Chapter 278: Chapter 225: The Disaster Caused by 1 Map Fragment
Zhe Shixun was locked in a world-shaking battle with Tiger. When he heard the long cry, he couldn’t help but freeze for a moment. The anxiety in his heart grew; he’d just had a bad feeling, and now it was intensifying!
It was just that this opponent was too tenacious. He was clearly not as strong as Zhe Shixun, yet he seemed impossible to kill. Zhe Shixun’s anger flared, and his attacks grew heavier and heavier!
The two had now fought their way from inside the city to the outside. Suddenly, another sharp cry rang out, and Zhe Shixun’s expression finally changed. With his eyesight as a Sword Emperor, he could naturally see that the four gates of Seven-colored City were tightly shut, the soldiers on the walls looking as if they were facing a great enemy. But his opponents... they actually had a Flying Magical Beast as a pet!
This was something no one could have ever imagined!
Only when the great bird rose from within the city and flew farther and farther away was Zhe Shixun jolted back to his senses. He abandoned the stocky man he had been fighting and shot back toward the city like a bolt of lightning. Tiger glanced in the direction Clown had departed. Without a word, he wiped the blood from a cut on his face left by Zhe Shixun and chuckled. Then, his body shot into the air, and he flew off in pursuit of Clown!
...
"My grandson!"
Zhe Shixun flew directly to where the battle had just taken place. The area was now a vast stretch of ruins, with eight or nine corpses lying on the ground. And among these bodies was the sole heir of the Zhe Family for three generations... Zhe Xiaoxing!
The others were all elite members of the Zhe Family from the Mortal World, and every one of them had reached the level of a Demon Sword Master!
The three strongest among them had died even more miserably. Their bodies were sliced in two by Sword Qi, their eyes still wide open!
Zhe Xiaoxing’s eyes were squeezed shut, because even in death, they were still full of sand...
Zhe Shixun let out a wail of grief, nearly fainting. He never imagined that his most beloved grandson would die here, just like that. He stood up, his eyes bloodshot. Just then, Zhe Jianye arrived with a large group of men, his face ashen. He stared in disbelief at his son’s bisected corpse as tears streamed down his face. He had always hated how spoiled Zhe Xiaoxing was. He was disgusted by his son’s absurd, reckless behavior. He always said Zhe Xiaoxing was worthless and could never carry the future of the Zhe Family.
But all of that was merely his frustration that his son wasn’t living up to his potential. No matter what, he had never imagined his own son would one day die right before his eyes.
SLAP!
Tears streamed down Zhe Shixun’s aged face as he viciously slapped his son!
That slap was like a blow to the face of everyone present. Hundreds of people had arrived, yet not even a heavy breath could be heard. The occasional tile falling from the ruins echoed loudly in the night sky!
"Beast! If it weren’t for you, how could Xiaoxing have died? Give me back my grandson! Give me back my grandson!"
Zhe Shixun rained a dozen merciless slaps down on Zhe Jianye. Zhe Jianye, however, seemed to have been struck dumb. He stared blankly at his son’s corpse, then suddenly let out a roar of grief and fury.
"Ling Family! I will never rest until one of us is destroyed! Ling Xiao... I will tear you to shreds!" As he spoke, he spat out a mouthful of blood, his vision went black, and he collapsed to the ground, unconscious.
Zhe Shixun seemed to snap out of it then. Without a single glance at his unconscious son, he picked up Zhe Xiaoxing’s bisected corpse, pressed the two halves together, and vanished in a flash of lightning!
Clown carried the three of them as if it took no effort at all. They flew for hundreds of miles before Ling Xiao, seeing how severe Song Mingyue’s injuries were, had Clown land. He took out an Elixir for Song Mingyue to take and then moved to bandage his wounds.
But Song Mingyue grew bashful and refused to let Ling Xiao help, no matter what he said. In the end, it was Ling Su who took over the task. ’He did come all this way to help me, after all,’ she thought, and volunteered.
Seeing Ling Su offer to help, Song Mingyue blushed and nodded in agreement. Even someone as aloof as Ling Xiao couldn’t help but roll his eyes, cursing Song Mingyue in his head for choosing a pretty face over a friend. ’He’s actually making a move on my sister! Should I stop him? But then again, I don’t really have the right to do that.’
As Ling Xiao’s mind raced with wild thoughts, he suddenly heard his sister, Ling Su, let out a soft gasp. Ling Xiao hurriedly asked, "What’s wrong?"
"Ah, it’s nothing, nothing," Ling Su said quickly. She then looked at the blushing Song Mingyue and praised in a low voice, "No wonder you wouldn’t let that silly boy bandage you. Even I didn’t see it. That Disguise Skill is incredible!"
Song Mingyue’s face was crimson as she said softly, "Isn’t your brother’s Disguise Skill also quite incredible?"
"What’s so incredible about it? I recognized him at a glance," Ling Su said with a proud smile. "My brother and I have been close since we were little. His eyes... that’s something he can never change. As for you... what should I call you?"
Hearing Ling Su’s teasing, Song Mingyue felt so embarrassed she wished she could disappear. She pleaded in a low voice, "Please don’t tease me, Sister. Just call me Ming Yue. And please, don’t tell Ling Xiao, okay?"
Ling Su finished bandaging the wound on Song Mingyue’s chest and carefully tied her clothes for her. She chuckled and said, "Just for calling me ’Sister,’ I’ll do you this favor!"
After taking Ling Xiao’s Elixir, Song Mingyue’s injuries were already mostly healed. The bandages were just to prevent infection. The two of them whispered in the grass for a while longer before slowly walking out.
Ling Xiao stared at the two of them, dumbfounded. ’No way,’ he thought. ’How did they get so close in just a short while?’
Ling Su gave her younger brother a radiant smile but offered no explanation. She just said, "Third Brother, it’s all thanks to you. Otherwise, who knows when I would have been free again."
Just then, Tiger caught up to them from a distance. Seeing Tiger all tattered and torn, his wounds still bleeding, Ling Xiao tossed him an Elixir and said, "Can your nose pick up scents even in the air?"
Tiger chuckled. "The tracking abilities of a Beastman are beyond human imagination!"
Ling Xiao rolled his eyes, but Ling Su looked at Tiger in amazement. "He... he’s a Beastman?" she asked, her face full of surprise.
Ling Xiao nodded and said, "I brought him out of the Penzes Swamp. He’s very strong. Sister, what about you? How did you end up being targeted by the Zhe Family?"
Ling Su sighed softly, her expression turning sorrowful as she began her story.
It turned out that Ling Su’s travels to search for Ancient Ruins were partly due to her love of archeology, but more importantly, they were for her younger brother, Ling Xiao.
The four Ling Family siblings had been very close since childhood. Unlike the children of old noble families, they never fought, openly or secretly, over the position of heir.
In contrast, while the Ling Family was a newly risen noble house looked down upon by many older ones, their close family ties were enough to make all other nobles feel ashamed.
Ling Su had always felt heartbroken for her third brother. It was true that one could live a full life without any martial ability. But the Ling Family wasn’t an ordinary family; they were a noble house with a military background. For the children of such a family, everything they did was magnified countless times by others.
If he had been born into a common family, Ling Xiao would have, at most, just been an ordinary person. No one would have paid him any mind, and no one would have ridiculed him. So what if he was a Celestial Vein Master? It only meant he couldn’t practice martial arts. It wasn’t like he was any less clever than anyone else.
But among the nobility, that wasn’t acceptable. Those nobles were already jealous of the Ling Family’s luck. They thought that Ling Tianxiao, a crude lout who spewed profanities, had managed to squeeze his way into the ranks of first-class families and be enfeoffed as a Duke only because he got shit-lucky and saved His Majesty the King. Otherwise, wouldn’t the Ling Family just be a bunch of country bumpkins? They probably wouldn’t even qualify for the rank of Baron!
The jealousy of nobles was, in truth, a petty thing, but a terrifying one. Its effects were felt directly by the second generation of the Ling Family. Fortunately, both Lingzhi and Ling Su were very accomplished, which made many people shut their mouths. But when it came to Ling Xiao, things changed drastically. Because Ling Xiao... was a Celestial Vein Master!
This gave those nobles a new topic of conversation! They ridiculed Ling Xiao to the utmost. It could be said that Ling Xiao grew up surrounded by this kind of mockery from childhood.
When he was little and didn’t understand, it was slightly better. But as he got older and understood shame, the young Ling Xiao would often cry to his sister, asking, "Why am I a Celestial Vein Master? Why are all the other noble children so cruel and heartless?"
Whenever she faced her brother’s questions, Ling Su felt a heart-wrenching pain. Women are naturally soft-hearted, and she was his own sister. From the time she was a young girl, Ling Su swore an oath that one day, she would travel across the continent’s famous mountains and great rivers, search every Ancient Ruin, and find a way to unblock her brother’s Celestial Vein!
Even if it took her ten years, or twenty... she would not hesitate!
The year before last, Ling Su obtained a very ancient, fragmented map. In truth, that map had already changed hands many times over a thousand years!
But no adventuring party had ever been able to find the location on the map, because the world had changed drastically between the Ancient Era and the present day.
It wasn’t unheard of for oceans to turn into fields. So, in the end, this map fragment, which had once been hyped up to an exorbitant price, was eventually forgotten and ignored.
And then, Ling Su obtained it.
Ling Su, with her passion for archeology, was intimately familiar with the geography of the Eastern Continent. After more than half a year of research, she finally determined that the location was somewhere in the Zichuan Empire!
So, she requested a long leave of absence from Qiu Jianhua, the dean of the Imperial Academy, left the academy, and gathered a few people to embark on her quest.
In the adventurer team Ling Su assembled, the strongest member was only a Tier One Demon Sword Master. The other few members were about as strong as Ling Su, all at the level of a Great Sword Master.
Treasure hunting was different from hunting Magical Beasts. As long as they carefully avoided the territories of those Magical Beasts and didn’t get into conflicts, it generally wasn’t considered particularly dangerous.
Therefore, they had been safe for the most part. Although there were occasional dangers, they always managed to get through them with nothing more than a scare.
The trouble began the moment they actually found the ruins.
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