Chapter 72: White Clothes
Upon opening her eyes, the young maiden instinctively bolted upright before discovering that she was no longer within the giant’s tunnel system.
She was sitting on top of a large, flat stone. Not far away from her, the despicable male who had ambushed her sat in front of a campfire as he baked a large fish from the river.
“Bastard!” the young maiden cursed and tried to attack him, but she suddenly felt a wave of exhaustion wash over her, and she had no way of controlling the Origin Energy within her body.
Qi Obstructing Powder!
The young maiden was both surprised and infuriated.
“You’re awake?” Upon hearing the commotion, Su Chen turned around to glance at her, then turned back around and continued his cooking session.
“Despicable, shameless, filthy, and vulgar!” the young maiden continued to curse at him.
“……” Su Chen was speechless. “I’d admit it if you called me despicable and shameless, but what do you mean by filthy and vulgar? Hey, although you fell into my hands, I haven’t done anything inappropriate to you except feed you the Qi Obstructing Powder.”
The white-clothed young maiden continued to yell, “It wouldn’t be wrong for me to use the world’s most offensive terms to describe someone who is a remnant of the Immortal Temple. You all are scoundrels and the scum of society, a bunch of people that has gone crazy because you were defeated!”
“……Fine, at least I can confirm that you attacked Night Demon last time because she was from the Immortal Temple and not for some other reason,” Su Chen sighed. “But I need to correct you concerning one matter. The Immortal Temple is the Immortal Temple, and I am me. I am not someone from the Immortal Temple.”
“If you aren’t someone from the Immortal Temple, then why are you with her?”
Su Chen rolled his eyes. “Who taught you such crude logic? So if I walk with you, then I belong to you?”
The white-clothed young maiden opened her mouth but couldn’t find the right words to say.
After quite some time, she said, “You aren’t from the Immortal Temple? Then why did you help her?”
“The answer to that question is a bit complicated, and I can’t describe it to you in one or two sentences so I don’t want to explain it right now.”
“So why did you ambush me then?” The young maiden didn’t force the issue, instead changing the topic to another question. After all, based on her current circumstances, she had no right to even force the issue.
“That’s the right question to ask,” Su Chen coldly laughed. “I ambushed you because although you pulled off your plan beautifully, you also dragged us into the mix because of it. If I didn’t find you for trouble, who would I look for?”
The white-clothed young maiden understood, but she still had some doubts. “You’re part of Zhang Sheng’an’s team? But why didn’t I see you in their team before?”
“I’m not part of his team, but when you set up that bastard, he turned on us and tried to take us down with him.”
Su Chen roughly explained what had happened before.
The white-clothed young maiden finally understood. “So that’s how it is; however, Zhang Sheng’an was the one harming you, not me. Why are you bothering me about it?”
“No matter what, you still played a role in all of this, and it would be an understatement to say that you implicated us. Right now, I don’t know whether my friends have escaped from the Clay Giant’s attacks or if there are any casualties. No matter what, you need to be held responsible. As the mastermind behind this plan, you must have earned quite a bit……”
“So you want to steal from the thief?” the white-clothed young maiden replied coolly.
Su Chen laughed. “You can think of it that way. After all, this is my favorite kind of activity, but I unexpectedly ran into you.”
“Is running into me different from running into someone else?” the white-clothed young maiden said coldly.
Su Chen tilted his head and replied after thinking for a moment, “There is. For instance, apart from the large quantity of ingredients that I got from your Origin Ring, I can also figure out why you hate the Immortal Temple so much and why you chose Zhang Sheng’an specifically to harm. After all, his clan has a long history, and you could have easily chosen someone else who is easier to deal with, such as someone without a bloodline.”
As he spoke, he raised the ring in his hand.
It was the white-clothed young maiden’s Origin Ring.
The white-clothed young maiden did not get angry.
She was extremely grounded, more so than most people, and her ability to accept the situation was surprisingly strong.
After a moment of silence, she said, “If I tell you, what will you do to me? Kill me? To conceal the relationship between you and the Immortal Temple?”
This time, she didn’t call him a remnant.
“That depends on the contents of your answer. Oh, just to let you know, I have a lie-detection Origin Skill, so there’s no point in trying to lie to me.”
The white-clothed young maiden harrumphed, “Do you think that I set them up just to search this cave for treasures? You’ve mixed up the cause and effect.”
Su Chen froze for a moment before understanding dawned on him. “You mean that harming Zhang Sheng’an was the main goal, while searching for treasures was secondary?”
“That’s right,” the young maiden replied.
“Tell me why.”
The white-clothed young maiden paused for a moment before begrudgingly answering, “I had a good friend named Qiu Tang, who I considered to be like my own sister. She was also a student in the Hidden Dragon Institute, but she didn’t possess a bloodline. Even though she wasn’t nobility, she always worked very hard. One day, she suddenly told me that she liked a person who was from a Bloodline Nobility Clan.”
Su Chen silently listened.
The white-clothed young maiden explained with a steady voice, “That person was Guan Shanying, a very handsome man. I tried to plead with her, telling her that people from Bloodline Nobility Clans didn’t marry commoners, and I advised her to give up on this mistaken idea. She agreed outwardly, but in reality I knew that she was still secretly involved with Guan Shanying. One day, she suddenly left without telling me where she was going, but just by looking at her lively attitude I knew that she was going to meet with him.”
After a brief pause, the white-clothed young maiden continued, “After that night, she never returned. Three days later, someone discovered her torn sleeve in the Falling Eagle Mountain, and many people believed that she had fallen prey to some Vicious Beast within the Falling Eagle Mountain. But I know that’s not the truth…… Later, I discovered some rumors surrounding that group of people, which was that Zhang Sheng’an and Zhong Ding had a craving for toying with women, and that they enjoyed abusing them. There had been instances where they had abused these women to death.”
The white-clothed young maiden’s tone was calm and emotionless, but Su Chen’s Lie Detection Skill told him that her heart was burning with rage.
Underneath that calm exterior was a sea of anger.
“After I confronted them, what do you think they did?”
“He denied it?”
“It was the complete opposite. They admitted to it,” the white-clothed young woman replied. “Guan Shanying admitted, to my face, that they had raped Qiu Tang, and because they were too over the top, she was raped to death. Afterwards, they tossed the corpse into the Falling Eagle Mountain to be eaten by Vicious Beasts to cover it up.”
Su Chen nodded. “They really do enjoy provoking others.”
They had admitted what they did to the white-clothed young maiden because they were confident that there was nothing she could do. Without any proof, they could simply deny what they had said. In addition, because of their status as nobles, they weren’t afraid of any consequences.
Thus, they “generously” admitted it to her face in order to provoke her, revelling in her inability to do anything about it.
“So you wanted to use the Clay Giant to deal with them, then come to harvest some raw ingredients?”
“Stone Soul Medicine is very expensive. I need to make back the money I spent,” the white-clothed young maiden indifferently replied.
Upon hearing this, a sense of familiarity began to surface in Su Chen’s heart, as if he had met his long-lost twin.
This young woman’s way of thinking really was quite similar to his own!