First Meeting Xiao Yi Xian

Although the moon was out tonight, the light was still rather dim.

Xiao Yi Xian reached out a fair hand, tied a safety rope around her waist, and lowered herself over the cliff.

After lowering herself halfway down the mountainside, Xiao Yi Xian took a firestarter from the cloth pouch at her waist and lit it.

To guard against attacks by magical beasts, Xiao Yi Xian had also made a point of preparing medicinal powder that could drive them away.

She scattered a packet of powder along the cliff wall to guard against attacks by magical beasts.

By the light of the moon and her firestarter, Xiao Yi Xian successfully found a cave entrance.

She had scouted the place beforehand, so she naturally knew the way like the back of her hand.

With no outside interference, Xiao Yi Xian found the entrance without trouble and reached it safely.

On the great stone platform, Xiao Yi Xian used the faint light of the fire in her hand to make her way into the cave, until she felt a stone door.

She patted the stone door with her palm to test its thickness.

Seeing the stone door blocking her path, Xiao Yi Xian did not panic in the slightest. Instead, she continued feeling around it.

At last, she found a small bump.

Feeling the raised spot against her palm, Xiao Yi Xian smiled with delight. "This should be it!"

She pressed down hard with her finger, and the stone door slowly opened amid a rumbling vibration.

As she watched the stone door gradually rise, Xiao Yi Xian remained on guard. She did not know whether there was more danger beyond it, so she gripped a packet of powder tightly in her hand, ready to scatter it at any moment.

As the stone door rose, a faint glow emerged from within, sweeping away the surrounding darkness.

Only after seeing what lay beyond the stone door with her own eyes did Xiao Yi Xian's taut nerves gradually relax. She put the packet of powder back in her pocket and stepped inside.

The stone chamber looked extremely simple. Dozens of Moonlight Stones had been set neatly into the surrounding stone walls, serving as light bulbs.

In the center of the chamber stood a chair, with a long-dried skeleton sitting in it.

It looked rather like a tomb chamber.

Three stone boxes sat on the Bluestone Platform in front of the chair. Xiao Yi Xian was just about to go over and inspect them when she heard a noise behind her.

When she turned to look, she discovered that more than a dozen familiar figures had appeared behind her at some unknown point.

Xiao Yi Xian was quite familiar with these figures.

"Xiao Yi Xian, it's the dead of night. It's not safe for a girl to be out in the wild alone."

The speaker was the young man leading the group of more than a dozen people. His gaze swept back and forth between Xiao Yi Xian and the stone boxes behind her.

"You followed me!"

I hid myself well enough, so how could anyone have followed me?!

"Then if I said we ran into each other by chance, would you believe me?"

"Xiao Yi Xian, you know how I feel about you. As long as you come with me, you definitely won't lose out!"

He made no effort to conceal the greed and infatuation on his face, looking Xiao Yi Xian over brazenly as though she were his spoils of war.

But even surrounded by more than a dozen mercenaries, Xiao Yi Xian still refused to compromise. She clenched the packet of powder in her palm, ready to strike at any moment.

"Stop struggling. I know your tricks very well. I have more than a dozen mercenaries here, but how much medicinal powder are you carrying?"

"But killing you might not require medicinal powder."

!!!

An unfamiliar voice suddenly rang out behind them. They were just about to turn around when their vision went dark, as though something had flashed past their eyes.

And then...

And then they felt as light as feathers, as though they were flying, and even saw their own bodies.

In the blink of an eye, more than a dozen headless corpses lay in the cave.

Sun Qi raised a hand and waved it. Terrifying heat set the corpses alight, burning even the blood splattered on the stone walls until nothing remained, as though they had never appeared at all.

And all of this happened in the space of a few breaths.

Xiao Yi Xian stared wide-eyed at the stranger who had suddenly appeared, her face full of shock.

To kill more than ten people so easily and destroy the corpses and all traces in such a short time, this person's strength was probably far beyond what she could imagine.

Just as Xiao Yi Xian thought he had also come to kill and seize the treasures, he tossed her a bottle of pills.

"Take these. Stay in this cave and cultivate for the next two days. I'll come back in a couple of days."

With that, he turned and walked out of the cave, then jumped straight off the cliff.

Seeing him suddenly jump off the cliff, Xiao Yi Xian instinctively ran forward and shouted, "Watch out!"

She had only just reached the edge when she saw a streak of light shoot up from the bottom of the cliff and fly into the distance.

"This! He's flying!"

"Dou Qi Wings. Could he be a Dou Wang expert?!"

"No wonder he could kill more than ten people so easily in such a short time. But what was his purpose in doing that? And why did he tell me to cultivate in this cave?"

Xiao Yi Xian truly could not understand what he had seen in her.

Since she could not make sense of it, she decided to stop thinking about it.

She opened the bottle and poured out the pills, wanting to see what he had given her.

But when she poured them out, she was dumbfounded.

"These... these are all tier-two or even tier-three pills!"

Never mind pills like these-even ordinary tier-one pills were in great demand in Qingshan Town!

A Dou Wang had suddenly stepped in to save her and even given her such good pills. What was he after?!

The mysteries in Xiao Yi Xian's heart kept multiplying, and she could no longer see things clearly. She wanted to run, but he was a Dou Wang expert. Where could she possibly escape to?

Besides, she did not know whether he was watching her from the shadows.

"Forget it. There's no use thinking so much. Let's see what's in these boxes first."

Compared with Xiao Yi Xian's extremely complicated feelings, Sun Qi seemed rather unconcerned.

"So where are we going next?"

When Sun Qi returned to the inn, Zi Yan was lying on the bed, bored out of her mind, rolling all over it like a child.

"We'll rest for the night and enter the Magical Beast Mountain Range tomorrow. I'm going to recruit a fighter."

At the mention of recruiting a fighter, Zi Yan immediately became interested.

"What kind of fighter?! Is it strong?!"

"A tier-six Amethyst Winged Lion King."

Hearing that it was an Amethyst Winged Lion King whose strength was comparable to a Dou Emperor's, Zi Yan immediately became interested.

A tier-six magical beast should count as the top beast in the Magical Beast Mountain Range, right? If I beat it, wouldn't I be able to rule the Magical Beast Mountain Range?!

There must be lots of good things hidden in its cave, too!

Early the next morning, Zi Yan excitedly dragged Sun Qi out of bed.

"Quick, quick, quick!"

"It's time to enter the mountain range! If we're late, it might run away!"

Seeing how excited Zi Yan looked, Sun Qi got up with a helpless expression.

"It's a king of the Magical Beast Mountain Range, after all. Why would it run?"

Though she said that, Zi Yan had been traveling for the past few days and was bored to death.