Chapter 136: Bargaining with Your Fists

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Qin Haoxuan shook his head so vigorously it was like a rattle drum. “Don’t joke around. If you can really break it, the token belongs to me. If you want to take it, then we can fight to the death.”

Xing rolled his eyes repeatedly and muttered under his breath, “You can’t break this ward. On what grounds does the treasure belong to you after it’s opened?”

“This is the Aqueous Manor of the Taichu Sect…”

“Nonsense…” Xing’s voice was low, but loud enough for Qin Haoxuan to hear. “If it’s yours, then why don’t you take it?”

Ye Yiming interjected, “If you can retrieve this token, I will give you a few packs of medicinal powder as a trade. Judging by your appearance, you must have lost all your belongings while being chased by those Nether-Creatures.”

Xing just curled his lip. The token was clearly a great treasure; a few packs of medicinal powder were nothing in comparison.

“No deal?” Qin Haoxuan rolled his eyes. “Then forget it! If I can’t have it, you can’t have it either.”

Xing was sorely tempted to risk a fight with Qin Haoxuan, but he quickly dismissed the thought. He was at a natural disadvantage when it came to spiritual sense, and all the treasures he had to defend against such attacks had been lost during the long chase.

“Let me eat one person!” Xing bargained after a long silence. “Just let me eat one person, and I will get it for you.”

“Alright!” Qin Haoxuan replied without a moment’s hesitation. “No problem! You can eat that Zhang Kuang who controls the Talisman Dragon. No one else. You can get the token for me now, and then go eat him.”

Xing snarled at Qin Haoxuan, cursing him a thousand times in his heart. Zhang Kuang had just chased the three of them like stray dogs. That wasn’t eating Zhang Kuang; that was suicide.

After a brief standoff, Xing finally sighed in defeat. “Remember, ten packs of your best medicinal powder!”

Qin Haoxuan gave him a thumbs-up to show it was no problem.

Xing, no longer bothering with Qin Haoxuan, carefully studied the connection between the ward and the token. Then, he cautiously stretched out his hand, which had no fingers. The three sharp bone spurs on his fist moved up and down like digits. As they moved, pulses of spiritual energy rippled out, and the light from the ward grew stronger.

The gray light of the ward gradually deepened, turning brown, and then black. Colorful, arcane characters began to rise from the bottom of the barrier, and a palpable sense of danger emanated from it.

Though they didn’t voice their doubts, Qin Haoxuan and Ye Yiming’s eyes were full of mistrust. They exchanged a look and, with a tacit understanding, stepped down from the high platform. If something went wrong, they wouldn’t be caught in the blast.

The feeling of danger grew stronger. They exchanged another look and retreated another hundred feet.

Xing’s hand movements became faster. Suddenly, the ward’s light dimmed. Just as Qin Haoxuan and Ye Yiming thought it had been broken and were about to step forward, the dim light flared brilliantly and then violently exploded.

BOOM!

The massive explosion of spiritual energy pulverized the high platform. Qin Haoxuan, Ye Yiming, and Xing were all sent flying by the shockwave.

Qin Haoxuan, opening his eyes amidst the debris, dug Ye Yiming out from a pile of rubble. Ye Yiming was an ordinary cultivator, his body not nearly as tough as Qin Haoxuan’s, but thankfully they had been far enough away. Though he was knocked unconscious, his life was not in danger.

As for Xing, who had been at the center of the blast, his hide was thick. After Qin Haoxuan had pulled Ye Yiming out, he crawled out of the debris with a foolish grin and walked over.

Qin Haoxuan was furious. “This is what you call breaking a ward?! If we weren’t far enough away, we’d have been killed in that blast!”

Xing rolled his strange eye, showing no sign of apology. He retorted with a twist of his mouth, “This seat is seriously injured and cannot eat people. It’s inevitable that I’m not at full strength. If you’d just let me eat someone, I guarantee the ward would have opened beautifully! How could it possibly have…”

Qin Haoxuan shot the creature a strange look, thinking to himself that this guy seemed to know a little bit about everything, but was a half-baked master of none of it. He suspected many things about him but was too lazy to ask, knowing he would only be met with lies and evasions.

The three of them walked over to the spot where the platform had been. Amidst the rubble, they found the golden token. It was the size of a forearm, thick at the top and thin at the bottom, like the upper half of a longsword.

The entire token was golden. It felt neither like gold nor jade; it was as smooth as silk to the touch, yet had the hardness of stone. It was completely clean, without a speck of dust on it.

Qin Haoxuan held it and examined it repeatedly. It was covered in strange characters and symbols, none of which he recognized.

Ye Yiming took it and studied it for a long time before admitting with regret, “I don’t recognize the characters on this token either.” With that, he and Qin Haoxuan both turned their gazes to Xing.

With both of them looking at him with such high expectations, Xing proudly took the token, weighed it in his hand, and his eyes glinted. He admired it lovingly.

After a long while, and only after Qin Haoxuan had interrupted him several times, did Xing reluctantly pull his gaze away from the token.

“What does it say?” Qin Haoxuan asked bluntly, holding out his right hand to indicate he should return it.

Xing very reluctantly handed the token back. With a pout of his three-lobed lips, he said, “Translation fee!”

“I saved your life, and now you want a fee to translate something for me?” Qin Haoxuan said with great impatience.

Xing rolled his eyes. “This seat is not human, so why should I remember any kindness? This seat is a proper demon, you know. Translation fee.”

Qin Haoxuan gave Xing a thumbs-up, as if to say, You’ve got a point, for his own foolishness in forgetting he was dealing with a demon.

Xing stuck out his crimson tongue and licked his lips, his large eye staring greedily at Qin Haoxuan. “Let me take a bite. Just a little blood is all I need!”

Seeing his expression, Qin Haoxuan couldn’t help but shiver. If he let this guy taste human flesh, he doubted it would stop at just a little blood. He’d probably be eaten, bones and all.

“Come over here and try,” Qin Haoxuan said with a beautiful smile, extending his arm. The combination of the smile and the gesture, however, made Xing feel an instinctual sense of danger.

“It’s too much trouble for me to go over there. Why don’t you cut yourself with a knife and hand the bloody knife to me?” Xing said, taking two steps back to what he felt was a safe distance.

Qin Haoxuan said no more. He put the token in his robes and said, “Let’s go. I don’t need your translation.”

Seeing that Qin Haoxuan still wouldn’t agree, Xing began to get anxious. “Alright, alright,” he said, “you can give me spirit stones instead. How about that?”

“How many?” Qin Haoxuan stopped, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye.

“One hundred low-grade spirit stones,” Xing said, putting on a look as if he were taking a huge loss. “Seeing as we are friends, I won’t be a greedy lion. If it were anyone else, I’d charge at least a thousand!”

“One hundred?” Qin Haoxuan sucked in a breath. “Why don’t you just go rob someone? Do you think spirit stones are just pebbles on the street? One stone! Not a single one more!”

“One stone? Are you paying a beggar?” Xing couldn’t help but jump up. “Even I give two stones to the poor mine-devils in the Netherworld! One stone is an insult! Ninety stones, not one less.”

Qin Haoxuan completely ignored his boasting and said coldly, “Two stones.”

“I came down by ten, and you only went up by one! Don’t you have a conscience? Don’t you think you’re being unreasonable?” Xing acted as if he were about to have a stroke.

Qin Haoxuan rolled his eyes at him. “Why don’t you mention that I doubled my offer, while you only came down by a tenth?”

Xing now had a whole new appreciation for Qin Haoxuan’s thick skin. He gave him a thumbs-up in defeat. “You’re good. You’re really good. Eighty stones!”

“Five stones,” Qin Haoxuan said, making a show of turning to leave. Ye Yiming played along and took a step.

Xing plopped down on the ground, waving his arms and whining, “Fine, fine! You two are too much! Sixty… forty… thirty? Twenty? Ten! Ten stones! If you want it for less, you can find someone else! This great master is done!”

Qin Haoxuan and Ye Yiming exchanged a look. Feeling the price was acceptable, they turned and tossed him ten low-grade spirit stones. “Brother Xing, we’ll have to trouble you.”

“Get lost!” Xing glared at him fiercely, a look of “you win” in his eye. He took the spirit stones and then, to their utter astonishment, popped them into his mouth and swallowed them.

“Do all the demons in the Netherworld just eat spirit stones?” Qin Haoxuan gulped and asked Ye Yiming.

“That’s not right,” Ye Yiming replied. “The Nether-race has different clans. His Jie Beast clan isn’t a high-level one, but they’re not low-level mine-devils that subsist on spirit stones either.” As Xing’s aura strengthened after eating the stones, his cultivation clearly rising a level, Ye Yiming had a sudden realization. “Xing must have been injured, and his cultivation was suppressed. Eating the spirit stones is restoring some of his power! His original strength is definitely much higher than this.”

Seeing their strange, speculative looks, Xing said, “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not a low-level mine-devil. I don’t subsist on spirit stones. I am a proper Nether-being, and my favorite food is the flesh and blood of cultivators. Tsk tsk…”

As he spoke of cultivators’ flesh, his gaze swept over Qin Haoxuan and Ye Yiming, but he quickly flinched under Qin Haoxuan’s murderous stare and retracted his lecherous gaze. He puffed out his chest again. “I eat spirit stones because this seat is a peerless genius. Eating them is beneficial to my cultivation. You don’t need to look at me with such jealousy. I know that you humans can’t directly absorb the spiritual energy from stones because of the ‘stone poison’.”

Hearing this, Qin Haoxuan did feel a pang of jealousy. Spirit stones were full of rich energy, yet cultivators couldn’t absorb it directly. That Xing could do so was truly enviable.

“What do the words on the token mean?” Qin Haoxuan asked, not wanting to see Xing’s smug face any longer.