The Joke Went Too Far

By the time Lin Yi returned to the brown bear's cave, the sun had already climbed overhead.

With swift, practiced movements, he bound the three corpses—the brown bear, the spider, and the earth boar—into a bundle with vines. In his other hand, he carried the fruit tree, roots and clumps of soil still attached. Its branches were bare after all the fruit had been picked, but its root system was fairly intact. Fairly intact, at least. He had ripped it out by force, so he could not demand too much.

"Off we go."

Carrying the tree, Lin Yi set off on the road back to the Bluestone Tribe.

He did not dare let his guard down on the way back. His Spirit Eyes remained active at low power the entire time.

A faint platinum glow flickered deep within his pupils as his spiritual-energy vision swept over the shrubbery on either side and the shadows among the trees, making sure no savage beasts were lying in wait nearby.

He walked like that all the way until the familiar outline of the tribe slowly emerged beyond the distant treeline—the wooden palisade, the Eye of Zheng atop its tall post. Everything was safe and sound.

Only then did Lin Yi finally set his mind at ease.

Then a mischievous thought surfaced.

"Hehe..."

He slowed his pace, running through the whole script in his head at breakneck speed.

The old village chief had always treated him with wholehearted sincerity. From cultivation techniques to sacrificial offerings, he had never hidden a thing. The man was clearly born to worry. Every time he saw Lin Yi, his face practically said, "Kid, don't get yourself killed."

So what if... he saw Lin Yi crawling back covered in blood?

The more Lin Yi thought about it, the more amusing it seemed. He activated the Breath-Concealing Art, suppressing his blood-qi fluctuations layer by layer, reining them in from the Mountain-Sinking Realm all the way down to the faint level of the First Cry Realm.

Then he wiped a handful of half-dried dark red blood from the prey dragging behind him and casually smeared it across his chest, shoulders, and forearms. He even rubbed some along the edge of his collar to make it look soaked through.

Finally, he mussed up his hair, took a deep breath, and forced out a weak, feeble air.

"Not bad, not bad."

Lin Yi looked himself over and nodded in satisfaction. He looked exactly like someone who had barely snatched his life back from the jaws of a savage beast, covered in wounds and desperately dragging himself home. Realism was the name of the game.

He bent down and gripped the vine dragging his prey again, staggered beneath his feet, and headed toward the tribe gate.

Then he heard a commotion at the tribe entrance.

Still twenty or thirty zhang away, he saw the village chief standing at the front of a crowd, with more than a dozen members of the hunting team behind him.

Biao was absent, still recovering from his injuries, but Mang and the other team members were all there. Something felt wrong. The village chief had his back to Lin Yi, and his deep voice drifted over in broken fragments.

"Whether he is alive or dead, we have to go look for him."

Lin Yi froze.

Before he could react, Mang's old hunter's eyes spotted him first.

Mang abruptly raised an arm and pointed, his rough voice exploding like thunder. "He's back! The Lin kid is back!"

Everyone whipped around.

Lin Yi, covered in blood and dragging three enormous savage beast corpses, was staggering weakly toward them.

The sight was too shocking. The village chief's expression changed first. He strode forward in great strides, and the rest of the hunting team followed close behind, swarming over like a hive.

"Lin kid!"

"Lin Yi!"

"You brat, you're alive!"

People crowded around him from all directions, talking over one another. Before Lin Yi could find an opening to speak, the village chief had already rushed up before him.

The old man's rough hands, weathered by years of managing the tribe, grabbed Lin Yi's arm. His eyes swept from the glaring bloodstains on Lin Yi's chest all the way down to the beast corpses at his feet.

"You little bastard, what happened?" The village chief's fingers had begun to tremble. "So much blood—"

Lin Yi gritted his teeth to suppress the upward twitch at the corner of his mouth. Cooperatively, he bent over slightly and deliberately lowered his voice.

"I ran into... a very terrifying savage beast. I only made it back after suffering grave injuries."

"Where are you hurt? Let me see." The village chief grabbed his wrist and moved to roll up his sleeve.

"My chest, my back, both..."

"Quick! Get him back into the tribe!" The village chief turned and roared at the others, his voice two pitches higher than usual. "Mang! Carry him inside!"

Before Lin Yi could even wave his hand and say it was unnecessary, Mang had scooped him up in one motion.

With the blood qi of the Tidal Surge Realm erupting at full force, Mang carried a person as easily as carrying a rabbit, charging into the tribe at breakneck speed.

Several members of the hunting team behind them hurriedly took over the prey Lin Yi had been dragging.

Wind howled past Lin Yi's ears. Within a few breaths, Mang had carried him straight into the village chief's stone house and dropped him onto the stone bed with a smack.

The village chief rushed in right after him, panting heavily and carrying a large bundle of medicinal herbs along with several clean bandages.

Without a word, the old man crouched by the bed and reached out to tear open Lin Yi's clothes to inspect his wounds.

"Don't—"

Lin Yi finally could not hold it in any longer. He quickly rolled upright from the stone bed and shouted in rapid succession, "I was pretending! I was pretending! I'm not hurt!"

Everyone froze.

Lin Yi hurriedly released the Breath-Concealing Art. The dense, vigorous blood-qi aura of the Mountain-Sinking Realm burst from his body in an instant, shattering the weakness he had deliberately maintained. It was as though that wave of blood qi had swept through the very air of the stone house.

The glaring bloodstains on his chest were real, but the skin beneath was perfectly unscathed—not even a scratch marked it.

The room fell silent for roughly two breaths.

Then the village chief was the first to react.

Smack.

A rough palm gave the back of Lin Yi's head a neither light nor heavy slap.

"You little bastard!"

The village chief's voice squeezed out through clenched teeth, full of anger, but the hand that had slapped the back of Lin Yi's head came down onto his shoulder and gave it a heavy squeeze.

The old man stood there for several breaths, his chest rising and falling a few times. At last, he let out a long breath, and his entire body seemed to relax like a tightly drawn bowstring finally released.

"Whew... it's good that you're all right."

The other hunting team members gradually understood as well. Mang scratched the back of his head and grinned, while several team members beside him began grumbling and complaining.

"Lin kid, you scared us to death."

"I really thought something had happened to you."

"That blood all over you looked way too real!"

Lin Yi looked around at the people before him. The village chief's white temple hair was stuck to his forehead with sweat. Mang's breathing had not yet fully settled. The other team members looked annoyed, but relieved as well, and no one truly blamed him.

The lingering fear still hung between everyone's brows and eyes, impossible to suppress.

Something suddenly pricked at a place deep in Lin Yi's heart, and the cheeky grin at the corner of his lips slowly faded.

"I'm sorry, everyone." Lin Yi jumped down from the stone bed, stood straight, and spoke with complete seriousness. "I shouldn't have made that kind of joke."

The village chief waved a hand and did not pursue the matter.

Lin Yi took a breath, then grinned again. "I brought everyone some gifts. The brown bear, the spider, and that boar-like savage beast I dragged back—let's divide them up. We'll have an extra feast tonight."

Everyone instinctively tried to refuse. Mang was the first to speak. "You risked your life for these. How could we possibly—"

"I brought back several of them." Lin Yi cut him off, his tone especially open and frank. "We are family. There is no need to stand on ceremony with family."

The words "we are family" stopped everyone in their tracks.

Mang opened his mouth, but did not refuse again. He nodded hard. The others also agreed one after another, and the atmosphere relaxed once more.

Lin Yi lifted his chin toward Mang. "Brother Mang, please help divide them among everyone. I have something else to ask the village chief."

Mang gave a cheerful wave of his hand and led everyone out of the stone house to deal with the prey outside. The sounds of footsteps and chatter gradually faded away, leaving only Lin Yi and the village chief inside the quiet stone house.

Lin Yi took out nine bright red fruits, spread them across his palm, and handed them to the village chief.

"Village chief, do you know what kind of fruit this is?"

The village chief took one and examined it for a moment. A trace of surprise flashed through his clouded old eyes. "...Blood Essence Fruit. Where did you get this?"

"It grew on the tree I carried back."

"What a pity." The village chief held the fruit up to the light at the window and turned it around, then shook his head. "It has not fully ripened yet.

"But if it had ripened completely, the savage beasts guarding it would have swallowed it on the spot. You would never have had a chance to pick it. These few of yours are only seventy or eighty percent mature, so their medicinal effect is probably only around seventy percent of that of normal Blood Essence Fruit."

"Blood Essence Fruit... what does eating it do?"

"It increases blood qi." The village chief handed the fruit back to him, then added with a serious expression, "It is very effective for those in the Blood-Qi Realm."