Not soon after, the brutes pushed open the door and came into the room, and along with them a dim, yellow light.
"Go, wake those two up! It would be too boring two play with them while they're asleep!" The one that was right at the forefront was a man with bulging muscles and tattoos that was holding a camera in his hands, and as he looked at the two girls on the floor, his gaze became more and more lustful.
Xiao Yun opened her eyes slowly, her eyes getting used to the dim light before squeaking in shock upon seeing the scene in front of her. Then, she slowly crawled in front of Gu Xiqiao protectively, glaring at the men as threateningly as she could, but her shivering body betrayed her fear.
The lens of the camera was pointed at the two girls, and Gu Xiqiao slowly opened her eyes too, glancing around and seeing a piece of rotten wood next to them.
"Boss, let me do it! I'll shoot the video!" One of the men walked in from outside and snatched the camera over, pointing it at the two girls. As he looked at the two figures through the camera, his breathing started to become erratic.
"I-I know I'm your objective, but she doesn't have anything to do with this, so let her go… Please." Xiao Yun figured out what was happening and tried to calm herself down as much as she could. Gu Xiqiao was in their hands now too, so she couldn't enrage them! "If you need money, I can get someone to send it to you right now, and we won't even press any further charges against you, promise!"
These people all looked quite fierce and all had tattoos, and Xiao Yun immediately started suspecting that uncle of hers that was always up to no good.
To destroy a girl in such a way was already worse than scum!
The bald man scoffed, before reaching over and grabbing her chin roughly with calloused fingers, before his fierce gaze swept over to Gu Xiqiao, looking up at down at her legs that were like a piece of art.
"We don't need money," He said, before pushing her away and making his way over to Gu Xiqiao slowly, looking at her clear eyes in enthrallment and reaching over, as if he wanted to touch her.
At that exact moment, Gu Xiqiao suddenly moved. She grabbed the piece of wood and swung it as hard as she could towards a weak spot she had aimed at beforehand!
There were seven burly men in total in the room, and they all didn't seem like nice people, and the bald man in front of her seemed to be particularly strong.
Gu Xiqiao had already weighed the odds of her winning against them, and while she was in the first level of ancient martial arts, things had already gone beyond her expectations—These weren't regular thugs that she could defeat while taking care of Xiao Yun at all!
Now that Xiao Yun was here, she needed to buy her time to escape before she could deal with them!
As the thugs were stunned in shock, the two of them ran outside as quickly as they could, and Gu Xiqiao handed Xiao Yun the keys to the van that was parked outside that she had snatched away and led Xiao Yun towards the car, but the latter wasn't willing to leave. "Let's leave together!"
"Xiao Yun, listen, this is an attack aimed at me, alright? I can deal with this!" Seeing that Xiao Yun wasn't relenting, she grit her teeth and continued without really meaning it, "Don't you see? You're being a burden!"
Xiao Yun closed her eyes and sighed, knowing that it was a truth that she would drag the other down.
"It's Gu Xijin, right?"
She gritted her teeth and cursed under her breath, already regretting why she didn't off Gu Xijin back when they had the chance, and more importantly, she hated how she was powerless to help!
Gu Xiqiao only glanced at her and didn't reply, but that already was enough of an answer.
"Listen here Gu Xiqiao, if you don't come back safely, I will let the entire Gu family go down to hell!" Xiao Yun entered the car and stepped on the accelerator, her expression filled with frustration and hatred.
She, Xiao Yun, would become a burden!
And so, the van drove off into the distance, and Gu Xiqiao made several seals with her hands, making the space in the direction of the road warp slightly before returning to normal.
After making sure that Xiao Yun was safe, Gu Xiqiao looked back at the thugs that had come back to their senses and walked calmly on a path leading to the forest.
Even though she was walking very slowly, those thugs couldn't catch up to her no matter what.
Meanwhile, wisps of dark energy permeated into the forest.
In the forest, the eight burly men stopped in their steps, and the next moment, their eyes became glossy and dazed, while their movements became synchronized, as well as speeding up drastically, but they didn't make a sound as they marched. As their aura became stronger, even the leaves on the trees shook and fell onto the ground into piles.
Gu Xiqiao suddenly stopped walking and tilted her head to listen to what was going on behind her.
What she couldn't see were the wisps of dark, gas-like energy dissipating as soon as they came into contact with her.
The next moment, the eight men appeared behind her, and Gu Xiqiao came face to face with eight pairs of lifeless eyes when she turned around, and it was like a scene from a horror movie that would cause chills to run up someone's spine.
Gu Xiqiao's gaze became focused, and she made another seal with her hands as she looked at the eight puppet-like figures in front of her.
Suddenly, the eight figures started walking in a strange pattern, and as they walked, there seemed to be a strange pulse of energy that attracted Gu Xiqiao's attention, and as they stopped, the scene changed immediately!
All of a sudden, her surroundings were plunged into darkness and thick haze, and there seemed to be no way out of it.
It was the Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams Array!
Gu Xiqiao's eyes widened slightly in surprise, and at this moment, all she had was awe in seeing such an amazing array.
The Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams Array had countless variations, and there were eight gates in total in the seal—The Gates of Opening, Healing, Life, Pain, Limit, View, Wonder, and Death.
Now what Gu Xiqiao had to do was to leave was to find the Gate of Opening!
The most marvelous part of this array was that it completely separated the worlds inside and outside the array.
Gu Xiqiao had made a seal to try and stop the eight men, but they were completely unaffected by it, and they started attacking her violently, but at the same time, they didn't seem to be aiming to kill her, more so were trying to trap her and bring her back alive.
Unbeknownst to everyone inside, a dainty paper crane came to rest on a tree branch outside the array.
Meanwhile, Gu Xiqiao split her strong mental power into eighths and sent them into the minds of the eight men, and while she hadn't seen the real Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams Array, she had the memory of seeing it in ancient scripts!
At this moment, she channeled a pulse of chi that became a stream of air towards the southeast direction, and the entire array warped as if it were disturbed before returning to normal.
Then, she picked up a few branches and channeled chi into them fully, and while the entire affair used so much of her mental power and chi that she became pale, but her eyes were sparkling with excitement. Then, she started walking in between the eight figures with strange steps, leaving afterimages as she did.
"The Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams Array is constructed to utilize the very rules and the flow of fate of the universe itself…You people are wasting it by using it like this."
Her clear voice rang out in the forest, and if whoever knew their stuff was here, they would be shocked by how this girl was creating an inverse array!
And only after looking at a half-baked array once…
After a while, Gu Xiqiao stopped and stepped to one side, the moonlight shining down on her as the eight people in the array disappeared!
Meanwhile, the girl that caused this to happen only raised her eyebrows slightly. "Hm…That was easy."
If the geniuses from the ancient martial arts society heard this, they would probably cough up three liters of blood.
Gu Xiqiao threw away the branches and was about to leave before her eyes closed and she fainted without warning.