Maybe My Soulmate! (GL)

Chapter 256: Leaving the azure dragon city 7.

Inside, they found an underground hall lined with bronze seals and a half-buried altar. There was also a rare divine beast there, though it did not look like what most people would expect from something so powerful. It was a black-feathered sky stag with antlers like carved jade branches, its body lean and elegant, with silver lines of light moving under its skin like water. It had been wounded by an ancient trap formation that still lingered in the hall, and it had been using the sword array’s remaining energy to keep itself alive. The moment it saw them, it lowered its head and stamped once, which shook dust off the ceiling. Mo Yuxin immediately knew it was not attacking out of hostility. It was warning them away.

Su Yubing crouched a little and sent out a gentle thread of spiritual sense. The beast did not trust easily, but it trusted honesty, and Su Yubing’s spiritual aura was calm enough to make the creature pause. What they learned then was that the ruin had once been the burial site of a famous general who had protected a whole border kingdom, and the sky stag had been the general’s summoned guardian beast. When invaders came, the general died, the kingdom fell, and the beast was left alone beneath the ruin to guard the tomb against grave robbers for centuries. Time and the broken arrays had slowly worn it down. A group of treasure hunters had come through recently and triggered the old seals, making the hall unstable. That was why the beast was injured.

Mo Yuxin and Su Yubing fought the trap formation more than the beast. The guardian stag only lashed out when the last seal snapped open and a torrent of sword light poured upward from the floor. Mo Yuxin drew a circle with her blade and split the energy stream in half, while Su Yubing sealed the loose edges with layers of frost and spiritual light. Then the beast tested them one last time by charging through the hall in a blur of black and silver. Mo Yuxin met it head on, not to kill, but to prove she would not retreat. Their clash sent sparks across the stone. Then, after a few fierce exchanges, the sky stag realized they were not grave robbers and not enemies. It calmed enough to let Su Yubing heal the wound along its side. The two women repaired the broken seals, cleared out the treasure hunters’ mess, and left the tomb standing with its honor intact. As thanks, the sky stag later led them out of the ruin through a hidden tunnel that emerged on a hillside full of white flowers, which saved them a long detour. Mo Yuxin called that a pretty good deal. Su Yubing agreed, then kissed her under the flowers just because the moment felt right.

The next stretch of travel was rougher in climate, though still nowhere near truly difficult for the two of them. The land sloped into a dry outer plain where the wind kicked up long ribbons of dust and the horizon looked endless. This was the kind of road where caravans relied on speed, luck, and prayer. They joined one such caravan for a while because the merchant leader had a bad knee and the whole group was too nervous to travel alone after hearing rumors of bandit-spirit cooperation in the region. The caravan leader, a stout woman named Madam He, was practical, sharp, and too tired to pretend she was not grateful for help. She had two nephews, one shy daughter, and five wagons full of cloth, tea, and metal work headed toward the coast. She also had the good sense to recognize strength when she saw it. After one short conversation with Mo Yuxin, Madam He immediately started speaking to her like she was a fellow merchant with excellent protection skills instead of some distant immortal cultivator.

The caravan days were actually quite pleasant. Su Yubing shared dried plums with Madam He’s daughter, who was maybe sixteen and still easily embarrassed by kindness. Mo Yuxin taught one of the nephews how to keep his breathing stable during long nighttime watches. The people in the caravan quickly realized that the two women were absurdly close, and after a while nobody even bothered to whisper about it. The niece, who had never seen two women so clearly devoted to one another, kept looking at them with shining eyes like she was reading some great romance tale in real life. One night she asked if being married to someone so strong was difficult. Su Yubing nearly laughed herself into her tea. "Only when she steals all the blankets," she said.

Mo Yuxin, without missing a beat, replied, "Only when she steals my sleeves."

The whole caravan burst out laughing.

That same caravan stretch brought another fight, this time against a wandering desert beast called a mirage lion. It lived in the pale salt flats where heat shimmered across the ground and the air seemed to bend around every hill. The beast looked beautiful from far away, with tawny fur and bright blue markings, but up close it could split itself into false copies so quickly that even experienced cultivators got fooled. It had been attacking the caravan because something in the wagons, probably a spirit lamp crystal, had been disturbing its nesting ground under the salt cliffs. The beast was fast, fierce, and clever enough to make the mercenaries hired by the caravan stumble in panic. The moment it leaped out from the haze, its shape multiplied into five glittering forms, each one more real than the last.

Madam He was scared out of her mind. Mo Yuxin only looked mildly interested.

She told Su Yubing to move the wagons back, then stepped forward alone at first and used her sword sense to trace the true body among the false ones. The mirage lion was strong, but its illusion trick created a small distortion in the spiritual current every time it shifted.

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to be continued.