Fortune

The next day, the sky stretched clear for ten thousand miles, a vast blue expanse without a cloud.

Dongfang Wanyu rose early. Feeling a slight itch on her body, she gently scratched twice. To her surprise, those two scratches were enough to dislodge the newly formed scabs over her old wounds, revealing tender pink flesh.

When she touched the scars again, she felt no pain at all.

She picked up the medicinal juice left over from what Dongfang Minghui had applied yesterday and sniffed it gently. "This medicine is quite effective."

Dongfang Minghui went to fetch some water from the river. By the time she returned, the heroine was nowhere to be seen.

Using four tree branches for each hide, she secured the four corners of the two beast hides she had tied with grass ropes yesterday, creating a little sheltered haven for the 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 feeble spiritual power to convey her emotions to the surrounding flowers and plants. Perhaps because she used it so frequently, she had begun to sense faint signs of a breakthrough from a second-level Spirit Practitioner.

This was a good thing!

But she had no intention of telling the heroine.

This entire world-no, the setting of this book-revolved around fantasy cultivation, where martial strength reigned supreme. Most people awakened their spiritual power. Children like her, who awakened before the age of ten, would generally be valued by their Lineage. Her attribute, however, was somewhat unusual and was considered half-useless in the book.

The ranks of spiritual power progressed from Spirit Practitioner to 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 attributes: wind, water, fire, earth, wood, metal, ice, lightning, darkness, and the Light Element.

When the heroine had acted in the woods earlier, she had already awakened both earth and Thunder Element attributes. Dongfang Minghui could only pretend she knew nothing about it, or there was a ninety-nine percent chance the heroine would kill her to silence her.

Most people who could not awaken spiritual power could pursue alternative professions, such as warrior, apothecary, or pill refiner.

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

Dongfang Minghui had little understanding of leveling up, and she did not even dare dream of reaching the highest rank, Spirit Sovereign. She figured she could make a breakthrough whenever she was able and let nature take its course. Clinging tightly to the heroine's leg and preserving her own little life was her most important mission.

This time, she needed the heart of a third-level red peony, or both lotus hearts from a twin lotus. Although red peonies were ordinary flowers and might be relatively easy to find in town, finding one in this magic beast forest was no small challenge. A twin lotus would be even harder to find. Dongfang Minghui suspected there might not be a single one in the entire forest.

Dongfang Minghui asked her way along. With the help of the flowers and plants, she successfully evaded pursuit by many high-level magic beasts and took numerous winding trails. Finally, guided by a little blade of grass, she spotted a red peony swaying in the wind.

"So beautiful."

There was only a single red peony on this patch of land. Like a crimson blossom growing atop a lofty ridge, it swayed with graceful poise. Unfortunately, heaven showed no mercy. The formerly clear sky filled with dark clouds, and rain came pouring down in torrents, bean-sized drops falling without warning. With lightning flashing and thunder rumbling, the entire magic beast forest looked utterly terrifying.

The red peony that had been dancing in the sunshine was battered by wind and rain, instantly wilting like an eggplant struck by frost. Its stem could not bear the weight and began to droop 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 offer it a little shelter from the wind and rain.

Fortunately, she had prepared ahead of time. Otherwise, she would certainly have been drenched like a chicken fallen into soup.

The red peony let out intermittent cries of distress unique to its kind, and Dongfang Minghui conveyed her intentions as well. In no time, the person and the plant reached an agreement.

"Once your roots take hold in the ground, transplanting you becomes difficult. Why don't you give me your seeds? Once I settle 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. Remnants of roots coiled together in a tangled web. If her spiritual power were a little stronger, she might have been able to free it from them.

Unfortunately, she could barely protect herself as things stood.

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

The torrential rain scoured the entire magic beast forest, showing no sign of stopping. Amid the lightning and thunder, Dongfang Minghui watched a towering tree just a meter away split in two under a lightning strike. As one half fell, it knocked down another tree and nearly crushed her to death.

Scared nearly out of her wits, she darted here and there for shelter. Spotting 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 a little safer.

Perhaps because she had rushed so desperately, she had not examined her surroundings at all. For a hundred li around the cave, there were no animals-not even a single flower or blade of grass.

"This rain is far too heavy." 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 found it empty and very clean-so clean that her heart began to pound with alarm. It thudded wildly in her chest, though she could not tell whether that was because of her eight-hundred-meter sprint or the constant rustling coming from deep within the cave.

"Uh."

Dongfang Minghui wanted to play dead. The cave clearly looked as though it was regularly tended. Perhaps someone had claimed it-or perhaps a high-level magic beast?

Either possibility could cost her life.

After weighing her options, Dongfang Minghui immediately picked up the beast hide beside her, slowly raised her feet, and tiptoed toward the cave entrance one step at a time. It had to be said that she had always possessed an uncannily accurate instinct for danger.

"Ah-help!"

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

As she was hauled deeper inside, the terrible fright and repeated collisions made Dongfang Minghui's vision go black, and she fainted outright.

Since arriving in the Purple Demon Mountains, Dongfang Wanyu had never witnessed rain this heavy. Not only had it left her in a miserable state, but when she used her Thunder Element spiritual power to pierce a third-level magic beast during the downpour, lightning struck her, leaving her scorched outside and tender within. She had nearly died.

"This rain was practically made for you. It is a tremendous fortune bestowed upon you by heaven. Take this opportunity to advance from a fifth-level Thunder Element Spirit Practitioner 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 a mountain peak, accepting strike after strike of lightning from the heavens. Her spiritual power went into a frenzy of absorption, drawing in the essence within the lightning.

The entire process was fraught with peril. Fortunately, several treasures she carried still proved useful. They shielded her from the lightning strikes while allowing her to draw their essence into her body. As she tempered her body, she refined the lightning for her own use.

The lightning essence rampaged wildly through Dongfang Wanyu's body, nearly bursting out of her several times. Again and again, her meridians expanded to the brink of rupture, only for her to forcibly suppress them. She cleansed her marrow through her meridians repeatedly and tirelessly compressed the essence, over and over. Only after eighty-one cycles did the lightning essence settle down, its violent elements finally refined away completely.

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

The first thing Dongfang Wanyu did upon waking from meditation was unleash a bolt of lightning. A distant tree that towered into the clouds, its trunk so broad it took five people to encircle it, was effortlessly blasted to pieces, leaving a vast, deep crater where it had stood.

"To achieve this as a mere Spirit Master-not bad." The cool voice offered a rare word of praise.

"How long was I in seclusion?" Dongfang Wanyu examined herself with disgust. Her clothes no longer covered her body; the lightning had blasted them to shreds.

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

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

"Fifteen days."

This heavy rain had actually lasted half a month.

"Damn."

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

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

The snake beasts struggled on the ground for a few breaths before falling still.

The cave smelled foul, filled with the rank stench peculiar to magic beasts. Although its furnishings had not changed, there were now things inside that did not belong there.

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

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

"It seems you care quite a bit about that ninth sister of yours." The cool voice suddenly surfaced again.

Looking at the mess inside the cave, Dongfang Wanyu felt an urge to destroy it. At the mocking voice in her mind, she did not even bother responding and simply rushed outside.

Finding someone was hardly realistic. The torrential rain had lasted so long that any traces would have been washed clean away. Besides, she did not even know whether Dongfang Minghui had left of her own accord or met with an accident.

Dongfang Wanyu searched aimlessly outside for two days, killing any magic beast that blocked her path. Her aura had changed. She was like a newly sharpened sword, incomparably keen.

At night, she returned. She even slit open the bellies of several snake beasts 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 snake beast. There's no point looking anymore. After all this time, those two brutes would have digested her already." The cool voice laughed without a shred of kindness.

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