Chapter 270: Helping Each Other In Hard Times

Chapter 270: Helping Each Other in Adversity

The flash of the Chaotic World Chronicle made several people spit blood.

Sima Xiao had just escorted the prisoner back to Yanmen Pass, and he looked up at the sky, stomping and cursing: "Damn it, no wonder they sent me back to deliver the man—they went off to steal the spotlight themselves! I'm not part of your Chivalrous Camp, so why should I do your missions for you!"

Cui Yuanyong took the head of the young master of the Qiao family and Qiao Er that Sima Xiao had brought, smiling as he gave orders to his attendants: "Spread the word—Brother Sima is our deputy commander."

Sima Xiao stomped his foot again: "I finally understand why you people are a family."

Cui Yuanyong looked up at the final commentary and sighed helplessly: "Being this family isn't easy... Back then at the mountain stronghold, I already knew—in the future, could Yangyang beat Yue Hongling in a fight at home?"

"?" Sima Xiao quickly said: "Yue Hongling and Zhao Changhe started that early? Tell me more!"

"Come to our Chivalrous Camp, and we'll talk over some wine."

"Fine, fine."

"At that time, Yue Hongling reached down and grabbed..."

Cui Yuanyong was worried about his sister's standing in the family hierarchy, but Cui Yuanyuan herself didn't think much about it. She was at home, resting her chin on her hand and staring at the sky, muttering softly: "Sixth place—I knew it. Three years on the Human Ranking means nothing to Brother Zhao."

Cui Wenjing was sitting across from her with a stern face: "Recite the sword technique I just taught you again?"

"Huh?" Cui Yuanyuan forced a smile: "The wind is too strong—I didn't hear clearly."

"You were diligent before, but ever since you came back from Langya, your face has been red every day, and you've even been secretly looking at erotic books!" Cui Wenjing stood up in anger, grabbed a feather duster, and pretended to strike: "If you keep this up, who can you beat? Yue Hongling or Tang Wanzhuang? How did I end up with such a useless daughter? I'll beat you to death!"

Cui Yuanyuan fled quickly.

Cui Wenjing grabbed her by the back of the collar and lowered his voice: "Get yourself to the ancestral hall. The Qinghe Sword has been faintly humming lately, as if the sword spirit has returned. Go see if you have a chance to make it recognize you as its master."

"Huh? Shouldn't Brother go instead?"

"Both of you will go. Do you think I'm only pinning my hopes on you?" Cui Wenjing shook his head in disappointment: "Do you think your performance deserves it?"

Cui Yuanyuan: "..."

At the headquarters of the Four Symbols Sect.

Xia Chichi was sitting cross-legged on the altar, meditating. She opened her eyes and tilted her head to look at the sky.

A guardian beside her bowed and said: "Holy Maiden, your ranking has been replaced..."

Xia Chichi twitched the corner of her mouth.

A group of people shouted: "We can't stand this, Holy Maiden! That Zhao Changhe—we spared his life out of magnanimity, and now he's pressing down on you!"

Isn't that a good thing...

Xia Chichi said expressionlessly: "The Chaotic World Chronicle is deliberately stirring up trouble. Only a fool like Cui Yuanyong would rush to challenge someone just because his ranking was pushed down. If someone were manipulating the Chronicle, they'd probably be laughing their head off."

Everyone exchanged glances. That sounds nice, but why does your expression look off? The anger on your face is practically grinding your teeth.

Xia Chichi stared at the final commentary again and again, until the golden light faded, then ground her teeth: "A mere brat at the seventh level of the Mystic Gate—what's so great about him? I've already broken through to the eighth level and am charging toward the ninth. Once I break through, I'll enter the Human Ranking directly. Why should I compete for rankings with a bunch of kids? What's the use of being sixth on the Hidden Dragon List? If he has the guts, let him be first—let him stay there forever!"

The crowd had no choice but to say: "The Holy Maiden's aspirations are lofty."

Xia Chichi suddenly asked: "Tell me—if a river reflects the sunset, is the river embracing the sunset, or is the sunset entering the river?"

The crowd: "?"

What are you talking about...

No matter how much Sima Xiao, Cui Yuanyong, Cui Wenjing, or Xia Chichi were jumping around inside, the one truly jumping the most was someone else.

Far away in Jiangnan, within the sphere of influence of the Maitreya Sect, a white-robed assassin looked up at the sky in confusion, then suddenly burst into rage: "Sha Qi, you said he was heading south—what is this?"

...

As for the storm brewing in the outside world, the adulterous couple had no mind to think about it. They only knew that the Hu army had sealed off the mountain, and Chi Li and his men had already entered to search.

Fortunately, it was nighttime, and finding people in the mountains wasn't that easy.

The two quietly fled, all the way to the mountainside.

This was a vast mountain range, stretching far and wide, and even the earlier Chaos Stone Mountain was only a small part of it. Yue Hongling didn't know why Zhao Changhe had chosen this spot to enter the mountain. Compared to other peaks, this one seemed worse—it wasn't as large, and the mountain was bare, with nothing but jagged rocks providing sparse cover. It really wasn't suitable for hiding and recovering from injuries.

They would probably be found as soon as dawn broke...

Supposedly there was a secret realm here, but she couldn't see any sign of it.

How did he know there was a secret realm here anyway? She had been wandering around here for three months, combining a lot of information and her own reconnaissance, and only had a vague suspicion. He had just arrived... Who gave him the map? Could he have been tricked?

By now, Yue Hongling could barely hold on. She leaned weakly against Zhao Changhe and said in a low voice: "Let's find a cave or something to deal with this first... If I don't regulate my condition, once we're found, I really won't be able to fight."

Zhao Changhe's own injuries were also agonizing. After riding for so long, the simple treatment he had done earlier had long since split open. The true energy of the Human Ranking expert was still rampaging inside his body, hard to eliminate, and extremely uncomfortable. At this point, their combat power was far worse than when they were first injured, and the longer they delayed, the worse it would get.

But since things had come to this, they had to grit their teeth and endure.

He bent down and said in a low voice: "I'll carry you."

Yue Hongling shook her head: "You're not much better off than I am."

"I have more strength than you." Without another word, Zhao Changhe pressed himself against her and lifted her onto his back: "Let's go."

Yue Hongling didn't even have the strength to struggle. She lay limply on his back, watching his staggering steps, not knowing what she felt.

Zhao Changhe trudged upward with difficulty, firmly believing that there must be a secret realm here. Judging from the map in his hand, the shape of the mountain range was drawn very vividly, and the entrance to each peak was clearly marked. He had easily matched it—this couldn't be something drawn randomly.

He unfolded the map again and looked at it. There was a small note on the map: "On the mountainside, there is a pile of rocks that looks chaotic and irregular, but among them, seven stones can form a very standard Big Dipper shape, though they are mixed in with other stones and hard to spot."

"If you stand at the position of the Celestial Pivot under the light of the stars and moon, you can faintly sense an unusual aura emanating from the stone formation, suggesting a hidden dimensional space. The exact method of opening it has not yet been explored, as I had to leave for other important matters. I will return another day if fate allows, hence this mark."

"The shape of the Celestial Pivot stone is as follows..."

Then there was a scribble, looking like either a rock or a pile of dung, completely irregular.

This was a marker left by Master Yuanxing for himself, mainly to remember which shaped peak to enter and which shaped stone was the key point.

Otherwise, all the mountains looked similar, and a single stone in a pile of rocks would be impossible to identify. If he returned years later to explore again, he would have forgotten everything.

Now, this marker had truly fallen into Zhao Changhe's hands. Staggering, he carried Yue Hongling to the mountainside and, sure enough, saw a chaotic pile of jagged rocks by the side—a very common and ordinary sight on such a rocky mountain.

The stones had nothing special about them. They looked like a bunch of ordinary rocks, arranged without any pattern, their shapes all messy. It was simply a natural rock pile, visible everywhere.

Halfway up the mountain, this unremarkable pile of rocks sat openly in plain sight. No one would ever think that this could be the entrance to a secret realm. No wonder no one had ever found it—probably everyone who passed by just ignored it.

How could anyone discover that among a pile of rocks, seven could be connected to form the Big Dipper? Even if they could, it would seem normal.

Zhao Changhe couldn't figure it out, nor did he dwell on it. He looked at the rock shape in the drawing, scanned the pile, and actually saw the shape. He tried standing on that rock, closed his eyes, and sensed—but didn't detect the unusual aura Master Yuanxing had mentioned.

Just as he was getting a headache, Yue Hongling on his back suddenly spoke in a low voice: "There is indeed something unusual here."

Zhao Changhe quickly set her down, letting her sit on the rock: "What is it?"

Yue Hongling closed her eyes and sensed for a moment: "There is a sense of communion between heaven and man... Only someone who has touched a hidden treasure can perceive it. It's normal that you can't."

Zhao Changhe: "..."

Yue Hongling said: "This is a very concealed star map formation. Where you and I are standing should be the eye of the formation. The person who gave you the information didn't deceive you."

"How do we break the formation?" Zhao Changhe asked, and a strange feeling suddenly rose in his heart.

Back then, when he and Chichi were trying to break the star map formation behind the pool, they had also asked Yue Hongling.

Yue Hongling had traveled the martial world extensively and was knowledgeable about such matters. Even if he knew the formation's eye, he wouldn't know how to break it alone.

Yue Hongling struggled to prop herself up, walked around following the positions of the Big Dipper, and said in a low voice: "Fortunately, there are two of us..."

Zhao Changhe: "Hmm?"

"This shape of the Big Dipper—the tail position at Yaoguang has an extremely slight deviation. One person must stand at Tianshu to hold the formation's eye still, while another moves Yaoguang, so that head and tail echo each other, and then the true form can be glimpsed."

Yue Hongling said, as she stood by a certain rock and pushed with all her might, just a little.

"Click!"

The rumbling sound of the rolling rock suddenly turned into a crisp "click", and then the Big Dipper in the sky shone brightly, and among the scattered rocks a vortex shape faintly appeared.

Zhao Changhe was overjoyed, jumped off the rock: "Let's go."

Yue Hongling did not respond.

He turned his head and saw that she had already collapsed unconscious on the ground.

Zhao Changhe swiftly picked her up and leaped directly into the "vortex", vanishing in the blink of an eye.

Just as he jumped down, the displaced rock rolled a little further on its own, the vortex disappeared, the stars hid, and everything returned to its original state, so that no one could tell anything had been there.

After a moment, Chi Li flew past, not even glancing at the scattered rocks here, and rushed straight up the mountain.