After My Black Lotus Disciple Overheard My Inner Thoughts - Chapter 7

“It’s you again!” Geng Duan lunged forward with his sword, the tip flicking aside Sui Yu’s sleeve to reveal a stretch of pale wrist. “What are you sneaking around hiding here for? Could it be you were planning to wait until I finished off the beast so you could sneak in and pick up scraps?”

Yun Mu tucked his fluffy little body deep within Sui Yu’s arms, rolling his eyes in utter speechlessness.

[This alien really has a screw loose. Does he suffer from some kind of delusions? Little disciple, we need to stay far away from someone like this, lest we catch some unclean disease.]

Sui Yu sidestepped the sword qi swung by Geng Duan, retreated several paces, and lowered his gaze to check on the Hidden-Spirit Fox in his arms. Seeing that it was unharmed, he then raised his eyes to look at Geng Duan.

Beneath his calm exterior lay a hint of mockery: “Young Master Geng really knows how to joke. We haven’t done anything at all!”

Geng Duan truly loathed how this brat always maintained such an aloof and high-minded demeanor. Channeling his spiritual energy, he activated the black bell hanging from his sword tassel: “You little bastard, today I’ll”

Clang,

A crisp, resonant sword chime suddenly pierced through the night.

Everyone looked up, only to see two streaks of sword light cleaving down from the clouds in the east one golden like the scorching sun, the other crimson-red like blazing fire.

Lu Zhihui’s voice followed closely: “Young Master Geng, don’t rely on your higher cultivation to bully a child. Throwing your weight around and oppressing the weak is hardly the righteous path.”

Geng Duan’s expression changed instantly.

He raised his gaze toward Sui Yu, running straight into the youth’s deep, fathomless eyes. Within them churned emotions he couldn’t quite decipher, resembling turbulent undercurrents in a deep pool, leaving one guessing what sort of storm might be whipped up the next moment.

Geng Duan’s blade was still suspended three inches away from Sui Yu, but Lu Zhihui’s sword light had already cleaved down to within half a foot of his side.

A crimson sword wind carrying sparks swept past Geng Duan’s temples, startling him into stumbling backward two steps in a clumsy retreat. The jade pendant at his waist crashed against a tree trunk and shattered in half.

“Ugly people making a fuss!” Lu Zhixue fluttered down gracefully onto the golden sword light, the hairpins at her temples chiming melodiously.

Failing to find the Wood Spirit Essence inside the tree demon’s cave had already left her in a foul mood, and now running into someone so thoroughly eyesore on top of that was practically killing her.

She swept a glance over the Hidden-Spirit Fox blinking inside Sui Yu’s arms and arched a brow with interest: “This secret realm does not belong exclusively to your family. If you want to kill someone to establish your dominance, you should pick a place without any bystanders.”

Geng Duan clutched his earlobe, which had been scorched red by the sword qi, his face shifting between shades of green and white.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Shen Bingzhang standing in the tree shadows not far away. The silver threads on his dark Daoist robes gleamed coldly in the moonlight—the hallmark of an inner-sect disciple of the Haoyang Sect.

Shen Bingzhang leaned against a tree with folded arms, his fingertips tapping nonchalantly against the hilt of the frost sword Han Jiangxue hanging at his waist. Clearly, he had been watching the show for quite a while.

“Is the young lady from the Tianshan Sect planning to protect him?” Geng Duan tugged at his blood-stained collar, his gaze darting back and forth across Sui Yu. “The affairs of my Sound-Shattering Sect are none of your concern.”

“Young Master Geng,” Shen Bingzhang finally spoke, his voice sounding like jade steeped in a cold pool. “Have you noticed that the inner core of that spotted leopard just now seemed to be tainted with a trace of demonic Qi?”

He flicked his finger, shooting out an ice crystal that pinned itself precisely into the soil by Geng Duan’s feet. The ice crystal melted the moment it touched the earth, exposing the charred, grey-fog-tinted beast fur buried half an inch beneath.

“If the demons have infiltrated the secret realm, and you and I engage in infighting right now, we’ll likely just be playing right into the hands of those hiding in the shadows.”

Geng Duan stared fixedly at that tuft of beast fur, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

When he had been hacking away at the leopard earlier, he had indeed felt that the beast’s blood carried a foul, sweetish tang to it, assuming it was merely because he had been blinded by bloodlust. Now that Shen Bingzhang had pointed it out, goosebumps instantly rose across the back of his neck.

Although the Sound-Shattering Sect had always looked down upon the hypocrites of the righteous path, if an actual demonic invasion were underway, they could hardly stay out of it alone, and he knew the consequences all too well.

Especially within a secret realm where resources were already insufficient and entirely up for grabs by raw strength, introducing a wave of demons to carve up a share meant their expedition would amount to nothing more than a wasted trip.

Geng Duan’s gaze paused briefly on the ice-encrusted sword hilt of Shen Bingzhang, then swept past Lu Zhihui’s hand resting on her sword handle.

He was no stranger to any of these individuals: one was the chief disciple of the Haoyang Sect possessing a special ice spiritual root, standing at the late Golden Core stage; another was the chief disciple of the Tianshan Sect, a fire-spiritual-root cultivator also at the late Golden Core stage. If a real fight broke out, he might not necessarily come out on top.

He spat out a curse, kicked away the loose stones at his feet, and said, “Fine, we’ll cooperate for now. But if anyone tries pulling any tricks” he glared fiercely at Sui Yu, ” my Ink Bell Sword isn’t blind.”

Sui Yu completely ignored his clownish warning. Cooperation or not, he didn’t care in the slightest; he had come to the secret realm in the first place for his natal weapon from his past life. As long as these people didn’t hold him back, everything would be fine.

As the sky cracked open with the dawn, Shen Bingzhang withdrew his sword. “That being the case, let’s continue our exploration.”

With that, he strode off toward the southeast, and the rest followed suit upon seeing him move.

“Fellow Daoist, pay him no mind,” Lu Zhixue trotted cheerfully over to Sui Yu’s side. “May I ask how to address Fellow Daoist, and which immortal sect you belong to?”

“Sui Yu, Luoxuan Sect, under the tutelage of Immortal Lord Yun Mu,” Sui Yu replied indifferently.

Hearing this, Lu Zhixue’s expression froze stiffly for a moment, and she chuckled awkwardly: “Heh, so you’re a disciple of the Luoxuan Sect. Very nice, very nice.”

How on earth could he end up as a disciple of that infamous Immortal Lord Yun Mu? You wouldn’t be able to tell by looking, but this kid is practically a tragic little bitter-melon!

According to reports on the Cultivation World Headlines, that Immortal Lord Yun Mu possessed a tyrannical temperament, prone to brutally abusing and beating his disciples at the slightest provocation. Nearly every single disciple under his banner had been beaten or scolded, and even disciples from other peaks weren’t spared a whipping if they happened to cross his taboo.

At this thought, Lu Zhixue’s gaze toward Sui Yu unconsciously revealed a hint of profound sympathy.

[What is wrong with this young lady from the Tianshan Sect? Why is she looking at my disciple with such sympathy?] Yun Mu’s fox eyes darted back and forth between Lu Zhixue and Sui Yu.

System: [What else could it be? Blame it on the notorious reputation of Immortal Lord Yun Mu spreading far and wide across the hundred immortal sects. It even made the trending searches on the Cultivation World Headlines once, so of course she’s going to pity the male lead big-shot who unfortunately wound up as your disciple.]

[Hehe—I don’t want to take the blame for the original host at all.] Yun Mu wilted a bit. [System, to be honest, tasks like this where I can’t break character or OOC, yet have to stop Sui Yu from turning dark and lower his corruption value is this really something a human can pull off? Didn’t you say earlier that you were a stray system without a master? Where on earth did these missions come from anyway?]

System: [Uh… hehe, I didn’t expect you to figure it out. I picked this up from the System Bounty Board. It’s been hanging on the board for goodness knows how many years, and no host ever wanted to take it on…]

[Oh, so in short, I’m just the sucker you managed to rope in!]

System: [No, Mu’Mu, don’t be mad. The most crucial part is that the reward is super generous! When the time comes for reincarnation, not only will you skip the lottery queue, but you can also choose the kind of life you want to live in your next existence, with a golden finger bundled in at random… I’m doing all this for your own good, you know!]

[I’ll believe a ghost of you.] Yun Mu rolled his eyes furiously. [Don’t use me as a shield; spill it what benefits do you, as a system, get out of completing these missions?]

System: [Heh, actually it’s nothing much—just gathering more energy and KPI values so I can be granted an exception to enter the System Bureau’s official establishment.]

[Pfft, oh my god! Are you guys in the system world this corporatized now? Little system, you’re truly tragic!] Yun Mu chuckled, his mood instantly improving quite a bit.

As Sui Yu walked along with the crowd, he kept his gaze lowered, listening to every single word of the conversation between Yun Mu and the system, while dark glimmers flickered relentlessly within the depths of his eyes.