Chapter 2048 - 1620: Jin Bao, You Little Coward!

Plus, everything they’d run into after entering Northern Mongolian was all related to that already vanished Ancient Wilderness Times, which made Gu Changsheng even more uneasy deep down...

She kept having this illusion that the one truly scheming against her wasn’t the people of the Sand Sea, but something like a predestination lurking in the dark...

As for why she would have such a feeling, Gu Changsheng herself didn’t know...

A woman’s sixth sense has never had any solid basis, but Gu Changsheng believed in it completely, because she felt her intuition wasn’t just shooting arrows in the dark!

"Let’s go. We’ll go check out that restricted place you mentioned. Who knows, maybe the Divine Weapon Forging Tower is there..."

After pondering for a moment, Gu Changsheng still made her choice.

"But the road to that place is not easy to walk..." Baby Jin Bao piped up immediately, "Whether it’s the main road or the side trail, the way there is all hard going, pretty dangerous..."

"It’s dangerous so we don’t go? What, we came all this way for nothing? Baby Jin Bao, not that I’m picking on you, but you’re at least the Mountain God of this place, how can you be this cowardly?" Gu Changsheng rolled her eyes massively at Baby Jin Bao, face full of disdain. "With how gutless you are, you still dream of Becoming a God? If gods were all as cowardly as you, what would the world come to?"

Gu Changsheng still remembered clearly why Baby Jin Bao had latched onto her—wasn’t it because he wanted to find a chance for Becoming a God from her?

But with this tiny scrap of courage, how the hell are you supposed to become a god?

If Baby Jin Bao could really become a god, that’d practically be an outrage against heaven and reason!

"I’m still just a kid..." Baby Jin Bao muttered, biting his finger, full of resentment. "Kids being a bit cowardly, having smaller guts, that should be okay...right?"

"You’ve even gone and prepared your excuse for yourself!" Gu Changsheng snorted, unable to help a wry laugh. One arm looped around Baby Jin Bao and pulled him into her arms, while the other hand patted the Soul-Devouring Python underneath her, signaling it to move on, and she didn’t forget to say to Baby Jin Bao, "Lead the way!"

Seeing this, Baby Jin Bao couldn’t say anything else. He just twisted his neck, using a pair of pitiful, watery big eyes to look at Gu Changsheng, and stammered, "Are we taking the main road, or the small path?"

"How much time can we save taking the small path?" Gu Changsheng blinked.

"You can save five or six days at least. It’s just...the small path is hard to travel, and dangers are everywhere..." Baby Jin Bao did a bit of mental math, then still spoke up.

"We have to get to the depths of Divine Mount Qilian ahead of Jin Luoyi and his group. Those five or six days are very important to us!" Gu Changsheng thought for a moment, then said with absolute conviction.

She suspected that the three people with veiled hats following beside Jin Luoyi were actually from the Sand Sea!

If so, there was no way she would allow that group to find the location of the Divine Weapon Forging Tower before she did!

The second Cold Iron Key absolutely could not end up in the Sand Sea people’s hands!

Only by holding all three Cold Iron Keys herself could she open Northern Mongolia’s Treasury and find the Key to unlock the Divine Demise Land. And only with the Key that opened the Divine Demise Land in her own hands could Gu Changsheng turn passivity into initiative, and gain at least a sliver of leverage under the relentless scheming of the Sand Sea faction!

So, Gu Changsheng had no choice!

While being completely passive, she could not possibly abandon this one chance to gain some initiative!

"All right then..." Baby Jin Bao’s little face drooped, and he reminded her again with a very unoptimistic look, "But the small path is really super hard to walk, okay? Baby’s afraid you guys will get scared..."

"Ha! What a joke!" Gu Changsheng let out a cold laugh as soon as she heard that.

Damn, this Baby Jin Bao really looked down on them too much!

Stuff that even a cowardly little Baby like Jin Bao isn’t afraid of—how could they be scared?

Isn’t it just a stretch of mountain path? However bad it is, so what?

That was how Gu Changsheng was thinking at the time. But by the second day, Gu Changsheng no longer thought that way at all...

Jin Linchuan had listened to the entire conversation between Gu Changsheng and Baby Jin Bao, and his mouth hadn’t closed once from start to finish...

What exactly had he just heard?

What on earth had he heard?

The rumor that Divine Mount Qilian had a Mountain God watching over it was widespread throughout Smelting City, but what the Youngster Linchuan couldn’t believe was that Baby Jin Bao was actually that Mountain God—and he didn’t look like he was faking it either...

But how could a Mountain God be such a tiny little brat?

And how could he be together with the mercenaries they’d hired, chatting happily and willingly serving as their guide?

This left Jin Linchuan utterly baffled, so baffled he felt like he was floating on clouds...

"Stop thinking about it. You’ll know when we get there..."

Yuan Bao looked at the completely stunned Jin Linchuan and felt deeply sympathetic toward this youngster who had just been bluffed silly by his own lady...

Tsk tsk...

Such a perfectly decent young man, and just like that, he’d been dragged into the mountains by his lady. If they keep traveling together like this, Yuan Bao could guarantee that this decent youngster’s worldview would get flipped upside down sooner or later!

But on this point, Yuan Bao really couldn’t help him at all...

You could only say this youngster’s fate was both good and bad...

His "good" fate was running into his lady and getting to go into the mountains with her. His "bad" fate was also running into his lady, because his lady was the very embodiment of shattering people’s worldviews!

Yuan Bao was genuinely worried about what kind of person this youngster would have turned into by the time he left Divine Mount Qilian.

It was like his lady always had this knack for making people who knew her and spent time with her slowly turn into someone else...

"Remember this: just treat yourself like air. Otherwise, all you’ll get is grief! If you treat yourself like air, my lady absolutely won’t make things hard for you; she’ll even treat you with extra courtesy. But if you’re too curious, too guarded... if you insist on treating us as outsiders, then you can only stay an outsider..." Yuan Bao fixed Jin Linchuan with a gaze and sighed.

He might as well spell it out a bit, so this youngster would stop worrying himself sick over everything!

"My lady and the lord’s identities are not something someone like you could even guess at. Just watch for yourself and you’ll understand. Their status is so high they can’t be bothered to make trouble for a Jin Family youngster like you, because you’re just not worthy yet..." What Yuan Bao said wasn’t pleasant to hear, but it was the truth.

His lady really wouldn’t lower herself to the point of treating a youngster as an enemy, and she disdained doing so.

Even the Jin Family, that noble family beyond Divine Mount Qilian, his lady would absolutely not take them seriously!

To be able to travel with his lady, to be honest, was Jin Linchuan’s honor. If Jin Linchuan had any brains at all, then just this experience of traveling alongside his lady would be enough to raise his standing in the Jin Family by more than just one or two levels. Hopefully he was smart enough not to screw up his lady’s big plans.

"Linchuan has learned his lesson." It had to be said: the cautious temperament Youngster Linchuan had always cultivated made him show sufficient respect to anyone. Hearing Yuan Bao’s words, he showed no displeasure at all; instead his face was all humble acceptance.

Yuan Bao took in Jin Linchuan’s reaction completely. As the Great Eunuch serving Zhou Mu at close range, even if Yuan Bao was a bit of an Er Que, he still had some eye for reading people. Having seen all kinds of debauchery and sycophantic faces, he also understood why his lady and his lord treated Jin Linchuan with special consideration. It had to be that life in the Jin Family had worn him down so much he’d grown into this overly cautious, self-effacing sort of temperament...

Yuan Bao didn’t say much more. He shook his head, stayed by the Witch Gu Horse at Jin Linchuan’s side, and followed behind his lady’s Soul-Devouring Python, slowly advancing along the path Baby Jin Bao had pointed out...

Baby Jin Bao really lived up to being the Local Tycoon of Divine Mount Qilian. He very quickly led Gu Changsheng and the group off the main mountain road and started weaving through the vast forest of towering trees...

The trees were sky-high, blotting out the sun and sky, making it very easy to lose all sense of direction. With the Witch Gu Horse and the Soul-Devouring Python as mounts, and with Zhou Mu, Black Man Duo Shu, and Yuan Bao all being people with decent Kung Fu, their speed on this journey was much faster than ordinary folks!

Because the trees were sky-high and blotted out the sun, as Gu Changsheng’s group threaded their way through the steep mountain ranges, they basically couldn’t see the sun, let alone any sunset...

Finally, after the group had eaten twice to fill their bellies, and Baby Jin Bao had gnawed down two meals of diamond, Baby Jin Bao waved his little claws and called a halt at a mountain hollow!

"This Baby is tired. We’re resting here for the night. We’ll move on when it’s light!" Baby Jin Bao, curled in Gu Changsheng’s arms on the back of the Soul-Devouring Python, announced shamelessly.

He was still a child; he needed sleep.

"Light or not, it doesn’t really affect our sight anyway. There’s no need to waste time resting, is there?" Gu Changsheng said, not quite agreeing.

Gu Changsheng was someone very purposeful in her actions. Since she’d already decided to hurry to the possible location of the Divine Weapon Forging Tower as fast as she could, she didn’t want needless delay.

Besides, with these towering trees blocking out the sky in the mountains, their light was poor whether it was day or night. So whether it was bright or not really didn’t have much impact on their progress!

"Don’t care! This Baby doesn’t care! This Baby just wants to sleep!" Baby Jin Bao immediately started throwing a tantrum at that.

Gu Changsheng had never seen Baby Jin Bao act this willful and unreasonable before.

Honestly, ever since Baby Jin Bao had started following her, aside from pestering her three times a day about Becoming a God, the rest of the time he’d been extremely well-behaved. He’d never rebelled like this...

"Why?" Gu Changsheng stared at Baby Jin Bao for a while in puzzlement before asking in a low voice.

Her instincts told her that something was off with Baby Jin Bao!

"Uh..." Baby Jin Bao’s expression froze for a second, but he still lowered his head and answered honestly, "Once we cross this mountain hollow and keep going forward, we reach the Broken Cliff of Ten Thousand Fathoms. It’s the shortcut we have to take, and it’s also the outer edge of that restriction..."

"Broken Cliff of Ten Thousand Fathoms?" Gu Changsheng’s brows couldn’t help but furrow at his words...