Moon-Melting Night

While Chu Xiaotian and Xia Xue were carefully tending to the little cub, the Huang Family in Yufeng Prefecture was steeped in gloom, everyone hanging their heads in dejection. After Chu Xiaotian left, they searched for another whole afternoon, but in the end, they found nothing. By then, only a fool would have failed to realize that the person had probably left with the cub long ago. Who that person was, though, remained a mystery. They hadn't even seen what he looked like. It had to be said: this was a colossal failure.

At this point, no matter how unwilling they were to accept it, they could only head home and stop dwelling on this result, which had left them so frustrated they could spit blood. But worse was yet to come. When they passed through that patch of woods, many Huang Family disciples were bitten by poisonous creatures hidden in the grass. Thirty Tongmai Realm disciples and five Pi-Hai Realm disciples died on the spot. More than twenty other Tongmai Realm disciples had their hands and feet chopped off. They survived, but were left crippled.

The losses were immense, and the Poxue Realm expert from the Huang Family was so furious he nearly spat blood. Everyone knew the girl had done it to get revenge for his and the Jiang Family elder's sneak attack. But they hadn't even so much as touched a hair on her head, while their own side had suffered devastating losses. He couldn't accept this outcome. If he ran into that girl now, he'd probably fight her to the death without a second thought. The problem was, where could he find her? He didn't even know when she had left.

They had gone to great lengths and poured the strength of their entire family into this. Not only had they failed to secure the Spirit Beast cub that should have been theirs, they had also lost several Huayuan Realm experts and dozens of disciples at lower cultivation levels. The loss was unbearably bitter, a pain that cut to the bone.

For a small family like theirs, Huayuan Realm experts were already at the peak of their strength. Losing even one was hard to bear, and they had lost several at once, along with dozens of disciples at lower levels. The Huang Family felt utterly helpless, as if the sky above them were about to darken. They no longer even had the will to investigate the deaths of Huang Nian and Huang Xiang. After so many people had passed through Greenwood Town, even if there had been a killer, they had likely fled long ago. They could only swallow this bitter pill in silence.

After returning in defeat, the Huang Family kept an extremely low profile. Their disciples hardly went out at all, focusing on recuperating and rebuilding their strength as quickly as possible.

The Huang Family had suffered a heavy blow, but the Jiang Family, their old enemy, didn't take advantage of the opportunity to strike as they had in the past. They, too, became extremely low-key. This wasn't because their cooperation during the Spirit Beast dispute had improved relations between the two families. The reason was that the Jiang Family was in no better shape. Their losses were almost as bad as the Huang Family's, and if one didn't count Huayuan Realm experts, they were even worse off. In the dead of night, a rain of snakes had fallen over their family grounds. At least a thousand venomous snakes had dropped from the sky, and many sleeping family members had died in their jaws before they even understood what was happening.

Fifty Tongmai Realm disciples had died, and thirty had been crippled. None of their Pi-Hai Realm disciples had died, but ten had been left crippled. Even one of their Huayuan Realm experts had been bitten by a venomous snake. He had survived, but lost a hand. Ordinarily, someone at that level shouldn't have been harmed by an ordinary venomous snake. But this Huayuan Realm expert had been caught at a particularly critical moment, and so he had fallen victim to the attack.

The two experts from the Huang and Jiang Families were filled with regret, even as they seethed with hatred for the girl. If they'd known she would be so difficult to deal with, they never should have provoked her. Or they should have risked injury back then and killed her. Though they wanted nothing more than to rip the girl apart, neither the Huang Family nor the Jiang Family sent anyone to look for her. They acted as though nothing had happened.

It wasn't that they didn't want to look for her. They knew it would be useless. She had a pair of wings that could fly, and even the two strongest men among them had been unable to do anything to her. What could anyone else hope to accomplish? There was another reason, too: those wings. In ordinary small sects and families, their disciples couldn't possibly possess a weapon of that level. The girl's identity might be far from ordinary. If they pushed her too hard and provoked the power backing her, the consequences wouldn't be limited to a few dozen deaths. Their entire family might be wiped from the map.

Yufeng Prefecture entered an unprecedented period of peace. The once-bustling Greenwood Town, too, gradually returned to its former quiet now that the Spirit Beast incident had passed.

Life was even more peaceful in the mountain valley where Chu Xiaotian and Xia Xue lived. Chu Xiaotian practiced drawing talismans and wielding the Soaring Dragon Spear during the day, then cultivated the Heavenly Corpse Art at night. As for Xia Xue, besides her usual cultivation and alchemy, she had another task: looking after Xiao Zi. Fortunately, the little thing was much easier to care for than a child. It did nothing but eat and sleep. Once fed some medicinal-herb juice, it could sleep for over ten hours. It didn't cry or fuss, only occasionally playing with Xia Xue and acting spoiled.

The medicinal-herb juice worked remarkably well. Every time Xiao Zi woke up, it had grown noticeably bigger. In just five days, Xiao Zi had grown to over two feet long. When it stood up, it was taller than Xia Xue's knee. Its growth was astonishingly fast. Now its purple fur gleamed, and it looked mighty and imposing, with a truly noble bearing. Its strength in particular had improved: it had officially entered the ranks of first-tier Spirit Beasts.

Setting weapons aside, beasts were considerably stronger than humans. A first-tier monster or Spirit Beast was already equivalent to a Tongmai Realm cultivator. With the fireballs Xiao Zi could spit from its mouth, no Tongmai Realm cultivator was a match for it anymore. Even a Pi-Hai Realm cultivator could be injured if they weren't careful.

Chu Xiaotian didn't know whether other people's Spirit Beasts grew in strength this quickly. But this little fellow was just too fast—even he was a little jealous. Of course, it also consumed medicinal herbs at an incredible rate. In just five days, it had used up all the herbs that would normally have lasted Xia Xue ten or twenty days. Since Xiao Zi couldn't appear in front of other people and Xia Xue had to look after it, Chu Xiaotian was the one who had to buy the herbs.

Though he couldn't stand the shopkeeper of the Hundred Herb Pavilion, Chu Xiaotian still had to go there. After all, he needed to buy the two medicinal herbs required to make his talisman paper. Fortunately, ever since Chu Xiaotian's imposing presence had scared the man last time, he had behaved himself. He didn't dare play any tricks in front of Chu Xiaotian, who bought everything he needed and returned to his secluded cultivation.

Ten days passed in a flash. That night, Chu Xiaotian sat cross-legged beside the pool, cultivating the Heavenly Corpse Art. Inside his dantian, a mass of purple corpse qi, a full two feet wide, churned without pause. After all these days of dedicated cultivation, his Heavenly Corpse Art had reached the threshold of a breakthrough. He estimated he would advance to the Green Corpse realm tonight. What was more, the heavens seemed to be helping him: the chill yin energy between heaven and earth was far denser than before.

Vast amounts of chill yin energy flowed continuously through his meridians and into his dantian. The mass of purple corpse qi roiled without end, its color slowly changing as the chill energy poured in.

What Chu Xiaotian didn't see was that high in the sky, the three moons, which had previously formed a triangle, were slowly drawing together. Their clear radiance spilled down in waves, brightening the entire world. The chill yin energy between heaven and earth multiplied as the three moons converged, growing so dense it was almost visible to the naked eye. It wasn't only the chill yin energy that was thickening. The other spiritual energies of heaven and earth were also growing denser and purer, though the chill yin energy was increasing far more than the rest.

Across the mountains and hills, countless ordinary wild beasts were quietly changing in their sleep. Their bodies were being reshaped by the dense spiritual energy of heaven and earth; their fur grew glossier and thicker, and their bodies slowly grew larger. By the time they woke, they would have become genuine monsters. Those that were already monsters rushed from their lairs and climbed to the highest peaks, raising their heads to devour the endless clear radiance in the sky. Some of the more powerful ones even soared into the air and hovered high above, drawing the spiritual energy around them into their bodies.

Besides the wild beasts and monsters, all kinds of strange creatures, never heard of before, emerged from their hidden corners and came outside their dens, striving to absorb the incredibly dense spiritual energy of heaven and earth. Human cultivators, too, streamed out of their homes, claimed the most favorable locations, and devoted themselves to cultivation.

In short, this night was a special one that filled all creation with excitement. Many who had been stuck at the same level for a long time might seize this opportunity to break straight through to the next realm. There were also many who had been called useless because they couldn't cultivate, yet after this night, they would suddenly become cultivation geniuses of extraordinary talent. And countless other things that had once seemed impossible would undergo fundamental changes after this night.

On the Lianyue Continent, this night was called Moon-Melting Night, and also Night of Miracles. It was the night when the three moons in the sky merged into one, causing the spiritual energy throughout the world to surge and miracles to occur one after another. Moon-Melting Night came once every year, always at the end of summer. After it passed, the entire Moon-Refining Continent began to enter autumn.

The changes brought by Moon-Melting Night were a great blessing to other people, but for Chu Xiaotian, they couldn't really be called a good thing. It had to be said, the dense chill energy at first had made him extremely happy. But the denser it grew, the more uneasy he felt. The massive influx of chill energy had greatly strengthened the corpse poison within him, and it was already showing signs of slipping out of his control.

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