Chapter 30

After Su Jiu came out of the shop, someone called out to her as she passed by a teahouse.

"Su, little fellow Daoist, hold your steps!"

The one who called out to Su Jiu was precisely one of the two youths before the task board that day. Su Jiu looked along the window and found several cultivators whose cultivation levels she could not discern, all with strengths superior to hers. One of them looked slightly familiar, as if she had seen him somewhere before.

Yet before Su Jiu could recall, the youth above waved his hand at her, signaling her to come up.

"Su, little fellow Daoist, I am Zhou Xing. We saw you at the task office that day." The youth had long since inquired about Su Jiu's name thoroughly from the task errand boy.

"And?" Su Jiu's tone was somewhat cold and detached; if her words carried any ambiguity, it was hard not to make people overthink.

Another unfamiliar youth beside him frowned slightly, feeling that Su Jiu seemed somewhat arrogant. She was merely at the fifth tier of Qi Refining, so what was there to be proud of? Thinking of this, he sneered in his heart.

This youth was precisely the other youth from before the task board that day.

However, the youth speaking with Su Jiu clearly had not thought much of it. "It's just that we accepted a team task and haven't been able to find a suitable final member. Seeing you independently hand in the tasks for the Civet Beast and Biyi Grass that day, we figured your strength is not ordinary. We'd like to invite you to join our team."

Hearing that it was a team task, Su Jiu also perked up a bit. She had never done a team task before.

"What task, and what is the remuneration?"

"Two hundred Spirit Stones per person, to hunt a First Tier advanced Two-Headed Python."

Su Jiu raised an eyebrow. Including her, there were five cultivators at this table, which meant five cultivators equally splitting the yields of a First Tier advanced demonic beast.

Su Jiu nodded. "Very well, when do we set off?"

Yet before Zhou Xing could speak, he was blocked from behind by another person.

"Su, little fellow Daoist, don't blame us for being overcautious, but we still want to verify your strength. After all, no one saw you kill the Civet Beast alone. Pick any person here at random; as long as you don't fall in a hundred moves, we can set off together tomorrow." This man resembled a jade-faced scholar, and his personality seemed relatively gentle, yet Su Jiu could tell that his smile did not reach his eyes. He was a truly warm-on-the-outside, cold-on-the-inside sort of person.

However, wanting to test the strength of a prospective team member was also a matter of human nature, for no one wanted to drag along dead weight and needlessly divide a fifth of the reward. This man was at least considered courteous on the surface. In her past life, when she entered an unfamiliar team without her identity being known, she had no idea how many seniors had made things difficult for her.

The cultivation world was actually the most realistic and fairest place, because no matter where one went, one could not escape these four words: Strength is supreme.

Leaving the market, there was a stretch of suburban area.

Su Jiu could not tell which of the four men possessed the highest cultivation level either, so she pointed randomly at one. The youth who was pointed at was precisely the one who had looked down upon Su Jiu earlier.

Seeing Su Jiu point at him, the youth could not help but be stunned, and then sneered again. "I am now at the seventh tier of Qi Refining. Since you chose me, don't regret it."

Su Jiu made a bow of obeisance.

The wind rose. Su Jiu and the youth drew their Flying Swords almost simultaneously and swept toward each other.

"Clang!" Their long swords crossed, and the two of them simultaneously flew apart by sliding backward.

At this moment, the youth's state of mind was in complete disarray. While observers of just now's sword clash felt nothing amiss, he had clearly sensed that Su Jiu's strength was completely not inferior to his own, and even surpassed his. Is this fellow a sword cultivator?

Though his mind harbored numerous thoughts, his expression showed not the slightest trace of them.

The youth bit his lip with some reluctance and swept toward Su Jiu once more. What if what happened just now was an illusion? He wanted to try again.

Su Jiu did not let the youth have his way either, once more blocking the youth's sword.

After finishing their second exchange, the youth only felt the tiger's mouth gripping his sword hilt grow slightly numb.

Yet Su Jiu gave him no time to recover, directly raising her sword to hack straight down-the simplest and most brutal style of fighting.

The youth did not want to clash swords with Su Jiu again, for he finally discovered that he could not win in a clash. Thus, he pinched out spell gestures, but just as his gestures were halfway through, Su Jiu's sword came hacking down, forcing him to abandon the half-completed spell gestures and use his sword to resist.

"What's wrong with Changfeng?" Zhou Xing asked with some puzzlement. If he had not seen wrongly, was Changfeng being suppressed by that little girl?

As for the jade-faced scholar, a sharp gleam flashed through the depths of his eyes. "Changfeng is not that Su, little fellow Daoist's match."

Meanwhile, the fourth man, who had remained silent all along, also stared fixedly at the battlefield at this moment.

Finally, feeling it was about enough, Su Jiu waved her hand, and five Ice Spikes stopped directly in front of the youth. The youth was so frightened his face turned pale.

With a retraction from Su Jiu, the Ice Spikes instantly dissipated into the air. She made a bow of obeisance toward the youth's direction. "You flatter me."

Actually, if she wanted to deal with the youth before her, she would have probed out seven or eight tenths of his capabilities within three moves, and then made him fall within ten moves. Yet for the sake of a future friendly atmosphere within the team, she chose to drag the fight out a bit longer. After all, she had no deep blood feud with this youth either; being defeated within ten moves by someone with a lower cultivation level than oneself was simply too humiliating.

Having grown up in the Outer Gate, Lie Changfeng's strength was naturally not ordinary. Fighting until the end, how could he fail to sense that Su Jiu had intentionally gone easy on him? He opened his mouth and said with some difficulty, "Many thanks!" Thanking her for not causing him to lose all face.

The other three were not fools either, and naturally they all saw it as well, involuntarily feeling a few more fractions of gratitude toward her.

The jade-faced scholar also stepped forward to make a bow of obeisance and apology. "Earlier, it was my discourtesy. Let me formally introduce her to you: the one who just sparred with you is called Lie Changfeng. He has a bad temper, but in truth, he is quite simple-minded. He is also the youngest in our team-actually, he is only eighteen this year."

Lie Changfeng secretly reddened his ears and muttered in a low voice, "Why mention age?"

The jade-faced scholar pointed again at the rather sunny youth and said, "He has already introduced himself, Zhou Xing. The few of us actually all got to know each other through him."

Zhou Xing revealed his trademark white teeth and smiled. "My eye for people has always been very good."

Then turning his head, he pointed at the youth clad in black and said, "The one who never speaks over there is called Mo Yan. He truly lives up to his name."

The youth called Mo Yan looked at Su Jiu and nodded slightly in acknowledgment.

Finally, he introduced himself. "My name is Shu Bai, though they are all accustomed to calling me Xiao Bai. You may follow suit and call me that."

Shu Bai's gaze only then acquired warmth; she had been accepted.

"My name is Su Jiu." A cyan tear-mote beneath the outer corner of Su Jiu's left eye seemed to have a ripple of flowing light pass across it.

Shu Bai saw it. He pinched the bridge of his nose, and when he opened his eyes again, he found that there was nothing there except for an inverted teardrop-shaped tear-mote, as if that flash of flowing light had been nothing more than an illusion. Shu Bai could not help but feel suspicious: Could it be that I really saw wrongly just now?

Ever since the fight ended, Lie Changfeng had kept a bellyful of questions until Shu Bai finished his introductions, whereupon he could not help asking, "Su Jiu, are you a sword cultivator?"

Su Jiu smiled faintly. "Didn't you see me cast Ice Spikes at the end?"

"Then why is your strength so great?"

"Practiced quite a bit, I suppose."

For the first time, Lie Changfeng let out a sigh. Gosh, the conversation just got chatted to death.