Book 4: Near Blood – Chapter 29: All According to Plan
When he reawoke, three days had passed.
Su Chen lifted up his head and looked at his wound. It had closed up significantly.
Su Chen carefully used the wall to prop himself up.
“Don’t move!”
Zhu Xianyao’s voice called out from behind him.
She hurried over to him. “Your wounds are quite serious. Lie back down.”
She pushed him back down as she spoke.
Su Chen said helplessly, “My wounds have almost healed.”
This was the truth. He had passed out because of the medicine, not because of the wounds. Even though Night Demon had stabbed him quite deeply, she had steered clear of his vitals, so Su Chen’s body quickly recovered. Su Chen actually needed to use medicine to slow down the healing process and to knock himself out.
“You don’t need to comfort me. Old Ye already took a look at you; even though that blade strike missed your vitals, the blade Qi it sent into your body is too frightening and saturated your whole body. If it weren’t for the strength of your Pig Dragon Bloodline and the fact that you seemed to have taken some kind of strange medicine, you might not have made it.”
“But the blade Qi has all left now. Try it if you don’t believe me,” Su Chen said as he grabbed Zhu Xianyao’s hand and placed it on his chest.
He hadn’t thought about it too much when he made the move, but Zhu Xianyao’s face immediately flushed, causing him to realize that his action was a bit too rash. He immediately let go.
Unexpectedly, Zhu Xianyao didn’t remove her hand. She left it on his chest, continuing to sense his heartbeat.
The two of them remained like this for some time.
After a long time, Zhu Xianyao seemed to suddenly start and removed her jade-like hand.
“Oh.” Zhu Xianyao said in a low voice. “There…… there isn’t a problem anymore.”
“See? I told you I was fine,” Su Chen revealed a “dense” smile.
Under normal circumstances, Zhu Xianyao should have reacted to this smile with annoyance.
Unexpectedly, Zhu Xianyao continued to stare at him in a daze and didn’t seem to mind.
Uh oh.
Su Chen felt a trace of anxiety.
He heard Zhu Xianyao say, “Tianyang, you did very well.”
“What?” Su Chen didn’t understand.
“Do you know who the person who tried to assassinate you earlier was?”
“Who was he?”
“He was Feng Xihuo!” Zhu Xianyao said. “He’s one of the Immortal Temple’s well-known assassins and has a record of 37 successful assassinations, some of them Light Shaking Realm cultivators! Yet not only did you stop his assassination attempt, but you also killed him. That’s really something.”
Su Chen continued to smile dumbly, but even the dumbest smile seemed incredibly handsome, suave, and charming in Zhu Xianyao’s eyes.
She stared at Su Chen and said, “You killed Feng Xihuo immediately after awakening your bloodline, which is proof of how strong you are. More importantly, however, you were incredibly brave. Even under those kinds of circumstances, you launched a counterattack. Tianyang, you aren’t a coward; you were just always concealing your true nature. Even you didn’t know how powerful you could be.”
“Oh…… Was I…… that good?” Su Chen stared at Zhu Xianyao doubtfully.
“Yes!” Zhu Xianyao replied seriously.
“Alright then.”
If you’re that insistent about it, I can only agree.
Oh, You Tianyang, it seems like I’ve already captured her heart for you. Take it as your reward for being captured.
With You Tianyang’s feelings for Zhu Xianyao, he might really prefer to be captured if this was the outcome.
Of course, once they switched back, he wouldn’t be able to continue to conquering Zhu Xianyao’s heart, but that wasn’t something that Su Chen needed to consider.
In any case, Su Chen had once again become the object of Zhu Xianyao’s affection.
Zhu Xianyao probably never would have even dreamed that she had unknowingly fallen for the same person twice.
The first time she fell him, she lost all her memories of that time. Now, she had fallen for him again, but she didn’t know that the person she liked was also the person who had caused her so much suffering before.
Fate oftentimes had a strange sense of humor.
Su Chen had yet to realize what would happen in the future. All he realized was that Zhu Xianyao’s attitude towards You Tianyang had changed.
“Right, you said that the person who tried to assassinate me was the Immortal Temple’s Feng Xihuo. If that’s the case, then the Immortal Temple must have initiated the assassination. So this has nothing to do with Miss Xianling then?” Su Chen purposefully asked.
“The Immortal Temple did participate in the assassination attempt, but it might not have been completely unrelated to Xianling……” Zhu Xianyao began to recount what they had found out.
After extracting the address from He Xu, Zhu Xianyao had taken her people with her and ran over.
Naturally, the address had belonged to Kong Cheng.
Kong Cheng’s existence was too much of an obstacle for Shi Mingfeng and Su Chen.
The best outcome was then to use Zhu Xianyao’s hand to kill him.
Su Chen and the others weren’t worried about Zhu Xianyao relenting because the person didn’t belong to her clan. After all, the Immortal Temple was still their bitter enemy.
More importantly, Shi Mingfeng had planted one of his own people near Kong Cheng. As soon as he saw Zhu Xianyao and the others arrive, he immediately reacted as violently as possible and attacked on sight. In the end, the whole place was thrown into chaos.
“How did it turn out?” Su Chen asked.
“Do you even need to ask? Of course we succeeded,” Zhu Xianyao replied happily. “Even though they had a Light Shaking Realm cultivator, he was of a mixed bloodline. How could he contend against my Demonic Emperor Bloodline? Zhao Jingwen, Ba Lieyuan, and I would be enough to take him on, not to mention that Culler and a bunch of our elite subordinates were there as well.”
It appeared to be true that women would purposefully flaunt themselves in front of the man they liked.
Zhu Xianyao was strong, of course, and Zhao Jingwen and Ba Lieyuan weren’t weak either. However, Su Chen didn’t believe that the three of them were quite enough to deal with Qi Shenyuan; they had probably received quite a bit of support from the guards with them.
Kong Cheng’s greatest problem was that he didn’t have enough people with him. Zhu Xianyao’s people and the Sand Race soldiers probably numbered in the hundreds. How could just Kong Cheng and Qi Shenyuan alone handle them?
“So what happened next? “Su Chen asked.
“Next? We killed them all, of course!” Zhu Xianyao replied. When she saw Su Chen’s disbelieving expression, she stuck her tongue out and said, “Alright, maybe one or two of them got away.”
One or two got away?
Su Chen squinted his eyes.
However, he knew that he probably wasn’t going to get a straight answer from Zhu Xianyao, so he didn’t say much else. He only asked, “How about our losses?”
“Four died. The most tragic was Yuan Gang. He came a bit late, but because he was not a part of the main force, he ran into the opponents and was killed immediately. What a pity.”
The two of them talked for a bit longer before Zhu Xianyao left.
Su Chen got into contact with Shi Mingfeng using the communications Origin Tool before discovering that, indeed, Kong Zheng and Qi Shenyuan had gotten away.
Kong Cheng had escaped under Qi Shenyuan’s protection.
Because they didn’t know Kong Cheng’s identity, the Zhu Clan’s people weren’t too worried. Qi Shenyuan’s all-out protection had given Kong Cheng an opportunity to escape. Immediately after, Qi Shenyuan also ran away at full-speed. With his strength as a Light Shaking Realm cultivator, he might not be able to win, but running away wasn’t an issue.
“So they still got away in the end?”
“Yes. I’m worried that they’ll realize that we set them up. There will probably be some problems in the future,” Shi Mingfeng said, his voice tinged with anxiety.
He hadn’t expected the Zhu Clan to be so useless that Kong Cheng and Qi Shenyuan had both managed to get away.
“Don’t worry. Didn’t we agree to this a long time ago? I’ll bear the responsibility,” Su Chen said with a faint smile.
“I originally thought that the Zhu Clan would carry it,” Shi Mingfeng sighed.
“If they died, then the Zhu Clan would have.”
“But they didn’t.”
“Who knows,” Su Chen said mysteriously before cutting off the transmission.
He pulled out another transmission Origin Tool and said, “Hey.”
“It’s me.” Yue Longsha’s voice came out from the other end.
“How did it go?”
“All according to plan.”