Leaving the Sect

"Master!"

Feng Zhuo shoved open the wooden door to Yunxiaozi's bedchamber, and it flew open with a bang.

"My junior senior brother and I plan to take a long-term sect mission and head down the mountain today!"

Cang Wuya followed behind him and silently closed the door for his junior brother.

His true colors were showing.

Yunxiaozi looked at the little fellow, who was growing more and more like his mother, and sighed inwardly.

His youngest disciple was not only like Feng Qingge to the bone, but his outward temper was just like hers too. He was simply better at putting on an act in front of outsiders than his mother was!

Yunxiaozi remembered the wooden house Feng Zhuo had burned down a few days ago and asked irritably, "Go down the mountain if you want. What are you coming to me for?"

Feng Zhuo held out his hand without the slightest hesitation. "Second senior sister said that when she and eldest senior brother went down the mountain on missions before, they both received Sword Qi talismans personally crafted by you."

There was not a trace of embarrassment on the young man's face as he said this.

As for Cang Wuya?

His junior brother said he wanted to take a sect mission and go down the mountain, so Cang Wuya accompanied him.

His junior brother said he had something to see their master about, so Cang Wuya came along too.

Yunxiaozi rolled his eyes in a most undignified manner. "You never think of this old man when good things come along, but you're awfully eager when it comes to asking for treasures."

As he spoke, he casually took four talismans gleaming with a cold light from his storage ring. "Take them, take them! Hurry down the mountain, and don't come bothering me again!"

Fortunately, when he had been in the Void Refinement Realm, he had crafted plenty of Sword Intent talismans to pass the time. Otherwise, there would not have been enough for his four disciples.

Feng Zhuo and Cang Wuya each took two.

Both of them already had plenty of life-saving Law Treasures, but who would ever complain about having too many?

"Oh, right."

Yunxiaozi suddenly remembered something and cautioned him, "A-Zhuo, keep an eye on your junior senior brother. Don't let him study the Sword Intent in these talismans."

Feng Zhuo looked at his junior senior brother in surprise. So he really is a sword fanatic...

That look made Cang Wuya's body stiffen slightly.

In the end, though, he said nothing.

Just as they were leaving, Feng Zhuo added with ill intent, "Oh, right, Master. I think I saw eldest senior brother dig up the spirit wine you buried under the tree the other day."

"What?!"

Before the two of them had even left, Yunxiaozi had vanished from where he stood.

The plan had worked.

Feng Zhuo burst out laughing, grabbed Cang Wuya's sleeve, and ran down the mountain. "Junior senior brother, hurry, hurry! Don't let eldest senior brother find out I was the one who tattled!"

Apart from his four disciples, the things Yunxiaozi cared about most on this peak were those wooden houses and the spirit wine buried beneath the trees on the back mountain.

The spirit wine was easy enough to understand, but Feng Zhuo had asked all his senior brothers and sisters why Yunxiaozi cared so much about the wooden houses, and none of them had an answer.

In the end, he had asked his master too, but got no answer there either.

He had simply stopped worrying about it. In any case, burning down a house would make his master's heart ache.

Cang Wuya's gaze was calm as he let Feng Zhuo pull him along at a run. Only when his junior brother laughed did his gaze linger on the young man's cheerful profile.

Not long afterward, Feng Zhuo stood before the jade wall in the sect's mission hall, tapping at the constantly scrolling list of missions with his fingertip.

Since joining the sect, he had cultivated to Foundation Establishment, but he had never taken a single mission.

As a result, the mission record on Feng Zhuo's sect disciple token was completely blank, and he could not even take a decent long-term mission away from the sect.

Though with his current wealth, he did not yet need contribution points to exchange for anything.

"This one won't do... neither will this one..."

Feng Zhuo muttered as he browsed.

He needed to return to the Feng Household, and the Western Region was extremely far from the Supreme One Divine Sect. Even with the aid of teleportation arrays, a round trip would take at least a month.

Cang Wuya stood quietly at his side, his gaze following his junior brother's fingertip.

"Found one!"

Feng Zhuo's eyes suddenly lit up, and he pointed to a mission. "Azure Creek Village, under the Supreme One Divine Sect's jurisdiction, is requesting aid. An evil demon is suspected of causing trouble. Mission deadline: three months."

Three months!

Feng Zhuo was delighted and continued reading.

Clear Creek Village was a mortal village located at the edge of the territory under the sect's jurisdiction.

Although the contribution point reward for completing the mission was very low, it was just right for Feng Zhuo.

Villages like this were different from the mortal world.

Spiritual Qi was thin in the mortal world, so few people possessed Spirit Roots. Even those who did generally had Spirit Roots of low purity.

The residents of villages in the cultivation world, on the other hand, were mostly descendants of cultivators who had failed to awaken Spirit Roots. Over time, they had settled together and formed villages.

This was not uncommon on the Profound Firmament Continent.

Compared with people in the purely mortal world, villagers in places like this knew more about the cultivation world and were better able to deal with cultivators.

"Junior senior brother, how about this one?"

Feng Zhuo turned to ask his opinion.

Cang Wuya nodded slightly, his gaze lingering on the mission description for a moment. "All right."

The description in the mission Jade Slip read as follows.

"Two young girls from the village chief's household vanished into thin air before everyone's eyes;

A child's limbs bearing tooth marks appeared for no apparent reason in a villager's granary;

The night watchman often hears strange swallowing and giggling sounds during his rounds..."

To cultivators like them, Demon Beasts eating people was perfectly normal.

But for mortals who could not cultivate, it was an utter catastrophe for whichever family it befell.

Feng Zhuo rubbed the Jade Slip thoughtfully.

In the cultivation world, once a Demon Beast reached the thirteenth tier and entered the Nascent Soul Realm, it could refine the transverse bone in its throat and speak human words.

After reaching the sixteenth tier, its cultivation attained Spirit Transformation. From then on, it was called a Demon Cultivator and could take human form.

When two Demon Cultivators had a child together, that child was naturally able to switch between its original form and human form.

Of course, certain Demon Beasts with exceptionally high-quality bloodlines might have lower cultivation requirements for speaking human words and taking human form.

Yanba, for instance, could speak human words from birth because he carried Nüba's bloodline.

There was even the Transformation Herb, a fifth-tier spirit herb that could help Demon Beasts take human form ahead of time.

Although the thing appearing around Clear Creek Village was called an evil demon, it was essentially still a Demon Beast, not a Demon Cultivator.

The Demon Beast haunting the mortal village had only eaten two people so far. For the two of them, dealing with it would be no different from a spring outing.

But Cang Wuya did not ask Feng Zhuo why he had taken such a mission. He merely said, "It should be a Nightmare Child Eater, a Demon Beast skilled at creating illusions and fond of eating children."

He did not suspect the space attribute.

After all, it was only because the White Tiger was a Divine Beast of exalted status that it could awaken an ability of the space attribute.

The ability to manipulate space and snatch people away out of thin air in front of everyone was certainly not something a low-level Demon Beast could possess.

Feng Zhuo frowned slightly. "A Nightmare Child Eater?"

He knew of this kind of Demon Beast.

It resembled an ape but had the face of an infant, and its tail could secrete a hallucinogenic mucus.

Most were second-tier, and only a very small number could break through the fourth tier and reach Foundation Establishment cultivation.

Because they liked to eat children, they often appeared around mortal villages.

Worse still, they were extremely cruel by nature and took pleasure in dismembering corpses, making them quite notorious in the cultivation world.

"If it really is a Nightmare Child Eater..."

A cluster of spirit flame sprang to life at Feng Zhuo's fingertip. "Junior senior brother, let's hurry."

Two children had already lost their lives to the Nightmare Child Eater half a month ago. Now that another half month had passed, if he delayed any longer, he feared more innocent children would die gruesome deaths.