God Of Crafting

Chapter 248 The truth the guide didn't warn us about

"bang!"

my fist connected with chihiro's palm, carried forth by all the cumulative strength of my cultivation, physical fitness, and five years' worth of practicing this exact punch.

at first, my entire arm froze in place, seemingly stopped by chihiro's block... only to then carry on, pushing his palm in and forcing the man to retreat two steps, just far enough for me to exhaust the reach of my attack.

"huff..." i exhaled, allowing the tension of my body to disperse, just like i would after fisting the wooden cock of a training target i used to strike for so long.

"he attacked a clan's senior!" despite just having his face saved from my punch, the leader of the cultivators didn't lose out even the tiniest bit of his enthusiasm. "kill...!"

"shut it!"

letting go of my hand and turning around on the spot, chihiro raised the very same hand he just blocked my strike with... only to slap the man across his face hard enough for the satisfactory sound to fill the air. continue your saga on empire

and as if this sound was akin to an elder's order... the other cultivators stopped in place now that they no longer had a leader or a scapegoat for them to push all the blame and responsibility on.

"shit, kid," ignoring the cultivators behind him, chihiro turned back to the two of us while rapidly waving his hand in the air as if to air out the leftover pain from having blocked my punch with it. "just what the hell did you do in that garden for you to grow even stronger..." at this point, chihiro cut his words short as he took a step towards us, locking his eyes on my face, only for his face to then twist in surprise. "wait, weren't you a quasi-ninth rank already? how come you are now..."

once again, before he could fully voice out his surprise, chihiro cut his sentence short, signifying he now remembered we weren't in a closed-off space where it would be relatively safe to discuss what was going on.

"well, it doesn't matter. what matters, though," he added while stealing a quick glance at the crowd of the cultivators behind him, "is how come you returned unharmed? did you, by any chance, opt out of aiming for the third floor, despite leila trying to egg you on it?"

"honestly, do you really think this is something we are happy to discuss with so many folks listening in?" i pointed out my concerns while turning my eyes over the man's shoulder, straight at the cultivators that still refused to step away. "because i certainly have no intention of letting them know anything, especially after they dared to point their weapons at claire," i mentioned, allowing my expression to grow darker as i locked my eyes on all the targets behind chihiro.

"just one more thing..." chihiro muttered, his face tensing up for some reason i couldn't really see through. "when you mean the third floor..."

"i mean the floor leila suggested we would be able to reach. but due to the concern i just mentioned, we opted out of cultivating further and decided to go back, leaving that part of the cultivation garden for a later date," i explained before shrugging my shoulders, still failing to figure out just what was wrong in this entire situation.

was it all some sort of nefarious plot concocted by claire's mom? was she the villain all along, egging us to reach the third floor in hopes we would fail, have our cultivation go berserk, and turn into some sort of monsters that could be then killed off, all for some unspecified reason?

'i really don't think that to be the case,' i thought, squinting my eyes as i struggled to make sense of it all. 'she never really struck me as someone who could act this well...'

my eyes twitched.

'wait, maybe the fact that she didn't appear to be acting is actually the proof of how good of an actor she was?' i thought, sensing as if i was approaching some sort of revelation, an insight that would serve as a key to unlock the mastery of just what the fuck was going on!

"haaah..." chihiro heaved a long and tired sigh, shaking his head as he lowered it.

"what's wrong?" i asked, eager to finally find out just what all of this mess was all about. "all those cultivators, even the way you react... it doesn't make even the slightest sense!"

chihiro slowly dragged his eyes up before taking a deep breath and raising his hands right as he took a step forth, only to then drop his hands down on my shoulders as he looked directly into my eyes.

"you see, there's one crucial piece of the puzzle that you are missing, a piece that you were supposed to learn from the guide, who has already admitted to the crime of keeping it from you," chihiro revealed, instantly throwing a wrench in all of my estimations.

'it was all the guide's fault? but what could it be that she didn't tell us? the nature of the floors or something?' i tried to guess again, even if all i had to do was to wait a few moments for chihiro to explain everything himself.

"basically," chihiro took a deep breath before looking right into my eyes again, "what your guide failed to mention is how the first floor of this garden is actually underground," he revealed, only to let go of my left shoulder and point his hand out to a much bigger door hidden just behind the corner of the doorway that we used to enter the place. "so, when you mentioned almost reaching the third floor, you were actually talking about the fourth floor of the garden," chihiro explained, his face growing slightly whiter as he did so.

"and that place, even the clan's patriarch dares not to enter."