And so… Su Wenjing was also scolded by Fu Ling.
Su Wenjing was tongue-tied and left speechless by her lecture. This was especially true when Fu Ling mentioned that Li Yunxian was only in her twenties.
Li Yunxian laughed as she listened, even mischievously echoing Fu Ling’s words.
Fu Ling… grew even angrier.
However, after being hit by this new situation, Fu Ling could no longer find the anger she once held toward Li Yunxian’s reckless behavior in the Secret Realm.
Since Li Yunxian had already deduced from her reaction that Su Wenjing had feelings for her, Li Yunxian’s echoing of her words made it clear that the affection was mutual.
Fu Ling was utterly speechless and didn’t know what to say. She merely felt like a giant, oversized third wheel.
She gloomily returned to the main topic.
“Let’s go to the final location,” Fu Ling said.
She wanted to finish this early and go home to sleep! She didn’t want to think about her own unemployment and frustrations while others were succeeding in their love lives!
Neither Li Yunxian nor Su Wenjing had any objections.
The three of them were already very familiar with how to navigate the Heaven’s Ruins.
Soon, Li Yunxian and the others arrived at the foot of that small hill.
“Is this Qingqiu?” Li Yunxian asked.
It was the rumored home of the Nine-tailed Fox clan.
“Yes,” Su Wenjing replied.
Li Yunxian and Su Wenjing were just speaking normally, but in Fu Ling’s eyes, it was extremely eyesore-inducing. Now, no matter what they did, she felt like she was being forced to eat dog food!
“Stop chatting and get in there,” Fu Ling urged.
Go, go, go!
Li Yunxian and Su Wenjing looked at each other and, in the end, very considerately refrained from laughing in front of Fu Ling.
They were already experienced when it came to entering markers. Although Li Yunxian had taken back the soul shards she had used, her divine soul was still broken.
The process of Su Wenjing bringing her into his Past Secret Realm went very smoothly.
However, everything that happened to Li Yunxian always seemed to follow the rule of the conservation of luck.
For example, if the process of entering went smoothly, then once she was inside, an accident was bound to happen…
Upon entering the Secret Realm, before Li Yunxian could even see the scene before her clearly, she felt a powerful force of rejection.
In the next second, Li Yunxian appeared in a dense forest.
Li Yunxian looked up toward the distance and saw the familiar Qingqiu far away.
Li Yunxian: “…”
It seemed that because her divine soul had not received permission from Qingqiu, she had been directly rejected and cast out.
Li Yunxian was speechless for a moment. If she couldn’t enter Qingqiu, how was she supposed to remind Su Wenjing?
However, Li Yunxian was all too familiar with such unexpected situations. She quickly composed herself and thought of a solution.
She would… just call for him.
If she couldn’t go in, was it possible that Su Wenjing couldn’t come out?
As for how to call him, that was very simple. Because she encountered so many accidents, even though Li Yunxian primarily specialized in the Sword Path, she actually knew quite a lot about miscellaneous things. For instance, she knew of a certain Seeking Talisman that could handle this situation.
However, those who entered markers did so as pure divine souls. Li Yunxian didn’t have any storage artifacts with her, so she couldn’t use any of the magic materials or treasures she had stored.
But that wasn’t a big problem.
Li Yunxian’s gaze turned toward a certain beast that had appeared within range of her divine sense.
In her pure divine soul state, without the limitations of a physical body, Li Yunxian was currently a genuine cultivator of the Tribulation Stage!
With a light lift of her hand, the beast didn’t even have time to let out a cry before it was smoothly processed into various materials. Li Yunxian easily gathered everything.
Meanwhile, inside Qingqiu, Su Wenjing opened his eyes and looked around in all directions. He felt as though someone was supposed to be near him, but he didn’t see anyone.
‘Who should it be?’ Su Wenjing thought with a frown, but he found no answer.
He felt as if a large chunk of his memory was missing. But when he thought back carefully, his memories felt completely intact, without any gaps.
Strange.
“Wenjing, what are you looking for?” a woman ahead of him, who also possessed long hair and fox ears, turned back and asked curiously.
Su Wenjing didn’t mention his inexplicable thoughts and instead said, “…I feel like it’s been a long time since I’ve seen Qingqiu.”
The fox-eared woman smiled and reached out to roughly pinch Su Wenjing’s face. “You’re just a little kid, why are you pretending to be an adult!”
Su Wenjing’s eyes were filled with annoyance as he strongly protested, pulling the fox-eared woman’s hand away. “Auntie! I’m almost 1,000 years old!!”
“You’re still a kid!” The fox-eared woman laughed loudly.
Outside Qingqiu, Li Yunxian was busy slaughtering while spreading her divine sense to look for a gathering place for cultivators.
She quickly found a large village.
After stepping inside, Li Yunxian realized that although this place looked dilapidated, it wasn’t actually a village but a country.
After all, this was several thousand years ago!
Furthermore, this was a country of the Ren Clan.
The You Su Kingdom.
Li Yunxian’s expression was full of surprise. In this country, the Yao cultivators and beast cultivators she saw were far more numerous than the humans.
Li Yunxian wandered around the area and quickly exchanged her materials for what she needed.
After inquiring about the news from the Yao cultivator she was trading with, she couldn’t help but voice her complaint.
Hearing Li Yunxian’s words, the Yao cultivator looked at her with a speechless expression.
“What are you talking about? Of course, the humans are the most numerous here. If this isn’t a human country, then what is it?”
After saying that, a look of envy appeared in the Yao cultivator’s eyes. “Sigh, those humans are really too good at breeding.”
Li Yunxian was stunned for a moment before she realized that even though she knew better, she was still instinctively looking at the situation from the traditional perspective of a human cultivator.
The humans instinctively felt that the Ren Clan was one group, the Yao Race was another, the beasts were another, and the creepy were yet another. But outside of the human race, other groups didn’t think this way.
The Yao cultivator before her was a bird Yao — specifically, a type called a Red Phoenix.
He felt that the Red Phoenix was its own race, even if other bird Yao were not of the same tribe. There was reproductive isolation; calling them all one race was just a joke!
Thousands of years into the future, as the populations of Yao, beasts, and the creepy dwindled, they would have some mutual care for one another, but they still wouldn’t view each other as the same race.
At this time, in the eyes of the Yao cultivators, the humans were just a certain weak race that was somewhat clever and very good at multiplying.
Li Yunxian realized she had made a fool of herself. She smiled apologetically at the bird Yao and changed the subject, using her mistake as a way to gather more information.
“Even though there are many humans, this should be a place protected by other races, right? It’s still a bit strange to call it a human country.”
This You Su Kingdom was just a large village. With a sweep of her divine sense, Li Yunxian knew that the cultivation levels of the humans here didn’t even reach the Golden Core stage.
Yet, among the Yao and beast cultivators active here, there were plenty of those at the Golden Core and Nascent Soul stages.
Led on by Li Yunxian’s words, the bird Yao thought for a moment and agreed.
“If you put it that way, it’s true. This place is protected by those foxes from Qingqiu. They even draw totems of the Nine-tailed Fox to offer sacrifices…”
The two chatted for a while. Li Yunxian gathered a lot of information from the bird Yao, roughly figuring out the relationship between the cultivators of the path of righteousness, the Demonic Path, and various races during this era.
However, after finishing the conversation, Li Yunxian suddenly felt that something was wrong.
‘Why am I learning all this?!’
This was Su Wenjing’s past; she hadn’t actually traveled back in time!
She had encountered so many pitfalls that gathering intelligence to prevent accidents had become an instinctive behavior for her.
Li Yunxian was speechless, quickly returning to the correct path.
Using the materials she had exchanged, Li Yunxian spent a good while tinkering, creating ink and Talisman Paper from scratch. A Seeking Talisman was very basic and simple; for Li Yunxian, it was easy to draw one.
Considering the range limitations of the Seeking Talisman, Li Yunxian returned to the edge of Qingqiu.
She touched the restriction before her, knowing this was as close as she could get to Qingqiu. She hoped that Su Wenjing was still inside Qingqiu during the time she was gone.
‘He wouldn’t be that unlucky, would he?’
Thinking this, Li Yunxian activated the talisman in her hand.
“I’m waiting for you at the southwest edge of Qingqiu.”
Li Yunxian silently recited Su Wenjing’s name, sending the sentence into the talisman.
In the next second, the talisman in her hand shook, then shattered right in front of her with a bang.
Li Yunxian: “…”
Li Yunxian: “?”
She fell into deep thought.
Li Yunxian was mentally prepared for the Seeking Talisman to fail. She was prepared for her own level of bad luck. But that didn’t include this specific situation.
The failure Li Yunxian had expected was that Su Wenjing was beyond the talisman’s range. In that case, the Seeking Talisman would have gone limp after shaking and turned into a pile of scrap.
For it to explode directly…
The only possibility was that she was looking for the wrong person.
To put it simply, the divine soul Li Yunxian was searching for did not match the name.
The positioning of a Seeking Talisman relied on the user’s perception of the target’s divine soul, while the name was the knocking stone.
Only after the correct name was called and the target agreed would the Seeking Talisman deliver the message.
Li Yunxian narrowed her eyes, looking at the broken fragments of the talisman.
Naturally, she wouldn’t mistake Su Wenjing’s divine soul, as she had accurately identified it before. In that case, the only possibility was…
Su Wenjing was not his real name.
They had essentially confirmed their relationship, and yet… that guy Su Wenjing hadn’t even told her his real name!
Li Yunxian looked dangerously at the restriction around Qingqiu. At this moment, she really wanted to directly break through the restriction and angrily knock on that fox’s head!!
The anger of a Tribulation Stage cultivator dissipated, and since she was a sword cultivator who could break all techniques with a single sword, even the restriction of Qingqiu trembled slightly.
However, Li Yunxian was not someone who would be controlled by her emotions. Ultimately, she only gave the restriction a cold glance.
She didn’t believe Su Wenjing wouldn’t come out of Qingqiu…
Thinking this, a sudden thought struck her. She remembered the information she had gathered from that bird Yao.
You Su Kingdom, Qingqiu, Nine-tailed Fox totems…
Li Yunxian recalled some historical trivia she had overheard from her classmates back when she was in school. For example, the origins and changes of certain surnames.
Was it possible that the name of this country was based on the surname of the Nine-tailed Fox clan?
Li Yunxian pondered for a moment, picked up the brush again, and drew another Seeking Talisman.
“You Su Wenjing, I’m waiting for you at the southwest edge of Qingqiu.”
Under Li Yunxian’s watchful eyes, the Seeking Talisman responded to her voice and instantly vanished from her sight.
Li Yunxian: “…”
She smiled.