With a backhand motion, Li Guanqi returned the Red Lotus sword to the sword casket.
Glancing at the two daggers scattered on the ground, he reached out and drew them into his grasp.
Examining them closely, he found the blades intact and undamaged, glowing with a soft, lustrous sheen.
Clearly extraordinary, they were likely a pair of rare spirit tool daggers.
With a backhand thrust, he drove his sword into Yu Heng's chest, only then feeling a measure of relief.
Having done that, Li Guanqi searched his body and retrieved five or six storage bags.
He then searched the other two corpses for a while, also stowing away the whip from the woman's hand.
Nine storage bags in total.
Looking at the storage bags in his hand, Li Guanqi couldn't help but murmur softly, "Are Core Formation cultivators really this poor? Not even a single storage ring?"
Yet once he opened all the storage bags, he couldn't help being somewhat astonished!
Across these ten storage bags, there were a full eight thousand low-grade spirit stones alone!
The storage bags on Yu Heng even contained thirty whole mid-grade spirit stones!
As for the assorted monster beast materials, beast cores, and low-grade spirit herbs and pills, they were worth at least two thousand low-grade spirit stones altogether.
Converted, the spirit stones alone amounted to fifteen thousand this time!
Li Guanqi clicked his tongue, swept everything into his storage ring, and cursed under his breath, "No wonder Grandpa always said highway robbery is the fastest way to make money in the cultivation world! 'A horse doesn't fatten without wild grass, and a man doesn't get rich without windfall wealth,' indeed..."
Taking out the corpse-melting powder he had purchased from the sect's Treasure Pavilion, he searched the three corpses twice more and found nothing else.
Li Guanqi sprinkled the white powder from the jade bottle over the three bodies, then wiped away every trace of battle in the surroundings before finally stopping.
Soaring through the air, Li Guanqi landed before the silent Ye Feng and popped a green antidote pill into his mouth.
Then, he sat quietly upon a treetop and began carefully taking stock of his gains.
Two bottles of Essence Augmentation Pills used by Core Formation cultivators, forty pills in total.
Judging by their quality, however, their surfaces were pitted and uneven, giving off a slightly pungent smell.
Li Guanqi couldn't help but frown and mutter, "Can this stuff even be called medicinal pills? Pellets at best. They don't even have sixty percent of their medicinal potency!"
Disappointed, he tossed the pills into his storage ring and pulled out a jade slip from among the items.
The azure jade slip looked plain and ordinary, bearing an imprint left by Yu Heng during his life.
With a surge of his divine sense, Li Guanqi erased the imprint almost instantly.
Extending his divine sense inside, he discovered that the jade slip actually recorded a very subtle mental technique meant for concealing and altering one's own aura.
However, the technique was also rather lackluster, only barely preventing cultivators of the same realm from discerning one's origins.
Li Guanqi pondered for a moment and memorized the technique anyway.
Having something was better than nothing.
After a long while, a touch of color finally returned to Ye Feng's face.
Yet even after all that time, he did not open his eyes. Li Guanqi smacked him upside the head in annoyance and scolded, "Stop faking it. If you're awake, open your eyes."
Ye Feng opened his eyes, scratched his head awkwardly, and beamed a flattering smile as he whispered, "Boss..."
Li Guanqi's face went cold, and he looked at him calmly, asking in a heavy voice, "Do you know what you did wrong?"
Ye Feng hung his head, not daring to meet his gaze, and whispered, "I was wrong."
"Where were you wrong?"
"I shouldn't have stuck my nose where it didn't belong..."
Smack!
Clutching his head, Ye Feng asked blankly, "Was that not it?"
Hearing that, Li Guanqi grew even angrier. He drew a deep breath and said in a grave voice, "No! It's because you failed to do what you promised me—to listen to me in everything! Didn't I tell you back then not to go?"
Hanging his head, Ye Feng said with a complicated expression, "I'm sorry, Boss. I was wrong. I promise this will never happen again. From now on, if you say east, I'll never go west!"
Seeing his sincere remorse, the anger in Li Guanqi's heart dissipated considerably.
Looking at him, Li Guanqi said, "Just this once. If there's a next time, you can roll back to the sect by yourself!"
Those were heavy words, and Ye Feng knew that this time, the blame lay entirely with him.
Had Li Guanqi truly left at the time, he would have been dead without question!
It was no exaggeration to say that he owed his life to Li Guanqi now.
Li Guanqi continued, "Your mind is usually pretty sharp. How did you act like such a fool this time? Out in the middle of nowhere, in a mountain range this vast, how could you just happen upon such a coincidence? That woman ran straight toward us, and that stubble-faced fellow clearly could have killed her directly several times!"
The more Li Guanqi said, the lower Ye Feng buried his head.
Because looking back now, everything had indeed been riddled with suspicious details, just as Li Guanqi pointed out.
"Remember this from now on: there aren't that many coincidences under the heavens! The moment you think something is too much of a coincidence, you've probably already been plotted against. Who knows how many people that woman has already swindled with that Blood Origin Fruit pit."
Ye Feng nodded heavily, his eyes full of apology, clearly taking every word to heart.
Seeing him like this, Li Guanqi didn't intend to say any more.
He had said enough today. If Ye Feng could absorb it, he would. If he couldn't, then perhaps they wouldn't be able to travel together in the future anyway.
Li Guanqi sighed softly, tossed the jade slip to Ye Feng, and said, "A mental technique I found on them. You should practice it too; you might need it down the road."
At the same time, he took out a storage bag and divided three thousand spirit stones to give to him.
Ye Feng took one look and shook his head emphatically, refusing no matter what.
His heart was filled with guilt right now; how could he dare take these things?
Li Guanqi firmly shoved the item into his hand and said, "Take it! Right now, raising your strength is what matters most. It's just a few spirit stones. If you obtain good stuff in the future, you can give it to me then."
As for the spirit stones in his own hands, they wouldn't last long either; there was still a Thunder Dragon egg inside the sword casket's space, which was a bottomless money pit.
Up until now, that dragon egg had only grown a circle larger, with virtually no other change.
If he didn't think treading atop a giant dragon would look magnificent in the future, he would have lost his patience long ago.
After helping Ye Feng bandage the wound on his leg, neither of them felt the slightest bit sleepy.
They simply got up and left the place. The commotion from the earlier fight was likely to draw unnecessary trouble, so it was better to pack up and hit the road.
Li Guanqi had also retrieved a map from Wen Mei's body.
It wasn't large, only marking the area within a ten-thousand-li radius.
After picking out the right direction, Li Guanqi led Ye Feng toward a city to settle down for a bit and see if there were any blessed spots or grotto-heavens in the vicinity.
Yet Li Guanqi did not know what kind of transformation today's events would bring about in the future Ye Feng.
Chapter 193