Tainted Blood

by Tinalynge

  Lin Xiao just snickered and shook his head. “They compete with one another; the more they can boast, the prouder they are. They can’t very well fight one another, so the only option they have is to take a moral high ground.”

  Xue Wei was not too interested in the reason behind them having such boastful names, so he just nodded to acknowledge what Lin Xiao had said. Lin Xiao pulled something out of his storage ring.

  “Well, let us get moving, you three. I have these facemasks, each of you takes one. They are the best quality masks on the market.”

  “Actually, one of them is for a female, and I suggest that Xue Wei uses it. We can’t really do anything about the size of that kid, even if he can pretend to be an adult from time to time. Changing his body will require quite some energy in the long run, so for us to pretend to be a family instead will be a good idea.”

  “Why do I have to be the woman?” Xue Wei complained, but both Hei Gou and Lin Xiao looked at him as if he was silly. “Obviously because you are the shortest of us,” they said at the same time.

  “Don’t worry, I have some dresses that are not too revealing. You can easily pretend to be a woman,” Lin Xiao continued, making Bai Tianyi and Hei Gou look at him with an odd expression on their faces. Why did he happen to have dresses? What exactly was his hobby?

  Sensing the odd atmosphere, Lin Xiao did not explain himself and gave a chuckle before tossing the masks to them. Xue Wei was not happy. He was a man through and through, but now he had to pretend to be a woman just to hide their identities?

  “We can always just leave the continent without going to visit Lan,” Bai Tianyi said casually on purpose. He knew that Xue Wei truly needed to meet Lan to get answers, but in the end this was quite the situation. Sighing, he stripped off his red clothes and put on a green dress provided by Lin Xiao. His shoulders were rather broad for a woman; his figure was not feminine at all; and his chest was as flat as a board.

  After taking a look at his new appearance, Hei Gou and Bai Tianyi started laughing so hard they could not stop trembling. Even Lin Xiao gave a giggle from the side. Xue Wei felt that all his pride had been destroyed.

  Chapter 27 - Life as a Woman

  Xue Wei was annoyed, but he also found it rather funny. Was this Lin Xiao an idiot? Although he did not think it would be too difficult to pretend to be a woman, he quickly understood that it would be absolutely impossible for him to look like a woman when he finally wore the dress.

  “This is perfect,” Lin Xiao said while doing his very best to keep a straight face, but he would tremble from time to time and turn his face away to not let Xue Wei see the smile he could not suppress.

  “Are you all done laughing now?” Xue Wei asked before moving to take the dress off.

  “Stop!” Lin Xiao stopped him before he could. “Try the mask! If you still think it is impossible after putting on the mask, then I will say nothing, but at least give it a try!”

  Xue Wei glanced at Lin Xiao. Did this man have some strange hobbies? Was he interested in seeing a male body with a female face? This was enough to make him shiver in fright. Was Lin Xiao not the strongest of them all? He was the strongest, and he had strange hobbies. This was terrible!

  Seeing Xue Wei’s perplexed expression, Lin Xiao could guess his thoughts. His lips twitched.

  “Don’t think too much and just wear it!” he exclaimed, understanding that he had now been labeled as a rather perverse person.

  Xue Wei wondered. He had already dressed up in the gown and supposed it could not get worse than this, so he shrugged his shoulders and took the mask, placed it on his face, and looked down at himself. His eyes widened in shock.

  “I told you already!” Lin Xiao gloated. “This is the highest class face mask! It alters not only your face but also your entire body.”

  “How can it do that?” Xue Wei was shocked when he saw that his figure had turned lithe and delicate. His height was the same, but his physique seemed completely different.

  Hei Gou and Bai Tianyi completely forgot to laugh as they looked at the woman who had appeared in front of them with wide eyes. There was no doubt that Xue Wei looked exactly like a woman now. Although a tall woman, he looked like a woman.

  “There’s an illusion inside the mask,” Lin Xiao explained. “It is an inscription. As long as there is Qi within the mask, it will keep you looking like a woman, and you can store your own Qi within as well. It is perfect!”

  Xue Wei was shocked. So it was an inscription. He had to examine it later when he had the chance!

  But for now, he felt a great loss. He was really supposed to pretend to be a woman now, which was something he had never seen coming, but in the end he understood that this would make their journey much easier. The only thing was that he was not too keen on the whole cross-dressing idea.

  “Put your pride behind you!” Bai Tianyi was the first to speak up. “You know that you need to visit Lan. This will make it smooth and easy, so stop complaining. Is it not just pretending to be a woman?”

  Xue Wei’s lips twitched at the words from Bai Tianyi, and then he walked towards the child. “My dear son, is that how you speak to your mother?” he asked with a voice so sugarcoated that every word dripped with sweetness.

  Bai Tianyi felt a shiver run down his spine. It was obvious that the other three had their own roles to play as family if Xue Wei had to pretend to be a woman. Since there was one woman and one child. it was reasonable that the child had to be hers.

  “Uh.” Bai Tianyi was stunned. “Well, I guess it is just pretending to be a child, right? I can do that,” he said with self-assurance, but both Xue Wei and Hei Gou looked at him skeptically. Although he had looked like a child since the day he made his soul body, he had never behaved like one. In fact, they had never seen him act like one.

  Knowing that he was not the only one who had to pretend to be something he was not, Xue Wei felt slightly better. He placed his hands on his now very narrow waist and turned around.

  “So who are the two of you supposed to be?” Having come to terms with the fact that he had to be a woman, Xue Wei wanted to at least have this planned out.

  “I will be your husband, he will be your brother,” Lin Xiao said as he pointed at Hei Gou. However, Hei Gou objected to it, “Why do you have to take the role as the husband?”

  “Why don’t we just say that we are four siblings?” Xue Wei sighed after seeing that Lin Xiao was snickering and Hei Gou was fuming.

  “No can do! We should look like a family!” Hei Gou and Lin Xiao yelled out at the same time. Xue Wei was taken aback, realizing that these two dunces were actually having a lot of fun. At his expense.

  “Well then, why don’t you duke it out, the winner gets to decide?” Xue Wei could not be bothered to deal with it, so he just said whatever, but Hei Gou immediately looked at him with the pitiful eyes of a lost puppy.

  “Listen here, my little ancestor, me fighting against him, is it not the same as saying that I have no chance? No matter what way we look at it, he will win over me, and he is even a Diviner!”

  Xue Wei understood Hei Gou’s thoughts. Not only was he a Primordial Beast against a Diviner, but he was also just on the verge of breaking into the Ordinary Knight rank, while the opponent was already an Earth Knight! This was an unfair fight if he had ever seen one.

  Xue Wei smiled wryly. What else could they do? He really did not care about who pretended to be what, as he had already taken the least desired of the roles.

  “I can’t let Lin Xiao be your husband!” Hei Gou said seriously. “He runs around with dresses in his storage ring, who knows what other hobbies he might have! I have to protect my brother’s reputation.”

  “Do you really think that I have a lot of reputation to protect at this point in time?” Xue Wei said with ironic laughter. “The humans want to kill me, the Primordial Beasts want to kill me. I am dressed as a woman, so you can forget about my reputation as a man amongst my friends.”

  “Also, considering
he had this mask, it is not too odd that he is running around with those dresses. I mean, the mask is quite useless if one chooses to wear male clothes with it.”

  Hei Gou listened but did not know what to say. “Wei, are you telling me you want Lin Xiao to be your husband?” he asked with a sad expression on his face. Seeing this expression and hearing his words, Xue Wei could not help but want to bury his face into his palms.

  “First of all, this is just pretend okay. I am not a woman, I will never be a woman, and I am not happy with pretending to be a woman. Second, it really does not matter to me. As I see it, the both of you drew the long straw pretending to be men. Even if one of you are pretending to be my sibling, at least you will not have to dress up in this getup,” he said rather bitterly, listing a litany of reasons for him to cease his complaints. Looking down at his very female body, he could only shudder in desperation. Why had he ever said yes to this he wondered?

  Hei Gou and Lin Xiao looked at Xue Wei before they started laughing again. He looked exactly like a woman, no matter what angle you looked at him from. His hands were resting on his hips and his face was dark and filled with stormy clouds so it was clear what he was thinking.

  “Sorry, sorry,” Lin Xiao finally was the one to withdraw. “I will gladly have a cute little sister like you,” he said sweetly, but his words just made the storm that was brewing in Xue Wei’s eyes increase in intensity.

  “Who is your little sister?” Xue Wei swore beneath his breath.

  “Now, now, don’t get upset,” Bai Tianyi chipped in, also snickering. He had it easy too. Then he went next to Xue Wei and took his slim and elegant hand in his childish one. “Come now, mother dear, let us begin leaving this godforsaken place and move towards Heavenward City.”

  Having said this, he and the two others all wore their facemasks, but Bai Tianyi soon found that he had to use his own face. The face mask was made for an adult, and a child with an adults face was simply too odd and made it impossible for anyone to believe that they were not using facemasks.

  Together, the four once again began moving. They quickly made it out of the forest and did not encounter any beasts or humans on the way out. Lin Xiao was deeply impressed by the fact that they cut through the very center of the forest without a beast coming to admonish them for entering their territory.

  “It is strange, normally they would only behave like that if there was an elite beast around them,” he said while looking over his shoulder all the time, but Xue Wei, Hei Gou and Bai Tianyi were not surprised. They just raised an eyebrow and said words like, “You don’t say,” “That was strange,” and, “Who knows what happened.”

  Lin Xiao was no idiot. He quickly understood that the cause for the beasts strange behavior was these three, but he did not know which of the three was the reason.

  He also understood that they were not the elites—that the beasts were hunting them in the same way as the Diviners were hunting him.

  In the end, Lin Xiao was incredibly curious, but he was not going to ask about their secrets. He was not ready to tell them his, so why would they tell him theirs?

  As the group made it out of the forest, they entered many small villages on the way towards the Heavenward City.

  Some of these villages were so small that they did not even have an inn.

  There was one main road leading through these villages and multiple smaller roads converged into the main road from all over, bringing with it many cultivators, merchants, and other people who were heading towards Heavenward City.

  The road was scarce when they first arrived, but by evening and when they reached an inn, the area outside was bustling with life and many experts were sitting on the ground floor in the restaurant, chatting together.

  The sound of loud chatter could be heard from the tavern before they even stepped inside. As they entered, a lot of the individuals inside glanced at the door, but most lost their interest when they saw that it was a family of four.

  Going to the counter, Lin Xiao ordered one big room for all of them to share. No one thought too much about it, considering that they looked like a family and that they were likely trying to save some money.

  Xue Wei was, for the first time, experiencing life as a woman, and he was in a foul mood. Everywhere he went, people would look at him—some with lustful eyes, other with appreciating eyes, but all in all, it was something he had never experienced before. And he was not happy with it either.

  “Women have to walk through life with these fragile bodies,” he muttered to himself. “They have to endure all those looks and be treated like objects. This can’t be right… just because they are women. They deserve to be treated like any other person. I reflect on my behavior towards women so far…”

  Chapter 28 - Entering Heavenward City

  No one caused problems for them as they spent the night at the inn. Although they appeared to be a somewhat wealthy family, a closer look at their clothes deterred the mercenaries in the area from messing with them.

  During the night, Hei Gou’s Qi level broke into the first layer of the Ordinary Knight rank, with his physical strength remaining unchanged at the fourth layer.

  Bai Tianyi had cultivated, absorbing soul power from the surrounding air and refining it into spiritual energy.

  Lin Xiao had also spent the night cultivating, but he was not as focused as the other two. He often opened his eyes and stared at Xue Wei curiously.

  Xue Wei used that night to refine medicine. He was at the edge of being able to create pills for the Ordinary Knight rank. Although that meant he would be making the semi-useless low-ranked pills, it would still be great practice for Xue Wei’s spiritual energy and his pill-making abilities.

  And after the low-ranked pills, he could only go up.

  He was, however, still unable to make Rainbow Pills. Even One-Color Rainbow Pills required a spiritual energy at the Earth Knight rank, and the Two-Color ones required the fifth layer. Three colors required you to be at the first layer of the Sky Knight rank; four at the fifth layer of the Sky Knight rank, and so forth.

  There was still a long way to go for him. But as long as he could make high-ranked pills for Ordinary Knights, it would tremendously improve their financial situation.

  “Give me pills! Give me pills!” Xue Wei muttered to himself as he was focusing his spiritual energy to merge the liquids within the cauldron. His complete focus was on these pills, and he even forgot that he was currently pretending to be a woman. His voice was feminine and his clothes were neat. If the concoction ended up exploding, he would need to find another dress.

  Xue Wei’s complete focus was on these pills. He was always positive that the concoction would succeed, but when it did not, it went completely against his expectations. He would never sense anything prior to the explosion, so it always caught him off guard.

  This time, there was no explosion. Instead, a heavy medicinal scent wafted out from the cauldron, followed by thirteen small glistening pills.

  Xue Wei snickered when he saw this. He had successfully refined thirteen high-purity Blood Coagulating Pills!

  A Blood Coagulating Pill was, as the name suggested, a pill that stopped bleeding and also healed user’s wounds. These pills were not of great use to Xue Wei or his friends any longer, but they sold rather well, which was incentive enough for him to make them. Their sole purpose was to be sold.

  Lin Xiao noticed that these three people he had found out of nowhere were actually rather good people. Although he had banded up with them due to their similar situations, he had never expected that they would hit it off so easily, and he was astonished by how much hard work these three put into their respective crafts.

  There was not any moment where they were not training. It was clear that they had such work ethic due to necessity given their statuses as kill-on-sight convicts. He quickly understood that their situation was a bit different from his own.

  Although he was also being chased, his pursuers did not seek to kill him. At mo
st, he would be dragged back to the temple and be forced to accept some sort of punishment before they would force him to take over the position they had prepared for him. These three, on the other hand, were fleeing for their lives.

  Lin Xiao was a Diviner—and he was not just any Diviner. He was the most talented Diviner in the entire Temple, a talent that only appeared once every millennium. He was a diamond in the rough and they placed great value on him.

  He had the ability to recognize a beast just with a simple glance. His ability exceeded what the common Diviner could do, allowing him to see any disguised Primordial Beast in a large crowd.

  Because of this, he had instantly recognized Hei Gou as a beast, but then that same beast was traveling together with two humans. It was clear that they had a story to them, and this story had made Lin Xiao incredibly curious. Why would a beast, an untamed one to boot, travel with two humans?