"Are you crazy? Who's your wife?" "Be careful," Tang Ruowei said to her. "On the night you performed in Dingguo's imperial capital, one of you was summoned aboard the Crown Prince of Dingguo's pleasure boat. What happened afterward? Can you tell us?" It seemed the demons had regained their human forms by this point and used magic to dig out a cave like this underground, where they could hide. Soil sifted down from overhead. Outside the cave, someone drew a deep breath and shouted at them, "Come out, demons! We've found you. There's no use hiding!" But just then, the ground suddenly began to tremble. "How can this guy be so useless?" Zuo Yanfei asked in confusion. "I'm going to die." Tang Ruowei asked, "Why did you take part in this kind of activity? If you needed money, I think you could've done just about anything that would've been better than putting yourselves on display." "Absolutely not." "Are you all right?" "This started when I came to Cangzhou. After arriving here, we didn't have any human currency, so we thought of finding a way to earn some money. That's why I started doing Idol activities with my maids." White Fox shook her head. "How could anyone die from being bitten on the shoulder? I don't have poison on my teeth. I suspect those human cultivators chasing us did it. When I jumped out the window, I think I saw someone floating above the pleasure boat." White Fox hesitated for a moment. Behind her, a woman with a fiery-red fox tail quietly urged her, "Your Highness, humans can't be trusted!" Tang Ruowei also heard a cry of surprise from the darkness. "It's a foreign word, from a place farther from my homeland, on an island overseas. It means 'idol,' someone who's admired and adored." White Fox stopped her subordinate. "I told you, I'll only step in during your trials if you run into a situation you absolutely can't handle, such as a Foundation Establishment Stage cultivator." White Fox explained. "You remember the Crown Prince of Dingguo, right?" Tang Ruowei watched Bai Qiuran from behind, her expression complicated. Zuo Yanfei warily raised a short spear and asked, "Who's there?" "What's an Idol?" White Fox waved a hand. "Anyway, our group's reputation kept growing, and later we received an invitation from some important person in Dingguo. So I took the girls to perform in Dingguo's imperial capital. That night, after the show, someone suddenly came to invite me, saying the Crown Prince wanted to speak with me, so I went along." Tang Ruowei answered quietly. "You're not an ordinary demon, are you?" the White Fox who seemed to be their leader asked warily. Perhaps Bai Qiuran's pained groans, rising and falling, had done the trick. A rustling came from the darkness, and then a young woman with black hair, dressed in white and adorned with fur, emerged, followed by several other young women in dresses of different colors. Tang Ruowei grew wary too, while Bai Qiuran remained completely at ease, acting as if he didn't care whether he lived or died. "Anyway, once we got to the pleasure boat, the Crown Prince had everyone else leave, then came at me with open arms," White Fox said. Zuo Yanfei asked, "What did he say?" "He kept calling me 'wife' and 'madam.' I thought, Are you crazy? Is every woman your wife? So I bit him on the shoulder, jumped out the window, and escaped along the canal. I didn't even get to taste the food. Later, after we left the city, a group of human cultivators started chasing us, so we fled all the way here." Tang Ruowei and Zuo Yanfei exchanged a look, at a loss for words. "So you only bit the Crown Prince. You didn't kill him?" "A demon capable of shapeshifting is at least as powerful as a cultivator at our level. And demons are naturally attuned to the spiritual, so there's no telling what innate abilities they might have. Junior Brother Bai, get between Ruowei and me." Bai Qiuran sent her a message through Spiritual Sense. "I'm here to deal with anything you can't handle. Don't worry. Go ahead with your plan; I won't let that guy interfere with your trials." A trace of hesitation crossed White Fox's face, then she said, "All right. I'll tell you." Tang Ruowei and Zuo Yanfei asked, "Hmm?" She cleared her throat, then began recounting the whole story to Tang Ruowei and the other two. Following Zuo Yanfei, they made their way through the cave. It had been dug out with magic and was quite spacious. They walked for several minutes, then a white shadow suddenly flashed ahead. A trace of disgust crossed White Fox's face. "It's not like it's anything important." All the young women were beautiful, and behind them swayed varying numbers of fox tails in different colors. She looked expressionlessly at her shameless master, leaning against Zuo Yanfei, and said calmly, "Sister Yanfei, don't worry. He has Master's Magic Treasure protecting him. He won't die." "We may as well be honest with you. The Emperor of Dingguo sent us to investigate this matter." A dull thud rang out. Tang Ruowei saw Bai Qiuran visibly freeze, then clutch his back and deliberately collapse to the ground in an incredibly theatrical pose. "He said there'd be good wine and food waiting." While Zuo Yanfei wasn't looking, she moved closer to Bai Qiuran and asked quietly, "Master, what are you doing here?" Then she turned toward the people in the darkness and said, "Please put aside your hostility. We're not with the people chasing you. Look at how useless our teammate is. We're only here to ask about the circumstances of the Crown Prince of Dingguo's death. Could you come out and talk to us?" "Ohhh!" "This..." "All right." "Okay, Sister Zuo." Following the path through the earthen tunnel, Tang Ruowei led Bai Qiuran and Zuo Yanfei into a spacious cave. "Why should we tell you?" "Junior Brother Bai!" Zuo Yanfei set Bai Qiuran on the ground and stood up. "There's a group of cultivators outside, probably from the same sect, hunting you down. They want your cores to make pills. If you're innocent, we can help you. We can help each other: you help us catch the real culprit, and we'll help you escape them." Zuo Yanfei drew her two short spears but didn't join them together. Bai Qiuran shamelessly squeezed in between his junior and his disciple, letting them protect him without a trace of embarrassment. Suddenly, thanks to her affinity with the earth around her, Tang Ruowei sensed something approaching from behind. She turned sideways just in time. A gust of wind rushed past as a snow-white fox tail shot out of the darkness at incredible speed, carrying a demonic gale. It grazed her face and slammed hard into Bai Qiuran's back. No one answered her from the darkness, but the swishing sounds in the black space around them grew faster and faster. Zuo Yanfei immediately crouched down in concern and took Bai Qiuran by the arm. The white-haired young man shamelessly rolled around on the ground like X-Mal. Zuo Yanfei lowered her head in thought, glancing at Tang Ruowei from time to time. Neither of them was about to believe White Fox's side of the story without question, but what she'd said did match what they'd found out. "Why did you go?" White Fox looked a little embarrassed. Bai Qiuran's cries suddenly cut off the fox woman. He sucked in a pained breath and groaned, "My shoulder! It's broken! Master's Magic Treasure is broken too..." "I figured, why not go? It'd be a waste not to eat the food." "Ohhh." "Cough, well, personal preference." "Your Highness!" The woman dressed entirely in white came before Tang Ruowei and the others. The remaining foxes surrounded them, then she asked, "Humans, what do you want to discuss?"
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