“Pi Li!” the youth shouted, his eyes glinting murderously at Li Mo and Yun Ruoyan.

The black hound, still in Li Mo’s grasp, was bleeding from its mouth. It opened its mouth wide and lolled out its tongue, and blood continued to pulse out of a hole in its chest.

When that hound had pounced toward Yun Ruoyan like a bolt of lightning, Li Mo tried to grab it with his hand. Incredibly, the hound had agilely twisted its body in mid-air, then bit down on Li Mo’s wrist.

Because Li Mo was a sword saint, potent spiritual energy seeped out of his body, and his bitten wrist instantly frosted over in ice. The black hound didn’t look like anything out of the ordinary, but its teeth were so sharp that it was even able to make deep impressions on the ice surrounding Li Mio’s skin.

At the same time, Yun Ruoyan thrust her Scarlet Eye, now in the shape of a dagger, through the hound’s chest and into its heart. 

“You!” The youth pointed at Li Mo with a trembling finger. “You actually dared kill my cloud-swallowing glutton! I’ll kill all of you!”

“You groundhogs are really getting quite feral, aren’t you?” Lie Yun called out. “How dare you retaliate against us!”

“Oh? Should we quietly lie down and await death instead?” Zhuo Yifeng replied.

As Li Mo held onto Yun Ruoyan with one hand and continued squeezing the neck of the black hound with the other, he glanced disdainfully at the two youths who had stepped out of the portal. “Where did the two of you come from?”

“You think groundhogs like you deserve to know who we are?” the youth called back.

Li Mo smirked, dropping the black hound’s body from where he stood. As it fell, it began to transform into the body of a massive black beast, one which was completely and utterly dead.

“You—just you wait!” The youth unsheathed the broadsword strapped to his back and soared to the skies, right in front of where Yun Ruoyan and Li Mo were standing.

Li Mo’s gaze turned to the youth’s sword. “Qin Feng, is this brat’s sword yours?”

“Yes, it is. Li Mo, this lad’s called Pi Yang. He’s not all that hard to deal with; the troublesome one is his brother, Pi Batian! He’s a sword saint, an extremely strong one at that, and he laid down many of the formations in this area.”

Li Mo’s eyes narrowed before he curled a few fingers at Pi Yang, motioning for him to attack. Furious at the loss of his beast and now taunted by Li Mo, Pi Yang immediately yelled out and charged toward Li Mo with another blade.

Li Mo and the others had been restraining their aura and hiding their true capabilities. In the eyes of the two youths, they were at most eighth-rank blademasters, but when the hotheaded Pi Yang dashed toward Li Mo, he suddenly released the full brunt of his sword saint’s aura.

The gust of spiritual energy surrounding him blocked the momentum of the youth’s dash. Despite the youth’s best efforts, he couldn’t advance any closer to Li Mo.

On the ground, Lie Yun suddenly shouted to the youth, “Pi Yang, come back! That man’s hidden his true abilities, and you’re not his match!”

Pi Yang reacted too late. Li Mo reached out with a frosted hand, a small vortex whirling about his palm and slowly sucking the youth toward him. Panicking, the girl threw a throwing knife toward Li Mo, but Yun Ruoyan blocked it with a fireball.

She was hiding her true skills too! 

Lie Yun was very shocked. Yun Ruoyan had kept her aura at the level of a fifth-rank blademaster, but she had suddenly revealed herself as a peak eighth-rank one instead. 

Who are they? Aren’t these groundhogs supposed to be weaklings? How did they end up with a sword saint?!

By then, Pi Yang had been caught in Li Mo’s hand, just like that black hound from before, and Qin Feng had regained his spiritual sword.

“Tell Pi Batian to come with the female instructor that he abducted if he wants his brother back!” Li Mo called out to Lie Yun. “If he’s not here by tomorrow, I’ll send his brother’s corpse through this portal!”

The young girl inclined her head to look at Li Mo, retreating as she spoke. “Just you wait! If you dare hurt even a hair on his head…!”

She vanished through the portal. Because Li Mo and the others were wary of a sneak attack at night, they didn’t stay in the Beast Spirit Valley. Instead, they returned to the mountain cave that was their new residence.

In order to reduce the travel time, they flew back on their swords. Li Mo tied up the youth with vines and held him close to his body. He squirmed, scolded, and threatened them as they flew, and ultimately proved himself such a nuisance that Zhuo Yifeng grabbed some grass off the ground and stuffed it into his mouth.

Along the way, they were attacked once more by the strange, howling wind and razor-sharp leaves. However, Li Mo shielded the entire party with his spiritual barrier.

Yun Ruoyan discovered something unusual: even while the leaves attacked everyone in their group, it seemed to avoid the youth in Li Mo’s hands. She prodded him with a foot. “Hey, why aren’t these leaves attacking you?”

The youth turned to her, his mouth still gagged by a bundle of grass. His eyes widened comically before furrowing in an angry frown, and Yun Ruoyan didn’t need much of an imagination to guess what sort of invectives he would have shouted at her. 

Yun Ruoyan kicked him with her foot, inciting another furious glance from the youth, then turned away.

After about two hours, they returned to the mountain cave, where the students were all very shocked to find that Li Mo had taken an outworlder captive. 

The youth was thrown to a side of the cave. The students had all suffered at the hands of the outworlders, and they couldn’t hold back their impulse to beat him up. As they did so, the grass keeping his mouth shut was knocked loose, and he began yelling and screaming again.

“You inferior creatures from a lower dimension, nothing more than smelly groundrats! I’ll have all of your bones pulverized to smithereens for daring to treat the second young master of the Pi household in this manner!”

“In that case, we’ll kill you first as revenge for our seniors and instructors, you little bastard!” Tian gritted out, kicking him in time with each word that he spoke. Very quickly, the youth’s eyes swelled up, and blood began to drip down his nose.

“Alright, alright, that’s enough!” Yun Ruoyan walked over, calming the indignant students. “We still have to trade him for your instructor tomorrow, so you can’t beat him to death.”

Only then did the students relent. Yun Ruoyan crossed her arms as she looked at the bruised, dishevelled youth slumped against the floor of the cave.

“Peh!” The youth spat out saliva flecked with blood and soft grass. “You bitch, don’t think I’ll thank you! When my brother’s here, I’m going to sell you off—”

Yun Ruoyan stuffed the grass back into his mouth before he could finish.

That night, as they ate dinner together, the students asked what had happened in the Beast Spirit Valley. In order to raise the students’ morale, Qin Feng described how Li Mo had caught the youth in detail, visibly weakening the specter of fear that still loomed over their heads and threatened to overwhelm them at any moment.

If they fought together, there was still a chance at victory!

“I’ll go over and have a look at him,” Yun Ruoyan whispered into Li Mo’s ear, then brought a chicken drumstick and a flask of water to the youth’s side. She kicked him, and he blearily opened his eyes. Yun Ruoyan stooped down and removed the grass from his mouth, then held the flask of water by his lips.

The youth looked stonily at Yun Ruoyan, and she stared expressionlessly back. “Drink it or not, I don’t care.”

Only then did the youth reluctantly take a sip. He gurgled and spat out the remnants of the blood and grass left, then took a few long swallows. After that, Yun Ruoyan handed him the chicken drumstick before turning to leave.

“Wait!” the youth called out. “I don’t want to owe you a favor, because I’m going to kill you tomorrow!”

Yun Ruoyan turned and smiled at the youth, waiting for him to continue.

“The reason those leaves didn’t attack me was because I have a talisman,” the youth began. “My brother was the one who set up the formation against swordflight, and he handed me the talisman as well.”

“Where is it?” Yun Ruoyan stooped down again and looked at the youth with large, expressive eyes. “Can you show me that talisman?”

“It’s in my robes. I’ll hand it to you if you untie me.”

Yun Ruoyan blinked, then stuck her hand into his robes and rummaged through them.

“Ah, you—!” The youth opened his eyes wide and glanced at Yun Ruoyan, bare inches from his body.

“I found it!” Yun Ruoyan exclaimed happily, then took her hand out of his robes. In her fingers was a square talisman, made with yellow paper.

“You… you groundhog!” The youth’s eyes were wide open, and his face was flushed a bright red, almost the same color as his hair.

Yun Ruoyan folded up the talisman and peered at the youth. “You little brat, you do realize we’re your captors? If you keep calling us groundhogs, the students here will skin you alive after we rescue our instructor!”

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