Volume 1, Chapter 57 – Return to the City

Shi Lan had no concrete sense of what “an enemy of ten thousand” meant, but she was very clear on how strong the Innate Realm was.

Shi Feng was only at the seventh stage of the Innate Realm, yet every strike of his sent out blade qi over ten zhang long. He could fight that Golden-Flame Eagle in midair and even kill it.

If someone was more than ten times stronger than that, wouldn’t every move they made cause mountains to crumble and the earth to crack?

“Centurion, have you already stepped into the Earth Fiend Realm?”

Huangfu Yun shook his head. “Even in the Demon-Suppressing Army, an Earth Fiend Realm martial artist can serve as a commander of a thousand. I’ve been stuck at the peak of the ninth stage of the Innate Realm for nearly four years now, still half a step short of breaking through.”

Huangfu Yun glanced at Shi Lan and, seeing the Flying Cloud Boots on her feet, paused for a moment.

After taking a closer look, he couldn’t help feeling a jolt of surprise. Yet another support-type magic artifact, and not a low-grade one.

Support-type magic artifacts were worth far more than ordinary ones. They were expensive and highly sought after.

Shi Lan wasn’t that old, yet she was covered in treasures.

Thinking of the elder brother who’d appeared with her earlier, Huangfu Yun grew thoughtful. The siblings’ family background clearly wasn’t simple.

After thinking for a bit, Huangfu Yun asked, “Shi Lan, what does your family do for a living?”

Shi Lan couldn’t really answer that for the moment. She honestly had no idea what income sources the Shi Residence actually had. She couldn’t say their business was collecting protection money, could she?

“If it’s inconvenient to say, then don’t. Just be more careful in the future.”

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Seeing Shi Lan stay silent, Huangfu Yun assumed she had some difficulty she couldn’t speak of. He didn’t press further, just waved a hand, said his piece, and got up to leave.

After dinner, Huangfu Yun began organizing the soldiers to retrieve the refined steel bolts lodged in demonic beast corpses. Things like refined steel bolts were consumables, and right now they were the most scarce resource in Twin Moon City. There was no way he’d let them go to waste.

Once the battlefield was cleaned up, everyone rushed over to the little stream in the dense forest, stripping off armor and clothes without a hint of shyness to wash the blood from their bodies.

Shi Lan also felt uncomfortable in her own skin, but she naturally wasn’t about to squeeze in there with everyone else.

After turning down Jiang Li’s invitation to bathe together, she took out a Bone-Forging Pill, swallowed it, and sank into cultivation.

The System’s main quest still showed no sign of movement. Right now, all she could do was speed up her own growth as much as possible, hoping to reach the requirements for the System to issue the next main quest sooner.

The main quests were risky, but the returns were just as great. The rewards from the first two main quests had benefited her tremendously.

Once everyone finished bathing, Shi Lan got up, led the jiao horse into the stream, and started cleaning the clotted flesh and gore from its scales. Then she unfastened her own armor and scrubbed the bloodstains from it as well.

After a simple wash, Shi Lan went back to the bonfire to continue refining the Bone-Forging Pill’s medicinal power.

The night passed in a blink.

Before dawn, Huangfu Yun woke everyone. Once they left the valley, they drove their mounts hard toward the next demonic beast gathering point and once again threw themselves into the slaughter.

…

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In the blink of an eye, three days had passed since they’d left the city.

In those three days, aside from the time spent eating and resting, they had been fighting demonic beasts almost nonstop. When one group was wiped out, Huangfu Yun would find another. The demonic beasts that had died at their hands now numbered in the thousands. If you counted ordinary wild beasts, the tally had long since passed ten thousand.

When they left the city, each person had brought twenty refined steel bolts. In just three days, more than half of them had worn down.

Under Huangfu Yun’s watchful eye, not a single person had died, though several had been seriously injured. Shi Lan herself had taken a few hits. Her left arm had been rammed from the side by a Gold-Ringed Ox nearly two zhang long, snapping the bone on the spot, and the jiao horse beneath her had taken the impact too, three of its ribs breaking.

That day, while they were on the march, they ran into three waves of roaming demonic beasts in a row. Afterward, Huangfu Yun finally ordered a withdrawal back to the city.

The number of demonic beasts was growing, and their level was much higher. Roaming outside the city any longer would be far too dangerous.

Hearing this order, Shi Lan couldn’t help but let out a breath of relief. Right now, she looked like she’d just been fished out of a pool of blood, and the underclothes next to her skin were soaked through with gore. The others didn’t look much better.

The trip back to the city was quick. Before the sun even set, they had already returned to Twin Moon City.

Once inside the walls, Huangfu Yun immediately gave everyone a half-day off and sent them all back to their own places.

Back at the City Lord’s residence, the first thing Shi Lan did was take a bath, washing off the reek of blood from head to toe.

When she came out of the bath, both her armor and that jiao horse had already been scrubbed spotless by the residence’s servants, not a speck of dust left on them.

Seeing this, Shi Lan let out a sigh. Being waited on like this, without having to do everything herself… felt pretty nice.

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Back in her own room, Shi Lan sat down on the bed, took out the last spirit crystal, closed her eyes, and began refining it.

The situation outside the city was growing more and more dire. Demonic beasts could show up under Twin Moon City’s walls at any time. There was no point in hoarding spirit crystals anymore.

She digested this spirit crystal a bit faster than the last one, taking only about an hour and a half.

After swallowing this one, her physical strength surged again by another notch. It had been less than two days since her left arm was set in a splint for the fracture; it had been completely immobile before, but now she could already move it a little.

Looking at the spirit crystal, now turned ashy white in her palm, Shi Lan let out a slightly wistful sigh. If only there were a few more spirit crystals…

Thump… thump thump…

“Brother Shi, are you in?”

Jiang Li’s voice came from outside the door.

Shi Lan closed her fingers around the crystal, got up, and opened the door.

Jiang Li was carrying three or four wine jars each about the size of a human head. Seeing her open up, he lifted the jars in his hand and grinned. “Have a few drinks?”

Shi Lan agreed readily with a nod. Since coming to the Lingyang Realm, she didn’t think she’d touched a drop of alcohol yet.

Drinking inside felt too stuffy, so the two of them just grabbed two cups and hopped straight up onto the roof, lying back on the tiles.

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In the night sky, the moon hung high like a silver plate, moonlight flowing like water. The gentle night breeze brushed past their faces, making it impossible not to relax.

Staring at the full moon above, Shi Lan zoned out a little. The moon in the Lingyang Realm was always full, never waxing and waning. After all, the Lingyang Realm wasn’t Earth; it was a vast world where heaven was round and the earth was square.

She couldn’t help wondering if there might be a moon goddess like Chang’e living on that moon in the Lingyang Realm…

Jiang Li unsealed a wine jar, poured Shi Lan a full cup, then filled his own.

The rich aroma of the wine pulled Shi Lan’s thoughts back.

Looking at the clear, crystal liquid in front of her, she couldn’t help but lift the cup and take a small sip.

The wine slid down her throat smooth and gentle. A deep, fragrant flavor lingered in her mouth and nose for a long time, leaving a lasting aftertaste.

Shi Lan’s eyes lit up. “What wine is this?”

In her previous life, she’d mixed in the corporate world, and drinking at business dinners was unavoidable. She couldn’t say she’d tasted every wine under the sun, but as long as a wine was famous, she’d at least tried it. Of all those kinds of alcohol, the ones that could compare to the cup in her hand now were very few.

Jiang Li drained his cup in one go and chuckled. “This wine is called Autumn Dew. It needs at least three years of brewing before it can come out of the cellar. It’s also known as ‘Three-Year Autumn.’”