At a certain moment, Furan felt a pull that caused her to lose focus for a second; when she regained consciousness, the first thing she felt was light.
Sunlight spilled onto a cobblestone road, surrounded by a somewhat messy street, where many people in strange clothing were watching her.
They wore leather clothes, and although the fabric was a grayish-tan, their outfits were embellished with several uniquely colored stones, making them look much more aesthetic.
Furan looked around and found that only these people were surrounding her; not only was Weilin Te not by her side, but she didn't see any other Spirit Realm Rangers either.
"Who is she?"
"She looks like an outsider."
"An outsider? Then have you notified the Guard?"
Furan had just cleared her thoughts, but before she could react, a commotion suddenly broke out in the crowd.
The crowd split open, and several people wearing clearly different clothing walked over.
Their clothes were covered in a layer of spikes made from various polished stones, distributed across their chests and arms; strangely, the material of their clothes still seemed to be cloth, appearing to have no armor at all.
They held weapons in their hands, the sizes of which were significantly larger than those Furan had seen in the Material Realm; she could feel the weight brought by the broad body of the axes.
Furan instinctively wanted to draw her longsword, but after fumbling twice, she remembered that bringing weapons into the Spirit Realm required special processing.
She hadn't found the relevant craft in Apprentice City; even Teacher Yiqi had to send his weapons elsewhere and have them sent back to bring them into the Spirit Realm, which was very troublesome.
So her longsword wasn't brought in; she only had a purple short blade on her now.
Furan drew the short sword directly from her waist with her left hand and gripped that book in her right hand to prevent it from falling if a fight broke out later.
Furan thought she was taking precautions, but the other side didn't see it that way; a leader said in a stern tone:
"Outsider, put down your weapon!"
Furan certainly couldn't put down her weapon at the first request; according to her understanding, even if the two sides eventually resolved things peacefully, they would have to go back and forth a few times before she could put down her weapon to show she was friendly.
In her view, her goal was to save this city, so naturally, she didn't have a life-or-death relationship with the people in this city.
"No, I cannot put down my weapon."
As she spoke, she even brandished her weapon to indicate she would absolutely not put it down now.
But something she hadn't expected happened; the opponent gave a cold laugh.
"Then don't put it down. Go! Just don't kill her; take her alive."
Then the opponent directly hoisted an axe, raised it over his head, and charged straight toward her.
This left Furan a bit bewildered. Why start fighting immediately? Shouldn't both sides confront each other for a bit and then shake hands and make peace? Why start fighting without any back-and-forth at all?
Since the opponent had launched an attack, Furan had no choice but to prepare for battle.
She gripped her dagger and blocked the opponent's attack as the axe was falling.
The purple blade directly jammed the axe, preventing it from moving down even a fraction; the opponent's body, which was still moving forward due to momentum, jerked to a halt, barely maintaining balance.
Furan felt this parry; she had almost failed to block it. The opponent's strength was greater than imagined.
"Is this trial so difficult? How can a passing grunt have such great strength?" Furan wondered in her heart.
She also spotted five or six people in the same clothing hurrying past behind the opponent, showing that these Guards were just common soldiers, not elite mobs or anything like that.
Although she suffered from the disadvantage of weapon size, the opponent's strength was so great that even with her constitution, she could only barely block it. What would the other Spirit Realm Rangers do?
According to her observations, the constitutions of the other Spirit Realm Rangers were generally lower than hers is now; only a few could match her, or at most exceed her constitution by a small margin.
She dared to say that if those Spirit Realm Rangers didn't have very powerful Combat Skills, they probably couldn't even beat a single grunt.
Since she was still in battle, Furan suppressed her thoughts and began to focus on the fight.
The opponent found it even harder to accept that Furan had blocked his giant axe attack with a small dagger.
"This is impossible. I've drunk the divine water; why is the opponent's strength still greater than mine?"
This caused him to stop making further moves, instead mechanically applying force to the axe.
Furan stepped forward with a side-turn, and the force blocking the giant axe vanished instantly; the purple short sword pulled away and moved forward from the side, while the giant axe could only follow its momentum downward, unable to make any other reaction.
Furan looked at the opponent's neck and decided not to use the dagger to finish him off directly. What if both sides made peace? It would be hard to talk if she killed someone.
So she leaned her left elbow forward, short sword pointed down, wrist reaching her chest, and smashed an elbow with instantaneous power toward the opponent's face.
The opponent, who was tightly gripping his weapon, was knocked back a few steps by this elbow strike but also stabilized his balance; he used one hand to feel the place where he was hit.
Furan recalled the sensation of hitting the opponent just now; something felt wrong.
"Too hard! How can there be such hard skin?!" Logically, if Furan's strike had landed on someone who was just a bit strong, they probably would have been knocked unconscious on the spot, and their skull would have been deformed.
Instead, Furan felt like she had hit wood, and looking at the place where the opponent was hit, there was only a bit of bruising; he didn't seem to have taken damage.
"How are you?" another enemy stepped forward to support the man who had been knocked back and asked.
"I'm fine. Let's go together; the opponent's strength is a bit high," that man said as he recovered; he put his hand back on his weapon, seemingly preparing to fight again.
"We can talk," Furan suggested.
"Talk about what? Talk after you put down your weapon!" The response Furan got was the opponent charging here again, about to launch an attack.
Furan frowned; looking at the opponent like this, it seemed they didn't intend to communicate.
She scanned her surroundings and decided not to waste any more time; another Guard in the same clothing had noticed the situation here and was about to walk into the crowd.
"I'll go find Weilin Te; I won't waste time with these people."
Furan knew that if she continued to stay here, it would definitely be a waste of time, and enemies might come in a continuous stream.
Thus, she activated her Breathing Technique and Spiritual Power, giving her physical attributes a massive boost.
However, due to the nature of the Spirit Realm, she didn't dare to add the full boost from her Spiritual Power, so after the enhancement, her constitution reached around 5.5.
By the time a Guard from outside squeezed into the crowd, he only saw this scene: his three colleagues were all lying on the ground groaning in pain, and no one else was to be seen.
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