Chapter 60

Several days later, there were already not many discussions in Liuzhu City about what had happened at the Goddess Shrine that day. People would only occasionally mention it with regret, such as when news of jiaoren from other cities reached Liuzhu City.

Xu Yizhuo heard news of many jiaoren deaths.

Some died from physical decline, some died by suicide. In short, just like the fate of the vast majority of their race after jiaoren entered the human race’s field of vision, they were unable to live out their natural lives.

There were fewer and fewer jiaoren in this world.

People suddenly realized that the little jiaoren who had died a few days ago seemed to be the only newborn jiaoren they had heard of in recent years. At some unknown point, there had no longer been news of any jiaoren being born.

This race seemed about to disappear from the world.

Thinking of this, people could not help sighing with regret. But how many of them were sighing for this race, and not for the new jiaoren pearls they would soon never be able to obtain again?

These past few days, the Goddess Shrine’s doors had remained tightly shut. Xu Yizhuo went once every morning, wanting to learn about the goddess’s current condition. If she stood far away and looked, she could only see the tightly closed vermilion doors of the Goddess Shrine. [Read on BaiLianTales]If she walked closer and was seen by the guards at the entrance, she would be politely advised to leave.

Xu Yizhuo had also thought about sneaking in. However, her stealth skills were truly not up to standard. One could say she had none at all. Entering the Goddess Shrine was easy, but entering the main hall was not. There were at least ten guards stationed there all day and night. And that was only what Xu Yizhuo could see from outside. As for how many people were inside the main hall, she had no way of knowing.

Xu Yizhuo still paid attention to the Goddess Shrine’s situation, but more cultivators had already shifted their attention away from the Goddess Shrine. They had not come to the Realm of Reincarnation to learn about a piece of the past, but for the tokens for Knocking on the Immortal Gate that would soon begin. For a time, the methods of obtaining jiaoren pearls became varied and strange. Obtaining them by challenging cultivators was the most common method, but there were also many methods Xu Yizhuo could not even think of, such as what Yuanwu was currently doing.

Yuanwu had been so busy these past few days that her feet barely touched the ground. Every day, she tracked the traces of the cultivators who had destroyed the Pearl Harvesting Office.

Xu Yizhuo did not even know how Yuanwu had thought of this method. The cultivators who dared rob the Pearl Harvesting Office were either too arrogant, or truly had some strength. The arrogant ones were caught first, while most of those with real skills were still “at large.”

They had avoided the guards of Liuzhu City, but they had failed to avoid Yuanwu.

In the Burning Mountain Secret Realm, Xu Yizhuo had discovered that Yuanwu had a special ability. She could easily see through others’ disguises. Even though the Burning Mountain Secret Realm’s cultivation was much higher than Yuanwu’s, Yuanwu had still seen through her true identity with one glance. As a result, those cultivators who disguised themselves and hid among the Liuzhu City residents were in trouble.

One night, Xu Yizhuo and Yuanwu went out together to look for food. The long street was crowded with people, and Xu Yizhuo’s attention was entirely on the shops by the road. She did not pay attention to the passersby’s monotonous stick-figure faces. When Yuanwu suddenly reached into the crowd and pulled out a cultivator, Xu Yizhuo was startled.

Yuanwu directly escorted that cultivator to Liuzhu City’s City Lord’s [stolen content]Manor. Even after the cultivator was locked in prison, he still could not figure out how he had been exposed.

There were no two people in the world whose spiritual power was exactly the same. Long ago, the cultivation world had developed all kinds of methods to record spiritual power, used to track cultivators who had committed crimes. But if it could be recorded, it could also be hidden. The cultivator Yuanwu dragged out had not only disguised his spiritual power, but had also put an illusion on his face to make it look like a stick-figure face and fool other cultivators.

“Disguises… Unless it is at the Tower Master’s level, any disguise is actually very difficult to work on me,” Yuanwu said to Xu Yizhuo very calmly as she put away the bounty from the City Lord’s Manor.

It was also at that time that Xu Yizhuo learned what Yuanwu had been doing when no one was around during the day.

She had accepted the bounty from the City Lord’s Manor. After obtaining the spiritual power records left by the cultivators who had participated in the robbery of the Pearl Harvesting Office that day, she tracked their traces through the city. Yuanwu’s efficiency was quite good, and her income was also fairly stable. Catching one person earned her a reward of one thousand jiaoren pearls. At the very least, she could catch one person a day. There were still more than ten people at large. Even catching one a day would be enough to last until the Realm of Reincarnation closed.

Moreover, the other cultivators had no way to deal with Yuanwu at all. They could not beat her, and they could not refuse either. After all, Yuanwu was not challenging them. She was merely arresting them and bringing them to justice.

If Yuanwu’s method of obtaining jiaoren pearls was taking the initiative, then Xu Yizhuo was purely waiting for people to come deliver themselves.

The cultivators defeated by her might have felt ashamed, or perhaps because they had stumbled at Xu Yizhuo’s hands and hoped others would also fall badly, Xu Yizhuo’s battle record did not spread widely. The vast majority of cultivators had no understanding of Xu Yizhuo’s strength and truly treated her as a little cultivator who had just broken through to Foundation Establishment.

Whenever Xu Yizhuo walked around the streets once a day, she could encounter several people who wanted to squeeze a soft persimmon.

Unfortunately, the current success rate was zero. Not only had Xu Yizhuo never been defeated, but she was also becoming increasingly smooth at beating people up.

At this moment, Xu Yizhuo was stepping on the Xuanwu Sword, flying swiftly out of Liuzhu City. She condensed a barrier for herself with spiritual power, and the biting wind at high altitude was blocked by the barrier. By the time it blew onto Xu Yizhuo, only a gentle breeze remained.

Her black hair was loose, her green robe fluttered gracefully, and she stepped on a sword in the sky. Xu Yizhuo felt that at this moment, she rather had the bearing of a cultivator.

Right now, she was chasing someone.

It was very rare, but Xu Yizhuo knew who this person who had come to challenge her was. Even rarer, this was currently the only person who could not beat Xu Yizhuo but had managed to seize a chance to run away.

Although it looked like she would not be able to run for much longer.

Xu Yizhuo stared at the small black dot in the distance. If Xu Yizhuo had not been so shocked by the sudden escape of a defeated opponent that she froze for quite a while, Yan Qiaoxin would never have been able to pull so far away from her.

The reason Xu Yizhuo knew the person Yan Qiaoxin was because among this batch of cultivators entering ​bailiantales.com​the Realm of Reincarnation, Xu Yizhuo’s cultivation ranked last from the bottom, and Yan Qiaoxin’s cultivation ranked second to last. The two of them had long since become famous among the cultivators and were synonymous with soft persimmons.

Only now, it seemed neither of them was a true soft persimmon.

Yan Qiaoxin’s appearance was androgynous, her voice was androgynous, and her clothing was also androgynous, but judging from the name, she should be a girl. Her cultivation was low, yes. On the surface, it was only a thread higher than Xu Yizhuo’s. However, this person had quite a lot of attainment in formations.

There were not many people in the cultivation world who specialized in formations. Most people learned some formations to assist their cultivation, but Yan Qiaoxin completely treated formations as her own cultivation path. If one underestimated her because of her cultivation, one would definitely suffer a huge setback.

If Yan Qiaoxin were given enough time to prepare formations in advance, even Yuanwu would find it rather difficult to defeat her.

When the cultivator with the second-lowest cultivation challenged the one with the lowest cultivation, she had been extremely cautious and had no intention of discussing fairness or justice. Yan Qiaoxin had set up seven formations at the challenge site beforehand. It would have been enough even to deal with Yuanwu. Who would have thought that the one ranked last would actually have the ability to overcome ten tricks with one force? Yan Qiaoxin had not even clearly seen what happened before the seven formations were violently destroyed by Xu Yizhuo in an instant.

Xu Yizhuo felt that her style was becoming more and more rough.

If it had been before, she might have earnestly opened her spiritual vision to look at the flow of spiritual power in the formations, thinking about whether she could use clever force to dismantle them. However, after being challenged by several people for multiple days in a row, Xu Yizhuo had unknowingly grown used to the method of ending battles quickly.

Surging spiritual power directly blasted the formations open.

Xu Yizhuo still could not quite release and withdraw the enormous spiritual power inside her body freely. Right now, she only knew how to release it, then quickly pull it back before it completely destroyed everything around her.

If anyone else did this, they would inevitably suffer backlash from their own spiritual power. But once Xu Yizhuo entered combat mode, all her stats truly reached their highest level. The meridians in her body could fully withstand spiritual power being released and withdrawn in such a short interval.

This operation was too simple and crude, which instead made Yan Qiaoxin unable to understand what exactly she had done.

Xu Yizhuo’s series of movements flowed as smoothly as clouds and water. A large amount of spiritual power had been used to break through defenses. Next, she could not beat people like this. Xu Yizhuo was afraid she might accidentally kill someone. So Xu Yizhuo took out an ordinary-looking mirror, held it in her palm, and slapped it downward. With a smack, Yan Qiaoxin was struck to the ground by an immense force, looking bewildered.

Xu Yizhuo had infused this strike with spiritual power. She had specifically chosen a mirror with lightning attributes. If it were anyone else, they would have been numbed to the point of being unable to move by the lightning spiritual power invading their meridians. However, Xu Yizhuo had not expected Yan Qiaoxin to have also placed a layer of formation on herself. That layer of formation blocked it for Yan Qiaoxin. She jumped onto a longsword and fled on her sword.

This was the first time Xu Yizhuo had seen someone still able to run away, so she froze for a while before chasing after her.

Before long, they had reached outside Liuzhu City.

Yan Qiaoxin seemed to only be good at formations. Her sword flight was terrible, and Xu Yizhuo was even afraid she would fall into the sea on her own.

How embarrassing that would be.

Xu Yizhuo resolved to be a good person. She jumped off the Xuanwu Sword and walked through the air. If Yan Qiaoxin turned around at this moment, she would discover that Xu Yizhuo looked much cooler without riding a sword than with one.

In reality, every cultivator could walk through the air, but most cultivators would choose sword flight or stepping on something else. Controlling the wind sweeping past one’s body or controlling the spiritual power that allowed one to float in the air was much harder than controlling a sword, and the consumption was terrifyingly large.

These happened to be problems Xu Yizhuo did not need to consider.

With the cultivation ranked last from the bottom, she did the same thing Jun Yu had done back in the Burning Mountain Secret Realm: riding the wind through the void. In the blink of an eye, she swept behind Yan Qiaoxin. Before Yan Qiaoxin could even see anyone, she first smelled the faint fragrance on Xu Yizhuo’s clothes.

Before she had time to show a horrified expression, Xu Yizhuo struck with an elbow and knocked Yan Qiaoxin, along with her sword, out of the sky.

The surface of the sea rose in waves several zhang high. Xu Yizhuo believed cultivators were all thick-skinned and sturdy. This bit of height should not be a problem for Yan Qiaoxin.

She also lightly landed on the [bailiantales.com]sea surface and smiled as she watched Yan Qiaoxin struggle to float up from the water.

Yan Qiaoxin: “…”

She really wanted to sink right now, sink all the way to the seabed and be done with it.

Xu Yizhuo asked her with a bright smile, “Still running?”

Yan Qiaoxin stared with dead-fish eyes, stopped struggling, and really just let herself sink.