Some rejoiced while others lamented.
Chen Xuanyi's fingers, hidden in his sleeves, dug fiercely into his palms. A raging fire of fury churned in his chest—on one hand, he blamed Qing Xu for being too soft-hearted, leaving behind such a troublesome problem, and on the other, he resented Gu Meng. If not for dragging her along as deadweight, he could have unleashed the full power of the Taiyi Sword, and the outcome of the battle might have been different!
Now, instead, Luo Luo, a mere girl, had stolen the spotlight while he was left humiliated.
This was sheer madness!
At that very moment, Gu Meng sidled up to him, tugging at his sleeve with an indignant pout. "So I’ve been pushed out of the top three just like that? If only you’d given me a few hundred more points..."
Her reasoning wasn’t entirely wrong.
Chen Xuanyi’s kill count wouldn’t have changed whether he gave her extra points or not. But if he had, she could have surpassed that nobody Feng Baiyan and secured third place.
The top three were the champion, runner-up, and third-place finisher—the ones whose names would be remembered. Fourth place? Forgotten.
Gu Meng couldn’t help but grumble, "Brother Li, you should’ve helped me more back then..."
Before she could finish, Chen Xuanyi snapped sharply, "Get lost!"
She flinched, startled, and looked up to see his forehead veined with anger, his eyes bloodshot, his entire being radiating a hostility so sharp it stung.
He was truly furious—at her.
With a harsh flick of his sleeve, he wrenched the fabric from her grasp and strode away without a backward glance.
"B-Brother Li..." Gu Meng stared at his retreating figure, shaking her head in disbelief as tears welled up. "What did I do wrong?"
His loss to Luo Luo wasn’t her fault, yet he treated her like this!
And in front of others, no less.
She stamped her foot, choked back a sob, and turned to flee.
Even if—even if he cooled down and came crawling back to apologize, she wouldn’t forgive him easily!
After running past two sky corridors, she heard footsteps approaching from behind and slowed her pace, wiping away her tears and straightening her back with pride.
She wouldn’t acknowledge him!
"Whew—whew! Junior Sister Gu, I knew it was you from afar! The others kept saying it wasn’t!"
A head popped into view beside her—Zhao Yu.
Gu Meng’s expression dimmed, but she forced a weak smile. "What do you want?"
Zhao Yu chuckled, jiggling his plump hands. "Heh, near our quarters, there’s a huge spring jujube tree! The dates are sweet and crisp—perfect for making jujube cakes!"
He remembered Gu Meng once saying that with high-quality jujubes, the cakes would be irresistibly fragrant.
Suppressing her irritation, Gu Meng replied flatly, "There’s no kitchen here."
"There is, there is!" Zhao Yu declared triumphantly. "I’ve already found you one!"
Gu Meng gritted her teeth and glanced behind her. The path was empty—Brother Li hadn’t come after her at all.
A surge of anger rose in her chest, and she turned back to Zhao Yu, her pupils trembling.
Through clenched teeth, she spat, "I’m a cultivator, not some lowly cook!"
Zhao Yu blinked, utterly lost. "Huh? What? Who—who dared call you that? Tell me, and I’ll teach them a lesson! What’s wrong with being a cook? Junior Sister, your culinary skills are the best in the sect—everyone knows that!"
Gu Meng felt her vision darken with rage.
They said fortunes reversed in thirty years. She had defeated the Xu Sisters and achieved a high rank in the Qingyun preliminaries—she was no longer the powerless mortal everyone looked down on!
And Zhao Yu, a mere early-stage Golden Core cultivator, had the audacity to belittle her with talk of jujube cakes.
"Enough!" Gu Meng snarled, her composure crumbling. "I’ll never stoop to such menial labor again."
Zhao Yu gaped, bewildered. "Menial? But Junior Sister, you always said you loved cooking!"
"That was before!" Gu Meng’s temper finally snapped. "Before, I had no choice! Do you think I enjoyed forcing smiles and catering to you all? If Luo Luo hadn’t driven me to the brink, I wouldn’t have had to demean myself!"
Zhao Yu finally caught on. "So now that you’ve ‘made it,’ you look down on the rest of us? Don’t forget—your Qingyun ranking wasn’t even earned by you. It was all thanks to Senior Brother carrying you!"
That struck a nerve.
"Useless? Take this!" Gu Meng’s face flushed crimson as she flicked her wrist. A multicolored silk ribbon shot from her qiankun pouch, lashing straight at Zhao Yu!
Zhao Yu, a healer with little combat experience, panicked and summoned his medicinal pestle to block. With a metallic clang, the recoil sent the pestle slamming back into him, his plump body rippling like waves.
Though his ample flesh absorbed some of the impact, he still staggered back, coughing blood, before tumbling over the edge of the sky corridor.
"Whoosh—thud!"
A round, dark figure plummeted from above.
"Bang!" He crashed onto the lower corridor, bouncing three times.
"Bounce~ bounce~ bounce~"
Luo Luo and Pretty Boy jumped in unison, their eyes tracking Zhao Yu’s body—up, down, up, down, up, down.
They exchanged a glance before circling to either side of Zhao Yu and peering down at him.
Zhao Yu opened his eyes to four curious orbs staring back.
Luo Luo greeted politely, "Senior Brother Zhang from Laojun Peak?"
Zhao Yu: "...My surname is Zhao."
Luo Luo nodded, committing it to memory.
'Roundest one is Zhao, roundest one is Zhao, roundest one is Zhao...'
Now Pretty Boy had it memorized too.
His gaze shifted to the large pestle lying nearby, and a thoughtful glint entered his eyes.
This thing seemed familiar...
He tilted his head, sniffed lightly, and caught a faint whiff of fish.
"Fish?"
At the word, Zhao Yu jolted upright like a spring, flailing his arms in terror. "Fish?! What fish?! No, no, keep it away!"
Earlier, while treating injuries in the arena, some ruffian had flung a rotten fish at him, dredging up the horrific memories of the Five Blessings Town fish incident. Just the mention of fish sent him into full-blown panic.
Pretty Boy kindly picked up the pestle and handed it back.
Zhao Yu’s pupils shrank as he spotted blood on it, and he let out a bloodcurdling shriek.
"F-f-fish blood! It w-won’t wash off!"
He stumbled backward, tripped over his own feet, and landed hard on his rear.
Luo Luo and Pretty Boy exchanged baffled looks.
Zhao Yu sat slumped against the railing, a chubby finger trembling as he pointed at his pestle, looking as if he’d seen a ghost.
"Blood! Blood! Fish! Blood!"
Luo Luo deadpanned, "...Senior Brother Zhao, that’s your own blood. Why are you vomiting blood anyway?"
Zhao Yu snapped out of his daze: "Ah, I coughed up blood... it was my blood... right, Gu Meng, Gu Meng did this—Gu Meng, damn your ancestors for eighteen generations!"
Luo Luo: "?"
Weren’t he and Gu Meng on good terms?
Zhao Yu grew angrier the more he thought about it: "If I hadn’t taken Gu Meng out on that mission to earn those ten spirit stones, I would never have gone to Wufu Town and run into that damned fish! That fish was straight out of a nightmare! It looked just like Senior Brother Li!"
Luo Luo froze in place.
It was as if a bolt of lightning had slowly descended from the sky and struck her head.
She lunged forward, crouching in front of Zhao Yu, her eyes blazing as she pressed him: "What fish?"
Zhao Yu was startled: "L-L-Little Junior Sister, I-I-I haven’t done anything to offend you recently, right?"
"I asked you, what fish?"
"Well, Senior Uncle Hao from the Duty Hall issued a mission to investigate an unkillable fish in Wufu Town. That fish... it had half its head missing, its blood nearly drained, its body covered in jagged fins, yet it was still crawling down the street..."
Zhao Yu shivered as he recounted the scene he had witnessed that day.
Luo Luo’s mind buzzed, like an echo chamber, replaying Zhao Yu’s words over and over—"Probably a fish, walking down the road, missing half its head, probably."
It took an immense effort to steady her breathing before she calmly asked, "Wufu Town, near the Black Abyss Sea?"
"Yes, yes," Zhao Yu peeked at her expression, terrified she might take her frustration out on him, and hurriedly added, "That fish was seriously eerie, like it crawled straight out of the Asura Battlefield, just trudging forward relentlessly. Its aura, I’m not exaggerating, really resembled our Senior Brother Li!"
Luo Luo’s face remained expressionless, her tone eerily gentle: "It resembled Li Zhaoye, and you killed it?"
Zhao Yu, sensing danger, immediately shifted blame: "Gu Meng told me to do it! Little Junior Sister, you have no idea how much I regret it! That fish was shattered into pieces, and only after returning to the sect did I realize two rows of teeth were still embedded in my shoulder—ugh, just thinking about it makes my heart tremble! I suffered so much! To this day, I’m still scared of fish!"
Luo Luo fell silent for a moment, steadying her breath before asking calmly, "Anything else? Birds? Insects? Fish?"
"Yes, yes!" Zhao Yu eagerly seized the opportunity to redeem himself. "Master Hao said that during that time, a lot of animals—fish, insects, birds—were throwing themselves at the Yin Mansion’s seal!"
"Was that when I was punished and sent into the Yin Mansion?"
"Exactly, exactly! Right around then, Gu Meng got thrown out by you from the Yin Mansion, acting all pitiful, saying how useless she was, and even swindled ten spirit stones from me! That was the time, no mistake!"
Luo Luo nodded: "I see."
Now she understood what it meant to "give one’s heart and soul."
He said he was a bird, a fish, an insect.
He said he had given his all to feed someone, yet that person hadn’t appreciated it—she remembered that demon that looked so much like Li Zhaoye. It had slaughtered countless demons, ripped out their innards, and hung them on her defensive barrier. She had thought it was a provocation.
Turns out, at the very moment she missed the terrible pancakes he used to make, he had been feeding her something even worse.
Truly, Li Zhaoye, you never disappoint!
Luo Luo pressed her lips together, using every ounce of strength to hold back her tears.
She should be happy, shouldn’t she? Happy!
She was so happy!
Zhao Yu watched her in terror: "...Uh, Little Junior Sister, don’t smile like that. When you smile like that, I get scared."
Luo Luo touched her own face: "Oh."
Zhao Yu was on the verge of tears: "No, I just thought that fish was... tenacious? Cold? I know you’re upset Senior Brother Li changed his heart, and I didn’t mean to bring him up, but that fish really did resemble him a little..."
Smack!
A bony, calloused hand landed heavily on Zhao Yu’s shoulder.
Pretty Boy crouched in front of him, posture cocky, tilting his head with a deceptively friendly smile: "Do I look like a fish to you?"
Zhao Yu shook his head in terror: "..."
Pretty Boy leaned in closer: "No? Look carefully. Do I look like the one you killed?"
Zhao Yu’s eyes darted around before he weakly muttered, "I... I get it."
He lowered his head, rummaging through his belongings with frantic rustling.
Luo Luo: "?"
Pretty Boy: "?"
A moment later, Zhao Yu handed a hefty Qiankun pouch to Pretty Boy.
"Bro, I know the rules of the underworld! Here’s the funeral expenses for your relative. Please accept it!"
Luo Luo: "..."
Pretty Boy: "..."
He had just been scammed.
