Demoness's Art of Vengeance

Two more days passed. Jun Xiaomo and Ye Xiuwen had finally managed to locate their second Basilisk Fruit. The second Basilisk Fruit was located near the edge of a crevice. And the crevice was a steep drop into what seemed like a bottomless abyss.

The crevice had appeared out of nowhere within the Mystic Woods. It was as though a Transcendent cultivator had cleaved the Mystic Woods into two with his sword, dividing the eastern and western parts of the Mystic Woods with a massive fissure. The ends of this fissure were too far away to be seen with the naked eye, and the gap between the two sides were of the width of several arms’ length. If a person stood at the edge of this precipice and looked down, he would be able to see nothing more than roiling mist, as though he were standing at the edge of a bottomless abyss.

“Martial brother, this place gives me the creeps. Should we pick the Basilisk Fruit from elsewhere?” Jun Xiaomo walked up to Ye Xiuwen and clutched anxiously at his arm.

Most importantly, this crevice was incredibly long and deep. If a person accidentally fell into it, getting out would be an almost insurmountable task.

Besides, who knew what lurked at the depths of this crevice?

Ye Xiuwen furrowed his brows. He did not get the same chilling feeling that Jun Xiaomo got from this place. Conversely, he found that this place was rich in spiritual energy. It was almost as though there was roiling, thick spiritual energy that was flowing out of the crevice and onto the surrounding Mystic Woods.

After deliberating for a moment, Ye Xiuwen still decided against Jun Xiaomo’s suggestion.

“Xiaomo, the Basilisk Fruit isn’t easy to find. We won’t know when we will be able to find the next one if we missed out on this one. I still think we should give this a shot. Furthermore, it’s not as though the Basilisk Fruit were growing on the walls of the crevice; it’s just located near the edge of the crevice.” Ye Xiuwen refuted Jun Xiaomo’s concern with his logical reasoning.

“But…” Jun Xiaomo began her refutation once more.

“I’ve still got some of the talismans Xiaomo has given me in my Interspatial Ring. It’s fine. Wait here for me.” Ye Xiuwen rubbed Jun Xiaomo’s hair as he cut her off with a peremptory tone of voice. He had evidently already decided the matter in his heart.

Jun Xiaomo knew that anything else she said would simply fall on deaf ears. Thus, she bit down on her lower lips as she murmured to Ye Xiuwen, “Then, martial brother, please be careful.”

Her combat abilities were far from Ye Xiuwen’s abilities. Thus, their arrangement had always been for Ye Xiuwen to pick the fruit while Jun Xiaomo stood a distance away, standing guard and observing their surroundings.

Ye Xiuwen nodded, and his eyes were filled with warmth. Then, he turned around and began to make his way to the Basilisk Fruit’s vine.

The Basilisk Fruit’s vine grew along the floor of the Mystic Woods. Its leaves were shaped like a snake’s head, and there were even scale-like patterns on it. It was precisely because it resembled a snake through and through that it had come to be known as the Basilisk Fruit. Some travelers who encountered the Basilisk Fruit after a particularly long and arduous journey might even end up being shocked by the Basilisk Fruit’s vine, because the vine could easily be mistaken for countless snakes squirming out from the ground.

Generally, a single Basilisk Fruit vine would only produce one Basilisk Fruit on it. This present vine was the same.

As he made his way over to the Basilisk Fruit, Ye Xiuwen discovered that this Basilisk Fruit was different from the other Basilisk Fruit he had managed to harvest. It was even different from how Liu Qingmei had described a Basilisk Fruit.

Before they set off, Liu Qingmei had carefully described the Basilisk Fruit to Ye Xiuwen so that he would be able to identify it without any issues. Over and above describing the shape and appearances of the Basilisk Fruit, she had even described where the Basilisk Fruits had more commonly been seen.

If not for her assistance in this regard, Ye Xiuwen and Jun Xiaomo might have even spent a far longer time before they could locate a single Basilisk Fruit.

From Liu Qingmei’s description of the Basilisk Fruit, its leaves would be a muddy, brown colour, while the fruit itself would be a pale, yellow colour. The leaves would possess a scale-like pattern on it, while the fruit itself would not.

But the present Basilisk Fruit seemed to possess a few anomalies. Its leaves were a pale yellow colour, while the patterns on it were not obvious to the eye at all. At least, one would have to take a closer examination of it to notice the patterns on the leaves. Furthermore, the fruit was of a deep purple colour, and it had starkly visible scale-like patterns on it.

This Basilisk Fruit itself looked more like a snake than its leaves.

Nevertheless, Ye Xiuwen did not remain astonished for too long. He began to release his divine sense probing about him as his arm swiftly reached out and plucked off the Basilisk Fruit with one smooth motion.

Suddenly, the Basilisk Fruit’s vine came “alive” and began to thrash around. Ye Xiuwen had already known this was going to happen from his experience with the first Basilisk Fruit that they had harvested. He quickly avoided the thrashing vines and threw out a Freezing Talisman.

The Basilisk Fruit’s vine was incredibly resilient, and it was not afraid of fire or water. The only element that could subdue it was the element of ice.

As expected, the Basilisk Fruit’s vine ceased moving once the Freezing Talisman took effect.

Just then, Jun Xiaomo’s anxious cry rang out from behind –

“Martial brother, be careful!”

Ye Xiuwen’s divine sense had also noticed the anomalous change in the surroundings. He whipped his body around, unsheathed his sword, and managed to block the attack from a monster that had just lurched towards him.

That’s right. It was a monster. This unidentifiable creature was far larger than any other spirit beast they had encountered in the Mystic Woods. Compared with Ye Xiuwen, its size was almost like a mountain, and it practically blocked Ye Xiuwen’s view of the surroundings.

ROAR! The massive creature bellowed. Ye Xiuwen and Jun Xiaomo were nothing more than ants in its eyes.

But these ants had the audacity to pick the Basilisk Fruit within its territory?! Unforgivable!

The massive creature spat a ball of flame at the Basilisk Fruit’s vine, melting the ice around it within the blink of an eye. Thus, both the Basilisk Fruit’s vine and the massive creature began to attack Ye Xiuwen at the same time. If not for the fact that Ye Xiuwen’s reflexes were quick, he might already have ended up dead by the claws of the massive creature.

Jun Xiaomo didn’t stand idly by the side. She immediately joined the fray, standing back to back with Ye Xiuwen as they battled together.

As Jun Xiaomo and Ye Xiuwen spent more and more time together, their tacit understanding and coordination with each other during battle also became stronger and stronger. When they first encountered dangerous situations together, Ye Xiuwen had habitually stood in front of Jun Xiaomo, protecting her. But after Jun Xiaomo had recklessly joined the fray on several occasions, Ye Xiuwen grew to discover that she possessed her own ways of fighting effectively and overcoming her cultivation level deficiencies. In this regard, even though the enemies they squared off against were invariably of a few levels higher than Jun Xiaomo, she had been able to skillfully and easily dispose of them with the aid of her talismans and formation arrays.

Thus, as time went by, Ye Xiuwen began to recognize Jun Xiaomo’s abilities in this regard, and the pressure on him to handle the skirmishes on his own had also dwindled substantially.

This massive creature looked incredibly frightening because of its size. But it was also precisely because of its size that its movements were clumsy and inflexible. In its eyes, Jun Xiaomo and Ye Xiuwen were like ants that it was unable to crush no matter what it did. This was incredibly frustrating to the massive creature.

On the other hand, the Basilisk Fruit’s vine possessed a decent speed. However, Ye Xiuwen possessed a wind-based spiritual root, and his speed and nimbleness were higher than that of other cultivators at the same level as he was. Under the confluence of all these factors, Jun Xiaomo and Ye Xiuwen hardly found themselves disadvantaged by the situation at all.

Furthermore, they could even support and supplement each other by providing medicinal pills for the other.

Finally, after battling for more than two hours, the Basilisk Fruit’s vine found itself frozen in place again by Ye Xiuwen’s second application of a Freezing Talisman on it. At the same time, Ye Xiuwen summoned a powerful wind magic and sliced up the frozen Basilisk Fruit vine into pieces.

The massive creature could hardly hold on as well. It possessed a basic level of spiritual awareness, and it had the ability to judge the situation. In such situations where it recognized its own defeat, all it had to do was to turn around and leave. However, it must have been so frustrated by the prospects of being defeated by two little vermin that it chose to detonate its Dantian instead.

An incredible crackle resounded through the Mystic Woods, and Jun Xiaomo and Ye Xiuwen found themselves severely injured by the massive creature’s self-detonation!

“Cough, cough…” Jun Xiaomo slammed onto the ground as blood began to sputter and gurgle from her mouth.

“Xiaomo!” Ye Xiuwen cried out anxiously. His condition was not far better either. The impact from the massive creature’s self-detonation had thoroughly riled up the spiritual energy within his body. The bottleneck at his peak twelfth level of Qi Mastery loosened even further.

His body was already showing signs of breaking through!

Nevertheless, breaking through under such conditions was incredibly dangerous. The most proper way to do things was to locate a safe place, stabilize the spiritual energy within his body before working on breaching the bottleneck of his cultivation. These were precisely Ye Xiuwen’s thoughts as well. He hastily consumed some recovery pills, before painstakingly making his way over to Jun Xiaomo’s side.

Jun Xiaomo’s cultivation level was lower than Ye Xiuwen’s cultivation level. Thus, her injuries were far worse than Ye Xiuwen’s injuries. She was not even able to stand up on her own right now.

When he saw how Jun Xiaomo lay in a puddle of her own blood on the ground, Ye Xiuwen’s eyes quivered with remorse as he berated himself.

Just then, the sound of footsteps could be heard in the distance, and these steps were noticeably drawing nearer to them by the second. There were even sounds of chatter.

“I hear that these Mystic Woods have a massive fissure running through it called the “Death’s Gorge”. I wonder if we’ll have the fortune of encountering this mythical place here.” A young lady’s voice rang out from the distance. Due to the dense growth within the Mystic Woods, Ye Xiuwen and Jun Xiaomo were unable to identify the people who were approaching them.

“I think it might be better if cousin shelves this thought for now. With that kind of name, that place must be incredibly peculiar. Who knows, it might even be fraught with hidden dangers.”

Another male cultivator refuted. His voice also sounded pretty young.

“I personally think that such a place might be worth considering. After all, the more dangerous a place is, the greater the rewards. Furthermore, we’re presently travelling eastwards from the west. It’s only a matter of time that we will encounter this Death’s Gorge.” Yet another male cultivator chimed in with a stern and solemn voice.

“See? Even brother Xu agrees with me!” The young lady was evidently pleased that “brother Xu” had approved of her suggestions.

“Hang on a moment! There’s somebody over here!” The male cultivator with the stern and solemn voice alerted his other companions, and they slowed down their steps.

They walked along gingerly and made another turn. Then, the two parties finally met. There was Jun Xiaomo and Ye Xiuwen on one side; while the other side had over ten people with them in their entourage.

These people wore the same uniform. Evidently, they were from the same sect.

Ye Xiuwen had just fed several recovery medicines to Jun Xiaomo, while Jun Xiaomo lay in his embrace. Her teeth were tightly clenched together; her eyes were shut tight, and her face was incredibly pale.

It was going to take several more incense sticks of time before she would be able to stand on her own again. Fortunately, even though her injuries looked incredibly serious, they were not life-threatening at all.

Ye Xiuwen looked up to size up the people who had just entered his field of vision. He discovered that the strongest among them was a male disciple in his twenties, also at the peak twelfth level of Qi Mastery. Everyone else possessed decent cultivation levels as well, ranging from the ninth to the eleventh levels of Qi Mastery.

All in all, this entourage of people possessed rather formidable strength.

Given that he had not fully recovered from his injuries, Ye Xiuwen did not intend to clash with this group of people at all. More importantly, his intentions were to bring Jun Xiaomo with him to a safe place so that he could break through his current bottleneck.

That said, his deference to peace did not necessarily mean that the others thought the same way too.

Just as he was about to lift Jun Xiaomo up, the young lady in the other group spoke up –

“Hey, ugly! You must be carrying a mutated Basilisk Fruit there, right? If you know what’s good for you, then leave the fruit here, hmm?”

The young lady had obviously referred to Ye Xiuwen as “ugly”. The tone in her voice was filled with evil and vicious intentions. It was a stark contrast with the soft, warm voice with which she had chatted with her “brother Xu” earlier. It was almost as though they were two different people.