Reaping the Fisherman's Rewards

With Broken Jade there, Xue Fuyao's presence was perfectly concealed. Every sneak attack was sure to hit its mark.

After smoothly dealing with that Monster Beast and pocketing the Soul-Nourishing Wood, Xue Fuyao had tasted the sweetness of sneak attacks and embarked on that path without looking back.

Now at the boundary between the outer and inner regions of the Demon Beast Forest, she looked at the traces of battle not far ahead and recognized at a glance that the Zhang Family triplets had left them.

Wonderful, I finally found them. I wore out iron shoes searching in vain, only to find them without the slightest effort.

Xue Fuyao immediately followed the traces.

About a dozen minutes later, she heard furious roars and the sounds of fierce fighting in the distance.

She hurried toward the sounds.

Upon reaching her destination, Xue Fuyao saw a lion covered in a golden mane, but with a scorpion's tail, fighting someone. It had been the source of those furious roars.

The person fighting the Scorpion-Tailed Lion was none other than one of the triplets.

To her surprise, this Scorpion-Tailed Lion, clearly at the peak of the Foundation Establishment Realm, was actually no match for him.

His cultivation had also risen from the foundation establishment early stage to the foundation establishment late stage.

But Xue Fuyao soon figured it out. He had probably used the Zhang Family Secret Technique to forcibly raise his cultivation realm, allowing him to hold his own against the Scorpion-Tailed Lion.

Barring any surprises, if she did not interfere, the Scorpion-Tailed Lion would ultimately be killed.

As though to confirm her words, the triplet's gaze suddenly sharpened. The longsword in his hand turned into a sharp whip and wound tightly around the Scorpion-Tailed Lion's neck. Already covered in wounds, the Scorpion-Tailed Lion now had no strength left to resist and died at his hands just like that.

Even after watching him finish off the Scorpion-Tailed Lion, Xue Fuyao still did not act.

Just now, through the Heavenly Eye, she had already learned exactly what was being guarded inside the cave behind the Scorpion-Tailed Lion.

They were three naturally formed Innate Sword Embryos. Given another few hundred or thousand years, they might well become three Heaven-and-Earth Spirit Treasures.

In her previous life, she had seen these three swords in the triplets' hands. Although they had not been Heaven-and-Earth Spirit Treasures, they had still been powerful Supreme-Grade Spiritual Artifacts.

It seemed that in her previous life, the triplets had obtained these three Innate Sword Embryos from the Qingfeng Secret Realm, then taken them back and forged them into the swords they wielded.

All Xue Fuyao could say was that this was an utter squandering of heaven's gifts.

These were Innate Sword Embryos, yet they had actually been forged into spiritual artifacts. If the Sword Cultivators of the Heavenly Sword Sect learned of this, they would probably spit out a mouthful of blood.

However, killing the Monster Beast guarding the sword embryos was not the end of it. To bring the three sword embryos out successfully, he still had to undergo a series of trials.

Xue Fuyao thought that rather than go inside and undergo the trials herself, she might as well wait outside for him to finish them and emerge. In any case, the sword embryos could not be bound by contract, and even if they were, the contracts would automatically disappear when their master died.

She waited for three whole days. During that time, she collected the dead Scorpion-Tailed Lion at the cave entrance.

Monster Beasts were everywhere here. Once a corpse appeared, the bloody scent it gave off would soon attract other powerful Monster Beasts, so it was perfectly normal for the corpse to be eaten.

Three days later, the triplet emerged from the cave, thoroughly satisfied, and indeed suspected nothing. Or perhaps he had long since put the Scorpion-Tailed Lion out of his mind.

He had never expected there to be such treasures inside the cave.

Just as he was about to tell his older and younger brothers the news, a streak of golden light suddenly shot toward him from afar and pierced straight through his head before he could react.

Even as he died, Zhang Hongzhi's eyes were wide open, as though he did not understand what had happened.

Meanwhile, in two other places in the Qingfeng Secret Realm, the other two triplets, Zhang Yizhi and Zhang Qizhi, simultaneously spat out a mouthful of blood without warning, then threw back their heads and howled in grief.

"Who was it?! Who did this?!"

However, no one answered their question.

Elsewhere, only after seeing that he was completely dead did Xue Fuyao emerge from her hiding place, the Heavenly Eye on her forehead slowly fading away.

She first went over to the corpse and searched it from head to toe, finding one Storage Bag and one Storage Space in total.

Clearly, he also understood the principle of not putting all his eggs in one basket.

The Storage Bag contained only some everyday items and clothes. Xue Fuyao took these useless things out and threw them on the ground, and a Token fell out among them.

The character "Zhang" was engraved on the back of the Token, while the front bore the name "Hongzhi."

Looking at the corpse on the ground, Xue Fuyao thought, So this was Zhang Hongzhi, the second of the triplets.

The Storage Space, meanwhile, held the treasures he had collected over the years, including the three Innate Sword Embryos.

Because the sword embryos had not finished developing, the Sword Qi around them could not yet be controlled. To keep it from damaging the other things in the Storage Space, he had sealed the three Innate Sword Embryos first.

Xue Fuyao took out the sword embryos. From the outside, they looked like three crudely crafted stone swords. No one would have imagined that they were actually Innate Sword Embryos.

She put the three sealed Innate Sword Embryos into the Demon-Suppressing Bracelet.

The Demon-Suppressing Bracelet was a Dharma Treasure meant for sealing and suppression in the first place. Even in its current battle-damaged state, suppressing three sword embryos that had yet to finish developing was no problem.

Then she took everything else out of the Storage Space as quickly as possible and put it all into her own Storage Space.

Based on what she knew of the triplets from her previous life, there should be three identical copies of this ring, and they might even be able to sense one another. Thus, apart from its contents, she had no intention of keeping the ring.

After discarding all his personal belongings, including the ring, she sprinkled a little Beast-Attracting Powder on Zhang Hongzhi's body. Then Xue Fuyao erased the traces of her presence in the surrounding area, changed her appearance again, and left.

This time, Xue Fuyao disguised herself as a female cultivator in a yellow dress, once again disguising her cultivation as the foundation establishment early stage.

She was in an excellent mood the whole way.

The triplets' strength lay in their connected minds: one plus one plus one was greater than three. Now that one was gone, it was equivalent to cutting the three's strength in half.

Although two remained, even if those two developed their coordination anew and made one plus one greater than two, they could never return to what they had been before.