Chapter 80: Sincere Apologies

Lin Xue stepped closer to Mo Fan and stopped shoulder to shoulder with him. "I'll talk to Hill Shtern. Our clans are on good terms, and his family often visited us when I was just a child."

Lin Xue looked at the group of disciples, each with swords at their belts, the Moon Swordsmen group, led by core disciple Hill Shtern, or as he was known among the disciples, the Great Moon Swordsman.

Turning to her, Mo Fan nodded. "Good. I'll talk to Lou Emilia and her group. Sister Mi and Sister Ru, try to talk to Rogu, and take Dunt with you."

Hearing this, Shepor Dunt exhaled but agreed. Ru Meng and Mi Mili exchanged knowing glances, yet they still agreed. The three of them headed toward Mighty Horn's group.

Only after walking away did both Mili and Meng throw hostile glances toward Lou Emilia.

"Sister Xia..." Before he could finish, Mo Fan was interrupted.

"Brother Mo, don't worry. I'll talk to Disciple An." With slightly empty eyes, Xia Ji looked toward the stern.

Hearing this, Mo Fan was surprised. "Are you sure? Especially after what happened between you and him. This An is unreasonable, it's better to have nothing to do with him at all."

Mo Fan cast a glance toward the stern, where An was sitting by the railing in a pose resembling a beggar by the roadside.

Mo Fan's gaze was a mix of incomprehension, indignation, anger, and disappointment. No matter how many times he tried to understand what was wrong with this strange disciple, he could never find the reason for his behavior. His last straw was when An dared to threaten his friends, when they had come to him in good faith, when he himself had been ready to extend a helping hand to this alchemist.

Every time he thought about him, he could never understand: any disciple without a clan, of peasant origin, would want to be under the protection of a core disciple, especially one who was the personal disciple of the Sect Leader and the future of the Sect itself. No matter how many times he tried, he couldn't grasp the reason.

"It's nothing, Brother Mo. Everything will be fine." Xia Ji only smiled slightly, and without waiting for Mo Fan's answer, turned and slowly walked toward the stern of the ship.

Just as he was about to object, Mo Fan was stunned. He hadn't expected Xia Ji, without waiting for his decision, without even listening to him, to simply take off and go.

Watching her back with a fallen expression, his eye suddenly twitched. But after a moment, his face softened again, and smiling slightly, he turned and walked straight toward core disciple Lou Emilia's group.

….

With his head lowered, An watched the crowd on the deck, how the core disciples and their associates communicated with each other. At the same time, he noticed the lost faces of the independent disciples who, like him, belonged to no groups.

Some tried to approach the core disciple groups to find out what was happening, but upon approach, each was stopped. No one was allowed close, without exception. Seeing all of this, he only shook his head.

"Hmm?" He felt a gaze on himself and, looking at the source, saw a girl with big green eyes and orange hair with green tips walking toward him through the crowd.

'Oh? What does she suddenly want...' Watching Xia Ji approach closer and closer, he took a deep breath, expecting something that was about to ruin his mood.

'Hm?' But starting to read her Qi, specifically her emotions, he was surprised. Before, when they had crossed paths, her emotions were always in the range between hatred, contempt, and disdain. Every time she saw him, all her negative emotions would spill out. And now, he was picking up embarrassment, shame, confusion. Even deeply hidden panic was carried by her Qi.

Approaching him, Xia Ji, with a slightly confused face, immediately bowed. "I apologize for my past behavior!"

Hearing this, An, without changing his expression, looked at her sideways. Inside, he felt slight shock, he had expected to hear anything from her, but not this.

"Due to my incompetence, immaturity, and envy of your talent, of the fact that you could constantly speak with my teacher, when my brother and I, even though we're official disciples, our master treats us like empty space... And seeing your meetings with him and how you communicated with each other, I was overwhelmed with envy. The only way I found was to release hatred and humiliate others! I'm sorry!" With a heavy voice, on the verge of breaking down, with her head lowered, she continued to apologize.

The disciples standing nearby, seeing this, watched with wide eyes. The entire stern and even part of the deck, hearing her apology, dropped their business and boiling discussions, turning to An and Xia Ji.

Many disciples on the ship knew who Xia Ji was, her character and her actions over the past period, more precisely, over all the time she had spent as an inner disciple. Many hated her for using her status, and that of her clan, to humiliate them simply because their clans didn't carry equal weight. No one likes it when you go from being a bully to being a victim.

There were many disciples on the ship who had been subjected to bullying from her. Seeing her standing before the alchemist, frozen in a bow, could not help but evoke a feeling of satisfaction.

"Heh! Look! The evil Xia is apologizing for once! Haha!"

"Shhh! What if she hears!"

"Oh? Isn't that the disciple who put her and her thugs in their place a few months ago?"

"You mean the incident during her brother's duel with Radiant Shine?"

"Heh, finally someone put her in her place!"

The disciples tried to whisper quietly among themselves, but because of the silence around, all their whispers were clearly audible to both An and Xia Ji.

Sitting on the floor, An looked at her, more precisely, at her Qi flows, and read her emotions from them. He saw that she wasn't lying, and everything she said was sincere, without any hidden intent.

Breaking the awkward silence for her, he only nodded and, almost in a whisper, asked. "Did you want something?"

Realizing that he had essentially ignored her apology, which had been so difficult for her, she began to tremble slightly. But immediately, she pulled herself together, understanding that the person opposite was not obliged to accept her words, even if she desperately wanted him to.

Straightening up, she looked into his empty, emotionless eyes. The fear she had experienced during their last encounter had become the catalyst for rethinking her behavior and even her life.

Looking into his eyes, she expected that primal fear to take hold of her, but the longer she looked into them, the more she realized that, like his eyes, she only felt emptiness, absolutely nothing. This gaze evoked no feelings.

'It's as if he's looking through me. As if he's not looking at a person, but at a little bug sitting on the grass next to him. At the same time, close, and at the same time, as if in different worlds...' Immersed in his gaze, deep down, she felt something like sadness, even disappointment, but she couldn't find the cause of these feelings, no matter how long she looked into his green eyes.

Gathering her thoughts, Xia Ji closed her eyes, breaking this strange connection.

She tried to make a serious, neutral face, trying to copy An sitting opposite her, but her eyes couldn't completely hide her sadness.

"Elder Li Deng spoke about..." Starting to speak almost in a whisper, she relayed everything she had heard from Mo Fan and his friends.

'Oh... So they really are using other disciples as the meat shields...' Having listened to everything she said, he confirmed his theory. But he hadn't expected that the main goal of this event was to escort Mo Fan to the Tomb so that he could obtain the inheritance desired by all Sects, both Righteous and Demonic.

"Are they ready to sacrifice so many people for the slightest chance to obtain this inheritance?" Looking around at the disciples, even though most were not associated with core disciple groups and had eighth-layer Qi Condensation cultivation, that didn't mean they could be used as disposable material.

To reach the eighth layer, an ordinary cultivator with ordinary spiritual root quality needed not only a huge amount of resources but also tremendous luck. Looking at all the disciples, their ages ranged from twenty to sixty in appearance. 'Even though they're not geniuses and the best talents of the Sect, they still have a good chance of reaching the peak state of the Qi Condensation realm...'

"Um, what?" Standing next to him, Xia Ji, hearing An mutter to himself, asked involuntarily.

Coming out of his thoughts, hearing her voice, he raised his gaze to her. "I'm saying, thank you for sharing this information with me."

From what she heard, Xia Ji opened her mouth, about to say something, but seeing how An lowered his head and stopped paying attention to her, she frowned slightly. Turning around, she walked back with big strides toward the deck, to where their group was.

The disciples in her path stepped aside for her, parting in all directions. Even though they had enjoyed the show between her and the strange disciple sitting by the railing, they themselves didn't have the courage and tried in every way not to cross her path, afraid of making a mistake and becoming the next victim of bullying.

'How dare he... No! I'm the one to blame for him treating me this way... I've insulted him many times and tried to humiliate him. I even created problems for him. Why would I think he would treat me normally...' Walking back, Xia Ji was in conflict with herself, her old self and her new self.

Even though she realized that her previous behavior was wrong, even outrageous, and she was trying with all her might to change, from time to time, her old self would emerge, and she was trying with all her might to suppress it.

Turning her head slightly back, she looked at An sitting there, trying to catch his gaze, to see if he would look after her. In doing so, she didn't fully understand the reason herself. 'His gaze. Even though it no longer evokes fear in me like before... It hurts even more when you realize what that gaze actually means.'

'Should I follow them to the central ring? But what's the point of that.' Lowering his head again, An began to think about future plans.

On one hand, he wanted to go with the others all the way to the center and find out what was there, purely out of curiosity, but he understood well that this option was meaningless for him.

His primary task was to try to break through to a new realm, the Foundation Establishment realm. He had no time to waste with a huge chaotic group. 'If I think about it, maybe it's better for me to also move closer to the central ring... But not with them. Alone, it will be safer and faster.'

Inside the Sacred Land, there would be no observers, and he would be able to freely use his flight to the fullest. 'I can finally fly without any restrictions! Haha!' Just the thought of finally being able to freely soar through the sky stirred his blood.

'If I fly as high as possible and activate Qi Silence, I can easily avoid even flying beasts, the main thing is to hide in the clouds. And this way, I can reach the central ring much faster.' He began to work out a rough plan of action.

'Having reached the central ring, I'll need to find some crack or cave in the mountains, if there are any, of course. Find a place where the concentration of Qi is the highest, and start cultivating there...'

Thinking through the plan, he remembered something. 'The only thing that worries me is the beasts. Since this is a demonic path Sacred Land, it's possible I might encounter demonic beasts. I hope they're not too different from ordinary spirit beasts...'

In the book Know Whose Tracks These Are, which he knew inside and out, there was no description of demonic beasts, only general information that they were more aggressive and stronger than spirit beasts. That was where all the information about these mysterious creatures ended.

'Hmm... By the way, I still don't know how big this Sacred Land is.' Straightening up and leaning his back against the railing, An began to watch the others, especially the core disciple groups.