Chapter 440: Demon Plant
“Rise. Tell me why you failed.” Ren Pingsheng’s face was shrouded in shadow, his expression unreadable. His voice was low and somber.
“We lay in wait for half a month and finally found an opportunity when Ning Xuan left the villa district for the secondary alert zone. However, the SSS-level Half-beastman, Qinghe, was by her side. Because the opportunity was too rare to pass up, I activated our inside contact at the auction house and had Number 19 ambush them from a private box to attack Ning Xuan. Unexpectedly, Qinghe detected the attack the moment it began. What’s more, he actually knew the Undead’s weakness, which caused the attack to fail. Afterward, I found that we had lost contact with Number 19 and the auction house exits were sealed, so I issued the self-destruct command to Number 19 and left the premises,” Xie Liuyun reported, recounting the events honestly.
In truth, Xie Liuyun hadn’t made a single misstep. His judgment had been precise, and his timing perfect. To this day, he still couldn’t understand why the self-destruct command he had clearly given Number 19 had failed to produce the intended result.
According to his plan, even if Ning Xuan had managed to escape with her life, she should have been severely injured, and the entire auction house should have been leveled. The bomb implanted in Number 19’s body was incredibly powerful, and its activation sequence was irreversible.
Yet, he had waited in the shadows for a full half-hour and received none of the news he was expecting.
The auction house was completely intact. Ning Xuan had returned safely to her residence. And as for Number 19, its life signs had vanished completely.
‘He couldn’t understand. Why hadn’t the explosion—one powerful enough to shake the entire Federation—happened?’
As the Federation’s safest political, economic, and cultural hub, the Central Star had incredibly strict security screenings and protective measures.
Causing a shocking explosion on the Central Star was part of the Star Lord’s grand design. To achieve this, they had already paid a heavy price, even going so far as to implant a high-explosive bomb within the body of the Undead, Number 19—an act that was guaranteed to cause it irreversible damage.
It took an exorbitant amount of resources to create a single Undead; each one was incredibly precious.
Yet, despite paying such a steep price, they had failed to achieve their goal.
“There were no flaws in your arrangements. There’s just something strange about this Ning Xuan,” Ren Pingsheng said, his gaze falling upon Ji Wuchen. “Wuchen, you’ve had contact with her. Tell us what you know.”
Ji Wuchen trembled slightly. His contact with Ning Xuan had been minimal at best. He had never been alone with her, as someone was always by her side. Even when he’d disguised himself as Jin Shanshan, he had been unable to get close to her.
“Ning Xuan has a very assertive personality, not at all like someone from a Low-class Star. Her spiritual power is incredibly pure, and her control over it is formidable. Her Companion Spirit is powerful. Her father is from the Bai Family, but she’s very distant from them. I once tried to test her reaction using the Bai Family, but she completely ignored them, treating them like total strangers,” Ji Wuchen said, racking his brain.
“None of that is particularly strange. Look at this.” Ren Pingsheng frowned, and with a wave of his hand, a series of images appeared in the air.
The first image showed Ning Xuan purifying some kind of medicine. It was a scene of her performing Alchemy in her home in Xingluo Bay. The young woman stared with intense focus at the Alchemy Furnace before her, her hands a blur of motion. At the same time, over a dozen black-and-red vines moved around her, helping process the medicinal ingredients.
The second image showed Ning Xuan performing Alchemy in the Alchemy Room at her school in Xingluo Bay. Once again, several vines were helping her. The vines appeared in the subsequent images as well, but those pictures were very blurry, revealing only a rough outline.
After Ning Xuan arrived on the Central Star, Yan Fuzhen was constantly by her side. From that point on, no more clear images of her circulated. In fact, Yan Fuzhen had even taken action to erase the traces Ning Xuan had left behind in Xingluo Bay. However, he had inevitably missed a few things, which was how Ren Pingsheng managed to find those first two clear video clips.
“Are those vines a Plant Pet that Ning Xuan is raising?” Ji Wuchen asked, staring at the images. “I’ve never seen her use a Plant Pet. I asked many people about her back then, and no one mentioned this.”
“There aren’t many Spirit Controllers with a Plant-type Companion Spirit, and tamable demon plants are even rarer,” Xie Liuyun analyzed with a frown. “Every tamable demon plant is exceptionally precious. Most of them can only provide materials like fruits and branches. A demon plant like Ning Xuan’s, one that can act as a helper, is incredibly rare. How could a commoner girl from a Low-class Star System possibly acquire such a thing?”
“So, are you saying this vine isn’t a Plant Pet, but her Companion Spirit? No, that can’t be right,” Ji Wuchen said, instantly dismissing his own guess. “Isn’t her Companion Spirit the Legendary Fire Spirit Vermilion Bird?”
“She’s highly talented. It’s not impossible that she awakened two Companion Spirits,” Xie Liuyun said thoughtfully.
“Stop guessing,” Ren Pingsheng stated. “It’s not her Companion Spirit. It’s more like a Plant Pet she acquired from some unknown place. And though these later images are unclear, I can sense that the demon plant’s power is continuously growing.”
“A single demon plant… no matter how strong, it can’t be that much of a threat, can it?” Ji Wuchen said in confusion, looking at Ren Pingsheng’s grim expression.