Free Web NovelChapter 299: Chapter 286: The Mantis Stalks the Cicada, Unaware of the Oriole Behind
Nalan Ziyun looked down and saw a series of faint footprints in the grass, stretching into the distance.
"Someone really was here. Could it be that fatty? Were you right?"
Shen Lang waved his hand, activated his Silver Eyes of Truth to scan the area, and immediately grinned. "Better to be lucky than to be early. Looks like the Thousand-leaf Fruit is about to appear."
"No way, that’s awesome! I want one too!" Nalan Ziyun grew a little excited.
Shen Lang rolled his eyes. "Want one? What for? The Thousand-leaf Fruit is for Body Forging. If you eat this, you’ll end up covered in muscles like your cousin, looking like a gorilla... It’ll be too late for regrets then."
"For real?"
Nalan Ziyun glanced at her own delicate skin, then pictured her cousin’s burly, thick-waisted frame and shuddered.
"Er, on second thought, never mind. That stuff sounds terrifying... Wait, I’ve never heard it was that extreme, have I?"
Shen Lang paused, surprised by how quickly she caught on, and couldn’t help but laugh. "Oh, I was just guessing."
"You bastard!" Nalan Ziyun threatened him with a raised fist. If not for the fear of alerting their target, she would have pounced on him again.
Nalan Ziyun suppressed her aura and followed Shen Lang, tiptoeing to a spot about twenty meters from the Demon Companion Grass.
But the Demon Companion Grass was gone, leaving only a hole in the ground. Someone had dug it right up!
"Damn it!" Nalan Ziyun cursed and was about to charge forward.
But Shen Lang grabbed her hand and covered her mouth.
"Mmph!" Nalan Ziyun’s eyes went wide, and she could only glare at Shen Lang as a warning.
Shen Lang made a "shh" gesture and sent a telepathic message: "You idiot, that’s a Blinding Technique! And there’s a Maze Array set up around it."
Nalan Ziyun’s eyes lit up. She viciously pinched Shen Lang’s arm, signaling for him to break the Blinding Technique.
’This kid is really something,’ Shen Lang mused as he examined the Maze Array set up around the Demon Companion Grass.
With his expertise in arrays, a small array like this was naturally no match for him.
But comparing the two, Shen Lang’s profound skill with Array Restrictions was entirely due to the War Emperor’s thousands of years of exploration—it all came from the War Emperor’s memories.
Chen Tianci, on the other hand, was only eighteen or nineteen and a member of the Barbarian Race—and the Barbarian Race knew nothing about things like arrays. Clearly, Chen Tianci had learned these skills in the Human Race’s territory after leaving the Barbarian Race’s domain.
To have achieved such a level at his age showed that his talent was truly extraordinary.
Shen Lang took a few steps outside the Maze Array, bent down, and reached out to grab at the empty air. From a place where there was clearly nothing, he pulled out a flag, no more than a foot long and covered in runes.
The moment Shen Lang gripped the flag, ripples spread through the void. Many traps were instantly dismantled, and several similar flags immediately appeared in the surroundings.
"This flag is made from the beast hide of a Barbaric Dragon Beast, which is unique to the Barbarian Race’s territory. It looks thin, but it’s indestructible. The runes carved on it are special runes known only to the Barbarian Race’s Royal Family. I didn’t expect this fatty to have such a significant background."
Chuckling to himself, Shen Lang unapologetically flicked his fingers and collected the other three small flags.
"This guy combined the arrays the Human Race excels at with the Secret Techniques of the Barbarian Race, making this Maze Array far more bizarre and unpredictable. If anyone else encountered it, even someone with greater expertise in arrays, they’d need a lot of time to break it."
"If he really wanted to deal with Qingfeng Stronghold, neither you nor anyone else there would be able to escape."
Shen Lang’s words made Nalan Ziyun’s face pale with fright, and a lingering fear grew in her heart.
Ever since arriving at Qingfeng Stronghold, Nalan Ziyun had gotten whatever she wanted, and she had those people wrapped around her finger.
She never would have imagined there was such a formidable character among them, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
’It’s a good thing he doesn’t seem to want to deal with me, or I would’ve been in real trouble...’
While Nalan Ziyun was still feeling a chill of retrospective fear, Shen Lang had already dispelled the Blinding Technique.
"Hey! I noticed something!" Nalan Ziyun said softly.
Shen Lang paused. "What?"
Nalan Ziyun said with great seriousness, "The flags stuck next to the Demon Companion Grass now are different from the ones you just took. The ones by the plant all have a small bell on them!"
"Damn, anyone with eyes can see that! You think I need you to point it out?" Shen Lang retorted irritably. "That guy is perched in the woods like an owl. It looks like these bells are meant to be an alarm."
Just as Shen Lang finished speaking, his eyes suddenly widened!
The fiery red Demon Companion Grass quivered slightly, and a small flower bud began to emerge from its center!
"It’s about to bloom!"
Nalan Ziyun almost cried out, hastily clapping a hand over her own mouth.
Shen Lang’s gaze, however, fell upon the small bells. As the flower bud appeared, one of the bells trembled slightly!
’I’m not afraid of that fatty, but this still feels a bit like being a thief with a guilty conscience...’ Shen Lang activated his Silver Eyes of Truth, and just as he suspected, he saw invisible threads extending from each bell, crisscrossing like a large net to cage the Demon Companion Grass in the center.
If one were to pull on the flags, all the bells would be triggered.
If one thought the flags were useless and touched the Demon Companion Grass directly, all the bells would be triggered as well.
And if the Demon Companion Grass were to actually bloom and bear fruit, that too would trigger all the bells, letting the distant Chen Tianci know what was happening!
’I see. Some of these threads are physical, while others are made of energy. So the flaw is here.’
Shen Lang pondered for a moment, then aimed two fingers at what appeared to be an ordinary thread in the middle and made a light snipping motion. A faint "SNIP" sound was heard as the thread broke, and all the other threads instantly vanished!
Just like that, this Qimen Small Array, designed as an early warning system, was easily broken by Shen Lang using his Silver Eyes of Truth...
’It blooms and bears fruit... the entire process takes just ten minutes!’
Shen Lang’s eyes narrowed slightly. He took out a square Jade Box and waited to harvest the fruit.
He was perfectly calm, but Nalan Ziyun, at his side, was a nervous wreck.
’This kind of thing is like having an affair... no, like stealing something. It’s so thrilling, but also so nerve-wracking.’
Especially since this was the legendary Thousand-leaf Fruit.
Even the Classics at Jialan Academy only mentioned it in passing. This meant that very few people in the entire Human Race had ever actually witnessed a Demon Companion Grass bloom and bear fruit!
And now, following Shen Lang, she was lucky enough to witness it all!
Before her eyes, the bud on the Demon Companion Grass grew upward at a visible rate, then continued on to bloom and bear fruit...
It all seemed to take an eternity, the speed feeling incredibly slow.
But in reality, it was impossible for a normal Spirit Fruit, let alone an ordinary fruit, to bloom and mature so quickly. It was absolutely impossible to watch the entire process so clearly with the naked eye in such a short time.
Though it was only ten minutes, Nalan Ziyun was so nervous she broke out in a cold sweat.
When the Thousand-leaf Fruit—the size of a walnut, crystal clear, and shimmering with a green luster—fully appeared and was plucked by Shen Lang and placed in the Jade Box, Nalan Ziyun’s heart nearly leaped out of her chest!
’I wasn’t even this nervous when I was killing people, or when I was trapped in a desperate situation before... Seriously, every time I go out with this little bastard, we run into something like this. And it seems I’m starting to like it...’
Just as Nalan Ziyun had this thought, she saw Shen Lang collect all the nearby flags, stretch lazily, and say, "All done. Clocking out. Let’s go."
With that, he wrapped his right arm around Nalan Ziyun, and with a PUFF, a pair of black wings unfurled from his back.
The two of them shot into the sky and vanished over the horizon.
Not long after they left, Chen Tianci walked back, frowning and holding up his pants.
’How strange, my stomach is a complete mess! If I weren’t immune to all poisons, I’d really suspect that bastard Shen Lang of drugging me!’
He looked up at the sky and muttered to himself, "The time is about right. Today, I’ll just stand guard at the cave entrance. I’m getting excited just thinking about it... The Thousand-leaf Fruit hasn’t been seen in the Barbarian Race’s territory for over two thousand years. It’s an unbelievably rare find. This ’luck’ thing is really something."
"Your daddy’s in a good mood, a good mood, such a good mood, la la la! Tra-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la... Oh no, the Maze Array has been broken! How could this be!"
Chen Tianci was still "tra-la-la-ing" with a blade of grass in his mouth when he saw the scene around the cave entrance from a distance, and his expression changed drastically.
He stomped his right foot on the ground. A thunderous BOOM sent birds and beasts in the forest scattering in panic as his figure shot forward like an arrow released from a bow, charging toward the spot where the Demon Companion Grass was. His speed was comparable to an expert at the Spirit Martial Realm Eighth Heaven!
BANG!
He landed heavily about two meters from the edge of the Demon Companion Grass. Powerful Qi surged, sending stone fragments flying as Chen Tianci roared at the sky, "Who did this!"
Chen Tianci’s voice, filled with fury, indignation, and a hint of resentment, echoed endlessly through the mountain forest.
If you were to compare his anguish with that of Zhang Cheng and the others, it would probably be hard to say who felt more aggrieved.
Chen Tianci could now perfectly understand the complex feelings Zhang Cheng had when facing Shen Lang... freewebnovёl.ƈom
"Wait a minute... Shen Lang?" A flash of inspiration struck Chen Tianci. ’That’s right! Damn it, besides that freak, who could possibly break my three-layered Maze and Illusion Array so silently and secretly in the time it took me to take a dump!’ freēwēbηovel.c૦m
’That bastard is demonically intelligent, his cultivation is monstrous, and his skill with Array Restrictions is simply unfathomable. On top of that, he’s utterly shameless. Who else could pull off something like this?’
Chen Tianci took two steps forward and crouched down.
He plucked a small leaf from the Demon Companion Grass, put it in his mouth, and chewed twice. His face instantly turned deathly pale, and with a PLOP, he plopped onto the ground.
