CURSED AND LOVE

THE SUSPICIONS

"Your humble junior name is Mario Marasigan." His voice was gentle, and his tone was unhurried as he spoke.

"So you are the Surigao Country's Third Prince; it's little wonder you showed such outstanding bearing."

The middle-aged man nodded and turned his eyes to the few others beside him and said with a laugh:

"Gentlemen, the Sacred Beast had only just manifested and I believe it is still within the forbidden forest. Let's just compete based on our own abilities and see who gets it first!" One immortal cultivator said. When he finished, the leader threw his head back and laughed aloud as he rode his sword to go search out the surroundings.

The immortal cultivators realize something and decide to leave, they were afraid they would lag behind, so they all left right after to search out the surrounding areas as well.

When the people below on the ground saw the immortal group leave, they all immediately heaved a sigh of relief unconsciously.

All cultivators in this country had never fated to meet one of immortal cultivators, who they nearly scared them out of their lives. But now, not just one, but they meet with face to face the eight immortal cultivators.

Seeing the eight cultivators of immortality ride off on their swords so captivatingly gracefully, fake Felisa's eyes were filled with yearning. She turned her head to Mario Marasigan beside her and said softly, "Prince Mario, when we have the chance, we should go together and get ourselves accepted into an immortality sect and learn to cultivate immortality as well!"

"Sure." Mario responded in a gentle voice, his handsome face smiling faintly. Seeing that he had nodded in agreement, her heart filled with delight as she said in a pliant voice, "Prince Mario, are we still going to continue searching for the Sacred Beast?"

"With those cultivators of immortality here, we will not stand a chance. Even if we managed to find it, we will only invite persecution from those people upon ourselves."

"Are we going back now, then?"

Hearing that, Mario Marasigan looked up at her and said gently, "You can go back first! I'll ask the Guardsman of Adonis to escort you back. I still need to go to the mountain to pass in the deepest reaches of the forbidden woods to help old Tabi to retrieve some mud from the heart of the well.

"I'll go with you."

She held on to Mario's sleeve and shook it before saying in a soft voice, "Prince Mario, I don't want to go back so soon. I want to stay with you."

"The deepest reaches of the forbidden forest has many entrapments, not like the area around here. Every hundred meters deeper that we move in further would see different dangers, especially at the heart of the well from the mountain pass. It is said that very few people go there as there are high-grade ferocious beasts of the third level guarding the place. Be good, go back home first, and I'll go look for you when I get back."

Hearing Prince Mario Marasigan words, the fake girl Felisa Adonis knew that he would not be letting her tag along, and she could only nod and say, "Alright! I'll return home first. Remember to come look for me when you get back."

"I will." He smiled slightly, and after glancing once more at her, he picked ten men from the group he had brought along with him and gave them their instructions:

"All of you escort Miss Felisa Adonis back to her residence safely, and if any mishap happens on the way, I will hold all of you responsible!"

"Yes!" The ten men answered respectfully and went to stand behind Guardsman Adonis.

After hearing those words, the fake girl Felisa Adonis was feeling rather blissful as she reluctantly bid a goodbye to Prince Mario Marasigan allowing Guardsman Adonis and his men to escort her home.

Only after seeing Felisa Adonis had gone a far enough distance did the smile on Prince Mario Marasigan's face fade, and his deep and calm gaze peered at the faraway figures before he collected himself and hid the deep thoughts and radiance in his eyes.

On the other side, hearing the commotion behind her, Jocefie Abad gave a great leap and rolled down the slope before picking herself up quickly, all the while cradling the golden egg in one arm as she stuck her back against a clay wall, trying her best to conceal herself behind the weeds in front of her to escape discovery.

A few heartbeats later, a lone cultivator of immortality was suddenly passing through the air, riding on a flying artifact, his eyes scanning the woods below for any suspicious figures or signs of movement.

Jocefie Abad stuck her back tightly against the wall and did not move in the slightest as she held her breath. It was not until the figure flying through the air had gradually flown further away and disappeared that she finally breathed out.

"Whew! That was really close! This egg has really brought me a lot of trouble!"

Her face creased up in a frown as she stared at the golden egg, thinking, "How was she going to deal with it?

She reached out her hand to knock on it, and there was no other sound other than the soft knocking she made.

She was thinking to herself that she would not be able to hide the egg, and the moment she met someone, she would definitely be found out. Those guys flying in the air were still looking for this egg, and they did not look like they would be leaving anytime soon. If she carried this egg with her to go look for Khallel Alcatraz, regardless of whether she would manage to reach there safely, she would be dragging him into untold danger if she was with him.

"What to do? With this troublesome thing?" Her brows creased up as she recalled the method to seal a contract from her mind. Her eyes lit up, and she immediately bit down on her finger to drip a drop of blood on the shell of the egg.

But somehow? That drop of blood was not absorbed into the shell of the egg but instead rolled down the side.

She stared hard at it and said, "Isn't it said that before beast types are born, dripping a drop of blood on them would contract them to you? Was that a hoax?" She did not give up, and she squeezed out another two drops of blood to drip on it, but there was still no response.

Finally, she had no choice but to give up.

"Huh? What's that noise?" She pricked up her ears and looked around, finally discovering that the faint noise seemed to be coming from below the ground.

As expected, when she looked down and observed the ground around her, she saw a spot where some earth was being pushed up, like something underground was boring through it.

"Burrowing gopher? It shouldn't be! There aren't any burrowing gophers that are this big!"

She stuffed the golden egg into her clothes before her chest and had wanted to leap off the rumbling ground, and her head had just popped up, and she immediately saw a middle-aged man riding a sword towards her area not too far away, and she instinctively backpedaled. But that one step backward had put her foot over loose soil, and her entire body lost its balance, and she fell into a hole below the loose soil's surface.

"Ahhhh!"

She cried out in surprise, and everything suddenly turned black. Her body slid down a steep drop, and the incredible speed at which everything was happening did not allow her any time to react.

Meanwhile, at the top, just after Jocefie had downed the slide, two burrowing gophers stuck their heads out of the ground and chittered a few times as they looked to their left and right. Shortly after, they once again went back to digging to fill up the hole that had been exposed to the surface.

Riding on his sword, the middle-aged man who was searching for the source of the sound earlier looked all around but did not see any humans around nor could he detect the presence of anyone there before he frowned deeply and asked, "Did I hear it wrongly?"

He released his consciousness to spread over the area a few times, and when he still did not find anything, he finally left the area, still riding his sword.

"AHH....."

Underground, Jocefie's cry of surprise reverberated in the tunnel as her body continued to slide down. It was completely dark, and she could see nothing. She only knew that the tunnel zigzagged left and right as she slid all the way down. Midway through the unstoppable fall, her foot seemed to have kicked into something fleshy, and with a shrill squeak, that soft ball of flesh had rolled down with her.

"Bam!"

"Ouch! Argh!"

She cried out in pain as her body fell forward from the momentum of the crazy slide. But she did not fall to the ground. She had fallen into the soft and fleshy thing that had been before her on that slide.

"Ow, ow! That really hurts."

Having slid down at such a pace all that way, the abrasions on her body could not be imagined, as she felt her entire body burning up in pain. Even then, when she saw the countless pairs of eyes surrounding her staring at her as they glowed a dull green in the dim darkness, she quickly leapt up.