Chapter 4: The Three-Tailed Fox
Little white rabbit, white and white, so cute when it’s still and quiet.
Gong Lianyue walked over to the Snowtooth Rabbit lying unconscious in the snow and gently nudged its fur with her foot. It remained motionless. It seemed to have knocked itself out.
Under normal circumstances, she would kill the poor rabbit and take out its spirit beast core to sell.
However, Gong Lianyue didn’t have a sharp weapon on her at the moment, and the Water Element couldn’t perform cutting attacks. The only way to extract the core would be to pummel the Snowtooth Rabbit into a pulp.
Such an act would be too bloody and unrefined, not at all befitting the perfect demeanor of a Saintess…
So, she could only watch as the Snowtooth Rabbit gradually regained consciousness and then, with a look of terror, fled into the vast expanse of the Ice Plains.
“Let’s continue cultivating.”
Gong Lianyue sighed helplessly and, with a clear conscience, occupied the ice rock where the Snowtooth Rabbit had been resting and sat down to meditate.
She usually returned from the Ice Plains late at night, but with the Saintess selection approaching, the turmoil within the Sea Concubine Palace was intensifying. Gong Lianyue decided not to return for the time being.
This time, she wondered which poor soul would end up waiting in vain for several days…
Her water-blue hair cascaded down as she sat quietly in meditation on the ice rock, her ice-colored teardrop eyes slowly closing. An illusory icy mist rose around her.
Spirit energy, the universal energy source for all Spirit Masters, existed in every corner of the world and was the life source of every spirit beast.
Like a girl’s first period, every young man and woman with Spirit Master talent would experience an awakening period in their teens, naturally generating spirit energy.
Those who couldn’t awaken between the ages of 10 and 18 would almost certainly remain ordinary mortals for the rest of their lives. However, in some popular fantasy novels, there were cases of awakening through accidental consumption of heavenly treasures. Whether such miraculous encounters existed in reality was unknown.
As a child, Gong Lianyue was playing in the mud in a human town when she was spotted by a passing Spirit Master from the Sea Concubine Palace. The Spirit Master was immediately struck, moved to tears.
The Sea Concubine Palace worshipped the Sea God. Gong Lianyue’s teardrop beauty marks and strange eyes were seen as a sign of the Sea God’s favor, and she naturally became the Saintess.
Even though her awakened companion spirit beast was a Water Element, the higher-ups of the Sea Concubine Palace firmly believed that a water deity resided within her, waiting for the day it would fully manifest.
Unfortunately, she was currently just a weak and pitiful novice Spirit Master, accompanied only by a Water Element. There were no water deities or sea spirits or any such nonsense.
“Chirp, chirp, chirp!!”
Immersed in meditation and the flow of spirit energy, a ferocious beast’s roar suddenly came from the distance.
Gong Lianyue slowly opened her eyes and saw a small, adorable fox-like spirit beast sprinting towards her.
The little fox’s three fluffy tails swayed as it ran, its pinkish-purple fur shimmering with a dreamlike luster, dazzlingly beautiful.
Gong Lianyue’s breath hitched, her pupils widening. A Three-Tailed Fox!
The rank of fox-type spirit beasts was easy to distinguish. Under normal circumstances, one tail was low-rank, three tails was mid-rank, six tails was high-rank, and nine tails was a rank beyond ordinary comprehension.
An average Three-Tailed Fox was at least mid-rank quality. Judging by this one’s beautiful coloring, its quality must be even higher.
If she could capture it and sell it, it would fetch a sky-high price…
Gong Lianyue quickly dismissed the idea. Behind the Three-Tailed Fox, several figures in Sea Concubine Palace uniforms were in hot pursuit, rapidly approaching.
Faced with this situation, she calmly took out an exquisitely decorated rouge box from her bosom and dabbed it on her face, concealing the six teardrop beauty marks.
Without the strange water droplet marks, her flawless, snow-white face looked even more delicate, like a beautiful doll.
Then, Gong Lianyue forcefully rolled her eyes, drawing out a few unnerving bloodshot lines. With a click, her eyes completely reversed. The teardrop shape disappeared, replaced by ordinary-shaped, strikingly beautiful ice-blue pupils.
Now she looked like an ordinary, beautiful village girl with blue hair, rather than the aloof and noble Saintess of the Sea Concubine Palace.
“Chirp!”
Witnessing this ghostly transformation, the Three-Tailed Fox, which had intended to run past the blue-haired girl, froze in terror. With a shriek, its small paws skidded across the snow, leaving long trails as it turned and ran back in the direction it had come from.
This pink-furred Three-Tailed Fox seemed to have a bit of a simple mind. After running back for a while and seeing its pursuers, it turned around again. Upon seeing Gong Lianyue, it shrieked in fright once more and continued to flee in the opposite direction.
This repeated several times, its back-and-forth route getting shorter and shorter until it finally threw itself onto the ground, its body erupting in a cloud of pink smoke.
The pink smoke lingered, and the Three-Tailed Fox’s form vanished, replaced by a beautiful pink flower bud.
“Hm?”
Gong Lianyue let out a soft sound of surprise. This Three-Tailed Fox could actually transform?
Just as the Three-Tailed Fox completed its transformation, its pursuers appeared in sight: two women and one man, all young and wearing the standard Sea Concubine Palace uniform.
Seeing the blue-haired girl meditating on the ice rock, the three of them became somewhat tense.
The fox had disappeared in such a short time. Could this woman be hiding it?
That was their prey! They had been staking it out on the Ice Plains for days!
Infighting was strictly forbidden in the Sea Concubine Palace. Even if this woman had taken the fox, they couldn’t forcefully take it back.
After exchanging glances, a plain-looking woman with a ponytail mustered up the courage to walk up to Gong Lianyue.
“L-Little sister, have you seen where that Three-Tailed Fox went?”
The contract signed between a Spirit Master and a spirit beast was called a blood pact. The bond it created was somewhat like that between siblings or parents and children. It required the willing consent of both parties to succeed.
Ancient contracts that resembled forced enslavement had been completely phased out. Nowadays, even if they forcefully captured a spirit beast, they couldn’t form a contract.
Therefore, if Gong Lianyue took the Three-Tailed Fox, she could only sell it and wouldn’t be able to form a contract with it as her second spirit beast.
In that case, it would be better to do them a favor. More importantly, it would avoid conflict. If her identity as the Saintess were revealed, it would be troublesome if it gave the other Saintess Candidates something to criticize her for.
After a few seconds of silence, Gong Lianyue pointed wordlessly at the pink flower bud that the Three-Tailed Fox had transformed into.
At the same time, a drop of dew could be clearly seen dripping from the bud’s petals.
Little brother, are you sweating?
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