𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚞𝚗𝚝𝚘𝚕𝚍 |𝚖𝚍𝚣𝚜| *hiatus*

三

If it was darker, then one would need a torch to move freely about in the mountain's forest. Wei WuXian walked for a while, but he didn't meet many cultivators. He was quite surprised, is it possible that half of the clans who came were in Buddha's Feet arguing and talking empty words, while the other half could only come back defeated, like the group of people who just passed by?

Suddenly, cries for help came from in front of him.

"Is anyone there?"

"Help us!"

Both male and female voices could be heard, and all sounded panicked, probably not faked. Cries for help from desolate mountains were usually the works of evil creatures, to lure ignorant people into traps. Yet, Wei WuXian was extremely happy.

The eviler the creature was, the better it was for him!

He directed the donkey toward the direction of the voices, but couldn't find anything around him. As he looked upward, instead of spirits or monsters, it was the rural clan that he met by the field earlier on, hung on the trees by a huge, golden web.

The middle-aged man was originally patrolling and scouting in the forest with a few others. However, rather than meeting the prey that they had hoped for, they stepped into a net trap, probably set up by some wealthy clan, which was why they were hanging on the trees, complaining and calling for help.

After seeing that someone approached, they immediately brightened up, but the hope faded as they saw that it was a lunatic who came. Although the threads of the deity-binding net were thin, the material was fine in quality, making them difficult to break. No matter human, god, demon, spirit, or monster, it would take a long while for the intruder to struggle out since it could only be broken by a superior magical tool. The lunatic probably didn't even know what it was, much less how to get them out of it.

The people in the nets then saw a maiden walk their way. She was dressed in an expensive black cultivator's uniform and had a sword in her right hand. She walked towards the nets and looked up at them.

Wei Wuxian could recognise that uniform from anywhere, even if he didn't recognise the woman. Well, he couldn't even see the woman's face. But, there was no doubt about it. She was of the NinghuaYue.

He was about to call others to come help him when the crisp sounds of parting branches and stepping on leaves approached. A boy wearing a light-coloured robe emerged from within the dark forest.

The boy had a vermilion mark in between his eyebrows, his features delicate yet sharp. He was quite young, around the same age as Lan SiZhui—still in his adolescence. He carried a bamboo canister of feathered arrows and a luminous sword on his back, holding a longbow in his hand. The embroidery on his clothes was extremely delicate, forming a magnificent white peony in front of his chest. The golden threads glistened against the dark nighttime shades surrounding him.

Wei WuXian silently exclaimed, "How wealthy!"

This must have been a young master studying in the LanlingJin Sect, since the sect was the only one with a white peony as the clan pattern, using the king of all flowers to suggest that they were the king of all cultivators. The vermilion mark implied the meaning of "opening the doors toward wisdom and aspiration; illuminating the world with the vermilion light."

The young master already had an arrow on his bow and was preparing to shoot it, when he realised that the deity-binding nets only caught humans. After an initial moment of disappointment, he quickly became annoyed, "I find you idiots every single time. There are more than four hundred deity-binding nets in the mountain, but you guys have already broken ten or so, and I haven't even seen the prey yet!"