Searching the City
Following Commander Feng, Chen Li rushed out of the city and to the gate where Xue Bai's carriage was waiting, where he would finally see the beings that forced him and his city into this perilous situation.
Xue Bai had been feeling suffocated inside the carriage, so he now sat in the driver's seat while the Wang Twins stood at the sides of the carriage showing their subservience.
Chen Li could also sense this, but since Commander Feng said that one of the servants was the one who engulfed the city, he didn't dare to treat them as servants.
And since the two of them were so obviously twins, Chen Li also assumed that both of them had either the same or extremely similar cultivation bases.
Chen Li, compared to the citizens inside of Ocean Breeze City, was a cultivator who stood at the Peak of the Muscle Nourishing Realm. And usually, his cultivation was more than enough to walk around unrivaled in the Barren Lands, but compared to Xue Bai's group, he was nothing but an ant.
He had expected not to be able to sense the cultivations of the twin servants, but what shocked him was that even the Young Miss was someone he couldn't see through! Not even sensing Xue Bai's cultivation base, Chen Li couldn't even detect an ounce of Spiritual Qi around him!
Concealing your own cultivation base wasn't hard, and with enough practice, anyone could do it with ease, but even if someone was a master at doing so, they couldn't completely hide all of their aura.
Which usually ended up in having some Spiritual Qi leak through, giving the observer a reasonable estimate of their cultivation base.
However, Chen Li couldn't even sense the leaking Spiritual Qi from Xue Bai, which meant that Xue Bai's cultivation was much higher than his own.
Chen Li was someone in his late forties and had spent his entire life cultivating to his current cultivation base, but a young girl not even halfway through puberty was not only stronger than him but stronger than him to the point he couldn't even see a wisp of his aura!
This, of course, wasn't the case, as Xue Bai was just wearing his usual cultivation-concealing artifact, but how could Chen Li know about that?
The Barren Lands didn't even have alchemists. So how could they have artifact refiners who knew about cultivation concealing artifacts?
In order to be a truly accepted side professional, one needed to at least be in the Qi Sea Realm. And to refine a cultivation-concealing artifact, one needed to at least be in the Law Engraving Realm since the process behind it was so intricate.
However, Chen Li thought that this was no time to ask questions to these mysterious immortals, so he forced down his curiosity and knelt down.
"Great Nobles, this lowly one is the City Lord of Ocean Breeze City, Chen Li. I am willing to follow your orders to my dying breath!" Chen Li earnestly spoke.
However, Xue Bai just waved it off casually. While he did look down on this barren region, he didn't care enough to show off here.
As much as he liked showing off, Xue Bai liked to do it to people of higher strength than himself. Doing it to bumpkins weaker than even himself would not only take the fun out of it but also make him feel bad.
It would be like bragging in front of a child about how much money you make yearly. It's incomparable and would only make him seem vain.
"City Lord, no need to be so humble. I'm no tyrant. I just need to search for a girl currently residing in your city." Xue Bai spoke simply.
Xue Bai's idea of recruiting her was to appear mysteriously and elegantly before 'recruiting' her. And while Zhu Que could easily misunderstand it, Xue Bai was positive he could dispel the hostile feelings that the girl had toward him.
Right now, Zhu Que wasn't the fearsome spear-wielding Ice Dragon Empress she would be in the future, but instead, a village girl carrying a burden far beyond her mentality could.
The fact that she hadn't collapsed into an emotional wreck at this point was something commendable.
And Xue Bai planned to take advantage of that. Like when he made friends with Huo Long before he became close-hearted and wise beyond his age. But now, Xue Bai planned to do the same with Zhu Que.
She had yet to receive the inheritance that made her the unparalleled genius she would become in the future. Coupled with the fact that her cultivation was almost nonexistent this early in the plot, Xue Bai was confident he could fool the girl.
'I'm giving her a background and protecting her from all the future calamities she'll face in the future. How could this be called immoral? Xue Bai consoled himself.
He also knew the personality of Zhu Que and that she had the habit of showing her emotions on her face, unlike Xiao Mo, who could keep a smile on his face while fighting against his mortal enemy.
So should Xue Bai ever start to aggravate her, he would be able to back up accordingly, and vice versa.
Away from his thoughts, Xue Bai had finished telling Chen Li what he planned to do, and after waving the man off, he turned to Big Wang.
"Big Wang, scan the city for a figure that looks like this." Then, Xue Bai spoke and described the appearance of Zhu Que to him.
Chen Li's appearance wasn't very needed, and Xue Bai only called him out as a formality. He didn't truly need the man's permission or help.
As Xue Bai was describing how Zhu Que looked to Wang Shu, in the room of an inconspicuous motel inside the city, a girl with a large cloak sat cultivating peacefully.
After awakening her Peak Earth-grade Martial Veins, Zhu Que had spent almost every moment she could cultivating.
She had heard of the legends of the mysterious cultivators who were Immortal, could seize the suns and moons with their hands, and control the cycle of reincarnation with a thought, but other than stories, she knew almost nothing about it.
These stories were, of course, extremely exaggerated by the people in the Barren Lands because in order to do anything even remotely similar to that, one needed to be in the Immortal Great Realm at the minimum.
But still, the legends she heard of, lies or not, gave her more than enough motivation to cultivate.
All Zhu Que knew was that if she became strong enough, she could maybe resurrect her parents, which was more than enough reason for her to cultivate.
So without daring to waste a second, she wanted to start cultivating, but without any information about it, she was stuck before even step 1.
Thankfully, she remembered how the Vein Transformation Realm worked from a hunter who lived in her village, so during the two weeks that had passed from her awakening, Zhu Que had started cultivating. And in the little time that she had, due to her great talent, she had already pathed out her Right Arm Vein and started to do her Left Arm's Vein.
Which was undoubtedly heaven-defying speed. Managing to reach the 1st of the Vein Transformation Realm in less than two weeks was impressive speed, but it still couldn't make her a genius.
Right now, Zhu Que was just about 15 years old, and a 15-year-old 1st stage Vein Transformation Realm cultivator wasn't a genius by any stretch of the imagination, but instead was something laughable by the Southern Continent's standard.
Of course, this couldn't be helped since she had only awakened her Martial Veins on her 15th birthday. But the sects wouldn't care about that and would deny her without care.
How could she explain herself?
"I awakened my Martial Veins at 15, so it didn't take me four years to reach the 1st stage but instead only one week."
Who would believe that? It was more likely they believed she was a God Great Realm cultivator's reincarnation.
And, since Zhu Que didn't even know the grade of her Marital Veins, she couldn't try and prove her talent to match her story. She could only compare her pace to others, and from the stories she heard of from other cultivators, Zhu Que learned that she was a genius.
ραпdα Йᴏνêl(сòm) 'Others take years to do what I did in less than two weeks! Were those words that came from the lightning bolt true?' Zhu Que couldn't help but wonder.
Like Huo Long, she was also struck by the lightning bolt and received the same message. Still, compared to Huo Long's wealth of knowledge coming from an aristocratic family in the Great Xuan Empire, Zhu Que didn't know how truly important it was and thought it was a hallucination.
She didn't know how talented she was, nor about the Baishen Plane at all. Zhu Que only knew that cultivation meant being strong. And if she was strong enough, she could bring back her parents.
'Mother, Father, Aunties, and Uncles, Little Que will bring you all back!' Zhu Que swore as she clenched her small fists.
The reason why she was living in Ocean Breeze City was that she had heard that the place where she lived didn't allow cultivators to grow very far. So Zhu Que planned to spend all of her money buying supplies before starting the long trek into the true cultivation world.
She had found a Low Yellow-grade Spatial Ring last week and was able to store all of the rations she had bought while also hiding them from any greedy eyes.
And today marked the day that she had planned to leave Ocean Breeze City and start her journey as a cultivator. But Zhu Que knew that the massive wealth she had exposed in the past few days had attracted many greedy eyes, so she wanted to wait until nightfall and take advantage of the darkness to escape the city.
So before the long journey, Zhu Que planned to rest and ready herself, but just before she closed her eyes, something crazy happened that made her question her grasp on reality.
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