"What's wrong?" Consort Dan noticed Jiang Chen suddenly acting strangely and was slightly surprised.
Jiang Chen lowered his voice, "There are Spirit Grade spirit beasts around — and more than one."
"Really?" Consort Dan's beautiful eyes lit up with excitement at his words. She quickly pressed further, "You can sense them? How far away are they? Are there any cubs?"
Jiang Chen furrowed his brow in concentration. After a long moment, he finally relaxed. "They've all moved on. No cubs — they're all adult Spirit Grade spirit beasts."
"Oh, no cubs? What a shame." A flash of disappointment crossed Consort Dan's lovely face.
"I think you've gone completely mad over spirit beast cubs. Even if there were cubs right now, how would you steal them? You don't seriously want to get swarmed by a bunch of spirit beasts, do you?"
Consort Dan stuck out her tongue playfully and chuckled, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained! If you want to get your hands on cubs, you've got to take some risks."
The moment this woman talked about spirit beast cubs, those clear, autumn-water eyes of hers blazed with a fanatical gleam that was absolutely never there under normal circumstances.
That expression — it was like a greedy old miser stumbling upon a pile of gold and jewels, eyes shining with naked greed.
"This woman, usually so refined and demure — but once she goes crazy, it's honestly terrifying." Jiang Chen reminded himself that he absolutely had to keep a rein on this woman's impulses. If she went off half-cocked and decided to raid some spirit beast's den, she could very well get them both killed.
Spirit Grade spirit beasts had pure bloodlines.
The laws of the world were sometimes wonderfully strange. Whether it was human cultivators or the spirit beast realm — the purer the bloodline, the more powerful the being, and the weaker its reproductive capacity.
Spirit beasts with pure bloodlines had breeding cycles of at least ten to twenty years. Those with slightly higher bloodlines needed thirty to fifty years, and some could only reproduce once every century or more.
That was why, in the spirit beast world, any creature that was in its breeding or nursing period — if you touched its cubs, it was treated as an even graver offense than attacking the beast itself.
Once a spirit beast discovered its cubs had been stolen, the fury of its retaliation would be absolutely insane.
It was precisely because of this that Jiang Chen kept warning himself he had to rein in Consort Dan's impulses.
They walked for a full day, and as the sky gradually darkened, they came upon a region of enormous boulders — massive stones naturally embedded in the hillside, forming a unique landscape.
"Let's spend the night here. Ahead is a vast, dense mountain range. The endless succession of peaks means things are likely to get much more complicated," Jiang Chen suggested.
He had actually braced himself for Consort Dan to object, but to his surprise, she simply nodded. "Then let's rest here for the night."
This Labyrinth world was genuinely bizarre. During the day the temperature was quite high, but once night fell and the mountain wind picked up, the chill became biting.
Jiang Chen was doing alright — his outfit at least provided some protection against the cold. But Consort Dan's attire left a stretch of bare skin between her thighs and calves with nothing covering it. She hugged her knees to her chest, curled up tight, her head buried between her legs, doing her best to fend off the bone-piercing chill.
Who would have thought that as the night deepened, the cold would only grow worse?
Eventually, even Jiang Chen had no choice but to circulate the spiritual energy inside his body to stay warm. When he glanced over at Consort Dan, she was trembling like a little quail.
Still, to her credit, the woman was tough — despite the bitter cold, she didn't let out a single complaint.
Jiang Chen suddenly remembered that inside his Storage Ring there was some equipment Gouyu had prepared for him. At the time he hadn't paid much attention and had just stuffed it all in.
He opened it up and sure enough, Gouyu had been thoroughly prepared — there was even a blanket!
Jiang Chen pulled out the blanket, walked over to Consort Dan, and draped it over her shoulders. "Wrap yourself up! If you're cold, just say so earlier. You're practically turning into a quail."
Shaking his head, he went back to his original spot, found a long robe, wrapped it around his chest backwards, leaned against one of the huge boulders, and slowly drifted back into a meditative state.
The night was far from peaceful. While meditating, Jiang Chen sensed spirit beasts passing by several times — some near, some far.
The close ones flew past at tremendous speed, passing within roughly five hundred meters of them.
Several times, Jiang Chen had the urge to wake Consort Dan and get them out of this dangerous spot. But in the end, he held himself back. With spirit beasts passing by so frequently, logically at least one should have noticed them.
Yet every single beast that went past showed absolutely no interest. Clearly, the prospect of two humans as blood food held no appeal whatsoever.
"What's going on with all these spirit beasts, passing through in such numbers?" Jiang Chen couldn't figure it out, but he didn't dare let his guard down.
The night finally passed. Morning sunlight fell across the hillside, and the chill of night was instantly banished, replaced by that comfortable, pleasant temperature once more.
Jiang Chen opened his eyes to find Consort Dan already preparing breakfast.
The woman had clearly come prepared — there was quite a spread for breakfast. Jiang Chen didn't stand on ceremony. He walked over, picked up some food, and started eating.
Consort Dan handed him a cup of juice squeezed from some unknown fruit and said softly, "Thank you for the blanket."
"Then should I thank you for breakfast?" Jiang Chen gave a lazy grin and downed the juice in one gulp. "Today, we're heading west. With a bit of luck, we might actually find you a spirit beast cub!"
He wasn't joking. Over the past day and night, at least seven or eight Spirit Grade spirit beasts had come from the northwest, heading rapidly southward.