FIMA Ch160: Seize

Gu Siyuan smiled sidelong at Xie Xueyi, let go of his chin, and instead took hold of his slender wrist. “Come on. Let’s go explore this secret realm.”

Coming back to himself, Xie Xueyi lightly shook their joined hands. “Mm, hurry, hurry. All the good stuff will get snatched up if we’re late.”

The two of them traveled forward all the way using only qinggong.

Inside a secret realm, danger lurked everywhere. Other than when fleeing for one’s life, cultivators generally would not fly on swords. If some dangerous thing noticed you in the air, that would just be courting death.

The Xianling Secret Realm was vast beyond measure. When they entered, they had only been at the outer edge, while all the truly good things lay deeper in the center.

And naturally, the farther inward one went, the more dangerous things became.

Whether it was demon beasts of increasingly high cultivation, the various cultivators one encountered more and more often, or the treacherous and ever-changing terrain.

By evening that day, the setting sun hung low on the horizon, and its orange-gold light draped the distant mountain peaks in a thin veil of gold.

Gu Siyuan and Xie Xueyi paused to rest beside an open river valley.

This valley also happened to be the final dividing line between the outer and inner regions of the secret realm.

Gu Siyuan killed two spirit birds with a single sword strike, then took a dagger, cleaned and dressed them by the river, and set them over the fire to roast slowly.

Meanwhile, Xie Xueyi excitedly dumped out the contents of his storage ring and counted them one by one, just like a hamster hoarding food for winter.

Gu Siyuan glanced over and casually asked, “Are you satisfied with our gains these past few days?”

Xie Xueyi lifted his head, his smile brilliant. “Satisfied. Very satisfied.”

Although they had encountered quite a few fierce beasts along the way, they had still been in the outer region, so basically everything had been solved with a single sword strike from Gu Siyuan. Nearly every precious resource they passed was swept into their possession.

Occasionally, they also ran into cultivators competing for those same resources, but with Gu Siyuan’s face as a walking signboard, those people mostly fled without even fighting.

Watching his adorable expression, Gu Siyuan said softly, “Tomorrow we can enter the inner region of the secret realm. There will be even more good things there.”

Xie Xueyi blinked, scooted over to sit beside him, leaned against his leg, and looked up at him with bright shining eyes. “Then are you going to get them all for me?”

Gu Siyuan raised a brow. “If you want them, then yes. It’s not troublesome.”

He himself did not care much about the treasures in this secret realm.

As the Da Shixiong of Taixuan Immortal Sect, for resources useful at the Golden Core stage, as long as they were not outrageously excessive, the sect would basically let him draw on them at will.

Besides, he had spent the previous two months at Artifact Peak. Just the artifacts he had produced during that time would already be enough to make him a considerable fortune.

But along the way, Xie Xueyi had shown great interest in collecting these things. Every time they found a little more, he became absurdly happy.

Overcome with excitement, Xie Xueyi threw his arms around Gu Siyuan. “Gege, you’re so good to me. I like you to death.”

The corner of Gu Siyuan’s lips curved up.

Looking at the spirit bird in his hand, now almost fully roasted, he handed one over to Xie Xueyi. “I can be even better. Taste this.”

Cultivators ordinarily did not need to eat grains, lest impurities form in the body.

But these two spirit birds were spirit beasts born within the secret realm and raised from birth in rich spiritual energy. Eating them was actually beneficial to cultivation.

Xie Xueyi took one and, thinking of something, smiled mischievously. “Gege, these spirit birds seem to have been hawk-type creatures when they were alive. And you’re an eagle too, aren’t you? So wouldn’t that make you the same kind? Hehe. In the end, it still means that I, this king of the forest, was the first one to eat you.”

Gu Siyuan gave him a calm glance. “Mm. I am not your equal. But to be kept in shidi’s thoughts at all times, never forgotten for even a moment, is a great honor to me.”

“…” Xie Xueyi.

Hmph. Quite good at putting on airs, wasn’t he?

Xie Xueyi widened his eyes and bit down hard on the roasted spirit bird.

Then he blinked, took several more big bites, and gnawed it down until only bones were left.

Only then did he turn to Gu Siyuan and say, “Good gege, how is it that even roasting a bird can taste this good? Is there anything in this world you can’t do?”

Gu Siyuan’s expression did not change. “There really isn’t. In every way, I’m very capable.”

“…” Xie Xueyi.

Was his mind too dirty?

Or was this man really hinting at something again?

Just then, a huge commotion came from not far away. It sounded like the self-destruction of a magical artifact.

Gu Siyuan’s spiritual sense stretched out toward it from afar.

A moment later, his eyes narrowed and he rose to his feet at once.

Xie Xueyi frowned. “What is it?”

Gu Siyuan replied, “A few shidi and shimei from the immortal sect are being hunted down. I need to go over there.”

As he spoke, he grabbed Xie Xueyi and sped toward the source of the disturbance.

A dark figure flashed rapidly across the open valley.

At the far end of the river valley lay a cold pool heavy with sinister yin energy.

And right then, near that cold pool, a massive white cold flood-dragon, together with its two toad generals, was carrying out a brutal slaughter.

A bright red tongue lined with barbs shot out and wrapped around a cultivator in purple robes, dragging him swiftly toward its mouth.

“Ji-shixiong! Ji-shixiong, save me—!”

That disciple from Ziji Mountain cried out in terror. As he struggled, the barbs on the tongue nearly scraped a layer of flesh from his body, leaving him drenched in blood.

Ji Jinghuan raised his eyes and glanced at the disciple, but he could not spare any attention.

He grabbed Xiao Xinchi tightly in his arms and retreated rapidly while activating a special spirit artifact on his body to block a tail strike from the white cold flood-dragon in the center.

In that instant, the Ziji Mountain disciple wrapped in the ice toad’s tongue could already smell the foul stench coming from its mouth, and his face turned utterly gray with despair.

Several of the other disciples nearby wanted to rescue him but were unable to.

Suddenly, a razor-sharp silver-white sword light flashed past like an immortal descending from beyond the heavens.

Blood sprayed through the air, and that long scarlet tongue was cleanly severed from the root, flying off together with the Ziji Mountain disciple.

Ding Yue felt the strength of the tongue around him suddenly loosen, and joy rose in his heart. But in the next instant, his whole body lost control and crashed downward toward the lake below.

Then the clothing on his back tightened—someone seemed to have caught hold of him.

He hastily looked up and cried out in shock, “Da Shixiong…”

Gu Siyuan carried him to the lakeshore and set him down, then said to Xie Xueyi, “Give him a pill.”

The moment he finished speaking, his figure leapt up again, sword in hand, and charged toward the ice toad that had gone mad after having its tongue severed.

Gu Siyuan’s expression was cold and severe. His sword flashed as Yunxing Jianfa was driven to its utmost limit.

Two sword lights slashed mercilessly toward the ice toad, crossing at one point and slicing its body cleanly in half. This time, the ice toad demon beast was dead for good.

The disciples who had been struggling desperately to hold out, seeing Gu Siyuan arrive to rescue them, were instantly overjoyed.

“Da Shixiong!”

“Da Shixiong is invincible!”

Gu Siyuan gave the slightest nod.

But the remaining ice toad, having witnessed its companion’s grisly death, had gone completely mad. It no longer dared to lash out its tongue, and instead sprayed freezing poisonous liquid wildly in every direction.

The poison was vicious. The moment it touched flesh, a terrible chill burst through the body. In no time at all, several people had already been injured by it.

Gu Siyuan’s expression sharpened. To the disciples, he said, “Fall back.”

Then sword light layered over sword light in his hand, growing even fiercer, and he dealt with the last ice toad the same way as before.

At that moment, several disciples suddenly cried out in alarm, “Da Shixiong, watch out!”

Gu Siyuan could roughly guess what was happening behind him. He did not even look back. Instead, he tapped his toe against the head of the toad he had just split in half and used it as leverage to leap upward into the air.

In the next instant, a pale ice-white tail came crashing down where he had been standing. The giant toad corpse was smashed directly into the bottom of the lake.

Among demon beasts, flood-dragons were naturally one of the strongest and hardest to deal with.

Gu Siyuan had no intention of confronting it head-on, and he swiftly retreated to the shore.

But the moment he withdrew, the pressure on Ji Jinghuan and Xiao Xinchi—who were facing the cold flood-dragon directly—instantly increased.

He watched as Ji Jinghuan tried again and again to leave the battlefield, only to be relentlessly pursued by the violent flood-dragon. Human cultivators simply could not compare to a cold flood-dragon in either spiritual power or physical body.

As the fight dragged on, Ji Jinghuan and Xiao Xinchi were repeatedly pushed into life-threatening danger.

Xiao Xinchi looked at Ji Jinghuan, then at Gu Siyuan, and shouted urgently, “Da Shixiong, save us!”

Gu Siyuan narrowed his eyes slightly and ignored him.

Just then, Ji Jinghuan suddenly moved his arm and threw some object toward Gu Siyuan’s side.

Gu Siyuan did not care what it was. He simply grabbed Xie Xueyi and avoided it at once.

But the cold flood-dragon’s attention had already been completely drawn over.

It actually gave up pursuing Ji Jinghuan and Xiao Xinchi, turning instead to attack Gu Siyuan with its full focus.

On the other side, Ji Jinghuan grabbed Xiao Xinchi, cast a cold sneer toward Gu Siyuan, and fled into the distance like the wind.

Xie Xueyi exploded in fury. “That damn bastard!”

Yet Gu Siyuan’s expression remained calm. He only said to Xie Xueyi, “Stand back a little.”

Then, with a slight movement of his palm, dozens of black round magical artifacts appeared in his hand.

In the next instant, he activated them all with spiritual power and hurled them at the cold flood-dragon.

“Boom—!”

Dozens of spirit-bomb artifacts exploded at once, releasing destructive force comparable to the Nascent Soul stage. The entire sky was lit red by the blast.

The cold flood-dragon, which had just been flaunting its might moments ago, was instantly ripped open. From the horn on its head to its limbs and flesh, blood gushed out everywhere, and it let out a shrill scream of agony.

Even Ji Jinghuan, who had already fled far away with Xiao Xinchi, heard that cry and could not help stopping in his tracks.

Xiao Xinchi exclaimed, “What happened?”

By the cold pool, Gu Siyuan pressed the advantage.

He took out several dozen more black spherical spirit-bomb artifacts from his storage ring and activated them, hurling them toward the struggling flood-dragon.

“Boom—!” Another earth-shaking explosion followed.

The flood-dragon collapsed completely, its corpse floating on the surface of the water while bright red blood poured out without end.

In an instant, the previously crystal-clear cold pool turned cloudy pink.

Xie Xueyi stared at Gu Siyuan with wide eyes and muttered, “Back when you were making these things at Artifact Peak, one by itself didn’t seem all that powerful. But with dozens—hundreds—of them exploding at once, they’re actually this terrifying?”

Gu Siyuan nodded lightly. “That was exactly the point. If they were useless, why would I have spent two months making them?”

Thinking back to how, before entering the secret realm, Gu Siyuan had forcibly stuffed a mountain-like pile of those black spheres into his own storage ring, Xie Xueyi’s heart immediately softened into a mush.

At once, he wrapped both arms around Gu Siyuan’s arm and acted spoiled again. “Gege, I like you to death. I like you so much I could die and come back to life…”

Gu Siyuan raised a sword-like brow, pinched his cheek, and said in a low voice, “Die and come back to life? Save that energy for later.”

“…” Xie Xueyi.

Had he just heard another beastly line?

Xie Xueyi coughed twice, then said stiffly to Gu Siyuan, “Gege, that surnamed Ji just now threw some broken egg over here, and then the flood-dragon went mad at you.”

Gu Siyuan narrowed his eyes.

Cold flood-dragons were born in cold pools and preferred yin-heavy, frigid places. They tended to be uncomfortable away from such environments, so they were generally considered rather lazy demon beasts and would not usually come out to trouble humans on their own.

For it to pursue Ji Jinghuan and the others with that kind of dead-or-alive determination, they had most likely done something first.

He remembered that near the end of the original story, the male leads had an ice-dragon beast pet. This should be where it came from.

The reason it would become an ice dragon and not remain a cold flood-dragon—

was that according to the original novel, among these two cold flood-dragon eggs, one had not actually been laid by the flood-dragon itself. It had risked life and death to steal it from some dragon cave, intending to swallow it one day during heavenly tribulation, thereby using it to transform and gain a trace of true dragon bloodline.

After thinking this through, he directly asked the few stunned Ziji Mountain disciples nearby, “What did you do to the cold flood-dragon earlier? Did you steal its eggs?”

Those people were originally from Ziji Mountain and were absolute loyalists of the Ji family. But when they remembered the sight of Ji Jinghuan fleeing without hesitation, their hearts finally wavered. They exchanged glances.

Among them, Ding Yue—the Ziji Mountain disciple who had been fed an antidote pill by Xie Xueyi and was now sitting in meditation—spoke softly. “When we went down into the cold pool to search for ice spirit stones, we saw two cold flood-dragon eggs…”

Xie Xueyi rolled his eyes and mocked them, “No wonder it chased you all so desperately. That cold flood-dragon—and even those ice toads—were that powerful, and you people still wanted the eggs more than your lives. If your Da Shixiong hadn’t arrived in time, were you all really planning to throw away your lives for an egg?”

“N-no, that’s not…” A few of them wanted to explain and stammered awkwardly, “How precious are cold flood-dragon eggs? Once they were taken, how could they possibly remain in the hands of people like us? Even if we wanted to return them, it wasn’t our decision to make…”

Gu Siyuan nodded. “I understand.”

Then he turned to Xie Xueyi. “Do you still want more treasures?”

“Of course I do. What are you planning?” Xie Xueyi blinked, eager to try.

Gu Siyuan looked toward the direction where Ji Jinghuan had vanished and gave a cold laugh. “As the saying goes, murder and arson are what put a golden belt around your waist. Why work yourself half to death searching for treasures when it’s faster to rob someone who’s already found them?”

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