Upon hearing Yu Ci's taunts, Monk nearly spat blood, but dared not stop his steps until he was ten yards away. Only when he felt that Yu Ci was not pursuing him did he halt. His eyes wanted to open but couldn't bear the sting, tears streamed down his face, hastily covered by his sleeve. His face had turned an iron blue.
Yu Ci, seeing this, was taken aback. However, he would not spare this Thief Monk any dignity and burst into laughter. His laughter was like a series of knives stabbing into Monk's heart.
Monk's face alternated between green and red, his teeth clenched with a grinding sound. When he first attacked, he never imagined such an outcome. His chest felt as if his qi and blood were flowing in reverse, a mouthful of fresh blood stuck in his throat, which he swallowed back down forcefully. After shedding tears, his eyes finally felt better. He squinted, trying hard to look at the detestable youngster across from him.
The sight that met his eyes made his heart feel even more suffocated.
In Yu Ci's hand, the Nine Yang Talisman Sword hummed lowly. A ring of fire spread out from under his feet to ten feet around him, igniting the surrounding grass and trees. Although it did not have real killing power, its momentum was quite astonishing.
"Nine Yang Talisman Sword?" Monk's voice was filled with extreme shock and anger.
Yu Ci, upon hearing this, lifted his head and grinned without speaking. This was more malicious than any words. Monk seemed to understand something, his face turned from green to red, then swelled to a deep purple. Finally, he could no longer bear it and gritted his teeth:
"You youngster from White Sun Mansion, I will make your life worse than death!"
His voice sounded like a hissing snake, but he was obviously mistaken. Of course, only a fool would clarify at this moment!
As soon as his words fell, a long howl sounded from the distant mountains. The sound wave crossed the forest barrier and clearly sounded in both their ears. It seemed far away, but it was actually only about ten miles away. Upon hearing this sound, Monk was overjoyed. Just as he was about to respond with a whistle, he saw that the boy from White Sun Mansion had already made his move and disappeared into the forest in a blink of an eye.
Yu Ci had caught Monk's change of expression as soon as the howl started. Knowing the situation had changed, he made a decisive move and fled north. He had the upper hand and could retreat as he pleased. Monk, whose eyes had not fully recovered, could only stomp his feet and curse:
"You youngster from White Sun Mansion, you killed Hu Ke, let the Ghost Beasts escape, and stole the Shooting Star Plate. The Thousands Spirits Sect won't let you go!"
To Monk's accusations, Yu Ci only spat in disdain: You have to find me in White Sun Mansion first!
In the time it took for him to say this, the person who had howled was already less than three miles away, and his howl had not yet stopped. Yu Ci ran a few more steps and heard howls rising from the forest, within a range of dozens of miles, at least seven or eight people responded one after another. Their voices were like thunder, shaking the pine needles to fall and even the ground began to shake.
It was the one who had howled first that suddenly went silent, as did Monk's curses.
There were factions here... Did Thief Monk's group count as self-created confusion?
Yu Ci quickly discerned the situation, a wry smile appearing on his face. However, he had now experienced the atmosphere of the Eight Directions Storm Gathering in the Central Plains. The people who were shouting and causing a ruckus, any one of them picked at random, had a cultivation level higher than his. This stirred a strong curiosity within him: What on earth was happening?
Taking into account the Monk's final curse, he tried to piece together several factors: The earlier corpse was undoubtedly Hu Ke; the Demon and fierce beasts mentioned by various Herb Gatherers were the Ghost Beasts referred to by the Monk; the so-called "Shooting Star Plate" was kept in the Storage Ring; as for the Thousands Spirits Sect... that name sounded so familiar!
Setting aside this unrelated factor for now, according to Yu Ci's speculation, the one who led the Ghost Beasts out of the Sky Rift Valley was likely the deceased Hu Ke. It seemed to have been intentional and premeditated, setting up an ambush here and using the "Shooting Star Plate" to lay down a powerful Talisman trap to kill or capture the Ghost Beasts. However, the power of the Ghost Beasts far exceeded his expectations. The trap didn't work as expected, and in his panic to escape, he was killed by the Ghost Beasts instead.
As for the Monk and his companions, they could have been part of Hu Ke's group, or more likely, they received news and wanted to take advantage of the situation but arrived too late, with Yu Ci getting there first.
At this moment, chaos ensued within the pine forest. After Yu Ci sprinted more than ten miles, an ominous aura carried by the wind from behind suggested that someone was pursuing him.
While Yu Ci was interested in Ghost Beasts and such, he had no intention of getting entangled in this mess. He promptly slapped a Godspeed Talisman onto himself. This Talisman also had a reputation among ordinary people as being as swift as a horse!
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As soon as the Spirit Talisman was applied, he felt as light as a swallow, his feet barely touching the ground. The sensation was exhilarating.
With his speed dramatically increased, layers of pine needles and long branches seemed like Demons' arms reaching out to him, only to be left behind in an instant. Yu Ci seemed to transform into a wisp of smoke, darting through gaps in the foliage. Moreover, as the power of the Spirit Talisman enveloped him, his internal True Qi seemed to resonate with it, creating a mutual resonance that unleashed astonishing energy. This made him run faster and feel more comfortable, so much so that he didn't want to stop.
Throughout his journey, Yu Ci ran at full speed. The pursuers initially managed to keep up, but Yu Ci was in top form. He continuously applied Godspeed Talismans, stacking dozens or even hundreds of Spirit Talismans together. Half an hour later, there was no trace of anyone behind him.
His feelings were incredibly good, incredibly sublime.
Although he was rapidly moving away from that land of right and wrong, away from the gathering area of Cultivators, Yu Ci felt as if a massive portal between heaven and earth had opened a crack, revealing the true face of the vibrant world behind it.
That place was the Cultivation World, the place he yearned for beyond measure.
His confrontation with Viper Monk, including a series of preceding events, could all be considered accidents. Yet it was through these accidents that he touched that world and began to sprint towards it with great strides.
Yu Ci ran with such enthusiasm that he spent more than an hour in high-speed sprinting.
While running with the support of Spirit Talisman, he didn't feel tired. But once he stopped, Yu Ci almost thought he had run out of breath. However, despite feeling like death from exhaustion, the results were very clear: by this point, he had run at least five hundred miles, far exceeding his previous record. At this pace, considering necessary rest time, it wasn't impossible to travel a thousand miles by day and eight hundred by night.
However, by this time, Yu Ci's physical strength had indeed reached its limit. Along with his excitement, his fatigue quickly set in, overwhelming his entire body. Knowing what was beyond his control, he found a relatively hidden spot, prepared to answer the call of the Sleep Demon and have a good sleep to recover his strength. As he was drifting in and out of sleep, he suddenly remembered that in the wild mountains and ridges, he couldn't be without precautions.
In his groggy state, the Divine Bronze Mirror was taken out from his sleeve. Sensing his weak breath, the mirror's surface also flickered with a hazy Azure Mist. His fingers probed into it and began to draw Talismans in a daze. What he drew was a Five-orientation Telepathizing Talisman. Only this talisman could warn him when beasts approached - as for whether it could wake him from deep sleep, only heaven knew.
Yu Ci was too tired. While drawing Talismans, he was already in a semi-conscious state. It was entirely due to years of habit that he performed this series of actions. Struggling to finish the last stroke, he didn't care whether the Spirit Talisman was successful or not. With a yawn, he fell asleep.
Under the moonlight, Yu Ci's completely empty body breathed in and out. Without conscious control, it followed the habit of twelve years, exhaling the old and inhaling the new with the rise and fall of the sun and moon, drawing in Lunar Qi. Beside him, the Divine Bronze Mirror seemed to resonate with him. The Azure Mist slowly expanded and contracted as if breathing.
**************
This time, what woke Yu Ci from his deep sleep was a sudden nightmare.
The nightmare came without reason. It seemed that in his dream he saw a gray eagle swooping down from thousands of feet high. In his confusion, his mind split in two, half in the sky and half on the ground. On one hand, the clouds were flowing at a high altitude, on the other hand, malicious intent penetrated his body, causing him to break out in a cold sweat. Instinctively, he rolled over and stood up.
Yu Ci narrowed his eyes as sunlight pierced through the forest, shining directly on him. He was still somewhat dazed, but since he was awake, the previous nightmares no longer held terror over him. Yu Ci intended to dismiss it all with a laugh, yet his mind stirred again. This time, the feeling was real and familiar.
It was a reaction from the Five-orientation Telepathizing Talisman.
This talisman was one of the most complex that Yu Ci had mastered. It could detect any intense reactions from living beings nearby and relay this information back to the caster's mind as a warning. He remembered that he had hastily drawn this before falling into unconsciousness, and it was a stroke of luck that it had been successful.
The talisman's duration was approximately two to three hours. If it was still effective now, it meant that he hadn't been unconscious as long as he had imagined... Wait, something wasn't right.
Yu Ci looked at the sun again, confirming that it had risen to its zenith. He distinctly remembered that it was just the beginning of the night when he fell unconscious. Even counting the sunrise and sunset, seven or eight hours had passed, and the Five-orientation Telepathizing Talisman couldn't possibly last until now.
But what was pulsing in his mind was indeed the reaction of this talisman.
Just as he was puzzled, he suddenly felt something strange on his left hand side. On the ground over there, the Misted Green Glow flickered. Wasn't that his Divine Bronze Mirror used for drawing talismans? Perhaps sensing his attention, the green light from the Divine Bronze Mirror became even more prominent.
Yu Ci was certain he hadn't activated the Divine Bronze Mirror's function with True Qi. He looked at the mirror's surface, and his face was instantly filled with astonishment, leaving no room for anything else.
In the green light, within the mirror, a hawk was clearly soaring. Yu Ci rubbed his eyes and looked again. There was no mistake. The hooked beak and grey feathers with horizontal stripes, dark yellow hawk eyes, and sharp tail feathers - it was undoubtedly a hawk. This fierce mountain bird was circling low in the sky, and beneath the mirror's surface, one could even see the verdant mountaintop.
He abruptly grabbed the mirror and held it in front of his eyes.
Why would a hawk appear in his mirror... No, what he meant was, why would the Divine Bronze Mirror reflect the image of a hawk? It seemed as if this mirror, which had accompanied him for many years, had suddenly become a demon's eye, filled with thrilling power.
As this thought arose, he abruptly turned around. His gaze just happened to pass over the mountain wall behind him. It was as if an invisible pointer was guiding his sightline, pointing directly towards the southeast sky.
There, a black dot was circling in the sky.
A hawk! A hawk identical to the one in the mirror!
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