Chapter 63: Who Can Argue with You? You Have a Bad Heart (1/2)

As the saying goes, you don’t know until you look, and once you do, you’re shocked. Ye Qingning was startled when she learned that the diviners were far more skilled at acting than she had imagined.

Kneeling, kowtowing, praying to the East, muttering incantations, making gestures, casting divination—everything was covered, all aimed at creating a mysterious atmosphere.

However, many diviners had quickly finished their divinations, but from their downcast expressions, it was clear they hadn’t divined anything of value.

A male disciple from the Wuliang Sect shook his head and said, “No good, no good, there’s a mix of good and bad, and a mix of evil and calamity! What kind of place is this?! Forget it, if you trust me, follow me to another path! I’m not wasting any more time on this broken divination!”

Another male diviner said, “Let’s go, let’s go, we’ll take a different route!”

Soon, disciples from various sects began to scatter. Ye Qingning and the others were still waiting for Mu Xingchen to complete his divination.

The reason other diviners had finished and departed, while they were still waiting, was simple—burning incense.

It was Ye Qingning’s first time seeing someone burn incense before performing a divination.

She watched as Mu Xingchen placed a turtle shell and copper coins on the ground, lit three sticks of incense, and placed them in the incense burner. His movements were smooth and efficient.

The others didn’t say much. Since Mu Xingchen was a disciple from the renowned Mu family, one of the ten great families, and had managed to get the 18th place in the exam to enter the Penglai Sect, he clearly had some real skills.

It was better to ask for a divination and check the auspicious or ominous signs rather than blindly walk in the secret realm.

Opportunities weren’t something you could find just by moving fast.

But not moving at all wasn’t an option either! Brother, please hurry up with the divination!

The group anxiously watched Mu Xingchen, but they didn’t dare to speak for fear of disturbing his divination.

The system took the opportunity to gossip with Ye Qingning:
【Ning Ning, according to the plot, the Mu family had once proposed a marriage alliance with the Su family, and the intended couple was Mu Xingchen and that punished Su girl, Su Chanshi!】
【The Su girl didn’t think highly of Mu Xingchen, publicly rejecting the marriage, and even belittling him in front of everyone, causing the Mu family to lose face. After that, the marriage alliance fell through.】
【Since then, the Mu and Su families have become bitter rivals. Mu Xingchen hates Su Chanshi to the bone. After Su Chanshi was punished for cheating during the exam, Mu Xingchen entered the inner sect, which was a slap in the face to the Su family.】

Ye Qingning couldn’t help but raise her eyebrows. This plot was pretty dramatic. If it were in a male-oriented novel, the opening would definitely be about the humiliation and rejection, followed by the “thirty years of the East River, thirty years of the West River” trope—don’t mess with a poor young man!

But just as she was thinking about this and munching on some gossip, the impatient Si Qian pulled Ye Qingning and the others aside.

She whispered mysteriously, “If Mu Xingchen can’t come up with a proper divination, we’re going to the southwestern peak!”

“Let me tell you a secret. Before we set off from Yunhai City, I spent a whole 18 top-grade spirit stones to buy some reliable information! They say on the highest peak in the southwest of the Yunshan Secret Realm, there’s an ancient tree that’s nearly ten thousand years old. It bears fruit every three years, and there’s never more than three fruits each time.”

“This spirit fruit is called the Thunder Flame Fruit. Cultivators with Fire or Thunder spiritual roots in the Foundation Establishment stage can use it to directly break through to the Core Formation stage!”

“Even if you don’t have Fire or Thunder spiritual roots, eating the Thunder Flame Fruit can still enhance your cultivation. It also strengthens the body, and when it matures, it emits a strong fragrance that attracts nearby demon beasts.”

“When that happens, not only will we get the Thunder Flame Fruit, but we can also hunt demon beasts. If we’re lucky, we might even get a few demon cores! How about it? Isn’t my information worth the 18 top-grade spirit stones I spent?”

The system and Ye Qingning were both taken aback by the mention of the “Thunder Flame Fruit.”

In her past life, Ye Qingning had harvested the Thunder Flame Fruit, and aside from Xie Jibai, she hadn’t encountered any other sect disciples on that peak, let alone heard of anyone selling information about it.

Just as she was deep in thought, she heard Li Taihang shout loudly.

“What did you say?! Say it again! What fruit?!”

“Thunder Flame Fruit!” Si Qian shot Li Taihang a glare and lowered her voice.

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Chapter 63: Who Can Argue with You? You Have a Bad Heart (2/2)

Li Taihang instantly lost it upon hearing the words.

“Ahhhhh! I can’t believe I was fooled! Damn it, that bastard sold me this same news!”

Li Taihang, afraid that the others wouldn’t believe him, even pulled out a hand-drawn map.

“Look, this map was given to me by the person who sold me the news! The drawing is rough, but the circled mountain is right in the southwest! I’ve been scammed! Five top-grade spirit stones down the drain!”

Li Taihang started crying out loudly, louder than when he had been pushed down to 15th place during the exam.

Top-grade spirit stones were worth 100 times more than high-grade spirit stones, so losing five top-grade spirit stones meant losing 500 high-grade spirit stones! Who wouldn’t cry about that?

“Ahem, brother, stop crying. To be honest, I also bought this information…”

An awkward silence fell.

Song Ziyan had never expected that the news he bought wasn’t sold exclusively to him!

As one of the most intelligent sword cultivators in his sect, he had actually been—fooled!

He had just comforted Li Taihang, but the more he thought about it, the angrier he got. He pointed at the sky, opened his mouth, and began to curse:

“Which bastard dares to deceive me, Song Ziyan! I curse you to choke on water, to choke on food, to fall into a pit while on the toilet, to be haunted by ghosts while sleeping, to have a green hat above your head, to be struck by lightning on the road, to never earn a single spirit stone, to die of hunger and poverty, to be hated by everyone… (Thousands of words omitted here.)”

The intensity of his rant left Ye Qingning and the system stunned.

What a master of cursing! Who could beat him in this department?!

Li Taihang stopped crying, his mouth hanging open as he stared at Song Ziyan in disbelief.

He had seen crazy people before, but never someone who could curse like this after going crazy. It was so intense, he almost felt like joining in!

Si Qian swallowed hard. Her sister always said she talked a lot, but compared to Song Ziyan, she felt like a mute.

Bai Wei secretly reminded herself that this kind of partner wasn’t ideal—she should find someone more emotionally stable.

“Song Junior Brother, are you tired? Wipe your sweat,” in the end, it was Si Nan who handed Song Ziyan a handkerchief, bringing some peace to the situation.

Meanwhile, the system, during Song Ziyan’s tirade, noticed something was off.

【Ning Ning, do you think it could be that Gui Lianhua is behind this? Although there was a record in the Lingyu Jade Slip about cultivators in the Yunshan Secret Realm selling news, they always sold one piece of news at a time, so it’s suspicious to sell the same one repeatedly!】

【If it’s just selling information, why would they focus only on this? Clearly, someone is targeting us. In the past, no one sold this news, otherwise, we would have had people fighting over the Thunder Flame Fruit when we went to harvest it!】

Ye Qingning had already started suspecting that Ye Hanyu might be behind this.

Ye Hanyu, a Water Spirit Root, wouldn’t find the Thunder Flame Fruit particularly beneficial. As the female protagonist in the story, Ye Hanyu had plenty of treasures and opportunities in the Yunshan Secret Realm that were no less valuable than the Thunder Flame Fruit.

She hadn’t directly gone to the southwestern peak, as the fruit wouldn’t mature until the third day of the Secret Realm’s opening, and it was still two days before it would ripen. She didn’t feel threatened by anyone trying to take the fruit yet.

But now, it seemed Ye Hanyu might not be interested in competing for the fruit, but her malice was boundless. She had likely sold the information to someone and spread the news among the disciples of various sects to gather a large group of them and grab the Thunder Flame Fruit for herself.

Since the fruit wouldn’t ripen for another two days, it wasn’t right to let Ye Hanyu go without receiving a “gift” in return for all the trouble she had caused.