Chronicles of Heaven's Chosen - Chapter 18

Yuan Yao merely smiled. “Because I like it.”

No one dared compliment her taste.

System 250’s announcement sounded in her sea of consciousness.

【Target Cang Li’s Awakening Value has reached 13. Target Yan Haonan’s Awakening Value has reached 15. Target Weng Mingshu’s Awakening Value has reached 10…】

【Congratulations, Host. You have successfully won over four targets and gained four days of life. Your current remaining lifespan has reached nine days.】

Yuan Yao grew thoughtful. She could not help looking at her Third Senior Brother.

If Awakening Value was the same as favorability, shouldn’t his value be much higher?

Why was Third Senior Brother’s Awakening Value even lower than Yan Haonan’s?

That proved Awakening Value was not the same as favorability—though it might include favorability as one component.

Cang Li noticed her staring. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m tired,” Yuan Yao answered out of habit.

Cang Li’s expression immediately darkened. He pulled her aside and began examining her injuries. Only then did he discover that she was hurt even more severely than Weng Mingshu.

Yet nothing in her behavior had betrayed it.

Looking closely now, he saw that her face was utterly bloodless.

Cang Li curled one finger and tapped her forehead in rebuke.

“I’ll find someone to dress your wounds,” he said helplessly.

He was a physician, but some of her injuries were in rather private places. His Little Junior Sister was grown now. They needed to observe the proper boundaries between men and women.

From childhood until today, she had suffered nothing worse than a few bumps and scrapes. She had never been this badly wounded, and Cang Li had rarely needed to treat her.

“Here. Take these first.”

He lifted her hand and placed two third-rank Spirit-Healing Pills in her palm. Then he walked over and said a few words to Yan Haonan.

Yan Haonan sent a female Tianyun Sect disciple to tend Yuan Yao’s wounds.

Yuan Yao swallowed both pills at once. Afterward, she noticed the surrounding cultivators giving her strange looks.

Soon, she heard them whispering.

“Those are third-rank pills! One would have been enough, but she ate two. What a waste!”

“I hear Cang Li is a third-rank alchemist…”

“What? He’s actually a third-rank alchemist?”

Alchemists were vanishingly rare in the cultivation world, much less a teenage third-rank alchemist.

The way everyone looked at Cang Li changed again and again. Several people immediately approached him with polite conversation, plainly hoping to establish a friendly connection.

Yuan Yao was speechless.

With the Tianyun disciple’s help, her wounds were soon properly dressed.

“Thank you.” Yuan Yao smiled at the girl.

The disciple smiled and shook her head. “There’s no need. Fellow Daoist Cang compensated me.”

Cang Li had given her a second-rank Spirit-Healing Pill.

“Your senior brother treats you so well,” the disciple added enviously.

After that battle, anyone with eyes could see how fiercely Cang Li protected his Little Junior Sister.

Yuan Yao looked up at Cang Li, who was speaking animatedly with several cultivators nearby.

“He does.”

Once the Tianyun disciple left, Cang Li came over.

“Does it still hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Then suffer through it. You’re the one who came here looking for hardship.”

“Cang Li, do you even know how to talk to people?”

“No.”

“I’m going to tell Master you bullied me!”

“How did I bully you? Don’t spit blood on an innocent man!”

“I’ll spit a mouthful of blood on you in a moment!”

“Go on, then!”

“Bleurgh… bleurgh…” Yuan Yao pretended to vomit blood.

Cang Li’s face twisted in disgust. He shoved her away with one hand. “You’re revolting! How did I end up with such a disgusting junior sister?”

Yuan Yao raised her foot and stomped hard on his.

“Hiss!”

He immediately began hopping in pain.

Not far away, Lin Jingtao could not conceal the gloom on his face. He had underestimated Cang Li’s strength. Silently, he clenched his fists.

“I wonder if the passage gate has opened?” The cultivators, having enjoyed a brief respite, remembered that they still needed to escape.

Someone suggested, “Why don’t we send one person up to look?”

“Who can even get up there right now?”

At once, everyone turned toward Cang Li and Yan Haonan.

Yan Haonan looked at Cang Li. “What do you think?”

Cang Li spread his hands. “I don’t.”

Yan Haonan was speechless.

Why did he suddenly feel the urge to stab this man to death?

He took a deep breath. “Watch over my junior sister. I’ll climb up and investigate.”

“Fine.”

Yan Haonan entrusted Weng Mingshu to Cang Li, then used his weapon to climb the wall little by little.

The others waited for news.

During that time, Weng Mingshu slowly regained consciousness.

She gave a groggy yawn. Then the thick stench of blood reached her, followed by the sharp pain throughout her body, and she abruptly remembered everything that had happened before she fainted.

Her eyes flew open. When she realized Yan Haonan was missing, she immediately questioned her fellow disciples about what had happened while she was unconscious.

Then she looked upward.

Time passed one slow moment at a time.

At last, Yan Haonan descended.

Faced with everyone’s expectant gazes, he shook his head gravely. “The passage gate is still closed.”

Disappointment swept through the crowd.

“Why don’t we wait a little longer?” someone suggested.

“How long are we supposed to wait?”

“Are we going to die trapped in here?”

“We won’t! There must be someone who can force that gate open.”

“Those giant pythons fled in that direction. Could there be an exit there? Perhaps we should follow the same path.”

Everyone turned toward the lightless passage.

The longer they stared, the more their skin crawled.

Something terrifying seemed to breathe within that darkness.

Yuan Yao looked in the same direction. For some reason, she felt as though something there were calling to her.

Her lifebound Phantom Spirit Sword stirred faintly.

Had she not restrained it, the sword might already have flown into the dark passage.

Cang Li knew they could not rush the matter of leaving. He turned to Yuan Yao.

“Yaoyao, rest and recover first. We’ll wait a little longer and see what happens.”

Yuan Yao nodded.

She truly could not hold on much longer. Her entire body felt hollow.

In a single day, she had endured two battles and exhausted all her spiritual power.

She was about to sit cross-legged when the green-robed girl beside her spoke.

“Are you also Senior Qian Jueshan’s disciple?”

Yuan Yao looked at Weng Mingshu and smiled with a nod. “I am.”

“I’ve met Xiao Lingwei, so you must be the Xiaoyao Sect personal disciple whom Senior Qian Jueshan treasures like the pearl in his palm! I heard my father and the elders say you’re incredibly lazy and think about shirking your work every day.”

Yuan Yao was speechless.

Did she realize how rude she was? Her father and the Tianyun elders were even ruder.

Xiao Lingwei was Yuan Yao’s Second Senior Sister.

Weng Mingshu, wholly unaware of her own lack of tact, continued, “What’s your name? My surname is Weng, and my given name is Mingshu. I’m from the Tianyun Sect. My father is the Tianyun Sect Master, and my mother is the head of the Weng Clan. Oh, and I took my mother’s surname.”

Yuan Yao smiled. “My surname is Yuan, and my given name is Yao. I come from the Xiaoyao Sect and study under Immortal Lord Qianshan.”

Her master, Qian Jueshan, bore the title Immortal Lord Qianshan.

Weng Mingshu asked curiously, “Will you be entering this year’s Grand Sect Tournament?”