Chapter 439: Sword Slave

"Chop... Cloud Mountain?" Owner Fang looked at the Penguin communications group on his phone. There, Jiang Xiaoyue was taking screenshots and posting them to the group while harvesting rare herbs and exotic plants in Chop Cloud Mountain and stuffing them into her storage bag.

Although there were many treasures in this spiritual mountain, not every place allowed for carefree gathering. Some spots had been laid with restrictions early on, and if one were not careful enough, they might very well be eliminated during the harvesting process.

The spiritual treasures and various spiritual items in this mountain area could be roughly categorized from rank three to rank six, as well as the extremely rare rank seven. Anything higher was unsuitable for the strength of these disciples, while anything lower was too simple.

If something reached rank seven, it would certainly be guarded by an extremely powerful demonic beast, or it would possess an exceptionally high self-preservation capability itself, with restrictions even laid around it, making it extremely difficult to deal with.

As for rank six spiritual items, they were bound to be guarded by restrictions, and there was also a certain chance a demonic beast would be guarding them by their side, which was purely a matter of luck; perhaps if one's luck was excellent, the surrounding restrictions might not be strong either.

Jiang Xiaoyue's eyes lit up as she saw a rank six spiritual flower in the marsh ahead, accompanied by several rank five spiritual herbs nearby, clearly showing her good luck.

Moreover, she looked around: "Are there restrictions?"

"Aren't these restrictions a bit too obvious?!" Li Ranruo smacked her lips slightly. Although the restrictions before them were laid out with some stealth, compared to other places, they were truly somewhat lacking in cleverness.

Could their luck really be this good?

Yet just as Jiang Xiaoyue drew close, several cold, sinister glints flashed from the darkness.

"Someone is coming!"

"Excellent! Looks like they've taken the bait!"

They saw a harmless little lolita dressed in a white palace skirt, and a beautiful woman in a blue dress.

"That woman... isn't she the one from the Li family?!" a voice said in a low tone. "Who knows for what reason she's being pursued by the Nangong family... to think she ran here? Young Master Nangong happens to be around. If we capture her and present her to the Nangong family..."

The group instantly grew excited; opportunities to curry favor with the Nangong family were few and far between!

"Be careful of the other one, she seems to be from the Jiang family!"

"Just a little girl, at worst we'll spare her life when the time comes. Once she's afflicted by the poison of my Thousand Spider Valley, even an immortal won't escape! This time, in order to enter the Haotian Academy, the Elder passed down all of the several supreme poisons treasured in the valley to me!"

"Then we shall rely entirely on Brother Poison Spider!"

"Easily said, easily said!"

As the few spoke, they saw Jiang Xiaoyue break open the restriction, wave her little hand, and a small skeleton suddenly emerged in front of her.

Then, carrying an axe, the small skeleton walked up with a series of heavy steps.

The small skeleton walked to the front of that spiritual flower and bent down to pluck it.

A multi-colored giant spider, seeing danger approaching, leapt up and stung the skeleton once.

The small skeleton continued its harvesting as if nothing had happened...

The few hiding in the dark exchanged glances: "...Brother Poison Spider, what kind of poison did you use?"

"Ghost Spider. As long as it touches a single speck, it will spread along the meridians and blood vessels of the entire body..."

"!!?? Does this thing have meridians?!"

The group: "..."

Where did this skeleton spring from?!

They watched as this little skeleton picked clean all the spiritual flowers and spiritual herbs as if nothing had happened.

"All done!" Jiang Xiaoyue waved her little hand, and the skeleton frame scattered onto the ground. "Here~ I'll share these rank five ones with you."

Then she strutted away openly.

"This isn't right?!" In the darkness, the faces of the several hidden figures darkened.

"That is our rank six spiritual flower!"

"Freeze right there!"

One minute later...

The group was seen completely collapsed on the ground, one of them with several spear holes added to his body, their storage Dharma treasures completely stripped bare as they lay on the ground wailing: "Wait... those are our spiritual flowers..."

"Stop hitting!" Amidst a chorus of wails, a pile of trash from the storage Dharma treasures was thrown back, smashing right into their faces, until they finally invoked their Grotto-Heaven Tokens.

At the same time, at White Cloud Hill.

A young man wearing purple robes and a golden belt, his eyes flashing like torches, was surrounded by swirling, surging purple qi that actually condensed into a furious purple dragon around him. Beyond the furious purple dragon lay a demonic serpent whose entire body was covered in scales like gold and iron, with wings growing from its sides.

Judging by its head alone, it was already the size of a human, its visage hideous, yet now it lay on the ground, as dead as could be!

At Floating Fragrance Valley, a young man with long hair in white clothes, holding a book scroll, stood before a magnificent tiger with reddish-gold fur that was actually prostrated on the ground, not daring to make the slightest extra movement, as if the person before it were not a harmless scholar in white but an ancient desolate beast instead.

The white-clothed man strolled into the deepest part of the valley. In the valley stood a towering giant tree, upon which grew a golden fruit; observing its miraculous and extraordinary appearance, it had likely reached rank seven!

At Misty Peak.

A world-shocking sword light seemed to fall from the horizon. Upon the towering high cliff capped with white clouds, the sword qi was sharp and crystalline like jade. A flash of sword light startled countless flying birds, and more than half the mountain rocks collapsed. A woman wearing a pure white Daoist robe and a bamboo hat gently wiped away the blood on her cheek, while the cultivators who had swarmed up to attack her lay scattered all over the ground.

Looking at those densely packed cultivators, it was estimated that more than half of the cultivators on the entire Misty Peak were right here.

"Senior Sister, these are the spiritual items they harvested." A young girl in green clothes nearby spat lightly and said, "Truly blind, it might as well benefit us. Seeing us harvest good things, they actually dared to come and rob us."

"Let it be." The woman nodded slightly, using a strip of white silk to wipe away the bloodstains from the tip of her sword.

...

In almost every place, at every moment, fierce battles were taking place, yet there was one area that absolutely no one dared to touch.

"Young Master Nangong!"

A tall young man clad in a cloud-dragon sword robe stood with his hands behind his back.

Nearly a hundred cultivators gathered densely behind him: "We are willing to follow Young Master Nangong's lead!"

Nangong Zhuo's eyes flashed sharply: "I saw that woman of the Li family head towards the direction of Chop Cloud Mountain."

"Send people to keep an eye on her."

"Yes!"

...

Inside the chat group.

"@Big Owner Fang, rotten owner! How come you haven't shown your face for half the day?! (Angry)" Jiang Xiaoyue stamped her feet. She was just showing off her "achievements", yet that damnable owner had disappeared.

In the sky above the Cloud Sea Square outside Yuanxiang City.

The dark clouds remained low and heavy, and a figure could be seen standing upon the edge of a sword.

The crowd below pointed and whispered: "What is that?!"

"What kind of thing is that?!"

In the extremely high and distant sky, lightning crackled and swirled. There seemed to be two black shadows, like phantom ghosts, circling within the dark clouds.

That figure standing upon the sword was slightly closer, barely discernable as a young man wearing a blue and white long shirt.

And in the sky, those two black shadows, with terrifyingly high speed, suddenly drew closer and closer. They were two entities completely covered in black cloaks, their hands and feet wrapped in chains; within the cloaks, only a mass of pitch-black, eerie yin mist could be seen, resembling neither human nor ghost.

One of the black shadows made a stroke with its fingertip.

Fang Qi frowned slightly; this sword stance was almost identical to the one executed by Nangong Jiuwen that day.

Yet he was seen tilting his body slightly at a speed imperceptible to the naked eye.

"Boom!"

A earth-shattering roar erupted as the dharma boat behind him, along with the very cliff face, was sliced through as if it were mere tofu, the entire precipice nearly cleaved into a yawning chasm!

"The exact same sword technique, so why does its power feel as though he castrated himself to practice the Pixie Sword Manual...?" Boss Fang muttered to himself.

"Quick! Retreat into the city, quickly!" The cultivators still outside the city walls fell into a chaotic frenzy.

"That is..." a cultivator suddenly cried out in terror, "that is the Nangong family's sword slave!"

"Who is that?! How dare they stand before the Nangong family's sword slave without fleeing?!"

"Flee?!" another cultivator sneered bitterly. "Can anyone truly escape?!"

"Beep. New quest acquired."

New Quest: Establishing Authority Requires a Firm Stand (Part One)

Quest Description: Defeat the enemy before you in the most awe-inspiring manner possible.

Quest Reward: Lucky Wheel Spin.