Hastily deciding not to heed the impatient and imposing voice of an arrogant silk-pants young master, An Fei silently dove into the crowd towards her right.
The little raven reversed its position on her shoulder to watch the young girl’s rear peripherals, its crimson eyes flickering with aghast and distaste.
“Xiao Hei, who do you think they’re looking for?”
An Fei muttered as she clapped her hands before her chest, thin streams of spiritual essence rushing through her arms to mingle at the contact between her palms.
The invisible reservoir greedily absorbed the polarized streams of spiritual essence, the loose threads compressed into a small particle in a matter of seconds.
“Stop!”
The imposing cry of an angered young master shocked the crowd into ceasing their movement, their countenances suffused with a hint of intrigue, as well as a thread of concern racing through their eyebrows.
Many even dropped onto a knee in salute, their foreheads glistening with a bead of sweat.
The Young Master was angered… someone in Dong Lin City was going to miserably suffer tonight.
“Damn!”
An Fei swore under her breath as she was forced to come to a standstill, hiding her figure from the six soldiers by standing behind a bulky man dressed in blacksmith attire.
As if she were just another citizen fearful of the upper echelons of the city, the young girl crouched low onto the ground, the wide sleeves of her hanfu covering the majority of her countenance from view.
In her haste, the diagram produced by spiritual essence could only disappear after having been interrupted at the final moment prior to manifestation.
Thus, as the armor-clad soldiers began to carefully search through the crowd one person at a time, An Fei rubbed at her ribcage with the fingers of her right hand, the coil of spiritual essence in her heart replicating the process of materializing as described by the latter half of the <Steps of Underlying Shadow>.
“We’re looking for a young girl dressed in a plain hanfu of indigo and peach brocade,” the young master stood at the center of the kneeling crowd, his wide sleeves flapping forth a mighty gust of domination and oppression.
“Anyone who has information on this person, this Du will not mistreat them! However, if you were to conceal any information or the person herself – I will personally flay you until your bones are ground to dust!”
The six soldiers completely covered in the black steel armor fanned out to guard the young master dressed in brocade on all angles, the longswords drawn and aimed towards the heads of the crowd.
Combined with the awestriking reputation and influence of the Du Clan of Dong Lin City, the kneeling people could not quake in terror, though an imperceptible excitement raced underneath.
The Du Clan of Dong Lin City – this was a clan emphasizing on the pursuit of cultivation, and possessed immense influence not only within the city, but also that of the Hundred Clan Coalition itself!
The elder’s generations were all endowed and empowered cultivators capable of shaking Great Yong’s lower levels as they wished, and their younger generations were no inferior to their predecessors.
Even the youth whose guards’ swords were aimed at their heads, could topple the jianghu with his reputation alone…
Du Yongkang, a famed genius in the path of cultivation.
Though his temper was a little questionable, it was widely forgiven for his tremendously young age in respect to his attainment in cultivation.
The Du Clan had instilled this Seventh Young Master into the trails befitting that of a practitioner when he was thirteen years old, dedicating the clan’s resources to his disposal.
Surpassing the Body Tempering Realm at the tender age of fourteen, the Foundation Establishment Realm at seventeen, and now in his eighteenth year, he was approaching the peak of the Spirit Building Realm…
Granted, his authority as a young master of a clan powerful enough to be matched only when the Shen, Tang, and Wen Clans coalesced their forces together permitted him to squander precious troves of spiritual medicines and pills more than anyone else, but Du Yongkang’s achievements as a sole practitioner could never be underestimated.
He wasn’t capable of contending against the fabled geniuses who could perform the impossible and surpass realms in combat potential, but within the same cultivation realm, Du Yongkang’s prowess was unmatchable.
At the battle of Tianqing in which Bei Tang had dispatched their younger generation’s practitioners to cause unrest in Great Yong’s territories, Du Yongkang had single-handedly slayed thirty practitioners of the same realm in a single battle.
After such a name-changing incident, nobody dared to antagonize this Young Master, fearing for their pitiful lives.
For such a tyrannical giant of the jianghu’s younger generation to eagerly seek a young girl that he would leverage the influence of his clan…
“Hanfu of indigo and peach brocade…”
An Fei murmured, her voice freezing in the next instant. Time seemed to slow as the young girl glanced down upon her clothing, her lips curling into a hateful smile.
Mm, her hanfu was plain, with an indigo skirt and an upper vestige of peach blossom.
It was one of the plainer dresses she could find within the Sanctum’s eye-boggling collection, but the combination of indigo and peach was alluring to An Fei’s taste.
Before she departed with Shen Haoren, the young girl had swapped out her clothing to reduce any imposing impression obtained from her appearance to befit that of a completely powerless mortal girl, but alas…
She didn’t think that it would be used against her in such a form…
“Coalesce!”
The young girl whispered in a harsh tone, her scarlet irises flaring at the puzzled expressions of the people besides her morph into surprise and delight.
As one of them opened their mouth to shout and raise their hand, the invisible diagram that confounded the world materialized into existence over An Fei’s heart.
The numbing and detached sensation of separating herself from the world once again flooded the young girl’s body to her core, but An Fei could care less about the odd rush of heat and cold surging through her Extraordinary Eight Meridians.
The young girl clutched the little raven’s stiff body to her bosom as she raced away, her feet lightly striking the ground to weave through the invisible maze of kneeling people.
“Oops…”
To avoid tripping on the feet of a kneeling elderly person, An Fei accidently took the wrong turn as she rushed forward, discovering herself to have moved closer into the circle of prostrating citizens instead of fleeing the area.
Just three meters away towards her right, the young girl spotted a tall man standing whilst covered in black steel armor, his lips being the only human article displayed to the public.
The longsword had gently lowered its tip to stab into the paved ground, the immaculate blade gleaming with the thirst to draw blood. Her gaze focusing on the soldier’s expressionless countenance and the lax grip on the sword, An Fei quickly came up with a ruthless plan.
A simple plan that was reckless in her opinion, but it could never fail whilst the <Steps of Underlying Shadow> cloaked her presence from even visual or tactile perception.
The young girl crept forwards, her hands outstretched before her chest towards the soldier closest to her.
As she neared the man about to readjust his grip on the longsword, An Fei’s fingertips released an eerie glow, and a spatial distortion manifested at her fingertips.
The fingers of her right hand released a violet radiance, whilst those of her left exuded a scarlet brilliance.
“Sorry, but your Young Master is giving me a little too much trouble,” An Fei whispered, her fingers just centimeters away from the man’s hand.
“Since you’ve most likely been hired by him to terrorize many people, you wouldn’t complain, right?”
With that, the young girl pressed tightly against the armored plate that guarded the soldier’s hand from the world, dispatching the threads of spiritual essence to invade the soldier’s body.
As she ran away, An Fei didn’t dare look back or slow down as she raced into the alleyways of Dong Lin City’s western sector.
“Ah?”
The solder dressed in black steel armor shivered as his right hand unexpectedly twitched, the bones and blood vessels vibrating as two rivers of fire and ice raced into his body.
The polarized spiritual essence invaded the meridians with ease, plunging into his Governing Vessel and submerging itself into his dantian.
“What’s going…”
The man frowned, his brows creased as his spine began to quiver in panic. The soldier slapped the back of his right hand to alleviate the unusual sting he had received underneath the armor, only to widen his eyes in dread and pain.
“Y-y-young Master!”
The reservoir compressed onto the unified mixture of spiritual essence, triggering the volatile reaction of Yang and Yin attributed spiritual essence to swamp over the area.
The man’s body bulged through the crevices of his armor as the cyan diagram erupted in his dantian, causing a tidal wave of flesh, bone, and blood to explode onto Dong Lin City.
