After leaving the courtyard, Yuan Jiang and I finally let out long sighs of relief.
Yuan Jiang was indignant. "What a fucking embarrassment. This is the first time I've ever been told to get lost in the Void Realm, and by a woman no less."
I gave a bitter smile. "You should be glad she only had those paper effigies deal with us. Can you be sure there weren't hunters lying in ambush in that courtyard?"
He froze for a moment, then sighed. "Yeah. If there had been hunters, we probably would've been shot full of holes."
As he spoke, he patted my shoulder. "Good thing you made the call right away. Otherwise, we might've ended up dead in that courtyard."
"Let's not talk about that," I said. "What do we do next?"
"What else can we do? Keep going. We just need to avoid this damn place and that crazy woman for now," he said.
I said nothing. I was considering something. The woman had forced us to leave Terrifying Ridge. What would happen if we refused? And if she didn't want us uncovering some secret, she could have simply sent the hunters after us and killed us outright. Then she wouldn't have had anything to worry about.
Yet she had only told us to leave. That meant she didn't actually want to kill us.
"You're not seriously going down the mountain just because she told you to, are you? She scared you once and now you're chickening out?" Yuan Jiang hurriedly tried to provoke me, as though afraid I really would leave.
I rolled my eyes. "Do I look like someone who scares easily? But she already said it herself. If we don't go down the mountain and run into the hunters again, we might be hunted down