Chapter 216: Chapter 212: Wanted, Bounty
BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!...
A roar echoed from the mountaintop. Immediately after, a brilliant light flashed across the summit, followed by a turbulent, sweeping wave of Spiritual Qi.
Boulders flew and trees shattered. It was a surprise attack, sudden and swift.
After a short while, the roaring ceased, leaving chaos in its wake.
Chu Mu stood atop a broken tree, his face pale. A shield floated before him, and his blood-stained blade slowly circled around him.
In front of him, severed limbs were strewn across the ground—enough to piece together three or four corpses.
The battle was decided, and several more lives had been claimed, yet Chu Mu was still a bit dazed.
’Why?’
’How had he offended these people?’
He had just left Luofu City and was flying on his sword. As he passed this mountain peak, he was suddenly shot out of the sky.
And then came the ambush by four Cultivators!
As for their cultivation, one was at the Qi Cultivation Tenth Layer, one at the Qi Cultivation Eleventh Layer, and two at the Qi Cultivation Twelfth Layer!
The nearest marketplace was almost two hundred li away!
’Even if it was just a robbery, it wouldn’t have been this sudden, would it?’
Chu Mu’s expression grew solemn. He scanned his surroundings, then swept the area with his Divine Sense. After confirming there were no other threats, he turned his attention to the bloody scene before him.
With a flicker of his Divine Sense, the items from the corpses’ robes, along with the magical artifacts and other miscellanea scattered on the ground, immediately floated up before him.
Almost instantly, Chu Mu’s gaze locked onto two tokens among the items.
He reached out and grabbed them. On the surface of the tokens, the two words "Blood Kill" were clearly visible.
After examining them for a moment, his surprise and suspicion turned to certainty.
These two tokens were undoubtedly Blood Killing Orders!
He then took stock of the loot, stowing it all in his Storage Talisman. Finally, Chu Mu held a jade scroll, a shadow of gloom clouding his brow.
He finally understood why those four Cultivators had suddenly attacked him.
While using Sword Flight, his use of Magical Power and Divine Sense had leaked his Divine Soul Aura, which these four must have detected...
The jade scroll didn’t contain a cultivation technique manual or any secret techniques and magic. Instead, it held hundreds of... Wanted Orders!
It seemed someone had compiled a list of Evil Cultivators wanted by various Clans and Sects, recording their appearances, cultivation levels, Divine Soul Auras, and even the bounty amounts...
He, Chu Mu, and Xu Yuan were both on the list.
Wanted by the Longevity Sect. Bounty... five thousand Lower Spirit Stones!
Xu Yuan’s bounty was one thousand Lower Spirit Stones.
The Wanted Order even specified his relationship with Xu Yuan...
Furthermore, in the jade scroll, beneath the Wanted Order for Chu Mu, an extra piece of information had been added.
There was also a bounty for him from the Blood Killing Pavilion.
A bounty on Chu Mu’s Divine Soul...
Mission reward... ten thousand Lower Spirit Stones and one... Foundation Establishment Pill!
In other words, whoever killed him could take his Divine Soul and claim a total of fifteen thousand Lower Spirit Stones and one... Foundation Establishment Pill!
It was no wonder those four men had gone so crazy after detecting his Divine Soul Aura.
Such an enormous sum of Spirit Stones, plus a... Foundation Establishment Pill!
It was clearly enough to drive any Cultivator in the Qi Cultivation Realm mad!
Even Sect Disciples and clan members would likely be green with envy!
It might even be enough to tempt someone in the Foundation Establishment Realm.
He remembered how, back in Jade Emperor Valley, a single Foundation Establishment Pill had caused a Foundation Establishment Realm cultivator to openly fight in the middle of the marketplace!
Chu Mu’s cheek twitched. He was speechless.
The bounty from the Longevity Sect was obviously posted by the Longevity Sect itself.
As for the huge bounty from the Blood Killing Pavilion...
...it could only have been Zhao Tang’s father.
As far as he knew, Zhao Tang had been his only heir.
"Greed truly moves the hearts of men..."
Chu Mu shook his head and sighed, unable to hide his worry.
After a moment’s thought, he cleaned up his tracks. This time, he didn’t use Sword Flight or his Divine Wind Boots, instead relying entirely on his physical strength to travel, just like a mortal.
However, with a Body Refining Cultivation equivalent to the Late Stage of Qi Cultivation, his speed was naturally anything but slow.
Driven by an unspoken urgency, he moved faster and faster. The perilous and rugged mountain terrain felt like flat ground beneath his powerful physique.
It wasn’t until the third day that a line where water met sky finally appeared on the horizon.
Back when Wang Mazi was ambushed and killed, Chu Mu’s habitual caution had already led him to prepare an escape route.
This escape route was, of course, based around East Lake.
After all, he’d had some contact with the mysteries of East Lake even before he had truly set foot on the Immortal Path.
He had selected several potential locations, and when he fled Yuning Town, he had used a sound transmission to tell Xu Yuan about one of them.
It was a marketplace called Water Heaven Workshop, located in Luofu County, adjacent to East Lake, and under the jurisdiction of the East Lake Xie Family.
According to the information he had gathered, Water Heaven Workshop was one of the three largest marketplaces run by the Xie Family on the northern shore of East Lake.
He chose this place for two reasons. First, it was adjacent to East Lake—you could even say it was right on its shore.
Second, it was quite far from Jade Emperor Valley.
Not only was the Sun Family’s territory between them, but also several marketplaces controlled by the Xie Family. Spanning a distance of several thousand li, the Longevity Sect’s reach could not extend this far.
And he had told Xu Yuan to rendezvous at this marketplace.
Chu Mu slowed his pace, the Illusionary God Mask already concealing his features.
As he drew closer, he could already see Cultivators coming and going.
BUZZ...
While still a good distance from Water Heaven Workshop, the Sound Transmission Talisman that had long been silent in his robes began to vibrate repeatedly.
As a series of familiar voices entered his ears, the anxiety that had been weighing on Chu Mu’s heart finally lifted.
He glanced at his surroundings, confirmed the general terrain, and then changed direction, quickening his pace.
After traveling for several dozen li and crossing a mountain, a city situated by a river came into Chu Mu’s view.
The city was massive, much, much larger than Jade Emperor City.
Outside the city, vast fields of gold stretched to the horizon.
"Rice paddies?"
As he got closer, a strange expression appeared on Chu Mu’s face.
’Is that... rice?’
From a distance, he hadn’t been able to see clearly and had assumed the golden expanse was just an ordinary rice field.
But now... the rice stalks were taller than a person...
’Enjoying the cool shade under the rice stalks...’
The phrase subconsciously popped into Chu Mu’s mind.
Before him were rice stalks taller than a person, their densely packed ears of grain a perfect picture of that dream.
’It’s not Spirit Rice...’
Chu Mu plucked an ear of rice. Probing it with his Divine Sense, he found it was a completely ordinary, mortal plant.
Then, as if sensing something, Chu Mu looked up at the sky and saw several Cultivators standing high above.
Amidst fluctuations of Spiritual Qi, dark clouds quickly gathered in the once clear, cloudless sky. A moment later, a sudden spring rain began to fall.
As the raindrops fell, the original scent of rice transformed into a faint medicinal aroma that lingered in the air.
’This is no ordinary rain...’
Chu Mu looked at one of the rice stalks. On its ear, several small insects that had been wriggling about just a second ago stiffened and fell to the ground the moment the rain touched them.
’It’s mixed with medicinal herbs, an insecticide?’
Chu Mu cupped a handful of rainwater. As he observed it, he understood.
It was composed of common mortal herbs, harmless to humans and plants, clearly developed to target pests in the rice paddies.
The Cultivators just now must have used a Water Attribute Rainfall Skill and a Wind Attribute Wind Summoning Skill as a base, somehow mixing this medicine into the water to create a medicinal rain.
This all seemed normal enough, yet Chu Mu’s expression remained strange.
The paddies were filled with mortal rice, and there were no protective measures whatsoever, which suggested that they were probably cultivated by ordinary mortals.
But these rice stalks were clearly not normal mortal plants; they were likely bred by the Xie Family’s Spirit Plant Masters.
’But... were the Xie Family’s Cultivators really so benevolent as to help mortals?’
Chu Mu found that incredibly hard to believe.
He even suspected that if it weren’t for the fact that the flesh, blood, and souls of mortals were of little use in this Cultivation Immortal Realm—and that the dirty, laborious work of the realm was beyond mortal capabilities—mortals would have long since been rounded up and used as consumables!
There certainly wouldn’t be any mortal towns or kingdoms left.
At least, that’s how it would be in the Great Chu.
If the flesh, blood, and souls of mortals were truly beneficial to Cultivators, he was almost certain that on his journey from Jade Emperor Valley to Water Heaven Workshop—the countless mortal villages, towns, and cities he had passed along the several-thousand-li journey would cease to exist within days!
The land would be barren for a thousand li, with almost no human life to be found!
No one could change that outcome!
Not even a high and mighty Nascent Soul Cultivator could change it.
After all, this was the fundamental nature of the Great Chu Cultivation Immortal World!
"So, the people living here... are the mortal members of the Xie Clan?"
Chu Mu gazed at the towering city walls ahead, lost in thought.
’It seems that’s the only possibility.’
...
