“The Bright Pearl, the Eyeball, the Walnut, the Crystal… I have all four now. Logically, I should be able to leave Chu Yuan. Why isn’t there any reaction?”
He held the latter three items in his palm. The Bright Pearl was absent because it had drilled into his brow and was being uncooperative.
“If only I had learned about array formations from Master,” Su Mo sighed. “Then maybe I’d just need to arrange them in a specific order.”
Erha, seeing this, comforted him, “Don’t be discouraged, we’ve barely started! I’ve waited several hundred years already.”
“Alright, alright, I know,” Su Mo said. “You’ve been here for centuries, you’ve told me so many times…”
According to Erha itself, it had been here for hundreds of years, yet the world it described living in was the year 2024. Could it be that it had traveled not just through space, but also time?
If that were true, just how powerful must Master Jade Fu be?
He must be a deity, an immortal, or something of that sort, right?
The highest known cultivation level on Earth currently was only A-Class, also known as the Celestial Human Realm.
As for the higher S-Class, some had theorized about it, but it remained purely hypothetical and thus wasn’t officially recognized.
“Hey, what do you think your purpose is for being here?” Su Mo suddenly asked Erha.
“What do you mean by that?” Erha thought Su Mo was implying it was lazy and good-for-nothing, and immediately started getting riled up.
“Don’t get excited, just listen,” Su Mo pressed down the snarling dog’s head and explained slowly. “Look, Master Jade Fu brought the four great families here to guard these four items. So, it doesn’t make sense that you were brought here just to enjoy yourself, right?”
Erha broke free from his grip, ready to demand an explanation, but then paused, considering the logic. “Well then, what do you think?”
Su Mo fell into deep thought, organizing all his previous ideas about the matter before voicing his hypothesis. “Do you think it’s possible… that your existence is meant to send me back?”
After some serious contemplation regarding this bold, if somewhat far-fetched, idea, Erha agreed it was possible.
After all, it really couldn’t think of any other purpose for its own presence here.
“So, what do you want to do?”
Su Mo stared at Erha without speaking, a slight smirk playing on his lips.
Erha grew creeped out under his gaze. “What exactly are you planning? Spit it out! I hate it when people speak in riddles.”
“I want to use your blood,” Su Mo said lightly.
“What?” Erha jumped back, startled.
“I’m saying, is it possible that your blood is the key ingredient to open a spacetime portal?” Su Mo repeated in the same casual tone.
Erha breathed a sigh of relief, then angrily retorted, “Is talking in gasps a common human affliction? Is your lung capacity really that bad?”
Su Mo chuckled awkwardly. “Let’s get back to the main point…”
He told Erha about his own past experience of using blood, taking some creative liberties but basing it on real events, so it wasn’t a complete fabrication.
After listening, Erha fell silent again, weighing whether to go along with Su Mo’s plan.
It sounded risky, but it was the only potential method to leave this place they had right now. They had to at least try.
Seeing its hesitation, Su Mo raised his right hand, about to make a vow.
In this world, vows held real power.
Erha stopped him, its tone serious. “Since I chose to trust you from the start, trusting you once more isn’t a big deal. Consider it an investment.”
Touched by this, Su Mo scratched the dog’s head and promised, “From now on, we’re brothers!”
“But you’re a girl,” Erha said flatly.
“So what? Can’t girls be brothers?”
Erha was quiet for three seconds, then suddenly said, “I’m actually a girl too. We could be sisters.”
Su Mo was taken aback, then laughed. “It’s funny, I never even asked about your gender. I did think your voice sounded kinda girly before.”
“And now?”
“Now it sounds a bit rough, actually.”
“Pfft!” Erha rolled its eyes, then reluctantly offered a front leg to Su Mo, turning its head away in imagined pain.
Su Mo took out an embroidery needle, sterilized it with fire, and pricked a blood vessel on Erha’s leg.
Drops of blood fell onto the three items. Sure enough, they all glowed once more, then transformed into streams of light that shot into the center of Su Mo’s brow.
The difference from the Bright Pearl was that these three remained under his control; with a single thought, he could summon them again.
His first priority was to stop Erha’s bleeding. Then, he focused inward, sensing the four items.
They floated in a chaotic space, moving along a strange, specific trajectory.
Su Mo observed quietly. After an indeterminate amount of time, the paths of the four items finally connected, forming a complete array formation.
He tried channeling spiritual power into the array. Just as expected, it began to operate.
When Su Mo opened his eyes, a spacetime portal hovered before them.
“It worked!” Su Mo and Erha cheered in unison, sharing a high-five (or high-paw).
After confirming the array was stable and the portal showed no issues, the human and the dog stepped through together, vanishing from the forest.
Shortly after they disappeared, a nimble figure rushed over from a distance and urgently dived into the closing portal.
Snap.
A single shoe dropped to the ground. The surroundings fell silent, as if nothing had ever happened.
A while later, a squirrel approached the shoe, sniffed it curiously. Its eyes gradually grew dazed, and it began to stagger around like it was drunk, eventually collapsing to the ground.
If one could see its face, the expression seemed rather… blissful.
…
…
Death Mountain.
A bright, silvery moon hung high in the sky, illuminating the dead, barren soil.
Under the moonlight, corpses twisted as they crawled and jumped, occasionally hopping in place, sometimes swaying left and right on a whim, bumping into each other.
Suddenly, space was torn open. Three figures tumbled out one after another.
Su Mo and Erha were fine, but Li Xiaomu was disheveled, her clothes in disorder, and crucially, she was missing a shoe. Her delicate, bare foot stepped onto the cold ground, creating an extremely alluring image.
The partying corpses froze mid-action, then surged towards them like piranhas sensing blood, completely frenzied.
Su Mo brandished his magic staff. The moment the Yin Fire exploded, the corpses were instantly turned into ice sculptures.
Li Xiaomu seized the chance to flee, but Su Mo suddenly reached out and grabbed the collar of her clothes from behind.
Rip—
Li Xiaomu let out a sharp scream as her clothes fell away, revealing pale skin. The curves of her body resembled rolling hills lying across a plain, rising and falling, a sight that could stir anyone’s heart.
“You… pervert!” Extremely embarrassed, Li Xiaomu hastily threw another robe over herself and, ignoring everything else, fled like the wind.
Su Mo stood frozen in place, his eyes dazed. It took him a long time to snap out of it.
A warmth trickled from his nose. He touched it—his fingers came away stained red.
“What just happened? Why did I feel so dizzy, almost losing consciousness? And… I had this urge to… Ugh, Pah pah pah, nothing happened at all!”
Erha, hearing him mutter to himself, couldn’t help but mumble, “You humans are so strange. A woman sees another woman and gets a nosebleed, even has those kinds of thoughts…”
Su Mo urgently cut him off mid-sentence. “W-w-what do you mean, those kinds of thoughts? Don’t talk nonsense! She knows seduction techniques! They work on everyone, men and women alike!”
Erha shut up, but the corners of its mouth curled up high in a cheeky expression. “I get it. This is called a hun— Hey, hey! Stop pulling my ear!”
…
Whether Li Xiaomu’s seduction techniques worked on women or not was unknown, but at that very moment, someone was certainly gritting their teeth, so angry they were almost in tears.