Volume 1, Chapter 135 – The March

After steadying her mood, Shi Lan left the room, went downstairs, and walked into the inn’s backyard.

Dozens of flood-dragon horses had just been led into the stable. Wang Ning and the others had all changed into their battle armor and were urgently feeding them. The flood-dragon horses ate in a rush, wolfing the feed down.

Ordinary fodder was nowhere near enough to supply a flood-dragon horse’s consumption. On the previous leg of the journey, they had barely managed by relying on the wild grass of the wilderness, and most of these flood-dragon horses had thinned by a whole size.

In the feed Wang Ning and the others were using now, they had mixed in a large amount of precious medicinal herbs such as blood ginseng, poria, astragalus, and so on, with many graded spirit materials scattered among them to replenish the flood-dragon horses.

The cost of a single meal for these horses was more than an ordinary Mortal could spend in a lifetime.

Wu Lingkong sat before the stable, staring blankly at the row of flood-dragon horses in front of her.

Shi Lan went over and sat down beside her. Looking at the horses before them, she also drifted off for a moment.

“With how things are now, this trip… whether we live or die is hard to say.”

Wu Lingkong’s voice was very low. It was hard to tell whether she was talking to herself or to Shi Lan.

Shi Lan listened to every word. She glanced at the sun overhead, whose warmth was slowly returning, and felt a little dazed.

In the blink of an eye, she had been in the Lingyang Realm for almost a year. A year was neither long nor short.

Three hundred-odd days and nights of cultivating, rushing about, fighting, then cultivating again. It felt like she had never had the chance to stop and catch her breath. All her time had been swallowed by the martial path.

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Ever since Twin Moon City, she had been thinking about getting stronger at every moment. If she wasn’t cultivating, she was thinking about how to complete the missions issued by the system.

Thinking about it, the most relaxed days she’d ever had were actually those first few days after arriving in the Lingyang Realm, even though at that time she had to constantly worry that her identity as a woman would be exposed.

That thought made her remember the parents she had in this life. It was almost laughable. Since running away from home until now, she could count on one hand the number of times she had thought of them. Calling her an ungrateful wretch didn’t seem wrong at all.

It was as if she had never had a home to begin with, like duckweed without roots drifting with the current. Wherever she went, it all felt the same.

Looking back now, Shi Lan understood that her secret as a woman probably hadn’t been a secret for a long time.

Shi Tianlu’s cultivation was at least in the Earth Fiend Realm, and she herself had stepped into the Earth Fiend Realm now.

With how keen an Earth Fiend Realm martial artist’s senses were, it was impossible that he couldn’t even tell if she was male or female. Shi Lan hadn’t stayed at the Shi Residence for just a day or two, but nearly twenty years.

As for why Shi Tianlu had never exposed her, Shi Lan didn’t know, and didn’t want to waste the effort to figure it out now. What she wanted to think about was how she should walk the road ahead.

When she first arrived in this other world, she’d been thinking about how to stir up wind and rain in the Lingyang Realm, never once considering that for an ordinary Mortal body like hers, just scraping by in this realm was already difficult enough, let alone tilting the world.

Step by step to this day, if not for reincarnation and the system, she would have long since died without even bones left.

Even so, she’d had several brushes with death, nearly losing her life more than once.

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If she added it all up, Heaven had not treated her poorly. At least she’d been given something to rely on to save her life.

In a daze, Shi Lan remembered the tiny dream that had once flashed through her mind by chance: hiding away in some safe place, cultivating until she was strong enough, then reentering the world, living as a salted fish who didn’t fight with anyone, slowly taking in the brilliant sights of the Lingyang Realm.

Now, that dream had become a flower in a mirror, the moon in water, thanks to the system and the demonic beasts, like a castle in the air, visible but out of reach.

“Centurion, everything is ready. We can set out.” Wang Ning came up to Shi Lan and cupped his fists.

Shi Lan drew back her drifting thoughts, and the faint confusion in her eyes slowly faded.

If she wanted to be a salted fish, the premise was that she couldn’t turn into a dead fish. And if she was going to be a salted fish in the Lingyang Realm, then she had to be a salted-fish king no one dared provoke.

Wu Lingkong beside her was no longer there. Shi Lan stood up, glanced around once, then strode out of the inn.

The Demon-Suppressing Army troops were already lined up in formation, with only Wu Lingkong nowhere to be seen.

“Shi Lan!”

A call came from overhead. Shi Lan looked up and saw Wu Lingkong, now also in battle armor, standing at an upstairs window and waving at her.

Shi Lan crossed the main hall in a few steps and went upstairs into the room.

“I scraped things together again and managed to put together a set of armor for you. Hurry and put it on. If that Demon-Suppressing General is the type who obsesses over rules, just your current outfit is enough for him to slap you with ‘damaging military image’ and ‘undermining morale.’”

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Wu Lingkong muttered as she picked up the armor and began putting it on Shi Lan.

Shi Lan had no choice but to tighten her White Crane Skirt again and help Wu Lingkong get the armor on her properly.

The faint sense of dejection from earlier was gone from Wu Lingkong. She looked no different from usual, if anything a bit livelier.

When it came time to put on the headpiece, Shi Lan was at a loss again.

“You’re this grown already and you can’t even tie your hair, fine. But you can’t even put on a headpiece…”

Wu Lingkong sighed, stepped forward to take the headpiece, loosened Shi Lan’s simple ponytail with a few quick motions, then retied it and settled the headpiece on for her in a matter of moments.

“Clack”

She fastened the black-iron belt around Shi Lan’s waist, tugged at the skirt-armor, and after looking her up and down felt it was about right. She clapped her hands and said, “Let’s go. Time to head out.”

Shi Lan raised a hand to touch the headpiece, then followed it back to the ponytail hanging behind her. She caught a strand between her fingers. Feeling the smoothness like silk brocade, she couldn’t help but let out a quiet laugh.

“What is it?” Wu Lingkong asked, puzzled.

“I don’t know, I just suddenly felt like laughing.” Shi Lan shook her head, and the smile at the corner of her lips deepened a shade.

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“Come on, we’re about out of time.” Wu Lingkong glanced at the sky. “If we set out now and travel through the night, three thousand li away, we’ll arrive by tomorrow morning.”

Shi Lan gathered away her smile, nodded, and strode out of the inn. She swung herself onto a flood-dragon horse, tightened the reins, and shouted loudly,

“Move out!”

The flood-dragon horses stepped into a brisk trot and quickly left the city. Once they entered the wilderness, they began to accelerate.

Fresh from a hearty meal, the flood-dragon horses were brimming with energy. At full gallop, their scaled armor spread wide, and they were extremely spirited.

The three thousand li proved even faster than Wu Lingkong’s estimate. By the time the sky was just beginning to brighten, the group had already reached the coordinates sent through the Demon-Suppressing Orders.

There was no camp on the ground. In the sky, however, a colossal object hovered, almost identical to the Cloudsky Treasure Ship Shi Lan had once glimpsed, only smaller in size, several thousand zhang long and several hundred zhang wide.

As Shi Lan and the others galloped near the giant flying ship, a column of golden light more than ten zhang wide shone down from the vessel and stretched out before them.

The dozens of flood-dragon horses did not hesitate in the slightest. They ran onto the golden light as if used to it, their hooves feeling as solid as if on earth. They raced along the beam, stepping into the sky and charging straight toward the flying ship.

Out of the corner of her eye, Shi Lan caught sight of several other beams of the same golden light, each bearing familiar black-armored figures. Clearly, they were not the only ones summoned here.