Shang Qingzheng and Tai Pei'er were only a step behind Jiang Yang, emerging from behind the stone stele almost on his heels.
At their questions, Jiang Yang turned and said:
"A... fiend from the Threefold Way. Utterly baffling."
Jiang Yang did not know quite what to call the man. As he spoke, he held out the peach for the two women to see and continued:
"He suddenly appeared, said this belonged to him, and demanded I hand over the Spirit Fruit."
The two women stared, somewhat dazed, at the pink fruit wreathed in vibrant vitality. Shang Qingzheng could not help asking:
"This... smells wonderful. Where did you get it?"
"Just picked it up off the ground."
"Uh..."
Tai Pei'er was momentarily speechless. Jiang Yang made it sound so casual that anyone who did not know better might have thought he had picked a vegetable from a garden.
The three fell into a back-and-forth conversation just like that, while the man opposite them did not dare move. Clutching his Spell Sword, he could neither advance nor retreat.
Looking at his timid, shrinking manner, with none of his earlier arrogance remaining, Jiang Yang only wanted to say:
Fellow Daoist, why were you so haughty before and so deferential now?
The young man holding the Black-Green Mystic Sword was indeed caught between advancing and retreating. He wanted to withdraw but could not bear to, yet he was not mad enough to willingly fight three opponents alone.
Thus, he could only remain at this impasse, watching the three talk back and forth, neither daring to move nor to interrupt.
But he was not entirely idle. While "holding the three in check," he had long since begun frantically calling to his fellow disciples in the distance through voice transmissions.
Seeing his hesitation, Jiang Yang had