Chapter 107: Meeting Xue Lan
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{[Late Soul Transformation Realm (Peak)]}
Although there was no breakthrough in cultivation and only one improvement to Battle Power, it was still far more than Lucifer thought he would receive from this little massacre. So, it was with a pleased grin on his face that he fell back toward the ground and leisurely walked in the direction of the bunker.
Surrounded by tens of thousands of dried up monster husks, the bunker had a vastly different atmosphere than before.
However, there was one thing that hadn't changed a single bit…
"Li Yan?" Poking his head through the hole he made in the bunker's roof, Lucifer curiously looked around for the girl of the hour.
Upon finding her collapsed on the ground and sweating buckets, Lucifer heaved a sigh before slithering in through the roof hole. After which, he gently lifted up his unconscious little sister and vanished from his spot, reappearing in the outside world.
"It seems like I can move above the speed of sound again, but more importantly, I need to find somewhere safer. Can't exactly have this silly girl recover out here in these spooky woods, now can I?"
Looking out at the still creepy ambience, Lucifer lightly shook his head before journeying deeper into the dead forest. The place they were dropped off at was quite literally a bunker that sat in the middle of a small, abandoned town. And outside this town, there was nothing but scary forest growth for as far as the eye could see.
This was to say that there was no other option but to head deeper into the forest…
Guessing that north was likely the best direction he could go, Lucifer did exactly that. Aimlessly walking through the ominous forest, he traveled at around Mach 2. Making sure to kill any and all low-level Nightmare Beasts in his way, he obtained another solid 2000 Super Clone Essence.
De-assimilating all his past high-level clones and summoning new ones left Lucifer with roughly 6000 Clones, all with strength near the peak of the Late Soul Transformation Realm. And that number only exponentially grew the further they ventured toward the north.
FWIP!
Phasing above a large rock located in the middle of a swamp, Lucifer saw a building off to the western side of this swamp. Normally, this would not be a big deal, but this was the first building he had seen since leaving the abandoned town over ten minutes ago…
And the worst part of it all was that the swamp house had a brightened interior, which meant that there were…
"People?" Perplexed by this notion, Lucifer became far too curious to just ignore this phenomenon and continue his path toward the north.
"I also need somewhere to properly work on helping Li Yan recover, so this house came just in the nick of time." Glancing at the out-of-breath girl in his arms, Lucifer may or may not have been anxious over her health.
He would tell you the latter was the truth, but the very universe itself already knew of his Tsundere syndrome, so…
"Hey, stop narrating a false personality trait for me, you bastard!"
Shouting at the air like a lunatic, Lucifer then clicked his tongue and decided to approach the swamp house.
"Nothing to lose anyway, so might as well go in blind!"
FWIP! FWIP! FWIP!
Flash-stepping across the top of the swamp like a skipping tadpole, Lucifer reached the swamp house in little more than a quarter of a second. The house had a large overhanging balcony, so he did a few parkour moves and made it onto the wooden railings. Then, with a carefree attitude, he approached a window door and slid it open with ease.
Looking at the inside of the house that he entered uninvited, Lucifer noticed a few rather peculiar things…
"Hmm… This place is a lot cleaner than I assumed it would be… I mean, when you think of a swamp house in the middle of nowhere, you imagine something from a Resident Evil game. So what the hell is this??"
Scrutinizing the interior of the home, Lucifer felt like he was in the presence of a true clean freak!
From the floor to the roof and rustic furniture—everything was organized in a way that would make an OCD freak scream 'Onii-chan~!'.
"Well, hmm, even though it is not scary in the slightest and seems more like an urban home, I can still use it to give Li Yan some resting time."
Moving around the house, Lucifer wondered why it was so quiet. But feeling no other presence with his divine sense, he assumed the house owners were out on the town or something. So, without further contemplation, he set a closet pallet down on the ground and laid his exhausted sister on it. After that, his footsteps rang out in the house as he gathered a few things from the kitchen and bathrooms.
Namely, they were a wet, warm cloth and some blanket warmers.
"She gets oddly cold in her sleep, and I can't exactly have my little helper dying to the cold, so this is the only natural thing to do."
While convincing himself of his peak-tier evilness, he was also stacking a number of blanket warmers on the goth midget. However, upon realizing that she could burn up from all this warmth, he took away most of them and left her with just two.
"Perfect," he said.
After the goth midget was covered nice and cozy-like with a warm towel on her forehead, Lucifer sat on the couch that lay directly in front of his sister. He didn't want anything to happen to her while she was sleeping, so staying close by was the only real option he had.
Lucifer couldn't have anything happen to his benefit-grabber; now could he…?
With Lucifer keeping a vigilant watch and Li Yan peacefully sleeping, something shadowy and curvy kept its presence completely hidden from the two 'visitors'.
"Humans…?" Whispering in a crackly feminine voice, the shadowy figure hid behind a wall, watching the human man watch over the human girl. "Humans here… not good…"
The shadowy figure could already feel the unnerving presences of multiple powerful Evil Spirits, all of whom had caught onto the scents of the humans.
In Raven's End, there were a wide array of anomalies that would be impossible to explain in modern times. And with their power being just as hard to fathom, they lurked around every corner and under every pebble…
The ones that Lucifer and Li Yan killed were the lowest of the low in terms of the 'Evil Hierarchy'. For the truly powerful evil apparitions, they didn't care a single bit about the deaths of a few low-level Nightmare Monsters.
However, with the deaths of tens of thousands of them, evil apparitions in the Void Refining Realm left their domains and actively followed the trails left behind by the humans.
As for the female ghost spirit that lived in this swamp house—she was what's known as an 'Intelligent Spirit'. And for the relatively peaceful life that she made for herself in this swamp, the approach of numerous Void Refining Realm Evil Apparitions was a big no-no!
Therefore, there was only one thing she could do to maintain her peaceful lifestyle…
WAAA!
Activating a secret veiling formation, a thin filament of dark energy erupted from the center of the swamp house and created a large bubble that encapsulated everything for a few hundred meters in all directions.
"!!!"
Alerted by this phenomenon, Lucifer suddenly opened his eyes; his piercing gaze immediately honed in on the source of this occurrence. And upon heightening his sixth sense, he was able to see something that was not previously there. "What are you?" He asked, confusion shining through his blood-red gaze.
Initially, he was just going to find and kill whatever had activated this secret formation. But upon seeing that the cause was something with intelligence, he immediately stopped in his tracks.
Halting the flow of energy to his arm and sword, he simply stared at the jittery, human-sized spirit. Unlike the tiny elemental spirits from before, this one was not created from elemental energy. Rather, she had died in her past life and wound up in the Nightmare Realm through one coincidence or another.
"Soo… what… or rather, who are you?"
"???" Exceedingly surprised that the human could see her, the Spirit woman backed up in fright, accidentally knocking over a vase. "N-Nooo, Little White!" Attempting to catch the falling vase, but failing terribly, her already white complexion became even paler. Just as despair was going to overwhelm her mind, a muscular hand appeared under both her and the vase.
It turned out that she was also falling but was too caught up in worrying about the vase to realize it.
"Yo, you good, lady?"
Hearing a voice lacking in all etique, Xue Lan looked down and saw what sort of risque position the human man had her in. Knee lightly brushing against her crotch and holding her at an arched angle—it was sufficient to say that steam nearly came out of her head.
...…..