Chapter 585: Hunting Down to the Black Cloud Spear

"How is your injury?"

The beautiful Qi Warrior stood at the edge of an abyss, with pebbles and dust falling from beneath her feet from time to time, plummeting straight into the deep darkness.

The Qi Warrior she was speaking to was a greasy-faced youth, baring his teeth and grimacing as he clutched his shoulder.

Hearing the beautiful Qi Warrior's question, he shook his head, "Not optimistic. It hurts terribly. Although I can still fight, my effectiveness is greatly diminished."

"In other words, you're half-crippled!" the beautiful Qi Warrior said irritably. "Why did you have to go join in the fun?"

"A mere Snow Bud Pill—what if you did get your hands on it? Look at you now, injured like this. You tried to steal a chicken only to lose the rice."

The youth shook his head. "That's not the right way to look at it. Great Medicine is precious; if someone else has one more, it means you have one less. The gap widens, so we have no choice but to fight for it. Even if we have to fight until our heads are broken and blood flows, we must compete."

"It's all that Shorty's fault. He clearly snuck into the auction, yet he didn't strike in time, wasting a great amount of time and opportunity."

The beautiful Qi Warrior shook her head. "He is short and poor, and he isn't core personnel like you or me, so it's understandable that he didn't put in his best effort."

"By the way, where is Shorty?"

The beautiful Qi Warrior tilted her chin. "He didn't meet with me immediately after the auction ended, so he must be up to something."

"Who did he go to hunt down?"

The beautiful Qi Warrior said nonchalantly, "It's nothing, let him be!"

"Perhaps he can even bring us some surprises."

The youth wanted to say something more, but the wound on his shoulder throbbed with intense pain again. He waved his hand, "I won't talk to you anymore. I'm going to find a place to treat my wound; you keep an eye on things here."

"..."

The beautiful Qi Warrior remained where she was, lost in thought. She thought of Zhou You; if it weren't for her background in the Human Seed Sect, she wouldn't have been able to detect the traces left by a 'peer' on him.

Precisely because of this, she was quite interested in Zhou You. Since he was still alive, it showed that the 'peer' hadn't used lethal methods to harvest his essence.

Perhaps... she had even given him some benefits. What a lucky kid, to have met someone kind-hearted.

It was just that since Shorty had set his sights on them this time, there was no chance of survival; she could only mourn for him in silence.

After leaving Chongguang Cheng, Zhou You and his group were targeted by uninvited guests.

The dwarf they had seen at the auction had clearly been following them the whole way. After leaving the underground city, he dropped the pretense and blocked their path. "Hand over the Heavy Talisman, and I will spare your lives."

Zhou You suddenly realized the truth after seeing the dwarf appear. No wonder the journey had been so calm; it turned out all those small-fry had been dealt with by this person.

As one of the personnel from Buguo Wu Auction House, his methods were ruthless; he had even turned Xi Junzi into a human candle.

The key was that as a Qi Warrior, he was willing to become a bandit for over two million gold—this was truly lacking in class.

Zhou You realized that he had still underestimated the value of this huge sum of money, and had also overestimated the integrity of certain Qi Warriors.

After all, not every Qi Warrior was like those from Dayin Mountain or Wanxiu Mountain, sitting on mountain forests and industries with countless Disciples paying tribute.

Once a Qi Warrior becomes famous, if they have no permanent assets, they don't fare much better than the average person.

"Senior, you're joking. Do you think I don't know the rules of killing for loot? Murder for money—the former is the goal, the latter is to silence witnesses. If you don't kill us, how can you bury the truth? Aren't you afraid of retaliation from the Thousand Faces Hall or the Rare Treasure Pavilion?"

Pei Li saw it clearly. Since the dwarf appeared and revealed his status as a Qi Warrior, this situation was already a dead end.

If they wanted to survive, they had to kill the dwarf; there was no second path to take.

This was the vast wilderness. They couldn't reach Fucheng ahead, and they couldn't reach Chongguang Cheng behind. With no reinforcements or helpers, they had to rely on the four of them fighting for their lives.

Hai Li'er and Pavilion Master Chang also realized this. They didn't say any polite pleasantries about leaving a way out for others to meet again in the future, but instead, they all took out their weapons and defensive treasures. Zhou You swept his gaze over them—ho, they were all wealthy dogs, using Storage Pockets to carry their weapons.

Speaking of which, ever since Storage Pockets became popular, it had become a trend to use them to transport heavy and inconvenient weapons, which was incredibly convenient.

Aside from the high cost, their portability and concealment surpassed traditional methods in every way.

Zhou You was no exception; he took two large hammers out of his pocket and wanted to take out his Iron Spear as well.

"Pavilion Master Zhou, catch!"

A sudden gust of wind rose by his ear. Something was thrown from Hai Li'er's hand, and he reacted extremely quickly, reaching out to catch it...

The Black Cloud Spear! It turned out this female martial artist had already kept the Black Cloud Spear by her side, and seeing the situation was bad, she immediately took it out to equip him.

Excellent, just as he was feeling sleepy, someone brought him a pillow.

As for Pei Li, his weapon was very special, hidden within his robe hem. It could be soft or hard, and its power changed with his fist techniques.

The dwarf crossed his arms, letting them prepare, and only asked after a moment, "Are you ready?"

As soon as the words fell, his feet crossed and he stepped forward. A blur passed before the four of them, and he was already right in front of them, close enough to reach their chests with a slight stretch of his hand.

Too fast; there was no time to react at all.

Zhou You took a deep breath, his chest swelling high, and shouted, "Chang Face, Blind the Eyes!"

*Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh! * The sound of hidden weapons piercing the air rang out one after another. The cold, eerie Qi that surged from his chest spun and expanded rapidly.

In the blink of an eye, over a dozen human-head-shaped Qi manifestations formed by Chang Faces swarmed toward the dwarf's eyes like moths to a flame.

This turn of events was completely different from standard fist techniques, catching the dwarf off guard for a moment.

With a slight wave of his palm, two Chang Faces burst like water bubbles, splashing all over his face.

However, the number of Chang Faces was quite large. Each one wore a sorrowful, sighing expression, and the gray Qi was everywhere, severely interfering with the dwarf's vision.

The Chang Faces were easy to hit, but the liquid that splashed out after they were dispersed made the eyes very uncomfortable.

Zhou You's sudden, unconventional move had actually achieved an unexpected effect.

He took the opportunity to grip the Black Cloud Spear, took a deep breath, and poured the results of his many days of hard practice on the spear manual into this single thrust.

"Black clouds obscure the sun; one spear pierces the rainbow."

Just as the spear momentum rose, the dwarf took a deep breath, and sharp, piercing Qi erupted from his facial features like a steel brush sweeping past. The human-head-shaped balloons formed by the Chang Faces burst one by one with *pop-pop* sounds, vanishing into thin air on the spot.

At this very moment, the Black Cloud Spear also arrived.

The divine spear, the spear manual, and the essence of Zhou You's spear techniques combined to double their power, and with no effort at all, the spear pierced through the dwarf's left shoulder.

Zhou You was momentarily stunned—was it really this easy? He had pierced a Qi Warrior? Pei Li's roar rang in his ears, "Don't let go! If you let go, we will surely die."

The roar of this 'Jade Shell Golden Turtle' was unprecedentedly shrill. Seven-colored glazed light flashed around his body, and he charged forward with his palms cupped, turning himself into a giant grinding stone.

In the blink of an eye, thousands of crisscrossing gullies appeared on the ground, a sight that could only be formed by the uncanny workmanship of nature.

He carried the force of a thousand jun, slamming headlong into the dwarf's remaining intact palm.

What should have been a destructive force like a falling meteor came to an abrupt halt within the dwarf's palm.

The dwarf's left shoulder had been pierced by the Black Cloud Spear, yet the right hand he could still use swung out; without even agitating his wound, he used a mere thirty percent of his strength to neutralize Pei Li's all-out strike.

(End of this chapter)