MJWCATFPITWOC Chapter 32
by VolareJust now, Shen Yucheng was buried under a pile of rocks, his limbs locked in place, unable to move. In his helplessness, he suddenly realized that he no longer needed to worry about collapsing the mountain, so he decisively summoned the Azure-Scaled Lion, instantly blasting the rocks pressing down on him into scattered fragments.
Shen Yucheng pushed away Mo Yifeng and turned his gaze to the Azure-Scaled Lion, suddenly noticing several semi-transparent bands around the giant beast, encircling it like rings. The familiar glow instantly reminded him of the Scaled-Tracing Beast core that had been eaten by the contract diagram earlier.
He stared intently at the back of the Azure-Scaled Lion’s neck, thinking, “It couldn’t really be you, could it?”
The Azure-Scaled Lion was sweating.
Shen Yucheng: “…”
“Junior Brother Yucheng, are you alright?” Fu Lingxuan asked, after observing Shen Yucheng and confirming that he hadn’t lost control and gone berserk.
Although Mo Yifeng was somewhat displeased at being pushed away by Shen Yucheng, he obediently stepped back a few paces, his gaze never leaving him.
“I’m fine,” Shen Yucheng responded softly, his voice calm as usual.
Seeing this, Li Yuan also released Li Juemu’s arm. Li Juemu, like a wild horse freed from its reins, excitedly rushed to Shen Yucheng, his eyes sparkling with unconcealed excitement.
He gently stroked the outer scales of the Azure-Scaled Lion, his face flushed red with excitement, and his breathing became rapid: “Brother Shen, your contracted beast is really too cool! Even more majestic than it was on Hanji Mountain!”
For Li Juemu, this was the first time he had seen Shen Yucheng summon the Azure-Scaled Lion in public since the Hanji Mountain incident.
However, the Azure-Scaled Lion ignored Li Juemu’s praise, focusing solely on its contractor.
At this moment, Shen Yucheng was frowning in disgust at the strong smell of blood on Mo Yifeng, ordering him not to get close. But Mo Yifeng ignored this, showing no intention of backing away.
Fu Lingxuan walked over to Lingyi, who was slumped on the ground in fear, her face filled with horror. Thinking about what she had done to Shen Yucheng and Mo Yifeng before, his expression suddenly turned cold, his usual elegance vanished, and his voice was as cold as frost: “If Mo Yifeng had been determined to kill you just now, I’m afraid I wouldn’t have been able to stop him.”
Lingyi blankly watched Shen Yucheng, who was unharmed and conversing in the distance, and recalled Mo Yifeng’s appearance, like a rabid dog out of control. A deep sense of regret arose in her heart. She realized how foolish her previous attempts to take advantage of Shen Yucheng had been. “You… aren’t you going to take revenge on me?”
Fu Lingxuan glanced at her indifferently: “I’m not interested in taking revenge for others. I’m just reminding you that making a move against Futian [Sect] was the worst decision you’ve ever made in your life.”
Lingyi didn’t respond, lowering her head in thought for a moment. She looked at Nie Yue in her arms and realized that they had completely failed. Before the other party decided to completely exterminate them, leaving was the best option. So she was about to carry Nie Yue away when suddenly, a wisp of faint smoke drifted out from the bushes behind them, as thin as a strand of hair and difficult to detect.
The faint smoke silently attacked from behind, gently passing over Nie Yue and Lingyi, then spreading towards Fu Lingxuan, and finally slowly drifting to Shen Yucheng.
Li Juemu was still excitedly talking, but as soon as the white smoke passed by, his originally smiling eyes suddenly dimmed, his gaze became empty, and the aura of his whole person changed noticeably in an instant.
His smile gradually faded, his gaze dully raised his head, his hands limply hanging at his sides. Then, he made a hand seal with two fingers, summoned a large sword, and his eyes instantly filled with bloodshot veins. Before everyone could react, the next second, he had already swung his sword straight at them.
Li Yuan had been paying attention to his clumsy younger brother’s movements, and he noticed the anomaly in Li Juemu the moment it happened. As the greatsword struck, he quickly had Fu Lingxuan activate the orange formation, teleporting him in front of Li Juemu. He raised his hand and struck the back of Li Juemu’s neck with a chop. Li Juemu immediately lost consciousness and fell to the ground.
However, the greatsword did not stop because Li Juemu had fallen. The remaining spiritual power drove it to continue attacking the nearest Shen Yucheng.
At that critical moment, Mo Yifeng wrapped his arms around Shen Yucheng, holding him by the waist, and leapt into the air with him, dodging the greatsword’s edge. Looking down, they saw the greatsword plunged straight into the spot where they had just been standing, a near-death experience.
Mo Yifeng was about to ask Shen Yucheng if he was alright when he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his abdomen, a stuffy feeling rushing from his chest to his throat. Then, blood spurted out like a fountain, staining his clothes red, like a shocking map of blood.
He opened his mouth slightly, staring blankly at Shen Yucheng in his arms, only to see the other party looking up at him, his gaze cold and scarlet. Shen Yucheng’s hands were tightly holding a prick sword made of thousands of gold threads, the tip of the sword deeply piercing Mo Yifeng’s abdomen.
The two were extremely close, and the depth of the wound almost penetrated Mo Yifeng’s body.
Fu Lingxuan’s eyes widened, all of this happened in an instant. In his eyes, this scene looked exactly like the two embracing, but in the next moment, Mo Yifeng was stabbed with a hidden sword.
Shen Yucheng didn’t hesitate to pull out the golden sword. Mo Yifeng’s body tilted forward due to inertia. He covered the hole in his abdomen, forcefully suppressing the urge to vomit blood, his voice choked with emotion: “Brother Yucheng…”
Fu Lingxuan was about to stop him like Li Yuan, but Shen Yucheng was different from Li Juemu. The moment he felt someone approaching, he immediately flipped over, mounted the Azure-Scaled Lion, and retreated several feet away.
Helpless, Fu Lingxuan had no choice but to check on Mo Yifeng’s injuries first. When he saw the shocking hole in his abdomen, Fu Lingxuan’s heart sank – the wound was so deep that bone could be seen, the flesh was blurred, and almost half of his internal organs had been torn apart and disappeared, showing how ruthless the attacker was.
This wound, directly caused by spiritual power, was even more serious than the physical damage of ordinary knives and swords. For a Nascent Soul cultivator, such a wound would be difficult to heal, let alone Mo Yifeng, whose cultivation was suppressed to the Golden Core stage at this moment.
“…I’m fine.” Mo Yifeng’s face was pale. He pushed away Fu Lingxuan, trying to get up and find Shen Yucheng.
However, Fu Lingxuan did not help him up, only watching him struggle on the ground several times, unable to stand up successfully. He frowned, a suspicion arising in his heart. Although Shen Yucheng was holding a golden thread magic weapon and had strong spiritual power, he was only in the early stages of the Golden Core stage after all. How could he have injured Mo Yifeng to such an extent?
It was really strange.
Seeing that Mo Yifeng couldn’t get up on his own, Fu Lingxuan felt relieved and walked away, unafraid that he would recklessly rush off. He turned to look at Li Yuan, his brow slightly furrowed. Shen Yucheng and Li Juemu’s conditions were obviously not right, the two were like they were poisoned, their expressions crazed. Li Yuan carefully checked Li Juemu’s body, but found no traces of any control magic. This situation could only be caused by toxins in the body.
However, they had all been here from beginning to end. If they were really ambushed, how could they have simply let the others go? Fu Lingxuan fell into thought, staring at Li Juemu, unless these two had offended someone elsewhere and were poisoned in advance, and only now was the poison taking effect.
Just as he was thinking, a sharp scream suddenly tore through the air. Fu Lingxuan quickly turned his head, seeing Lingyi retreating in horror, while Nie Yue bent over and stood up, her right hand tightly holding a sword, pointing directly at Lingyi, but her left hand was desperately pressing on the blade, her palm trembling violently, blood gurgling out from between her fingers and dripping onto the ground. This scene seemed extremely contradictory.
Seeing this, Fu Lingxuan couldn’t help but overturn his previous reasoning. Shen Yucheng and Nie Yue had only met after the secret realm. If Shen Yucheng had been poisoned early on because he had offended enemies in the past, how could this explain Nie Yue’s abnormality?
If one assumed that their enemies also hated Nie Yue, such a possibility was almost negligible.
Therefore, Fu Lingxuan concluded that they were more likely to have been poisoned here, so the remaining question was, why were only they unaffected?
Fu Lingxuan surveyed his surroundings, quickly glancing over everyone at the scene, discovering that the cultivators who were not affected were all powerhouses who had already broken through to the Nascent Soul stage.
At this moment, Li Yuan’s voice came: “Look here.”
As soon as Fu Lingxuan turned to the side, a golden thread pierced straight beside his feet, almost stabbing into the sole of his foot. Fu Lingxuan looked back in a daze, and saw Shen Yucheng standing high on the Azure-Scaled Lion, coldly looking down at him.
“…” Facing this provocative gaze, Fu Lingxuan sneered. Since breaking through to the Nascent Soul stage at the age of eighteen, he had not felt such a provocation for a long time: “Interesting.”
He no longer hesitated, facing Shen Yucheng, the blue formation under his feet instantly unfolded, surging out like a raging storm.
Seeing this, Li Yuan helplessly turned his gaze away. Mo Yifeng saw that Fu Lingxuan was getting serious and intended to use the high-damage blue formation, and quickly stopped him, but Fu Lingxuan turned a deaf ear.
A glint of light flashed in Shen Yucheng’s dull eyes, as if some memories surfaced in his mind. He immediately directed the Azure-Scaled Lion to prepare its outer scale defense. Fu Lingxuan watched coldly, secretly weighing things, Shen Yucheng, although lost himself, still had memories, otherwise, he would never have reacted to his blue formation.
Along with the Azure-Scaled Lion’s preparation of its outer scales, an extra-large blue formation also appeared at the same time in the sky above them. The scale of this formation far exceeded the ordinary, as much as five times the usual formation, covering the sky for several miles around, and the sense of oppression was overwhelming.
Li Yuan was speechless: “The other party is your junior brother, not an enemy.”
Fu Lingxuan controlled the great formation, the corners of his mouth slightly raised, revealing a smile: “The master once taught that no matter who the other party is, one must not be careless, so one should treat fellow disciples even more carefully.”
After saying that, the giant formation pressed down on Shen Yucheng like Mount Tai. However, when it came into contact with the Azure-Scaled Lion’s defense, it stopped abruptly.
“Not bad,” Fu Lingxuan didn’t expect his Golden Core junior brother to have such courage. If it were an ordinary Golden Core cultivator, they would have been frightened and their legs would have gone weak upon seeing such a powerful formation.
But his formation was not that simple.
Seeing the familiar expression on Fu Lingxuan’s face, Mo Yifeng’s heart tightened, and he shouted: “Brother Yucheng! Get out of here!”
Whether it was a mistake or a coincidence, the moment Mo Yifeng shouted, Shen Yucheng seemed to have heard the command, controlling the Azure-Scaled Lion to quickly dodge to the right, narrowly avoiding the blue thunder that flashed out of the giant formation.
“Do you want to save him or not?” Fu Lingxuan angrily glared at Mo Yifeng: “You useless piece of trash who’s been stabbed with a knife, shut your mouth.”
Shen Yucheng gradually mastered Fu Lingxuan’s attack patterns and began to dodge easily, actually being as easy as playing with the giant formation.
Li Yuan sighed from the side: “Fortunately, Li Juemu isn’t as smart as him.”
Fu Lingxuan was not disturbed by this scene, he had long seen Shen Yucheng’s talent and had already experienced it. It should be said that without such talent, it would be impossible to become his junior brother.
He looked at all of this calmly, in the huge shadow covered by the blue formation, an unnoticed black formation quietly emerged, quietly falling under the Azure-Scaled Lion, several blue thunders guiding it to move closer to the center of the formation.
When Shen Yucheng unknowingly walked to the center of the formation, the black formation suddenly activated, and the Azure-Scaled Lion’s light figure was instantly locked in place, fixed into afterimages. Shen Yucheng, riding on top, was also fixed in place, unable to move.
His eyes rolled slightly, looking down, and when he found that the black formation had unknowingly appeared under his feet, his pupils shrank sharply.
Fu Lingxuan returned the gentleman’s courtesy, smiling gently: “I can’t only activate one formation at a time, junior brother is too careless.”
Li Yuan: “…” That’s why he didn’t like fighting with such old foxes, when you think you’ve escaped a disaster, that’s actually the trap set by the other party, and if you take the wrong step, you’ll be doomed. The wisest choice is not to fight with this kind of person from the beginning.
Mo Yifeng breathed a sigh of relief and concentrated on treating his injuries.
Fu Lingxuan bent down to check the direction Li Yuan was pointing in, his gaze falling on a dense thicket of grass.
Li Yuan gently parted the grass leaves, and a wisp of green smoke slowly drifted out, disappearing into the wind as it approached Fu Lingxuan. The two looked at each other for a moment, and Fu Lingxuan frowned slightly: “This is…?”
Li Yuan, as a member of a noble family, was well-informed, and his nose twitched slightly to identify it: “If I’m not mistaken, this should be Expansion Spirit Smoke. This kind of spirit smoke can greatly enhance spiritual power in a short period of time, and is mostly used in battle.”
Fu Lingxuan’s heart skipped a beat, and he immediately understood. After Nascent Soul cultivators formed their Nascent Soul, a layer of spiritual power shield would naturally form around their bodies. This shield did not need to be deliberately maintained, so they were not affected by the smoke.
He pondered for a moment, then asked: “Where can these smokes be found?”
“This type of smoke belongs to the category of medicinal materials and magic weapons. Because misuse can be fatal, only pharmacies and large merchants sell it now. Large merchants can obtain guarantees and record the buyer’s identity, so they should have Expansion Spirit Smoke there.”
Li Yuan added: “I smelled a similar smoke once in my house, but this one seems to have had its ingredients changed.”
Fu Lingxuan didn’t say much, lifted the grass leaves, and resolutely stepped into the bushes, Li Yuan also closely followed behind.
On the other hand, Cai Ji was controlling a long-distance viewing magic weapon when he suddenly saw Fu Lingxuan rushing straight towards his location. In a panic, he didn’t even have time to take back the magic weapon and ran away. The little brother beside him followed him breathlessly, anxiously asking: “Brother Cai, what’s wrong?”
“Fu Lingxuan is coming to us! If we don’t leave, we’ll be caught!”
Before he finished speaking, a burst of black light suddenly appeared under their feet, as if an invisible force had trapped them, instantly stopping them.
“Cai… Brother Cai, why did you stop?”
“I, I don’t know either.” Cai Ji trembled even more violently.
Then, the two heard Fu Lingxuan’s low and cold voice.
.
Mo Yifeng’s wound finally stopped bleeding, and after a rough bandage, he rushed to find Shen Yucheng.
Although Shen Yucheng’s body was fixed, his face was visibly pale, almost bloodless. Mo Yifeng stepped forward to check, and found that Shen Yucheng had no external injuries at all, his heart couldn’t help but sink, could it be internal injuries.
He explored his pulse, and time passed by. In an instant, Mo Yifeng felt a chill rise from the bottom of his heart, gradually spreading to his limbs and bones: “How could this be…”
He couldn’t believe it, and explored again, and found that the spiritual power in Shen Yucheng’s body was growing at an abnormally alarming rate, almost several times faster than ordinary people. This situation was extremely unusual, and if it continued like this, Shen Yucheng’s inner core would soon be burst open. If this was the case, the consequences of exploding would be a loss of cultivation at best, and death at worst.
Mo Yifeng’s hands trembled at some point, he stared at Shen Yucheng, knowing that the other party would not respond, he still asked: “When did this happen?”
Shen Yucheng did not respond, and the Azure-Scaled Lion was also affected by its contractor, losing its divine sense.
Seeing that Shen Yucheng’s inner core was getting fuller and fuller, Mo Yifeng’s mind raced, and he thought of a method he had heard before. The old generation of cultivators who formed Dao companions could share spiritual power, and if the nature of their Dao companion contract was the same, this method might work.
He tightly grasped Shen Yucheng’s hand, and between their fingers interlocked, the two’s spiritual veins seemed to be connected, and Mo Yifeng could clearly feel a strange and warm spiritual power flowing into his body.
The spiritual power continuously filled every part of his body along his veins. Generally, the inner core of a Nascent Soul cultivator is extremely huge, and it takes several years to completely fill it, and Mo Yifeng did not feel any pressure about this.
He needed to constantly transfer spiritual power for Shen Yucheng, otherwise the other party’s inner core would be filled again.
Mo Yifeng was worried, and many thoughts flashed through his mind.
He had also explored Shen Yucheng’s spiritual veins before, but the speed of flow was not as fast as it is now, and this matter must be related to the loss of control.
At this moment, Fu Lingxuan returned, bringing someone he did not expect.
[End of Chapter]