Chapter 29: Point-Blank Scare (Part 1)

They split into two groups.

Pang Xiaolei led the large group with no combat ability down the mountain, while Chen Yi took Captain Sun and another Captain Liang, found a place, and rested on the spot.

They had brought field rations when they set out, just in case, and now they came in handy.

Chen Yi sat in the shade of a tree, opened the outer packaging of the rations, took one bite, and immediately frowned.

There was no water, so he could only force it down with his own saliva.

Captain Sun and Captain Liang were fine. These were all part of training. No matter how awful it tasted, they could eat it with blank expressions.

As they ate, they discussed the progress of the case with Chen Yi. Then Captain Sun said, “Aren’t cultivation methods supposed to be mysterious and unfathomable? From what I can see, we don’t have the ability to use flying swords, we can’t fly, and we don’t even have the storage spaces that are so common in cultivation novels. Otherwise, if everyone had a storage ring, we could pack food and drink whenever we went out on missions.”

Captain Liang laughed. “You even read cultivation novels?”

Captain Sun said, “Isn’t that normal studying? I’ve already entered Qi Refining. Am I not allowed to understand cultivation civilization? So...” Captain Sun changed the subject and looked at Chen Yi. “Sect Master, once we cultivate further, can we fly?”

“Yes.” Chen Yi answered with certainty. Under the gradually brightening gazes of the two captains, he said, “Sword flight definitely exists. Releasing spiritual energy outward to use spells exists too. Storage rings definitely exist as well. Whatever can be imagined exists.”

This alternate dimension, which had been born from a world built on an author’s imagination, contained every strange tale, immortal-hero fantasy, and magic civilization created by human imagination. They simply had not reached the strength required to touch them yet.

The future was worth looking forward to.

Following Chen Yi’s words, the two captains imagined it for a while. Finally, Captain Sun said, “This is the worst era, but because of Sect Master Chen, it has also become the best era. I can already imagine how huge a sensation it will cause throughout the world when our cultivation army appears!”

“Maybe other people have inherited magical civilizations too?”

“Can’t you think of something good?”

“The higher you fly, the harder you fall. I’m helping you build a cushion at the bottom, and you’re still blaming me.”

“No need! I’m just looking forward to the day when our Xia cultivation army sweeps across the Three Realms!”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk, my ass!”

The two old brothers bickered to pass the time, while Chen Yi listened beside them, amused.

He had thought Captain Ye was the only one who joked about life and death to make the best of suffering. It turned out this was the style shared by the veteran members of their guard teams.

When first encountering them, people might feel they were improper, unreliable, even a little indifferent to life and death and lacking sympathy. Only after truly interacting with them would one understand that they were indeed indifferent to life and death—but only to their own. It was the open-mindedness that came after setting their own lives aside.

Before transmigrating, there had been a popular saying online: there is no such thing as peaceful years; someone is carrying the burden for you.

Now, everyone Chen Yi saw with his own eyes was that kind of person.

So how could he demand that they must be solemn while handling cases? They had already handed over their own lives. What was there left to criticize?

After he had barely eaten a quarter of the field rations in his hand, Chen Yi completely lost his appetite.

He swallowed some saliva, moistening his dry throat, then stood and looked in the direction of the village chief’s house. “Let’s go. This time we’ll take a detour into the village. Don’t let them discover us.”

The two had no objections. They followed behind Chen Yi and plunged straight into the woods.

Without ordinary people restricting them, even in the mountain forest, their travel speed was very fast. It was not long before they circled around to the outside of the village. Not far ahead was the village chief’s house.

Chen Yi said there was something abnormal about the village chief’s house, and the two naturally believed him. They were only curious about what the abnormality was.

“Could the person be locked up there?”

“Probably not. Didn’t Little Pang say the traces were already very old?”

“But aberrations can’t be causing trouble in broad daylight, right? Aberrations can’t come out during the day. Even if our flesh and blood smells delicious, that iron rule doesn’t change.”

“Then what is that red cloud? And that moon-platform disk... tsk, it’s kind of disgusting just thinking about it. I went on a mission once before where the aberration domain was a moon-platform disk. Back then, we didn’t have any way to deal with it yet. I almost didn’t make it out. The rotten flesh and blood vessels inside were a lifelong nightmare.”

“When I reach the third tier, the first thing I’m going to learn is Aura Observation. I suggest everyone in the Demon Suppression Bureau learn it. Being able to see abnormalities at a glance like the Sect Master does is pretty good.”

Chen Yi silently listened to their conversation. The Aura Concealing Technique operated shallowly, often making him “disappear” from the two men’s perception, only for him to suddenly be mentioned again at some point.

Chen Yi gave an “Mm,” identified a direction, and stopped heading toward the village chief’s house.

The two followed behind him, curious. “Wasn’t there something wrong with the village chief’s house? This is heading into the woods.”

Chen Yi looked toward the direction from which the red clouds were rising. So it was not the village chief’s house, but the woods.

They continued forward for another five or six minutes. At some unknown point, the trees around them suddenly became much taller. Branches twisted and tangled together, connecting into a vast, thick canopy that almost completely blocked out the blazing sunlight.

By the time they came back to themselves, Chen Yi and the others had already gone deep into the darkness.

Their vision was blurry. It seemed impossible to see anything beyond an arm’s length. Underfoot, it felt as if they were stepping on rotten objects. Every step sank deep and soaked the tops of their feet.

The air was too damp and stifling, and it smelled especially foul.

Chen Yi blinked, then circulated the Delusion-Piercing Eye Technique again.

The level of the Delusion-Piercing Eye Technique was too high, and that also had drawbacks. His strength was limited now, so he could no longer maintain it for longer periods the way he had when he first cultivated it. Otherwise, both his eyes would ache violently, and his head would feel like it was splitting open.

Now, he could only circulate the technique when he needed to use it. Five seconds was the limit his body could endure.

The layered flower deep in his pupils appeared quietly, rotating slowly. Golden flowing light streamed from the petals like fine, thin quicksand, flowing into a corner deep within his eyes.

His pitch-black field of vision suddenly brightened.

A woman wearing red clothes, with disheveled hair and eyes with no whites, appeared before him with a deathly pale, ferocious face.

“!!!”

Too close!

Too sudden!

Before Chen Yi could even cry out in alarm, Captain Sun’s voice was faster than his.

“Snake! Snake! There’s a snake!! Holy shit!!”

Captain Sun’s howl called Chen Yi’s startled soul back.

He had seen plenty of aberrations by now, and Chen Yi’s fear threshold for aberrations was high. If not for this startling, point-blank scare, he would not have been frightened so easily.

Now that he had come back to himself, he realized that the female aberration in red was only floating in front of him and staring straight at him. She did not seem aggressive.

What truly made his scalp tingle, however, was that there was not only this one female aberration in red. Around them, seven or eight more densely surrounded them, and there seemed to be more deeper inside.

They drifted like wandering souls. Their eyes, which had no whites, stared at them just like that. There was no emotion inside them, no grief, no joy, no anger, no resentment.

Chen Yi raised his hand and snapped his fingers.

With a crisp snap, a ball of light from the Light Technique rose from his fingertip, illuminating everything before him.

Chen Yi stopped using the Delusion-Piercing Eye Technique and blinked his slightly sore eyes.

He looked again at the empty woods ahead, focusing especially on the position of the female aberration who had given him the “point-blank scare.” After confirming that there really was no threat, Chen Yi finally withdrew his gaze and looked toward the screaming Captain Sun.

He did not know whether it was because space here was twisted, or because he had been walking too fast, but the two captains who should have been following closely beside him were actually five or six meters away.

Captain Sun’s wrists and legs had only been tangled by vines, not the snakes he had claimed.

Captain Liang had fallen even further behind. He also wore a startled, unsettled expression, as if he had encountered something.

In this kind of dim environment, the Light Technique was practically an instant-kill move.

Captain Sun, who had come back to himself, broke free of the vines and came to Chen Yi’s side. He looked fervently at the ball of light Chen Yi held in his hand and said, “I suggest everyone in the Demon Suppression Bureau learn the Light Technique.”

Captain Liang was still shaken, his expression grave. “This place doesn’t feel right. Just now, I vaguely felt like I’d encountered an aberration domain. It’s clearly still daytime. Was that my imagination?”

Chen Yi shook his head. “It wasn’t your imagination. This is yin land.”

Captain Sun wiped the drool from the corner of his mouth and said solemnly, “You mean aberrations really were causing trouble just now?”

“In a while, this place might truly become very dangerous. But right now, it is still far from ready. Don’t even mention us—even ordinary people, as long as they still want to live and can still walk, could leave smoothly. So it doesn’t count as aberrations causing trouble yet.”

After Chen Yi finished speaking, he took down the sword case on his back and opened it.

Inside the sword case lay two swords quietly.

One was a large peachwood sword, fifteen centimeters wide and about one and a half meters long.

The other sword rested in its sheath. The sheath had a black base with silver patterns. Its material seemed like steel yet not steel, jade yet not jade. It was not a material found on the current planet. This was precisely the “Standard Weapon: Sword” issued by the sect mission.

Chen Yi took the sword in his hand. Its weight felt neither light nor heavy, exactly right. He held the one-meter narrow sword, circulated his master-level Sword Manipulation, and spiritual energy spread across the sword blade.

One breath in and one breath out.

The blue tassel swept through the air. The sword left its sheath, and a sharp edge flashed into view.

In the next instant, Chen Yi was already standing in a bow stance, the sword held level in midair.

A cool breeze swept past.

Creaking sounds rang out.

Three trees, each as thick as an adult’s thigh and growing tightly together, slowly tilted until they toppled over.

A large hole opened in the canopy overhead. A beam of sunlight shone down from above, instantly driving away all the cold.

“Holy shit!”

What could one do with no culture? One “holy shit” carried you through the world.

Captain Sun and Captain Liang were dumbfounded.

This was unscientific. These were trees, not tofu, all right? And they were cut just like that?

Chen Yi withdrew his stance and studied the sword in his hand for a moment. Then he said, “A weapon specially made for cultivators. Although it is only the most basic entry-level weapon, it has the effect of guiding spiritual energy into the sword. Rather than saying I was chopping with the blade just now, it would be more accurate to say I was cutting with spiritual energy.”

After he explained, his gaze landed on the two captains’ faces. He asked, “Which of you learned Sword Manipulation?”

“...”

The two captains’ faces fell as they watched Chen Yi continue using the sword to chop down trees, looking as if they had missed out on a hundred million.

In order to gradually build combat power as quickly as possible, the Night Watchers sent by the Demon Suppression Bureau to train in the sect all followed a strict standardized training process.

First was entering Qi Refining.

Only after entering Qi Refining could they come into contact with aberrations and gain the qualifications to stand on the same battlefield as them.

After that, the first choice of technique was Spirit-Charge Fist.

The Night Watchers were all selected talents from the military and guard teams. In their original units, they had all learned military boxing and had a foundation in fist techniques, which allowed them to pick up the cultivation technique more quickly.

Time had been too short, and the need too urgent. So this batch of special trainees, Captain Ye included, had not learned to use any other weapons.

Who made it so the cultivation world did not need guns?

As for the development of more techniques, that would have to wait until they had more capacity later, when training could be assigned according to need.

In short, the current situation was this: Chen Yi, a master swordsman, was holding a cultivation-world weapon and destroying the environment in the forest by cutting down large trees.

Anyone else would start with at least ten years.

But under his full effort, the entire yin land was gradually filled with sunlight, becoming warm and gentle.

That terrifying, cold feeling was gone.

Chen Yi even found time to scan with the Delusion-Piercing Eye Technique. All the red-clothed wandering souls had vanished. This was also the result of his destruction of the yin land.

If he had not come to this world, in a few more years, an extremely terrifying urban legend would definitely have been born here.

But now...

Chen Yi lifted his head and glanced at the sky. Without the nourishment of the red clouds above the yin land, that bloody moon-platform disk was also rapidly collapsing.

Another day of saving humanity.

“Sect Master!”

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