Chapter 30: Explanation
What in the world had happened just then?!
They’d all seen the tiger’s lifeless body fall limply by Yun Ruoyan’s feet, but they couldn’t believe their eyes.
Lin Qingchen was the closest to Yun Ruoyan, and she was the first to walk to her side and check the tiger’s body. The spear had been thrust into the center of the tiger’s forehead, leaving a small but lethal wound. The saber-toothed tiger was well and truly dead.
“Sister Ruoyan, you... really managed to kill the saber-toothed tiger.” Lin Qingchen raised her head and looked toward Yun Ruoyan, as if she could scarcely believe what she saw.
“Sister Ruoyan, you’re amazing!” Lin Qingxue slowly walked over, her tone simultaneously shocked and amazed.
“How did you do it? Your cultivation’s clearly the lowest out of all of us.” Zhuo Yifeng inspected the tiger’s body and asked curiously after seeing the spear wound.
Someone who was supposed to be weak, killing a beast that everyone else working together couldn’t? That was surely a mystifying and shocking feat.
If Yun Ruoyan had managed to do it on her first blow, that could have been attributed to chance, but this deathblow had resulted from a head-on confrontation.
After all, Yun Ruoyan was only a third-rank blademaster, essentially the lowest rank needed to call oneself a cultivator. Naturally, her attacks should have been weak, so how did she manage to defeat a seventh-rank beast in one blow?!
This question floated above everyone’s heads, but the current Yun Ruoyan didn’t have the strength to answer it. After her deathblow, the energy that had suffused her had drained away rapidly, and she felt as if she were floating, that all her mass had vanished, followed by a serious bout of dizziness and nausea.
She looked at the three people speaking to her, and they began blurring in front of her. There were only three, she knew, but her eyes showed seven, eight, nine indistinct figures.
Her vision turned dark, and her feet stumbled. She stretched out a hand at the closest figure she could see, and her body fell limply onto the ground.
Zhuo Yifeng felt that something was wrong the moment he looked at her, and he was just about to ask her if she was alright when she extended a hand to him.
Before he could react, she began falling to the ground, and he hurriedly stepped forward to grab ahold of her.
“Qiu, qiu, Mistress!” In her daze, Yun Ruoyan heard Qiuqiu’s concerned chirping. “Qiu, qiu, Mistress, wake up, Mistress!”
Qiuqiu’s voice was unusually urgent, and Yun Ruoyan eventually opened her eyes slowly.
“Mistress, thank goodness you’re awake! I was so worried!” Qiuqiu chirped as it inspected Yun Ruoyan’s body.
“How did I end up here?” Yun Ruoyan sat up and touched her forehead doubtfully.
“Qiu, qiu, Mistress, you fainted from exhaustion right after defeating the saber-toothed tiger,” Qiuqiu explained. “Mistress, based on your current level of cultivation, you still can’t use the bracelet’s strength for an extended period of time. Once you run out of energy, unless you have a core foundation pill with you, you could be in serious danger.”
“Oh, no wonder I felt like I was about to die.” After hearing Qiuqiu’s warning, Yun Ruoyan couldn’t help but have a lingering fear over what might have happened. After all, for someone who had experienced a rebirth like her, perhaps nothing was more important to her than life itself.
“Actually, the bracelet itself is only supposed to give you power equal to approximately twice your cultivation,” Qiuqiu continued. “Since you only have the cultivation of a third-rank blademaster at the moment, Mistress, the power you should have been able to wield would only be that of a peak fifth-rank blademaster. But when you were fighting the saber-toothed tiger, you borrowed the equivalent of a third-rank beastmaster’s power, far exceeding what your body was able to sustain.”
Qiuqiu blamed himself for the mistake. “This is all my fault, Mistress. I was afraid you would be bullied for your lack of strength and removed this restriction, but it almost cost you your life.”
“No, you did nothing wrong,” Yun Ruoyan quickly responded. “If not for that, we might all have died here. Qiuqiu, you did the right thing. But in order to avoid over-extending my powers again, I think it’d be better if you reinstated the restriction.”
If it wasn’t a life-threatening affair, she certainly didn’t want to experience those bouts of vertigo and weakness again.
But when she reflected on what Qiuqiu had said, that she could command a power twice her cultivation, Yun Ruoyan was very excited. Didn’t this imply that, as her cultivation grew, the bracelet’s power would grow with her?
The bracelet was an amazing safety net.
But she was still suffering from poison, and her cultivation was restricted to third-rank and below. Even if she borrowed the power of the bracelet, all she could manage would be the cultivation of a peak fifth-rank blademaster.
If she used all her power, she would be able to defeat Yun Ruoyao and Pei Ziao, but she would hardly be able to do anything against someone like Pei Yingxiong.
Although the power of the Feilai Blade was equally monstrous, she knew that that wasn’t something she could easily make use of.
There were far too many vicious and greedy cultivators on the Chenyuan continent. Once they got wind of the Feilai Blade, it would surely lead to a bloody fight for its ownership, and as nothing more than a little girl forsaken by the Yuns, she would hardly be able to survive.
On the other hand, the bracelet’s power was different. Even if she did use it, others wouldn’t be able to detect it as easily because it was tied to her cultivation.
Once she clarified her thoughts, Yun Ruoyan focused on her most important task: restoring her body to good health.
She sat cross-legged within the pocket dimension and began to circulate qi throughout her body to repair the damage caused by overexertion.
Although Qiuqiu mentioned that it had many top-grade cultivation manuals, Yun Ruoyan’s foundations were too poor to study them. At her current level, it was most appropriate to focus on fundamentals.
She stayed in the bracelet’s pocket dimension for the entire night before feeling a slight reprieve from her exhaustion. When she next woke up, the sky was bright.
“She’s awake, she’s awake, Sister Ruoyan’s awake!”
The first thing Yun Ruoyan heard was the voice of Lin Qingxue, and then Lin Qingchen and Zhuo Yifeng also crowded around her.
“What, what’s happened to me?” Yun Ruoyan pretended that she knew nothing of what had happened, her eyes blearily looking at the three of them.
“Sister Ruoyan, you slew the saber-toothed tiger with your own strength last night, and then you fainted.” As Lin Qingchen summarized last night’s events, she stretched out her hand to take Yun Ruoyan’s wrist.
After having studied medicine with Lin Zainan for so long, she was a rather famous physician in the capital in her own right.
“Sister, you’ve recovered really quickly.” Lin Qingchen relaxed. “When you suddenly fainted, I found that your pulse showed signs of stopping momentarily. That’s a sign of near-fatal exhaustion, and it scared me and Qingxue to no end.”
Lin Qingchen was a little introverted, quite different from Lin Qingxue, who was a chatterbox. Anything that could shock her was serious indeed, and it made Yun Ruoyan realize once more how close to death she’d come.
Even Lin Qingxue was uncharacteristically quiet as she stared at Yun Ruoyan without blinking.
“What’s the matter? Am I leaking pus from my birthmark again?” Yun Ruoyan reached out to touch her birthmark.
“No, no.” Lin Qingxue quickly shook her head and opened her eyes wide. “Ruoyan, can I ask you something?”
Yun Ruoyan sighed internally. Well, it was finally here—how much effort would it take to explain away her sudden rise in ability last night?
Before Yun Ruoyan could nod, Lin Qingxue asked rapidly, “Ruoyan, how did you become so scary last night? It was as if a war god had possessed you!”
Even now, Lin Qingxue could clearly visualize how the wounded Yun Ruoyan, lying down with her, had suddenly stood up as if possessed and spoken resolutely, “I won’t let any of you come to harm.”
The Yun Ruoyan of that moment radiated a terrifying strength.
“There’s a secret technique that’s been passed down on the Chenyuan continent that’ll allow you to quickly raise your cultivation for the short-term, but it’s highly damaging to your body. Did you use a technique like that?” Zhuo Yifeng asked.
Yun Ruoyan stilled for a moment before quickly shaking her head. “No, of course not! That sort of technique’s a double-edged sword, and I’m only thirteen! How could I have learned a forbidden technique?”
A forbidden technique that had gained notoriety on the Chenyuan continent in the past was one that forcibly stole someone else’s cultivation and converted it into your own, but it was so easy to receive a backlash and so cruel that it was designated a forbidden technique.
Zhuo Yifeng looked at Yun Ruoyan’s childlike face and dismissed the possibility. “In that case, how did you manage it?”
Yun Ruoyan knew that she wouldn’t be able to escape this question today. Although she didn’t want to lie, there were some secrets that could only be kept buried in her heart.
For example, the fact that she had rebirthed, or that she had two precious treasures on her body!
“Actually, I don’t know either.” Yun Ruoyan clutched her forehead and covered her eyes, as if she too were vexed and flummoxed. In truth, she was simply afraid that her eyes would give her away.
“You don’t know?” The three people surrounding her exclaimed simultaneously.
“It’s true!” Yun Ruoyan suddenly thought of a very good excuse, and she quickly continued. “I can tell you a little secret. It’s something only Grandfather and I know at the moment, so when I tell you, you have to keep it secret!”
“What secret?” The Lin sisters were even more curious as to what secret their grandfather would actually keep from them.
“You’ve all known that I’ve been called a cultivation genius since birth, but as time passed, my talent diminished at a rapid pace.”
This wasn’t news to the Lin sisters, but it was the first that Zhuo Yifeng had heard of the matter, and he couldn’t help but frown.
“Everyone always thought that this too was a natural occurrence, and even Grandfather couldn’t find a reason for this unusual event. But not too long ago, my birthmark was accidentally cut open, and only then did I realize that I had in fact been poisoned.”
At this point, everyone was astonished. Yun Ruoyan continued, “Grandfather told me that what I was suffering from was a slow-acting poison that could limit my cultivation and destroy my appearance. He’s currently trying to help make me an antidote. I feel much better after his attempts, and even my talent’s showing signs of returning. I think the reason I suddenly became so strong was because the talent that had been suppressed for so long ended up blossoming.”
Yun Ruoyan paused for a moment as she waited for the crowd’s reaction.
“Your talent, blossoming!” Lin Qingchen exclaimed. “From a medical standpoint, I suppose that’s indeed possible.”
Lin Qingxue was already a devout believer of Yun Ruoyan’s lies. “Who poisoned you, sister? How malicious! We have to catch and punish the culprit!”
Yun Ruoyan sighed at how gullible and innocent her sisters were, but Madam An’s face popped up in her mind.
Once she was out of the imperial territory, she really did have to pay back this debt!