Chapter 285: Ancestral Hall Built of Thunderproof Wood
People rarely use Thunderproof Wood to build houses. For one, it has a long growth cycle and is expensive. For another, it’s simply unnecessary.
You rarely hear of anyone being struck dead by lightning. You’d be better off worrying about choking on your food, which is obviously far more likely.
In truth, there was another reason: Thunderproof Wood caught fire more easily than ordinary wood. A single spark could ignite a roaring inferno.
In the short time it had taken her to get here from Tian Fu’s courtyard, the ancestral hall had already burned to an unrecognizable state.
A man who looked like a butler was directing the servants to fight the fire. "Quick! Put out the fire over here! My god, this blaze is huge!"
"You few over there! Yes, you! Soak your clothes and go get the ancestral tablets!"
The servants who were singled out all dodged away, grabbing their buckets and scurrying off to find water.
’Are you kidding me? The fire’s this huge—going in would be certain death!’
’Even if you didn’t die, you’d be burned half to death. What good would any reward be then?’
The butler paced around anxiously, not daring to rush in and save the ancestral tablets himself. He could only pray for the fire to go out on its own.
’And find the arsonist who started this!’
Unfortunately, even with the ancestral hall nearly burned to the ground, Tian Fu still hadn’t appeared.
Yu An was about to leave when a small, snow-white bundle in the crowd caught her eye.
It was Han Li!
Perhaps thinking his fur was too conspicuous, he did a quick roll, and his snow-white coat instantly turned a dusty gray.
He saw Yu An too and sped up, running toward her.
Just as he leaped into Yu An’s arms, a servant who was about to run off for water let out a piercing shriek. "AHHH! Who’s that!"
"The arsonist is here! Get her!"
Yu An: "???"
She and Han Li shared the same confused expression. ’Wait, they can see me now?’
The servants stopped fighting the fire, mostly because it was a lost cause. They couldn’t douse the flames as fast as they were spreading.
But if they caught the arsonist, even if they didn’t get a reward, they could at least atone for their failure!
So, it didn’t matter if Yu An was the arsonist. What mattered was that she had appeared out of nowhere. Whether she was or not, she was about to be.
The butler, however, paid no attention to the commotion. He was slumped on the ground, wailing in despair.
"It’s over! It’s all over!"
’Catching some arsonist is useless. The ancestral hall is gone. The Family Head’s wrath... it’ll take countless lives to appease it!’
At the same time, Yu An caught a whiff of a strange fragrance.
Sniffing closer, she detected a faint, foul undertone.
She covered her nose. Looking at the servants glaring at her like predators, she suddenly smiled.
"Looks like he does care, after all."
’See? The ancestral hall is destroyed, and my Invisibility is gone.’
’As long as he’s willing to show himself, this will be easy. My only fear was that no matter what I did, Tian Fu would just keep hiding in his shell.’
Yu An took out a signal flare. BANG! A firework exploded high in the sky.
It was the signal for the others to return to her space. Once Tian Fu appeared, the Illusion Realm could vanish at any moment. It was better for everyone to be together.
The little ones were very obedient. They returned to the space and did a roll call one by one to put Yu An at ease.
Once Red Fox had also returned to the space, Yu An could relax and focus on dealing with the people of the Tian Family.
They brandished their weapons. Whether it was because of the smoke or something else, their eyes began to turn red. They looked hell-bent on capturing the "thief."
"They’ve all absorbed Blood Crystals! Miss, you have to get out of here!"
A familiar voice echoed in her ear. Yu An recognized it as Meng Fanxin’s. She diverted her attention for a moment to glance at Meng Fanxin inside her space, only to see she was still sound asleep.
’Just now... was I hearing things?’
Yu An didn’t run. Instead, her interest was piqued. She wanted to see how fighting people who had absorbed Blood Crystals differed from fighting ordinary people.
However, remembering the voice she’d "hallucinated," Yu An decided against close-quarters combat.
Back in the Apocalypse World, she had always fought zombies from a distance, directing her vines to pierce their skulls and retrieve their Crystal Cores.
Partly because it was disgusting, and partly because she feared infection.
She valued her life far too much to take any unnecessary risks.
It was the same now. The vines she summoned were either thick and powerful or covered in sharp, poisonous thorns. They tore up the ground, ripping it to shreds.
Yu An watched the battle from a safe distance, surrounded by a protective barrier of vines. She discovered that these people seemed to have stronger attacks and higher defenses than ordinary people.
For instance, her thorny vines could impale a Beastman with low spiritual power in a single strike, but against these people, it took two or even more hits.
If that were all, it wouldn’t be a problem; she could just attack a few more times. But these were all merely servants of the Tian Family.
The Blood Crystals they had absorbed were riddled with impurities, yet they still possessed such power.
’Then what about purified Blood Crystals? Or Blood Crystals made from Beastmen without any impurities at all?’
Yu An hadn’t counted exactly how many Blood Crystals she possessed, but she was certain this wasn’t all of them. A portion must have already been shipped to the Upper Realm.
’Can absorbed Blood Crystals be turned back into Beastmen?’
’Just how powerful is a Tian Family that has absorbed Blood Crystals?’
Yu An had no answers to any of these questions.
A great family like the Tian Family had countless servants and guards, and more were streaming in continuously.
Yu An didn’t want to get bogged down in a battle of attrition. If her superpower ran out, she’d be the one in trouble.
Her gaze fell upon the burnt-out ancestral hall. Summoning her Cloud Beast, she flew into the air and began to clear out her inventory.
What was in her inventory?
The same liquor she had used to repel the snake swarm.
Hard liquor.
Jar after jar smashed onto the ground, the splashing liquid filling the air with a rich, alcoholic aroma.
The butler was doused, the liquor running down from the top of his head and into his mouth.
"Liquor?"
The word escaped his lips. Yu An’s lips curved into a smile as she lit a match and tossed it down.
The fire, which had begun to die down now that the ancestral hall was gone, roared back to life with a vengeance. The butler and the others panicked, scrambling and crawling to get away.
But this time, whether because the ancestral hall was already destroyed and there was nothing left to burn or for some other reason, the butler no longer screamed for people to fight the fire. Instead, he pointed at Yu An.
"Get her!"
Seeing them lift off the ground and fly into the sky, Yu An remembered that people from the Upper Realm could fly.
The duration depended on the strength of their spiritual power. For the group below, the longest anyone could manage was about five minutes.
But there were a lot of them. They could take turns, wearing her down in waves.
Yu An had no intention of fighting them like that. She reached into her space and pulled out something else.
Tian Fu had been watching the show from outside the Illusion Realm. He wanted to personally witness Yu An fail to find an escape, to see her slowly succumb to it, trapped forever.
Even if the phantoms within the Illusion Realm couldn’t hold her, he had backup plans to keep her trapped.
Tian Fu was in an exceptionally good mood, which was why he hadn’t stopped Yu An from going to see Meng Fanxin.
’It didn’t matter. Everything was under his control. Besides, his birth mother, Meng Fanxin, was going to die after today anyway.’
’Once she was dead, and his birth father—the Tian Family’s Second Master, far away in the Upper Realm—also died, there would be no one left in this world to restrain him.’
Tian Fu was perfectly relaxed. Until the ancestral hall caught fire.
’Alright, he was a little tense, but not much. The fire could only destroy the hall above ground; the chambers below wouldn’t be affected.’
Just as he breathed a sigh of relief, he saw Yu An pull out a gas canister.
And on her face, a demonic smile.
That smile was horribly familiar. It had once been the stuff of his nightmares.