Having been a long time since he saw everyone, Bai Yunfei gave everyone a long few words of greeting and conversation. He spoke then about the three others having to need to go into closed-door meditation as soon as possible. Before they left, Song Lin had even asked Zheng Kai if he would need a place to go into closed-door meditation as well. There was no way Zheng Kai would even dare approach the matter of becoming a Soul King so sloppily. He had already planned on training here in the Crafting School and readily agreed to the request.
As the group continued to speak with one another, Zheng Kai noticed Bai Yunfei glancing around the place as if looking for something. Not wanting to call out Bai Yunfei for his actions, Zheng Kai grinned. “Oh?” He swept around the area with his eyes, “I don’t see Tang Xinyun here, is she training at the moment?”
“Sis Yun went back home!!”
Kou Tingting hadn’t even responded before Huangfu Rui beat her to the punch.
Bai Yunfei looked startled. “Returned home?! Tang Xinyun went back to Mo City? When?”
“Three days ago,” Kou Tingting replied. “I was going to accompany her, but the second elder said little Rui wasn’t allowed out the school, so I decided to stay behind and keep her company.”
“Daddy is so mean! He won’t let me play with sis Yun!!” Huangfu Rui pouted.
It was known that Huangfu Rui was more or less a shadow to both Tang Xinyun and Kou Tingting. She’d be unhappy if she wasn’t following either of the two, so if Kou Tingting and Tang Xinyun both left to go to the Tang, then the girl would definitely want to go. And if Huangfu Nan said no, then that meant Tang Xinyun would have to return home by herself.
Seeing the look on Kou Tingting’s face, Bai Yunfei surmised something was off. “What’s wrong? Did something happen to the Tang, is that why Xinyun went home?”
“Something did happen.” Kou Tingting spoke. “Otherwise Xinyun wouldn’t have been in such a rush…the Tang came by with a message saying that Xinyun’s mother is seriously ill. Xinyun started back home that day.”
“What?! Aunty Xue is ill?!” Bai Yunfei cried out, “Why now?! What kind of illness? Did the poison relapse?!”
“I’m not aware of the details,” Kou Tingting shook her head, “the message only said that she was ill…but poison? Yunfei, why do you say that?”
But Bai Yunfei didn’t reply to her. The expression on his face clouded over as he thought about something…
……
That afternoon, a violet and blue streak of light flew out from Mount Crimson to fly in the direction of Redfire City.
Bai Yunfei stood within one of the two streaks of light. He was flying on the Heaven’s Thunder with Xiao Qi on his shoulder. The blue streak of light was Long Lan, of course.
Their destination was Redfire City so they could use the airship to fly towards the Forest Pass Province.
Aunty Xue falling ill was a very grim matter for Bai Yunfei. He had been worrying about it ever since he heard about it. He felt uneasy about the matter and immediately drafted up the plans to travel there. He had planned to use the airship scheduled three days later to fly for the Forest Pass Province, but he found it impossible to wait and immediately set out from the Crafting School after getting permission from his master.
It hadn’t even been half a day since he came back to the school.
Zheng Kai decided to remain behind in the Crafting School. He had been planning to go into closed-door meditation, so it’d be unsuitable for him to go running off with Bai Yunfei now. Secondly, it wasn’t his right to involve himself in Xinyun’s family business. Bai Yunfei could do to his relationship with Tang Xinyun, so that was normal. But Zheng Kai had no right to try and be as familiar as Bai Yunfei was.
“Yunfei, you don’t have to worry so much. Xinyun’s mother will be fine.” Xiao Qi consoled him.
Bai Yunfei gave a slight nod of his head, but Xiao Qi’s warning seemed to have done nothing for him. He was completely focused on flying as fast as possible, but after a while of flying on top of the Heaven’s Thunder, Bai Yunfei came to an abrupt stop.
“Flying’s too slow, Xiao Fang, teleport us!”
Right as Xiao Qi and Xiao Lan were both coming to a stop, Bai Yunfei was already patting at the folds of his robes.
The Core Stone was being held there. He had used an abnormally strong material to fashion a rope to act as a necklace. By fastening the Core Stone through a small hole in it, Bai Yunfei was able to have the item close to him at all times and hidden away in his robes. Of course, this didn’t count as a pendant and was just a convenient way for Bai Yunfei to carry it.
An image of a stone materialized into being soon after Bai Yunfei spoke. “Teleport? No problem, which direction?”
“Forwards.”
He turned to Long Lan and Xiao Qi next, “You two wait in the Core World, it’ll be more convenient for me to travel this way alone.”
“Alright.” The two soulbeasts nodded before allowing themselves to disappear into the Core World.
Bai Yunfei stored away the Heaven’s Thunder and remained motionless. Feeling as the space around him started to distort, Bai Yunfei allowed a sliver of his soulforce to enter the Core Stone. Three seconds later, Bai Yunfei’s figure disappeared without a trace!
……
Redfire City was the most prominent city within the Great Plains Province and had carriages and horses adorn the streets in large numbers. Normally, most cities would have a few soul cultivators, but Redfire City had an ample sum of soul cultivators.
Right now, a single Soul Sprites was just walking out from a soul armament store in glee at the items he had just purchased. He walked out from the store and turned into a small alley to make his way onto the main roads.
“Eh?!”
But just as he was nearing a small fork, the Soul Sprite came to an abrupt stop to look towards the right.
A person had just suddenly appeared out of nowhere there!
The Soul Sprite hadn’t even sensed the person there! His eyes honed in on the person, his heart pounding rapidly in his throat in fear that this person might try to attack him.
Acting entirely on instinct, he shook his right hand to take out a golden dagger to brandish at the person.
“Clang!”
The hand holding his dagger went numb immediately afterward. No longer attached, the dagger flew off to the side to embed itself into the wall a little ways away.
The expression on the man’s went slack before he could see the appearance of the person he had just attacked. It was someone younger than him.
The person glanced over at him, immediately striking fear in the Soul Sprite’s mind. The Soul Sprite stumbled backward and collapsed onto the wall behind him in abject terror.
“Excuse me…where might the airship station be?”
Just as the man was about to submit to his fear and give himself up to be killed, the pressure he felt weighing on him suddenly disappeared and a voice spoke out to him.
“Eh?” He gasped.
“Airship station?” He was scrambling to respond now, “It’s…it’s that way. Make a right and then go straight, you’ll be there in ten minutes…”
“Oh…” The figure turned his eye to look in the direction the man was pointing out. He turned back and clasped his hands together, “You’ve my thanks.”
To the surprise of the Soul Sprite, the figure then turned around to leave the alley towards the direction where he had just pointed at.
“……”
It wasn’t until the figure had blended into the streets that the Soul Sprite finally managed to get his wits to him. Breathing in a shaky breath, the man started to count his lucky stars.
“He was just…asking for directions…” He gasped. “But that was teleportation, wasn’t it? Was…was he a Soul King?! I…I actually attacked a Soul King…and I wasn’t even killed for it…”
……
The one who had suddenly appeared on the street and caused that small misunderstanding was Bai Yunfei, of course. By borrowing the powers of Xiao Fang, he was able to teleport a large distance to reach Redfire City.
“It’s an extraordinary amount of power to travel so far so fast…” Bai Yunfei muttered to himself after he left the alley. It had only taken him a few leaps and a bit of soulforce to net him a result completely ridiculous.
Ten minutes later, Bai Yunfei was standing at the airship station of Redfire City. The next airship scheduled for the Forest Pass Province was in just two hours, so Bai Yunfei handed an obscene amount (for regular soul cultivators) of primal stones and boarded the airship.
It was a giant airship with all sorts of rooms big and small. Bai Yunfei was able to find himself a small room to close himself in and focus on his own self.
When he was done recovering his lost soulforce, Bai Yunfei took out a large amount of accessories and started to upgrade them.
The earrings Bai Yunfei gave to Tang Xinyun’s mother the first time had been of the wood-type, but it had an additional effect that helps cure the poison in her still. Knowing that Bai Yunfei wanted to see if he could find another accessory and upgrade them to have a poison-resistant effect or so.
Time went by slowly on the airship. Right as Bai Yunfei was in the middle of upgrading his accessories, he noticed that there was a small cacophony of sounds coming from outside his room. There was a disturbance of some sort…
