Yin Long, Lan Yun, and Jin Wang turned towards the source of the unknown voice at the same time, Yin Long's fingers bending slightly so that he could grasp a sword the second it became necessary. There was a small group of eight people standing a bit away from them, just outside of the range of Yin Long's law of space.

But even if they were outside of the range of his senses, they were still so close that they should have noticed them when they approached, especially due to the size of the group. But they hadn't, none of the people in Yin Long's group had managed to discover the approach of this unknown group.

Yin Long swept his gaze over the group of five men and three women, his gaze and attention landing on the woman that clearly led the group. She had a somewhat small stature but her breasts and hips were clearly pronounced and she exuded a strong and sensual charm. Her raven-black hair hung down to her shoulders and was tied into a neat ponytail, her yellow eyes flashing with a slightly devious light.

Her appearance shared a fair few traits with Xue Qiuling's so even if she hadn't referred to Xue Qiuling as Elder Sister just now, it would still have been easy to see that they were clearly related. But while she seemed to be the younger sister, the aura she radiated was much closer to the aura of Kuan Xiao, the head disciple of Eagle King Hall, than it was Xue Qiuling's aura.

As for the person who had been addressed, Xue Qiuling, she looked at the other girl with a grim expression. All the charm and confidence she usually exuded had vanished, replaced by an icy chill which carried a certain hint of worry and unease. But the young girl acted as if she couldn't even see Xue Qiuling's expression, maintaining her enchanting smile.

"Now now, don't look at me like that, Elder Sister. Did you think that I wouldn't know that you went out scavenging again? After you went through all that trouble to snoop around? Hihi, it's nothing to be ashamed about, that's just how some people have to do things. But since you want to scavenge, I hope you won't mind that I do some poaching again."

Xue Qiuling continued to remain silent in the face of her sister's provocations, the black-haired girl seemingly losing interest in her elder sister as her gaze slid over to Yin Long and Lan Yun again. The girl raised her leg to take a step forward, but one of the men that had followed her shout out his left hand and stopped her.

The man's right hand was clutching the handle of the sword sheathed at his waist, his shrunken brown pupils focused squarely on Yin Long. The girl tilted her head curiously at the man's actions, her gaze eventually drifting over to Yin Long again, containing a bit more interest this time around as she introduced herself.

"Greetings, how are you? I am Xue Shuiye and as you might have guessed, I'm Xue Qiuling's younger sister, sharing the same mother but not father. You must be the new disciples that she brought to the dojo, right? I'm not quite certain what she offered you, but would you possibly consider joining my faction? I can assure you that I can offer you at least twice as much as she can."

Xue Shuiye didn't bother beating around the bush and straightforwardly made her request, seemingly confident in the fact that Yin Long and Lan Yun were part of Xue Qiuling's faction. She was also confident in her ability to bring them over to her own faction, after all, everything that her sister had, she had in excess. But the reception she received was a fair bit different from what she expected, Lan Yun didn't show the slightest bit of interest and Yin Long responded with a very simple question.

"What weapon do you specialize in?"

As was to be expected by such a nonsensical and seemingly random question, it caught Xue Shuiye completely off-guard. The tilting of her head got a bit worse as she asked for confirmation, engaging in a small conversating with Yin Long.

"I'm sorry? What...weapon I specialize in?"

"Yeah, your weapon. You're not carrying a sword nor do you carry the faint scent of sword-tainted Qi."

Yin Long pulled out his white sword as he spoke, the expression of the man standing next to Xue Shuiye turning even tenser. Yin Long allowed his gaze to slide over the man but didn't say anything despite his brows furrowing slightly, Xue Shuiye responding somewhat absent-mindedly to his question.

"Oh, I specialize in chakrams, a pair of sharpened and rounded metal disks I can throw out and control with my Qi."

She brought out her weapons as if to show them off as she spoke about them, two centre-less metal disks made from a cyan metal appearing in her grasps. The chakrams were covered in ornate carvings of birds, and strangely enough, they didn't have a single place for her to grasp properly, they were sharp all around. Yin Long looked at her weapons, Lan Yun doing her best to hold back a soft laughter as she could already guess his response.

"Ah, then you must be a member of Heron Lord Hall. Sorry, but then you haven't got the slightest thing to offer me, at least she has the ability to teach me things."

Yin Long didn't have any interest in chakrams, and he wasn't exactly looking for resources or the like. As such, there was nothing Xue Shuiye could give him that he couldn't already get from Swan Queen Hall's martial library or from Xue Qiuling. He hadn't trained with her yet, but looking at the sparring match they engaged in when they first met, she had a few things that he could learn from her.

This was a fact that remained true even with him being taught by Meiyu, as the two people had different styles that he could learn different things from. It was a fairly simple and straightforward fact to Yin Long, but Xue Shuiye didn't seem to view it like that, her eyes narrowing slightly.

"...Is that your way of trying to earn more resources? Because if so then it's a pre...?"

Yin Long waved his hand and cut off Xue Shuiye before she could continue talking. Her way of talking reminded Yin Long of some of the elders from the Lang clan, making him almost completely certain that Xue Qiuling hadn't been lying when she said that they came from a family that was fairly large in their city.

"No, I don't really care about any resources you can give me so why should I bother trying to get more? I just don't have a reason to join you, not to mention that I haven't even joined her faction. I'm just here to train, once I've learned all that your dojo has to offer me, I'll move on again. As such, your factions really don't mean a damn thing to me."

Yin Long wanted to straightforwardly cut the problem at the root and make his stance clear, he was never going to join any faction since they meant nothing to him. Of course, with Xue Shuiye's mentality of someone from a large family, he guessed that she would likely believe that this was just an attempt at him being stubborn in trying to get more resources. It seemed to be a habit of those from larger families that they were unable to think in a straightforward manner, at least the ones involved in the politics seemed to suffer from this.

But that was fine too, it would make her spend some time studying him to see what could be used as the best reward to drag him over to her side, it would buy him some peace at the very least. And if she ended up displeased at his answer, well then he would just have to move on a little earlier, it would be a bit of a shame but it was still something he could live with.

And just as he guessed, Xue Shuiye's eyes narrowed suspiciously, roaming over Yin Long's body and studying both the sword he was holding and the robe he was wearing, even giving his interspatial ring a second glance. It was almost as if she was trying to determine his financial status to see how high she had to raise the price she stated.

But she didn't state a price, casting a glance at the brown-eyed and bald man that was still preventing her from stepping forward. She moved her gaze between Yin Long and the man for a bit before returning her gaze to normal, flashing Yin Long a dazzling smile while politely bending her knees and holding the hem of her robe.

"Very well, if those are your wishes then I won't needlessly interfere. But if you'll excuse me, I have to leave now so that I can find my meal before the vultures get there, if you wish to speak to me then you can find me in Heron Lord Hall in the future."

Xue Shuiye cast a very obvious glance at Xue Qiuling as she spoke, bringing her group with her and leaving as abruptly as they had arrived. It seemed like she had only bothered showing herself so that she could harass Xue Qiuling, probably asserting her dominance to remind Xue Qiuling of the difference between them.

Xue Qiuling grit her teeth so hard that Yin Long wondered if they might crack, but she maintained her silence as she watched the departing figure of her younger sister. Only when Xue Shuiye's figure had completely vanished from their sight did she let out a very long breath, turning to Yin Long and looking at him with nearly pleading eyes while giving a very short explanation.

"As you heard, she is my younger sister and she is the one most likely to succeed the position of our family's leader. And yes, I got the location of the Heart-root Tulips by spying on her, it might be slightly despicable but I had to do it. I know a bit more about their location than her since I was here recently, so please, can we go to the tulips before she finds them? I promise you that you too will get to fight to your heart's content later on."

Xue Qiuling looked straight into Yin Long's eyes as she pleaded, clearly more than just a little desperate to get a leg up over her sister. Yin Long glanced at Lan Yun, who simply shrugged her shoulders, and then at Jin Wang, who indicated that he would follow along with him. With their stances made clear, Yin Long copied Lan Yun and shrugged his shoulders.

"Alright, lead the way and let's go."

Xue Qiuling flashed him a radiant smile and quickly led the group away from the area, Yin Long making sure to quickly snatch up the corpses so that Jin Wang could gobble them up. Xue Qiuling seemed to follow a map she had made in her head, occasionally stopping at some points and looking at the sky as if she was trying to determine their exact location. But her guiding proved very effective, as Yin Long got to stop her after they had only spent a bit over six hours walking.

"They're over there."

He pointed to their right as he spoke, having discovered the colony of Heart-root Tulips using his law of space. Xue Qiuling stopped the moment Yin Long spoke out, following his finger to what seemed to be a patch of dead leaves. She glanced at the sky and made a few calculations, her brows arching up slightly as she turned her gaze back onto the patch of dead leaves.

"Are you sure? The area where they are supposed to have roamed is still about an hour or so away? ...No, they might have been spooked and thus may have ended up moving, it's worth checking out."

She swiped her interspatial ring as she spoke and took out a small crystal bottle, removing the cork and releasing some of the faint red mist that was trapped within the bottle. The mist seeped out and gathered around their group, a countermeasure to make sure that the Heart-root Tulips didn't notice them.

With the mist covering them, they could casually walk up to the path of dead leaves, Yin Long brushing some away to reveal finger-sized orange tulips that had hidden beneath the leaves. Xue Qiuling's eyes lit up brightly when she saw the leaves, carefully removing all the dead leaves to reveal a tulip-field that was nearly 200-metres wide.

"Quickly, we moved fast but I'm certain that my sister started following our tracks at some point, we probably only have an hour or less to harvest!"

Xue Qiuling wasted no time as she spoke, starting the tedious harvesting process. To harvest the main part, the heart-shaped roots, you had to carefully sense the energy that moved through the roots. Once there was a root that had a spot with no energy, you had to sever the root at that spot, repeating the process for all the roots that connected to the heart-shaped intertwined roots. If you did it in any other way, you would not only alert the rest of the colony, you would also ruin that Heart-root Tulip as all the energy would start pouring out.

Yin Long and Lan Yun also did their own harvesting, Yin Long having a much easier time thanks to the fact that he had the law of space to investigate every inch of the Heart-root Tulip at once. But their time was still limited, and once the 40-minute mark arrived and they realized that they had to stop just to be safe, they had only harvested a very small portion of the colony.

Yin Long had acquired 7 roots, Lan Yun had 3, and Xue Qiuling had 5, but there were still well over 100 tulips presents that could be harvested. But just as Yin Long put away the last root and got up to move away, Xue Qiuling did something he hadn't expected in the slightest. She snapped her finger and unleashed a torrent of deep crimson flames that scorched the tulips and their roots, utterly ruining them. His confusion at her action was clearly evident on his face, Xue Qiuling responding to the confusion with a steely expression.

"Don't you remember what I told you previously? In larger families like mine, it's the law of the jungle. We have to grasp a hold of every little thing we can, even if it doesn't end up being useful, just to make sure that someone else doesn't grab it. As for the things we cannot grab, we must destroy them so that others don't get their hands on them and use them against us."