Chapter 86: Who is She?
Yu Nianzhen stopped in his flight, and his body tensed slightly.
A sword appeared in his hand, and his eyes narrowed.
’When did she get ahead of me?’ He wondered as he looked at the female cultivator in front of him.
The woman was dressed in white and had several silver ornaments on her black hair.
Although the lower half of her face was covered with a white veil, the exposed half was exquisite.
"Does the fellow Taoist need something from us?" He asked.
His voice was cold, and his senses were on full alert.
In their current situation, there were two types of people that would stop them.
The first kind was someone who had witnessed everything on the lake and the underwater garden.
The other kind was an opportunist who just happened to come across them.
Either way, Yu Nianzhen wasn’t willing to get entangled when Jiang Yue was in bad condition.
His first priority was to find a safe place where Jiang Yue could recover.
Everything else could come after that.
However, the woman had other plans.
"Are you Yu Nianzhen?" She asked.
When he heard her words, Yu Nianzhen became more alarmed.
Since he arrived at the thousand herbs garden, he hadn’t revealed his name to anyone.
The closest he had come was the black-clothed youth at the clear water lake, but the other had disappeared before they could introduce themselves.
"Who are you?" He asked instead.
The female cultivator was silent for a moment.
It was clear that she wanted to know his identity but didn’t want to reveal her own.
This made Yu Nianzhen warier, and he couldn’t be bothered to speak with her any longer.
"Get out of my way."
He injected silver qi into his sword, and the black sword glowed with an eery light.
Without hesitation, he swung the sword, and twelve wind blades flew toward the woman.
However, he didn’t wait for her reaction.
While she was distracted with blocking, Yu Nianzhen flew at a faster speed.
"Should we release the treasure boat?" Jiang Yue asked.
Although flying treasures were somewhat restricted in the thousand herbs garden, using the treasure boat was faster than flying.
Also, it would allow Yu Nianzhen to conserve some qi in case he needed to fight.
"Let’s not. It’s too conspicuous."
While flying, Yu Nianzhen was keeping an eye out on their surroundings.
He couldn’t see it, but he knew the woman had managed to block the wind blades and was now following behind.
More importantly, a group of cultivators from the underwater garden was also rushing toward them.
"Let’s use a teleportation talisman."
Given a choice, Yu Nianzhen didn’t want to use the talisman.
This was because the teleportation talisman was non-directional, and there was no telling where they would be teleported.
Although this was not a big problem, he was worried because they had already decided to go to the trade valley.
’It doesn’t matter, we can correct our path later.’
He removed a low-grade teleportation talisman and activated it.
Just before they were teleported away, he heard the woman shouting for them to stop and saw her figure appear in front of them.
However, the talisman was already active, and he couldn’t stop it even if he wanted to.
Five breaths later, Yu Nianzhen and Jiang Yue appeared at the side of a rock crack.
The crack was only a metre wide but several metres deep.
"What do you think about this place?" Yu Nianzhen asked.
"It’s good."
Jiang Yue couldn’t see anybody in the immediate vicinity, which made him feel a little relieved.
"Should we enter the crack?" He asked.
"Let’s not. There are no demonic beasts in the thousand herbs garden, but there are some carnivorous plants."
Yu Nianzhen didn’t need to finish his thoughts.
They both remembered the waterwheel plant in the underwater garden.
Among carnivorous herbs, the waterwheel plant was relatively tame compared to most others.
If they recklessly entered the crack and encountered such a plant, they would have a hard time dealing with it.
At best, they would escape with minor injuries, but if they were unlucky, they would be seriously injured.
Rather than taking such a risk, it was better to stay beside the crack and slowly explore it before jumping in.
"Good."
After that, Yu Nianzhen removed an array plate from his storage ring and quickly set up a defense formation.
"Take your time to recover, I will guard outside."
"Alright."
Jiang Yue was about to enter the defense formation when he suddenly thought of something.
He turned around and faced Yu Nianzhen.
"What’s wrong?"
"Nothing much." Jiang Yue smiled and approached Yu Nianzhen.
Before the other could react, he dropped a light kiss at the edge of his lips and quickly retreated into the array.
On his part, Yu Nianzhen took a moment to realise what had happened.
When he did, a smile appeared on his lips, and his mood improved exponentially.
’It won’t be long before we are twenty-one.’ He thought, and the smile grew wider.
As Jiang Yue settled in the defence array, Yu Nianzhen began to patrol the area.
The area was rocky, and few herbs could grow in such an environment.
However, he still managed to harvest one peak-grade silver rank herb, three high-grade silver rank herbs, and more than ten mid-grade silver rank herbs.
As he checked the surroundings, Yu Nianzhen couldn’t help but think about the female cultivator who had stopped them.
Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t seen her at the lake banks, or the underwater garden.
"How does she know my name? Did she learn it from one of our sect’s disciples?"
Yu Nianzhen couldn’t figure it out.
Even if he thought it was likely for her to learn from someone in the Sea Cloud sect, he still thought it was more unlikely.
After all, many people in the sect didn’t know him.
Although he had become a little famous after the battle with the sea beasts, most disciples knew his name but didn’t know his face.
Because of that, he found it difficult to believe that a disciple knew him so well that they could perfectly describe him to a foreign cultivator.
Even if that was the case, what was the purpose of doing so?
Yu Nianzhen’s thoughts were whirling madly, but he was still lost.
"Wait, could she be from the Sea Cloud sect?"
All this time, he thought the female cultivator was from another region.
However, now that he thought about it, it was likely she was from the same sect.
As he considered this, random names began to flash in his mind.
These names were on the list of disciples that had won a place to enter the secret realm.
However, he still couldn’t place the person after going through the list.
"Forget it. I will ask if we ever meet again."
After that, he sat cross-legged in front of the array and began to cultivate.
Although it wasn’t as much as Jiang Yue, he had also consumed a lot of qi in the underwater garden.
With that in mind, he needed to replenish and absorb the battle experience he gained at the lake.
Replenishing his qi took less than a shichen.
When his qi had fully recovered, he exhaled a turbid breath and opened his eyes.
"My foundation has improved again." He said.
No matter how good his cultivation technique was, it wasn’t perfect.
It couldn’t refine one hundred per cent pure qi.
Because of that, it was important to frequently circulate the qi in his dantian to purify it.
By removing impurities, Yu Nianzhen could use the extra space to increase the quantity of his qi.
"The number of sword qi in my dantian hasn’t increased though."
A frown appeared on his face as he thought of that.
After having an epiphany during the mayfly experience, Yu Nianzhen decided to transform all his qi into sword qi before breaking through to the qi transformation realm.
However, it was more than a month since then, and he hadn’t managed to transform even a drop of qi.
"Is there something I am missing?"
Yu Nianzhen closed his eyes and began to think.
From what he knew, an origin forging realm cultivator needed something to stimulate a qi transformation when breaking through.
In most cases, that something was a strand of similar origin qi or something related to their origin.
However, even then, qi transformation was a long process.
"Am I being impatient?" He wondered.
This question was redundant because he knew he was being impatient.
However, he was an ambitious person.
Since he realised that his qi could be transformed before he broke through, he didn’t want to stop halfway.
This is because he had a feeling that transforming his qi ahead of time would bring him unprecedented benefits.
"I need to be quick without rushing."
After thinking this, he took a deep breath and slowly breathed out.
He repeated this a few times until his tense mind and body relaxed.
When he was calm enough, he opened his eyes and then jumped in surprise.
