Like a hail of daggers, countless leaves flew toward Yun Ruoyan, Zhuo Yifeng, and Li Mo. A spiritual membrane surrounded all three of them as they continued flying toward the lake despite the leaves’ attacks.

Because Li Mo was a sword saint, his spiritual membrane was far stronger than Yun Ruoyan’s and Zhuo Yifeng’s, and many of the leaves rebounded off when they struck. As for Yun Ruoyan and Zhuo Yifeng, their spiritual membranes began to shudder and crack. Upon seeing the problem, Li Mo hurriedly hid Yun Ruoyan in his robes.

“Zhuo Yifeng, take this!” Yun Ruoyan extended her hand out of Li Mo’s robe as she tossed her spiritsteel dagger to Zhuo Yifeng. One of the leaves struck her arm, scoring a bloody line in it.

Zhuo Yifeng took the proffered dagger and began to strike at the leaves while rushing toward the pond behind Li Mo as quickly as he could.

After a frenzied rush, the three of them finally managed to escape the leaves’ attack, safely reaching the dazzling lake. As they landed, Yun Ruoyan burrowed her way out of Li Mo’s robe.

“Is your hand alright?” Zhuo Yifeng stepped forward and returned her dagger to her. 

“Oh, I’m fine. It’s just a little scratch.” Yun Ruoyan glanced at her arm as she took the dagger. A small trickle of blood escaped the wound.

“Ah, it’s bleeding.” Zhuo Yifeng frowned. He retrieved a roll of gauze and was just about to bandage Yun Ruoyan’s wound when Li Mo walked over with a handkerchief he kept by his side.

“Give me your hand.” Li Mo’s expression wasn’t very pleased, so Yun Ruoyan obediently stretched her hand out in front of him and allowed him to bandage her wound.

“Why did these leaves suddenly attack us?” she asked.

She thought she had moved rather agilely, and she was even wearing clothes optimized for combat—but even so, a leaf had cut her arm! One leaf alone might not have done very much to her, but there were thousands of them out there.

“Could someone have been controlling the leaves?” Zhuo Yifeng asked, causing both him and Yun Ruoyan to stare warily at their surroundings.

“It’s also possible that it’s a phenomenon unique to this realm,” Li Mo explained. “Different realms tend to have different environments and peculiarities, so we’d best be careful.”

As one of the instructors responsible for overseeing student expeditions into these realms, Li Mo was quite familiar with the different types of realms. Zhuo Yifeng and Yun Ruoyan had only entered two realms before this one: the first was in a sandy, desert-like area peppered with oases, and the second was in a forest filled with giant trees.

This time, the three of them had arrived at a realm of breathtaking natural beauty, but who knew what sort of dangers awaited them behind this glamour?

After Li Mo bandaged Yun Ruoyan’s wound, the three of them walked about a quarter-hour along the side of the lake and discovered that it extended all the way through a valley. Within that valley, they could see a small house in the distance.

Their spirits quickly rose upon seeing the house: in this uncolonized area, it was hardly likely for there to be any manmade structures—unless they were built by the instructors and students who had gone missing three years prior!

They rushed to the house only to find that it had long since been deserted. There were still a few pieces of furniture remaining, clear evidence that someone had stayed there for an extended period of time, but all the furniture was covered by a thick layer of dust.

“There used to be a woman living here,” Li Mo said, brushing his fingers against a table’s surface.

“Why do you think that?” Yun Ruoyan asked.

Li Mo pointed by a wooden comb by his hand. “This is a woman’s ornament.”

Yun Ruoyan walked over to find a comb with a peach blossom engraved on it.

“A couple used to live here, it seems like,” Zhuo Yifeng commented from one corner of the room, and Li Mo and Yun Ruoyan both turned to him.

Zhuo Yifeng pointed at a wooden cradle by his side. “This is a baby’s cradle, but it’s only half-finished.”

“Were there any couples among the students from the beastmaster institution?” Yun Ruoyan asked Li Mo.

He shook his head. “There weren’t any, but there were certainly both male and female disciples. It’s not impossible that they got married afterwards.”

“But where could they have gone?”

Zhuo Yifeng and Li Mo both shook their heads, unable to answer this question.

“Based on how clean and undamaged everything looks around here, as well as this half-finished cradle, they must have left rather urgently but willingly,” Zhuo Yifeng suggested.

“Not necessarily.” Li Mo shook his head. “It’s possible that they were forced to leave even before they managed to return to this house.”

Not finding anything more valuable in the house, the trio walked out and decided to investigate the nearby forest. Perhaps because of the spiritual energy density in this realm, the forest was lush and rampant. With their experience in the forest of giant trees, however, this level of greenery was something they had all grown used to.

They walked about another fifteen minutes within the forest when there was a commotion ahead of them. Quickly after the discordant sound, a bunch of wild rabbits, pheasants, and other beasts that Yun Ruoyan couldn’t name, began running toward them.

“Mistress, there’s a magical beast ahead.” Even Qiuqiu was startled from its cultivation.

Yun Ruoyan nodded. She could also sense the beasts’ auras, a large crowd of them, in fact. However, they all seemed to be rather low-ranking ones that could be dealt with quite easily.

Instead of stopping, the three of them continued moving forward. Shortly afterward, a louder commotion could be heard from the distance, and Yun Ruoyan was the first to notice a pack of firehounds dashing in their direction.

“So they were firehounds,” Zhuo Yifeng murmured, aiming his bow at the leader of the pack. It pierced through the leader and embedded itself in the head of the hound right behind it. The hound howled, then slumped to the ground. The other hounds, shocked by the sudden attack, all stopped moving, but another pack of hounds rushing toward them from behind forced them to head onward as well.

“What’s the matter? Is it a beast stampede?” Zhuo Yifeng wondered.

The three of them jumped up into the trees as they watched a pack of almost a thousand firehounds rush by below them. Although firehounds weren’t high-ranked beasts, it was quite rare to see such a large pack of them.

Most beast stampedes consisted only of about a thousand beasts, usually of different types, but this pack of hounds was a thousand strong just by itself.

“It’s… not likely that there are only firehounds here, is it?” Yun Ruoyan asked. “After all, we did see quite a large variety of beasts present when we scried this realm with the all-seeing mirror.”

“This realm truly seems rather unique,” Li Mo commented. “Let’s continue heading forward.”

By then, the pack of hounds had already rushed by them. Li Mo took Yun Ruoyan’s hand as they leapt down from the tree together, and the three of them continued rushing forward. What they hadn’t anticipated was for a pack of red-eyed wolves to show up next, also about a thousand strong. Red-eyed wolves were stronger than firehounds, but some amongst this pack were clearly rather shortsighted. Even after most of the pack had drifted away, about thirty or so remained, surrounding the trio and treating them as prey.

Despite the fact that red-eyed wolves weren’t high-ranking beasts, Qiuqiu had mentioned that their cores were fire-attuned, and could be used to craft a pill that would improve the efficacy of her pillmaster cultivation. As a result, Yun Ruoyan planned on slaughtering a few of them now that they had presented themselves so nicely to her.

It’s been a long while since I hunted some beasts, so I’ll practice on these ones for now…

Yun Ruoyan waved to Li Mo and Zhuo Yifeng, then jumped down from the tree with her spiritsteel dagger in her hands. As the thirty wolves watched her fall, they immediately pounced on her, causing Yun Ruoyan’s spiritual membrane to shimmer with light. Although their claws and teeth were sharp, their cultivation was far too low to penetrate the defense of the eighth-rank Yun Ruoyan.

With the protection afforded by her barrier, Yun Ruoyan raised the dagger in her hands and struck at the red-eyed wolves neighboring her. Every strike struck a critical location and netted her another kill; only when half their comrades were gone did the wolves finally realize that she wasn’t prey to be hunted, but rather a predator who had begun attacking them, instead.

The remaining wolves immediately gave up on the attack and began fleeing toward their pack.

Yun Ruoyan slaughtered the wolves to her heart’s content. Protected as she was by her spiritual barrier, no blood or viscera stained her body. With Li Mo and Zhuo Yifeng’s help, she quickly extracted the cores from the dozen or so wolf carcasses.

By then, the skies had darkened, and the three of them were just about to head back to the lake to rest when an even louder noise came from behind.

Awoooo! Awooooo! Tremendous howls caused the air itself to vibrate. 

“Mistress, there’s a beast horde ahead, and a high-rank beast!” Qiuqiu exclaimed.

Yun Ruoyan, Li Mo, and Zhuo Yifeng all glanced at each other. What was going on? Was this some sort of breeding ground for magical beasts?