Chapter 140 (Patreon)

Li Mou didn’t have time to react before Chen Haoran crushed his skull. It was the only mercy he was given. Following his final breath came a flood of burning orange qi. Li Mou’s body was vaporized to ashes as his liquid qi became out of control. For a Liquid Meridian, death was their most dangerous moment. Chen Haoran had plenty of experience in that regard both from observation and personally killing a Liquid Meridian himself. As a Qi Realm, Chen Haoran had to rely on others’ help to escape the range of the Liquid Meridian Realm’s death throes. Now facing a Final Flood yet again, he calmly reached out with a hand wreathed in liquid qi and smothered the escaping qi with a dragon’s roar, grabbing Li Mou’s storage bag before it could be burned to ashes. He smoothly retreated after securing the bag to avoid the worst of the flood.

Li Mou’s last gasp crashed against the stones of the pyramid and fell down its slopes in a wave. The Yellow Dragon growled, and a shield of yellow qi flowed in front of Chen Haoran that deftly swept the orange qi to either side of him. After a few seconds, the last of Li Mou’s qi dissipated into the air, and the shield of yellow qi fell back into his body. Chen Haoran stood there unscathed and curiously observed the pyramid. While their fight may have been brief, it was no less intense for it. Yet despite their battle and Li Mou’s Final Flood, not a single mark was to be seen on the pyramid. The pillar of silver light shuddered and collapsed in on itself, falling back down and disappearing into the building atop the pyramid.

Phelps squealed and came floating over, cradling Li Mou’s cast of sword. Chen Haoran smiled. “Thank you, Phelps.” Chen Haoran reached out to pat his head but paused when he saw his bloody hand. A brief flash of qi scoured the blood from his hand, but he still swapped to his other to pat Phelps’s head.

He wouldn’t lie. Killing Li Mou had been cathartic, and it wasn’t even because he was an ass. After having his body puppeted by that Crystal Transformation Realm, he felt like a fighting bull seeing the red uniforms of the Garrison. His anger had uselessly paced inside his chest like a caged animal, but there was nothing he could do to the shaman. His subordinates, on the other hand….

“Zhang Yong, huh?”

It was wrong, admittedly. Just because they were part of the same force didn’t make the Garrison soldiers responsible for their leader’s actions. Chen Haoran wanting to hurt them was just him trying to find a weaker scapegoat he could take his anger out on. It was a thought worthy of giving him pause. Was that what was going on in this world? People couldn’t do anything when they were bullied by cultivators stronger than them, so they took their anger on those below them instead. Well, the idea sounded a bit simplistic, but it was something to keep in mind. Perhaps it was just another reason of various ones that he was only now just discovering firsthand for himself.

That was neither here nor there, however. The state of the world wasn’t really important to the situation at hand. Assuming Li Mou wasn’t lying, then the Garrison was as caught off guard by the random teleport as Chen Haoran was. That was worrisome. When it came to the ignorant, they were never wrong about just one thing. If the Garrison was wrong about how to enter the trial ground, then they might be wrong about other aspects of it, too, like that danger.

….no. The real issue wasn’t what else the Garrison was wrong about. It was why. The Garrison had sent nearly six hundred Liquid Meridian Realms to these ruins, including talented and powerful individuals like Pan Gong. How many cultivators like that did they have in Reservoir Town? Surely not enough to let them deploy so many into a situation of unknown danger and potentially high loss. Pan Gong had caved in Li Mou’s chest for damaging a wall just because it might have contained something useful for their researchers. That didn’t sound like an organization that would go into a situation half-cocked. The Garrison was confident about the ruins. That much was clear. Yet despite this confidence and the professionals they had studying the ruins, they were wrong. Why?

“This is gonna suck,” Chen Haoran mumbled to himself. He took Li Mou’s sword from Phelps and let the sloth clamber on his back. “Come on, bud. Let’s see what this reward is all about.”

Chen Haoran entered the top of the pyramid, wreathed in a protective covering of liquid qi. The inside was a carbon copy of the pyramid outside, just smaller in scale. There was even another circle of silver runes though this time it was on the floor surrounding what looked to be a stone altar. The runes flashed in succession before light flashed on the altar, and a transparent, glass-like fruit appeared on the altar. It was perfectly round, unnaturally so, only broken up by a stem surrounded by five leaves on its top and seemed to be filled with water. Chen Haoran was still not versed enough in this world’s supernatural fruits and plants to identify the majority of them on sight. This particular one, however, was extensively detailed to him by Xie Jin on their way here, given its importance.

Liquid Core Fruit.

Chen Haoran cautiously approached the altar, stopping just a few paces away from it. He mentally prodded the Yellow Dragon, who grumbled at being disturbed for something it considered beneath it, but nevertheless complied with his request. A thin tendril of liquid qi stretched out and delicately wrapped around the Liquid Core Fruit before pulling it away from the altar and bringing it to Chen Haoran’s waiting hands. The silver light dimmed, and the rune circle disappeared. After a few tense seconds of waiting, there was no further reaction, and Chen Haoran finally relaxed.

“Thank you.”

The Yellow Dragon huffed and returned to gathering ambient qi. Chen Haoran didn’t mind its sass. It was far more skilled at manipulating liquid qi than he was. It was why he could so easily overwhelm Li Mou. Four hands were always better than two in a fight.

He played around with the fruit in his hand. It was surprisingly squishy like he was holding a water balloon instead of an actual fruit. Phelps leaned over and sniffed the fruit curiously. According to Xie Jin, the Liquid Core Fruit did everything a Heavy Core Pill did but better, and unlike the pill, it could be used by cultivators of any element.

Even animals.

Maybe it was a good thing that they were separated. Xie Jin would kill him if he knew what Chen Haoran was about to do.

“What do you think, Phelps?” Chen Haoran asked, holding the Liquid Core Fruit toward him. “Fancy a level up?”

Phelps squealed and fell from his back. Chen Haoran placed the Liquid Core Fruit on the ground before him and stepped back to guard the entrance. Staying at the pyramid was a bit of a double-edged sword. It was safer than being out in the jungle, but at the same time, there might be other people on their way after seeing the silver light pillar. Not that it was necessarily a bad thing for more people to come.

Phelps looked at Chen Haoran, then at the Liquid Core Fruit. There was no more hesitation. He snapped the fruit up in one bite.

Received Hundred-Fold: Liquid Crystal Fruit

Interesting. He had noticed it before, but there was a clear difference between certain spiritual herbs. Some, like his Stygian Lotus and the Banquet Peach, had their age improved but otherwise remained the same. Others like this Liquid Core Fruit and the Monk Flowers from the Spa Cavern were turned into new varieties entirely. It was something due for investigation in the future. Now, however, Chen Haoran crossed his arms and focused his sense on Phelps.

There was no change initially when he ate the fruit. Phelps laid down and steadily breathed. Then he shuddered, and his qi began to spike. Chen Haoran tried to observe Phelps’s changes with his sense but failed to get an accurate picture. He mentally poked the Yellow Dragon again, and this time, it didn’t grumble as much as it peered curiously through his body at Phelps. Chen Haoran’s vision blurred, and the world became split between water and not water. Fortunately, Phelps aligned with water element energies and, under his shared vision, lit up into a diagram of meridians coursing with blue qi. They were different compared to a human’s meridians. A little less in number but wider and thicker.

In an ephemeral space by Phelps’s stomach was a growing sphere of clear qi. Some of the energy escaped into his meridians and filled them to the brim. The majority of it was trapped in his core and soon became tinged with the blue color of Phelps’s qi. It spread across the sphere like wildfire, and the originally clear qi now shone brightly like a blue star. Then it collapsed. Chen Haoran flinched in surprise at how sudden it was. The sphere contracted violently and condensed into a droplet in a single motion. It was far faster and even more reckless than when Chen Haoran himself condensed his first drop of liquid qi.  It didn’t stop there; however, only the sphere was condensed. There was still more energy in Phelps’s meridians. Chen Haoran looked on in concern as Phelps’s qi madly rushed to his core. He canceled the shared vision for a moment and observed Phelps’s condition.

He was asleep.

Chen Haoran looked incredulously at his pet. He knew beasts cultivated differently compared to humans, but sleeping while advancing was a bit ridiculous. Still, ridiculous or not, as he switched back to the shared vision, he couldn’t deny the facts in front of him. Phelps’s qi gathered around the drop of liquid qi in his core and easily merged with it. The droplet grew larger, far larger than what Chen Haoran condensed during his own advancement, until there was no more qi left. Slowly, inexorably, it fell from Phelps’s core and into his meridian. From there, it drifted along the natural qi cycle through his body. Around the droplet, gaseous qi drawn from the outside began to gather. As the droplet grew, it attracted more and more qi. It was a slow, steady accumulation. After what felt like half an hour, however, there was a shift in the air.

The droplet had become a flowing stream of liquid qi and now reached critical mass. The air began to distort as a large amount of ambient qi suddenly moved all at once. The liquid qi within Phelps expanded exponentially, rushing throughout his body until both ends finally met and created a continuous whole. Phelps’s eyes flew open, and he rose with a shriek. His body bulged, and he grew nearly twice in size while his aura spiked. That wasn’t the end of it. Phelps flexed his qi once, twice, before finally releasing a flood of blue liquid qi.

Chen Haoran laughed as the Yellow Dragon directed his liquid qi to block Phelps’s sudden flood. To his surprise, his qi began to float out of control as soon as it collided with Phelps’s. Even the Yellow Dragon was briefly startled before narrowing its eyes and letting loose a roar that saw his qi return back to his control. Phelps, in the meantime, seemed to realize what he had done and squealed. His liquid qi halted its flood. Phelps grunted, and the deluge of qi was slowly drawn back to his body, ebbing and flowing like ocean waves before he finally reabsorbed it all and shrunk back down to his original size.

Chen Haoran sighed in relief, both for Phelps’s successful advancement and that his size increase was a temporary thing. He didn’t know how he would lug a 5-foot sloth around. The fact Phelps learned to release liquid qi directly after becoming a Liquid Meridian Realm was a surprise. He remembered Song Yuelin saying it wasn’t something they instinctively knew how to do the way humans did. It just proved more that Phelps was a genius. The smartest sloth in the world, if Chen Haoran said so himself.

“Good job, Phelps. I knew you could do it.” Chen Haoran opened his arms for a hug, and Phelps squealed in joy upon seeing it. Unfortunately, Chen Haoran only realized something was wrong too late when Phelps shot like a cannonball through the air and tackled into his chest. Before he could react, he was swept off his feet, and man and sloth when tumbling down the long flight of stairs together. They were halfway down when Chen Haoran finally had the sense to cancel his momentum with a wave of liquid qi. He lay splayed across the steps, Phelps in his arms, while he waited for the world to stop spinning.

Chen Haoran laughed. “Damn, if I shouldn’t have expected that.”

Phelps squealed and started licking his face, leaving Chen Haoran covered in slobber.

“Enough. Enough I said!”

Chen Haoran pushed Phelps’s head away and laughed again. Phelps finally settled down and seemed content to just lay on his chest. They spent of a brief moment like that. Chen Haoran staring at the skyless sky of the secret realm while Phelps softly crooned.

He sighed and stretched out a qi-covered hand.

“I guess I should eat my fruit too.”

A rich, dense peach smell filled the area, even through the isolating cover of his liquid qi. Sitting in his hand and shining like a bright sun to his sense was a full and ripe golden peach.

He wondered what kind of face Xi Wangmu would make if she knew she effectively handed him an 80-thousand-year-old Banquet Peach.