Chapter 5

The cold metal of the shackle chains clamped tight around Lou Yue's throat.

She tried to shift, but the man pressed his knee hard against the joint on the outer side of her thigh, his elbows weighing down heavily on both her arms, pinning her firmly to the bed.

"Let my sister go!"

Xiao Rangchen popped out of nowhere, reeking of fish, the ends of his hair still dripping with some unknown liquid.

Lou Yue wrinkled her nose. "That stench is unbearable. Couldn't you have at least freshened up before coming to ambush me?"

Xiao Rangchen's gaze was sharp and fierce, but the person he was holding hostage was Lou Yue. She showed not a hint of panic, her tone instead lazy and faintly mischievous. "Oh, I get it now. You snuck up here hiding in a fish crate, didn't you?"

Xiao Rangchen pressed his lips into a tight line, not saying a word, icy hostility rolling off him.

Lou Yue was about to tease him further when he cut her off sharply. "Lou Yue!" His voice was low and hoarse, thick with suppressed fury.

To subdue Lou Yue, who wielded spiritual power, Xiao Rangchen leaned his full weight over her, his half-dry long hair slipping down with the movement and smacking right against her face.

Lou Yue instantly felt the stench shoot straight to the top of her head, and gagged instinctively.

Xiao Rangchen: "..."

Lou Yue's brows knotted together. She wanted so badly to hold it in, but since neither of them could free a hand to move that clump of hair away, it kept brushing against her sensitive nose, irritating it nonstop.

Lou Yue could not hold back any longer, squirming despite the chains binding her. "Wait— I'm gonna— ugh— throw up— ugh— loosen up first— ugh..."

Seeing her face pale, the chains scraping red marks into his own neck, looking like she truly was struggling horribly, Xiao Rangchen frowned, and loosened his grip by half a fraction.

That was the split second she needed.

Lou Yue burst her waist upward with all her strength, kicking Xiao Rangchen right off the bed. At the same time, she cast a newly learned binding barrier, locking him in place so he could not move an inch.

"You faked it." Xiao Rangchen's face was livid, every word ground out through gritted teeth.

It wasn't exactly a total lie— she just somehow ended up not actually throwing up in the end. But there was no need to explain that to Xiao Rangchen. She sat up slowly, brushing the messy strands of hair back from her neck, lifting her chin slightly with a smug, arrogant tone. "That's right. I faked it."

Rage flared in Xiao Rangchen's eyes. He punched the barrier hard, but the spirit-restraining shackles on his wrists kept him from breaking through it at all.

"Don't waste your energy." Lou Yue straightened her clothes, hopped off the bed, and circled around him to look him over.

Xiao Rangchen's clothes were far more rumpled than before. A piercing wound on his right chest gaped open, the flesh red tinged with gray, showing faint signs of rotting.

Lou Yue glanced away from the wound quickly. No wonder he's the classic overpowered hero, he really can take pain.

She walked back to stand right in front of Xiao Rangchen, fixing her gaze on him again. "What did you use to break open the spirit-restraining cage? Something sharp enough to cut through the cage, but not the spirit-restraining chains on your hands and feet? It has some kind of usage limit, doesn't it?"

Lou Yue's eyes darted to the storage ring on Xiao Rangchen's finger, then to the black-gold ear stud on the side of his ear. Since his spiritual power was sealed, he could not retrieve items from it, so whatever that thing was, it had to be hidden somewhere on his body.

She circled him two more times, but found nothing. She shrugged and gave up. "Fine, I won't try to take it from you."

She sauntered back to the bed, propping herself up on her hands behind her, crossing her long legs to prop them up, looking down at the man on the ground from her elevated position. "You could have just run off, but you had to sneak onto my cloud boat. Now look at the mess you've landed me in— I have to figure out what to do with you."

She thought about just tossing him right off the cloud boat, but they were so high up, he would definitely die if he fell. If the heavens came after her for that and struck her down with lightning, she would end up losing far more than she gained.

Then, a brilliant idea popped into Lou Yue's head.

"Close your eyes. No peeking. If you do, I'm going to go sleep cuddled up to Xiao Aiai tonight!"

Xiao Rangchen's Adam's apple bobbed sharply, his knuckles clenched so tight at his sides they blanched white. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes heavily.

Lou Yue immediately fished out a jade slip, swept her spiritual sense across it in a rush to find what she was looking for. After two failed attempts, she finally conjured a clear, pale-gold protective barrier. Glancing out of the corner of her eye to see Xiao Rangchen still standing perfectly still, she curled the corner of her mouth into a smile, lifted her fingertips, and the spherical barrier flew up and swelled abruptly, engulfing Xiao Rangchen inside.

"Relax, this is a barrier to keep you safe," Lou Yue said, stepping over to Xiao Rangchen, who had jolted awake. She poked the golden ball with her fingertip, then thumped it hard twice, nodding in approval. "Excellent elasticity. This is a really good ball."

"What on earth do you think you're doing?" Xiao Rangchen's back went rigid, his dark eyes fixed intently on her.

A playful, mischievous laugh tinkled from Lou Yue's lips. "What am I doing? Why, getting rid of you, of course."

With a flick of her sleeve, the door swung open at once, and fresh breeze poured in. Lou Yue pushed the golden ball out the door, then looked out into the distance.

Hmm, the sky was a bright, clear blue, the wind gentle and the sun warm. It was a perfect day to dump someone.

"Goodbye, Xiao Rangchen."

Lou Yue's smile was bright and unbridled. She channeled spiritual energy into her fingertips and sent the golden ball holding Xiao Rangchen flying straight off the top deck.

"Lou Yue!"

The low, deep magnetic voice wrapped in towering fury made Lou Yue arch her eyebrows high. She was just squinting to savor the moment, when suddenly —

"Crack-boom!"

Silver lightning came crashing down from the sky, striking Lou Yue square on.

Her vision swam, her body tilted, and she toppled straight over the guardrail of the cloud skyship.

The sensation of weightlessness jolted her fully awake. She reacted instantly, latching onto the ship's railing to steady herself, but then an icy-blue water-type spell coiled around her ankle, the other end of the tether leading straight down to the golden ball below.

The one who cast the spell was not Xiao Rangchen. It was a tiny cyan puppy with a horn on its head, gritting its teeth and scrabbling frantically at the golden ball with its short little limbs.

Lou Yue recognized it at once as Xiao Rangchen's contract beast, Qinglin. But in the book, Qinglin wasn't supposed to hatch until long after Xiao Rangchen left the Xuandu sect. How was it here so early?

Lou Yue had no time to dwell on that. She immediately tried to use her spiritual energy to break the binding, but this seemingly ordinary water could devour spiritual energy. She had been fine before channeling her power, but the moment she did, the spiritual energy in her dantian was siphoned away. Her fingers went limp in an instant, and her grip on the railing slipped completely.

Wind roared in her ears, and the terror of death wrapped around her, thick and suffocating.

"Lord Xuan! Save me!"

"Lord Xuan!!"

Panicked, Lou Yue screamed out a name by instinct: "Xuanba!!!"

The second the name "Xuanba" left her mouth —

A dark red-black tortoise lunged straight out from the cloud skyship, its body swelling dozens of times in size as it dove toward Lou Yue like a falling meteor. A wisp of spiritual energy wrapped around her first, blocking the howling gale completely.

Still shaken to her core, Lou Yue gathered what little spiritual energy she had left to conjure a golden protective barrier of her own.

Xuanba caught up to Lou Yue steadily, landing at the exact same moment as Xiao Rangchen, and the impact blew a crater over ten feet wide into the ground. It had just climbed out of the pit to catch Lou Yue —

Thud! Lou Yue's golden ball slammed right into its tortoise shell. The barrier didn't shatter at all; instead, it bounced high into the air. Right after that, Xiao Rangchen's golden ball also crashed into the shell with a thud. The two golden spheres, one right after the other, bounced and hopped rapidly toward the Misty Forest, vanishing from sight in the blink of an eye.

Xuanba: ?

Lou Yue: ??

...

Deep in the shadowy forest, the bouncing golden balls startled flocks of birds and beasts into flight.

At first, Xiao Rangchen had kept his composure, but after the ball kept bouncing wildly for what felt like ages, a cold frost began to creep over his sharp, chiseled face.

"Release me," he said, his tone heavy with irritation.

Lou Yue's golden sphere dropped high up in front of her. She turned her back to Xiao Rangchen, planted her hands on her hips and shouted back, "If you're so capable, break it yourself!"

But out of Xiao Rangchen's sight, Lou Yue was frantically flipping through a jade slip, and the second she saw the note that "the protective barrier will break on its own once its spiritual energy is exhausted", her spirits immediately deflated.

Lou Yue slumped down inside the sphere, filled with the exasperation of having shot herself in the foot.

Still, her moods always came and went quickly. After a moment, she consoled herself that a contracted beast could sense its master's location, so instead of fretting pointlessly right now, she might as well wait patiently.

Lou Yue turned around and sat down leisurely, deciding to find some fun to pass the time.

She propped up her chin, raised her eyes to glance teasingly at the man behind her who was striking the sphere's wall to no avail, and said, "Hey, still haven't cracked it? Where's that little cyan dog of yours? Why don't you let it help you out?"

Xiao Rangchen lifted his gaze, gave her a deep, fleeting glance, and said nothing.

Lou Yue kept chattering away, "Don't tell me it ran out of spiritual energy and dropped halfway down? Hm... That's some karmic payback for it dragging me down here in the first place."

Xiao Rangchen suddenly stopped his movements. His dark eyes fixed sharply on her, and after a long moment, he stated with absolute certainty, "You can't break it either."

Lou Yue's smile froze on her face.

Xiao Rangchen then sat down too, recovering his strength while keeping a vigilant watch over their surroundings.

At some point, even the wailing sound of wind drifting through the tree branches in the forest vanished, leaving only the dull thud of the golden sphere bouncing on the ground. The dead silence was eerie enough to make one's skin crawl.

After the sphere bounced around for nearly another hour, its glow gradually dimmed.

When Lou Yue's golden sphere finally landed, it hit a slanted rock, veering off course and crashing straight into the other golden sphere that was descending right then.

"Pop!"

Both golden spheres shattered at the same time. Without the protection of the barrier, Lou Yue and Xiao Rangchen were caught off guard and collided hard into each other!

"Ow—" Lou Yue yelped in pain, her nose smacking squarely into Xiao Rangchen's hard jaw.

Xiao Rangchen instinctively reached out to push her away, and Lou Yue did the same. In the scuffle, Lou Yue's fingers got tangled in Xiao Rangchen's hair, and the ornament on her waist caught in the chains of her shackles. They lost their balance completely and plummeted straight down from the high altitude.

Lou Yue twisted around, trying to make him land under her to cushion the fall, while Xiao Rangchen bent his elbow to fend her off. As a result, the two of them crashed sideways onto the ground at the same time.

Two crisp cracking sounds rang out.

Lou Yue's right arm bone, and Xiao Rangchen's left leg bone, broke in unison, accompanied by Lou Yue's yelp of pain and Xiao Rangchen's low groan.

As if things weren't bad enough for them, a scarlet giant mouth suddenly lunged out of the thick fog. Both of them instinctively dodged to the side, but they picked the exact same direction, crashing into each other hard again. In the end, they could only tumble across the ground in a thoroughly embarrassing mess to barely avoid the fatal bite.

"You did that on purpose to get back at me, didn't you!!" Lou Yue rolled into a mud pit, her clothes all soiled. She sat up holding her broken arm, pointed at Xiao Rangchen and yelled furiously.

Xiao Rangchen glanced at her disheveled, mud-covered state. The coldness in his eyes softened a little, his mood lightening, and he only let out a faint, cold huff.

The snake demon that had been completely ignored flew into a rage. Two more heads poked out of the thick fog, making it a three-headed serpent. Its forked tongue flicked and hissed, and its thick, scaled tail swept over carrying a fierce gust of wind.

Lou Yue stared at the three feral, scale-covered snake heads, her throat tightening. All her earlier fire vanished in the blink of an eye, and her body shook like a sieve, completely out of her control.

In this life, and even in her past life, the thing she feared most was snakes... and the one right in front of her was the maxed-out pro version. She felt like her soul was about to leave her body any second.

In the gaps between her clumsy dodges, Lou Yue unconsciously inched her feet toward where Xiao Rangchen was standing.

The snake demon, which no longer had to split up to hunt them down, was absolutely delighted by this. Its attacks grew more and more fierce, and its sweeping tail forced the two of them to retreat again and again.

Seeing Lou Yue huddle back to his side after he had tried to get her to keep her distance, Xiao Rangchen finally lost his patience and snapped, "Do you have any common sense at all?"

Lou Yue clenched her fists, forcing herself to hold her ground as she yelled even louder than him, "Brainless! So what!"

Xiao Rangchen was left speechless, unable to come up with a retort for a moment.

In that split second of distraction, the snake's tail lashed out and struck Xiao Rangchen. His balance gave way, and he stumbled backward, crashing right into Lou Yue who had been trying to duck behind him. The two of them slammed hard into a tree, shaking the dry leaves off the branches to patter down all around them.

Crushed between the snake tail's massive force, Xiao Rangchen's body, and the hard tree trunk, Lou Yue's chest ached so sharply she felt like it was splitting apart. She yelped in pain, "You're squashing my chest flat!"

Having used her to soften the impact, Xiao Rangchen curled his lips into a cold, mocking smirk, his tone icy and unbearably teasing. "There wasn't much there to squash in the first place."

The cruel jab hit her like a ton of bricks. Lou Yue was so furious that a sweet taste rose in her throat, and she spat out a mouthful of blood. Her voice trembling, she spat out a vicious threat, "Xiao Rangchen! I curse you to never have a chest for your whole life!"

Xiao Rangchen, who naturally had no chest to speak of, let out a dismissive "heh", his tone cold and flippant enough to make Lou Yue want to jump right out of her skin.

Far angrier than her, the giant python demon reared all three of its heads high, looming over them like a dark blanket blotting out the sky. Its jaws split open, and three streams of purple flame burst forth. One stream coiled around the perimeter to shrink the space the two could use to dodge, while the other two shot straight toward them.

Lou Yue's eyes were fixed entirely on those three enormous snake heads, and she couldn't stop her legs from trembling where she stood.

Seeing her zoning out at such a critical moment, Xiao Rangchen didn't have time to think twice. Biting back the searing pain of his broken leg, he lunged over and rolled to the side with her in his arms.

Xiao Rangchen lifted his head, just about to explain that he had only saved her for Xiao Aiai's sake, when he caught sight of the thick beads of sweat covering her forehead and neck. Her face was deathly pale, her whole body shaking so badly that none of her usual brash, fiery attitude was left.

Xiao Rangchen frowned, unable to figure out what trick she was pulling this time.

Lou Yue forced herself to fix her gaze on Xiao Rangchen, and then she noticed a tuft of purple flame burning on his left calf, creeping steadily upward. Realizing the fire was about to reach her too, all the strength in Lou Yue's body came rushing back at once.

She shoved Xiao Rangchen away hard, her voice cracking as she shouted urgently and sharply, "Get out of here!"

Xiao Rangchen saw the unmistakeable, genuine look of wanting nothing to do with him in Lou Yue's eyes. His dark eyes sharpened instantly, and he flipped himself over to retreat a good distance away.

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Xiao Rangchen: Tch, he never should have saved her in the first place.