Dual Cultivation God Returns-Chapter 943: An outing

They stood in silence for some time, both looking at the city, which was gradually covered by the darkness of the sky, and yet lighting up with brilliance of uncountable lanterns.

Wu Long’s expression was relaxed, as if simply enjoying the scenery, or perhaps the moment itself, while Hong Yue had a look full of thoughts as she dealt with the shock of her recent realization.

As the city fully embraced the late evening, it seemed to come to life even more than during the day. The flickering of the lights on the busy streets and in windows of homes and manors in residential areas, as well as the myriad of sounds combining into an ambient hum carried by the wind made it feel like the whole city was breathing.

After a considerable time, Hong Yue’s gaze finally became clearer, the complicated thoughts and emotions visible in her eyes disappearing to once more reveal her usual unreadable look. The view before her, that she didn’t really see or pay attention to, finally caught her attention, and she suddenly thought about his question before.

"Come to think of it, I haven’t asked your view on the auction situation", she said, glancing at him from the side.

"Oh my, are you interested in my thoughts?", he smiled with an amused and lightly curious look appearing in his eyes as he turned his head to her.

But contrary to his expectations, not only did she reply, instead of meeting his gaze head-on as usual she avoided it by pretending to just happen to look back at the city, and to top it off, her tone was slightly flustered as well, "Y-your idea of listening to the opinions and observations of others is new for me, but I agree that it makes sense. So I wanted to try it, that’s all"

His eyes almost imperceptibly widened, and then shone with surprise, a more intense curiosity and delight, ’Hmm, well this is certainly new... and a pleasant surprise...’

He didn’t expect that her tight guard against him would suddenly weaken here, and it seemed like by a considerable amount. It happened abruptly and - more interestingly - seemingly without an apparent cause, at least it wasn’t clear to him what triggered it.

’Truly, you never know what might happen’, he mused as he pondered whether he could tease her a bit more, but ultimately decided not to ruin it by being too hasty, he was already more than happy with the unexpected gain, so he answered her sincerely, "Your analysis of the situation is on point. This city... no, this continent exactly resembles a barrel full of explosive powder, with open fire lighting up and going out here and there around it"

Hong Yue’s gaze also grew sharp again as she focused on his answer.

Meanwhile, Wu Long continued, turning his gaze back to the city as well, "Right now the fire is under control, and its heat is not enough to reach the powder through the barrel, but we both know that’s not going to last long, and your observation about us growing the scale of the inevitable explosion is exactly right. However, that is not a point of concern for us - on the contrary, it is something to anticipate. In fact, it’s still not enough... it falls too short, we need it to grow a lot more than this"

"You’re saying you did it on purpose?", Hong Yue asked in slight confusion.

"I’d say yes but that would be a bit too simple and dishonest of an answer", Wu Long shook his head, "It is an inevitable outcome of the actions we took, that could become a concern - as you rightly pointed out - if we did not take it into consideration or mishandle it, but could also become an opportunity if we use it right. And since it couldn’t be avoided anyway, I didn’t want it to be the former"

"Couldn’t be avoided? That’s not something I thought I’d hear from you regarding things that you plan out into the future", she asked with a bit of curiosity in her tone.

His smile turned wry, "I suppose I should rephrase it: it couldn’t be avoided given our actions regarding the auction"

"Which means the importance of the auction outweighs the potentially dangerous effect of drawing this much attention and creating this commotion", Hong Yue drew a conclusion.

"Yes, the auction is that important to the Eternal Duality Valley as a whole, and before you ask, the timing could not have been postponed, at least not to a meaningful degree. If we could announce the auction earlier, or if we could set the date later, we would have done it, but in this case time isn’t on our side"

"Because to be beneficial instead of malignant, the commotion that we’re talking about has to be on a much larger scale than it currently is, which would’ve been easier to pull off with more time...", the crimson-eyed beauty nodded.

Seeing her expression which showed that she understood the gist of it but was reluctant to ask in more detail about the benefit of this situation, he smiled, "I need to go out into the city now, but it would be a shame to cut off our conversation here as it just reached the interesting part. Would you care to accompany me for a walk?"

She showed a strange expression, and asked in a slightly doubtful voice, "Are you saying it is fine for me to ask further?"

"It is indeed something that’s not easily spoken of, but that’s only in regards to people through whom it might spread. You, on the other hand, don’t have to be so reluctant about asking further, since there’s no way you would leak this information to anyone", Wu Long replied.

She turned her eyes to him. It would be hard for most people to notice because of how fundamentally good she was at concealing her thoughts and emotions, but it was clearly visible to Wu Long that there was intense surprise in her eyes.

"That’s a lot of trust...", she spoke in a voice a bit quieter than before.

"Of course, it’s because you are someone who can be trusted", he shrugged his shoulders as if he said something so obvious it didn’t even need to be mentioned.

Her gaze became more intense, but after a short pause, for some reason she didn’t pursue the topic further, instead accepting the offer to take a stroll through the city streets, only clarifying, "Should we switch to sound transmissions then?"

"Let’s just talk normally, while sound transmissions are secure, it’s still quite easy to notice that someone is using them. Speaking in sound transmissions for a long time while walking in public would only attract unnecessary attention. Instead, I can ensure no one can eavesdrop, and our conversation would sound completely different and benign on the outside. coupled with the Cloak of Perception that I’m finally starting to get better at, we will basically complete dissolve into the crowd", Wu Long shook his head, while taking out a simple wooden mask out of his robe and putting it on, "I will wait for you here"

"Wait for me?", Hong Yue raised her eyebrow.

"If you go out in your usual assassin clothes, you would stand out quite a lot even if I tried to cover us with the Cloak of Perception. I’m sure Ye’er will help you pick out something you can wear to blend in outside... Baihu", Wu Long explained, and without waiting for an answer, called out.

A small white fox appeared on his shoulder, and a mystic mist cloud started enveloping Hong Yue in a blink of an eye.

"Wha-...? Wait, I-...", the crimson-eyed beauty didn’t even have time to properly react, when her figure disappeared.

"Huhuhu, her little sister’s quite excited to hear you two are going out together", Fen Baihu chuckled, closing her eyes from the comfort as his hand gently patted her, but after a bit, she mumbled a puzzled "Hmm?"

"What’s wrong?", Wu Long asked curiously.

"Ah... no, it’s just... for some reason Sister Hong Ye called other Sisters as well...", Fen Baihu replied in a confused voice, causing Wu Long to chuckle.

"That playful girl, she probably waited for this moment for a long time", he shook his head with a wry smile, remembering how flustered Hong Ye was when Wu Long’s beauties took her away before their first date, ’Heh, she must’ve wanted someone to experience that at her hands after that... to think she would choose her own older twin for that...’

However, what that meant, was that the waiting time became considerably longer, since at this moment, within the Mystic Realm Manor, there was an entire concilium of beauties deciding how to dress up Hong Yue.

Wu Long didn’t mind though, chatting with Fen Baihu in a relaxed atmosphere.

After some time, Hong Yue finally appeared with a bewildered look in her eyes. The impression she gave off was as if she just went through some kind of pandemonium, and barely escaped, still shaken to the core by the experience.

’Heh, as expected of an older sister, she fought them off far more resiliently than Ye’er’, he inwardly chuckled as he could instantly tell that unlike her younger twin she still wore her skin-tight assassin clothes underneath the long-skirted long-sleeved white robe.

That, however, didn’t diminish this new appearance in any way.

Her hair was collected up with a rather large piece of expensive jewelry, but it didn’t look gaudy. Rather, since it and the matching earrings were the only jewelry on her, and the robe had a subtle, restrained design without any patterns despite being from high-quality silk, it became an accent that gave her an elegant and graceful look.

Instead of her usual mask, there was a white veil covering her upper face, only leaving her mouth visible, which made quite a stark contrast since the portions of her face that were usually covered and exposed were reversed.

"It’s going to be hard to not catch attention with such a gorgeous woman beside me, but I guess it’s not the suspicious kind of attention. Rather, this is even better ", Wu Long smiled.

"...", Hong Yue seemingly froze up at his words, but as Wu Long turned, gesturing ’shall we?’, she eventually moved to walk, and as soon as she was close he turned to join her.

Hong Yue noticed that the small fox didn’t disappear and continued to make itself comfortable on Wu Long’s shoulder. That somehow made her relieved, although she didn’t understand why would it be otherwise if they were alone without the fox.

Regardless, it seemed Fen Baihu wasn’t interested in their conversation as she laid down and closed her eyes, snuggling her head to Wu Long’s neck and enjoying occasional pats, with only her eight fluffy tails occasionally lazily swaying.