In the middle of the night, the pale moonlight cast a hazy, grayish glow over the entire mountain peak.

Yu Wantang flew up against the cliff face, crouching behind a boulder and poking her head out halfway to take a look.

Walking about a hundred steps east from the top of the cliff, the three of them were lying under the crooked old locust tree, piled on top of each other in a disarray.

Lin Zhao was curled up into a ball like a shrimp scalded by hot water, with his head resting on Zhou Han's lap. Zhou Han leaned against the tree trunk with his back straight, but his eyes were already closed, and his chest rose and fell shallowly and slowly. Shen Yan was the farthest from them, sitting near the roots of the tree with his back against the bark, still gripping his natal sword in his hand.

The bonfire was left with only a pinch of dark red ashes, occasionally popping with a tiny spark that burst open with a soft crack before falling back into silence.

The air was filled with the smell of blood and burning, mixed with the dampness of the night dew, making it both cold and fishy.

Yu Wantang crouched behind the boulder and watched for a few seconds.

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The faces of the three people were dirty beyond recognition, with blood and ash mixed together. Their clothes had several rips, revealing dried blood scabs underneath. Lin Zhao's saliva trickled down the corner of his mouth, smearing half his face.

She cautiously crawled out from the bushes, stepped on the gravel, and went around to the other side of the old locust tree. She found a flat stone two or three zhang away from them and sat down.

The sound of the wind was very soft. Moonlight pierced through the gaps in the clouds and fell on her shoulders.

She took out an outer robe from her storage bag, wrapped it around herself, leaned against the stone, and closed her eyes.

None of the three woke up.

...

When the sky was just turning bright, Lin Zhao was the first to wake up.

He had been woken up by the cold. Dew had fallen in the second half of the night, leaving him soaked from head to toe, with his hair plastered to his forehead, shivering uncontrollably. He drowsily rolled over and reached out to the side, touching a patch of icy grass.

Then he touched another hand.

Warm, dry, and with distinct knuckles.

Before Lin Zhao's brain could process it, his hand pulled back first. He rubbed his eyes, his vision shifting from blurry to clear, and saw a person in blue clothes sitting in front of him.

That person had their eyes closed, chin resting on their knees, breathing evenly and sleeping soundly.

Lin Zhao blinked.

He blinked again.

Then he opened his mouth, and a strange sound somewhere between a scream and a hiccup came out of his throat.

"S-Senior Sister!!!"

Shen Yan opened his eyes abruptly, his hand instinctively reaching for his sword. Zhou Han bounced up from the ground, hitting the back of his head directly against the tree trunk, making him wince in pain.

Yu Wantang was woken up by that shout. She raised her head with a frown, a blade of grass stuck in her hair.

"What are you yelling for? Be careful you don't call the demonic beasts over."

Lin Zhao lunged forward, not even feeling pain when his knees hit the stone. He grabbed Yu Wantang's sleeves with both hands, tears streaming down instantly, his face smeared with snot and tears.

"Senior Sister, you didn't die! You really didn't die! I dreamed last night that you turned into a ghost and came to me asking for honey-soaked spirit fruits!"

Yu Wantang leaned back in disgust. "Can you wipe your face first?"

Shen Yan stood in place, his hand still pressing on the hilt of his sword, his knuckles turning white. He looked at Yu Wantang, his lips moving without uttering a word. His eye sockets were red, but he stubbornly held back his tears.

Zhou Han walked over while rubbing the back of his head, looking Yu Wantang up and down, and hissed, "Senior Sister, are you hurt?"

Yu Wantang stood up, patted the grass leaves off her body, and her expression was exceptionally calm.

"I got caught by an old vine on the cliff halfway down, which cushioned the fall, and there happened to be a cave at the bottom." She moved her wrists. "I got lucky."

Zhou Han was skeptical, but he didn't press further. After all, having a complete and intact person standing right here was better than anything else.

Shen Yan walked over, stood in front of Yu Wantang, lowered his head, and said in a muffled voice, "Senior Sister, I'm sorry."

Yu Wantang looked at him. "What are you apologizing for?"

"You did it all to protect me."

"Alright, I'm the Senior Sister, it's only right for me to protect you."

She silently retorted in her heart, There's no help for it; if you, the child of great fortune, were to die, where would she go to fleece opportunities?

Her gaze swept past the three of them and landed on the corpse of the wolf king not far away.

The huge white body lay across the edge of the cliff. Its white fur was caked into strands by blood and mud, and the sword wound on its neck revealed dark red flesh, looking painful just to look at.

Yu Wantang chuckled. "Let's go, time to get down to business."

"What business?"

"You three killed the wolf king and made such a big sacrifice, we can't do it all for nothing."

Yu Wantang stood up. "Since this wolf is the boss of this area in Youming Valley, there must be a lair behind it. If we don't hollow out the wolf king's lair, it would be a disservice to our losses."

Lin Zhao's eyes lit up, and he was the first to raise his hand. "I agree!"

Yu Wantang walked over to the corpse of the white-furred giant beast.

She untied the storage bag from her waist. As soon as the opening of the bag widened, a flash of spiritual light flickered, and the three-zhang-long corpse of the wolf king was sucked in with a rumble.

Lin Zhao watched with straight eyes. "Senior Sister, your storage bag is so huge!"

"Senior Sister is rich." Yu Wantang closed the bag, patted the dust off her body, and said, "Let's go, time to find the nest."

The four of them walked backwards along the tracks trampled by the wolf king when it came.

The wolf king's lair wasn't hard to find.

A Tier 4 demonic beast had a very strong sense of territory, and the scent extended all the way. Walking north along the top of the cliff for about two li, behind a pile of cluttered rocks, there was a cave entrance about half a person high. The grass around the cave entrance was trampled bare, and the ground was covered in claw prints and dried bloodstains.

Piled at the entrance of the cave were quite a few broken bones—deer, wild boar, and even one or two human-shaped ones.

Lin Zhao stood at the cave entrance and peered inside. It was pitch black, and a foul, gamey stench rushed straight at his face.

"This smell..."

A pungent, gamey odor was carried out by the wind, choking Lin Zhao into covering his nose on the spot.

Yu Wantang took out four filth-repelling pills from her storage bag and stuffed one into each of their mouths. "Hold them in your mouths and let's go."

The cave was much more spacious than it looked from the outside. After walking a dozen steps, the ceiling rose high enough for them to stand straight. Walking further in, their vision suddenly widened, revealing a natural stone chamber about half a mu in size.

The back of the cave was a natural stone hall, with a pile of white bones stacked like a small hill against the inner wall. Beside the pile of bones, a mess of cluttered items made the four of them unable to move their feet on the spot.

Shen Yan held the fire starter high in his hand, sweeping the light across.

In the corner of the stone wall, spirit stones were piled up in varying qualities. Large and small ones were stacked into several piles, and the brightest pile consisted of medium-grade spirit stones—a rough count showed over three hundred of them.

Pressed beneath the pile of bones were a few spirit herbs with plump roots and stems, their leaves carrying a faint glowing light. One of them was entirely jade-colored with nine curled leaves. Yu Wantang recognized it: the Nine-Orifice Soul-Returning Herb. A single one sold in an outside apothecary could trade for a mansion in a small city.

Right at the top of the bone pile sat a broken sword with a pitch-black blade, embedded with a broken fang of the wolf king. It was clear this was a trophy the wolf king had looted from some unlucky cultivator.

In the corner, there were also three large animal-skin bags. Opening them revealed nothing but demonic beast inner cores—large and small, dozens of them piled inside, looking like the private stash the wolf king had saved up over the years.

Lin Zhao threw himself entirely onto the pile of spirit stones, burying his face in them, and let out a whimper from the depths of his throat.

"My three hundred spirit stones... they're back..."