Chapter 26: We Meet Again
Zhuo Yifeng looked at the medicine before turning back to Yun Ruoyan, his face expressionless but his eyes bright.
“It’s quite alright,” he said,” Even if you girls weren’t the ones surrounded, I would still have helped.”
Zhuo Yifeng’s luminous eyes made Yun Ruoyan feel as if he wasn’t an actual human, but rather a magical beast.
“Did you just get that facial wound?” Zhuo Yifeng asked, all of a sudden.
Subconsciously, Yun Ruoyan felt her face. There were indeed traces of blood: ever since her birthmark had received the slash wound, it had never healed completely, and would occasionally even leak pus.
Lin Zainan claimed that the pus was actually poisonous residue, and that leaking pus was actually a good thing for her. He didn’t give her any medicine for the wound because he wanted it to heal naturally.
But the wound looked so frightening that Yun Ruoyan specially left a length of hair covering the wounded part of her face. In the intense battle, the half-healed wound once again split open, and her hair was matted with pus.
“There’s no problem, it’s just a superficial wound.” Lin Qingchen handed Yun Ruoyan a handkerchief, which she accepted gratefully.
“Did the two of you follow the scent of magical beasts here, too?” Yun Ruoyan didn’t try to hide her vigilance.
Lin Qingxue walked over and tugged on Yun Ruoyan’s sleeve, but she paid her no mind.
Naturally, she would repay kindness with kindness, but she wasn’t about to sacrifice her security to do so.
Zhuo Yifeng looked at Yun Ruoyan, not saying anything. Instead, he knelt down and helped his sister get on his back. “See you later, perhaps.”
He turned and was just about to leave when Lin Qingxue quickly called out from behind, “Wait, Brother Zhuo! It’s almost nighttime, so how about we all rest together tonight? Can’t we split up tomorrow morning instead?”
This last question was directed at Yun Ruoyan.
Zhuo Yifeng stood still, not turning around, evidently waiting for Yun Ruoyan to respond.
In the end, she finally spoke up. “It’s true that we’ll be safer with more people at night. And we do have to take care of these hound corpses; after all, you killed quite a large number of them, and we can’t just take your spoils.”
Although the long-maned firehounds were low-tier magical beasts, their cores were still quite valuable, and they began to dig for them immediately.
While they were working, Qiuqiu spoke once more. “Mistress, there’s a group of people heading over here.”
“A group of people?” Yun Ruoyan stopped what she was doing. “I wonder what family they’re from?”
In her past life, Yun Ruoyan had overheard a few hushed whispers regarding what had happened during the opening of the imperial territory.
Some malicious families, in order to remove their competitors or to obtain more treasures for themselves, would target other cultivators rather than the magical beasts.
In some cases, not only would they snatch away their valuables, they would even kill the victims to make sure word didn’t spread.
“How strong is this group?”
“According to their breathing, there are two fourth-rank and two fifth-rank blademasters.”
The opposing party had four members, and so did they. She didn’t feel like they had much to fear, but Zhuo Yifeng was indeed an unknown quantity.
Yun Ruoyan couldn’t help but look at him. Seemingly having detected her gaze, Zhuo Yifeng also turned around to look back at her.
As the two’s gazes met, a blaring female voice rang out from afar.
“Why’s this place so crowded?”
As everyone looked at the source of the voice, they were startled to find that the one who had spoken was none other than the third miss of the Yun family, Yun Ruoyu.
Along with her, naturally, were Yun Ruoyao and Yi Qianying, but the other youth was more unexpected: Pei Ziao.
Upon seeing Yun Ruoyan, Pei Ziao quickly walked forward, his face beaming. “Ruoyan, I thought it’d have taken us quite a while to find you, but who knew we’d meet right here?”
Yun Ruoyan frowned when she saw him. Did this person have amnesia? Didn’t she explain her feelings toward him clearly that day at the Peis? Why did he still cling on to her?!
“Why are you guys here?” Lin Qingxue strode forward and asked, “We were walking in opposite directions, so how did we meet each other again?!”
Yun Ruoyu also stepped forward. “I was just about to ask you the same question! We split up at the very beginning!”
“What do you mean?” Lin Qingxue looked strangely at her. “Are you implying that we’d follow you? What a joke!”
“That’s clearly what you did!” Yun Ruoyu glared at her. “We followed that trail ahead of us, and it must have been that your trail didn’t lead anywhere good, so you doubled back and trailed us instead!”
The two girls began to quarrel, neither able to speak past the other.
Yun Ruoyan frowned: after all, even though Yun Ruoyu was brash and arrogant, she was straightforward and wouldn’t lie so blatantly.
“Just then, I truly wasn’t following behind you, but we encountered each other again too.” Zhuo Yifeng muttered softly, having walked up to Yun Ruoyan’s side before she realized it.
Yun Ruoyan’s forehead creased even more. Could we have fallen into a misdirection array?
There were such arrays in the imperial territory, but they were uncommon enough that one truly had to be unlucky to walk into such an array out of nowhere.
“We might be stuck within a misdirection array,” Pei Ziao spoke up. Yun Ruoyan wasn’t surprised: after all, she had obtained all her information about this place from him in the past.
“Once we get trapped in an array like this, no matter which direction we head in, we’ll all end up in the same place, just like how, on a merry-go-round, we’ll eventually return to the same spot we started in.”
“Then, then what do we do?” Yi Qianying huddled by Pei Ziao’s side, tugging on his sleeve, acting like a frightened little girl. “Brother Ziao, are we going to die here?”
Yi Qianying had a slender, petite frame. When she spoke in such a tender voice, she could easily evoke sympathy from the crowd.
“No, of course not! All such arrays have an exit, and we’ll be able to leave once we find it.”
“And if we can’t?” Zhuo Yifeng was the one who asked this question, his eyes almost luminous in the darkness.
Pei Ziao was slightly disconcerted by his gaze and responded only after a brief pause. “Even if we can’t, when the expedition ends ten days later, someone will naturally come by to save us. We just have to survive these ten days.”
“In that case, won’t we be unable to attend Kongming Academy?!” Yun Ruoyao, who had remained silent all this time, spoke with a grating voice. It would be particularly shameful to admit that she had failed the entrance examination, and doubly so that her candidacy was only due to her family’s recommendation.
After all, she was supposed to be the talented one; it was fine if others didn’t make it through, but she had to!
Now that everyone realized that they were stuck in an array, their expressions turned downcast and their demeanor gloomy.
“It’s too late to think at the moment. We’ll start searching for the exit tomorrow. Given how many of us there are, I’m sure we’ll make it out.” Pei Ziao was unexpectedly optimistic.
They built a campfire together before crowding around it, and the long-maned firehounds’ carcasses naturally became their dinner and supper.
The two groups each began to roast a hound carcass.
Yun Ruoyan, along with the Lin sisters and the Zhuo siblings, began to split up the cores from the firehounds, twenty-four clay-red little balls in all.
“Those hounds were so frightening, but their cores look quite cute, don’t they?” Lin Qingxue looked at the cores on the ground, smiling happily, and the others all began to laugh upon seeing her face.
If they continued to be trapped within an array, then they would lose their opportunity to get into Kongming Academy. In that case, collecting cores and herbs was even more important than before.
While Yun Ruoyan and her group happily split up their loot, Yun Ruoyao and the others could only look on enviously.
They’d encountered a pack of low-tier magical beasts too, but there were just too many of them!
Of the three Yun sisters, only Yun Ruoyao had a high enough cultivation to be able to defend herself against their onslaught.
Yun Ruoyu grit her teeth and pulled through with a few minor wounds. As for Yi Qianying, she was so scared that she screamed until her throat became hoarse.
But luckily, her screams were shrill enough that it brought Pei Ziao over. With his help, Yun Ruoyao managed to scare the beasts away, but they had been unable to kill them all and retrieve their cores on account of their two useless teammates.
The party of four thus ended the day with nothing to show for their efforts.
“There are twenty-four cores here.” Yun Ruoyan counted each one out loud, before handing ten of them to Zhuo Yifeng. “These are yours, and the rest are ours.”
This time, Zhuo Yifeng didn’t refuse, and he carefully stored the cores.
“Look at how close Ruoyan and the two Lin sisters are! Are we even family to her anymore?!” Yun Ruoyu began to grumble once more.
Yun Ruoyao didn’t speak, but an icy smile hung by her lips. Once they were all out of the territory, she would be sure to report to their father that Yun Ruoyan had refused to cooperate with the rest of them.
Her mother had told her that, although their father seemed to be thinking better of Yun Ruoyan, he was still a little worried that Yun Ruoyan would loathe him.
After all, despite being the sole wife-born daughter, she had been all but neglected by her family and unloved by her father, so it wouldn’t be unusual for her to be resentful.
Yun Ruoyan was simply so skilled at deception that, while she was weak, she pretended to be a useless nobody in order to make the other sisters let down their guards.
Now that she had recovered some of her talent, she immediately threw them aside. If her father were to know about this, she was sure that Yun Ruoyan would no longer be welcome at home!
Seeing Yun Ruoyao’s cold smile, Yi Qianying could guess what Yun Ruoyao was scheming in her head.
But she didn’t expose her, and instead began to console Yun Ruoyu. “Those are Ruoyan’s cousins, after all. It’s not unexpected that they should be so close to each other, so don’t worry too much about it, Ruoyu.”
On Yun Ruoyan’s side, the entire firehound carcass was gleaming and shiny with oil, and the concentrated aroma of roasted meat permeated through the air.
Zhuo Yifeng had spread a medley of spices from who-knew-where onto the meat, and soon the meaty aroma was accentuated by tangs of spice.
Everyone on Yun Ruoyao’s side seemed entranced by the fragrance.
Meanwhile, the others weren’t so lucky—after all, their group consisted of three young misses and one young master, whose servants would do everything for them.
Honestly, the fact that they hadn’t charred the meat was impressive enough.
Yun Ruoyu scowled at the meat skewer that she eventually received, half-raw on the inside and blackened on the outside. Exasperated, she threw it into the fire pit, grumbling, “What sort of meat is this?!” And she looked at Yun Ruoyan’s group with anger and vexation.