Ning Yu had just lost a battle, all the shop assistants around her were wounded, and they knew nothing about the Xiang Family Pill Shop's methods.
Staying here was no different from waiting to die.
Worse still, even now, she was thinking about those bullshit rules of the jianghu.
With the way these people thought, fleeing early was their best option when faced with someone as ruthless as Xiang Li.
"Run?"
Bai Xuesong stood up, flames of anger burning in his eyes.
"Things have already come to this. Where else can we run? Are we throwing away all our dignity?"
Ji Feng found the Nine Treasures Glazed Tile Sect's thinking incredibly contradictory. "When you fled from Shrek City to this Inkstone Village, you didn't seem to care about dignity. Didn't you just up and run?"
Ning Yu shook her head. "That was different. They were planning to strike at us from the shadows, so we fled to Inkstone Village to guard against it. Now they've come to challenge us openly, with blades and spears in plain sight. We should answer them the same way."
"Why can't you run just because their blades and spears are out in the open? What kind of reasoning is that?" Ji Feng was thoroughly baffled.
Bai Xuesong's face filled with mockery, and he sneered. "Mr. Ji, you don't understand the jianghu."
"Our opponents have raised their banner and come openly to deliver a challenge. You can prepare in advance and fight them. But if they scare us into running, our banner in the jianghu will fall for good. No one will ever respect the Nine Treasures Glazed Tile Sect again!"
Ji Feng swept his gaze over everyone. "Then if you all die here, what good will the Nine Treasures Glazed Tile Sect's reputation do you?"
Bai Xuesong proudly puffed out his chest. "Of course it'll do us good. It proves that our Nine Treasures Glazed Tile Sect has standing in the jianghu. That banner represents the sect's honor!"
Ji Feng said slowly, "If Xiang Li prints your Nine Treasures Glazed Tile Sect's emblem on a condom, puts it on when he fucks a woman at night, thrusts away, and then shoots his load inside, what can you do about it?"
Bai Xuesong roared, "He wouldn't dare!"
"Why wouldn't he? You'll all be dead, nothing but corpses lying on the ground. If he has the Nine Treasures Glazed Tile Sect's emblem, can you stop him from doing whatever he wants with it? Would Heaven Dou City really interfere in Shrek City's affairs?"
The truths of this world were simple, yet some people never understood them.
Bai Xuesong lowered his head and muttered, "These are the rules of the jianghu. Our Nine Treasures Glazed Tile Sect has followed them for decades..."
"Can dead people make him follow the rules?" Ji Feng asked again.
Bai Xuesong refused to accept it, and so did everyone else, but none of them could refute Ji Feng.
The old warehouse keeper drained the entire bottle of fiery liquor in one go and looked at Ning Yu.
Of all these people, he alone had understood Ji Feng's words and grasped the reasoning behind them.
"Shopkeeper, let's go. We'll head to the Rainbow Mountain Soul Zone and hide out for a while."
After hearing the old warehouse keeper's words, Ning Yu nodded slightly. No one else argued anymore.
"What exactly is a soul land?" Ji Feng asked whenever he did not understand something, unafraid of being laughed at.
Ning Yu had grown used to it. She did not know whether Ji Feng genuinely knew nothing or was pretending, but it no longer mattered.
"A soul land is land formed by the gathering of soul power. When we soul masters cultivate, die, or break through, soul power escapes and drifts through the air.
"Some places become gathering points for this soul power. Over time, the accumulated soul power transforms that land into a soul land. Each one is about the size of two or three villages.
"These lands are newly formed, and their resources are extremely abundant."
Newly formed land?
Ji Feng shook his head. He still did not understand. How could something like land be newly formed?
Ning Yu continued explaining, "Soul lands generally appear in random places. Say there was originally a large lake. A year later, that lake suddenly splits into two, with a large stretch of land appearing between them. That's a soul land. It looks as though it's newly formed.
"Most soul lands are flat, but there are exceptions. Some are hills, some are canyons, some are mud pits, and some might be swamps."
Ji Feng forcibly suppressed his shock. Shrek City could grow land on its own?
Ning Yu nodded. "Not just Shrek City. They appear everywhere. After the Sun Moon Empire collided with the Douluo Continent, soul lands began appearing, and they've existed for a long time.
"Only recently, as soul tools developed, did people begin using them to learn about this new phenomenon."
Ji Feng found a sofa and sat down, rubbing his face as he tried to soothe his shaken understanding of the world.
Ning Yu reminded him, "Ji Feng, pack your things first. We should leave."
"There's no rush." Ji Feng shook his head. "You go ahead and take Tang Ya with you. I still have something to deal with."
At one in the morning, Ning Yu left Inkstone Village with all the Nine Treasures Glazed Tile Sect's shop assistants.
By two thirty, Xiang Li charged into Inkstone Village with around a hundred people.
They split into two groups. One group had perfectly normal martial souls-ordinary sabers, swords, and common wild beasts. The others stood behind Xiang Li. Their manifested martial souls all bore the color of fresh blood, but their faces were blank, showing little reaction.
These Monkey-Blood People had released their martial souls, but for now, they were simply walking and doing nothing else.
A servant from the Xiang Family Pill Shop carried a row of syringes, injecting their contents into each Monkey-Blood Person one by one. The injections gave off a strong, sweet scent and appeared to be nourishment for the Monkey-Blood People.
After receiving the injections, all the Monkey-Blood People released their soul rings, visibly taking up battle-ready stances.
A little later, two servants brought over several pots of tea. The tea smelled foul and bloody, completely unlike any other tea.
Xiang Li picked up a palm-sized tea bowl, tipped back his head, and gulped down its contents.
Soon, his face flushed red, intense heat steamed from his entire body, his breathing grew much faster, and fine beads of sweat seeped from his forehead.
Xiang Keshu and a group of soul masters from the Xiang Family Pill Shop were drinking the tea too, gulping it down desperately, as though afraid they would not get enough.
Ji Feng hid inside a single-story house, watching everything clearly through a crack in the window. His spatial perception filled in many of the details, making it little different from being there himself.
Why were they guzzling tea like that? Ji Feng was puzzled.
But his confusion was soon cleared up.
Xiang Li shouted, "Kill!"
The Monkey-Blood People stood blankly, capable only of obeying Xiang Li's commands.
When Xiang Li ordered them to walk, they followed him; when he ordered them to kill, it meant killing anyone they saw.
These Monkey-Blood People could clearly distinguish the scent each person carried, killing only those who smelled of human blood.
If you carried the scent of monkey blood, not only would these Monkey-Blood People spare you, they would also obey your commands.
Ji Feng used his space martial soul to forcibly control the space around him, confining sound waves to the surface of his skin.
This allowed him to move soundlessly.
He slipped out of the room without a sound and hid in the kitchen.
A man pushed open the kitchen door and walked in.
Before you continue