“Ugh~”
After a long while, Lu Qiancha slowly woke up inside the cave, stretching like a lazy young wolf, her bones faintly creaking.
She tilted her head, her clear eyes scanning the empty grass mat beside her, her small mouth slightly open: “Gone already…”
Somewhat disinterested, she shook her head, but her peripheral vision was suddenly caught by a magical treasure quietly lying on the ground.
Instantly, the little wolf cub’s mood lifted greatly, happily tucking the treasure away while exclaiming sincerely, “What a truly wonderful person! Leaving such a generous gift behind, so thoughtful!”
Humming an off-key cheerful tune, Lu Qiancha stepped out of the cave just as a sliver of moonlight pierced through the mist, falling right upon the path ahead.
This picturesque moment stirred a faint pang of literary sentimentality in her heart.
She seriously looked up at the moon, racking her brain for a fitting line of poetry. But after much thought, all she could manage was half a line — “I lift my head to gaze at the bright m—”
“Ahem!” Realizing her poetic mood was a bit forced, Lu Qiancha awkwardly turned away and decisively pulled out a crumpled map. Time to get serious—continue searching for the Essence-Returning Fruit!
After all this effort, she still felt a tinge of dissatisfaction in her heart.
“Just keep heading north a few more days.”
Lu Qiancha muttered to herself, then leaned forward, dashing swiftly toward the snowy lands she had chosen in the north.
The further north she went, the more endless silver-white stretched before her, biting cold to the bone. Yet, stepping into this frozen world didn’t feel piercingly cold to Lu Qiancha.
Instead, it was like plunging into water on a scorching summer day, every pore tingling with a refreshing chill.
Three days after rescuing Shangguan Yunzhu, Lu Qiancha still hadn’t found any Essence-Returning Fruit.
Instead, by delving deeper into Bei Juluzhou, she harvested many useful spiritual herbs and rare medicines.
She even caught two precious Jinchi Luyu Spiders. These insects were highly venomous and could be taken back to refine into potent poisons.
While poisonous creatures were valuable, the absence of the target fruit left Lu Qiancha pouting in frustration.
“No way…” She grumbled while pressing forward.
“Though rare, the Essence-Returning Fruit is an extremely wicked poison that can melt souls and spirits into chaos.”
“Mortal contact means instant death; immortals who swallow it lose their three souls and seven spirits in mere moments, dissolving like ice in boiling water or spring frost in a furnace!”
“Who in their right mind would casually gather such a lethal, child-dooming herb?”
And yet, every region she had explored perfectly matched the fruit’s growing environment, but not a single seedling appeared…
It was downright ghostly.
Could it be that all the medical and poison texts she had studied in her spare time were fake?
“As expected, it’s just my master’s bad luck.”
Lu Qiancha shook her head and comforted herself with that, banishing her dissatisfaction and beginning to consider when she should leave this place.
Just three hundred more miles west!
If she still couldn’t find it, she’d have to give up and return to town to see if anyone was selling Essence-Returning Fruit.
Quickening her pace, Lu Qiancha’s short legs left afterimages as she pushed on to complete the final leg of her search.
Five miles, ten miles, fifty miles… All she could see was vast snowy ridges and jagged ice rocks, without the slightest sign of success.
After a hundred miles, although no Essence-Returning Fruit was found, she unexpectedly gathered several rare spiritual herbs used to make the Rebirth Pill…
“No use stacking up all these auxiliary herbs without the main ingredient…”
She sighed deeply, preparing to grit her teeth and advance another few dozen miles.
Suddenly, the spiritual energy of the world fluctuated—someone was dueling!
Lu Qiancha’s spirit perception immediately spread toward the source of the disturbance.
The duel was about twenty miles away, and with her spiritual awareness, she only caught glimpses of several shifting and dodging figures…
Holding to her principle of neither stirring up trouble nor fearing it, a warning bell rang in her heart. Her little feet instinctively began moving away from the battlefield.
As the saying goes, a gentleman doesn’t stand beneath a crumbling wall. It seemed this journey into Bei Juluzhou would have to end in regret… Hm?
Suddenly, Lu Qiancha’s spirit perception tingled sharply. She detected a few unremarkable green vines lightly swaying beneath a cliff not far away, their tips hanging several bright red small spheres.
Like red pearls, their patterns looked like countless bones intertwined.
Essence-Returning Fruit!
The Essence-Returning Fruit that could poison an immortal soul and severely damage the spirit of a terrestrial immortal!
Judging by the number of veins, the central fruit was at least two thousand years old, with the surrounding fruits growing for at least a millennium each.
Lu Qiancha was so excited she nearly jumped up, her tail wagging like a giant broom.
No, no, stay calm. The herb’s not in hand yet—too early to celebrate. Once it’s secured, then she could be happy!
Let’s get to work!
Lu Qiancha took out her Demon Cube, and with a twist of her mind, a sparkling Fanghuan Pearl appeared in her palm.
Immediately, a gust of wind rose beneath her feet as she executed the Yunhai Wandering Dragon Steps to perfection.
Her petite figure almost became an elusive blue mist, shooting like lightning toward the Essence-Returning Fruit under the cliff!
As she moved, her spreading spirit perception finally traced the battlefield clearly—it was Shangguan Yunzhu!
But unlike the determined resolve she showed that day in the cave, now Yunzhu was struggling to weave through the violent magical lights, fleeing desperately.
Chasing after her were four deeply powerful men in black. Their attacks were ruthless and overwhelming, yet each strike was carefully aimed to avoid fatal points on Shangguan Yunzhu’s body.
Their intent was obvious: capture her alive.
Lu Qiancha raised an eyebrow, puzzled why Shangguan Yunzhu would come here. The southeastern path was the exit of Bei Juluzhou, after all. Could she also be searching for some kind of medicinal herb?
Lu Qiancha recalled Qingfeng Senior Brother mentioning Chifeng Grass on the flying boat… But that fire-element herb couldn’t possibly grow deep in such frozen tundra, could it?
“Whatever!” Lu Qiancha scoffed inwardly, thinking, “I already did a good deed rescuing her once. Get me involved again? Does this young master have an endlessly kind heart and answer every call? Especially when—”
Her spirit perception swept over the four black-clad men like leeches on bones, and her expression darkened.
All four were peak Huanshen cultivators, and one was even half a step into Refining Void! This was a mess she couldn’t afford to touch.
The priority was to snatch the fruit in the chaos and then make a swift exit!
Let Xuanmo Shigu worry about this mess.
With her plan set, Lu Qiancha was about to silently approach the vines—
No!
An extremely subtle yet cold sensation of a binding restriction suddenly reached the edge of her spirit perception!
“…?”
Lu Qiancha detected a strange pattern etched in the snow, its center the very vine bearing the Essence-Returning Fruit.
This meant… the fruit had an owner.
No wonder there were no fierce beasts guarding nearby…
But giving up this Essence-Returning Fruit? Impossible.
That array, however, she absolutely couldn’t touch personally…
She then shifted her gaze away from the dangerous formation to the distant battlefield where Shangguan Yunzhu was barely escaping death, and a bold and… “helpful” plan instantly formed in her mind.
Maybe… she could do a favor with the flow?
Just as her thoughts turned swiftly, her spirit perception caught two new auras suddenly entering the edges of the battlefield.
Compared to the black-clad men, Lu Qiancha was somewhat familiar with these two.
The Palace General Qiong Gong from that certain kingdom.
And a fellow disciple from Zaohua Peak, Qingfeng Senior Brother.