Once she’d killed the first porcupine, several more popped up beside her.
Their original plan had been to wait for her to take the bait. But now Shi Sheng had simply killed it, so they couldn’t sit still any longer and jumped out, glaring at her fiercely.
Shi Sheng flicked her sword to clean the filth off it before her calm gaze swept over the porcupines that had her surrounded.
‘With only this many people—Pei!—porcupines, you want to rob me? In your dreams!’
The porcupines’ attacks were a bit weird. They were surprisingly able to shoot out poisoned quills. But these attacks were useless against Shi Sheng, so she managed to kill them relatively easily.
All the creatures Shi Sheng came across subsequently used the exact same bloody tactic.
First, they would bait her into approaching. And if that didn’t work, they’d attack anyway with all their group members. But since their attacks were so weak, Shi Sheng just chose to avoid encountering them because she felt that dealing with them all was a waste of energy.
Shi Sheng walked for an indeterminate length of time before she finally met a human.
Well… a half-dead one.
It was a girl. Her face still held some hints of immaturity, so Shi Sheng concluded she couldn’t be older than 12 or 13. But she appeared to be on her last breaths, as if she could croak at any minute.
Shi Sheng squatted beside her and searched her body. There was only a single letter on her person. The handwriting on the envelope was so illegible that Shi Sheng didn’t feel like making the effort to read the letter inside..
She didn’t open the letter, instead stuffing it back into the girl’s clothes. She pondered for a bit before carrying the girl towards a distant cliff.
……
The girl woke up from the pain.
The first thing she saw upon opening her eyes was a sword gleaming with cold light, her pale face clearly reflected on its razor sharp blade. She could feel a warm stickiness oozing down from where the sword’s tip was pushed against her neck..
‘This person wants to kill me?!’
“Well, you woke up fast.” Shi Sheng shifted her sword aside. Had the girl not woken up at that moment, she’d have become a corpse by now.
The girl’s face paled even further in terror, her lips trembling as she looked up at Shi Sheng with tearful eyes steeped in despair.
Shi Sheng, “…” ‘Is my(lz) appearance that scary? I don’t get the aesthetic sense of the people or animals here…’
“Do you know where Dong Jing is?” Shi Sheng began approaching the girl. The bloodied girl jerked back like a startled bird.
No matter how Shi Sheng questioned her, the girl had no other reaction besides fear. She didn’t make a single peep despite clearly being quite terrified.
It was then that Shi Sheng discovered the girl was a mute…
‘Oh come on!’
Fortunately, the girl knew how to write. So after Shi Sheng repeatedly expressed that she had no interest in killing her, the girl wrote out an answer in some crooked handwriting.
Great Desert City.
‘With a name like that, it ought to be a pretty important city in The Great Desert. With Dong Jing’s status, living there is…normal, I guess.’
The young girl had experienced the death of her whole family at the hands of their clan’s enemies. She was the sole survivor. She had brought the poorly written letter along in her travels as she was planning on seeking shelter with a family friend. This person just so happened to also be staying in Great Desert City.
As thanks for giving her information about Dong Jing’s whereabouts, Shi Sheng brought the girl along with her.
But the sight that greeted them when they got there was a city full of corpses and rivers of blood. The smell of decay was so thick, it seemed like it could suffocate you.
Several carnivorous devil beasts were gorging on the corpses in the city, making the scene look even more savage and brutal.
Shi Sheng, “…”
‘This development’s completely out of script! Let me(bbb) digest this for a bit…’
[Side Quest: Stop Dong Jing. Auto-accepted.]
‘What? What side quest? Why isn’t it a hidden quest? And what’s with stopping Dong Jing? Bet you’re just having a ball with this, ain’t ya?’
[Host, you drastically changed the plot, causing Dong Jing to have never even met Yue Yao in the Mortal Realm. Hence, he is currently in the final stage of his mad plan.]
Shi Sheng, “…” ‘So it’s still my fault in the end?’
Dong Jing had always wanted to unify the three realms under him. That’s right! Every villain dreamt of being the conqueror of the world, and Dong Jing was no exception!
But while Yue Yao was in the Mortal Realm, she’d encountered Dong Jing when he had yet to fall into such a maddened state. Perhaps feeling like he still had a chance at redemption after experiencing her ‘saintliness’, Dong Jing postponed his plans to fulfil his grand ambitions of world domination.
But when Yue Yao returned to the Heavenly Realm with Cang Lan, Dong Jing felt like she had abandoned him. This was why the idea of conquering the world to snatch her back popped into his head.
As a result, Dong Jing began plundering the cultivations of others in order to raise his own strength in the shortest time possible before attacking the Heavenly Realm.
In the end, he was killed under the combined efforts of the main leads.
But now, because she’d changed the plot so much while she was in the Mortal Realm, Yue Yao hadn’t even had the chance to meet Dong Jing. Hence, Dong Jing had already become a bloodthirsty lunatic.
‘Okay… I guess it kinda was my fault…’
Shi Sheng looked at the girl. “I reckon the person you were looking for is already dead, so you’ll have to fend for yourself from here on out.”
The girl looked at Shi Sheng woefully. Crystalline tears threatened to spill from her eyes, making her look very pitiful.
“…” ‘Don’t think those eyes are enough to make me(bbb) moved!’
“Seeing as how you’ve acted as my guide… I’ll give you some protection.”
Shi Sheng picked out a ring from her space, roughly sliced the girl’s finger and dripped some of her blood onto it so that it would recognise her as its owner.
“It’s got some defensive capabilities… Though I’m not sure how good it’ll be. As long as you don’t mess with someone too strong, you should be just fine.”
Shi Sheng paused before adding, “Also, if anyone bullies you, just activate it and don’t act scared. You have to pretend you’re an expert. If you act tough enough, they’ll be wary of any other trump cards you might have up your sleeve, so they won’t dare to act too recklessly. But if you act weak, they’ll instantly know you’re an easy target and never give up.”
Shi Sheng patted the dumbstruck girl on the head. “Good luck with surviving.”
‘“Good luck with surviving.”’
The girl watched as the dark green figure walked off into the distance and her eyes teared up. Her hands balled up into fists as she made a resolution. ‘I’ll definitely survive. I’ll survive till I can see her again!’
……
After Shi Sheng left the massacred Great Desert City, she met some people—refugees, to be more accurate. She learned from them that Dong Jing was heading towards the capital of The Great Desert, the City of Ten Thousand Flowers.
It was the one and only place where one could see vegetation in The Great Desert. Everyone who lived there was either famous, powerful or influential. If Dong Jing wanted to rapidly increase his strength, he would find no better place than this city.
[Host, please, now is not the time to be taking your own sweet time. At this rate, the entire City of Ten Thousand Flowers will be massacred before you get there.]
‘What “take my own sweet time?” Is this how you use that idiom? Don’t use idioms if you don’t know how! You think you’ll be able to hide the fact you’re dumb by saying things you don’t understand?’
[……] ‘Host is attacking my confidence again… Requesting termination of Host.’
“I definitely can’t beat him as I am right now, so I won’t go and seek out death,” Shi Sheng replied with a straight face after she was done with her internal cussing.
System was very speechless. ‘I’ve never seen you afraid of the male lead, no matter how amazing he is… Aren’t you pretty enthusiastic about seeking death when it comes to the two leads?
And now you’re here, saying you’re afraid that you can’t beat the villain…so you won’t go out and seek death? This joke isn’t funny at all!
There’s no need to find such lame excuses for not wanting to fight!
Please bring out the passion you have when facing the leads! Don’t have any misgivings and just attack!!!
I’m(bxt) going to die of anger…’
System wanted to shut down in frustration.
No matter how much it urged otherwise, Shi Sheng acted deaf and continued to slowly make her way to the City of Ten Thousand Flowers at her own leisurely pace.
However, the defences of the City of Ten Thousand Flowers were clearly on another level; even though Shi Sheng only arrived after what seemed to be an eternity on the road, Dong Jing still hadn’t made his way into the city yet. He was currently fighting a group of people at the city gates.