Baiyun grasped a brand vaulted over a cluster of thorny shrubs into a clearing amidst the forest.

  The endless opy above parted a moonlight bask the earth beh. Without the veil of leaves from the vying trees, the grass here was tall and vibrant.

  A giale t 5-metres tall sat peacefully, its mossy bck shell glimmering uhe brilliant night sky. A lone horn as tall as a grown man jutted from its forehead, its poiip bluhreatening. Its body was exceptionally rotund; if oo look at it from a bird's eye view, its body would appear to be a massive horned circle.

  Baiyun slowed his steps cautiously but it did not seem to care even as he approached, seemingly asleep.

  A Bckhorle! He didn't know what he would first find in the forest, but it eaceful like the guides had said.

  He realised something strahe town's popution seemed to mostly sist of aging mortals, yet anyone who could veo a forest this dangerous was certainly a cultivator. Who exactly wrote that guide?

  In any case, this was one of the opportunities he hoped to find.

  Bckhorns were peaceful herbivorous beetles that relied on their mighty shells to fend off predators. The young ones would be protected by adults before their shells hardened, before being chased off to fend for themselves in adolesce.

  Entering the Foundational stage art of their growth cycle, but much like human cultivators, they needed rare essences for major breakthroughs. Adolest beetles would raise a unique spirit pnt known as the "Bckhorn Root", sitting atop the pnt for years and proteg it until maturity, before ing it and breaking through into adulthood. It was a luxury only spirit beasts could afford with their ability to survive off qi alone.

  Baiyu out a thread of divine sense and probed the root beh the beetle, then nodded in approval. It was full of earth essehat would greatly enhance his physique, far beyond the rock ginseng pill from Martial Elder Guan Qiang.

  He paused to listen for the tipedes and their scuttling through the leaves. Good, they were about to catch up at any moment.

  Baiyun revealed the riween his teeth and squatted. The barrier struck the ground as he jumped, ung him 6 metres into the air instantaneously!

  "Ack-"

  His vision suddenly bcked out as the blood rushed away from his head. Baiyun's body was disorientated and briefly stunned, but thankfully, his soul was separate. This body was far tile...

  Baiyun puppetted his body with soul and braced himself for impact as he shot towards the beetle. The spherical barrier smmed into its shell and bounced into the air before fading, letting him nd atop its shell safely.

  The beetle seemed to stir for a moment, but it settled down. Meanwhile, the tipedes charged into the clearing!

  Baiyun grinned. He took out a metal pan and a dle and smacked them together loudly.

  BANG BANG BANG BANG, BANG!

  The beetle raised its head in a fused mahe tipedes charged at it, climbing up its shell fearlessly to hunt Baiyun down.

  Baiyun almost ughed as he swung the pan and smacked the climbiipedes back down.

  The beetle was angered. It fpped its wings violently, ung Baiyun and the tipedes away!

  Baiyun grunted as the force sent him flying into the opy of a nearby tree. The branches scratched his arms, but he grabbed onto them like a monkey and hung on.

  A tipede smashed into the branches right beside him and was dazed; he picked it up and tossed it upwards towards the shell of the beetle, where it g on instinctively.

  Baiyun had a brief moment to think with the tipedes now dazed and scattered.

  It seemed the beetle had little fear of the tipedes, which made sense. A sedentary creature that behaved more like an oversized boulder was uo have many enters. Besides, the bckhorn root was far too precious to the beetle for it to be frightened off by just a few tipedes.

  He suddenly thought of an idea and reached a hand into his bag for the artefact bow. If he he tipede to the beetle with a silver arrow, he could sptter danger pheromones all over it! Aipedes he lured over would prioritise attag the beetle instead and if it sughtered enough, they would even call upon a warrior tipede.

  But he shook his head. Ying Shi lent him the bow for the expedition, not for him to sneak off and use it for his own gains. For the sake of iy, it probably was best not to use it unless a life-threatening situation came up.

  Baiyun thought a little further about his hasty pn and realised it had its share of problems too. If a warrior tipede was lured over, he would have to stay far away until the age was over. Afterwards, even if the tipedes took no i in the bckhorn root, an opportunistic spirit beast would probably take the root before he returned.

  Tsk.

  It was clear he wasn't equipped for the job, so there was no point in wasting time. Baiyun decided it was best for him to move on and look for another opportunity. He would return tomorrow with more preparations against the beetle.

  He leapt down from the tree before he could attract the attention of more opy wolves, then ran off as fast as he could.

  Baiyun turned around briefly and frowned. It was really annoying how much the tipedes gged behind him. He wondered if he could simply wrangle one of the tipedes and hold it in his hands while he ran. If he used ropes to tie their mandibles shut and around their legs to a ve handle... hm, that might be a surprisingly viable idea.

  But before he could follow through, Baiyun suddenly turned his head towards the skies.

  Perhaps it was the subtle ge in the sound of wind, for reasons unknown, he felt like something was ominous.

  Baiyun reached his divihread 12 metres above a a present rapidly desding! His eyes stricted and he immediately activated the ring, summoning the barrier! There was ion of a noal airborne predator in the book!

  The sound of rustling leaves and snapping branches echoed as the entity swept down, smashing straight through the opy/ A shower of leaves fell from above as it nded beside Baiyun.

  "Hey!"

  This voice... Fei An?!

  She stood before him with a grin, patting the dust and debris off her robes.

  "What are you doing here? How did you find me?" Baiyun blurted out.

  Outside the sect, he could freely use divihread! How did she detect him without alerting him? Could it be that the people of this world ied a urag teique? A qi pass wouldn't have worked on him as a servant physique did qi.

  "Wait, don't get mad at me! I know you don't like to talk to me but... you're entering a very dangerous area!"

  Fei An waved her hands frantically as she spoke, averting his gaze. Baiyun did not realise it, but he was staring at her so intensely, it was as if it could bore through stone.

  "Answer me."

  "Okay, okay! Calm down! I'll expihing!" Fei An said. "So ba town, I heard this weird sound in the middle of the night! It was like... Ting, ting ting! So I looked out of the window, and I didn't expect to see you outside, running about!"

  Baiyun's face went bnk. Was that the sound of the Thousand Will barrier boung?

  "So I climbed on top of a roof to see what you were up to. But I didn't expect you to rush out of town! I didn't want Ying Shi to get mad if something happened, so I decided to follow you. But I have this feeling that you have crazy sharp senses, so I didn't use qi sense. I just followed the bull's path since you were following it too."

  "When you ehe dark forest, I just listened for your footsteps and flew quietly. And when the tipedes started chasing you, I just left a qi mark on one of them and followed that!"

  Baiyun smacked his head mentally.

  To think such a simple trick got him! If he had sed the tipede thhly with divihread, he would have likely sensed her mark. But he was focused on direg the thread ih he ran to detey ining threats. Threading senses greatly increased their range, but this was their main disadvantage pared to aura fields.

  Perhaps Fei An was smarter than she looked.

  "Anyway, you shouldn't go deeper into the forest! Haven't you heard of beast kings?" Fei An said.

  Baiyun was aware of them.

  Spirit forests often formed above "qi faults" where rge amounts of qi would leak from underground world veins and burst to the surface. But the further away from the fault, the thihe qi. The qi-dense tre of the forest would be dominated by the mightiest beasts monopolising the qi. This resulted in an onion-like structure, where every yer further to the outside would be poputed by weaker and weaker beasts.

  Artificial qi faults known as Qi Towers could also be created by drilling massive holes kilometres underground, something powerful sects often did.

  "I'm not going that deep into the forest," he said.

  "That's not the point! To begin with, you shouldn't even be here! You're not invincible just because Ying Shi gave you some artefacts."

  Baiyun shrugged and tie deeper.

  "Hey! Don't ignore me!"

  Fei An furrowed her eyebroouted as she chased.

  Hah... To think his pns to sneak out i would be foiled on the very first day. How unlucky could he be? Baiyun sighed.

  At the very least, he now had a free bodyguard. He certainly wasn't going to pin about some extra security.

  Hm?

  He paused. Where had the tipedes gohey should have caught up by now. Baiyun turned around araced his steps.

  "Oh? Are you finally listening and going back? I fly us back to town, so we don't have to walk forever!"

  Fei An spoke excitedly and waved her arms as she floated into the air.

  Baiyun didn't reply, but found his answer shortly in the beetle clearing.

  The tipedes were pio the ground by a hail of arrows that struck everything indiscriminately, dotting even the grass and treetops. The beetle seemed unharmed and was surrounded by fallen arrows that bounced off its shell.

  Baiyun sighed deeply.

  "W-what?" Fei An said. "Why do you look mad at me?"

  Mad? He was just mildly annoyed.

  "I was using those tipedes to scare off the beasts!"

  "Ah! Erm, I thought your eyes were so scary that the beasts just stayed away..."

  ...

  Baiyun spped his forehead. He decided to take back what he thought about Fei An looking smarter than she looked.

  "It's okay! I figure something out!" she said.

  Fei An waved her hands and dislodged the arrows from the dyiipedes. With another wave, a powerful swirl of wind tossed them into the air along with a storm of fallen leaves.

  A maniacal grin spread over her face as she pulled out a shortsword, disappearing into a fsh and rushing towards the floatiipedes! With swift motions blur to the eye, she quickly bisected each tipede head to tail with secutive sshes.

  Fei An tio swing her bde and gutted them, digging out their entrails and tossing them aside.

  tipede blood spttered everywhere but a barrier of wind arou her spotless. But it also had the unfortunate side effect of flinging blood everywhere, so Baiyun took cover behind a rge tree.

  "Almost done! Now to them!"

  Fei An used one hand to anchor their position in the air, then used her other hand to summon a tornado of wind that wrung out any liquid remaining from the exoskeletons.

  "There!"

  Fei An dispelled the wind and caught the empty husks as they fell.

  The massive beetle stared at her and shifted restlessly as if worried, but remained seated on its precious root.

  "Hehe! Now you wear them as scarfs! They shouldn't be too heavy either, since I gutted them!" she said cheerfully.

  Baiyun's eyes twitched.

  ...how exactly had this child been raised? He would like a word with her parents.