The Attack of the Wastrel

After Tianfeng Wei shouted, she proceeded to attack Gu Lingzhi. Gu Lingzhi did not bother to avoid her but activated the Protective Jade Amulet by her waist. A green light appeared, blocking Tianfeng Wei’s attacks. Gu Lingzhi turned back to block the attacks from the other people.

“Clang!” The sound of metal hitting metal resounded along with Gu Lingzhi’s cry of pain. She had taken a stab to her waist in exchange for cutting off the other guy’s arm. Using the same method, she slowly reduced her opponent’s ability to fight, bearing injuries in exchange.

At the same time, Shao Weiming had also knocked down the wall and was pointing his sword towards Gu Lingzhi.

Gu Lingzhi did not dare to slow down as she beared with the pain at her waist and dodge his attack, turning to Tianfeng Wei.

Tianfeng Wei’s eyes flashed as she wanted to give Gu Lingzhi a good beating. Unfortunately, in her anger previously, she had used up a lot of her spiritual energy and in the short moment she had, she could not activate much spiritual energy to attack Gu Lingzhi. She forced out a few water arrows which Gu Lingzhi managed to dodge easily. Hopping over her head, Gu Lingzhi fled in the other direction.

Gu Lingzhi’s string of movements looked as if she had practiced it numerous times. When she escaped from the group, Shao Weiming finally realised why she did what she did and his heart stiffened.

They had thought that with more people on their side, they were sure to win and did not think highly of Gu Lingzhi. However, in their first encounter, they had already suffered quite a bit. Through this, they finally realised Gu Lingzhi’s true ability.

“No wonder the Third Prince wants to marry her even if it means offending the North Qiu Kingdom. Just based on her ability to fight, there is no way you can compare to her,” Shao Weiming said solemnly as he looked at Tianfeng Wei’s frustrated face.

Tianfeng Wei was extremely frustrated at how she was so easily triggered by just a few sentences and lost control of herself. This resulted in her wasting her spiritual energy and allowing Gu Lingzhi to escape. She had no mood to bother with Shao Weiming’s mocking tone. Her mind set on making up for her mistake, Tianfeng Wei chased after Gu Lingzhi as fast as she possibly could.

On Gu Lingzhi’s side, although everything had gone as she planned, she still did not feel great.

She was left with less than ten percent of her spiritual energy and it was only enough to escape. The injury at her waist was hurting and had stained her clothes a deep red.

This was still not the worst thing. After staying in the Valley of Beasts for over ten days, she knew that it was dangerous to get even the slightest injury in the Valley of Beasts. Even if she were to get injured, she had to quickly wrap her injury to prevent the smell of blood from attracting other beasts.

But now, she had no time to deal with her injury. All she could do was press on her injury with a handkerchief. However, her constant movement causes blood to keep flowing out of her wound. Before long, the clean handkerchief was also stained red. Droplets of her blood fell to the floor as she ran. If any beasts were to come across the road she ran past, they would easily be able to locate her by following the trail of blood.

“Give up, you won’t be able to run. It is better to go with us than to die in the stomach of a beast.” Shao Weiming shouted out as he saw the trail of blood on the floor. He was following closely behind her.

Gu Lingzhi pursed her lips and remained silent. In her mind, she ran through whatever happened ever since she entered the Valley of the Beasts. In the back of her mind, she felt like she had overlooked something and that something could possibly help her get rid of Shao Weiming.

“Awooo—” A fierce cry resounded from somewhere in the forest. Gu Lingzhi’s heart fell with a plop sound as she knew that a beast had caught on to the scent of her blood.

True to her feeling, the sound of heavy footsteps could soon be heard through the forest.

When she was unlucky, she was really unlucky…

Gu Lingzhi laughed bitterly as she swallowed a spiritual medicine to restore her spiritual energy.

While behind her, Shao Weiming did not give up on the chase, beside her, a beast was lying in wait. Was she fated to die today?

Alas, the footsteps of the beasts neared and Gu Lingzhi caught sight of it. Except for its striking dark green eyes, the entire body of the beast was pitch black in colour. It was a high grade third-order demon beast - a Shadow Leopard that was about two meters tall.

Before Gu Lingzhi had gotten injured, she had killed a similar beast before. The attacking power of a Shadow Leopard was not extremely high but its speed was extraordinary. Its sharp claws would injure you before you even had time to react.

Her bloody scent had attracted the beast that she was most afraid of meeting right now and Gu Lingzhi could not help but shake her head. She stuffed another bunch of Spiritual Medicines into her mouth. There was no time to worry that her overconsumption of medicine might create side effects.

Behind her, Shao Weiming’s eyes lit up. With this Shadow Leopard, he could wait until Gu Lingzhi was bitten by the Leopard before he made his move.

“Roar!” The Shadow Leopard gave an indignant cry towards Gu Lingzhi. Just as Gu Lingzhi made up her mind to escape into her Inheritance Space, the Shadow Leopard suddenly turned and burst in the other direction.

“Err…” Gu Lingzhi blinked. She made no move to slow down.

The group with Shao Weiming were equally dumbfounded. Why would the Shadow Leopard give up on its chance for food?

In contrast to the disappointment of the group, Gu Lingzhi caught sight of the tail between the two back legs of the Shadow Leopard and came to a realisation. Third-order beasts had a certain level of intelligence. The Shadow Leopard must have sensed Shao Weiming and realised that it would not be able to contend against his power and decide to give up at the last minute.

If Shao Weiming realised that it was his presence that caused the Shadow Leopard to give up, would he be extremely furious?

However, Gu Lingzhi had no intention of bringing this up to Shao Weiming to anger him. She should just let him continue emanating his Martial Lord aura and help her clear the way of beasts!

The effects of the bunch of Spiritual Medicine that she had just consumed started to cause her body to heat up. A huge amount of spiritual energy spread from her stomach to all four limbs, refilling Gu Lingzhi’s exhausted spiritual energy. In her mind, she had remembered what she left out.

She thought back on the large group of capuchin monkeys that she had unfortunately come across when she just entered the zone of third-order demon beasts. The group was so large that it would cause problems even for Martial Sages, much less a beginner Martial Lord like Shao Weiming.

Trying to recall the exact location at which she met those capuchin monkeys, Gu Lingzhi subtly changed the direction in which she was heading to.

After running for another half an hour, Shao Weiming was losing his patience and decided to give up on depleting Gu Lingzhi’s spiritual energy before attacking. Another wall rose from the ground in front of Gu Lingzhi once again.

This wall was different from the small wall that he had created previously to slow her down. This time the wall that Shao Weiming created was three meters tall. The only way to get over it was to fly.

There was no time for Gu Lingzhih to change direction and Shao Weiming’s attack followed closely behind. She could only brace herself as she slowly defended against his attacks while finding a way to get over the wall.

Before she could get over the wall that was surrounding her, Tianfeng Wei and the rest who were slightly slower had caught up. Gu Lingzhi was matched with Shao Weiming before they came, but as soon as they joined the fight, she was severely disadvantaged and sustained several cuts.

“How dare you laugh at me for being neglected by Lang Jingchen? His Highness was also looking for something new. In a year, let’s see if he will still dote on you!” Bearing a grudge on what Gu Lingzhi had said to her before, Tianfeng Wei declared coldly as she attacked her.

Gu Lingzhi gave her a fleeting glance and responded with silence. Her disdainful silence was more infuriating to Tianfeng Wei than if she had spoken directly.

“Say something! Weren’t you quite quick with your words earlier? Have I touched on a sore spot?”

Gu Lingzhi’s eyes filled with even more contempt. This time, she did not even bother to look at Tianfeng Wei.

It was not that Gu Lingzhi purposefully did not look at her, but she had no time to do so. Gu Lingzhi could not even block her attack in time and had to take a blow. Large beads of sweat rolled off Gu Lingzhi’s forehead as her face turned pale.

It was no wonder Shao Weiming was a Martial Lord. His control over his spiritual energy was much better than Gu Lingzhi who was a Martial Teacher.

Although Martial Artists could use their own internal spiritual energy and combine it with the external spiritual energy to achieve their goal, the purity of a Martial Lord’s spiritual energy was superior over that of a Martial Teacher. In the same space, the person with a purer spiritual energy will be able to control more external spiritual energy.

As Gu Lingzhi exchanged blows with Shao Weiming, she realised that she was not able to control spiritual energy as well.

To begin with, there was already this difference between her and Shao Weiming. In addition, her internal spiritual energy came from consuming medicine and would definitely not be as pure as her raw internal spiritual energy. This caused Gu Lingzhi to be able to control a very pathetic and minimal amount of spiritual energy.

It was not very obvious at the start, but after a few blows her inferiority was starting to show. Seeing that Gu Lingzhi preferred attacking with fire spiritual energy, Shao Weiming intentionally changed his usual earth spiritual energy and attacked Gu Lingzhi with fire spiritual energy as well.

“Sss…Bam!” Taking two consecutive hits, Gu Lingzhi’s body was ablaze as she was thrown afar by a hard hit. She could smell the smell of her own skin cooking.

With only time to activate water spiritual energy to put out the fire, Gu Lingzhi used the force at which she was thrown out to escape over the wall. She then fled towards the place in her memory.

“Cough…” Grabbing onto her chest, Gu Lingzhi coughed out a mouthful of blood.

After getting hit by Shao Weiming’s fireball and getting thrown so far, even an ironman would not be able to withstand it. What more she, who was made of skin and bones? A good majority of her skin had been burnt and her internal injuries were similarly severe. Every step she took was like getting stabbed internally. Her only consolation was that all her wounds had stopped bleeding as the fire had burnt the wounds, forming scars. The only thing pushing her on was pure willpower.

“You can still run in this state?” Shao Weiming claimed in disbelief as he looked at how Gu Lingzhi was swaying as she was running, seeming like she was about to fall any second now yet not falling.