As expected of the biggest apothecary in town, the work was finished very efficiently. In just ten minutes, everything he had wanted to purchase was in his hands in small jade boxes. When Situ Yue moved forward to make the payment, however, she was stopped.
"Please consider these materials a small gift to the son-in-law of the Yun Family." The woman at the reception said with a bowed head, prompting the maid to look back at her young master for commands.
"Who should I consider this gift from?" Yun Lei asked curiously. The gift was rather unexpected, after all.
"The Branch Leader asked us to be accommodating to Young Master Yun if he were to ever visit us."
"Ah, I see."
The 'Branch Leader' in question was the leader of the Ether Cloud branch of the Alchemist Guild.
"Please let him know that I appreciate it."
There is no such thing as a free lunch, Yun Lei knew of this truth as well as anyone else. But while he was rather hesitant to accept the gift, he also thought that it was an opportunity to establish closer ties to the Alchemist Guild.
The reason he wanted to do so was simple: pill recipes. As old and mighty as the Yun Family was, there was no way for them to have as many recipes as the Guild that had dedicated itself to fostering and nurturing alchemists for many millennia.
Of course, he didn't even think that it was weird for the staff to recognise him. It was one thing for the common folks to not recognise him. To many of them, his presence mattered little in their daily lives. But an entity like the Alchemist Guild would clearly pay more attention to matters regarding the important people in the city.
The sun was shining above him in the sky, the gentle wind carried with it the chill of the coming winter, the people were scurrying about in the streets. When Yun Lei left the apothecary, everything was as it should have been. Yet, something just felt off.
If it was anyone else, they would have probably written it off as nothing but the Young Master was someone who always believed in his instincts. And his instincts were telling him that something was wrong.
He immediately focused his senses and began combing through his surroundings. The sights, the sounds, the smells. He even focused on every bit of profound energy that was in his sensory sphere. But, even after doing that, he was left, ultimately, with nothing concrete, just a vague feeling.
Were my instincts wrong? A thought arrived in his head before he quickly shoved it aside. Even if his instincts were wrong, it was better to be cautious than not.
"Young Master, is something the matter?" Situ Yue asked after seeing Yun Lei just stand there, as if he was trying to find something.
'I had a weird feeling' was clearly not something he could tell his maid so he just shook his head and began walking.
Dong!
As soon as he had taken the first step, a loud noise began reverberating throughout the city.
Dong! Dong!
The sounds of the alarm filled the air as the panicked people in the market quickly began searching for shelter. Most of them didn't know what those bells meant, besides the fact that they were in danger but Yun Lei knew exactly what it was. Three loud rings followed by small, continuous rings indicated an attack upon the city.
The nature of the attack couldn't be identified from just the alarm but there was only one natural conclusion.
"Another tide?" Yun Lei wondered out loud. It hadn't even been a full month since the last one. A tide was already something rather rare for Ether Cloud but it was natural for it to occur once in a while. But two in the same month? That was something unheard of.
"Call a carriage..." Before Yun Lei had even finished the sentence, a carriage marked with the word 'Yun' was turning the corner and coming towards him quite quickly.
"Young Master, you must return to the estate immediately." The woman who hopped down from the carriage said hurriedly. This woman was Dong Zhu, who had been following behind him in secret, alongside two other cultivators who were also sitting in the carriage. It was a case of emergency; the Young Master's safety took priority over keeping themselves hidden.
As soon as Yun Lei, Situ Yue and Dong Zhu, who had gotten off to help them, were on board, the carriage immediately shot off. The ride was a bit uncomfortable but Yun Lei didn't particularly mind it.
"Savage boars again?" Yun Lei asked the maids. Of course, he wasn't as surprised to see them there as the maids had expected. He had known about them being cultivators a long time ago and he was also very aware of the fact that they had been following behind him. There was no reason for him to be surprised.
"Yes." One of them answered.
Two tides occurring so close to each other is weird enough already but it's savage boars again? Yun Lei thought the scenario was immensely strange. Something was up, he just didn't know what.
"How long till the tide reaches the walls?"
"We do not know, Young Master. We simply received a voice transmission from the Patriarch commanding us to bring the Young Master to the Estate as soon as possible due to the tide."
Yun Lei looked out the carriage window at the panicking people in the streets and immediately noticed something weird. The richest people in the city lived towards the centre, where the Yun Estate was located, while the poorer ones lived closer to the walls. So, for those people outside his carriage window to look, in frank words, dilapidated, compared to the people they had been passing by not too long ago, he could only think of one reason.
The Young Master turned away from the window and toward the people who had been sharing the carriage with him, all of whom were wearing the standard maid uniform all maids of the Yun Estate wore. He beckoned Situ Yue, who was sitting beside him to scoot closer. She was holding all of the jade boxes that contained the ingredients he had bought from the apothecary.
As the carriage began moving faster and faster, Yun Lei took all off the contents out of the jade boxes before packing them up in a single box that was only about four inches long. Although the ingredients could have all been fit into a single jade box from the start, the reason the apothecary had packed them up in different boxes was to preserve their purity.
Yun Lei picked up one particular thing from the box before closing it and storing it in his pocket. He raised the ingredient to his nose, as if observing its smell.
"This thing is called 'Dragon Stare'. Apparently, it instantly paralyses anyone who is touched by its aura, as though they were being stared at by a dragon." He held up the red root with a lot of fine hair-like strings hanging off its ends for the maids to see. "Do not be intimidated by its name, however. It is merely a somewhat rare herb and the profound energy in the body of a cultivator would easily purify it, causing it to have no effect on them."
The four women watched the herb in Yun Lei's hand, completely unaware that his aura had already begun spreading out of his body in thin strings. The thin strings consolidated into several bigger strings that were slowly inching closer towards their body, like venomous serpents, coiling up, awaiting the opportunity to deliver death with a single strike.
"I just think this herb is quite interesting." Yun Lei said with a smile, fondly looking at the red root, that somewhat resembled a dragon, like he was looking at a cute and precious child. "So seemingly useless, yet receiving the honour of being named after the gaze of a creature as legendary as a dragon. Isn't it so very interesting?"
The Young Master's smile deepened as he snapped the herb in two halves with ease, revealing its inside that resembled ginger's. A metallic smell began filling up the insides of the carriage as the root began oozing liquid. The red colour of the liquid, combined with the blood-like smell, almost made it look like the herb was bleeding.
"Even the way it bleeds is interesting." Yun Lei said as he focused all of his senses, observing the four women extremely carefully. "Almost as interesting as the fact that this carriage is moving towards the city walls and not the Yun Estate."
Everything happened in merely a single second.
The cold, sharp aura Yun Lei had very carefully kept restrained exploded in a single instance, filling up the inside of the carriage with a feeling of dread. The coiled serpents were as quick as lightning as they pierced straight through the layer of profound energy surrounding the cultivators, delivering the aura of the Dragon Stare, which he had discreetly extracted while breaking it in half, directly into their bodies.
Of course, Yun Lei could have just overwhelmed the cultivators with his aura alone, however, he didn't want to strain his soul in a scenario where he didn't know who his friends and foes were. He also had been very careful in keeping his aura within the carriage so as to not alert the carriage driver. Although he couldn't be certain about the people in the carriage, the driver was undoubtedly an enemy.
Situ Yue, who was looking at the Young Master with eyes full of shock and horror was grabbing at her throat, desperate to restart her breathing that had completely stopped. She hadn't been a victim of the Dragon Stare's aura since Yun Lei simply didn't think he needed to use it to restrain the movements of a mortal.
Meanwhile, the three cultivators were equally shocked as the mortal maid, both at how suddenly Yun Lei had made a move but also because of how easily he had managed to immobilise them. Although, like Situ Yue, they couldn't breathe at all, they were in much less of a danger than her since they could hold their breath for much, much longer.
"You know, I was planning to go home and do some alchemy research in peace but, it seems someone out there doesn't enjoy seeing me in peace." Yun Lei softly said.
Although the profound energy in the three cultivators' bodies should have easily purified the foreign aura by now, he was carefully protecting it with his own, not letting any profound energy get close. His aura ripped apart the energy as if it was a fire burning apart sheets of paper.
As a result, the Dragon Stare's aura began wreaking havoc in their bodies as it slowly burrowed deeper and deeper towards their heart. Once it got there, even without Yun Lei's aura to protect it, it would be able to keep the cultivators paralysed.
"If you're innocent, I'll apologise later." Yun Lei said with a small chuckle before turning his attention towards the carriage driver.
There was no questioning the fact that the driver was just a mortal, Yun Lei could easily immobilise him. But that wasn't the problem. The problem was that incapacitating him would immediately alert any enemies that could be following them.
He tried to concentrate on every single one of his senses as hard as he could yet he could not determine the presence of any hostiles. Everyone under his sensory sphere were just ordinary mortals. He could not find a single cultivator.
Is the carriage driver the only enemy that's left? He thought before shaking his head. There was no way anyone would dare to act against him so openly with just three Energy Sensing Realm Cultivators and two mortals.
Oh well, I'll just let this kidnapper take me where he wants. Yun Lei thought as he continued scanning his surroundings. He would just wait in the carriage and only make his move after he had determined that it was safe to do so.
Not long after, he noticed five cultivators enter his range of detection, directly from in front of him. The carriage slowly decelerated as Yun Lei prepared to make a move. But suddenly, a horrible chill ran down his spine and his instincts began screaming.
Yun Lei would have no trouble facing a few cultivators, that wasn't a cause for concern. The only problem was, every single one of those cultivators was in the Blood Cleansing Realm.