Dual Cultivation God Returns

Chapter 723  Recognizing sincerity

"So, shall we go?", Wu Long chuckled toward Hong Yue after Old Yen left the area to go back.

"Where to?", she stood up from the boulder she was sitting on, since from their discussion it didn't look like there was much for him to do, and he couldn't return to the Mystic Realm.

"Real-estate search", he said with a bright smile, and seeing the look in her eyes shrugged his shoulders, "Haha, come now, don't look at me with such sharp eyes, I'm not joking, we need a Spiritual Land, so we're going to look for one"

"Just like this?", Hong Yue raised her eyebrow.

"I was postponing it far too long, since I thought it would be easier to do after Old Yen and Madam Liang were fully operational within the city, and thus could provide information, and I paid the price for delaying it with the incident at the plateau. Not to mention, we can't keep having secret meetings in the middle of the woods right?", he spoke as he was disabling all of the concealing arrays and disposing of the talismans he set up in the area, while a small fox landed on his shoulder and comfortably sat there, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Hong Yue's eyes narrowed at that sight, but inwardly she was thinking over his words.

It made sense for him to want a Spiritual Land.

After all, Wu Long required massive amounts of Spiritual Qi to cultivate, and if done in open territories, where draining that much of it was too obvious, it brought unnecessary attention.

Even now, he needed to cultivate to solve the problem with his condition, but would once more attract too much attention if he started doing it somewhere random. If he had a Spiritual Land, he would avoid causing such an uproar whenever he wanted to just cultivate.

Not to mention, that the Spiritual Qi inside Fen Baihu's Mystic Realm came from the outside world, meaning that currently his entire Sect was cultivating with just the amount that permeated most of the normal territories on the continent.

It was fine for those who were in Nine Mortal Realms, as it was still far better than what they were used to in the Three Continents, but for those already in Seven Profound Realms it was lacking.

And on top of that, having a Spiritual Land would serve double purpose as a base of operations on the continent.

'But… there's no such thing as a free, vacant Spiritual Land', she thought as her crimson eyes watched the little fox lazily yawn on his shoulder.

Spiritual Land was a valuable resource, for Sects and other such groups, perhaps the most valuable of all in the world of cultivation. It was as essential for cultivators as a water source for mortals.

Which meant that all of them were occupied by one force or another. Even if this was considered a countryside now, there would still not be such a thing as a Spiritual Land without owner.

"I thought you wanted to look good in front of that goodie-two-shoes lady of yours", Hong Yue snorted, as it became apparent from the upper half of her face that she was smirking under the mask.

"Hahaha, Lan'er certainly has a stronger sense of justice and moral compass than average, and she's a bit too empathetic. But that doesn't mean she's naive or delusional, she can make pragmatic choices as well", Wu Long's smile turned carefree as he talked about Wei Lan.

'He's making that look again… whenever any lady of his Dao Family comes up in conversation, or something reminds him of any one of them, he has that look in his eyes', Hong Yue's eyes focused on his face, and especially his eyes and thus she slightly froze when those eyes turned to her, their gazes meeting straight on.

"But, I'm not really pretending in front of her", he snickered a little as he saw her hurriedly look away, adding with a bit of mischief in his eyes, "Maybe just a little sometimes?"

"Hah, someone who's not pretending is going to take over a Spiritual Land that already belongs to someone else?", she made sure that her voice sounded sarcastic enough, relying on it to gloss over the fact she was caught staring at him before. After all, she was not expecting a continuation of the talk, and thus did not foresee him turning to her.

"First, pretending or not aside, why do you automatically assume I'm going to do something that goes against Lan'er's or anyone's conscience? Didn't I say we're going to look for it? I didn't say we're going on a raid", he smirked, "There are many ways to take possession of a Spiritual Land, and many factors that influence whether that acquisition process goes against conscience or not. It could also not belong to someone because there's a Demonic Beast occupying it that small Sects don't have a chance against"

'... I don't get it... He actually stopped to talk instead of just brushing me aside when I made that casual remark, and he's not dodging my words with jokes or simple excuses that don't mean anything, he's really answering me...', she thought with a bit of puzzlement as what she initially thought would be just small talk, with him making a joke to gloss it over, now started to turn into a conversation.

"You say that, but you're not looking for a simple Spiritual Land, are you?", she then replied while crossing her arms, expecting for him to now make up a quick answer to get it over with.

But she didn't speak just for that to happen either, she did have a point.

After all, an average or weak Spiritual Land was not going to cover his needs. She knew that if he was aiming for a Spiritual Land, it had to be a somewhat powerful one, if not one of the best ones around, and those were for sure occupied by someone, and it would not be a small group that would be in a position to easily and willingly let go of their prized Spiritual Land.

Even the last option he listed, of a Demonic Beast occupying it, was not something she took seriously, since maybe a small and weak Spiritual Land would be too insignificant for a more powerful organization to really put effort in subduing the beast, while at the same time any smaller forces would be powerless to clear it, but a large and rich Spiritual Land was too much of an enticement to leave alone even for major forces.

"That's why I called it a search. You never know unless you look into it. We're going to look around and see if there's a suitable one that we can get our hands on. Just assuming there isn't one is a bit too dismissive, don't you think?", he chuckled, surprising her once again by actually answering.

"Hah, and you're saying that you're not pretending. Why do all that if you can find someone you can beat and take their Spiritual Land?", she shook her head as if he confirmed her point.

"Hmm, do I look like someone who would pretend to be someone I'm not, just to look good in front of a woman? Is that what's reflected in your eyes?", he asked with a smirk, and her eyes widened.

'Again... and again..., why is he not dodging the topic? I know he doesn't really care if I think he's pretending, or if I don't believe him... why does he take time to talk to me?', she finally couldn't deny that it wasn't just a whim of his to answer one or two questions.

She fully expected him to not really engage in this conversation, which was why up to here she still talked in a halfhearted manner that implied she was not invested in their discussion, and yet something that she did not understand herself was driving her to mix in some of her real thoughts into her words. And it as those real thoughts that he was answering.

Not that it was something she expected of him specifically, she just thought that was the standard behavior of people toward someone who they had no reason to really interact with.

'No... if I think about it, he was like that before too... he doesn't evade answering or brush it aside if I talk to him... I've never seen him do that to anyone too...', she realized that in the past, when he caught her snooping around his room on Cao Xiang's ship in the Three Continents, their conversation was something that surprised her as well. She just never interacted with him enough to know that it wasn't a one-off thing.

It was a simple thing, but the fact he decided to have this talk, and face her while doing so instead of simply treating it as a side distraction while doing something else, and then randomly finishing it with some remark, was a show of , as she saw it, consideration, that she did not anticipate.

"You don't look like someone who needs to do that… but you never know…", she hesitated at the end, but decided to meet that gesture of facing her, voicing her doubts instead of avoiding to mention them to not make this conversation last too long. "Hahaha, that's fair", but to her surprise yet again, he simply laughed without getting angry or defensive. In fact, he acknowledged that it was hard for her to tell what kind of person he was. After all, despite following her twin to join this group quite some time ago, the amount of time the two actually spent around each other was minimal.

So it made sense she didn't know much about him.

She only started to appear next to him when they came to this world, driven by her curiosity of what made him so appealing to her twin. But even then, it was for short amounts of time, and only happened without directly interacting with him herself. For the most part she just observed him from the side inside the mansion, when he spent time around his beauties.

So all in all, the only time she interacted with him was their relatively short talk that happened while capturing that spy of the Ember Palm Pavilion, and even then they only talked about the circumstances surrounding them.

In fact, this was the first conversation since that time on the ship in the Boundless Mortal World, that they had a lengthy conversation discussing his thinking and intentions and not some other topic.

But most of all, even for someone as good at reading people and their intentions like her, since it came with her profession, it was impossible to read him, who had such immaculate control of his emotions and impulses, that she would not really know if he was acting even if he was. Besides, there was one thing she had trouble discerning, since it was something she had almost no ties to apart from her connection with Hong Ye. It was something he was demonstrating to her this whole time, something she mistook for polite consideration, it was sincerity.