"What treasures did you two bring back?"
Upon seeing the two of them, Xianhai Shuoyi rose to his feet and asked.
"Here, Brother Shuoyi — this is what I got."
"And this is mine."
In the hands of the man and the woman respectively, two items had appeared.
In the woman's hand was a bamboo scroll. Its color differed from the one Young Master Liming had given Chu Feng, yet the mysterious inscriptions carved upon it were identical.
In the man's hand was a stone. It was pitch-black throughout, yet it shimmered with a brilliant luster — not light, but a sheen of its own.
The stone was roughly the size of an ordinary brick and unremarkable at first glance. Yet for some reason, it gave off an intensely unusual feeling, as if it were alive, as if it possessed a noble bloodline.
"A bamboo scroll imbued with the Martial Dao — only useful for a Martial Ancestor. Still, it'll fetch a decent price, so not a bad haul."
"As for this Immortal-grade Black Iron Stone, that one can be sold for a pretty penny." After delivering his assessment, Xianhai Shuoyi walked over to the man and gave him a pat on the shoulder. "You made out well this time."
"Brother Shuoyi, then what treasure did you bring back from the Heavenly Palace Sacred Hall?" the woman asked curiously.
"I…" At this, an expression of deep embarrassment surfaced on Xianhai Shuoyi's face.
"Xianhai Shuoyi, I just heard you say you failed." The man noticed Xianhai Shuoyi's hesitation and couldn't help but ask. "Don't tell me you really were that unlucky — you ran into some expert who picked the same treasure as you inside the Heavenly Palace Sacred Hall, and they actually defeated you?"
The woman had dropped her earlier teasing as well. Her eyes were now wide, fixed intently on Xianhai Shuoyi.
They were both waiting for his answer.
"Mm."
After a moment of hesitation, Xianhai Shuoyi slowly nodded.
"To be that unlucky — for something like that to actually happen to you." The surprise in the man's and woman's eyes only deepened.
But the mocking tone from before had vanished entirely. Not only was there no longer any ridicule, there was even a hint of sympathy in their gazes.
It seemed they were quite close — the earlier teasing had been nothing more than banter, and they hadn't truly believed Xianhai Shuoyi had encountered something like that.
After all, the odds of that happening were astronomically low.
And now that it was confirmed — that he had indeed run into such a situation and been defeated by the other party — they, knowing Xianhai Shuoyi's temperament, naturally felt bad for him.
"But it was a fluke. That guy was weak — in a contest of cultivation, he was no match for me at all."
"Unfortunately, inside the Heavenly Palace Sacred Hall, cultivation is useless. And the test that so-called Guardian Spirit happened to pose was something I'm not good at, which is why I lost."
"Otherwise, even ten thousand of him wouldn't have been my opponent," Xianhai Shuoyi said.
"So what exactly did the Guardian Spirit test?" the woman asked curiously.
"It's hard to explain in a nutshell. Either way, it wasn't any kind of conventional contest," Xianhai Shuoyi said.
He certainly wasn't going to say he had lost a contest of Mental Power — that still counted as a conventional form of competition. If word got out that he had lost a Mental Power match, he would inevitably be laughed at by others.
"Speaking of strange things — I heard that Her Highness Yuer also ran into a competitor after entering the Heavenly Palace Sacred Hall," the man said.
"Yuer ran into a competitor too?" At those words, Xianhai Shuoyi immediately grew tense.
"Yes. Her Highness Yuer said so herself." The man nodded.
"How is Yuer?"
Xianhai Shuoyi asked anxiously. From the way he reacted, he was clearly quite concerned about the person known as Her Highness Yuer.
"Our Her Highness Yuer is no ordinary person — she is the greatest genius our Xianhai Fish Clan has produced in tens of thousands of years."