Encountering Trouble

Love is but like an endless sea, the deeper you dive, the deeper you fall. And when you fall, you don't measure the depth nor do you judge the sea you are diving deep into. Although what he had towards the lady was love or only mere attraction, he didn't know. What he knew was even if he liked her, she was a Kāihuā badge owner.

The fact wasn't that he disliked or feared these badge owners, it was that he wanted to keep a distance from them. Why? It reminded him of a terrible past that he left behind eight years ago. The mark of betrayal he received from his most trusted friend was still dressed on his chest. That year he isolated himself in his room for six months to recover himself by cultivating. From then onwards he distanced himself from Kāihuā badge owners. He stopped trusting people way too much and stopped being too social.

Her being from the same rank as that betrayer reminded him of those painful memories. The past that he didn't want to remember. But...the past was after all in the past. He couldn't change it. He could only walk towards the future. Now if he wanted to walk alone or with someone was his decision.

Now it was time to change the topic. He wanted to let her talk this time but suddenly the sedan stopped with a huge halt and Léi Yún dropped on his back on the sedan wall and the lady in front of him crashed into his arms. Her soft body landed on his chest and her long slender arms were around him. The lady somehow helped herself to get up from the chest of the man she landed into. She looked highly apologetic and while helping herself up she stopped in the middle and out of politeness she asked while rubbing her forehead that crashed on the man's chin:

"My lord, are you fine?"

"..."

The lady found it strange. Why wasn't he answering? Did she kill this man by mistake when she crashed into him? No. She was lighter than a feather. Even if she jumped on anyone from a high branch of a tree, they wouldn't feel any pain. That is how it was. But then why wasn't he answering? She looked at his face while mouthing a few words :

"My lord-" She stopped between her sentences. Her tongue couldn't say the other half because the person had his eyes open wide, his mouth open slightly and he looked as if he was in a daze. His face wasn't the same as before. It was flushed red.

She got up not knowing what to do and then shook him a few times calling him "My lord…do you hear me?...my lord?" It took the man a few moments to return to the real world as he was stuck in his weird fantasies again. Trying to save the last bit of dignity he had left he got up with a jolt, maintaining his lofty personality, he coughed two times and only said "I-I am fine, let me check what happened." while covering his mouth with the blue bamboo fan and left maintaining his cool attitude.

The lady stood still inside the sedan while blinking and noticing his motion. She smiled slightly and sat inside the sedan after straightening her clothes. The emotions of her face couldn't be guessed.

Outside, Léi Yún couldn't help but act depressed. He kicked the tree nearby a few times out of embarrassment. Then banged his head on the tree and after punching it a few times, he stood up straight while panting and then he inhaled a lot of air through his mouth and let it all out . Then only calmed himself. But it wasn't the time to bully a tree. The actual problem was that they didn't even exit the forest and the sedan stopped in the middle. Even the sedan carriers were nowhere to be found. Thinking again, he was standing at the same place from where he picked this junior in red. But according to what he remembered, the sedan moved a long way. By this time they should have exited the forest. Then could it be...

As if he suddenly realised something, with ultimate speed he moved the curtains of the sedan. Inside the lady in red sat with her chin rested on her palms bored. Because of the sudden movement, she turned her head to see her senior looking serious and confused.

No. That couldn't be. She couldn't be that malicious ghost the villagers talked about. Ghosts could take human appearances but didn't have a heartbeat. But just now when she fell on his chest, he heard her heartbeat just clear.

They actually never came out. They just came back to the same spot. The sedan carriers also disappeared without any trace. Just now the fog outside was mild but it started thickening again. This was not a good sign.

The lady inside also thought something was wrong and came out to accompany him. He didn't mind since sticking together was the best option in this situation. Suddenly the fog increased in amount and everything became unclear. Just what he feared. He quickly unsheathed his sword and asked the lady to stick together to prevent her from getting lost.

They suddenly heard a weird noise from a distance. It sounded like a beast was crying. That sure was something nobody would want to hear at a situation like this. Suddenly the noise started coming from various directions and it became difficult to tell from where it was coming.

"Prepare your weapon and tag along." Léi Yún grasped his sword tightly as he said the words with a serious voice and still face. Just a second later he felt the air getting heavy with spiritual energy. He noticed a thin white light shifting across the air in the middle of the fog, charged with ferocious spiritual energy. From time to time the brilliant light would glow in the fog and hiss ferociously.

This was a spiritual whip charged with their owner's spiritual energy. This was a common weapon among the Kāihuā badge owners. They mostly used it for torturing as it had its perks. In this way, the spiritual weapon could feed on blood and as seen in most cases criminals were cultivators who had spiritual power running in their blood. Thus the weapon having contact with their blood not only drained their spiritual power but also consumed it for its own benefits. In a way, the owners didn't always need to put spiritual power of their own in it, since it would be always charged with spiritual power. Although this method saved a lot of spiritual power and was effective, it wasn't preferred by most of the owners. As the spiritual power received from anyone else's body was different from theirs. It was very rare to even have the same level of spiritual energy. Since the weapons were spiritually connected with their master's body and worked according to their master's instructions. It was important for them to receive their owner's spiritual power to balance with their mind and body. It was the most important thing to make the weapon become devoted to its owner and listen to their orders. For that the weapon and the user needed to be one and to make it happen the owner had to give the weapon their spiritual power.

The first option had benefits but wasn't really as beneficial as it seemed. This could turn the weapon berserk and make it unruly. They wouldn't always listen to their owner and might act out of order. Many Kāihuā badge owners tried this method and it was also very popular a few years ago. When fighting with any overpowered opponent or when in any huge trouble, it was used since even after using the spiritual weapon, there would still be enough spiritual power left to counterattack or flee. But that was their first and also the very last time trying the method because the headlords were informed about this. The users were lectured for using such a lowly method and degraded to a lower rank for two whole years. Even their weapons got stripped from them since the headlords believed that they didn't deserve to have such powerful spiritual weapons. After this, the method became unpopular and soon the number of users started to decrease. But still, there were some of the method users left among them.

The fog thickened even more and the noise got even closer as if the source of the noise had surrounded them. Léi Yún gripped the hilt of his lightweight sword tightly and focused on the direction of the noise. He suddenly saw a faint blurry silhouette among the fog. It stepped closer towards him making weird and disgusting noises. Then it stepped back a little and then the shadow suddenly bounced on him.

*Slash*

The blade slashed through the air and ripped the shadow. Soon the pieces of the black shadow shattered and faded in the air. But that wasn't it. The noise still came from various directions and this time there wasn't only one of those black shadows. At a rather close distance, there were at least ten more of them. This time those shadows attacked even more ferociously with crazy speed.

*Slash* *Slash* *Slash*

One by one Léi Yún slashed every one of them. Black fragments flew everywhere in the thick fog matter how much he slashed them, the shadows didn't stop appearing. So he didn't stop slashing them either.

He swung his sword and killed many of those with his air slash. The amount of those shadow beings didn't stop right there. From only god knows where they kept appearing.D*mn that old man. He told about that mischievous ghost lady but was never informed about these annoying endless shadow beings. No matter how many he killed, only more of them appeared over time. It truly was tiring but not hard.

Why it was not hard to defeat them had two reasons. First, because it didn't take any fatal attack to kill them. He just had to Slash them with his sword and they disappeared and second, was-

*Crack*

Second was that the owner of the white spiritual whip, clad in red, fiercely used her metal sharp weapon to slash the shadows. Only a swing of her whip and five of those shadow figures were slashed at the same time. She flipped her whip skillfully and pierced each of the shadow figures in the heart and they vanished into thin air. She then increased the whip in size, a long white light that flickered in the fog, grabbed a lot of them and slashed them at one time. Peculiarly these moves seemed so familiar to him. But he couldn't call up where he had seen them. He felt that something was wrong with his memory.

But the moves in themselves were elegantly done. Her whole slender body matched the moves of a whip. Beautiful but dangerous. Both her body and the light of the whip danced with each other and pierced the heart of the enemy. Although her features were blurry in the fog, he had his whole concentration on her and forgot about the fact that he was in a battle too. Suddenly a shadow jumped over him. He managed to dodge but he felt extreme pain in his left arm. When he checked it with his hand, he felt a huge bloody scar there and blood was gushing out of it in a large quantity.

Wait! They could cause harm with their sharp shadow nails!? Lower-ranked shadow beings were supposed to be very weak and slow. They could only weakly bite or cause weak diseases if touched. But if they overpowered each other then they could be a bit of a headache. But if one looked from any angle, they were not able to cause a huge damage like this. When these shadow beings moved with unbelievable speed, he thought something was wrong but now he was sure something was wrong. Were these YǏNG NÚ[1]!?!? No way that this forest had YǏNG NÚ!!

Actually, according to ancient scrolls, there were nine infamous Zǔ shī throughout history who mastered dark arts and almost completed their dream of turning the world into hell. The first and the most famous of them all was Qīn Quán[2]. He managed to learn dark arts at the age of five and when he was ten, he almost opened the path of hell. Although he failed to open it completely, he somehow made the hell's lowest beings appear in this world and made them his slaves. They were none other than these shadow beings. It is said that he had a whole army of these slaves by the time he was in his twenties. Although they weren't that powerful, he could still use them to usurp power in the mortal world or create chaos. After he perished, the shadow beings were sent back to hell. But over decades, other Zǔ shī of different eras also followed this Qīn Quán and used them as slaves after summoning them from hell. Sending every one of them to hell was almost impossible. So only the most dangerous ones were sent to hell and those were these yǐng nús.

There were three types of these shadow beings and a yǐng nú was the most pesky of them all. The two other shadow beings were a Yóu yǐng[3] and a Yǐng tūn mìng[4]. The first one just wandered into the mortal world without any purpose and consumed on evil Qì[5]. They were really similar to a yǐng nú as they went berserk when met with living beings and attacked them to drive them off their territory. A Yǐng tūn mìng was not that harmful as they only consumed the life of any weak creature near death. They were peace-loving entities who wandered into the mortal realm. They were also friendly sometimes. Unlike its two other relatives, a yǐng nú was way too dangerous. But they also had a weak point. Unlike the other two, they were not able to do anything without the order of any master. So if they caused harm to anyone, that meant that they had an owner.

Not only this forest had a yǐng nú but these yǐng nús also had a master!? This didn't seem to be too great of a news. Summoning a yǐng nú from hell costs a summoner a lot of spiritual power and effort. One needed to have a sense of dark arts for that and master it. But this wasn't the real deal. Summoning them was a forbidden art written in sealed scrolls and it was also protected by the guardian they were handed to. Then how in the world did someone summon them in this huge of an amount in the middle of a forest!?

Did that mean that the scrolls were stolen!? Impossible! The scrolls were protected with great security. Even a fly couldn't reach there unharmed, let alone a person. But halt! On second thought…the one responsible for guarding it was that... nameless brat. Not even a week of experience at work and the headlords chose him as a guardian! What was so good about him? He didn't even receive a name. Now now...he couldn't even take care of those few scrolls. Who would now save humanity from destruction? What was he doing when they were being stolen!? Sleeping!? He was for sure going to be banished from Diǎn Zhēn Zhī Zhú.

But now wasn't the time to blame someone. The shadow beings were getting out of hand. They were quicker than before. Their sharp spike-like nails tried to wound him in every way. He managed to dodge them a few times but he was already exhausted after fighting for a long while, he didn't know if he could dodge them any longer. On the other hand, the girl was also near exhaustion. Her moves also slowed down a lot and her panting could be heard.

The wound on his hand couldn't be healed or treated in such a situation. The more he moved, the more the wound opened. The blood gushed out from the cut between his flesh. The smell of the blood in the air drove the yǐng nús even more crazy. Suddenly a yǐng nú attacked him from behind while he was dealing with others in the front. It was almost near his back when suddenly something grabbed him by his waist and pulled him towards another direction.

It was the Light Whip!! The whip pulled him out of the danger and with demonic speed pulled him towards the other end in a high altitude without coming to a yǐng nú's sight. On the other end stood the lady in red. Where she stood, there was no fog at all and no yǐng nú could be seen. After landing him on the ground safely, the whip decreased in size and returned to its owner. After returning, the whip disappeared in her palms, just like it appeared.

"Quick!! We need to escape. I know the way, follow me, my lord!"

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[1]Yǐng Nú(影奴)translates to shadow slaves. Here 'Yǐng'(影) means shadow and 'Nú'(奴) means slave.

[2]Qīn Quán(侵权)translates to infringement. Here 'Qīn' (侵) is invade and 'Quán' (权) means right.

[3]Yóu Yǐng(游影) translates to wandering shadow. Here 'Yóu'(游) means wander and 'Yǐng'(影)means shadow

[4]Qì(气) translates to vital energy.

[5]Yǐng tūn mìng(影吞命) translates to shadow swallowing life. Here 'Yǐng'(影)means shadow. 'Tūn'(吞) means swallow and 'Mìng'(命) means life.