After I Play-and-Runned the World's Number One Sword Cultivator - Chapter 2

Qin Zhizhi clutched her abdomen, secretly looking up to survey her surroundings. She was lying inside a carriage, swaying and jolting along toward an unknown destination. The carriage was incredibly crude, able to accommodate two people at most, and the entire compartment emitted a suffocating, musty odor.

Outside the carriage curtain, the sound of voices drifted in intermittently, broken up by the bumpy movement along the road.

“…This one is a good catch, so I kept her aside separately. They say she’s a young lady raised in some aristocratic family. Not only is her skin delicate and tender, but from the looks of her, she actually possesses a spiritual root…”

“She just looks a bit fragile. I don’t know if she’ll be able to endure it.”

Qin Zhizhi sat up and quietly lifted a corner of the curtain. She saw two burly men sitting up front, chatting while driving the carriage. The taller of the two had already reached the Foundation Establishment stage, while the other possessed a Qi Condensation cultivation. If this had been her past self, she would have slashed them across with a single blade—wouldn’t beating these two be more than a simple task? However, her current body was a few degrees weaker than even an ordinary human. Trying to use brute force was clearly out of the question.

Thinking of this, Qin Zhizhi ground her teeth in sheer hatred. Being sold off to the lands of demonic cultivators was profoundly cruel. If that concubine couldn’t tolerate others, it would have been one thing to just leave the original owner of this body to fend for herself, but she explicitly chose to do something like this! The cultivation techniques of demonic cultivators were completely different from those of orthodox cultivators. If one were sold into the hands of demonic cultivators, becoming a servant or a maid could still be considered a good ending. If one possessed even a shred of spiritual aura, they might very well end up as a human cauldron for dual cultivation, wishing they were dead instead. Although Qin Zhizhi was the daughter of a city lord, she had lost her mother at a young age and had been neglected by her stepmother for a long time. Raised deep within the inner chambers, she had not developed any cultivation and understood absolutely nothing. This was fundamentally driving her down a road to execution. Qin Zhijie and that concubine possessed such malicious minds; once she escaped this time, she would definitely find an opportunity to go back and vent this grievance on behalf of the original owner.

For the moment, however, Qin Zhizhi glanced down at her tiny arms, which were barely thicker than a rolling pin, and let out a heavy sigh.

A crude carriage, a body completely devoid of cultivation… While observing her surroundings, Qin Zhizhi pondered how exactly to break free. Just then, a gentle breeze wafted past, lifting a corner of the carriage’s window curtain. She raised her head and glanced out the window.

The sound of horse hooves shattered the silence, kicking up flurries of yellow sand. The yellow sand here seemed particularly abundant; the swirling dust blotted out the sky and covered the sun, giving the outside a gray, unerasable gloominess. Amidst this expanse of dust and smoke, a group of young cultivators clad in green shirts and white robes, carrying seven-stringed zithers on their backs, walked gracefully past the carriage. The cultivators’ wide sleeves swept through the smoky sand, carving a faint arc that brushed against the tassels of their zithers. The tassels, crafted from a special material, flashed with a glint of light under the sun.

Qin Zhizhi’s heart stirred. Lowering her head, she bit down hard on the tip of her right index finger.

It was said that the ten fingers connect directly to the heart, and this single bite made her knit her brows in pain. However, Qin Zhizhi was someone who could be ruthless enough to cut open her own dantian, so this minor injury amounted to nothing.

Without a moment’s hesitation, she used the blood to draw a complex rune upon her palm.

An Amplification Rune—this kind of minor rune in the cultivation world was usually quite useless. The elders of the Tiantong Sect only drew one when the disciples became too rowdy, using it to bellow a command to control the situation. A non-combat rune could be used even if drawn by someone without cultivation, though such runes were typically more complex and difficult for ordinary people to master, making them uncommon. But who was Qin Zhizhi? The number one little tyrant of the Tiantong Sect. While she might not necessarily know how to draw proper, serious things like combat runes, how could she be absent when it came to something as amusing as an Amplification Rune?

The blood coagulated very quickly. Qin Zhizhi did not dare to relax for even a fraction of a second, holding her breath to complete the drawn rune in her palm in a single, continuous stroke. The next second, she unhesitatingly slapped her blood-stained palm right over her mouth—

“How audacious! I am the fiancée of Jun Wuya, a disciple of the Heguang Sect. Who are you people, and how dare you kidnap me?”

The young girl’s sharp, rebuking voice sounded as though it were hooked up to a loudspeaker, instantly doubling in volume. The sound waves shook the carriage’s door and window curtains, causing them to flap violently. Outside the carriage, the group of zither cultivators from the Heguang Sect froze in their tracks. They stared straight at the carriage; inside the curtain lifted by the sound waves, only a blurry silhouette could be seen.

This voice startled the two men outside the carriage, making their formidable frames shudder. The tall man cursed secretly, wondering if the knockout drug they administered hadn’t been enough. How could this person have woken up halfway through the journey? Furthermore, hadn’t they agreed that she was just an aristocratic young lady who understood nothing? What kind of scene was she throwing right now! He cast a sharp glance at the man beside him. The other man nodded and crawled into the carriage compartment, intending to knock Qin Zhizhi unconscious.

Seeing a man lift the curtain with a ferocious look in his eyes, Qin Zhizhi did not panic. Instead, she sat perfectly stable and unmoved like the wind, merely offering the man a smile. The area around her lips was completely stained with blood, and the lines of the rune covered her face, winding and twisting like a ghost’s drawing. Under the dim light deep within the carriage, her slight smile made her look like a sinister spirit.

Dazed by this smile, the man was instantly struck with terror, not daring to step forward.

“I am the fiancée of a Heguang Sect disciple. If you mistreat me like this, are you truly not afraid of the Heguang Sect coming to settle the score?” The rune gradually lost its effectiveness, and the power of this statement was already far, far weaker than the first. However, this did not hinder anything. After all, cultivators possessed excellent hearing; not a single word they were meant to hear would be missed.

“Bah! You say you’re the fiancée of a Heguang Sect disciple, so that makes it true? I’ll have you know I’m the Heguang Sect Master’s father!” Enraged to the point of laughing, the man spat on the ground and stretched out his hand, intending to seize Qin Zhizhi.

Qin Zhizhi dodged to the side, laughing secretly in her heart. You’re finished. You actually dared to claim you’re the Heguang Sect Master’s father.

Sure enough, in the next instant, the neighing of horses and the howling of zither music carried a chilling, murderous aura. With a loud crash, the carriage compartment was sliced open from the side. Wood chips rained down upon Qin Zhizhi’s head. Illuminated by the piercing light, she subconsciously reached out her hand to shield her eyes.

Under the sunlight, the young man who had played the zither to attack appeared to be only twenty-five or twenty-six years old. He possessed a straight posture and a handsome face. His wide robes billowed without any wind, the embroidery of winter pines on his lapels resembling a steep spring breeze. Across his knees lay a Fuxi zither that gleamed with a warm, gentle luster, its pale green tassels flying within his musical domain.

“I heard someone wants to be our Heguang Sect Master’s father?”

Behind the young man stood five or six other disciples in green shirts and white robes, holding their zithers. They exuded an aura of severe authority without even needing to show anger.

The current cultivation world was divided into Three Sects, Six Factions, and Twelve Cities. Setting the Twelve Cities aside for a moment, anyone who could enter the Three Sects and Six Factions to become a core disciple was a standout leader among their generation. With their soul lamps lit within their sects, which one of them wasn’t the absolute treasure of their master’s eye? The two men looked up at the clothing of these few cultivators and instantly knew they were characters who should not be provoked. If this continued, they would likely meet a terrible end. Neither of them dared to entangle themselves further; exchanging a glance, they quickly crushed the teleportation talismans on their bodies. Their speed was so fast that before anyone could react, they vanished from the spot without a trace.

Looking at the two who had slipped away faster than mice, Qin Zhizhi was momentarily dumbfounded.

How should she put it? They were highly enthusiastic when claiming to be someone’s father, but when exposed, they ran incredibly fast. It seemed all their skill points had been allocated to their two legs.

While she was still lost in thought, she felt someone gather her up from the broken wooden floorboards of the carriage.

Qin Zhizhi turned her head and saw a tall female cultivator dressed in a green shirt and white robe supporting her. Noticing her gaze, the other party handed over a handkerchief and smiled gently, asking, “Are you alright, young lady?”

“I’m… I’m quite alright…” Qin Zhizhi took the handkerchief and wiped hard around her mouth a few times. This handkerchief seemed to have something special about it; the blood clots that had already dried were easily wiped away, leaving the skin around Qin Zhizhi’s lips clean in an instant.

“Just now, young lady, you said that you are the fiancée of a disciple from our Heguang Sect…?” Seeing that she had finished tidying herself up, the female cultivator raised her eyebrows slightly, inquiring with a hint of testing.

Qin Zhizhi felt somewhat helpless. She hadn’t originally planned on using this relationship, but the situation had been dire, leaving her no choice but to resort to this desperate measure. How could it be such a coincidence that the Heguang Sect happened to be passing right by her side?

However, since she had already claimed it, it wouldn’t do to contradict herself now. Qin Zhizhi answered honestly, “I am the fiancée of the Heguang Sect disciple Jun Wuya, the daughter of the Wudu City Lord, Qin Zhizhi.”

The moment she finished speaking, the two youths in front of her suddenly became somewhat excited. One of them nudged the youth beside him, eagerly leaning in with a face full of gossip: “Jun Wuya, Jun Wuya…”

Qin Zhizhi’s ears twitched, naturally catching the person’s words. Recalling the somewhat blurry image of the youth in the original owner’s memory, she couldn’t help but purse her lips, offering that youth a sweet smile. “You must be Jun Wuya, right?”

In truth, Qin Zhizhi of Wudu City and Qin Zhizhi of the Tiantong Sect looked about thirty to forty percent similar. It was just that the original Qin Zhizhi of Tiantong Sect was bright, beautiful, and proud, whereas the local Qin Zhizhi was quiet and introverted, appearing somewhat delicate and melancholic due to being neglected since childhood. Now, with this pursed-lip smile, the small dimples beside her cheeks appeared faintly. Stripped of that layer of melancholy, the young girl’s brightness resembled a March peach blossom budding in the spring breeze.

Stunned by this smile, both youths were temporarily dazed.

“Ahem, ahem.” A soft coughing sound came from behind Qin Zhizhi, the voice still carrying a few hints of amusement. “You have recognized the wrong person. I am Jun Wuya.”

Qin Zhizhi: “…”