70: Chapter 70 Wolf Demon

A hint of complexity flashed in Ye Jingjun's eyes as she whispered.

"He is my father."

She looked up and added with some urgency.

"I ask that Mr. Su does not tell my father about tonight; he doesn't like me practicing the sword."

Su Chen's gaze shifted slightly; it seemed there was quite a story between this father and daughter.

He nodded.

"Rest assured, I am not one to gossip."

"Since you are devoted to the sword, if you face any difficulties, I happen to be active in the Qinglai area recently."

"Perhaps I can spare an hour each day to discuss the Way of the Sword with you."

This round of angel investment had many restrictions.

He had to make the most of that precious hour of transformation time to build up Ye Jingjun as quickly as possible.

Hearing this, Ye Jingjun was pleasantly surprised, yet she hesitated.

"This... it would be far too much trouble for you, Mr. Su."

"It's no matter."

"We cultivators place great importance on the word 'fate'."

"Our meeting now is fate in itself."

"Tomorrow at this time and place, how does that sound?"

"Alright!"

Ye Jingjun blurted out.

Then, she suddenly felt she had lost her composure.

A faint, almost imperceptible blush rose to her pretty face.

She could only be thankful that the moonlight was hazy and didn't reveal it clearly.

With a thought, Su Chen sensed that his transformation time was coming to an end.

He could only give Ye Jingjun a small smile as his robes fluttered.

In an instant, the figure in green robes had completely vanished from the spot.

Ye Jingjun stared blankly at the place where Su Chen had disappeared.

She pressed her jade-like hand against her rising and falling chest.

Su Chen's appearance was too mysterious and far too sudden.

It gave her an impulse to investigate.

But for now, practicing the sword was more important.

She took a deep breath and continued her drills in the center of the small courtyard.

Yet even she didn't notice that her originally clumsy movements had somehow become much more proficient.

...

The next day, before dawn had broken and the morning mist had scattered.

Ye Yuan had already risen.

Nourished by pills and his own powerful cultivation, the wound on his abdomen had barely healed.

Although external injuries were easy to heal, internal injuries and depleted Primordial Qi could not be recovered overnight.

His eyes, in particular, remained dull and lifeless.

Flying on a sword was out of the question.

He could not afford such consumption in his current state.

At the Relay Station east of the Qingzhou Prefectural City, he rented the most ordinary green-canopied carriage.

The shafts were old, and the horse pulling it was no exotic breed.

It was just an ordinary packhorse.

It didn't travel fast, but it was steady.

Ye Jingjun silently loaded their few belongings onto the carriage, her movements nimble and somewhat mismatched with her slender frame.

She had changed into deep blue clothes that were more suitable for travel, her long hair tied up with a simple wooden hairpin.

Her small face was cold and clear, showing no emotion.

Only when her gaze occasionally swept over the rapidly receding, increasingly desolate scenery outside the window.

Her beautiful brows would knit together almost imperceptibly.

The long sword that Su Chen had transformed into had its hilt carefully wrapped in coarse cloth by Ye Yuan.

It was placed casually in a corner of the carriage within reach.

From within the sword, Su Chen carefully observed the father and daughter in the carriage.

Unfamiliar.

That was his first impression of them.

Su Chen was all too familiar with this feeling.

Having lost both parents as a child, he had spent a long time being fostered in the homes of some kind relatives.

The attitude of those relatives toward him was no different from Ye Yuan's current attitude toward Ye Jingjun.

One couldn't call it estrangement, but that kind of polite formality was impossible to hide.

Ye Yuan tried to find topics to talk about with Ye Jingjun, but she ignored him completely.

Thus, he could only lean against the carriage wall with his eyes slightly closed.

He appeared to be resting to heal his injuries, but in reality, he was using his divine sense to perceive the outside world.

Precisely because he could not see, the things perceived through divine sense were even more important to Ye Yuan.

The carriage wheels rumbled across the rugged Official Road, heading all the way east.

From Qingzhou to East Lai, it was a journey of four hundred li.

It wasn't exactly far, but it wasn't close either.

The further east they went, the closer they got to the edge of the imperial court's control, and the more desolate and dilapidated the scenery became.

The Official Road was in disrepair, full of potholes and unevenness.

Abandoned villages were visible along the roadside from time to time; among the broken walls and ruins, wild grass grew taller than a person.

The occasional pedestrians they encountered were mostly sallow and emaciated, their eyes numb.

They traveled with their families, unsure if they were fleeing disaster or migrating.

In the air, the faint aura of demons could still be sensed.

East of Qingzhou was a peninsula extending into the sea.

Surrounded by the sea on three sides, the center of the peninsula was, strangely enough, a large mountainous area.

Sea monsters and land demons "celebrated together" in this region all year round.

A significant population was forced to crowd along the coastline, having to defend against both sides.

Then there were those tax collectors and minor officials who wore simple official uniforms but acted like wolves and tigers.

They shouted and cursed in the remaining villages, scrounging for the commoners' last bit of life-saving rations.

"Heh... the state of the world."

Ye Yuan stepped in to scare away these minor officials, returned the grain to the people, and boarded the carriage to continue the journey.

He sneered softly, his tone full of sarcasm and helplessness.

Although he could not see.

The misery and despair sensed through his divine sense, along with the faint demonic aura and the stench of official corruption, made his heart sink even more than if he had seen it with his own eyes.

This journey was not peaceful.

When the carriage reached a desolate mountain wilderness, it was attacked by a wolf demon that had been eroded by demonic energy and lost its mind.

The wolf demon was as sturdy as a calf, with blood-red eyes and drool flowing.

In the wolf den nearby, there were even many human bones.

They likely belonged to commoners passing through this area.

Sensing the carriage's arrival, the wolf demon let out a roar and lunged toward it with a foul wind.

The carriage driver was scared out of his wits, nearly tumbling off the carriage.

Ye Yuan didn't even fully stand up.

He merely gave a cold snort, gripped the "su chen sword" in the corner with a backhand, and flicked his wrist.

A beam of sword light instantly shot out from the carriage window.

The move was not flashy.

There was only extreme precision and ruthlessness.

The sword light flashed and vanished.

The wolf demon's massive lunging body suddenly froze, then crashed to the ground.

At the center of its brow, a red mark rapidly expanded, and blood gurgled out.

"A Third Realm wolf demon..."

Ye Yuan sighed.

"A wolf demon must eat at least a triple-digit number of people to evolve to the Third Realm."

Granted, to the Sixth Realm Ye Yuan, it was no different from an ant.

"But what about the ordinary people it had eaten?"

"Im... Immortal, this is how it is in our East Lai."

"Because it's at the end of the line, at the edge of the imperial court's administration, aside from those coming to collect taxes, basically no imperial officials are willing to bother with us..."

The carriage driver tremblingly climbed back onto the carriage and pulled the reins to continue the journey.

Ye Yuan did not speak.

The moment he swung the sword, he could clearly feel it.

Between the sword soul and his body.

An indescribable resonance had been created.

It wasn't fear.

But a kind of joy.

Like a long-awaited rain after a drought, like a sleeping beast smelling blood.