Unsheathed

The old scholar visiting Eastern Splendor Mountain had been invited by an assistant mountain master of Mountain Cliff Academy, and he was holding a lecture this afternoon in the academy.

Chen Ping'an and Pei Qian arrived at the designated lecture venue right as the lecture drew to a conclusion, and they spotted Little Baoping traversing through the crowd like an agile red fish. Before long, she had rushed out of the building, and as she did so, she clenched her own fist in a gesture of self-encouragement.

Upon spotting Chen Ping'an and Pei Qian, she immediately sped up further as she rushed over to them, and Pei Qian admiration for Li Baoping only continued to grow as she watched the latter race along without any regard for what others thought of her. It seemed that she really was afraid of nothing.

From there, the three of them went to Chen Ping'an's guest room together, and along the way, Li Baoping told him many interesting things, such as how there had been a white deer resting beside the old scholar as he was giving his lecture. It was said that back when he founded his own private academy, the white deer had come to him to protect him, and it ensured that the academy wasn't attacked by wild beasts or damaged by mountain spirits.

However, according to Li Baoping, the old scholar's white deer wasn't as majestic and beautiful as the one that He Xiaoliang had brought with her into the Jewel Small World.

Just the mere mention of He Xiaoliang immediately gave Chen Ping'an a headache, and he was praying that he would never meet her again in this lifetime.

Chen Ping'an had seen that white deer of He Xiaoliang's during their first encounter on that stone cliff beside the Dragon Whisker River, and only after asking Cui Dongshan about it in a later conversation did he come to realize that it was an extraordinary creature.

The white coloration of its pelt was only the result of an illusion that had been cast by Qi Zhen, and in reality, it was a Five-Colored Deer that that was highly sought after even among cultivators of the Upper Five Tiers, and such creatures were only ever owned by individuals who were blessed with immense fortune.

Using his unfathomable powers, Lu Chen had created a bridge of fortune between Chen Ping'an and He Xiaoliang, and as a result, in the wake of the Jewel Small World's fall, Chen Ping'an was able to evenly split the resulting fortune with He Xiaoliang. Of course, this was all part of the plot that Lu Chen had hatched in an attempt to sever Mr. Qi's scholarly lineage.

These temptations that he had dangled out in front of Chen Ping'an were extremely perilous, and if someone else had been in Chen Ping'an's shoes, they would've most likely already been confined to the White Jade Capital in the Heavenly World, leading a life that appeared glamorous on the surface, but was actually one in which they had been reduced to a mere puppet.

It was through these experiences that Chen Ping'an came to understand just how fine a line there could be between fortune and disaster.