Archfiend

Chapter 83: Meeting Old Friends (1)

Translator: XTB

With such an arcane effort in his hands, did Xu Yangyi need to consider some other secret realm? Moreover, it wasn’t even certain that it was a secret realm. It was merely a “possible” connection. Currently, he wished in no way to take out his trumps. Nevertheless, he wouldn’t even take out a single card—the player would be finished.

Sooner or later, he would go to a secret realm. If not now, he would have enough to grasp in the near future.

“Nothing but a secret realm.” He laughed. “Get ready. I’ll leave seclusion in a week, and we’ll head to the Four Great Joint Pools.”

Giving Li Zongyuan no chance to speak, Xu Yangyi entered the cultivation room. A week’s time arrived swiftly. After he left seclusion again, he immediately set foot on the road to the Four Great Joint Pools with Li Zongyuan.

In his week of seclusion, he verified a theory. Wind Brandishes Traces was indeed capable of acting in tandem with the Ten Cardinals Red Lotus. They were born from the same root; it wasn’t against his expectations. What went beyond his expectations... was its might!

Calling to mind the several-hundred-meter space charred black within the cultivation room, he couldn’t restrain his smirk. It was no wonder... that divine abilities could stir the people’s hearts. Li Zongyuan had nearly kneeled and prostrated upon witnessing his divine ability. Such might... truly should’ve been forbidden by society. Otherwise, the eruption of a divine ability, even an explosion in the hands of an initial-stage Qi Condensation cultivator, was a normal person’s catastrophe.

The second validation was that regardless of what method he employed, the “peach pit” within his qi sea remained motionless. It wasn’t like a living or dead organism. It was just quietly floating there like so.

Already, a week had come, so he could only temporarily set aside his experimentation. After all, meeting the Master Decrypter Jadewave and uncovering the Emperor Armament’s true face was more important.

The Emperor Armament... was the first crucial matter that he wanted to solve right now. He didn’t understand what it was, and it wasn’t clear to him why he was being hunted! Moreover, he didn’t have a grasp of his own situation!

Seven days later, in Li Zongyuan’s new car, Xu Yangyi watched the endless traffic flow of cars with handsome guys and pretty girls inside, with half-lidded eyes. He suddenly realized... he truly seemed to have slightly forgotten the feeling of human society.

Over a dozen years of Heavens Law’s militarized administration had went by like a single day. It could be considered the only place that was deeply woven into human society. Unexpectedly, he even served as the police captain in Sanshui City. It was indescribable and somewhat nostalgic.

Perhaps his time in secluded cultivation had been too long. He said quietly, “Slow down a bit.”

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“Alright.”

Li Zongyuan didn’t ask why, and Xu Yangyi cranked down the car window, putting his hand outside and feeling gusts of wind pass by. He didn’t use qi to isolate his body from the heat or cold, instead feeling the summertime tail of the fiery sun as it neared October. A kind of needlelike sunshine shone on his powerful arm, faintly pricking it. Waves of hot wind blew by and seemed to disperse the roiling heat on his arm.

He wore a black T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. He didn’t care much about his outward appearance, only feeling a sensation of leaving the gloomy stone room and walking into nature’s embrace. It caused each one of his nerves to relax, and seemed to nearly vanquish all of the haze in his heart.

Such relaxation even caused him to feel a tad sleepy. In cultivation, like the absorption of drug-like qi into the body, walking into nature was another kind of elegance.

Plup! At this time, his arm grew cold. It wasn’t a drop but rather a puddle. Xu Yangyi faintly furrowed his brows and opened his eyes, yet discovered the thudding sound of a Sprite bottle tossed on the road. As for his hand, there was liquid that happened to splash out along with the bottle.

He tilted his head up. There were many cars on the highway, yet the most conspicuous was a car in front of them. A wine-red sports car with a streamlined science-fictionesque build and a rather interesting license plate: Ming A-AA6666.

The car’s windows didn’t reflect light, but this didn’t stop him from seeing the things inside in the slightest. They were youths using their hands to point at the side as they laughed heartily.

It was him they were probably pointing at...

Inside the car, there were two young men and one young woman. Driving the car was a bald man wearing sunglasses and a suit. At this moment, the young woman was sneering at the glass window behind her, raising her middle finger, and laughing loudly at Xu Yangyi’s car. “Haha, retard! How ‘bout you show off! A 700,000 Audi A6L is frickin’ crap. I always get a bad mood when I see a lousy car like that!”

“The entire road is as worth as much as the car we’re in.” At the side, a guy wearing sunglasses lit a cigarette and leisurely crossed his leg over the other as he took a drag. “You said you wouldn’t cause a ruckus. What’s gonna happen if that guy chases after us?”

“Oh? I’m fucking scared he won’t chase us. I’m so scared.” The young woman rolled her eyes. It seemed her mood was extremely foul, and she unscrewed another Sprite bottle. “Isn’t it boring on the road? It’s so hard to have some fun, and we even ran into a retarded car driving in front of us. A crummy A6L? Fuck, what I just tossed out of the car could be considered his good luck!”

She appeared quite decent, but each of her words revealed a domineering tone of her spoiled childhood. Unpleasant to my eye, so I’ll just throw it away. Say something not to my liking, so I’ll just block your path. There were too many people of some status like this.

The youth in the front row laughed, “It can be considered your good fortune. If that bottle got into their car, maybe there would be news tomorrow about the daughter of Mingshui Province’s minister of the Ministry of Land and Resources, Hu Jiaojiao, driving recklessly and flipping over a passerby’s Audi without a reason.”

“Hehe, then he’ll sue?” Hu Jiaojiao haughtily stuck a straw into her drink and sipped. “I’m SO scared. Scared that he won’t come.”

“Not to mention throwing it on him, so what if I threw it on his face?” Rolling her eyes, Hu Jiaojiao used her arm to nudge the roughly twenty-year-old youth at her side and laughed boisterously, “Whaddaya say, big bro?”

“You...” The elder cousin wore a smile and his brows didn’t even furrow. It seemed that this business was like the law of the heavens and the principles of the earth. His finger casually relaxed, and ash from his cigarette butt fluttered along in the wind behind. He then turned up the window. “How you love to play, but I have to remind you. It was hard this time for big brother to ask around to go to the Four Great Joint Pools today. Once we’re in front of other people, you have to be good for me. It’s not like you don’t know about big brother’s temper.”

The young woman seemed to cool down a bit and shrugged. “I know, you’ve said it eighty times. You don’t have to worry that I’m gonna be trouble. Hey... check it out, is that idiot still looking?”

“He can’t see, Young Miss.” The bald man drove the car quickly and steadily, and he laughed, “Maybe he’s estimating how much money this car is? Maybe the sun is glaring too much on the license plate. Anyways, I want him to get a good look, then he won’t have the guts to run his mouth.”

“As it should be.” Hu Jiaojiao laughed matter-of-factly. “What I despise the most is the stupid bragging of that kind of commoner.”

“Pffft...” The young man in front row laughed. “I see you really are so bored to pick a fight. Miss, you should smarten up. Careful or you’ll bring your family misfortune. The internet nowadays sure is serious...”

“Misfortune? Don’t kid me.”

Xu Yangyi calmly pulled back his gaze. He had no desire to understand a chuunibyou. Especially after experiencing over half a year of seclusion, his attitude had changed greatly.

After long periods of solitary, there were only two kinds of symptoms. The first was an inability to stop speaking and the second was habitual silence. He felt that he belonged to neither of these two sides, but he really did speak less than before. Perhaps this was the price of cultivating... or at least one of them...

He closed his eyes and his head leaned against the soft chair. He asked casually, “What’s that car?”

Everything in the back row was observed within Li Zongyuan’s eyes, however, without his master’s word, he was found it awkward to speak. He squinted his eyes and said, “A GT-R NISMO.”

“How much is it?”

“Probably... over 2 million?”

“Oh...” Xu Yangyi’s understanding was heard. “What status do you think a person has to have to drive a car like that?”

Li Zongyuan could also see the people inside the car as clear as day. Reflective glass didn’t have the slightest effectiveness against cultivators. Without almost even thinking, he replied, “Rich second-generation kids with money at home.”

“Ones that don’t view a single person around them as above them, but raise their heads once they have a group. Self-important rich kids.” He stowed his gaze, bored stiff. “A good majority of rich kids these days won’t flaunt their wealth. Even if they want to, their parents wouldn’t allow them to. But there’ll always be some middle-of-the-road households that produce a few wonders... Are you mad?”

“Mad?” Xu Yangyi laughed, revealing an unspeakable derision. “At them?”

“I’m just saying...” Li Zongyuan stealthily measured Xu Yangyi’s expression from the rear-view mirror. “Our system of values is totally different from theirs. Master, concerned persons might be thinking of you right now. It really isn’t easy for you to personally appear.”

“Moreover, if I haven’t remembered incorrectly, sir, the Shennong Convention states in writing that cultivators and demons can’t reveal their existences before humans by any means unless it’s absolutely necessary. It’s forbidden to use spiritual force and qi in front of ordinary people, and not only are a great majority of magik artifacts prohibited to circulate to the masses, the distribution of cultivation goods is banned in mortal marketplaces...”

“These are the protections of humanity’s peak authorities for mankind. After all, even at the initial stage of Qi Condensation, we’re all superhumans to them. In general, even if humans offend us, we won’t do anything public. Besides, it’s not necessary.”

He spoke for three to four seconds, and Xu Yangyi didn’t interrupt as well. As soon as Li Zongyuan finished speaking, Xu Yangyi opened his eyes and looked at Li Zongyuan in the rear-view mirror. Xu Yangyi watched him for a full five seconds.

It wasn’t until Li Zongyuan lowered his head, not daring to look at him, did Xu Yangyi say coldly, “You memorized it clearly.”

“I’m really not angry. If I was angry, their lives wouldn’t be intact right now.”

“Cultivators maintain the law of the jungle’s veneer of peace. If you tolerate it once, there won’t even be a chance for you to bear it next time. The consideration of all consequences can’t be called the struggle of fate.” He looked into the other’s eyes. “That’s called... fearing the head and nervous of the tail. The hesitation of the mouse to step out of its hole, mired by indecision.”

As he finished speaking these few words, he closed his eyes again. Too long had he not encountered humans. In reality, he quite enjoyed such a sensation. In the human world, strength still reigned supreme, yet it wasn’t as naked as in the cultivation world. In the last second he advanced, and in the next, Qi Nan and Wang Sanshan, older than him by several decades, only dared to appellate themselves as humble, even avoiding mentioning themselves directly.

There was injustice and there was pleasure. There existed grievance and delight. Without sharp thrills, there was but unending happiness. He rather enjoyed this kind of sensation. The liquid from the bottle that spilled onto his body, however, was the emergence of a minor ripple.

The inside of the car was saturated with the newest song on the radio. He didn’t enjoy it, but he didn’t make Li Zongyuan switch it off. This was proof of the human world.

“I really have been apart from people for too long...” He wore a faint smile, enjoying his negligible happiness of a cultivator that had just left seclusion.

Minute after minute, time drifted by. After roughly ten-odd minutes passed, Li Zongyuan’s laughter arrived within his ear. “Master, that car just now ran into a problem. It’s at the side of the road being patched up.”

“Which car?” Xu Yangyi faintly raised a brow and questioned.

“The GT-R NISMO. It’s, it’s that car those group of chuuni-kids were sitting in...” Li Zongyuan said in surprise.

Xu Yangyi nodded. Were it not for the other reminding him of this matter, he really wouldn’t have remembered.

At the side of the road, three youths walked out of the car. The oldest was no more than twenty and the youngest had an appearance of roughly fifteen or sixteen.

Nonetheless, they were dressed in vogue. As long as their clothing was recognized, one would know the price was considerable. In addition to their current ill-mannered expressions, not only did they not draw the sympathy of others, quite a few cars suddenly sped up once they drove by them. Among the few cars, loud whistles came from the driver’s seat.

It appeared this location exceeded the vanity they were able to satisfy.

“What’re you looking at, huh!” Hu Jiaojiao turned her head and cursed, “Haven’t you ever fuckin’ seen a good car? Retard!”

1. License plates in China feature the character of the location. In this case, it is: 明A——AA6666. The Ming character denotes the region of the car. The letter A refers to a specific part of the region.

2. Not really her big brother. Actually her older male cousin through her mother. In Chinese, cousins are considered siblings.

3. Honestly not sure if Chuunibyou here is necessarily correct. Chinese is “Second-year middle school” To be honest though, this is really the only thing that makes sense to me. If you do not know what a Chuunibyou is, in English, it is known as “Second-year Middle School Syndrome”, but this is a term made popular by the Japanese. Encapsulates an idea that a person has a certain delusion of themself, i.e: magical powers. Called middle school syndrome because that’s when this weirdness is likely to occur. Anyone can get it though.

4. I think I made this note in early chapters, but in China there is an idea of a super wealthy group of kids known simply in Chinese as “Second Generation”. It’s the rich kid with a supercar. Referred to as second generation because their parents hauled ass to become rich, but they reap the benefit.