Gao Wu: Oh no! Young Master Zhen is a cultivator!

Chu Xining glared at him, her cheeks puffed out, and squeezed out a few words through gritted teeth: "You're so annoying."

The reason you find me annoying is because you don't know me well enough. If you truly understood me, you would discover...

Lin Ran paused for a moment, then gave a meaningful smile: "Your feeling is not wrong."

Upon hearing this, Chu Xining paused for two seconds, then grabbed a tissue from the table, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it at him.

Lin Ran turned his head to dodge, and the paper ball flew past his ear and landed on the back of the chair.

"Why did they start hitting each other?"

"I'm talking to you about something serious, can't you be a little more serious?"

"That won't do, it can't be serious!"

The two sat in the beverage shop for a while longer, waiting for Chu Xining to finish her fruit tea before getting up to leave.

It was almost 11 o'clock when they returned to the training center. As the two walked by, the motion-sensor lights in the corridor turned on one by one and then turned off behind them.

Lin Ran stopped at the entrance of 310: "Go to sleep early, we have to go back to Xinhai early tomorrow morning."

"Okay." Chu Xining held the doorknob but did not push the door open.

She looked up at Lin Ran, then quickly tiptoed and gave him a light peck on the cheek: "Goodnight, Brother Lin Ran."

Then, she immediately pushed open the door and slipped inside, like a startled little rabbit.

"How dare you launch a sneak attack!" Lin Ran looked at the closed door and raised his hand to brush his cheek where he had been kissed.

He smiled, shook his head, and turned to walk back to 312.

Upon entering, Qin Wuyai was already fast asleep, his breathing steady.

Lin Ran sat cross-legged on the bed, took the Nine Heavens Pendant off his waist, and placed it in his palm.

The skin feels warm and smooth to the touch, and the pale blue flowing cloud pattern shimmers slightly in the moonlight.

He probed a wisp of spiritual energy into the pendant and began the initial refining process.

The spiritual energy flowed slowly through the array patterns inside the pendant, and a faint light would appear for a moment each time it passed through a node.

Before it was refined, the storage space of the Nine Heavens Pendant was completely undefended, and anyone could open it.

He had to leave his own restrictions to ensure that the things stored inside would not be discovered by others in the future.

In the future, he may store a large number of high-level crystal cores and other important items in the Nine Heavens Pendant, so there can be no oversights in terms of security.

The refining process lasted about an hour.

When the last spiritual energy imprint landed on the Nine Heavens Jade Pendant, the pendant trembled slightly, a pale blue halo flashed, and then returned to calm.

Lin Ran opened his eyes, hung the Nine Heavens Pendant back on his waist, and tested the restrictions on the storage space.

The entrance to the storage space was sealed by a barrier. Each touch would create a ripple on the surface of the barrier, and only his divine sense could easily pass through it.

Only after confirming that everything was correct did he feel relieved and lay down on the bed on his back.

The voice of the Lord of Xuan Chen drifted over: "Actually, there's no need for such trouble. With me inside, no one else can see anything at all."

"You can't stay a spirit forever, can you?" Lin Ran replied casually. "Once you've fully recovered, you'll eventually have to come out."

The Lord of Xuan Chen remained silent for a moment: "That makes sense."

The next morning, Lin Ran opened his eyes and glanced at the corner of the wall.

The body had been standing in the corner for two days; if it were an ordinary corpse, it would probably have already decomposed.

However, the bodies of extraordinary martial artists are inherently different from ordinary people, and with the addition of corpse control techniques and array isolation, the entire corpse is currently still alive.

Lin Ran was considering whether to continue using the illusion to control and take away the corpse when a flash of inspiration struck him.

Can a corpse be placed in a storage space?

Lord of Xuan Chen: "Of course."

Upon hearing this, Lin Ran immediately locked his divine sense onto the corpse, and with a thought, he instantly stored it in his Nine Heavens Pendant.

"That saves me trouble." Lin Ran raised an eyebrow and got up to go to the bathroom to wash up.

After breakfast, everyone gathered in the lobby of the training center. Zhang Qichuan counted the number of people and led ten students onto the return vehicle.

The morning sunlight brings the whole city to life.

The vehicle drove along the street, with traffic flowing past the window.

Upon arriving at the airport, everyone boarded the plane one by one.

A flight attendant poked her head out of the work area, shouted something towards the cockpit, and then went back inside.

A moment later she poked her head out again, this time with a look of confusion on her face.

She walked to Zhang Qichuan's side and whispered a few words to him.

Zhang Qichuan frowned slightly, flipped through the list again, and then looked up and scanned the cabin.

Seeing this, Lin Ran stood up from his seat, walked to Zhang Qichuan's side, and whispered, "That senior has left. We can just go back."

Zhang Qichuan turned his head to look at Lin Ran, his face showing realization.

He nodded, closed the list, and said to the flight attendants, "Everyone's here, prepare for takeoff!"

The flight attendants seemed slightly puzzled, but ultimately didn't ask any further questions.

Before long, the aircraft slowly took off.

After the safety demonstration at the front of the cabin, the display screen switched to a flight path map, with the dot representing the aircraft moving south along a blue curve.

Kyoto gradually shrank outside the porthole, eventually becoming a gray square swallowed by the clouds.

More than an hour later, the dot on the flight path map had traveled more than halfway.

The clouds outside the window gradually thinned, revealing the rolling mountains below and the occasional town flashing by.

As they approached the new sea, the aircraft suddenly shuddered.

The entire fuselage felt as if it had been hit from the side by something, and the lights inside the cabin started flashing at the same time.

Everyone looked panicked, and Chu Xining instinctively grabbed Lin Ran's arm.

Zhang Qichuan stood up from his seat and walked quickly to the porthole.

Outside the window, a giant golden eagle was approaching.

With a wingspan of tens of meters, each feather gleamed with a metallic sheen, and the airflow generated by the flapping of the wings caused the aircraft to shake violently.

The golden eagle's vertical pupils stared intently at the aircraft, like a predator locking onto its prey.

"A sixth-order mutated golden eagle." Zhang Qichuan's voice was slightly deep.

At this moment, the golden eagle flapped its wings again, and the aircraft was pushed to one side by the air blast.

Zhang Qichuan unbuckled his seatbelt, stood up, and walked towards the cabin door: "I'll stop it, you guys get out first!"

If he can't get these students back safely, all his previous efforts will have been in vain.

The moment the hatch closed behind him, the golden eagle had already pounced on the front of the aircraft.

Zhang Qichuan stood in mid-air, drawing the long sword from his waist. The cyan true energy flowing on the sword condensed into an arc-shaped blade of energy.

He swung his sword, the blade slicing through the air and striking the golden eagle squarely in the belly.

when!

A tremendous clanging sound of metal clashing against metal traveled through the aircraft's hull into the cabin.

However, a shallow white mark was cut into the feathers on the golden eagle's belly, but the skin was not even broken.

This sixth-tier golden eagle's body was as hard as iron, and its feathers were comparable to armor plates made of fine steel.

Zhang Qichuan's all-out attack on the air blade failed to break through its defense.

Fortunately, this attack also diverted the golden eagle's attention.

"Hey!"

The golden eagle let out a sharp cry, abandoned its aircraft, turned around, and pounced on Zhang Qichuan.

With its wings folded, its massive body, accelerated by gravity, transformed into a golden cannonball, crashing into the protective aura that Zhang Qichuan had hastily conjured.

Bang!

The qi surged violently, and Zhang Qichuan was knocked back more than ten meters, tumbling several times in the air before regaining his footing.

He was merely a peak Transcendent Realm martial artist, already a realm lower than a sixth-order mutated beast.

Being in the air with nowhere to grab onto, it was already quite an achievement to maintain one's balance amidst the hurricane created by the golden eagle.

Wanting to win is simply wishful thinking.

The golden eagle gave him no chance to breathe, flapping its wings repeatedly, and several solid wind blades were flung out from the edges of its wings, sealing off all his space to dodge.

Ding ding ding!

Zhang Qichuan swung his sword to block several attacks, producing a metallic clanging sound.

Bang!

In the rush, he was ultimately unable to catch all the wind blades and was struck on the shoulder by one of them, causing him to fall from mid-air.