As Yone's figure faded into the horizon, the ferocious beast's amorphous hands showed no interest in his departure after finishing off the remaining guards.
Strangely enough, the beast had no desire to pursue anyone without a trace of Qi in their dantian. After carefully scrutinizing Yone and Sara, finding nothing within them, it ignored their existence and vanished into the deep hole it had created.
Had Yone known this about the beast, he would have cursed his luck for days, vowing never to flee again at the first sign of danger beyond his capabilities.
He abandoned the food and water inside the carriage without a second glance, fearing he'd be killed if he lingered even a moment longer. Yet, as it turned out, the ferocious beast didn't target mortals.
Though Yone wasn't technically a mortal, the system's aid rendered him indistinguishable from one in the eyes of cultivators and ferocious beasts alike.
According to the system, this state would only be broken if he used real martial arts or intentionally spread his aura. As long as Yone refrained from fighting, his identity as a cultivator would remain undetectable
As the terrifying ferocious beast retreated to its lair, a black silhouette, swaying gently in the wind, hovered above the massive hole. Its eyes gleamed with red light for a split second, as if no distance could limit its vision, gazing far beyond the horizon and watching over the unseen.
It hovered in that state for about a minute, before vanishing into thin air, as it never existed, a mere illusion to the onlookers stumbling upon it by chance.
***
A short distance from Lake City, two young kids walked side by side, conversing.
"Girl, don't forget my instructions when we reach the gate. If you want your family to have time to escape, you must repeat everything I told you word for word, or they might not survive the week." The boy, dressed in tattered clothes stained with old blood, spoke seriously.
Sara, the little girl, rolled her eyes in exasperation.
He had repeated this warning dozens of times on their journey to the city, and she was growing tired of it.
"I've told you a hundred times, I'm not dumb. I understand," she retorted, her frustration evident. Then, in a more subdued tone, she continued, "Raven went back to his clan to seek permission to join a sect in Lake City, and as his only friend, you were entrusted to escort me to the city and stay with my clan until he returns."
Even though thoughts of her friend, Raven, filled her with a deep sense of emptiness and sorrow, Sara held back her tears, determined to stay strong.
Had it not been for her brother Yone saving her at the last moment, she would have suffered the same fate as Raven.
Sara was grateful to Yone and resolved to help him by lying to the sects and clans when they inevitably came looking for Raven. Given Yone's circumstances and the dire state he was found in, she believed he could benefit from her father's influence and secure a better life.
'I must ask my father to help him. He saved my life, and I owe him that much,' she vowed, feeling a mix of gratitude and guilt for the way she had treated Yone earlier.
Reflecting on the cold gaze she had once directed at him, Sara sighed, realizing that the pride of her clan had blinded her to the truth. But despite the guilt, she allowed herself a faint smile as she glanced at the average-looking boy beside her.
Yone inwardly rolled his eyes at her behavior. He could more or less guess her thoughts, and though they were still childish, he was confident that this experience would help Sara mature beyond her years and become a strong expert
But Yone didn't care about any of that.
The only reason he bothered to save her in the first place was the potential rewards her clan might offer him!
He wasn't a bloodthirsty demon who killed without reason. Yone would only take a life if someone stood in the way of his benefits—no more, no less.
As the sole heir and daughter of the Albon clan leader, even though it was a declining clan on the verge of destruction, Yone believed the patriarch wouldn't be stingy when his daughter pleaded with him to reward her savior.
He had been talking for hours atop the horses they used to reach the city, doing his best to make her believe he had suffered greatly to get her out alive, using all kinds of simple yet intricate schemes to paint himself as the hero Sara now saw him as.
He even went a step further, mourning the death of Albert, lamenting that he wouldn't be able to repay the kindness Albert had shown when he saved his life that morning. He went another step further by burying Albert's body in the jungle.
After that, Sara managed to hold herself together and finally woke up from her trance. Fortunately for Yone, she also remembered some of the events that occurred back then, making it much easier to converse with her.
Once he was sure Sara understood his point and there was no danger to him when they reached the city gate or entered the Albon clan, he began asking about the powers in Lake City, mainly Sword Cliff sect since that's most likely the sect he is planning to use as his training ground for the several next years.
He wasn't from this world!
Plus, his parents had faked almost everything, attempting to groom cultivators who despised nobility and hated it to the core, so that information was pointless to him.
As for the guards?
His knowledge was limited, and since he had spent most of his life between the village and the city, he didn't know much about the powers in Lake City, their distributions, or their deep backgrounds.
Sara looked at him with a knowing gaze, understanding that he was likely a kid raised in some unknown village deep within the forest or beyond it.