31: Are you talking to me?

After fully delegating the task of "Disrupting the Secret Realm" to the group of Loose Cultivators under his command, Mysterious Ink's life returned once again to a leisurely "AFK" state.

He wandered freely throughout this vast Secret Realm, his massive python body silently traversing the forest. Wherever he passed, all beasts submitted.

Soon, a peach grove, shrouded in faint rosy light, attracted his attention.

It was a grove of Spirit Peach Trees, laden with fist-sized, pink and juicy peaches. The rich fruity fragrance assaulted his senses from far away, instantly stimulating the appetite.

"'Jade Rosy Peaches' of the High Grade, First Tier?" Mysterious Ink recognized the origin of this Spirit Fruit immediately. "It looks like they will be fully ripe by tonight at the latest."

He thought of the kind couple back home.

The Two Elders treated him like their own grandson; they even thought of him when eating fruit daily. He ought to bring some gifts back to show his filial respect.

These Spirit Peaches taste sweet, and their spiritual power is gentle, making them perfect for Mortals to consume.

With this thought, Mysterious Ink decided: this peach grove was his.

"Hoooowl—!"

A warning roar came from the depths of the peach grove.

A Late First Tier Yao Beast, the "Tusked Ghost Ape," measuring over two meters tall, shaped like an ape but possessing a pair of sharp tusks, suddenly leaped out from behind a tree, baring its teeth at Mysterious Ink, attempting to scare off the unwelcome guest.

However, Mysterious Ink merely raised his eyelids indifferently.

Just one glance.

The Tusked Ghost Ape's roar instantly ceased, like a rooster whose neck had been wrung. An uncontrollable fear, stemming from the depths of its Bloodline, instantly submerged all of its ferocity!

It let out a whimper, scrambling and crawling back into the depths of the dense forest, never daring to show its head again.

Having resolved this minor annoyance, Mysterious Ink found a comfortable patch of grass, quietly coiled down, and waited for the Spirit Peaches to ripen.

Night soon fell.

As the bright moonlight spilled onto the earth like a veil, the Jade Rosy Peaches covering the trees finally matured completely.

Each peach was now emitting a jade-like halo on its surface, and the fragrance became even richer and more intoxicating.

Just as Mysterious Ink was about to get up and pick them, more than ten malicious auras suddenly leaped out from the shadows not far away!

Leading them was Liu Mang, the Liu Family's leading Genius, at the Ninth Level of Qi Refining!

"Hahahaha! I knew the rosy light soaring here meant a great treasure must have appeared! It really is a grove of ripe Jade Rosy Peaches!" Liu Mang stared at the Spirit Peaches covering the trees, his eyes filled with ecstasy and greed.

Immediately after, his gaze fell upon Mysterious Ink, who was coiled beneath the trees, massive in size.

"Oh, look, there's also a blind black snake guarding this place?"

A Liu Family disciple beside him immediately smiled obsequiously and said, "Brother Mang, this brute's aura is only First Tier. It's probably the guardian Yao Beast of this place.

Wait for us to strike, slaughter it, and we can treat the brothers to a good meal!"

Hearing this, Liu Mang nodded arrogantly.

He didn't even bother to act personally, merely shouting coldly at Mysterious Ink in an impatient tone, like swatting a fly: "Brute, did you hear me? Everything here has been claimed by our Liu Family! If you know what's good for you, scram immediately! Otherwise, we will slaughter you today and stew you into a pot of snake soup!"

However, facing the clamor of these ants, Mysterious Ink didn't even bother to raise his head.

He simply opened his mouth slowly.

A cold, indifferent, yet profoundly authoritative hoarse voice slowly sounded, clearly entering the ears of every Liu Family disciple.

"Are you talking to me?"

Instantly.

The entire peach grove fell into a deathly silence.

The ecstasy and arrogance on the faces of all the Liu Family disciples were completely frozen at this moment!

What... what did they just hear?

Spe... Speaking Human Words?!

Shock, confusion, absurdity, disbelief... countless emotions, like a landslide and a tsunami, instantly overwhelmed their reason!

"A Se... Second Order Demon Beast?!" Liu Mang's voice was trembling, and the color drained completely from his face at a visible speed!

How is that possible?!

How the hell could there be a Second Order Demon Beast here?!

Before this Secret Realm was opened, the Foundation Establishment Realm elders of their Three Great Families had jointly swept through it!

All Yao Beasts above the Second Order had been either completely slain or driven away!

This was common sense!

Otherwise, how would the Three Great Families dare to confidently send their Qi Refining junior disciples inside to gain experience?!

But now... a living, breathing Second Order Demon Beast capable of Speaking Human Words had appeared right in front of them!

What kind of joke is this?!

Mysterious Ink had no interest in appreciating their ghost-struck expressions.

He slowly raised his massive head, his pair of cold snake eyes, devoid of any emotion, quietly watching this group of fools who were scared senseless.

"Since you won't scram, then you can all die."

The instant his words fell, his enormous five-meter-long snake tail swept out toward the Liu Family disciples, like a whip of death lashed out from the Nine Netherworlds, carrying terrifying, sky-rending power!

"No—!"

The desperate shriek abruptly stopped.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

After a series of muffled explosions, tranquility returned to the peach grove.

The dozen or so Liu Family disciples were all whipped into a sky full of bloody mist before they could even offer a semblance of resistance.

Mysterious Ink flicked his tail, as if he had only done a trivial thing.

He slowly picked all the Jade Rosy Peaches from the trees, and one by one, coiled up the Storage Pouches left behind by the deceased Liu Family disciples.

However, he had nowhere to put the Storage Pouches.

After thinking for a moment, he simply strung seven or eight Storage Pouches together with vines and hung them around his thick neck like a necklace.

Having finished all this, he continued to wander leisurely through the Secret Realm.

Suddenly, he keenly sensed a familiar yet cool aura.

It was Ye Feiyan.

Mysterious Ink's heart stirred, and he sped away following the aura... Before long, he met Ye Feiyan, who was sitting cross-legged meditating beneath a waterfall.

The moment Ye Feiyan detected Mysterious Ink's aura, she opened her eyes, and a hint of a smile appeared on her cool face.

However, when she clearly saw Mysterious Ink's current "bejeweled and opulent" appearance, she couldn't help but burst into laughter.

She saw a long string of Storage Pouches hanging on Mysterious Ink's massive python body, clinking as he moved. That comical sight instantly diluted her usual coolness.

"Mysterious Ink, did you... go robbing?" She teased him, a rare occurrence.

Mysterious Ink shook his neck and calmly replied via Divine Thought: "I picked them up."

"Picked them up?"

Ye Feiyan was stunned for a moment upon hearing this, but then showed a look of understanding and actually believed him.

In her view, the Secret Realm was full of Yao Beasts and fraught with danger.

Countless Cultivators died in the mouths of Yao Beasts every day. It was entirely reasonable that Mysterious Ink, having good luck, would pick up a few ownerless Storage Pouches.

She stood up, walked over to Mysterious Ink, and asked with concern, "How has your haul been these past couple of days?"

"Just barely passable," Mysterious Ink replied.

"It's alright." Ye Feiyan thought he hadn't gathered much and gently comforted him, "My haul here is decent. After we leave, I will split half of it with..."

Before she could finish her sentence, she was startled by the scene before her, causing her words to halt abruptly.

Mysterious Ink flicked his tail, and as if dumping trash, poured all the Spirit Medicine he had "collected" from the Loose Cultivators over the past two days onto the ground.

Clattering sounds—

Instantly, thousands of streams of auspicious Qi and ten thousand rays of rosy light burst forth!

Nearly two hundred stalks of Spirit Medicine, varying in grade but none below Mortal Grade, were piled up into a small, dazzling mountain.

The extremely rich medicinal fragrance was so potent it almost solidified the surrounding air!

Ye Feiyan was completely dumbfounded.

She stared blankly at the small mountain of Spirit Medicine before her, then subconsciously looked at the lonely thirty or forty stalks of "trophies" in her own Storage Pouch... She instantly fell into deep silence.

This... this is what he calls... "just barely passable"?!