Life as a Rogue Cultivator

Chapter 310: Friend or Foe

Deep in the woods, the night breeze whispered through the trees. The moon climbed from the eastern hills, until it hung among the branches to the west.Once the enemy entered the formation, he whipped out an iron baton and started smashing everything in sight, trying to brute-force his way through. When that didn’t work, he switched tactics. Started probing around, looking for the weak spot, the “eye” of the formation, hoping to break it with a clever, targeted strike instead. Now he’d gone up into the attic, and he’d been in there for a four hours without coming out.

Liu Xiaolou sat cross-legged in the woods, his mind locked in total focus as he poured everything into manipulating the formation's shifts and changes. He didn't dare slack off even for a second. Sweat poured down his face in streams; he'd lost count of how many times it'd soaked through and dried again.

After the Abyssal Blackstone Formation Disk was re-refined, what happens in the attic now plays out on two levels. The first layer still had people sitting in the main hall, watching the illusions play out in front of them. On the second, they move deeper into the back rooms of the attic, where each person’s experience continues in a different way.

Some found themselves drinking and feasting in elegant rooms. Others wandered through back gardens, flirting among flowers and willows. Some sat in the front hall with zithers, board games, painting, and calligraphy. Others soaked in hot baths while incense burned nearby. This particular man had gone to the bathhouse in the rear, where a maid attended him from front to back. She first scattered flower petals into the pool, scooped up water and poured it gently over his body. Then she start feeding him sips of rich wine, or peeling grapes and slipping them between his lips.

In this upgraded formation, whatever illusions the intruder saw were mirrored into Liu Xiaolou’s spiritual sense. So the womans face reached him too. But only faintly, like trying to make out someone through thick fog. The details stayed blurry, never quite clear.

Even so, he could still tell that she was at least in her early thirties. Through the hazy blur of her face, her nose bridge seemed slightly high and well shaped. As for her body, it could be called graceful, though there was no doubt she was small-chested.

Generally speaking, the people who appear in such illusions are those the intruder thinks about day and night.

Liu Xiaolou watched every move the man made in the hot pool, all the while feeding more of the Bewildering Fragrance into the formation. Wisps of fragrance drifted above the bath, mingling with the rising steam to form a dense, misty haze that pressed in on him without pause.

This was already the third time. The man finally grew so comfortable that he let out a moan. Unable to help himself, he reached out a hand toward the woman pouring hot water over his shoulders.

Within an illusion formation, the world is born from the mind. Everything that appears is something the intruder has imagined. In this new generation of the Abyssal Blackstone Formation, the moment you takes action and crosses that line, it means they have lost yourself in the illusion. At that point, Liu Xiaolou only needed to withdraw the formation disk to declare victory. The intruder was already hopelessly immersed in the fantasy, powerless to resist any longer.

He reached out with all five fingers, groping toward the woman’s chest, but somehow never quite touched it. Liu Xiaolou was getting anxious that he was yelling is his head. Grab it, damn it... touch her already, come on, touch her...

In the end, the hand pulled back and sank once more into the steaming pool.

Just as Liu Xiaolou was about to lose hope, the man lifted both hands out of the hot water again and slowly reached toward the woman’s waist. Once more, Liu Xiaolou cheered him on. Go for it. Go for it. Go for it.

This time, before his hands could even reach her waist, the woman slapped them away. “Don’t.”

Liu Xiaolou blinked. “What the...”

But getting worked up didn’t help. The man simply refused to make a move. No wonder he was an old Foundation Establishment cultivator. His willpower really was that strong.

Liu Xiaolou raised his assessment of him yet again. He was probably already brushing up against mid-stage Foundation Establishment.

Under normal circumstances, or in a different place, he wouldn’t have minded settling in and trading blows with this guy, even if it dragged on for three or five days. That wouldn’t have been a problem at all. But here and now, that simply wasn’t an option. Earlier that very day, he had already looted a whole group of Qingyuan Sect disciples, and now he was on the southern slopes of Qingyuan Mountain, right under the Qingyuan Sect’s front gate.

To be honest, even though both of them had deliberately held back their strength, the fact that they had been fighting this long without alerting the Qingyuan Sect was already a bit hard to believe.

Just as his agitation was mounting, Liu Xiaolou suddenly felt a chill run through him.

He turned his head and looked behind him. Through the dense canopy above, his gaze slipped through a few narrow gaps between the leaves. And there, halfway up the mountain a hundred zhang away, a faint flash of light flickered off a jutting rock.

Something there was catching the moonlight.

The chill that had crept into Liu Xiaolou’s gut spread through his entire body. From the roots of his hair right down to the soles of his feet, everything went ice-cold. Like he’d been dunked naked into a frozen river and left there to stiffen solid.

An old man was standing under the moonlight, peering in his direction.

Even though Liu Xiaolou could not see him clearly, he knew it without a doubt. This old man was far stronger than he was. The fear he felt wasn’t something he could control; it came straight from his instincts, the instinct born after reaching the Foundation Establishment stage, when your senses aligned naturally with heaven, earth, and all living things, and danger could be felt before it was seen.

Liu Xiaolou did not move. He did not dare to. He just stared through the narrow gaps in the leaves toward that spot halfway up the mountain. He didn’t even dare focus his gaze, afraid that doing so might alert the old man. He simply wanted to know what the man would do next.

In that moment, he had no attention left for the Abyssal Blackstone Formation. With a single lapse, the enemy trapped within the formation broke free.

After being trapped in the formation for half the night, even someone with exceptional cultivation and deep reserves of true qi would have been badly worn down. Once he broke free, he was just about to strike back when, like Liu Xiaolou, he noticed the danger on the northern mountainside halfway up the slope.

His reaction mirrored Liu Xiaolou’s exactly. He dropped into a crouch and did not dare move an inch. The soft armor on his body quietly shifted in color, turning into a muddy blackish yellow that blended with the earth.

Out of the corner of his eye, Liu Xiaolou glanced at the Concealment Pendant Jade hanging at his neck and silently prayed, It’s all up to you now.

How much time passed, he could not tell. At last, the old man turned slightly, as if looking toward something off to the side. Liu Xiaolou could not see it clearly, of course, but the icy feeling in his chest faded at once, and the crushing pressure on his body eased.

A gust of mountain wind swept through. With a light tap of his foot, careful not to use too much force, he let the wind carry him gently backward.

Almost at the same time, the person not far beside him began retreating as well. The two of them were like fallen leaves, rising and dipping as the mountain wind carried them along.

When there was no wind, they did not move. When the wind came, they drifted together. They let themselves float like that for who knew how long, carried three or four li away. Just before dawn, when dark clouds covered the bright moon and the forest lay at its blackest, they stole a glance at each other and then split up, each heading in a different direction.

This whole fight had come out of nowhere and ended just as bizarrely. Ambushed for no damn reason at all... normally, with the temper of a Wulong Mountain cultivator, there was no way he’d just let that slide. He’d hunt the bastard down and make him pay. But right now, the situation was stacked against him. He had no choice but to choke down the bitterness and move on.

Liu Xiaolou poured his body with true qi and bolted southeast like his life depended on it. Because it damn well did. A few more li, just a few more, and he should be out of that old monster’s range, right?

A Foundation Establishment cultivator moving at full tilt was terrifyingly fast. In just a moment, he had already covered nearly a li of dense mountain forest.

Just as he was moving along at a brisk, easy pace, a sudden noise came from the right. In the trees, he could make out several people moving back and forth.

Liu Xiaolou quickly changed course and veered left. After circling around for more than half a li, he spotted a person coming in from the left, rushing toward him. It was the same enemy he had split up from not long ago, when they had gone their separate ways.

They locked eyes. The man made a quick hand signal, indicating that there were Qingyuan Sect disciples searching the mountain in his direction, and asking what things looked like on Liu Xiaolou’s side.

Well, at this point, there was no choice but to put their earlier grudges aside and deal with the situation together.

“There are a lot of them over here,” the man said.

“Same here,” Liu Xiaolou replied quietly. “At least six.”

“Do we turn back, or go this way?” the man asked, looking to Liu Xiaolou for his opinion.

Liu Xiaolou thought for a moment, then pointed due east. “Let’s go this way,” he said, adding, “The farther we get from Qingyuan Mountain, the better.”

Just remembering the old man’s gaze halfway up the mountain sent a chill through both of them.

Without another word, they moved together, slipping quietly toward the east.

At this kind of speed, the Concealment Pendant Jade still worked just fine. But the soft armor on the man? It could not change colors fast enough, and that was where its flaw really showed.

The eastern side of the mountain wasn’t unsearched, after all. As it turned out, Qingyuan Mountain was being searched on a broad scale, thorough and airtight. Soon, the two ran into several of them.

There were five in all, led by a Foundation Establishment cultivator, sweeping the area to the east. Liu Xiaolou and his companion ended up charging straight into them.

Two Foundation Establishment cultivators striking together was devastating, as you might expect. Liu Xiaolou hurled the Mysterious True Cord through the air. The man shot off two short arrows.

In a single exchange, the five Qingyuan Sect disciples were reduced to just two.

Only then did the Qingyuan Sect’s leading inner-sect disciple manage to react. “Stop right there!”