The scenery that Wang Lu saw right now was indeed not Frozen Wind Valley. Frozen Wind Valley was just a realm carved out in the Misty Peak by an expert from the Spirit Sword Sect. It appeared to be endless, while in fact, it actually has boundaries. This place was specifically intended to be used by the participants of the Immortal Gathering and not disciples of the Spirit Sword Sect. Most of the beasts inside were nothing more than category 3 monster. Because of all these, the boundaries of this place were not made to be too strong just to save some cost. But who would have thought that someone would unleash the full power of a third rank spiritual treasure here?
Therefore, it made perfect sense that Wang Lu found himself standing in front of a huge emptiness. Under the full blow of the sword, the boundaries of the Frozen Wind Valley were shattered, revealing the scenery of the Misty Peak.
Wang Lu himself had never thought about how powerful the sword was until now. His mouth agape and his tongue-tied as he looked at the emptiness that appeared where the boundaries once stood.
When he opened the reward chest of the Peach Blossom Village, he was certain that he would get an amazingly powerful celestial weapon. After all, he had achieved a perfect score on the hidden quest… However, celestial weapons had their rank too. Because he merely succeeded in passing one of the checkpoints in entering the Spirit Sword Sect, he thought it would be a lower rank celestial weapon. If what he got inside the chest was instead something like the Emperor Sword, Wang Lu would have thought that he was just dreaming.
When he stepped into the Frozen Wind Valley, he found out that the dream was real. With a single step, he skipped the long and arduous journey, and with a swing of a sword, he killed that mutated mammoth. Wang Lu felt like he was clad with some kind of magical battle dress, making him omnipotent in this Immortal Path.
However, after his painstaking effort to achieve a perfect score in the Peach Blossom Village, he wanted to wield the sword to his heart’s content. Unexpectedly, it all ended in a heartbeat, making him somewhat unsatisfied.
“Is this also part of the trial? Is this how lonely those unequaled immortals felt? Do they want me to experience this feeling to temper my resolve? Being lonely at the top is indeed unbearable, sigh.”
Thinking of this, Wang Lu’s heart was flooded with emotions. Unconsciously, he loosened his grip on the Black Frost Sword, which then fell to the ground.
With a clatter, the sword collided with the solid thick ice. The next moment, the sword that could seemingly conquer every obstacle turned into fragments.
Wang Lu was dumbstruck; he turned his head to look at the wreckage of the Black Frost Sword and, after a moment, sighed and then nodded.
He realized that it was impossible for the Spirit Sword Sect to give a magical treasure that could destroy everything in its path to him. He surmised that this sword was just a disposable treasure, designed to allow him to smoothly cross the pass. After killing that monster, its energy became depleted, and then it turned into fragments. In other words, it was a quest item.
Although this design was somewhat extreme, it was indeed incredibly ingenious. The designer was not only talented but also creative and courageous.
Wang Lu thought, “To be so daring to give this kind of treasure that could destroy everything in its path in the hands of the participant without fearing any mishap? Tsk, tsk, what courage. I like it.”
While he was lost in thought, a golden light came from the distant green hills, and in a blink of an eye, the light turned into a human and landed in front of him.
Wang Lu saw a twenty-six to twenty-seven years old clean and neat young woman in white clothes. She has both a childlike temperament as well as the charm of a mature woman. Although she could not be considered as a woman that could cause a downfall of a nation, nevertheless, she was indeed a rare beauty...
While Wang Lu was sizing her up and secretly praising her in his heart, he heard the woman’s bloodcurdling shriek.
“Oh fxck! It’s broken!”
Like a grief-stricken person who just lost a mother, the woman in white clothes knelt beside Wang Lu’s feet and picked up the wreckage of the Black Frost Sword and then wept.
“Is it the heaven’s will for me to die!”
This mournful voice nearly made Wang Lu fell over. “What the fuck? Who would have thought that she is a masculine woman?”
However, before he could think of anything else, that woman in white clothes suddenly stood up and grabbed Wang Lu by the collar. “Speak, did that retarded Sect Leader send you to play with me?”
In his mind, Wang Lu was cursing all kind of profanities. He thought, “Sure enough, this manly woman is not only fearless but also violent! You can’t even make sense of what she’s saying, like a crazy woman… Could it be that she’s the public meat toilet of the Spirit Sword Sect?
Seeing Wang Lu’s blank and at a loss expression, the woman did not ask him anymore. She let go of him and just stared at the wreckage of the Black Frost Sword. Her mournful face gradually turned to a face filled with great focus.
“Damn, I’ve got to push this matter to someone else… I got it, I am going to say that Liu Xian did this. Hmm, let me think about the reason first…”
Wang Lu pretended not to hear all this. He asked, “Excuse me, senior. The monster guarding this Frozen Wind Valley has been eliminated, and the path to Misty Peak has also been cleared, did… I pass the trial?”
The woman was surprised for a moment, but then she sneered. “Yeah, you passed… Not only you, everyone else fxcking passed too!”
While she spoke, a successive string of cracking sounds could be heard coming from the distant sceneries. After a short moment, several holes appeared in that huge emptiness, revealing a sea of lava, cyan cloud mist, and layers upon layers of ghostly figures...
Obviously, those are Red Ridge Mountain, Cyan Cloud Peak, Netherworld Path… which were the other branches of the Immortal Path. Now, they were all connected together into a single path.
The woman in white clothes coldly said, “Not bad, you’ve blown four realms in a single sword strike. You could say that you’re famous now.”
Hearing her words, Wang Lu finally realized that something had gone wrong. He could not help but say, “Don’t tell me when I swung that sword, it was not part of the designer’s plan?”
Immediately after he said that, the woman in white clothes launched a barrage of verbal attack against him, “I am a fxcking lunatic if I designed this part so that it could give me trouble!”
Wang Lu once again shocked when he heard this, thinking, “This grandmaster-of-screaming woman is actually the designer of this Immortal Path? The one that I secretly thought to have a connection with me? Sure enough, the road to immortality is impermanence; one can never judge a person by their appearance!”
But then he wondered aloud, “If you didn’t intentionally design it to be like this… then what happened?”
Hearing his question, the face of the woman in white clothes looked helpless as if she just suffered a vicissitude of fortune.
“Who knows which idiot put the Sect Leader’s golden seal inside the storage so that it can be drawn out by you.”
Hearing this, Wang Lu thought of something and took out a golden seal from his waist. “Do you mean this?”
The woman in white clothes trembled. “I’ll be damned, it really is the Sect Leader’s golden seal… I was wondering how you could unleash the power of a spiritual treasure. It was really due to this golden seal!”
Anyone who held the golden seal of the Sect Leader could act as if he was the Sect Leader himself, and was able to command all the members of the sect without exception.
All magical treasures that have spirit made them spiritual treasure. The spirit of the Spirit Sword Sect’s spiritual treasures was naturally part of the sect. When the golden seal was in Wang Lu’s hand, the Black Frost Sword - recognizing the golden seal - naturally had to act accordingly, even without the input of the spiritual power. Not only did the Black Frost Sword had to unleash its power, it had to unleash its full world-shattering power!
The Black Frost Sword was a sword with a strong sense of loyalty. Even if the wielder ridiculously forced it to expend all its energy which could permanently harm itself, it would still strike down. Thus, after the Frozen Wind Valley vanished into thin air, the Black Frost Sword also ceased to exist.
The truth was finally revealed, which was not that complicated. The mind of the woman in white quickly recovered from the shock.
Wang Lu must have had an inconceivably high score in the Peach Blossom Village to be able to draw the golden seal from the sect storage, which was his luck… Of course, she must bear a part of the fault for designing such a scoring formula. She should have put an upper limit to the total score.
However, all of these issues were unimportant.
The most important thing was the glimmering golden seal in front of her eyes!
What was so important about that seal? It was very simple. As long as she got ahold of that seal, she would be the Sect Leader!
Of course, the real Sect Leader, that sucker, had yet to die, but who cares? At worst, she could have half of the sect! If nothing else, she could try to wrest away the financial control of the sect.
Perhaps she couldn’t have the authority to stand side by side with the previous Sect Leader, but she could use the golden seal to enter the storage and loot as many of the sect funds as she could before that idiot found out about it. After a rough calculation, she determined that the sect’s reserve must be astronomical, with countless top grade spirit stones! As long as she could take possession of those, she could live a carefree life hundreds of years into the future!
In the eyes of the woman in white, the golden seal had become the embodiment of her future happiness.
But at this moment, Wang Lu suddenly uttered a cry. It turned out that the golden seal in his hand had had suddenly changed into a ray of light and flew away.
The woman in white raised her brows. “Want to escape? In your dreams! You’re mine!”
The next moment, a white light flew across the area that was previously a snowfield, chasing the golden light towards the Misty Peak.
——
“Damn it, a mere golden seal dares to fly so fast? You want to rebel?”
Above the Misty Peak, the woman in white soared on top of her flying sword; her body had turned into a flash of light as she tightly followed behind the Sect Leader’s golden seal. But the golden seal that had become the symbol of her future good life continued to be just out of her reach.
The woman clenched her jaws in frustration. Due to her cultivation method, the speed of her flying sword was not that fast. But if she couldn’t even overcome a mere golden seal, that would be a disgrace for her.
Of course, the woman couldn’t care less about being “disgraced”. She only cared about that piece of golden seal. If she let it escape, then she would live in regret for the next twenty years.
One desperately flew away, while the other one continued to chase with all her strength. Soon, they left the boundary of the Misty Peak and continued to fly higher and higher.
After an indeterminate amount of time, the golden seal seemed to slow down a little. Noticing this, the spirit of the woman in white was greatly aroused. She thought that human could indeed prevail over nature. Although the golden seal was faster than her, it nevertheless succumbed to her invincible perseverance!
“Haha, nobody can sit at the Sect Leader position forever. Today, it’s my turn.”
And then, just as she was about to grab the golden seal...
A vigorous and forceful palm seized it first.
The woman in white’s eyebrows immediately jumped. “Ha, trying to rob me of my precious? Which idiot dares to do this? How dare you… Em, how are you, Sect Leader? Long time no see… Hehe...”
Directly in front of her stood the leader of the Spirit Sword Sect, who was currently looking at her with an expressionless face. He then lightly said, “It’s indeed ‘long time’ no see, what noble errand brings you here?”
The woman in white let out a chuckle and slowly moved forward to grab that golden seal. “I was looking for my lost thing. Thankfully, Senior Martial Brother helped me find it first, I really have to thank you, hahaha. Later on, I must be careful not to litter things up.”
The Sect Leader gave a sigh and said while he put the golden seal in his pocket, “What you lost is your moral integrity, right?”
“…”
“All right, let’s not talk about little things because I am quite busy myself. I am just going to say a few simple things.”
“By all means…”
“According to the initial calculation, because of your Peach Blossom Village’s design flaw, the loss of Spirit Sword Sect are currently as follows: the Frozen Wind Valley, Red Ridge Mountain, Cyan Cloud Peak and Netherworld Path. These four realms have been severely damaged. The third rank spiritual treasure, Black Frost Sword, has been completely destroyed; The fifth rank spiritual treasure, Cloud Treading Boot, has been seriously damaged… Combined with the other large and small incidents, the total damage cost would be around two hundred thousand top grade spirit stones. I’ve already included the ten percent internal price discount, so do not haggle with me... According to your current salary, you would need to forfeit your twenty years of salary to cover all of these. So, for the next two decades, you can forget about getting your salary.”
“... Martial Brother, this joke of yours is a bit too frightening.”
“Is it? Then you need to temper your character because I am not joking.”
“Senior Martial Brother, you are forcing me to become a criminal [1]!”
“Junior Martial Sister, you need to ask yourself honestly. Did I really force you into this difficult situation?”
“... In short, if you don’t pay me my salary, I am going down the mountain and be a robber.”
“Well, if Junior Martial Sister truly has a mind to add another source of revenue to our sect, I, as your Senior Martial Brother, will be very pleased. If you want to, I can give you the license to be a Privateer.”
“My God, Senior Martial Brother, have you lost your moral integrity too!”
...
[1] Originally “To force an honest girl into prostitution.”