Chapter 47: Fishing? How Can That Beat Electro-Fishing!

On the morning of the third day,

Xu Gu headed to Alchemy Peak at the agreed time.
Mi Suhui and Kong Haoran had been waiting for ages already, faces full of eagerness.

As Xu Gu walked up and got a good look at the two of them, his brows twitched. He blinked a few times, honestly unable to understand.

It wasn’t just him.
At Alchemy Peak, Blueflame Elder and Redfire Elder, who were waiting to open the path to the Fallen Spirit Pool for them, had just descended from the sky. Their faces were all smiles at first.

But when they saw Mi Suhui and Kong Haoran, their expressions instantly went pitch-black.
The two elders took a deep breath at the same time, utterly speechless.

The reason?

Mi Suhui and Kong Haoran were both draped in white gauze nets shrouded in thick black miasma.
Each held a fishing rod in one hand, and in the other… a cudgel wreathed in wailing ghostly shadows.

The more you looked, the weirder it got.

“What are you two doing?” Xu Gu asked.

“Catching Fallen Spirits, of course,” Kong Haoran’s eyes flashed slyly. He sent a sound transmission:

“Those two old demons, Redfire and Blueflame, would never do a losing business.

“If they dare let us fish freely for a whole month, that means those Fallen Spirits must be very hard to catch. Wouldn’t surprise me if a month passes and we don’t land a single one.

“So we brought nets. This is webbing woven from Sky-Spider Demon Silk. Forget Fallen Spirits—even a flood dragon can’t get out once it’s caught!”

“Don’t worry, we even altered the net to wear it as clothing. Even if they don’t allow fishing nets, they can’t forbid us from wearing clothes, right?” Mi Suhui added.

“…”

Xu Gu’s eye twitched, and he pointed at the cudgels in their hands. “And those?”

“Mourning clubs! Crafted from South Pole Silverwood—one smack and even a flood dragon goes down. That’s in case the Fallen Spirits struggle after getting netted; one club to the head, they’re out cold, then we bag them!”

Kong Haoran lifted his mourning club and deliberately flexed the bulging muscles on his arm.

Xu Gu was even more speechless.

Are you two really righteous-path undercover?
Even many veteran demon cultivators couldn’t manage to be this… demonic.

“We even practiced this several times,” Mi Suhui chimed in. “Guaranteed we’ll bring back a big haul.”

This was a plan the two of them had cooked up together.

They both puffed their chests out in sync, heads tipped back at a proud forty-five degrees, smiles crooked with smugness.

Might as well have written “We’re geniuses” across their faces.

Then they turned, puzzled, to Xu Gu.

“Senior Brother, you didn’t prepare anything? Or is it in your storage bag? Are we allowed to bring storage bags? They shouldn’t ban that… right?”

“I didn’t bring anything,” Xu Gu shook his head.

“Huh? You should’ve said something earlier. We thought you had an even better idea, so we didn’t come to ask you,” Kong Haoran and Mi Suhui said, genuinely surprised.

That was the truth—they just instinctively felt that as long as Senior Brother Xu made a move, it would be something world-shaking, so they didn’t bother him.

At first, Mi Suhui had suggested going to see how Senior Brother Xu was preparing, but Kong Haoran firmly refused:

“If we rely on Senior Brother Xu for everything, how are we supposed to grow?”

He’d said it full of righteousness.

They really hadn’t expected Xu Gu to show up with… nothing.

Kong Haoran turned back and said, “Senior Brother Xu, don’t worry, once we’ve netted enough, we’ll let you use some.”

As he spoke, he patted the net he was wearing as a coat, proudly asking, “Well? Isn’t this move brilliant?”

“It’s… not bad,” Xu Gu said with a polite dry laugh. “But why didn’t you just practice some lightning spells? Zap all the Fallen Spirits and pick them up off the water. Why go through all this trouble?”

“Hiss—right! We could just blast the entire pool!”

“We never thought of that!”

The two of them froze, then their eyes lit up with fervor as they turned to Xu Gu, full of admiration.

“As expected of Senior Brother Xu!

“So that’s what you were doing these past few days, right? Practicing lightning spells?”

“…”

Xu Gu fell silent.

You two actually took that seriously?

These old demons might not have the highest combat power, but every one of them is a master of dirty tricks. You think they’re just going to leave an obvious loophole lying around?

Traditional cheating methods are definitely off the table.

Sure enough, Blueflame Elder and Redfire Elder finally tore their eyes away from Mi Suhui and Kong Haoran. Though their faces were still dark, they didn’t say anything about the two. Instead, they turned to Xu Gu and asked very kindly:

“Is there anything you want to bring? You can bring whatever you like.”

Obvious hint:
If you want to arm yourself like those two maniacs, we’ll allow it.

“No need. Just this tiger is enough,” Xu Gu replied with a smile.

As he spoke, he pulled out a necklace. Embedded in the center was a pitch-black gem.

It was a magic artifact he’d borrowed from his “guide” Yaphenon—capable of storing living creatures.

He’d placed a tiger inside.

“A tiger?”

All four of them—two elders and two juniors—were stunned, utterly baffled.

They thought for quite a while, and still couldn’t see any connection between a tiger and catching Fallen Spirits.

If anyone else was doing this, they’d already be mocking him as a lunatic.
But because it was Xu Gu, they could only question whether they had failed to comprehend the deeper meaning.

“Honored Elders, can we also go catch ourselves a tiger and bring it in?”

Kong Haoran and Mi Suhui instantly chose to copy his homework.

They didn’t understand why Senior Brother Xu wanted a tiger, but copying him couldn’t possibly be wrong.

“…”

Blueflame and Redfire’s expressions went several shades darker.

They were truly sick of these so-called Heaven-sent Demon Children.

“What are you saying? We can’t hear you,” Blueflame Elder said flatly.

As he spoke, he sealed a hand sign. A vortex-like gate suddenly opened in midair ahead of them. From the other side came the howls of countless malevolent spirits and savage ghosts, the pressure so thick it weighed on the chest.

“Off you go.”

The two elders grabbed the three juniors, and with wild, arrogant flair—like peerless demon gods descending—simply hurled them into the portal.

“Ahhh—!”

A scream went up.

Not from Xu Gu and the others.
But from the living beings already inside the Fallen Spirit Pool.

“So this… is the Fallen Spirit Pool?”

Xu Gu’s white robe fluttered, one hand tucked behind his back as his body glided down through the air, landing lightly on his toes.

Mi Suhui and Kong Haoran also landed steadily.

They all frowned and looked ahead.

What lay before them was a gigantic, pitch-black deep pool, oozing eerie black light and chilling mist. Dense miasma shrouded the surroundings.

In the dark water below, enormous shadows rolled and twisted, sending waves of cold out in all directions.

Around the pool, however, stood a crowd of figures.

Every one of them had a pale face and a thin, frail frame. All clutched fishing rods in their hands and stared nervously at the water below, as if waiting for some big catch to bite.

“What’s going on here?” Mi Suhui and Kong Haoran tensed up, guarding themselves as they scanned the people around the pool.

Xu Gu’s gaze flickered, and he answered calmly:

“They think they’re fishing.

“But in reality, they are the bait.

“The Fallen Spirits in this pool have to feed on living flesh and blood, and on essence, energy, and spirit. With a pool this large, the amount of food required is enormous. If Redfire and Blueflame went out to kill and gather blood food themselves, the risk would be too high—they’d easily be noticed by the righteous path and the authorities.”

“So those two old demons set up a scheme to trick demon cultivators from all over the land into coming here to ‘fish for Fallen Spirits’?”

“And the price for fishing is to pay a portion of their own essence, qi, and blood to feed the Fallen Spirits?”

“Then in the end they get nothing, and their own life force is drained away?”

Mi Suhui and Kong Haoran picked up the thread.

They weren’t stupid; with Xu Gu’s hint, they could infer the general idea.

And then both of them looked grim, a newfound respect in their eyes for those old monsters.

After spending this recent stretch of time with them, they’d almost started to think these demon elders were just a bunch of clowns. They hadn’t expected them to be this sinister and crafty.

Sure enough, you must never underestimate any demon cultivator.

“Impressive. Truly, the heroes of the world are as numerous as the carp crossing the river,”

Xu Gu sighed inwardly, then turned his gaze to the cultivators fishing around the edges.

He said to Mi Suhui and Kong Haoran,

“Don’t worry about them. We’re not the same as they are.

“We pay no price to fish here, and we have the best spots.

“Though they look close to the pool, they’re actually very far. Because of the restrictions, they can’t get near the true edge of the Fallen Spirit Pool—they can only fish from afar. They won’t interfere with us.”

Mi Suhui and Kong Haoran both nodded. They picked good positions, then began to cast their nets while dropping their lines, planning to catch with both methods at once.

Xu Gu wasn’t in any rush.

He released the tiger, then said to it, “Dig yourself a cave.”

“???”

The tiger was completely baffled.

You bagged me up and brought me all the way here… just to make me dig a hole? Are you kidding me?

But it was bound by his “Nine Bulls Two Tigers” technique and had no choice but to obey.

Meanwhile, outside—

Blueflame Elder frowned as a bad feeling struck him.

“When we opened the gate to the Fallen Spirit Pool just now, I think we might’ve overdone it a little… just to look imposing.

“I may have torn open quite a few space rifts. You don’t think any other cultivators slipped in during the process… do you?”

“No way,” Redfire Elder shook his head. “If someone else had slipped in, Xu Demon Child would’ve told us already.”

(End of this Chapter)