Chapter 278 – The Price of… (1)

Note : There’s a Chinese pun in this chapter which is impossible to correctly translate into English. I put the Chinese word in pinyin and in (…), and add a footnote for that.

“That’s right! That’s right! She must be a hidden expert. Her shenfa was terrifyingly fast… If she didn’t possessed top-class psychokinesis cultivation, it would be impossible for her to display such skill!”

In succession, everyone retorted.

“Deny it all you want.” The man elegant’s smiling appearance, that was like a spring breeze, became obscured. “But don’t regret it later.” His figure rose and could no longer be seen on the branch.

Everyone, “…”

The notion of obtaining a qilin is extremely tempting. If that small girl really was trash and they were scared off by a few words of hers…

They all looked at each other in dismay. After a moment, someone left to chase after Ning Xuemo. Of course, no one was willing to lag behind the others, fearing that it would be snatched by someone else at the key moment. So in succession, they started to chase after Ning Xuemo…

In a short span of time, the place became a deserted open space.

The red-clothed man’s figure reappeared on the branch. His jade-like hand was stroking his chin as his gaze looked into the distance, in the direction where Ning Xuemo was going. “Little girl, you need to pay a certain price for scheming against me…”

‘How she will deal with this crisis this time?’

A trace of expectation flashed through his dark sea green eyes.

………………………………..

At this moment, Ning Xuemo who mounted the little qilin had already crossed the Third Peak and started crossing the Second Peak.

“Master, you’re very cool!” The little qilin thought about that blood boiling scene from before. “I never expected that one trick on that old man would allow us to leave freely! How did you do that?”

Ning Xuemo was silent for a moment. “Cough! Earlier, I poisoned him…”

“Ah? You didn’t defeat him?”

Ning Xuemo coughed once more and told the truth, “If I were to fight him, it would have been impossible for me to defeat him.”

The little qilin inquired, “…But he didn’t look like he was poisoned, no? I saw that they used silver needles when examining him.”

“If everyone can diagnose poisoning like this, how would I be able to shock them?” Ning Xuemo smiled and patted the little qilin’s head. “Earlier, I used a strategy from Sun Zi’s Art of War[1] called ‘the empty city stratagem’[2].”

“Sun Zi’s Art of War? The Art of War written by Sun Zi is so awesome. That Old Zi who wrote it must also be awesome. Master, you should use Old Zi’s Art of War…” Even if the little qilin only understood half of the strategy, it was still excited about Ning Xuemo’s plan earlier.

Ning Xuemo’s eyes twitched. “Old Zi (Laozi)[3] didn’t write the Art of War. He only wrote a book called The Book of the Way of Virtue. Sun Zi is only his honorific. His real name is Sun Wu…” Ning Xuemo started to impart her world’s general knowledge to the little qilin.

The situation earlier was extremely dangerous. First, she acted out with an enigmatic, high and mighty demeanor to suppress those people. Next, as she passed by the Vice Hallmaster, she scattered poisonous powder. That kind of poisonous powder had a sweet fragrance. By itself, the powder had no harmful effects if someone took a whiff of it. When she was attacked by the vice hallmaster, she took advantage of that moment to use her qinggong combined with her special footworks to fly past the vice hallmaster and in a flash, scattered another type of poison.

When both poisons are combined, the toxicity immediately flared up, causing that insufferably arrogant vice hallmaster to collapse while simultaneously shocking everyone else. Finally, she made the little qilin summon all kinds of ferocious beasts to guard her rear, reinforcing her image as a mysterious and untouchable expert in order to deflate everyone’s courage to chase after her…

In fact, to create the facade of an unfathomable expert and bluffing her way out, she was relying on her acting skills, her abnormal poisoning techniques, her first-class qinggong, and her unique footwork.

Her whole plan was based on the principle of Zhuge Liang’s empty city strategy.

Although at that time she appeared calm and collected, the truth was her palms were sweating from nervousness.

Currently, her inner force was already on the verge of a breakthrough, yet her psychokinesis was so-so. Therefore, she could only rely on her qinggong. If she didn’t used it, she would absolutely not be able to escape!

[1] Sun Zi (孙子) or Master Sun was a Military General and strategist during the Spring and Autumn period. He wrote out the Art of War which is a military treatise. For more informations on Sun Zi, click here. For more informations on the book Art of War, click here.

[2] That stratagem, which is part of the Thirty-Six Stratagems, was highly popularized in the fiction of Romance of the Three Kingdoms when Zhuge Liang used reversed psychology to stop the opposing army from attack the city. In fact, there’s still debate on who was the exact author of the Thirty-Six Stratagems, but popular opinions mostly attributed it to Sun Zi. For more information on the stratagem itself, click here. For more informations on the Thirty-Six Stratagems, click here.

[3] 老子 (Lao Zi) can be understood in two ways. The first is Old Zi, as Old is pronounced Lao in Chinese. However, there’s a very famous figure called Laozi which is the founder of Taoism (Daoist) and wrote a well-known book in China called The Book of the Way of Virtue. For more informations on Laozi, click here. For more informations on the book, click here.

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