Chapter 109 - The Secret Realm (1)

The mountain forest on a snowy night was an endless stretch of black. The only thing Xu Yuan could feel was the chill of snowflakes brushing his cheeks like drifting willow catkins.

He circulated his cultivation art to ward off the cold. Threads of blood-red light quietly surfaced in his eyes, and the forest hidden in darkness around him became clear.

As Xu Yuan and Ran Qingmo hurried along, the freezing wind howled past his ears. In his field of vision was the woman in black’s graceful figure, moving through the dark woods as if she were taking a leisurely stroll. She was deliberately keeping her speed at a pace he could follow.

Compared with Ran Qingmo’s ethereal, fairy-like movement, Xu Yuan’s own method of travel had nothing Immortal about it. He looked more like those ninjas from his previous life, arms thrown back, sprinting through the forest.

About an hour later, the woods vanished, and a frozen river appeared before them. Ran Qingmo landed beside the river valley.

Xu Yuan stopped several meters behind her and instinctively glanced back.

Tian Yan was still there, following about three meters behind him. Her golden eyes were especially striking in the dark, snowy night. She was just a little short.

Xu Yuan’s blood-lit gaze flicked downward.

She was still barefoot. Her slightly oversized palace dress dragged across the snow as she walked, leaving ripples in the white surface behind her. Barefoot on a freezing snowy night, and she did not even seem to mind the cold. With a high enough cultivation, you really could do whatever you wanted.

Ran Qingmo continued leading the way. Xu Yuan withdrew his gaze. The silent atmosphere lasted for roughly another fifteen minutes before someone among the three finally spoke.

It was not Xu Yuan. It was Ran Qingmo, walking at the front. Her voice was very soft. “Tian Yan, why... did you come?”

As she spoke, she stopped and looked back quietly at the little girl at the rear of the group.

In the darkness, the wind and snow were fierce, yet at this moment, her voice sounded very still.

Xu Yuan also stopped. He figured that Ran Qingmo and Tian Yan should count as old acquaintances. No matter what, they could not possibly go the whole way without saying a single word to each other.

Tian Yan did react to Ran Qingmo’s words. Those golden eyes, especially eye-catching in the night, calmly glanced at Ran Qingmo. Then she looked away and continued staring at Xu Yuan.

Great. Here came a loli who talked even less than Ran Qingmo.

From now on, he would call her Little Ice Chunk. Of course, if a fight broke out, Xu Yuan still hoped she would become Dead Ice Chunk instead.

Ran Qingmo’s clear, quiet eyes flickered slightly. She glanced sideways at Xu Yuan and very considerately sent him a voice transmission. “Xu Yuan, why is she here?”

Xu Yuan sighed and shrugged. “No idea. Old Luo said it’s because I escaped her divination, so she came looking for me. She’s probably been following us for a while already.”

After a pause, he added a reminder. “Also, there’s no need to use voice transmission. Tian Yan can hear it anyway.”

Ran Qingmo looked at Tian Yan again.

Tian Yan also looked at Ran Qingmo.

Ran Qingmo withdrew her gaze first. After pondering for a moment, she asked in a low voice, “Will it be dangerous if she follows us?”

Xu Yuan shrugged. “No idea. Most likely, yes. I ruined the future she foresaw, and she went through all that trouble to find me. I doubt she came all this way just to take one look at my face.”

The Great Flame Empire was vast. In a world this huge, finding one specific person was no easy task.

Hearing this, Ran Qingmo drew her sword and held it in her hand. She stared at Tian Yan as waves of source qi began to ripple from her body.

“I’ll hold her off. You follow Mr. Luo and run?”

This time, Ran Qingmo did not use voice transmission. She was openly plotting right in front of the target.

Xu Yuan immediately glanced at Tian Yan. The little girl still showed no reaction at all, quietly playing the part of an indifferent bystander. He shook his head.

“Old Luo said she might be second rank.”

“I still might be able to escape,” Ran Qingmo said softly.

Xu Yuan raised an eyebrow, slightly surprised. There was a huge gap between second rank and third rank. Plenty of geniuses got stuck there for their entire lives, so the difference in combat power was bound to be massive too.

Back then, above the Xu residence in Stillwater, when that mysterious second rank expert attacked, Zhou Chen and Si Ziyu had their qi pierced through almost instantly.

Still, Xu Yuan did believe Ran Qingmo could escape from a second rank cultivator. Old Luo and Xu Changge both rated her very highly. Roughly speaking, she belonged to that rare batch of people who could be considered invincible within the same rank.

Invincible within the same rank did not mean she could fight above her level as easily as she had when her cultivation was lower. But escaping should still be within her ability.

The problem was Tian Yan. Even if she was only second rank, there was no way she was an ordinary second rank. The legacy cultivation method of the Pavilion Master of the Heavenwatch Pavilion was no joke.

Thinking this, Xu Yuan glanced at her and continued, “She might be second rank. She might also be first rank.”

Ran Qingmo fell silent. After a long pause, she suddenly asked, “Um... Xu Yuan, is your brother still nearby?”

Xu Yuan rolled his eyes, then turned straight toward Tian Yan and asked, “Hey, Tian Yan. Is Xu Changge here?”

Tian Yan quietly stared at him.

“Heh. Looks like he isn’t.” Xu Yuan smiled, then turned back to Ran Qingmo and asked, “After you saved her back then, was she always this quiet too?”

Ran Qingmo thought back for a moment, then nodded. “Mhm. More or less.”

Xu Yuan gave her a strange look and asked, “Ran Qingmo, you met a little girl with this kind of personality in a dangerous place like Nine Abyss Gorge, and you still dared to take her with you? Didn’t you think that was weird?”

Ran Qingmo was silent for a moment. Then she tilted her head and asked, “Mhm... what was weird about it?”

Xu Yuan fell silent. He looked at Ran Qingmo, then at Tian Yan. Different faces, same expression. Same world, different you. He suddenly felt a little curious about what it had looked like when Ran Qingmo traveled through Nine Abyss Gorge with Tian Yan back then. One big iceberg and one little ice chunk. The two of them probably could not squeeze out a single sentence between them in half a day.

Xu Yuan gathered his thoughts and said, “Mhm. You’re right. Nothing weird about it at all. By the way, how much longer until we reach the entrance to the secret realm?”

Ran Qingmo hesitated slightly when she heard that. “You want to bring her with us?”

“If we could beat her, of course I wouldn’t.”

“We’re already here.” As she spoke, Ran Qingmo raised a hand and pointed ahead.

Xu Yuan followed the direction of her slender, jade-like finger, but the snowy night in the mountains was simply too dark. Even with source qi flowing into his eyes, with his current cultivation, he could only see about a hundred meters around him.

After walking a little farther, Xu Yuan paused.

In the darkness, heavy snow continued falling tirelessly from the sky like goose feathers. This was a lake beneath a waterfall, surrounded by withered trees. The waterfall had run dry, and the lake, roughly 200 feet across, was frozen solid.

At the very center of the frozen lake 100 meters away, a 20-foot long tiger with fleshy wings on its back lay quietly on the ice. Even though the three of them had already approached within a hundred meters, this Qiongqi-like beast showed no sign of moving at all.

Only after walking a little closer did Xu Yuan understand why. The reason it was so quiet was probably because its head had already been pierced through by an icicle. Spiderweb cracks spread across the thick ice beneath its body.

Xu Yuan also managed to identify the big cat from its features. A cloudwing tiger. It looked terrifying, but in truth it was mostly for show. Its strength was far inferior to the white fierce bird from before.

Of course, saying the cloudwing tiger was not strong was from a cultivator’s point of view. For ordinary mountain villagers, this thing was a true mountain lord that treated humans as blood food. No wonder all the villages in the Goddess Mountains had been abandoned.