Chapter 1318: Vacation!
Writer: StarReader
Proofreader : Silavin
Zhuo Fan carries himself with difficulty, wobbling back to Luo Clan, looking ragged and weary.
Kunpeng gasped in fright at his weakened state, hardly better than a cripple, but saw something in his steeled gaze. "You knew how this meeting was going to play out, so why did you still go through with it? Are you trying to allow Heavenly Sovereign to win?"
Everyone was panicking, thinking that their renewed hope got crushed before they could take a stand.
"Everything is going swimmingly." Zhuo Fan's attitude shifted from his previous warm and thoughtful actions, showing a harrowing bloody smile.
"Let's get you back inside and rest for now. We'll think about this later when you're healed. You're barely standing as it is." Luo Yunchang was frantic.
"No. Now's time for some good ol' fun!" Zhuo Fan grinned from ear to ear as he turned to the startled girls with some creepy hand motions any old perv would know their meaning from a mile away.
"T-this isn't the time for that!" Lei Yuting, the slowest to get away, cried out in embarrassment. "Aren't you supposed to be saving Sacred Domain from extinction? How can you do that if you're about to drop dead?"
She shrank, defending her sensibilities as Zhuo Fan's hands inched nearer.
As he was about to grab her, she closed her eyes, mortified from being seen like this by everyone she knew and worked with. Even the clan head was watching for crying out loud!
"Tag, you're it!" Zhuo Fan bopped her nose and skipped away, laughing all the while.
"Ugh, that insufferable punk!" Lei Yuting raged, shooting after him with all she had in her anger, catching Zhuo Fan easily as he was far too weak. "In bed, now!"
On the way to his room, he slipped out of his grasp, leaving the girls baffled. They all ran all over the place trying to pin him down, while also refraining from using too much strength and worsening his condition.
As minutes passed, the close calls of getting caught soon turned to never even catching a trace of him, making the girls slowly use more of their cultivation to get him, but even after ten minutes, there was no catching him. What was baffling, he seemed to be even livelier by the second.
Seeing him jumping and laughing around, the girls got into it, thinking he wasn't in that worse a state.
While he was having the time of his life, one short-tempered dragon was finding it increasingly annoying, unable to take this sudden and incomprehensible shift in demeanor.
Moments ago, he was sappy and corny with the girls and now he was playing around like there was no tomorrow. And by the looks of things, there wouldn't be if things continued like this. It was no different with him unconscious or awake at this point.
"That's enough!" He launched a fireball that Zhuo Fan barely dodged it. The attack was slow on purpose.
"Get him, for heaven's sake! We need him to rest if we want to stand any chance at beating Heavenly Sovereign while we're still alive!" At Dragon Ancestor's furious prompt, the other experts joined in to catch Zhuo Fan.
The Sword Kings and the elders gave their best to catch him while also going easy not to make it worse, but it was only a repeat of his game with the girls, with Zhuo Fan laughing and chuckling like a child. None could truly get a good hold of him. He just always slipped away right when they thought they had him.
"Stand still, you monkey! You think this is a game?" Dragon Ancestor's temper got the best of him and unleashed a full powered attack hitting him head on, even turning into a dragon as a result. "Oh, no!" He realized his mistake too late. There was no sight of Zhuo Fan, even in the aftermath of leveling everything in sight.
"Over here, scaley! What else did you think this is? Of course it's a game, one giant sandbox and we're its toys." Zhuo Fan appeared lounging on the dragon's snout, giving the dragon a headache as he tried crossing his eyes to see his taunting smirk.
"Argh! Get the hell of me!" He and Zhuo Fan played cat and mouse, albeit a far more dangerous one. One slip and he would be a goner. The others watched anxiously, picturing the worst, but their fears never came true. Now no one tried joining in, not wanting to go out in a literal blaze, glory or otherwise.
"Yes, of course!" Danqing Shen gasped, coming back from his thoughts. "The world is a playground, and we are its byproducts, bound by its limits and laws. Only by understanding its limits can we hope to break free of its restrictions. That's cultivation, going against the world's limits!"
"Someone gets it! High five, Shen!" The Sword King raised a reluctant hand, and felt someone tapping it, despite Zhuo Fan's voice being heard from a mile away.
"Got you now!" And here came Dragon Ancestor's fireball, forcing everyone to scatter for their lives, with Sword Child forced into intercepting it before there would be any collateral.
Danqing Shen, however, sat cross-legged then and there, his power growing, as did his path, with his aura changing in a bizarre way. The sky above him was warping, as if undecided if it should strike him down or welcome him.
"I see." Kunpeng surmised having watched Zhuo Fan bounce around like a child for the better part of the day. "He is actually using Child Sovereign's elusive dodging skill born from his path. He's going after another path!"
"Can he do that?" Sea Ao asked. "I thought a human can only form one path in their life."
"I don't know the details, but it seems like he can." Kunpeng replied. "We'll need to wait for him to stop the game before we can ask him. It's also helping him recover not just his cultivation after what Heavenly Sovereign did to him. It's beyond anything I've seen."
Only when everyone grew tired did Zhuo Fan stop, declaring, "It's time for a vacation!"
The experts groaned at his whimsical persona, not getting him at all, while the girls' mood slightly cheered up, thinking they would get some more time with him. If this was going to be their end, having the last few moments with him would be best. After all, weren't vacations usually among couples, or lovers in this case?
"We'll ask him after he comes back then." Kunpeng changed his stance, not wanting to stop Zhuo Fan from what he was doing. He knew there was a method to this madness, thought he couldn't see it.