Chronicles of Heaven's Chosen - Chapter 8

Yuan Yao bowed to him with a solemn expression. “Fellow Daoist Xie, I have reflected deeply on my mistake. I offer you my sincerest apology.”

If she couldn’t beat him, she surrendered.

If she could, she swaggered.

“Do you think I should accept your apology?” Xie Yan asked with a half smile.

“I do.”

“You actually dare say that.” He laughed from sheer anger.

Yuan Yao chuckled awkwardly, then ventured, “Fellow Daoist Xie, why don’t we call a truce?”

Xie Yan met her bright eyes, and the last trace of his killing intent faded.

Had she removed his mask while he was unconscious and seen his real face, he would have killed her without question.

He would allow no one to learn his true identity.

Taking his silence for a promising sign, Yuan Yao limped over and offered him a hand.

“Fellow Daoist Xie, let’s introduce ourselves again. My name is Kuang Ni.”

Xie Yan lowered his gaze to her mud-stained hand. He frowned unconsciously, disgust flickering through his eyes.

“Get lost.”

Yuan Yao immediately understood that he intended to let her go.

“Yes, yes, of course.” She smiled obsequiously, snatched up her gaudy longsword, and turned to leave at once.

【Target Xie Yan’s Awakening Value: -98.】

Yuan Yao’s smile vanished.

How long would it take to win this man over?

Xie Yan was far too difficult. She would have to give up on him for now and find other targets.

Besides, she still had no idea how to raise a target’s Awakening Value, and that idiotic System 250 refused to tell her.

Yuan Yao followed the cavern passage away. After walking for some time, she began to sense someone following her.

She spun around.

No one was there.

There wasn’t so much as another living creature in sight. The empty tunnel felt distinctly sinister.

Yuan Yao tightened her grip on her sword.

Soon she reached a fork where the passage divided into three.

At that moment, faint noises drifted from the middle tunnel, stirring a vague unease inside her.

Yuan Yao stared at the three passages, torn.

Which one should she take?

“Help—!”

The commotion in the middle passage rapidly drew closer.

There seemed to be quite a few people.

And something else was mixed among their auras.

Alarmed, Yuan Yao backed away to the entrance of the right-hand passage, ready to flee at any moment.

She did not run immediately because she wanted to see whether any of her senior brothers or sisters were among them.

The chaotic screams and cries of pain grew louder.

“Stop pulling me!”

“Help… help!”

A young cultivator burst from the middle passage first. Blind with panic, he raced toward the tunnel Yuan Yao had just come from.

Several more young cultivators rushed out behind him and followed in the same direction.

Yuan Yao knew that tunnel ended in a dead end.

“This way!” she shouted. “That way is blocked!”

The young cultivators looked back.

They saw a white-robed girl with a high ponytail, huge bright eyes, and skin so pale it almost seemed to glow. Her face was lovely enough to make them mistake her for an immortal maiden.

Their breath caught.

There was no time to think. They ran in the direction she pointed.

“Leech monsters!” one of them shouted as they fled into the right-hand passage. “There are swarms of mutated leech monsters! Run, miss!”

Leeches?

Yuan Yao’s gaze sharpened as she recalled what the books said about them.

Leech monsters resembled earthworms. They drank blood and possessed frightening combat strength.

If they had terrified these cultivators so badly, they had to be at least second-rank spirit beasts.

Spirit beasts were divided into eight ranks, corresponding to the eight cultivation realms: Qi Refining Realm, Foundation Establishment Realm, Golden Core Realm, Nascent Soul Realm, Soul Transformation Realm, Void Refinement Realm, Body Integration Realm, and Mahayana Realm.

Once an eighth-rank spirit beast survived its heavenly tribulation, it became a Sacred Beast.

Above Sacred Beasts stood Divine Beasts.

Yuan Yao decisively ran after the others.

She had taken only a few steps when System 250 spoke.

【Targets Lin Pengtao, Wei Xiaoxia, He Ru, and Ling Xiaoyu have reached an Awakening Value of 20.】

Yuan Yao stopped dead.

She stared at the figures receding ahead of her, surprised.

All she had done was warn them, yet their Awakening Values had risen to twenty.

Could Awakening Value actually be… favorability?

Thinking of the fewer than three days she had left to live, Yuan Yao gritted her teeth and decided to gamble.

She ran back to the fork and began calling out to the fleeing cultivators.

“Quick! This way!”

“That passage is a dead end!”

The panicked cultivators glanced back. Some were suspicious, others only half convinced.

Most of them still chose the path Yuan Yao indicated.

System 250’s announcements sounded one after another inside her sea of consciousness.

【Target so-and-so… Awakening Value has reached…】

The highest value reached twenty-eight.

Not a single person had reached fifty.

Then enormous leech monsters wriggled out of the middle passage, each with a desiccated human corpse still clamped in its mouth.

They were cultivators drained of every drop of blood and moisture.

The sight struck the mind like a physical blow.

The giant leech monsters sensed Yuan Yao at once and lunged toward her with astonishing speed.

“That’s disgusting!” Yuan Yao scrunched up her entire face. Gripping her gaudy sword, she slashed with all her strength.

The result—

The leech monster was completely unharmed.

Yuan Yao turned and ran.

The creatures were terrifyingly fast. In an instant, one was right behind her, opening its mouth to latch on.

Hidden in the shadows, Xie Yan watched the scene unfold.

He had been enjoying the show for quite some time.

This “Kuang Ni” clearly had something wrong with her head. She was a hopeless do-gooder on top of it.

Mockery curled at the corner of Xie Yan’s mouth.

Just as he expected to see the leech monster drain Yuan Yao into a husk, she abruptly turned with a high-grade formation disc in her hand.

“Heaven and earth as threads—barrier, arise!”

She poured her spiritual power into the disc.

A barrier sprang into existence, trapping the leech monster on the other side.

Bang!

Enraged, the creature began battering the barrier.

It trembled on the verge of collapse.

Yuan Yao’s face changed. She decided it was time to keep running.

“The outside world is terrifying,” she muttered as she fled.

But aside from being terrifying, it was also incredibly interesting!

Xie Yan’s smile stiffened.

She had escaped death again.

Just how many high-grade artifacts was she hiding?

At the same time, several leech monsters detected Xie Yan’s presence and pounced.

In the next instant, terrifying pressure crushed them into paste.

The remaining leech monsters recoiled in alarm and cleared a path for him.

Xie Yan pointed down the right-hand tunnel. “Go on. This way. Chase down that little trash for me.”