V4C11: Uniting

That day would pass without any outside interruptions, at least so far as they were able to tell.

After he had rested a little bit, and after he confirmed that he wasn’t about to be stabbed from behind, he emerged from the tent to find Wei Yi staring at him with an intense degree of concentration.

“Are you goin’ to be doing somethin’ suspicious?” she asked before he had a chance to ponder her actions, “’Cause if you’re going to be doing something like that, I will need to report you to the boss straight away. He looks silly so I’d rather not do that, so if you could restrain yourself that’d just be prime.”

“I… I am not going to be doing anything suspicious at all!” he declared.

It didn’t take him much effort to understand what had happened outside of the tent he had laid in when he was only able to hear faint murmurs, nor was it challenging to know that Wei Yi wasn’t the leader and hadn’t bothered to consult him before letting him remain.

Judging by her behaviour, she had also failed to consider whether or not he could be lying, so the moment that the leader of the camp had heard about it, he had told her to keep a closer eye on him than before. For him, it was a perfectly understandable response to a strange person suddenly appearing, but it was hardly pleasant to be stared at by someone that might have beaten the metal used as nails to keep the tents in the ground into shape with her bare hands, so he tried to be as confident and direct as he was able to be.

“Really? Hm… The boss had said that you might do, though. Which one of you is more trustworthy?”

“Eh… I am at least as trustworthy as your boss!” Huang Yu Di stated after considering that answering that he was more trustworthy might make even the woman in front of him suspicious of his words.

Indeed, even when he toned down his statement, she still stared at him with narrowed eyes for a little while, as if trying to decipher whether or not he could be trusted to answer whether he could be trusted. Perhaps she was even realising that asking someone with doubtful reliability about the value of their words was not the most intelligent thing that she could have done.

“Yeah, I guess that’s right. He isn’t trustworthy at all. The jerk had told me I’d get a week off to fuck some whores, and then he just forced us out here,” she said, spitting at the sand.

While the man naturally lacked most of the context for that conversation, he still understood that this was his best chance of confirming exactly what was happening at this camp, how many people there were, and whether any of them would try to kill him the same way that so many before had, so he asked, “By the way, how many people are there meant to be at this camp, and are any of them related to the Chen family?”

“How the fuck should I know?”

“Well, that… uh… Are any of them named Chen?”

“… I dunno. The boss is called Da something, and I am Wei Yi, but almost everyone else is boring, so I never listen to them. You don’t want to listen to them, do you?”

“Nope, not my intention at all!” Huang Yu Di said right away, since he didn’t want to lose the best bet to figuring anything out within this mysterious Hunters of the Cosmos group, and returned to an earlier question as he said, “What about the number of people here? Is the number of tents similar to how many of you there are, or is there two or three people per tent?”

“Maybe two. I don’t count the people coming along with us. Most of them don’t speak with me either, so I just pretend they don’t exist. After all, they can’t hit things as well as I can, so why should I care?” Wei Yi asked, grinning as if she had just asked something profound.

The man was unable to muster the energy to even pretend to agree with her, so he didn’t.

For that matter, neither of them were able to continue this strange conversation as their attention was quickly pulled up and to the side, where, almost above the sands, they saw a crimson spark rise into the skies and remain in the air for a little while before falling back down, disappearing from their sight once it got too low to the ground, and was obscured by the heavier layer of the sandstorm. Looking for guidance, the man turned back to Wei Yi.

“That must be Ru Chao. She’s hot, so I like her a lot,” she stated, “I don’t know if everyone else will think that you’re suspicious, so you might want to get into the tent and sit there.”

He did not need to be told twice, and he had no doubts regarding what the woman before him meant with her remarks. Assuming that she was the simplest person in the group of these strange Hunters of the Cosmos, which everything about her suggested was the case, unless they were somehow even worse to the point that even she didn’t want to listen to them, the rest would be far more likely to question his story, his actions so far, his attempts to learn more, and would be the most likely to try and end him before he could cause trouble. As such, she rushed inside the tent right away.

As the man was only in the ninth stage of Planar Pool, and he did not seem to be practising any special techniques for extending his spiritual perception, it could only reach out by a metre, and it didn’t seem to be something that he had a significant amount of practise with, as the strands of his spiritual perception were haphazard and weak, so the moment that he had entered a tent made of a rather dense material, he couldn’t perceive Wei Yi even if she stood right next to it.

Due to this, and as a small test to confirm that this was indeed the case and that she wasn’t just being unnecessarily careless, she relaxed her expression just a little bit, finding that he did not react whatsoever and just lay down on the bed.

‘It seems that he has been heavily reliant on things other than his spiritual perception to evade whatever pursuit he may have faced,’ she concluded, noting that he did lay down in a manner that would allow him to leap up and flee the moment that he detected any sign of danger, ‘Either he is also acting, and doing a decent job of it, or he had simply managed to get away without his cultivation. Perhaps he had been fleeing since the first realm, and never had the chance to get much practise with the powers of the Planar Pool realm?’

She was able to make all sorts of guesses, but she would hardly be able to confirm any one of them without the pursuers themselves making an appearance, so for now she focused on the direction from which the so-called scouting team was going to return from. So long as they made enough of a ruckus, the man would probably have a look at them regardless of how safe he was trying to be, so she wasn’t concerned that their performance might be wasted by the only observer being absent.

The primary point of it wasn’t intended to be convincing this man in the first place, since he would hopefully believe them enough to not try pointing his suspicions at them, but instead to help them get into character.

At this point, they only had one potential observer, at least so far as Wei Yi with her monstrous range of spiritual perception was able to tell, so they were able to do quite a few things wrong and likely not have it be noticed, and they would be unlikely to make mistakes due to the pressure of too many gazes upon them. However, when the primary groups searching for them will arrive, they will have far, far less space for error, and they will also need to know one another’s character well enough to not get into any awkward situations that wouldn’t be expected from a group that knew one another after some time of travelling together.

In order to prevent any mishaps later on, whatever that lot had done out in the sands and the reunion that was about to occur – with Chao Ru’s flare indicating their imminent return and a supposed failure to find anything – would hopefully give them enough to work with for the rest of their time in disguise. So long as they did this properly, they could effectively recreate their existing relationships and behave so convincingly that they might not even be able to distinguish truth from fiction themselves, although such a situation would obviously not be entirely ideal.

They had discussed a few things together, such as the very basics that everyone would need to know of the supposed past few months of the operations of the Hunters of the Cosmos, which was what Wei Yi had mentioned to Huang Yu Di, and a certain physical relationship was reignited for the sake of this, but the rest would be up to them to create on the go, or otherwise hide as any group might.

After all, not every little secret of any group would be spouted out the moment that someone asked for them. Certain things were usually kept quiet, and everyone had some shameful past that they wouldn’t wish to have exposed. Still, it was better to be aware of as many possible matters relating to their supposed group as possible, and if some of them weren’t mentioned, they would hardly suffer from getting to speak with one another in a way that was different from their usual forms of interaction. Perhaps some of the people in their group would learn new things about one another, and some might display new sides that they had been too afraid to show before, and this would bring them closer together.

She couldn’t be certain of this either, nor whether they would have much of an opportunity to put these things to use before one of the Greats could suddenly appear and just break their illusion right away, but in this case, over preparation would always be superior to preparing insufficiently.

‘That being said, Chao Ru hadn’t been here when I had swapped my clothing, so I haven’t yet mentioned this to her… I mean, judging from our previous interactions, she might even accept if I was to tell her to do it right here the moment she gets here, so that might not be a particular issue, but I wouldn’t want to do the same thing that I had instructed others not to by misleading someone and forcing them into something that they aren’t comfortable with… I guess we’ll see.’

To make sure that there wouldn’t be any unfortunate surprises, she directly faced the angle from which the so-called scouting party would approach and waited.

Although the sands still assaulted them, they were under the partial protection of an inscription and the desert fortress itself, so even Chao Ru and her current cultivation of the seventh stage of Emergent Anchor was able to endure the sandstorm without any significant damage to any of her exposed skin, of which there was quite a lot.

Fortunately, she was from the Chao District, so she was used both to clothing that covered nothing and to the sand, although the latter did not tend to be so extreme anywhere near the district itself. Whatever inscriptions had been placed inside of the walls a long time ago had assisted in the prevention of the assault of natural sandstorms, while most did not dare to besiege a district in modern times, when any foes had already claimed the territory they wanted and knew that they wouldn’t be able to face the last remnants of Yi City’s former greatness.

As such, besides needing to try a second time to get that flaming signal into the air, as per Wei Yi’s instructions, she faced little trouble in getting out of the camp to change, then getting back with the people around her to assume their roles within the Hunters of the Cosmos.

Finding the camp itself did take a few moments, seeing as the sands were still rather dense even this far out from Paragon, but it was eventually located by Luo Lia Kun, whose spiritual perception was able to endure the sandstorm for just long enough to permit her to find the traces of the protective array around the camp. From there, all that they needed to do was to keep walking and they would get to their destination.

The moment that she got out of the sand, she caught sight of Wei Yi, immediately putting a smile on her face.

Back in the Luo District, when they had first met, they had agreed to not go into any kind of long-term, romantic relationship, and as far as she knew, that had not changed up to this day, but she couldn’t help but light up a little when spending time with the Ascendant. At times, she was a little forceful, but as Chao Ru had figured out rather quickly, that appeared to be something that she enjoyed being on the receiving end of just as Wei Yi enjoyed providing it, so that did nothing to diminish that uncontrollable smile upon her face.

When she saw how Wei Yi was dressed, she did have the urge to giggle slightly due to the sheer difference from her usual and highly dignified appearance, even in bed, but she managed to restrain herself just before her breath was caught in her throat.

It wasn’t the style of her clothing, or her muscular body – for which she, like many of the Chao family, did have a bit of a thing for – that caused it, but instead the extremely prominent feature that, instead of being covered by the loincloth Wei Yi had chosen to wear, was brought to one’s attention instead. The pathetic piece of cloth simply couldn’t contain what it obscured, no matter how it tried to.

She had already heard from the Ascendant that there had been some changes to her body since the last time they had been able to spend some private time together, so she was a little more prepared for this than she might have been, but rather than freaking out over the appearance of such an organ on the fantastic body of someone she cared about, she was forced to ponder whether this was something that she could accept as easily as Wei Yi had.

Due to her own preferences, she had never before slept with a man, and so she had no clue whether she could possibly handle it, nor whether it was something that would be of interest to her.

‘However, these butterflies in my stomach… I… I think it just might be fine…’

Without even realising it, she broke away from the group and hurried towards Wei Yi, her cheeks burning up as her breath got heavier. Her mind may not have known what she thought of the new addition just yet, but she could tell that her body had decided on the answer the moment she saw it.

“Ah Ru-” the Ascendant began when she saw her rushing forward, but she was stopped by Chao Ru’s lips pressing against her own, before the latter broke the kiss just as quickly as she had started it and stood on the tips of her toes to be able to reach up to Wei Yi’s ear, into which she breathed out a hot mouthful of air.

“Take me…”

Wei Yi only hesitated for a moment before she lifted Chao Ru’s back and legs and carried her off to a tent.

Wei Yi easily carried Chao Ru into their tent, closing the flap that served at a door on her way in. The Ascendant brought her to the bed, but didn’t lay down on top of it, instead lowering her down onto the large sheet of cloth that acted as a semblance of a regular floor atop the sand, letting her kneel on the side of the bed.

With the way she ended up being positioned in front of the rising loincloth, and immediately got the full sensory experience of what had been behind it, she hardly needed to ponder where this was going.

The others had no words for any of this, but to Huang Yi Di, who had predictably decided to take a look at what was happening, this seemed as if they were already familiar with this kind of behaviour and could say little about it that they hadn’t already mentioned numerous times.

Fortunately for them, and not for him, with them having no choice to interact with Wei Yi at this time, their attention naturally moved to the tent from which he had been peeking, and so Luo Lia Kun, who had been at the forefront of the group, walked towards him as to join in the interrogation that Great Dark would undoubtedly be interested in participating in.

After all, what kind of proper Primordial Cosmos hunting organisation could possibly ignore someone who had outright wished to join the worshipers of a Primordial Deity right to their faces? It was only proper that they would question him fiercely and intensely, and that they would show him the appropriate interrogation methods that they reserved for potential heretics, or something of the sort. Mostly, they just wanted to verify how freely they would be able to talk, as a man that was secretly spying on them all would make it far more challenging to converse about ordinary things just by changing a few terms or words there and then.

“You, come out here, or stay in there and we’ll surround you,” Luo Lia Kun stated, leaving out the fact that both options were essentially identical save for the locale, “We have some questions for you.”

“I… I am meant to be under your protection!” Huang Yu Di exclaimed, remaining in place as his feet refused to be lifted off the ground, either to come out of the tent or to step back and allow them to enter as well, “You’re not meant to be trying to kill me!”

“Kill you? We said nothing about that. If we are going to be protecting you – I’m guessing the boss said that – then shouldn’t we know who we’re protecting? Do you expect us just to stand by and let someone potentially dangerous sit in our camp while we’re hunting any remaining traces of Primordial Cosmos? Don’t lie to yourself if you did,” she said, “Fine, just come out here, and we’ll be nice in how we ask you things, unless you refuse to answer. Then, we may not be so nice. It is your choice.”

“Just answering questions… I am not some suspicious person, I-”

“Get the fuck out of that tent. Now. You don’t want to have your heart torn out, do you?” Luo Lia Kun raised an eyebrow threateningly as she replicated the motions that Wei Yi had previously displayed as best she could.

In her replication, she also managed to convey the same terrifying air that the Ascendant had been able to manifest as Wei Yi the Warrior, so the man in front of her had no chance of knowing that she had never once attempted to tear out a foe’s heart in all her life. Given her strength, grown as it has as of late, she might be able to accomplish it, but it wouldn’t be so polished as the one she was mimicking.

“F-Fine, I will get out in just a-”

His sentence was cut short by a loud moan of pure pleasure originating from the only tent that could produce such a sound, being followed soon by the wet slapping of flesh against flesh.

The atmosphere that had built up between Huang Yu Di and the supposed Hunters of the Cosmos broke in an instant, as one was rather dumbfounded while the other averted her eyes and did her best to restrain her blush. Neither of them was used to the typical openness of the north, so although this kind of behaviour wasn’t too unusual in their current geographical location, they lacked the same practise that everyone else in the Chao District and beyond would have.

“Um… Let’s go inside the tent instead. I think that would be better,” Luo Lia Kun muttered to him.

“Yeah, I think that might work best…” the man replied in a similar low voice, stepping back into the tent to allow her and a few others to enter. The rest went off to pretend to perform some other duties elsewhere, since it would be too irregular if the entirety of a group would focus on one random guy.

They stood in silence for a few moments, listening to the traces of sound that were still able to make it into the tent from outside. Almost at the same time, they realised that this was, somehow, even more awkward, so Huang Yu Di instead sat down on the bed while Luo Lia Kun stood beside him, staring down at him with as much intensity and menace as she could possibly generate while the sounds of sex permeated the moment. Everyone that had gone in with her, including Zhi Qiu Ya, who manifested a small amount of her wolven strength to add to the lacking threat, stood around him in a semi-circle, all also staring down at him in a disapproving, interrogating or outright hateful manner.

“So, what do… what do you want from me?” he asked, unable to stand this discordant atmosphere for long.

“Who are you, what are you doing here, and why were you looking to join Primordial Cosmos?”

“I… I already answered all of- Alright, fine, I can repeat myself,” Huang Yu Di was unable to tell them to look for Wei Yi as the number of powerful people all staring at him at once, applying a significant amount of pressure through the gaze alone, not to mention their cultivation, was simply too much for him to handle.

“I am Huang Yu Di. I came here from the Chen District, although I had passed through most of the districts on the way here, as I had been made the Chen family’s enemy after I had underpaid a single copper coin during a transaction. The further I ran, the more they sent after me, until I thought that I wouldn’t be able to survive unless I found the protection of something truly powerful, no matter what it would take. Primordial Cosmos sounded like the right kind of power, but if I get your protection, even for only a few days, they might finally stop chasing after me! Please, let me stay with you!”

“A single copper coin, you say? Sure, we’re familiar with the Chen family around here, but them sending enough after you to bring you all the way here doesn’t sound likely. Is that the absolute truth?”

“Yes, I promise! I have no reason to lie to you! I just want to survive and be able to go back to my parents, and tell them that I am not dead, that I’m not a failure, that I will make him proud of me again!” he cried out, his eyes becoming a little red.

Nobody around him expected quite a reaction like that, and it seemed to take him by surprise as well as he paused and tried to prevent any tears from forming within his eyes, managing to do so well enough. As he wasn’t paying attention to them, the interrogators momentarily raised their gazes to try and commune with one another without being noticed. On their own, it was difficult to figure out whether or not he was being entirely truthful, but each one hoped that another would manage it.

And yet, not a single one could do more than send a questioning gaze towards the others, somehow making them more suspicious of the situation for the wrong reason.

That was until a strand of spiritual will wormed its way towards Luo Lia Kun, one that the vice-leader was able to track all the way to the tent from which Wei Yi and Chao Ru were continuing to fill their camp with the sounds of their activities, with the occasional loud moan or exclamation managing to pierce even more than usual into the tent they had chosen to hide in, and she didn’t dare to venture further. However, judging by its stability, length, and the difficulty with which she was able to see the spiritual will, Luo Lia Kun was able to easily confirm that the Ascendant was attempting to speak with her.

Wei Yi’s voice practically wormed into her ear, sound entirely calm and collected despite her own circumstances. ‘I have been checking his memories while you were speaking with him, and while I had talked to him as well, and they appear to be entirely accurate with his claims, although their legitimacy and similarity to reality are more difficult to confirm. Even if it is false, he isn’t aware of it.’

‘How in the world are you so calm? Are you faking those sounds to distract him and make it more difficult for him to focus?’ the vice-leader just had to ask, as she wouldn’t go into the other tent with her own spiritual perception unless her life depended on it.

‘Are you trying to accuse me of being unable to perform in bed? Of all of the issues I can think of relating to the possession of this particular dick, erectile dysfunction is not one of them. On the contrary…’ a sigh was transmitted through the spiritual will thread, ‘I am just decent at doing multiple things at once after some forced practise with it. The method of practise still fucks my head worse than… sorry, you’re the shy type, right? Anyway, can’t do the thing that let me do this, but that’s fine.’

‘Right… Well, you can focus back on that… I’ll be doing this…’

The thread separated, and Luo Lia Kun had to hold back her own sigh. The mention of her shyness brought back the memories of her husband, and they were not particularly happy ones.

In general, she had a rather good time with him when he had still been alive, and it was part of the reason that she had avoided experiencing much to do with sex outside of her relationship with him. He had been a strong enough figure in most matters, but whenever it came to their time in bed, he would take care of her and make sure that she would be happier than him.

At the time, she had simply been too lacking in knowledge on too many lewd acts, so rather than forcing her into them, he allowed her to take her time, and never complained to her or anyone else that she was stopping him from getting what he wanted, like the husbands of certain acquaintances that Luo Lia Kun had back then. Back then, he had said that he could do just fine with his hand for the rest of his life, and that was somehow an understatement, for she had never witnessed him going to a brothel nor taking care of himself on his own.

The commitment that he had for her made her feel bad that she had never strayed beyond her own comfort zone in sexual matters until he had perished, and it was what had encouraged her to take a far more active role in life than she had before then, leading to her current position.

One thing that she couldn’t ever go far with was the very thing that prompted this very change, and that was because she did not believe that it would be fair for another to experience more than her husband ever could with her, and she did not think that there could possibly be anyone out there that could ever substitute him in any way.

That did not mean that she was free of all desire, and she suspected that it would be the cause for her to eventually take things forward even if she thinks it would be wrong in some way.

Some time ago, she had though that she would need to do so with some random man, just to get her lust out of the way and to be able to move on to more important matters in life, but now her thoughts involuntarily went to her new leader instead of some vague masculine figure. She certainly couldn’t say whether she was or could be as good as her husband was, at least within her own mind, but she did seem to be the best choice.

‘Wait, no, what am I thinking? I’m meant to be questioning this man, not…’ she shook her head while Huang Yu Di’s head was still down, trying to clear her thoughts.

Unfortunately, she was unable to move her focus to a continued interrogation, as the confirmation that he appeared to be being honest about most things effectively ruled out pressing him further until some flaw or discrepancy was found. Until then, he would need to be treated nicely.