Hua Qingsi stared at him, caught between fear and resentment. When the full weight of her grievances hit her, her lips quivered and she dropped straight to the ground, throwing a full tantrum. "You bastard! You've got no conscience — worse than a pig or a dog! I curse you to rot in hell after you die, never to be reincarnated…"
Yang Kai's face went black with lines.
He waited a good while, and when she showed no sign of stopping, he finally barked, "Enough!"
Hua Qingsi's voice cut off abruptly, but her sobbing continued, her fragrant shoulders trembling.
"A Dao Source Realm Third-Stage powerhouse, and this is how you carry on? Have you no sense of decorum!" Yang Kai scolded.
Hua Qingsi said aggrievedly, "Then what do you want me to do…? I can't beat you in a fight — and now you won't even let me curse?"
"If you behave yourself, I naturally won't torment you any further," Yang Kai snorted coldly.
Hua Qingsi nodded frantically, saying, "I'll behave, I'll behave, I'm the most well-behaved there is." As she spoke, she wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes and forced Yang Kai a smile that looked even uglier than crying.
"That's how it should have been from the start," Yang Kai huffed.
After a moment's deliberation, he slowly walked over to Hua Qingsi and extended a hand toward her.
Hua Qingsi instinctively shrank back, clearly terrified. But when she saw no hostility in Yang Kai's demeanor, she bit her lower lip, steeled her courage, and reached out, letting him pull her to her feet.
"Come with me!" Yang Kai said. With a surge of power, he activated a short-range teleportation, bringing Hua Qingsi along.
Her vision blurred, and by the time she recovered, the two of them had arrived inside a bamboo pavilion.
The bamboo structure was simple, yet elegant and refined.
"There are buildings like this in here?" Hua Qingsi asked, bewildered. "Does someone live here?"
"Someone used to," Yang Kai replied evenly.
Many years ago, when he had brought his friends and family from the Profound Sky Continent to the Dark Star, more than ten thousand people had resided within this Small Mysterious World.
Needless to say, quite a few structures still remained.
"Sit," Yang Kai gestured with his hand, then promptly took a seat himself.
Hua Qingsi hesitated for a moment before sitting down across from him.
"I'm going to ask you a few questions, and you will answer honestly," Yang Kai said once she was seated.
Hua Qingsi nodded.
"You came to Maple Forest City to investigate the circumstances behind Han Leng's death, didn't you?" Yang Kai asked.
Hua Qingsi hesitated briefly, then nodded. "Yes!"
"Why?" Yang Kai looked at her.
Hua Qingsi chose her words carefully before answering. "Junior Brother Han Leng was a discarded disciple of my master. When he fled the Star God Palace, it seems he stole a treasure belonging to my master! I was sent out this time to track down the truth behind Junior Brother Han's death. But my primary objective is to find that item!"
"What item?"
"My master didn't elaborate on the specifics — he only told me it was a token!"
"A token?" Yang Kai raised an eyebrow, but almost immediately seemed to recall something. He retrieved a strange-looking token from his space ring and held it out in front of Hua Qingsi. "Is this it?"
The token was about the size of a palm, made of an unusual material — neither metal nor wood. On its face was the character for "Dragon," and on the reverse was an intricate engraving of a true dragon soaring through the nine heavens.
He had naturally found this token among Han Leng's belongings in his space ring. At the time, however, Yang Kai had no idea what it did, so he had simply left it there and paid it no mind.
But now, having heard Hua Qingsi say she had come on her master's orders for precisely this token, Yang Kai immediately realized that it was no ordinary object.
Hua Qingsi was a Dao Source Realm Third-Stage cultivator. Her master, at the very least, had to be a powerful figure at the Emperor Realm Second-Stage level. Anything that such a powerhouse could not stop thinking about was bound to be extraordinarily valuable.
"You found this among Junior Brother Han Leng's space ring?" Hua Qingsi asked.
"That's right."
"If there were no other tokens in Junior Brother Han's ring, then this should be my mission objective." Hua Qingsi stared at the token with a peculiar expression.
"You recognize what this is?" Yang Kai asked, watching her reaction intently the entire time.