting that if he had been buried at the bottom, he would have been unnoticed and no one would have thought he had died at the hands of Duan Shujue.
During the conversation with Chi Xiaochi, the young master in white also arrived at the other end of the Blackwater River.
He stood at the edge of the rippling river, thinking and thinking, intent on listening to Chi Xiaochi’s thoughts, “Why?”
The clear, watery voice is synchronised in Chi Xiaochi’s head.
061 Ask him, “Why?”
Chi Xiaochi lowered her voice a little and said with a smile, “That’s no fun.”
”Why not take him and let him watch with his own eyes as everything he wants falls into the hands of Duan Shujue. It would be cheaper to let him die at this point in time.”
The young master on the other side of the river laughed helplessly and walked towards the river with a turquoise carp umbrella.
But he did not dive to the bottom of the river.
The moment he stepped onto the water, a patch of water beneath him instantly turned to ice, and as he withdrew his foot and walked forward, the ice that had been formed by the change in data form melted away, as if a lotus was born under his feet, and he stepped through it.
He rarely comments on Chi Xiaochi’s ideas and mostly just listens.
But 061 knows only too well how much pressure and black mud has accumulated in Chi Xiaochi’s mind for those hosts over the course of the worlds.
061 , or rather Little Uncle, while holding his umbrella and walking slowly with his head down, said softly, “Do you really think so?”
Chi Xiaochi’s eyes widened slightly, “Hmm?”
He said, “You’re actually thinking that seeing death is not something that ‘Duan Shujue’ would do. That’s all.”
Chi Xiaochi was stunned: “I ……”
061 said with certainty, “You do.”
Chi Xiaochi had never heard 061 speak to him in this way.
Gentle, firm, with a little bit of force, yet not uncomfortable.
…… This feeling is familiar.
Whenever he got a problem wrong as a child, someone would pull over his workbook and teach him so carefully.
It felt so familiar that it called him out of his mind.
”When a wicked man does evil, he only blames the outside world; when a good man does evil, he blames himself. It’s easy to be evil and have peace of mind; being good is hard, so it’s precious. If you had watched Yan Jinhua die at the bottom of the river, the pain of not saving him would have been left to Duan Shujue, who would have thought of it from time to time. I don’t think it would have no effect on you.”
Whenever harm is done, it will have a greater or lesser effect on the human mind.
Chi Xiaochi lifted a hand to the tip of her nose and smiled distractedly, “You say that like you know me well.”
061 Decisively and forcefully, he said, “Of course I understand.”
Chi Xiaochi’s habits, Chi Xiaochi’s thoughts, Chi Xiaochi’s physical and psychological structure are all well understood and enjoyed.
As he spoke, he had crossed that river.
His tone softened a little as his feet landed on the other side and he looked away from Chi Xiaochi’s back against the tree: “You always think badly of yourself, it’s a bad habit to break.”
Chi Xiaochi’s heart shook violently and he blurted out, “You are ……”
At that moment, a hand slapped Chi Xiaochi’s shoulder from behind.
A dewdrop on the tree was startled by the movement of the person behind him and landed impartially on Chi Xiaochi’s cheek: “Shu Jie, go, get the sword.”
…… is Yan Jinhua.
Chi Xiaochi’s eyes blinked.
He took half a second to collect himself, two seconds to gather his thoughts, and when he opened his eyes again, the redness that had just risen around them had dissipated, and his eyes were as gentle and refined as Duan Shujue’s: “Let’s go.”
With 061’s reminder, Chi Xiaochi realised that he had been thinking a little off the mark. The real thoughts and purposes were hidden and confused by self-loathing.
This is not good for the host, nor for himself.
What he should have taken was the Yangguan Road, which belonged to Duan Shujue.
There is no conspiracy, only a conspiracy to get back what was lost in a frank and honest way is the best way to deal with Duan Shujue in this world.
Unnoticed by Chi Xiaochi, the two monks who had just crossed the river also arrived at the upstream location.
Both came from shattering the river bottom and crossing the birth gate, yet both were covered in stench and sludge and were grumbling as they stripped and bathed.
The little uncle in white followed Chi Xiaochi unhurriedly, carrying his umbrella, which covered the upper half of his face, revealing only the corners of his lips with a smile.
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