219 Visiting Liu Bian
Getting tips from the dao gods and his sponsor was nice. Also, surprisingly, this was the first time that they decided to gift him something out of the blue.
'Now, I feel like I'm Kim Dokja. Should I keep entertaining these bored gods?'
200 essence cores were equal to 10 million liters of life essence. They were barely enough to buy a set of heaven-grade herbs from the system shop to make one batch of pills, but Cao Mao needed them to practice making higher-grade medicines. Then, he needed to master the immortal-grade tier and the tier after that before he could attempt making the Yin Yang Divine Vein pill.
His goal was in sight. The only hurdle remaining was the limited resources, which was the reason why Cao Mao had sent Ju Shoufen to sell several heaven-grade pills to increase his spending budget.
Yet, that was far from enough. Cao Mao had to do something to acquire even more essence cores.
Thus, he walked toward the other VIP room, hoping to strike more deals with one of the powerhouses.
As Cao Mao was walking away from Zhao Bao's room, Mao Xueyan ran after him. The cat jumped up and climbed the top of his head.
Cao Mao raised his eyebrows, rolling his eyes upward, "I thought you wanted to stay with the rabbit boy and the spear."
Mao Xueyan snorted, "I'm not done with the auction yet. We still have one more item to bid."
"I thought there were two."
"One of them is that time-and-space mural. Well, it doesn't matter now. I think my mind was a bit hazy during the auction. I think I'll give up on that one since it doesn't suit me."
"…"
Cao Mao still hadn't figured out why Tang Deming had used a hypnosis array against so many nascent soul cultivators. Even if he was greedy, there should be a limit of how many people he could offend at the same time.
After all, pissing off many top organizations at once was a stupid thing to do as these nascent soul experts could simply delete the northwestern peninsula from the world map if they were serious.
Cao Mao decided not to tell Mao Xueyan about it since he didn't want to get involved in her affair or Tang Deming's business.
"What's the other item that you need?" Cao Mao dodged the array topic.
"One of our people got captured by the Qiang Clan. She will be auctioned as a slave in the afternoon."
"Oho? She?" Cao Mao lewdly grinned.
Sensing the lewd intention, Mao Xueyan scratched Cao Mao's face, dragging her claws from his forehead down to his chin, leaving eight long red lines.
"DAAAAAAAHHHH!!"
"Don't even think about it, you sick pervert! She's my little sister."
"That's even better!"
SCRATCH
"DAAAAAAAHHHH!!"
Eight more lines appeared on Cao Mao's face. This time, Mao Xueyan added more force, which almost sliced his face to pieces.
When Mao Xueyan noticed how fast Cao Mao recovered himself, she raised her eyebrows, surprised, "You stupid orc is quite tough. For a moment there, I thought you were a troll or a vampire instead of an orc."
"Oh, please. This gentleman's vitality and stamina are invincible. At least, I can handle this much," Cao Mao rubbed his face and peeled the wasted skin layer from his face.
"Cool! Next time, I'll use you as a scratching post."
"Sure! In exchange, I'll use you as a cock sleev-"
SCRATCH!
"DAAAAAAAHHHH!! MY EYES!!"
…
It took Cao Mao five minutes to regenerate his injured eyes, which was poked by a sharp fingernail of Mao Xueyan. He even ate a high-grade healing pill to assist his regeneration rate before he continued to walk toward Liu Bian's VVVIP box seat.
As for Mao Xueyan, she hid inside Cao Mao's clothes once more.
Cao Mao's feet brought him to the hallway toward Liu Bian's box seat, which was guarded by a dozen of imperial soldiers.
As soon as Cao Mao got closer to the room, the guards pointed their spears at the former's neck, "Halt! This room belongs to the crown prince! State your business!"
Cao Mao pretended to be humble and timid. He took three steps back, cupped his fist, and bowed, "My name is Mao Miaomiao, a humble servant of a rank 7 alchemist. I've come to pay respect to the crown prince."
The guards were expressionless. Even though they heard the explanation and Cao Mao's status as a servant of a rank 7 alchemist, they ignored his words and chased Cao Mao away.
"The prince has given us an order. No one is allowed to meet him. Leave!"
"…"
Cao Mao was planning to bribe the guards to let him in, but he changed his mind after he had seen the color of their eyes. Despite being humans, they had crimson pupils, which was similar to Cao Mao, demon races, and other evil art practitioners.
'Is the prince rearing demons or unorthodox martial artists? No, this can't be right. They should be something else… Right, Liu Bian can use Necromancy. It won't be strange if he is keeping a few ghouls or vampires as his bodyguards.'
Ghouls and vampires could easily blend in the human cultivator society, similar to succubi or other demon races. However, they belonged to the undead category, and their lives were bound to their master.
Cao Mao was concerned about Liu Bian's power and potential. He had to get rid of this protagonist as quickly as possible before he could amass a large army of undead. Then, Liu Bian could potentially steamroll the continent with his army, and nobody would be able to stop him.
'How ironic. A protagonist is gathering an undead force, but a villain like me is planning to kill him to save humanity. Is this the setting of Liu Bian's story?'
Cao Mao turned around and walked away.
"Please wait, junior Mao."
Unfortunately, he couldn't go far. A paled and ugly eunuch came out of the room and asked Cao Mao to stop.
Cao Mao turned around, but he almost covered his nose by reflex. He smelt bloody scent, which came from the clothes of Eunuch Rang. However, the eunuch's robes were clean.
"Junior Mao, the prince has invited you to come inside. Please…"
The eunuch also glanced at the guards, "As for you, watchdogs, I'll personally deal with you later."
The guards were expressionless as if they were robots. They ignored the eunuch despite being threatened.
"…"
Cao Mao glanced at these guards. Their robotic reaction and expression confirmed his theory that they might be Liu Bian's undead soldiers.
'Undead soldiers with 5th-stage cultivation base as gate guards? If these people aren't the best soldiers, how strong is his elite unit? Liu Bian is probably hiding more soldiers somewhere if he is capable enough to use these undead soldiers as guards. I guess I need more allies before I start duking with this upstarted prince.'
Cao Mao entered the VVVIP room, but his brain didn't stop calculating and processing new data.
Inside the room, Liu Bian was sitting on a eunuch, who crawled on all four and acted as Liu Bian's chair.
Standing and lining close to the walls were Liu Bian's bodyguards in imperial armors. They simply stood there to temporarily act as wallpaper to replace the burnt ones. Other attendant eunuchs were also there, crouching and crawling as a replacement for the destroyed furniture.
The prince was frowning and staring at a large boulder in front of him. He was in a bad mood after he had discovered a suspicious array in this room.
"Sir Mao, I'm sorry that I've let you see this unsightly scene," The prince muttered without turning his head to look at Cao Mao. His eyes fixated on the texts on the boulder that he had just bought.
Cao Mao maintained his pokerface and feinted ignorance, "I'm just an uneducated errand boy. I don't understand what you mean by [Blunder].
"So, you were unaffected by the array?"
"What array are you talking about, Your Highness?"
Liu Bian turned around to look at Cao Mao. He scanned him from head to toes for a moment, "I see. So, Sir Alchemist wasn't aware of it. Well, never mind. Let's change the subject."
The prince snapped his fingers. Then, a eunuch nearby crawled on the ground, becoming another human chair.
Liu Bian waved his hand, gesturing to Cao Mao to have a seat, "Take a seat. Let's look at the mural together."
"…"
Cao Mao stared at the human chair with widened eyes. He might be a psychopath and a sick pervert, but he was not into BDSM or this type of play.
As Cao Mao couldn't stand it, he pulled out a camping chair from his dummy spatial ring. Then, he tilted his head, gesturing the eunuch to move away.
The eunuch cooperated. He moved back and stood behind the prince.
Cao Mao set the foldable camping chair and sat down. He ignored the stare of Liu Bian.
"Sir Alchemist, do you have another one of those?"
"… Your Highness, don't tell me that you had never brought camping gears or tools around with you when you're heading out to the wild?"
"I always travel with these mongrels, and they never prepared a proper gadget like this for me. Well, can you sell me one? I'll give you an essence core for one of that."
"… Sure."
Cao Mao pulled out another foldable chair and gave it to Liu Bian. The latter stood up and chased his living chair away before he placed the camping chair to sit down.
Looking at Liu Bian's reaction, Cao Mao missed his old days when he hadn't adapted to this world. He made several blunders here and there. For example, he went through the sewer without using a pseudo aura barrier to protect his body from feces. Another time, he washed his clothes in an old fashion way when he could have used yang Qi and yin Qi to expel the dirt and grime within a couple seconds.
It was a memorable time back then. He got to do nothing but having sex all day while being under the protection of Xu Xiuying and her minions. But now, the grace period was over.
"Haiz. I've never thought that I would have needed spare furniture. This world is quite unique."
The prince carelessly revealed his secret, thinking that nobody here could understand the underlying meaning behind the complaint.
"You sounded like an old man, Your Highness."
"Hahaha! Everyone said that."
Liu Bian stopped speaking. He returned his gaze to the boulder, "Say, Sir Mao. Do you understand anything after reading the words?"
Cao Mao turned to the counterfeit mural.
As Cao Mao had seen two pieces of the real murals, he was aware that the real technique description was more direct and coherent. It even showed images of the connection between human anatomy, power circulation, theory, and the power of time.
However, the writing on the boulder was unreadable as it contained random characters together to make strange words. At a glance, it seemed like a code. But in reality, everything was nonsense, and it contained no benefit to cultivators other than being a useless puzzle.
"I'm afraid that my intelligence is insufficient. I can't understand anything."
Liu Bian bit his lips and nodded. He also couldn't figure out what the text on this boulder implied.
Being helpless, the prince gave up, "I guess I should drag Tang Deming and his goons out. How the hell is this a time-and-space mural!? Even if it is the legit one, I need to squeeze some information from that asshole!"
Cao Mao's eyes brightened when he heard that Liu Bian would find trouble with Tang Deming. He got an inspiration.
"Your Highness. I think that you might have been tricked, and many people are involved in this conspiracy."
Visit freewe𝑏no(v)el.𝘤𝑜𝓂 for the best novel reading experience