Even Yun Ruoyan was surprised by the stack of scrolls on the ground. There were at least twenty of them, and the students were well aware that such legendary teleportation scrolls had all but vanished from the Chenyuan continent. Where could all these scrolls have come from?

“Is this a real teleportation scroll?!” Many of the students looked disbelieving at the stack of scrolls in Li Mo’s hands.

Yun Ruoyan took one of the scrolls and held it in her hand, immediately feeling an unusual pulse of spiritual energy. 

This scroll is real! 

Although it was real, it felt if it were new, not something passed down from ancient times. She turned doubtfully to Li Mo, as did many of the other students.

“This is something that I developed with the first elder after a long period of experimentation,” Li Mo explained. “I’ll set up an array within the treehouse linked to these scrolls. Once you use a scroll, you’ll be sent directly back here. Because of the time constraints, however, I was only able to make twenty-seven such scrolls. If you join my team, you won’t get one.”

“I want a scroll!” Guan Tianyu was the first to step up. “Given how strange the enemies can get here, even Master Mo might not be able to protect us all. Having one of these scrolls around will be safer.”

“I want a scroll as well.” Rong Yueshan was the second one up. She and Yun Ruoyan were bitter rivals, and Li Mo was both Yun Ruoyan’s master and supposedly her fiance. Rong Yueshan found it quite likely that he would ignore her if she were in danger in order to remove one of Yun Ruoyan’s competitors.

Pei Ziao and Yi Qianying evidently felt the same way, because they too hurriedly took a scroll. The remaining students from the northern college followed suit, as did those students from the other three colleges.

Zhuo Yifeng didn’t think that Li Mo assigned him to his team in order to protect him, but he also didn’t think that Li Mo would use this opportunity to harm him. After all, Li Mo had once told him to challenge Li Mo again once he felt capable. Although Zhuo Yifeng hated Li Mo, he believed that he was a trustworthy man. 

I’ll figure out what you’re up to—just you wait!

“In that case, since it’s already dark, we’ll rest for the night and head out tomorrow,” Li Mo announced, once everyone had claimed a scroll.

The treehouse was constructed with seven or eight gargantuan trees as base, and it was extremely spacious and sturdy. After Li Mo’s announcement, the thirty expedition members split up into their teams and each found a spot for the night. 

In the meantime, Li Mo stood in the middle of the treehouse and began inscribing an array. He raised both hands, emanating a blinding amount of spiritual energy from his palm and fingertips, which diffused through the air. Following some arcane pattern, they landed on the floor of the treehouse, causing the students’ teleportation scrolls to glow softly.

The students stared at the grand working with awe, twenty-nine yearning, admiring glances all focused on Li Mo. Constructing arrays was a rare, lost art on the Chenyuan continent, because all the arraymasters had supposedly died a millennium ago in the great war between man and demon. Kongming Academy was the only place on the continent where arrays still continued to exist.

After Li Mo finished inscribing the array, he joined Yun Ruoyan and Zhuo Yifeng in finding a corner of the treehouse in which they could rest. Yun Ruoyan wanted to speak with Li Mo, but she had to refrain from doing so overtly in front of the gathered students.

Instead, they sat quietly and meditated late into the night, at which time Yun Ruoyan was stirred awake by the howling of wild beasts. She was just about to get up and investigate when Li Mo pulled her back. 

“Don’t worry, they’re harmless,” Li Mo assured her. “Save your energy for tomorrow.” 

Li Mo pulled Yun Ruoyan into his lap, causing her to frown as her eyes darted around the treehouse. Only when she was confident that they were all still asleep did she let out a breath, her heart still pounding.

Although she had been intimate with Li Mo before, she had never done so in front of others. Yun Ruoyan was still deeply uncomfortable with performing such acts publicly.

Although Rong Yueshan, Pei Ziao, Yi Qianying, and Guan Tiantu were far away, Zhuo Yifeng was right by their side. If they were discovered…

“Li Mo, put me down!” Yun Ruoyan whispered urgently.

“Shh. Close your eyes and rest.” Right after Li Mo spoke, she heard a low, throaty noise. As though it had some sort of sleep-inducing property, Yun Ruoyan’s eyes immediately shut tight, and she drifted into a dreamless sleep.

The next day, she woke up slightly past dawn. Half her body was resting on the wooden floorboards. Li Mo wasn’t by her side, but Zhuo Yifeng was quietly resting against a wooden pillar. Yun Ruoyan sat up to find the other students all sleeping unusually soundly, and she gingerly began walking to the side of the treehouse.

She poked her head out a window, infused spiritual energy into her eyes, and was shocked to find two dozen wild beasts sleeping beneath the trees. Each beast was massive in its own right, at least four or five times the size of creatures on the Chenyuan continent. Despite resting right by each other, they showed no sign of hostility, and she couldn’t discern whether they were dead or alive.

“Yan’er, you’re awake.” Li Mo’s voice came from the side, and Yun Ruoyan turned to find him perched on a tree branch.

“Li Mo, what’s going on? Are these beasts dead or alive?”

Li Mo didn’t immediately respond. Instead, he stepped onto the air, a green sword aura flaring by his feet, as he extended a hand to Yun Ruoyan. She turned back to the treehouse to see the other students, even the usually alert Zhuo Yifeng, still soundly asleep. Frowning in doubt, she accepted Li Mo’s hand, and he brought her down to the ground.

From up close, Yun Ruoyan could easily tell that the beasts were indeed alive, not dead. “What’s going on, Li Mo?”

She thought back to the students still soundly asleep before suddenly remembering the noise she had heard right after Li Mo dragged her into his lap. 

Was that noise the problem?

Before Yun Ruoyan could ask once more, Li Mo replied, “It was caused by a soul-stealing bird.”

“A soul-stealing bird?” The name felt somewhat familiar to Yun Ruoyan—she had read about it in a tome of magical beasts; more precisely, in a chapter of extinct creatures! The chapter contained all sorts of records about magical beasts that had gone extinct on the Chenyuan continent, and it seemed that this soul-stealing bird was one such. However, she didn’t have a clear impression of the contents of the chapter.

When Li Mo saw her visibly lost expression, he explained, “Adult soul-stealing birds can kill with their cawing, but the one from last night was clearly just a chick, and it could only induce sleep.”

“No wonder they were all sleeping so soundly! But in that case, what about these wild beasts?”

The beasts were regular beasts, not magical beasts; the treehouse was situated on the outskirts of the forest, where the weaker and non-magical beasts would gather. More frightening existences tended not to appear until deeper in.

“Last night, I heard some beasts bellowing deep in the forest, and I’m not sure what happened then,” Li Mo began. “We can go check it out, but before that, I’d like to catch this soul-stealing bird.”

Li Mo then told Yun Ruoyan that soul-stealing birds enjoyed consuming all sorts of strange plants, especially the bewitching flower that they had encountered yesterday. Most likely, this particular bird had been attracted by that flower. Despite the sun already being high up in the sky, none of the other students seemed to be stirring.

Li Mo’s eyes brightened. “Looks like this bird might still be a fledgeling, but it’s certainly not weak.” He struck one of the smaller beasts with spiritual energy, causing it to stir. Moments later, it shut its eyes once more, dead. 

“Well, here’s breakfast and lunch.” Li Mo glanced at Yun Ruoyan: at this stage in his cultivation, Li Mo only ate when he wanted to. On the other hand, Yun Ruoyan seemed to need to consume an ever-increasing amount of food daily. Clearly, Li Mo had killed the beast for her.

As the sun rose even higher up the sky and sunlight filtered through the dense foliage, the beasts finally began to stir. They glanced blearily at their surroundings, not seeming startled by Yun Ruoyan and Li Mo’s presence. Slowly, on four thick, solid limbs, they stretched and began lumbering off into the distance. A small number of beasts still remained asleep within the shadows.

“Generally, low-rank or regular beasts will naturally awaken about twelve hours after being put to sleep by a soul-stealing bird. However, the bird from last night seems to be much stronger than average, so they might remain asleep for two whole days unless they’re struck by direct sunlight,” Li Mo guessed.

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