A Heaven-Sent Opportunity

The next day, the sky was clear and blue, without a cloud in sight.

Dongfang Wanyu rose early. Feeling an itch, she scratched lightly twice. To her surprise, those two scratches dislodged the newly formed scabs over her old wounds, revealing tender pink skin beneath.

When she touched the scars again, she no longer felt any pain.

She picked up the medicinal juice left over from what Dongfang Minghui had applied the day before and sniffed it gently. "This medicine really works."

Dongfang Minghui went to the river to fetch some water. By the time she returned, The Female Lead was nowhere to be seen.

She secured the four corners of each of the two beast hides she had tied with grass ropes yesterday to four branches, creating a small sheltered space for the medicinal herbs outside the cave.

Once everything was done, she shouldered her bundle and headed out.

Ever since leaving the estate, Dongfang Minghui had been using her meager Spiritual Power to convey her emotions to the flowers and plants around her. Perhaps because she had been using it so often, she could faintly sense that she was on the verge of breaking through from a level two Spirit User.

This was a good thing!

But she had no intention of telling The Female Lead.

This entire world—no, the setting of this book—was a fantasy world where martial strength reigned supreme. Most people awakened their Spiritual Power. Children like her, who awakened before the age of ten, would normally be valued by their families. Her attribute, however, was rather unusual and considered half-useless in the book.

The Spiritual Power ranks began with Spirit User, followed by Spirit Master, Great Spirit Master, Spirit Warrior, Spirit King, Spirit Lord, Spirit Emperor, Spirit Venerable, Spirit Saint, and finally Spirit Sovereign.

There were ten Spiritual Power attributes: wind, water, fire, earth, wood, metal, ice, lightning, darkness, and Light Type.

When the leading lady had fought in the woods earlier, she had already awakened both Earth Type and Thunder Type attributes. Dongfang Minghui could only pretend she knew nothing about that, or there was a ninety-nine percent chance the leading lady would silence her for good.

Most people who could not awaken their Spiritual Power could pursue alternative professions, such as warrior, apothecary, or alchemist.

Across all three great empires, not a single Spirit Sovereign had emerged.

Dongfang Minghui had little concept of leveling up, and she did not even dare dream of becoming a Spirit Sovereign, the highest rank. She figured she should break through whenever she could and let things take their course. Her key mission was to cling tightly to The Female Lead's leg and keep her own little life intact.

This time, she needed a level three Red Peony Flower Core or the two cores of a Twin Lotus. Though red peonies were ordinary flowers and might be relatively easy to find in town, finding one in the Magical Beast Forest was no small challenge. A Twin Lotus would be even harder to find. Dongfang Minghui doubted there was even a single one in the entire Magical Beast Forest.

Dongfang Minghui asked around as she traveled. With help from the flowers and grasses, she successfully evaded many high-level magical beasts and took numerous winding paths. Finally, under the guidance of a little blade of grass, she spotted a red peony swaying in the wind.

"How beautiful."

There was only a single red peony on this stretch of land. Like a crimson flower growing on a lofty peak, it swayed gracefully. Unfortunately, the heavens showed no mercy. The previously clear sky filled with dark clouds, and a torrential downpour began, fat raindrops falling without warning. With lightning flashing and thunder booming, the entire Magical Beast Forest became terrifying.

The red peony that had been dancing in the sunlight immediately wilted under the wind and rain. Its stem could not bear the weight, and it began to bow and bend.

"Hey, are you all right?" Dongfang Minghui rushed over, pulled her clothes from her bundle, and held them above the red peony to give it a little shelter from the storm.

Fortunately, she had prepared in advance, or she would have been soaked to the bone.

The red peony let out intermittent cries of distress unique to its kind. Dongfang Minghui explained her intentions as well, and the human and plant soon reached an agreement.

"Once your roots take hold in the ground, transplanting you becomes very difficult. Why don't you give me your seeds? Once I've settled down, I'll plant you in my garden. What do you think?"

Only after digging around the red peony's roots did Dongfang Minghui discover the situation underground. Old roots wound around one another in a tangled web. If her Spiritual Power had been a little stronger, she might have been able to free it from them.

Unfortunately, she could barely keep herself safe as things stood.

The red peony nodded and gave Dongfang Minghui both its seeds and flower core.

The torrential rain battered the entire Magical Beast Forest without any sign of stopping. Amid the thunder and lightning, Dongfang Minghui watched a bolt split a towering tree just a meter away from her in half. As one half fell, it knocked down another tree and nearly crushed her to death.

Scared out of her wits, she scrambled from place to place. When she spotted a cave in the distance, she charged toward it without a second thought.

To her, being surrounded by trees meant being struck by lightning. Danger lurked everywhere, and a cave might at least be somewhat safer.

Perhaps because she had rushed so frantically, she had not looked closely at her surroundings at all. Within a hundred li of the cave, there were no animals—not even a single flower or blade of grass.

"This rain is ridiculous." Dongfang Minghui shook out the beast hide draped over her. Despite her early preparations, her clothes were still soaked through.

She surveyed the cave and discovered that it was empty and very clean—so clean that it made her uneasy. Her heart pounded wildly, though she could not tell whether it was because of her eight-hundred-meter sprint or the constant rustling coming from deep inside the cave.

"Uh."

Dongfang Minghui wanted to play dead. The cave clearly looked as though it was tended regularly. Perhaps someone had claimed it already. Could it belong to a high-level magical beast?

Either possibility could cost her her life.

After weighing her options, Dongfang Minghui slowly picked up the beast hide beside her, carefully raised her feet, and tiptoed toward the entrance one step at a time. She had to admit that she had always possessed an unerring instinct for danger.

"Ah—help!"

Just a few steps from the entrance, her feet suddenly stopped obeying her and froze in place. A vine thicker than the tree trunks outside wrapped around her waist and dragged her into the depths of the cave.

As Dongfang Minghui was dragged deeper inside, the terrible fright and repeated collisions made her vision go black, and she fainted.

Since arriving in the Purple Demon Mountains, Dongfang Wanyu had never encountered rain this heavy. Not only had it left her in a wretched state, but when she used her lightning spiritual power to pierce a Level Three Magical Beast during the downpour, lightning struck her, leaving her scorched outside and nearly killing her.

"This rain is practically tailor-made for you. It's a tremendous opportunity sent by the heavens. Take this chance to advance from a level five Thunder Type Spirit User to a Spirit Master," the cool voice in Dongfang Wanyu's mind suggested.

Dongfang Wanyu hesitated for only a moment before sitting cross-legged on the mountain peak, subjecting herself to bolt after bolt from the heavens. Her Spiritual Power began absorbing furiously, drawing in the essence within the lightning.

The whole process was fraught with danger. Fortunately, several of the treasures Dongfang Wanyu carried were still useful. They shielded her from the lightning's attacks, allowing her to gather its essence into her body. As she tempered her body, she also refined the lightning for her own use.

The lightning essence rampaged through Dongfang Wanyu's body, nearly bursting out several times. Her meridians repeatedly expanded to the brink of rupture, but she forcibly suppressed it each time. Again and again, she cleansed her marrow through her meridians and patiently compressed the essence. Only after eighty-one cycles did the lightning essence settle down, its violent elements fully refined.

"Congratulations on completing your secluded cultivation." The cool voice appeared at just the right moment.

The first thing Dongfang Wanyu did upon waking from her meditation was send out a bolt of lightning. In the distance, a tree that towered into the clouds and required five people to encircle it was effortlessly blasted to pieces, leaving an enormous crater in the ground.

"To reach this level as a mere Spirit Master—not bad," the cool voice said in a rare moment of praise.

"How long was I in seclusion?" Dongfang Wanyu looked down at herself in disgust. Her clothes barely covered her; the lightning had blasted them to shreds.

She took another set of clothes from her storage space and hastily put them on.

The magical beast she had slain nearby had long since been reduced to a skeleton by the lightning strikes. Nothing else remained.

"Fifteen days."

The downpour had actually lasted half a month.

"Oh no."

Only then did Dongfang Wanyu remember Dongfang Minghui back in the cave. She had thought she was forgetting something.

When she hurried back to the Cave, she discovered that two hermaphroditic serpent beasts had taken it over. Dongfang Wanyu struck without hesitation, blasting the serpent beasts into several pieces with a bolt of lightning.

The serpent beasts struggled on the ground for a few breaths before dying.

The cave smelled foul, filled with the rank stench of magical beasts. Though its furnishings had not changed, there were now a few things that did not belong there.

The medicinal herbs outside were still growing wildly, but all looked somewhat wilted, probably because no one had tended them.

The shelter Dongfang Minghui had made for them had been blown away by the fierce winds after just a few days. Battered by the downpour, they had nearly died in the storm, so naturally they looked listless.

"It seems you're rather concerned about that ninth sister of yours." The cool voice suddenly spoke again.

Looking at the mess inside the Cave, Dongfang Wanyu felt an urge to destroy it. At the taunt in her mind, she rushed straight outside without even responding.

Searching for someone was hardly practical. The downpour had lasted so long that any traces would have been washed away completely. Besides, she did not even know whether Dongfang Minghui had left on her own or met with an accident.

Dongfang Wanyu searched aimlessly outside for two days, killing any magical beast that blocked her path. Her aura had changed, becoming as sharp as a newly unsheathed sword.

She returned at night. She even cut open the serpent beasts' bellies to see whether she could find any trace of Dongfang Minghui.

"It would be perfectly normal for a weakling like her to be swallowed by a serpent beast. Looking again won't help. After all this time, those two brutes would have digested her already." The cool voice laughed without the slightest sympathy.

Dongfang Wanyu refused to believe that Dongfang Minghui had died just like that. Dongfang Minghui had yet to achieve her purpose in staying by her side. How could she die so easily?