Axia

The cook repeatedly interrogated Xiaofeng, trying to force out the source of her information. Xiaofeng, however, insisted that their dwelling spirit had divined it. Li Banfeng didn't believe for a second that a dwelling spirit possessed such great skill. If she were truly that good at divination, how had she failed to divine that Li Banfeng would uncover her deepest secrets tonight? Yet it was possible Xiaofeng truly didn't know. Youtao finished the roast chicken, then ate the squab inside the chicken's belly, and then ate the quail inside the squab's belly. Sucking her fingers, she rose and said, "Elder Brother, I know you came to help me. Youtao will never forget your kindness. As of today, all ties between Xiaofeng and me are severed. But after so many years, I still can't forget our past affection. I beg you to show mercy, spare her life, and just let her leave." The cook would never listen to Youtao; he was waiting for Meng Yuchun's instructions. Meng Yuchun looked toward Li Banfeng, who gave her a subtle twitch of his eyebrows. *Let her go first, and see if Axia comes looking for her.* Meng Yuchun understood and relayed the order to the cook with a technique. The cook stood and said to Xiaofeng, "You may leave." Xiaofeng struggled to sit up, her stomach still racking her with spasms of searing pain. Looking at the cook, she said, "Aren't you going to give me the antidote?" The cook smiled. "Are you saying you don't want to leave?" Xiaofeng looked to Youtao, hoping she would plead for her once more. Youtao turned her face away and gritted her teeth. "Get the hell away from me!" "Tao'er..." "I said get the hell away!" Xiaofeng dared not say another word. Hanging her head, she left the plot. Yet leaving the plot was easy; making it out of Li Banfeng's territory was a different matter entirely. After walking three li or so, the pain in Xiaofeng's stomach worsened, and she crouched by the roadside, dry-heaving. Unable to vomit anything up, she could only force herself to trudge on. After another two or three li, Xiaofeng passed a vine covered in sharp thorns. It tore through her clothes and ripped open the skin across her back. Though the scratch barely broke the skin, Xiaofeng felt agonizing pain radiate from the wound. A few steps further, she saw thorns and vines everywhere ahead, impossible to avoid. With no way forward, she decided to skirt around to the left. Dwelling Cultivators had terrible senses of direction, and she had no idea where going left would take her. After several dozen paces, the left was also choked with vines. *Am I seeing things?* Xiaofeng rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, only to feel a knife-like pain slice across her eyelids. Looking down, she found vines sprouting right out of the back of her hand. And not just her hand—they sprouted from her arms, shoulders, chest, belly, and legs. Vines were growing all over Xiaofeng's body. Overcome with terror, Xiaofeng shrieked in desperation, "Axia! Axia, save me!" Meng Yuchun and Li Banfeng waited quietly nearby, watching to see whether this Axia was willing to step in. After about ten minutes, when Xiaofeng could barely scream any longer, a cluster of green light flashed in the distance. Above the green light, the figure of a woman slowly emerged. She wore a light blue robe, a small rounded cap, and a pair of round-framed black sunglasses. In her hand she held a cylinder of counting rods, and across her back was slung an enormous abacus. Such attire was commonly seen on fortune tellers, but rarely on a woman. Meng Yuchun froze for a moment, then asked, "Gao Shuxia?" They actually knew each other. Gao Shuxia sighed. "I had Xiaofeng do everything she could to steer clear of you, yet she still failed to avoid you. Who is this man beside you?" Gao Shuxia looked toward Li Banfeng. Meng Yuchun smiled and linked her arm through Li Banfeng's. "He's my lover." Gao Shuxia froze for a moment. "Your lover is a man?" Li Banfeng frowned. What an absurd question to ask. Meng Yuchun was a woman; naturally her lover would be a man. Meng Yuchun nodded. "I wanted to try a change of taste." *Why would you need a change of taste? What are you...* Li Banfeng looked at Meng Yuchun and realized things might not be as he had thought. Meng Yuchun and Gao Shuxia were old acquaintances, and Gao Shuxia had a very unusual relationship with Xiaofeng. Could Meng Yuchun be the same way? Did they share the same appetite? Then he thought of the close female friends by Meng Yuchun's side—Huangdie, Hongdie... The two women seemed inclined to reminisce, but Li Banfeng shot Meng Yuchun a glance, reminding her to get down to business first. Meng Yuchun asked, "How did you know something happened to Lord Mountain-Uprooter? Don't you dare say you divined it." Gao Shuxia remained silent for a moment before saying, "Lord Mountain-Uprooter hired quite a few roaming anomalies to seize your territory. That's true, isn't it?" "It is!" "One of those roaming anomalies is an old friend of mine of many years. She was hired by Lord Mountain-Uprooter and was supposed to fight you as well. "When the time came to act, though, she got cold feet and didn't follow Lord Mountain-Uprooter into your territory. "Afterward, fearing Lord Mountain-Uprooter's retaliation, she prepared a lavish gift to apologize and admit her fault. But after waiting for days, Lord Mountain-Uprooter never showed up. "She deduced that Lord Mountain-Uprooter had died. Following her clues, I performed a divination and learned that Lord Mountain-Uprooter was indeed dead, so I sent Xiaofeng here to sound things out. "To tell you the truth, I really wanted this territory. But since you've already snatched it, I won't covet it anymore. "I can't bear to let Xiaofeng go. If you still have any regard for our past bond, spare her life. If you truly don't care anymore, then let's fight right now!" Meng Yuchun hesitated for quite a while. Whether out of regard for old feelings or wary of the other's strength, she ultimately chose not to fight Gao Shuxia. "Take her and leave. Don't ever set foot on my turf again." Gao Shuxia kicked up a gust of wild wind and vanished into the night with Xiaofeng. Li Banfeng asked Meng Yuchun, "What cultivation level is this Gao Shuxia? Has she reached the clouds?" Meng Yuchun shook her head. "When I knew her back then, she was at tier nine. The two of us attempted promotion together. I succeeded, but she failed, and she turned into an Injured Demon Fiend." An Injured Demon Fiend was someone who failed the jump from tier nine to tier ten, suffering soul damage of more than twenty percent, but less than fifty percent. Because their souls were severely damaged and nearly impossible to restore, they could linger in the world for an exceptionally long time, ranking among the fiercest class of evil spirits in Puluo Province. "Can an Injured Demon Fiend become a local spirit too?" Meng Yuchun shook her head. "Normally her status wouldn't be sufficient, but I haven't seen her in years, so I don't know what changes she's undergone. "Judging by her demeanor just now, she didn't shy away from fighting me. Her cultivation might not be beneath mine." "With a severely damaged soul that's hard to repair, could she still advance further?" Meng Yuchun gave Li Banfeng an awkward look; her knowledge in this area was extremely limited. That didn't matter for now—he could ask his wife when he had time. The urgent matter at hand was whether Gao Shuxia had spoken the truth. Had she truly gotten her information from a roaming anomaly? Did that roaming anomaly she mentioned actually exist? He needed to verify that with the cook first. Li Banfeng went to Youtao's plot. Youtao was sitting on the ground, her eyes vacant, motionless as a clay sculpture. Meng Yuchun frowned. "Look at how pathetic she is. If an anomaly came to test her right now, one slap would kill her. You can't let someone like this succeed at reclaiming land. She doesn't deserve it!" Meng Yuchun wasn't wrong. In Youtao's current state, she truly didn't deserve this one-li plot of land. Yet Li Banfeng wanted the Heavenly Light. For the sake of a good omen, Li Banfeng didn't want his first land reclamation to end in failure either. He stood outside the boundary and nodded toward the projector in the tree. The projector adjusted its lens angle, allowing Li Banfeng's figure to appear. Seeing Li Banfeng, Youtao stood up and walked toward him, listless and forlorn. "Brother Baisha, you're here." "I am." "What do you think of my face? Is it pretty?" "It is." "And my figure? She always said I had a good figure. She said when she held me in her arms, she could never get tired of it." Li Banfeng nodded. "Yes. Definitely not." "Brother Baisha, do you like it? Do you want me? I'll go with you. I'm all yours. You can do whatever you want." Youtao's tone was very calm, like a person who had lost her soul muttering to herself. She took step after step toward Li Banfeng. Li Banfeng signaled for her to stop. "Don't take another step. Any further and you'll cross the boundary, and the reclamation will fail." "Reclamation... heh heh heh." Youtao chuckled, laughing foolishly, laughing with total despair. "Why should I bother reclaiming land? I was played for a fool. I'm just a piece of tattered cloth used to shield someone from the wind and rain. She treats me like a rag. Do you understand, Brother?" Li Banfeng said, "What she treats you as, I don't know, nor does it matter. I treated you as a friend. I brought this cook here to help you reclaim this land. You should at least repay that kindness, shouldn't you?" "Fine, I'll repay it right now. I'll give you everything." Youtao stepped toward Li Banfeng again. Li Banfeng shook his head repeatedly. "Don't you dare say you'll repay it with your body. That degrades you, and it degrades me. If you don't want to reclaim the land, then just leave. We'll pretend we never met." With that, Li Banfeng glanced at the cook, lowered the brim of his hat, and turned to walk away. The cook pulled another dish from the food box. "Eat, Miss. Soft-sautéed sliced pork—crisp, tender, and appetizing. As long as your stomach is full, there's no knot in your heart that can't be untied." Youtao remained frozen where she stood. The cook placed the food box on the ground, set the dish of soft-sautéed sliced pork inside it, and went after Li Banfeng. Youtao watched Li Banfeng's retreating back, then looked down at the food box on the ground, and couldn't help sobbing. Two lines of tears slid slowly past the corners of her mouth. ... Li Banfeng asked the cook, "Back then, how many roaming anomalies did Lord Mountain-Uprooter hire to go after Meng Yuchun?" The cook pondered for a moment. "Besides Old Vine and me, there was the Opera-Beckoning Matron, the Devotion-Claiming Elder, and a Hundred-Eyed Fish. The rest were people from her own turf." "What sort of creature is this Hundred-Eyed Fish? A living spirit from a river?" The cook shook his head. "She's no fish from the river. She's a kind of pest that resembles a silverfish, only she doesn't just eat clothes—she eats anything and everything. "If you ask about her origin, I can't say for sure. If you ask how high her cultivation is, I never looked into it either. "But I saw her make a move once. In the blink of an eye, she devoured one of Old Vine's arms. "From then on, none of us ever dared provoke her again. Her cultivation is probably above ours." According to Gao Shuxia, it must have been this Hundred-Eyed Fish who leaked the news. Was that truly the case, though? Li Banfeng asked the cook, "Can you find any news about this Hundred-Eyed Fish?" The cook thought for a moment. "I'll try. Since I started following Shopkeeper Meng, I haven't heard much about what goes on outside." Li Banfeng never made people work for him for nothing; he produced two Xuanchi Pills and handed them to the cook. Even finding the Hundred-Eyed Fish wouldn't solve the problem at its root. News of Lord Mountain-Uprooter's death had already gotten out. Today he had driven off Gao Shuxia, but who knew who would come to seize territory tomorrow? Meng Yuchun could handle opponents on the ground-crust, but what if opponents above the clouds showed up? And what if the Inner States caught wind of this? In the year and a half since arriving in Puluo Province, he had reached tier seven in two separate pathways. Li Banfeng's rate of advancement was enough to make countless people green with envy. Yet right now, Li Banfeng felt he wasn't advancing fast enough. Tier seven across two pathways, when sitting in the seat of a local spirit, was not only inadequate, but practically embarrassing. Finding a secluded spot, he took a pill. He didn't have many Golden Origin Pills left. By Li Banfeng's calculations, reaching tier eight would definitely be no problem, but reaching tier nine would leave him about ten pills short. He didn't know what was going on with the Red Lotus, but lately it either produced Xuanchi Pills he had no desire to take, or Profound Accumulation Pills he had no use for. He needed to find a source for those ten-odd pills as soon as possible. Moreover, advancing only as a journey cultivator wouldn't do; he also had to find some tonics for the wife so his Dwelling Cultivator pathway could keep pace. ... Carrying Xiaofeng on her back, Gao Shuxia flew out of Li Banfeng's territory and arrived at a cavern, where she met a woman dressed in a silver gown. Looking at Xiaofeng's battered state, the woman asked Gao Shuxia, "You failed?" Gao Shuxia nodded. "Meng Yuchun took the plot." "Could you not beat Meng Yuchun, or did you just not want to lay a hand on her?" "Easy for you to say. Meng Yuchun's cultivation is above the clouds. How could she be so easy to deal with?" The woman in white sighed softly. "Then we'll just have to wait patiently. Though, over by Bei Wushuang, there is good news." Gao Shuxia paused. "You want me to go after Bei Wushuang? He's even harder to deal with than Meng Yuchun." "I heard he provoked someone he shouldn't have. Before long, there will likely be a fierce battle. When the time comes, whether we can pick up some scraps will depend on our skills." "Our skills?" Gao Shuxia sneered. "When have you ever lifted a finger?" "Axia, why are you keeping score with me?" Stroking Gao Shuxia's hair, the woman in white said with tender affection, "It's not that your little sister won't help; the time just isn't right yet."