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Chapter 27: Search for the Exit

The meat that Yun Ruoyu was grumbling about was roasted by none other than Pei Ziao.

Although she hadn’t helped out at all, she complained about every little thing, and her clear distaste made Pei Ziao feel somewhat embarrassed.

Pei Ziao was holding some more meat skewers in his hands, and he was just about to hand them out when Yun Ruoyu spoke up. As a result, he simply stood still awkwardly, his face red and his hands trembling.

Yi Qianying reached out for one of the skewers, taking a big bite before turning to Yun Ruoyu. “It’s not that bad! Ruoyu, you’re a little too picky.”

“If you like it, you can have it all! As I’ve said, it’s charred on the outside and half-raw on the inside—you might be able to consume it, but I can’t!” Yun Ruoyu’s face was lined with displeasure.

“It’s already really good for Brother Ziao’s first attempt!” Yi Qianying looked toward Pei Ziao with a look of adoration on her face.

“Qianying...” Pei Ziao called out gratefully, his heart about to melt under her radiant smile.

Perhaps half a year ago, Pei Yingxiong had sat Pei Ziao down for a serious conversation, telling him to frequent the Yun household and try to get on good terms with their sole wife-born daughter, Yun Ruoyan.

It was an open secret that Yun Ruoyan was both useless and ugly, and almost no one in the upper echelons of society was unaware of that fact. But in order to maintain the family’s prosperity, Pei Ziao had no choice but to follow his father’s orders.

Pei Yingxiong had promised him that she would be nothing more than an ornament after they’d gotten married. Once the Peis surpassed the Yuns, he would be able to get a divorce and find a new wife immediately.

Pei Ziao had spent a tremendous amount of effort on Yun Ruoyan in the past. After all, as timid and self-abasing as she was, he had to make sure that his every gesture was moderate and kind in order to avoid frightening her.

In addition, she was so sensitive that a single demeaning glance from another party would be enough to cause her to cry.

Everyone else would show an expression of disgust upon seeing the birthmark on Yun Ruoyan’s face, and it was all he could do to ignore its existence and pretend that he was wholly unaffected.

Eventually, gradually, she finally got a favorable impression of him.

During their mountain trip, he had known that Yun Ruoyao and Yi Qianying were scheming to push Yun Ruoyan into the lake, and had wanted to completely conquer her heart with one grand gesture. Of course, he hadn’t expected to almost die in the attempt.

Luckily, he managed to survive, but Yun Ruoyan’s attitude toward him had soured completely.

Pei Ziao hadn’t particularly cared about Yun Ruoyan except for his familial obligations, but her sudden aloofness actually ignited his desire to get into her good graces once more.

As a dashing gentleman, the sole heir of the Peis, he could have whatever girl he wanted, let alone one as ugly and useless as Yun Ruoyan!

He forcibly suppressed his feelings for Yi Qianying and turned his gaze aside.

Opposite them, Zhuo Yifeng was cutting the roasted meat into chunks. The golden-brown meat was dripping with fat, and it sizzled as it landed on the charcoal, making everyone salivate further

The four girls all ended up staring at Zhuo Yifeng as he prepared the meat, and even Yun Ruoyan couldn’t help gulping down mouthfuls of saliva.

Zhuo Yifeng carved out a large piece of meat, but he handed it to Yun Ruoyan rather than to his own sister.

Yun Ruoyan hesitated for a moment before taking the meat, but instead of eating it herself, she handed it to Lin Qingxue by her side.

“Thank you, Ruoyan.” Without hesitating, Lin Qingxue took a big bite. “Wow, it’s so tasty! Even more so than the chefs in the capital!”

Lin Qingxue praised Zhuo Yifeng in an exaggerated fashion so loudly that Yun Ruoyu gave the whole crowd a supercilious look from afar.

Yun Ruoyan was just about to stand up when Zhuo Yifeng handed her another chunk of meat. She frowned slightly, saying, “I’d prefer to do it myself, please.”

And then she stood up, walked to the roast, and used her own little dagger to cut out two pieces of meat, one for Lin Qingchen and one for herself.

“Oh, it really is tasty!” Yun Ruoyan took a bite and praised Zhuo Yifeng sincerely. “You’re a surprisingly good cook.”

“Brother Zhuo’s really skilled, isn’t he?” Lin Qingxue mumbled as she chewed, and Lin Qingchen likewise ate with gusto.

Zhuo Yifeng revealed a rare smile. “We beastkin often have to hunt deep in the mountains, so we’ve amassed quite a few cooking-related skills.” As he said this, he cut the meat finely and placed it on a big green leaf before handing it to Zhuo Lin’er.

Zhuo Lin’er took the proffered food and began chewing slowly, and it was only then that Zhuo Yifeng took a few bites for himself.

“Who else is there in your clan besides you siblings?” Yun Ruoyan asked carelessly while popping a chunk of meat into her mouth.

Zhuo Yifeng stilled upon hearing the question.

At first, Yun Ruoyan expected that he would refuse to answer, but he spoke up calmly instead. “It’s only the two of us left now, but there might be other missing members of the clan elsewhere.”

Beastkin were a rather special sort of existence in the Chenyuan continent. Supposedly, the beastkin were half-blood spawns of man and beast, and had always served as slaves of the nobility, generally as hunters and beast tamers.

A hundred years ago, a brave warrior emerged amongst the beastkin. He led his kinsmen to victory against their human masters, ending the perpetuation of slavery that had lasted millennia.

This warrior had seized untold amounts of riches from the hands of humans, bringing his kinsmen to the other side of the Yueli mountain and founding a beastkin kingdom.

For a time, this kingdom coexisted with the Li, Yue, Mo, and Chen kingdoms, and there were said to be five great kingdoms on the Chenyuan continent.

The warrior who had founded this kingdom was titled the Beast King.

But eighteen years ago, the Beast King had died of mysterious causes in the prime of his life. The beastkin kingdom splintered, marred by internal schism and conflict. Soon, it became no more.

The beastkin once again roamed the four kingdoms as nomads.

Many adventurers, driven by greed for the treasures that the beastkins had seized from the humans, would go about hunting beastmen and interrogate them regarding where the treasure had ended up, and it was under these conditions that the beastkin population dwindled by the day.

What made Yun Ruoyan particularly curious was how Zhuo Yifeng and his sister managed to obtain tokens to enter the imperial realm despite being beastkin.

Seemingly having anticipated Yun Ruoyan’s question, he said, “I once saved the master of a noble family while out hunting. He granted me a wish, which is how I’m here right now.”

Zhuo Yifeng’s openness made Yun Ruoyan a little uncomfortable, as if she were being petty and secretive in comparison.

“Ah, there’s no reason you have to divulge all this to me. Shouldn’t you beastkin be vigilant against us humans?”

Zhuo Yifeng really seemed to be an exception among his kind. Even when they first talked in the morning, Zhuo Yifeng had revealed his identity as a beastkin at the very beginning.

“I believe in you,” Zhuo Yifeng said resolutely, looking at Yun Ruoyan with eyes that were far too bright.

“Believe me?” Yun Ruoyan looked toward him, her expression uncertain. “Why? It’s the first time we’ve met!”

“Because your body’s suffused with a familiar scent.”

“What scent?!”

“I don’t know, but it’s familiar and intimate!” Zhuo Yifeng looked at Yun Ruoyan, his eyes gleaming like those of a magical beast.

“It can’t be that this fellow’s smelling my scent, can it?!” Qiuqiu chirped from the bracelet.

Yun Ruoyan’s heart trembled in shock. Was this guy’s sense of smell so acute that he could even sense what was inside her pocket dimension? That defied common sense!

Yun Ruoyan’s attitude became cool once more. “You look like an honest guy, so I didn’t expect you to try to hit on me like that.”

“No, I’m not—” Zhuo Yifeng quickly spread his hands out.

“Alright, I’m tired and going to rest now.” Yun Ruoyan didn’t want to hear his explanation. She walked up and to one side of the fire, preparing to lie down to sleep.

Late in the night, she was jostled awake by someone. She opened her eyes to see Lin Qingxue looking at her in pain.

“What’s the matter?”

“I ate too much meat for dinner, and then a whole bottle of cold water on top of that. My stomach hurts so much! Ruoyan, could you accompany me to relieve myself?” Lin Qingxue pleaded earnestly.

And so the two girls found a location downwind and far from the fire. After Yun Ruoyan gave the signal, Lin Qingchen went to relieve herself.

In her boredom, Yun Ruoyan looked around her surroundings before suddenly seeing a faint glow coming from a nearby brush.

She walked over. Under the moonlight filtering through the leaves up above, she found a pile of animal entrails near the brush, likely those that Zhuo Yifeng had cleaned out while he was preparing the meat for dinner.

The funny thing was, there was an object giving off a faint green glow from within those entrails.

Yun Ruoyan unsheathed her sword and cut open the glowing organ, revealing a glowing green monster core!

After she’d cleaned it thoroughly and inspected it carefully in her hands, she could even smell a faint trace of medicinal herbs. It could only be the beast core of the bunny that had landed them within the pack of hounds in the first place!

Before the hound which had captured the bunny could fully digest it, they’d slain and eaten the hound.

The bunny had grown up feasting on such medicinal herbs, and its core would have retained some of that potency in restoring qi and curing poison. In that sense, this one core was more valuable than a hundred firehound cores.

“Ruoyan, what’re you doing over there?” Lin Qingxue’s voice came from behind her. Yun Ruoyan quickly kept the bunny’s core in her pocket dimension and then turned around.

“I saw a firefly just now and wanted to catch it, but it flew away instead.”

Lin Qingxue squinted at her cousin. When had she become so mischievous?

In the end, the two of them returned to the firepit to sleep, and when they next woke up, it was already morning.

The next morning, as soon as everyone woke up, they went off in search of the exit to the misdirection array.

Yun Ruoyan brought up the idea of splitting into two parties once more. Yun Ruoyao and Yun Ruoyu were both fine with the suggestion, but Pei Ziao insisted on following Yun Ruoyan.

His excuse was that he had to protect and take care of her in order to thank Yun Ruoyan for saving his life.

“I feel like it’s best for us to work as a team,” Yi Qianying began. “None of us are familiar with the imperial territory, and if we encounter another beast horde, it’ll be better if there are more of us.”

After hearing Yi Qianying’s words and concluding that her party really would be too weak otherwise, Yun Ruoyao doggedly followed behind Yun Ruoyan’s group, ignoring Lin Qingxue’s taunts and Yun Ruoyan’s cold and aloof behavior.

“I saw that first!” Yun Ruoyu and Lin Qingxue glared at each other, both unwilling to let go of their half of a mauve medicinal herb gingerly clutched in their hands.

This was already the third such incident this morning between the two girls.

For some reason, the two of them would always see a treasure and rush to it at exactly the same time.