Extra's Strategy: Cultivate Protagonists, Become Invincible-Chapter 97: You People Have Dirty Minds

Ignoring the amused glance from Qian Yun, Han Xuhan imperceptibly moved closer to Mu Ran.

"How do you suggest we deal with this ambush in front of us, martial brother Mu Ran?" Xuanyuan Zhou asked. Mu Ran answered very confidently while pulling out his spear.

"Well, I can just sneak up on them and beat them unconscious. That’s what I’ve been doing since the start. It’s a brilliant strategy because of its simple nature!"

"...None of us needs to take that kind of risk when these zombies are available," Qian Yun butted in.

"Let fellow cultivator Zhou send in a few of them to create a distraction and then send a second group to corner them. We can judge their strength and decide whether to attack or not after seeing the results."

For some reason, Xuanyuan Zhou looked a little unwilling to sacrifice the zombies. But she eventually relented.

Using the squirrel as a scout, she managed to pinpoint the location of the cultivators. They were hiding in a ditch next to the floating emerald orb, having cast a weak illusion art on their hiding spot.

As for how the squirrel could sniff them out, Xuanyuan Zhou refused to explain it, if she knew the answer at all.

The group of four humans and one skeleton maneuvered around that ditch, hiding their tracks easily with the fog, and found the most suitable plan of attack.

Han Xuhan, Qian Yun, and Mu Ran worked together as a team while Xuanyuan Zhou controlled her zombies to attack from the other direction.

The battle didn’t last long. The cultivators had never imagined that their well-hidden location would be discovered and attacked by the monstrous, but unintelligent zombies.

While they tried their best to cast Mystic Arts and the disposable law fragments on their hand at the oncoming humongous nightmarish creatures, Mu Ran and Qian Yun ambushed them from the back together, one by one.

Han Xuhan and Zhanxian stood far away and cheered them on silently until it was time to ’collect the loot’. The moment the last guy dropped to the ground, Han Xuhan’s hands were deep inside his pockets.

A few minutes later, all four of them gathered in front of their tied-up opponents, wondering the same thing.

"...Now, what do we do with these people?"

Some of their fallen opponents were still conscious. They looked at their captors fearfully.

They couldn’t believe that someone could control the berserk zombies in the fog.

Their opponents were too scary! Were these guys the infamous demonic cultivators? What were they going to do to them?

Han Xuhan was observing these guys intently for a while. His eyes had a nasty gleam that did not escape the notice of the perceptive prisoners.

"Since they can use the power of laws, we shouldn’t allow them to reach the next stage and impede us," Xuanyuan Zhou muttered in a low voice. Mu Ran nodded in agreement.

"I’ve got just the thing we need," Qian Yun said as he pulled out another stack of documents from his pocket.

"We can make them sign contracts with us. If they want us to leave them unscathed, they need to cooperate with us. The contracts will ensure that they can’t betray us here."

Everyone’s eyes lit up at the suggestion. Indeed, most cultivation techniques can do awesome stuff if you knew how to use them well. Not all techniques had to revolve around fighting and killing! For more insidious jobs like this, soft Mystic Arts were more useful than violent techniques.

Of course, the defeated party didn’t look particularly eager to sign the contract. To speed things up, Han Xuhan rammed into their mental defense with his harmless threat.

"Your mouths say no, but your bodies say yes."

Everyone turned to look at him in confusion. He felt like there was something wrong in their gazes. So he awkwardly explained.

"All of you are injured. How can you hope to put up a fight now? Even if you’re mentally prepared to struggle till the end, you must recognize the capability and limits of your own body!

"How can you people be successful cultivators if you’re not sensitive to your own limits?! Stop denying our goodwill and sign the contracts, or we’ll hit you again right where it will hurt the most! That’s what I meant! Don’t take it any other way!"

"...."

The strange gazes didn’t go away despite his logical reasoning. Even his own teammates, especially Xuanyuan Zhou, were looking at him with an indescribable light in their eyes.

But it achieved its purpose. The countenance of the defeated party was a lot gloomier now, probably considering whether Han Xuhan was messing with them, the way a cat plays with its food.

After a couple of minutes of bargaining and declarations along the lines of ’Even a cornered mouse dares to fight a cat’ and ’I’d rather die standing than live kneeling’, the contract was finally signed.

Qian Yun’s conditions were not particularly harsh. The only disadvantage their opponents had to swallow was being used as a meat shield during unexpected turns of events or ambushes. They also had to listen to many types of commands, as long as nothing threatened their lives directly.

Just as the defeated group breathed in relief after signing the contracts, Han Xuhan’s innocent voice suddenly overturned the situation.

"Guys, why don’t we take our clothes off and have some fun?"

_________

The sun’s appearance had colored the faraway horizon golden red.

Pine Town was just ahead, and old man Di Qian’s targets were supposedly inside the woods next to the small town, exploring a hidden world fragment, based on the information he had gathered so far.

The world fragment hidden within that place was an aberration.

A few decades ago, it had suddenly opened up, uncontrolled. Before anyone could investigate what was going on, a foul aura of demonic creatures had started to emanate from it, scaring away most of the curious, low-level cultivators nearby.

Some bigshots of the continent had come to poke at its secrets. Witnesses say that those high and mighty figures of this realm had run away from that portal faster than bolts of lightning and winds of storms.

Later, through the combined effort of numerous local and traveling experts, a formation so complex had been laid over the portal that even he, Di Qian, had no confidence in breaking through its restrictions.

But right now, his concerns lay elsewhere. The suspicious soul he had been tracking for a day and a night wasn’t even in his thoughts.

He was sweating very nervously. He hadn’t been this tense during his last major celestial tribulation.

The visage of the town in front of him was fading in and out of existence, like an unstable illusion.

In the feeble light of dawn, the humans, buildings, and the bustling streets appeared and disappeared repeatedly, their bodies sometimes solid, sometimes transparent, sometimes in between.

It wasn’t a sight he was familiar with, but he could easily guess its source, and the conclusion he reached frightened him.

Despite his impressive cultivation base, he had been gravely injured a while ago. He couldn’t hope to contend with what slumbered ahead, in the heart of this town.

Just as he was about to retreat, a low voice rang beside his ears. The speaker sounded extremely frustrated.

"A cultivator from the Beasthaven sect? This isn’t your territory. Get lost!"

Di Qian, who had stood at the entrance of Pine Town for nearly half an hour in a daze, turned around and vanished on the spot.

The bottom of the sun rose past the horizon. Its light fell on where Pine Town was supposed to be.

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