Shen Tinglan stood by the porthole and looked down.
Her little niece had half her body buried in the sand, but her legs were still moving, so she seemed fine.
She ordered the guards to raise the flying vessel into the clouds.
The flying vessel ascended, quickly disappearing into the cloud banks.
On the sandy beach, Shen Qingci struggled to pull her head out of the sand.
Grains of sand clung to her temples, and her ears and nose were completely filled with sand...
She spat out the sand in her mouth, spitting several times, and wiped the corners of her mouth with her sleeve.
Looking up at the sky, the flying vessel was already long gone.
Was her aunt really her dear aunt?
Last time, she had promised to give her a heads-up before tossing her around. This time, she had gone ahead and stuffed her head straight into a sandpile.
All that talk about being gentle and caring was just a scam to trick her "niece"!!!
Before Shen Qingci could even finish her third silent complaint, her feet suddenly kicked off the ground, and she leaped back a hundred meters.
A five-meter-long, blue-gray sea beast burst out of the sand from the very spot she had been standing on.
Its head was flat, and its snout was sharp and long like a shuttle. Its mouth, filled with backward-curved fangs, opened to its absolute limit. When its upper and lower jaws snapped together, it let out a piercing screech, biting nothing but empty air.
A mid Foundation Establishment stage Shuttle-Tailed Lizard.
The information recorded in the jade slip instantly surfaced in Shen Qingci's sea of consciousness.
An amphibious, lightning-attribute sea beast. They lived in packs and often hid beneath the wet sand of tidal flats to ambush their prey.
Running into one meant that the entire tidal flat was their hunting ground.
She didn't even have time to think about whether she could win. She spun around and bolted, only wishing she could channel her spiritual energy faster.
If she ran too slowly, she would only end up being surrounded by dozens of Shuttle-Tailed Lizards and devoured until not even a speck of her was left.
She had no desire to be picked up by her aunt to be stitched back together, only to be dragged to the entrance of the Sword Tomb to wait for her senior sister to emerge from seclusion.
Lightning spiritual energy surged into the meridians of her feet, and her figure abruptly vanished from where she stood.
By the time she reappeared, she was already dozens of feet away.
Shen Qingci's figure repeatedly flashed across the tidal flat. Every time she appeared, she stayed for only a brief moment before vanishing again.
Through repeated maneuvering, she gradually got a feel for using the power of lightning to absorb her momentum. Her landing spots became increasingly precise, and she was no longer stumbling around like she had at the beginning.
Behind her, the sandy ground continuously bulged and collapsed. A dozen, then dozens of Shuttle-Tailed Lizards burrowed out from beneath the sand, their flat heads bursting through the surface.
Their screeches merged into a single deafening din as they relentlessly pursued her afterimages.
She fled across the tidal flat like this for an entire night.
She went from executing Thunder-Concealment Steps awkwardly to moving with structured grace. Her teleportation distance increased from dozens of feet to twenty or thirty feet, and her landings became more and more precise.
Between life and death, progress in techniques was always the swiftest.
However, the spiritual energy in her dantian was also depleting rapidly. Her purple vortex of qi went from full to sparse, until finally, only a thin layer remained clinging to the walls of her dantian.
The sky shifted from a dusty yellow to a dark gray, then faded into the pale white of dawn.
After chasing her all night, the pack of Shuttle-Tailed Lizards gradually dispersed.
Most of them lost interest halfway through and turned back to hunt other prey on the tidal flat.
They had initially treated Shen Qingci as prey to play with, but seeing that they couldn't capture her after so long, they couldn't be bothered to waste any more time.
Yet, four still remained.
Four mid Foundation Establishment stage Shuttle-Tailed Lizards surrounded her from four different directions.
Their flat heads pressed close to the sand, their shuttle-shaped snouts tilted slightly upward, and their flat tails plowed four closing trenches into the sandy surface.
Shen Qingci half-knelt on the tidal flat, her entire body severely depleted of spiritual energy.
Torn to shreds by lightning and lizard claws, her robe hung in tatters, and her exposed skin was crisscrossed with bloody gashes.
Four or five bloody scabs stretched diagonally from her temples to her chin. The one on her left eyelid was the most dangerous—had it been half an inch closer, she would have lost her eye.
Her spiritual energy was also nearly empty!
A spark of lightning spiritual energy gathered at her fingertip, forming an arc no larger than a grain of rice. It flickered twice, then died out.
She looked incredibly wretched.
She wiped the blood smeared on her eyelid with the back of her hand and stared at the Shuttle-Tailed Lizard directly in front of her.
Four mid Foundation Establishment stage beasts, her spiritual energy depleted, her storage rings completely confiscated by her aunt, and not even a sword by her side.
She had run for an entire night, which was already worth it.
Before she got severely injured, she had to drag at least a few of them down with her.
The Shuttle-Tailed Lizard directly in front of her was the first to strike. Its six-meter-long body launched from the sand, its shuttle-shaped snout lunging straight for Shen Qingci's face.
She didn't retreat. Instead, she shifted her feet and sidestepped.
Her right hand, wrapped in a minuscule trace of lightning spiritual energy, thrust straight into the softest part of the lizard's inner mouth.
Most of her forearm sank inside. Through the barrier of spiritual energy, her fingertips brushed against a swollen, sac-like tissue.
She suddenly released her lightning energy, and the venom sac inside burst instantly.
Dark green venom mixed with flesh splattered outward, but it was entirely blocked by the spiritual energy barrier on her palm, only staining a corner of her sleeve.
The lizard's body thrashed violently, and its flat tail swept toward her.
Unable to pull back in time, Shen Qingci took a solid hit to her waist. She was sent flying sideways, crashing onto her back on the tidal flat as a metallic sweetness welled up in her throat.
The lizard rolled and convulsed on the ground, its snout wide open as it let out a dying shriek.
After a moment, it fell still.
She pushed herself up from the sand, but her right leg went numb the moment she put weight on it.
The impact of the tail sweep earlier had been too powerful. Her leg bones throbbed with pain, and large bruises had formed where her spiritual energy failed to protect her, making it impossible to stand steadily.
She knelt on one knee, staring at the remaining three.
Enraged by their companion's death, the three Shuttle-Tailed Lizards pounced simultaneously from three different directions.
Shen Qingci took a deep breath, squeezing out every last drop of the thin layer of spiritual energy remaining in her dantian.
A spark of lightning lit up in her palm once more. It was as weak as a medicinal pill, but it was enough.
She charged head-on toward the leftmost one!
The lizard opened its snout wide, its hooked fangs snapping down toward her head.
Shen Qingci ducked and slid into the sand, using her momentum to slip beneath its belly. The faint lightning in her right hand condensed into a fine needle and pierced through the soft seam connecting its abdominal segments.
The lightning force tore through its internal meridians.
A bloody hole burst through the scales of the lizard's belly from the inside. It screeched and writhed, its flat tail thrashing wildly.
Shen Qingci rolled away to dodge, but her left shoulder was still clipped and dislocated.
Clenching her teeth, she pushed herself up with her right hand and lunged toward the second one without looking back...
This bloody battle dragged on from early morning until noon.
The sea breeze was thick with the scent of blood and the stench of the lizards' ruptured internal organs. It attracted quite a few small scavenger sea beasts, which poked their heads out in the distance but dared not draw close, intimidated by the residual power of the lightning.
By the time Shen Qingci blasted the snout of the second lizard charred black, the backlash of spiritual energy in her right hand left her finger bones numb.
The third lizard bit her calf and dragged her backward, its hooked fangs piercing through her robe and sinking into her flesh.
Reaching back, she grabbed a broken shard of lizard scale from the ground. Channeling her lightning force into it, she plunged it straight into the beast's eye socket.
The lightning force shot straight through its eye cavity into its brain. The lizard let go in pain, its entire body convulsing before it went limp.
She flipped over to pin down the lizard's head, pressing her palm against the scale to continuously channel her remaining lightning force into it until the beast stopped moving entirely.
The last Shuttle-Tailed Lizard was dead...
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