Chapter 171 (1/2): Your Sister Hua… Or Your Sister Hua?

With this allocation, each Forbidden Land was essentially guarded by a Ling King-level cultivator.

Within their respective Forbidden Lands, these Ling Kings could also utilize the environment to exert even greater power.

This arrangement effectively filled the gap in combat strength caused by Hua Jian performing too well.

Fortunately, she had only driven away one person. If Linglong had also been driven off by her, she wouldn’t have been able to scrape together enough combat power no matter how hard she tried, and one of the Forbidden Lands would have been left completely defenseless.

If the Demonic Path caught that opportunity for a surprise attack… tsk, tsk, tsk.

“You take the people on Ji Caiyue’s side; I’ll go to the Sword Hero to ask for manpower,” Hua Jian decided.

This choice made Linglong hesitant. Hua Jian had just had a conflict with the Sword Hero. If she went over now, would she really not be rejected?

She felt that it might be better for her to handle the negotiations. Given her status, the Sword Hero wouldn’t go so far as to argue with her and refuse to release people.

Hua Jian could just go to Ji Caiyue. They were on good terms with her, so borrowing some people wouldn’t be a problem.

But Hua Jian didn’t think that was a good idea. Someone like Linglong, who needed to maintain a certain image, was not suited for this kind of work.

“If they don’t cooperate with you, aren’t you done for? What if they feign compliance while secretly opposing you? You are the Saintess of Yaochi; you must maintain your image.” Hua Jian reached out and patted Linglong’s face twice with some force.

A Saintess couldn’t do “bad” things, but she, Hua Jian, had no such restrictions.

“Leave the dirty work to me. You just stay as your pure and flawless Saintess!”

Hearing these words, Xia Hui was instantly so moved that tears almost began to flow.

While clutching Shiqi beside her, she wiped the corners of her eyes and sighed softly, “Miss Hua Jian is truly kind. Miss Linglong and Miss Hua Jian are truly a tragic pair of — “

“Take your tragic lovers and go eat manure!” Hua Jian immediately turned around and silenced Xia Hui.

Being physically silenced, Xia Hui looked at Hua Jian with a grievance. Had she said something wrong? Given the way Hua Jian and Linglong were acting, they were definitely a couple, right?

Sigh, who would have thought the Saintess of the Yaochi Holy Sect had this kind of preference? Who knew?

“Anyway, it’s settled. Let Senior Sister Xiao Qi help us send a transmission to the other Forbidden Lands.”

Hua Jian decided to try diplomacy before force, letting those two factions pick half of their cultivators to come and help.

If they didn’t want to work under her, they didn’t have to come; they could just stay in their old spots.

But those who did come had better be prepared for Hua Jian to turn up the pressure, lest they refuse to work when the time came.

……

“What do you all think about this?”

“Lack of manpower… tsk, that’s a pretty good reason. Even I almost believe it.”

“Then what should we do? Are we really going to listen to her and go over?”

Inside the Tiandao Sect’s Forbidden Land, the Sword Hero and his party, who had already learned that Hua Jian wanted to recruit people for labor, were discussing in low voices which people should go to cooperate with her.

The few cultivators gathered here were those the Sword Hero could trust, his most solid allies.

“If you ask me, we shouldn’t go. If she actually succeeds, wouldn’t we — “

The Sword Hero immediately raised his hand, stopping his subordinate from saying anything inappropriate.

If Hua Jian actually completed the Array, it indeed wouldn’t be a good thing for them.

No matter which angle one considered it from, it wasn’t.

“You’re right, but don’t you think this whole situation is a bit strange?” The Sword Hero pointed toward the west, which had now completely become the territory of the Demonic Path.

But this was actually abnormal. The Demonic Path’s offensive shouldn’t be so massive, and such a large number of Ling Kings couldn’t possibly be the work of the Demonic Path.

“I suspect this is just a farce directed and acted out by the Saint Sect itself. Those people from the Demonic Path aren’t the real Demonic Path at all.”

He considered himself very knowledgeable about the Demonic Path and was certain that the anomalies occurring at this Ascension Gathering had little to do with them.

The current crisis was fake, intended only to test the cultivators’ abilities, and that Hua Jian was likely the most brilliant rising star of this assessment.

Even that Ji Caiyue didn’t seem to be half as good as Hua Jian now.

“We should shift our focus away from Ji Caiyue. Hua Jian is the target we need to deal with.”

“But she’s harder to deal with than Ji Caiyue, and she doesn’t have a useful pawn like Zhao Ming…” the cultivator beside the Sword Hero muttered quietly.

When dealing with Ji Caiyue, they could use Zhao Ming’s banner as a cover to hide their identities a bit.

But in this situation, if they wanted to deal with Hua Jian, what could they do?

Open confrontation was definitely out of the question, and secret sabotage would be easy to catch. If the Sword Hero’s guesses were true, it would be useless even if they prevented Hua Jian from completing the modification of the Array.

Because nothing would happen to Hua Jian. This whole thing was just a play by the Saint Sect.

“Why prevent her? We should help her wholeheartedly and make her understand that our previous friction was just a temporary moment of agitation. Now that we’ve thought it through, we’ve set aside our grudges to cooperate with her.”

“Huh? But isn’t that helping the Saint Sect?”

“Hmph, this is called using sugar-coated bullets. First, we let her lower her guard, and then we’ll pull a dirty trick on her!” The Sword Hero sneered and subtly pointed to his storage pouch. “I have something good waiting for her!”

……

When Hua Jian saw the large alliance group that had volunteered to help, her first thought was whether these people had offended the Ling King from the Tiandao Sect, making them unable to survive in that Forbidden Land and forcing them to come to her.

Just look at the people in this team. There was the boss, the Sword Hero, along with his group of lackeys.

The other cultivators were also of decent strength, considered small elites.

It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that the Sword Hero had brought almost the entire main force of the alliance. Those left back at the Tiandao Sect’s Forbidden Land were just a bunch of motley characters.

Hua Jian even suspected that these people might be trying to seize power from her.

Looking at it this way, she only had Shiqi and Xia Hui as followers behind her, which made her seem much weaker in momentum.

“I didn’t expect you to personally lead the team, Sword Hero. What, not used to being managed by others?”

Faced with Hua Jian’s thorny remark, the Sword Hero laughed twice and stated with righteous passion that he felt his strength was more needed here.

“There’s a Senior Brother from the Tiandao Sect guarding the Forbidden Land over there, so it’s about the same whether we’re there or not. But your place is different, Miss Hua Jian. If we want to survive the hands of the Demonic Path, nothing can go wrong here.”

As he spoke, the Sword Hero pointed to the cultivators behind him. “Don’t worry, Miss Hua Jian. I’ve already told them about you. Now, you are their leader. If you say go east, they won’t dare go west. You can even order me around like that!”

‘Something’s wrong. This is way too sycophantic. Is there some kind of conspiracy?’ Hua Jian took a small step back, feeling uneasy.

‘This guy couldn’t have lost his mind, could he? He wasn’t like this yesterday.’

If the opponent had been a bit firmer, stubbornly refusing to back down, Hua Jian would have acted more naturally.

Tough ones were easy to handle; a mix of the carrot and the stick could always get them to work.

But since the Sword Hero had become so soft, her original countermeasures were useless for the time being, giving her a powerless feeling as if she were punching cotton.

“Cough, then let’s begin the modification. The Spiritual Pillars here were reset by me, so there are a few more steps than in other places.”

Speaking of which, it was a bit frustrating. To create the Array described in the Token, one had to pull the already reset Spiritual Pillars back out of the ground, which was much more effort than in a Forbidden Land that hadn’t been conquered yet.

This really gave Hua Jian a sense of deja vu, like a matchmaking Elo system. Why was it that after she beat a strong enemy, the difficulty of the subsequent challenges actually rose?

It was too unreasonable!

“Good! Brother An, I’ll trouble you!” The Sword Hero immediately nodded and had one of his subordinates lead the others to the stone pillars to begin the first step of the Array Formation.

Digging a stone pillar out of the ground was much harder than pressing one down. The Sword Hero’s subordinates exerted a great deal of effort and only managed to dig out less than half of it.

It looked like just digging out the stone pillars would take nearly a full day. Counting the time for the Array Formation, the Array here would take at least one and a half days to complete.

If they encountered an attack from the Demonic Path during this period, the situation would be quite bad.

However, this area was close to the northern Ice Plain, so the Demonic Path probably wouldn’t find her here anytime soon.

That was what Hua Jian thought, but soon, something slapped her in the face.

One of the cultivators in the Sword Hero’s team was ambushed with a poison needle while on guard at the perimeter.

When he was carried back to the center of the Forbidden Land, Hua Jian saw at a glance that this person had been hit by the same move as the cultivators who had fled from the east a few days ago.

“The poison isn’t deep; I should be able to handle it.”

Although he wasn’t her own subordinate, she couldn’t just watch and not try to save him. Hua Jian first fed the unlucky cultivator a Poison-Dispelling Pill and then skillfully pulled a poison needle from his foot.

Once the poison needle was removed, the effect of the Poison-Dispelling Pill began to take hold. The cultivator’s face recovered slightly, but his complexion was still poor.

In the short term, his combat power likely wouldn’t return.

“Is this also a Demonic Path technique?” The Sword Hero watched from the side, a strange expression on his face.

And he wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, but he felt like that short little follower beside Hua Jian was constantly looking at him with a very strange gaze, as if she were seeing through his true self.

But every time he felt that scrutinizing gaze and turned back to look, the little follower would act as if nothing were wrong, which was very strange.

“I’m not sure. It could be someone else.” Hua Jian couldn’t say for certain what it was. She couldn’t very well say that this might be the Poison Circle mechanism originally arranged by the Saint Sect, could she?

‘Hiss, could it be that the cultivators playing the part of the Poison Circle don’t know the Secret Realm has been invaded by the Demonic Path and are still carrying out their duties?’

Regardless, Hua Jian believed they couldn’t let the villain who was using poison to pick people off from the outside continue. In the current Secret Realm, dying meant real death, and having an assassin hiding in the shadows would make everyone uneasy.

She had to resolve this hidden threat before everyone could relax.

“Since the other party struck first, they are a foe, not a friend. We cannot just passively take hits.”

Hua Jian very seriously shared her thoughts with the others. “I’m going to catch that person.”

No one else reacted much, but the Sword Hero immediately agreed, saying he thought the same.

“As expected of Miss Hua Jian. You’re truly brilliant to have thought of such a thing.”

‘Dammit, is this guy trying to disgust me to death?’ Hua Jian’s gaze toward the Sword Hero grew increasingly unfriendly. ‘When things are this abnormal, there must be something fishy. This Sword Hero definitely has no good intentions.’

Otherwise, why would he be so fawning? Did she, Hua Jian, really have such powerful charm?

Even if she was indeed beloved by all, their first meeting hadn’t been very harmonious. Less than a day had passed, and his attitude had done a 180-degree turn. There was clearly a major problem.

“We need someone to act as bait. That person’s strength should be higher, someone who can detect the location of the ambusher and won’t be hit without realizing it…” As Hua Jian spoke, her gaze shifted to the Sword Hero, who had just praised her.

Originally, she had intended to let Shiqi be the bait, since Shiqi wore a Spiritual Garment just like hers and wasn’t afraid of being ambushed by poison needles.

But since the Sword Hero was acting so strangely, it would be a waste of the ammunition he had provided if she didn’t take this opportunity to test him.

“Sword Hero, how about you be the bait?”

Hearing this, one of the Sword Hero’s subordinates couldn’t help but frown. “Why should the Sword Hero do it? Can’t you do it?”

‘This reaction is more like it.’ Hua Jian secretly labeled this subordinate as a normal person and then continued looking at the Sword Hero.

If the Sword Hero refused, it would mean he was using a cooperative facade to lower her guard while harboring ill intent.

If the Sword Hero accepted, that would be even more significant. To accept such a request meant he was a real “ninja.” Such a person would definitely not be easy to deal with.

In short, whether the Sword Hero accepted or not, in Hua Jian’s mind, he was a villain.

The Sword Hero’s choice was: “Fine! I’ll be the bait!”

……

“I think this guy has a major problem. He didn’t even try to bargain and just accepted my arrangement.”

Watching the Sword Hero walk alone toward the snow-covered plain, Hua Jian whispered to the two girls beside her.

To prevent the ambusher from realizing something was wrong, those lying in wait had to stay far away from the Sword Hero and take a detour to the direction where the ambusher might flee.

In truth, their task was the heaviest.

“Could it just be that he really thinks your idea is fine?” Shiqi asked, puzzled.

“You’re a Sword Cultivator, so of course you don’t understand. If he were a Sword Cultivator, I could accept him doing this, but his previous behavior didn’t look like that of a pure Sword Cultivator at all.” Hua Jian shook her head.

The Sword Hero’s title had the word “sword” in it, but he was very different from the Sword Cultivators of the Sword Sect.

This man was very savvy in social ways and even relied on staged fights to build his reputation.