Chapter 980: Traces
“Is this the Song clan’s territory map? Why is it so much smaller than yours?” Qianye was puzzled.
Li Kuanglan rolled her eyes at him. “Have you forgotten my sister’s identity? A good portion of land controlled by the imperial clan has been added to this map. Where did you get your map, though?”
“Song Zining stuffed it into my hands before he pushed me into the passage.”
Li Kuanglan gnashed her teeth at the mention of Song Zining. “I wouldn’t be in this situation if it wasn’t for that bastard. Humph! Birds of a feather flock together. You hang out with him every day, so you can’t be a good person, either.”
Qianye was puzzled. “What did he do to make you hate him so?”
“You ask him!” Li Kuanglan replied unceremoniously. She shot Qianye a glance, and then said in a gentler voice, “You dummy, you don’t even know that you’re being schemed against.”
Qianye still couldn’t understand. “How did he scheme against me?”
Li Kaunglan wanted nothing more than to bite Qianye. “Ask him, don’t come to me.”
Judging from her mood, Qianye realized that she didn’t want to elaborate. Hence he didn’t press on with the matter. It would be even more troublesome if the emotional agitation were to ignite her instincts. Qianye wasn’t lying about what he said before, it would be especially difficult to refuse her during the daytime. Her fair, tender, yet powerful body, as well as those long legs that could crush all male creatures, served to constantly erode Qianye’s reasoning.
It would seem Li Kuanglan didn’t want to continue conversing, either, as she just went back to comparing the two diagrams. Fortunately, there were a lot of overlapping portions between Song Zining’s map, the Li family’s, and the Imperial Clan’s. Moments later, Li Kuanglan had combined the two maps into one for Qianye to study. She herself also took the time to memorize the information before destroying both the wooden board and scroll. Qianye didn’t stop her—maps like this contained too many secrets that couldn’t fall into outsider hands.
Having completed the work, Li Kuanglan climbed the nearby hill. “Pick a direction.”
“What direction?”
“Somewhere you think will give us a good harvest.”
“How should I know?” Qianye was puzzled.
“Just pretend you know divination arts. Try feeling where our fortune lies.”
“But I don’t know divination.”
“I told you to pretend. Start searching, quick!”
Qianye felt helpless. All he could do was look toward each direction and concentrate on sensing something. This was no different from a blind guess to him. How could he even sense anything? He decided to just pick a random direction if he couldn’t find anything. In any case, it should be fine as long as they didn’t approach the giant lake.
But to make sure he had done all he could, Qianye activated the Eye of Truth and scanned each direction. Qianye’s heart skipped a beat as he glanced toward a certain direction, and he was overcome by a certain urge to rush over immediately.
“There.” Qianye pointed forward.
“You really sensed something?” Li Kuanglan found it weird.
“I don’t know how to explain, but I think something is about to happen there.”
“Okay, let’s go and see.” Li Kuanglan picked up her blade and followed Qianye from behind.
After walking over several hills and valleys, a winding river appeared before their eyes. The water flow was gentle and waveless, and there was a forest on the other shore. The woods were silent, verdant, and full of vitality. There was a tall mountain range further out, with tall, ashen peaks jutting into the clouds and stretching far into the distance.
Li Kuanglan had learned to be careful whenever she saw water. Even the fish in a small valley-lake was enough to injure Qianye. There was no telling what manner of creatures the long river was hiding. Li Kuanglan wasn’t proficient in marine battles, to begin with. Things would go even worse in her current situation.
Gazing at the other shore, Qianye frowned. “I have a feeling that we need to check the other side.”
“How do we cross?”
“Build a boat.”
Qianye’s answer was fairly simple and concise.
He said they would build a boat, but all they did was nail some wooden boards together into a box-like vessel. The river wasn’t really that wide—with the duo’s skills, they would be able to cross over even with two palm-sized pieces of wood. However, Qianye had decided to focus on safety as only with proper footing would they be able to deal with the dangers of the river.
Qianye pushed the wooden box into the water and boarded the vessel with Li Kuanglan. Channeling origin power beneath his foot, he started driving the boat across the water and toward the other shore.
The crossing went without a hitch, and the two successfully came ashore. Li Kuanglan suddenly pointed toward the side. “Look.”
There was someone fishing in the distance!
Seeing someone in this world was even more nerve-wracking than seeing a beast. Qianye shattered the boat with a slap—the wooden fragments flowed down the river while he and Li Kuanglan hid themselves.
Qianye’s eyesight was powerful. He was able to focus over a thousand meters and actually see this person’s attire.
He was clad in a beast-skin shirt, with several feathers sticking out from the bandanna on his head. The man’s skin color was a rare dark brown. His exposed arms and legs looked exceptionally powerful and covered in black hair. Overall, he looked stout and strong. There was a fishing rod in his grasp and he seemed entirely focused on fishing.
From his getup, Qianye was sure that he was neither from the Empire nor Evernight. Then, there were only two possibilities—he was either a descendant of the last Great Maelstrom expedition or a native.
Qianye decided not to approach for now and merely kept on observing the man. Qianye had interacted with the natives of the neutral lands before, so he knew that the more dangerous the world, the more powerful its natives. It would be unwise to show themselves without ample preparation.
That person sat there like a stone statue, just as immobile as the fishing rod in his hand, so much so that one would suspect if there were any fish in the river. Besides, most creatures in this world had six legs or more, but this person was bipedal, just like a human being. This form was incompatible with this high-gravity environment. On the Evernight side, the race most suited to the Great Maelstrom was the arachne.
Before long, a series of rustling sounds appeared from the forest as another person walked out. This person was tall, muscular, and over two meters tall, making loud noises as he ran toward the fisherman.
The latter turned back at this point, revealing his face—a tall nose, deep eye-sockets, and a pair of dark brown eyes. If it wasn’t for the big mouth and lack of eyebrows, he might’ve been considered quite handsome. He looked quite flustered as he got up and made to escape.
However, the person running over stomped hard on the ground at this moment. Visible shockwaves shot across the earth and arrived beneath the fishing man’s feet. The latter let out a miserable cry as he was flung into the air. With no footing, he was caught by the pursuer before he could even land.
What happened next greatly surprised Qianye.
A pair of small hands stretched out from the newcomer’s ribs, and with four limbs, they tore off the fisherman’s clothes and pressed him to the ground. The latter struggled with all his might, unwilling to submit until the end. But, the four-armed person spat out a cloud of white mist onto the fisherman’s face. Gradually, the fisherman stopped struggling and revealed a pained but happy expression. The four-armed person had won.
Next up, the two began mating furiously, rolling about with great ferocity and violence.
With Qianye’s observation and judgment skills, he could tell that the fisherman was the male, while the violent one was the female. This kind of situation where the female was the dominant gender would rarely appear in higher species—it was more common among insects and the like. Both Qianye and Li Kuanglan were surprised by the female’s sudden eruption of martial prowess as she captured the man.
The might of her stomp was also quite extraordinary, but then again, everything was abnormal in the Great Maelstrom. It would take an origin power cultivation of at least rank four to produce such a stomp. If that four-armed woman was only an ordinary native, this meant that everyone in their tribe was at that level and the region was extremely dangerous.
Qianye turned back and whispered into Li Kuanglan’s ear, “Were there any records of natives in the Li family’s records?”
Li Kuanglan shook her head. It seemed like she wanted to say something, but all of a sudden, she pounced over and sealed Qianye’s lips with her own. To his shock, Qianye found that she was burning up—her face was flushed red, and she was on the verge of tears as her hands ran all over Qianye’s body, tearing at his clothes.
Qianye had no idea why she would suddenly lose control. He flipped over immediately and pressed her firmly to the ground. As for their lips, he could only go along with her movements, lest she makes a sound.
Qianye’s sharp senses immediately caught a faint fishy fragrance in the air. All of a sudden, his body burst into action like an ignited keg of gunpowder. A “big” change came over his body and knocked "hard" against Li Kuanglan. The latter trembled briefly before locking tightly onto him like a spider.
Qianye looked up toward the source of this smell and found an extremely thin wisp of white drifting in the air. It would seem the four-armed woman’s white mist had drifted to their place. This white smoke possessed extremely powerful aphrodisiac effects, turning that fisherman from an unyielding man into a beast in heat. Li Kuanglan had surely breathed in the white mist to have turned into this state.
Having sensed the source of the issue, Qianye pressed down on her even more tightly. He could no longer care about their intimate position because every knock and every movement was frighteningly arousing.
Even if Qianye had somehow succumbed to the white mist, it was definitely not a good place for procreation. They were clearly in native territory, so things could go horribly wrong if they were to charge out.
Hence, Qianye used his blood energy to suppress the white mist while pressing Li Kuanglan down, preventing her from making noises. Unable to fulfill her desires, all she could do was settle for the next best thing—which was to rub herself against Qianye’s body.
After a while, she trembled violently and her entire body fell limp. She was no longer struggling.
Qianye heaved a sigh of relief as he glanced at her. At this point, the flush on Li Kuanglan’s face had receded and her forehead was drenched in sweat. Her breathing was still heavy, but her eyes seemed to have regained their clarity, immediately looking away as their eyes met.
“Get up, we should find a place to recover. It’s too dangerous here,” Qianye whispered into her ears.
Li Kuanglan nodded, but she was too exhausted to clamber up. Qianye found it quite odd, but he wrote it off as a side effect of the white mist. He immediately dragged her up and started walking downstream. Before leaving, Qianye glanced back once more to find the natives still engaged in a fierce battle. It was just that the fisherman was not the woman’s match and had given himself up to her whims. The four-armed woman, on the other hand, was in high spirits and there was no telling when she would stop.
Qianye stopped looking at this point and focused on running downstream. He hadn’t gone far, however, when he heard a sharp whistle as an arrow shot out from the distant forest.