Ch14 – Exhausting One’s Schemes

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Translator: transcendentwings

Editor: teaff 

The Beast Hide Person was already crippled and now his heart was also shaken and his mind was unstable.
On top of it all, Xu Xingzhi forcibly created a crack using a dagger and that crack ruptured into a chasm of thousands of kilometers.
Now he wholeheartedly desired a quick death so that he could be liberated after he realized that his situation was completely hopeless.

He said: “I carry the fragment on my person, it’s on my body.”

 

 

After Xu Xingzhi and Zhou Wang exchanged a glance, he released the Beast Hide Person’s oily dregs while Zhou Wang raised her foot and returned the dagger back into the shaft of her leather boot.

Xu Xingzhi wasn’t in a hurry to start patting him down as he asked: “Where did you hide the fragment?” 

The Beast Hide Person answered: “Buried in my body, close to my stomach.”

 

Xu Xingzhi furrowed his brow: “.
.
.
You certainly went all out.”

He didn’t know if it was because of the angle, but the Beast Hide Person’s smile looked slightly treacherous in that moment: “In this savage wasteland, if I don’t go all out, then I’m afraid that I would’ve long died without a bone to be found.
This key fragment alone can attract a gang of death warriors who want to use it to escape the wasteland alone.
How could I not hide it properly?”

Before Xu Xingzhi could speak, Zhou Wang already yanked the cold iron dagger that she had just resheathed out.

 

Xu Xingzhi reached out his hand to block it: “What are you doing?”

“Digging for the key.” Zhou Wang approached the Beast Hide Person, “My uncle and godfather have been looking for it for 13 years.”

Xu Xingzhi continued: “Didn’t you hear him say that the key was buried inside of his body? He is a man and you are a girl, you can’t see such filthy things.”

Zhou Wang was surprised: “My uncle has guided me since I was child.
.
.” 

Xu Xingzhi seized the dagger from her hand: “That’s because your uncle doesn’t know how to teach.
.
.
.
Close your eyes, stand by the wall, when I say you can turn back around, you can do so.”

Zhou Wang gave him a slight eye roll, but still obediently walked over to the wall.

Xu Xingzhi tore open the lapel of the Beast Hide Person and saw rough skin that was polished by wind and sand and the twisted snake-like scar coiled around his muscles which was about two fingers long and made for a very shocking sight.

Xu Xingzhi spent a long time trying to pick a spot for him to insert the dagger, when he suddenly turned around to ask Zhou Wang: “How long have Meng Chongguang and the others been gone?” 

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Zhou Wang answered as she faced the wall: “About the better half of an hour.”

Xu Xingzhi exclaimed ah: “Then they should be returning soon.”

Zhou Wang was very clever and soon came to a realization: “Xu-shixiong can’t bear to bring the dagger down ba.”

Xu Xingzhi: “.
.
.” 

In all honesty, Xu Xingzhi had always acted unrestrainedly in the real world with a vague line between good and evil, and he often had rebellious and non-conforming thoughts.
If his life was in danger, then he would most certainly be as merciless as he was when he slew the Razor Blade Monster, but the Beast Hide Person was simply lying sprawled on the ground in front of him, just like a pig waiting for slaughter, making Xu Xingzhi somewhat unable to bring the dagger down.

Zhou Wang intended to turn back around: “.
.
.
Just let me do it ba.”

 

“Don’t.” Xu Xingzhi immediately slid over to block the Beast Hide Person’s bare body, “You’re not allowed to look, turn around.”

He cast his gaze back on the Beast Hide Person and then suddenly asked in curiosity: “Can you operate with your eyes shut?” 

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection.
If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

Zhou Wang: “.
.
.”

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.
.”

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Lf abbx j vffq ygfjat jcv fzqfiifv jii atf aegylv jlg ogbw tlr iecur: “Mbgufa la, atlr xfs kbeivc’a vlrjqqfjg jcs alwf rbbc, ifa’r mbcalcef joafg Zfcu Jtbcuuejcu gfaegcr.”

He was about to turn around when the Beast Hide Person suddenly called out and stopped him: “I also know one more thing, do you want to hear it?” 

Xu Xingzhi nodded: “You may speak.”

The grin on the Beast Hide Person’s face became more and more twisted: “Bring your ear close and I’ll tell you.”

Xu Xingzhi abruptly realized that something was not matching up.

Zhou Wang already lost her patience.
She stalked back and snatched the dagger from Xu Xingzhi’s hand. 

Since she was able to swing those two giant blades, her stamina should not be underestimated.
Once Xu Xingzhi’s hand was emptied and he lifted his gaze again, he was surprised to find that Zhou Wang’s face had long lost her usual indifference.
It was as if a starving wolf had finally caught a glimpse of lively prey, she couldn’t wait to immediately skewer the Beast Hide Person and open him up.

Xu Xingzhi placed a hand on her shoulder to hold her back: “Don’t come any closer.
There’s something fis.
.
.”

However, Zhou Wang didn’t bother to acknowledge what he was saying and just brushed Xu Xingzhi aside.

Zhou Wang had quite a small figure and her height wasn’t even up to Xu Xingzhi’s shoulder, so although Xu Xingzhi expected her strength to not be weak, he still didn’t expect her to be this strong. 

The same moment Xu Xingzhi was thrown to the side in a somersault, Zhou Wang raised the dagger and brought it down, plunging it through the belly of the Beast Hide Person in the blink of an eye.

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The pig iron buried itself into the abdomen, yet no trace of pain could be found on the Beast Hide Person’s face.
Instead, the contorted smile was magnified to an almost exaggerated degree as if the corners of his mouth would almost split open.

Zhou Wang hadn’t been able to react yet when Xu Xingzhi already lunged over and shoved Zhou Wang backwards!

Being close to the wound on the Beast Hide Person, Xu Xingzhi witnessed a ball of light that was concealed in his bloody flesh suddenly flash out of the open wound in the Beast Hide Person’s abdomen.
The white light dazzled his eyes and shimmered before them until he felt a burning, stinging like pain. 

—The Beast Hide Person buried the key within his body but he had also embedded a coiled strand of spiritual energy with it.
That way, if someone wanted to open up his body to retrieve the key, he would rather mobilize that bit of spiritual power to blow up the key fragment and gain a chance to perish together than give the key up in vain to others!

Seeing that it was impossible to avoid, when Xu Xingzhi stretched out his hands to block it, he was already prepared to suffer the consequences.

 

However, a warm embrace came before the pain could hit, and Xu Xingzhi was firmly enfolded into the shadow of the hold.

That pair of arms didn’t dare to exert any force and only loosely circled around Xu Xingzhi’s shoulders as if they were protecting a dreamscape that would shatter into pieces at a touch. 

A hug full of the fragrance of plants allowed Xu Xingzhi to lock on the person’s identity instantly.

He opened his eyes and ran head-on into Meng Chongguang’s gaze.

Xu Xingzhi has never seen a gaze such as this before in his entire life.
It was like the sea, deep, gentle, and bottomless.
But it also always seemed to have a whirlpool hidden away under the lull, ready to swallow up the person before it at any time.
It seemed to wish to entangle with the other inseparably even at the cost of one’s own life, unwilling to rest even until death.

Xu Xingzhi was stared at until a shiver went down his spine, and for a moment, the air was so hot and dry that he became so choked up that he ended up forgetting what he had wanted to say. 

Meng Chongguang hugged him and spoke to him softly in a low voice as if he were very aggrieved, exceedingly like a little puppy dog: “Shixiong, you’re running around again, why didn’t you wait in the room until I returned?”

His beautifully shaped and graceful lips hovered near the space above Xu Xingzhi’s nose, and the heat exhaled from his mouth directly brushed over Xu Xingzhi’s face until he flushed crimson as if he were being steamed.

The inadvertent, fleeting touch at the corner of his lips last night, and the “Lord Rabbit” mentioned by the Beast Hide Person just before, further coupled with the faint ticklish feeling on Xu Xingzhi’s ears that were being teased by his breath and tone of voice, disturbed Xu Xingzhi’s state of mind into a disorderly mess.
Merely sputtering the word “you” made his throat tighten in bursts.

A smile was hooked on the corner of Meng Chongguang’s lips. 

If his smile was placed on the face of any mediocre-looking person, it would inevitably be contrived with the suspicion of being dramatized.
However, on his face it was so charming that it made people stare open-mouthed in wonder: “.
.
. Shixiong is really cute.”

As soon as the atmosphere between the two became a maelstrom of ambiguity, Zhou Wang, who snapped out of her stunned state, rushed over: “Xu-shixiong, are you hurt?”

Xu Xingzhi had a bit of a guilty conscience and pushed Meng Chongguang away.

Meng Chongguang was caught off guard and was shoved back two steps, his face laden with injury. 

When Zhou Wang saw that Xu Xingzhi was completely unharmed to the point that even his headdress crown wasn’t crooked, she finally calmed down.
Only then did she remember the matter of the key fragment as she pointed to the Beast Hide Person and exclaimed: “The key!”

With this reminder, Xu Xingzhi thoroughly woke up from his trance and removed himself from Meng Chongguang’s arms to check-up on the Beast Hide Person’s condition.

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Having been so resolutely cast aside by his Shixiong, Meng Chongguang immediately became blue in the face and secretly stomped his feet in anger, unnoticed by anyone else.

It would’ve been okay if he didn’t look, but Xu Xingzhi nearly threw up. 

The look of triumph on the Beast Hide Person’s face was already grotesquely contorted into a mask of pain, distorted until it didn’t even seem human anymore.
His abdomen was wounded by the burst of spiritual power that blasted a hole several inches deep, but the spiritual power didn’t spread any further.
Instead, it was wrapped in a ball of vermillion light created by a stronger spiritual power where the mangled flesh and blood were gnarled in a lump and roiling turbulently within.

Judging from the intensity of the tumbling movements, if Meng Chongguang hadn’t intervened, this small room would’ve been leveled by now.

 

And further in the depths of the bloody hole, a fragment of something like broken jade was faintly visible, glowing softly.

Zhou Wang ignored the filth and immediately fished out the broken jade with her hand. 

The Beast Hide Person’s final trap fell through.
He couldn’t beg for mercy and was unable to seek death.
Due to his physical deformities, he couldn’t even roll over.

He howled harshly: “Give me death! Just let me die ba! Kill me ah!”

Amid the Beast Hide Person’s screeching, Meng Chongguang pushed Xu Xingzhi and Zhou Wang towards the door: “Shixiong, Zhou Wang, both of you, leave, be careful that he might go crazy again and injure you.” His gaze couldn’t be more sincere, “.
.
.
I will take care of everything.”

Zhou Wang obtained the treasure of her heart’s desire, so of course she didn’t want to bother wasting any more words on the Beast Hide Person.
Xu Xingzhi was choked by the bloody odor filling the air here and also had no desire to linger any longer. 

After the two left, the smiling expression in Meng Chongguang’s eyes was instantly snuffed out and the light in his eyes slowly became sharp as he slowly swept his gaze across the Beast Hide Person’s entire body.

Soon, he crouched down and stimulated his spiritual power to clear the Beast Hide Person’s meridians for him.

“Relax, I will preserve your life.” Meng Chongguang immediately retrieved his previously childish countenance, his tone overly gentle, “.
.
.
You’ll regret not killing yourself in the explosion this time.”

The Beast Hide Person look of hatred cracked and a gurgling sound bubbled up in his throat, but he was unable to even let out the least bit of a scream. 

A piece of broken jade laid in Zhou Wang’s blood-stained palm as she walked out of the small room.
She couldn’t help but wipe it repeatedly with the lapels of her clothes, like a child who earned a piece of candy, revealing a rare joyous expression.

After exiting, she directly caught sight of a person and took the initiative to run up and greet them: “Godmother, where is Godfather, we’ve obtained a great object!”

Initially, hearing Zhou Wang call out “Godmother”, Xu Xingzhi who had followed her out of the small room, was under the impression that there was another woman residing within the tower whom he hadn’t crossed paths with yet.

However, with a closer look, he was trapped between laughter and tears. 

The one Zhou Wang had called “Godmother” was a man that was dressed in what Xu Xingzhi remembered as the robes worn by disciples of Danyang Peak.
He seemed too frail to bear the weight of the clothing, and his face was pale as if he had just recovered from a severe ailment, but even so, there was still quite a bit of color in his complexion.

He had a beauty different from that of Meng Chongguang.
If one had to make a comparison, the temperament of the person before him was similar to that of a Huadan on the stage of a theatrical group, a weak woman with a frail and delicate physique.

.
.
.
It really did comply with the word “mother” in Godmother.

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The man’s voice was also very soft and dainty, which made it difficult to distinguish whether it was a male or female voice upon hearing it for the first time: “Wh, What is it?” 

Zhou Wang was just about to explain everything that happened in the small room when the man slightly stammered: “If anything, if there’s anything, let’s go to Xiao-Lu’s room to continue ba.
He.
.
.
took an arrow through the shoulder, and was hurt pretty badly.
Yuan, Yuan-shijie is currently treating him.”

Hearing the name Lu Yujiu, the ghostly cultivating youth with a baby face immediately surfaced before Xu Xingzhi’s eyes from the memories of the original owner.

 

And he was rendered into a daze for a while.

That year, in order to save the disciples of other sects whom couldn’t even be considered his acquaintances, he had almost become the Feiyi’s meal. 

Why would such a person commit the theft of the divine artifacts and be sentenced to the savage wasteland?

Having lived together in the wasteland for so many years, everyone had long connected their hearts as one and so hearing that Lu Yujiu was injured, how would Zhou Wang be able to continue sitting still? She cupped the fragment and immediately strode for a particular room.

When he caught sight of Xu Xingzhi, who closely followed behind Zhou Wang out of the room, the exquisite man didn’t evade and took the initiative to approach and greeted him timidly: “I heard Qu-xiong say, that Xu-shixiong was here, but, but two days ago when I came back from Nan Mountain looking for spiritual stones, you were still lying in bed, ill, and unable to get up, so I didn’t.
.
.
didn’t come greet you.
Does Xu-shixiong still remember me?”

Xu Xingzhi: “.
.
.” 

While he was struggling to comb through the original owner’s memories and pick out a trace of the person before him, the other had smiled first: “Xu-shixiong.
.
.
it’s normal to not remember.
Last time, last time I saw Xu-shixiong, I.
.
.
was still a kid who was a crybaby.”

Xu Xingzhi slightly furrowed his brows: “.
.
.
You’re Tao Xian?”

During Xu Xingzhi’s conversation with Qu Chi, he once heard Qu Chi mention a person named “Tao Xian”.

At the time, although he didn’t show it on his face, he already had some reservations in his heart. 

.
.
.
This “Tao Xian” was extremely strange.

Of course, it wasn’t that his speech and behavior was unusual, rather it was Tao Xian’s existence itself that was an oddity.

—Not only did he not exist in the memory of the original owner, but neither did he appear in the novella that Xu Xingzhi had written himself.

He seemed to have appeared out of thin air, but was accepted as a trustworthy person by Meng Chongguang and welcomed into this seven-person team in the wasteland. 

Was there really something extraordinary about this girly little stutterer?

The author has something to say:

Please take note that the only clear-cut CP in this book is Shixiong and Chongguang little miao~

Author's Chapter Summary:
Trap, Tao Xian, sissy.