An hour later.
In the inn, Yuan Nuhe had lost his patience. His expression was grim, and the veins on his forehead pulsed from the long wait.
Why hadn’t Yuan Wen returned yet?
“Bang!”
Yuan Nuhe stood up in a fury and spat out a mouthful of blood essence to track Yuan Wen’s last known location.
A moment later, he opened his eyes, which were as dark as stagnant water.
She disappeared at North Mountain…
Had she discovered he intended to use her as the main soul and fled ahead of time?
Executing his movement technique, Yuan Nuhe’s anger flared as he left the town and rushed toward the north.
Two sticks of incense later.
With a heavy face, he slowly came to a stop in a clearing halfway up the mountain. He saw that the place where the Thousand Soul Banner was supposed to be had been carved with a single word: “Death!”
“Who is it?!”
Yuan Nuhe let out an angry roar, his expression momentarily stunned.
He suddenly sensed something was wrong.
The faint wails of resentful spirits drifted toward him. Yuan Nuhe subconsciously turned around, only to see a young girl holding three Thousand Soul Banners, smiling at him apologetically.
Those are mine…
Yuan Nuhe opened his mouth, instinctively trying to summon the banners. After a moment, his eyes filled with shock.
He actually couldn’t sense the existence of the Thousand Soul Banners anymore!
However…
“Little girl, holding onto my artifacts is a bit dishonest, don’t you think?”
Sensing her aura, Yuan Nuhe suddenly felt a sense of relief, and a smile appeared on his face.
He stood tall, releasing the pressure of the Golden Core stage.
The girl before him was only at the middle stage of Foundation Establishment.
The girl looked at him curiously, not expecting this reaction from Yuan Nuhe.
She was holding the Thousand Soul Banners; wasn’t he afraid?
Yuan Nuhe smiled. “Little girl, I’ll give you two choices.”
Even if she had erased his mark, so what? The Thousand Soul Banners required specific manipulation methods; it wasn’t something just anyone could operate.
“Hand over the banners obediently and become one of my souls. If I’m in a good mood, I might leave your corpse intact.”
“Or… I will strike personally. I won’t have any mercy for a beautiful face, and you might die a very painful death.”
Black mist swirled around Yuan Nuhe’s hands as he said playfully, “So, what is your choice?”
A glint of greed flashed in his eyes.
Not only was this woman beautiful, but her soul was also much stronger than his younger sister’s…
If he could make her submit willingly, the combat power she could provide would be several times higher than if she were simply refined!
After all, ordinary resentful spirits only attacked mindlessly, but nurturing a war soul was entirely different.
“My master just told me something,” the girl said after a moment of thought, speaking very seriously.
She has a master?
Yuan Nuhe broke into a cold sweat. Fearing a sneak attack, he scanned his surroundings.
Gu Xianyu sighed and waved the Thousand Soul Banners. “Master said that villains often die from overconfidence. Because they are so confident, they talk too much…”
“Wooo—”
Instantly, black mist blotted out the sky as a mournful wind howled.
The playfulness on Yuan Nuhe’s face froze. He gnashed his teeth in hatred, lashing out with the black mist in his hands toward Gu Xianyu.
However, with a single wail, his black mist was actually blocked.
Behind the girl, hundreds of resentful spirits surged out of the Thousand Soul Banners, staring fixedly at Yuan Nuhe with heaven-piercing malice.
They had no thoughts and no consciousness, but they vaguely sensed a natural enmity toward this man.
Usually, when suppressed by the Thousand Soul Banners, they didn’t dare to resist, but now… they couldn’t wait to tear him apart.
“You all…”
Sweat poured down Yuan Nuhe’s face. Only now did he realize he had truly shot himself in the foot.
He never imagined that this girl could actually master the manipulation methods of the Thousand Soul Banners!
Weren’t these the secret techniques of the Holy Soul Sect? How could she possibly know them?
Secretly annoyed at his carelessness, Yuan Nuhe did not simply sit and wait for death.
He was extremely confident in his own strength. His body had absorbed some of the resentful spirits, allowing him to display the combat power of the middle stage of the Golden Core.
“Brother…”
At that moment, a ghostly, somewhat familiar cry rang out.
Yuan Nuhe was startled and looked up. Yuan Wen’s remnant soul was staring at him, weeping.
“Brother, you’ve finally come to save me…”
“Get away, you bitch!” Yuan Nuhe swung a palm of black mist. Seeing her crying face, his anger boiled over.
“If it weren’t for the mishap with you, I would have already entered the Holy Sect to practice!”
Yuan Wen looked at him blankly. “Brother, what did you say?”
“I asked you to set up a banner, yet you got killed by a cultivator a whole stage lower than you?” Yuan Nuhe stopped pretending and said viciously, “You actually told her the operation methods for the Thousand Soul Banners? Did you intend to set me up?!”
“I didn’t…”
“Hurry up and drive these spirits away! This is your mess!”
“Weren’t you also trapped by a middle-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator? How can you have the nerve to blame me?” Yuan Wen retorted, her eyes filling with resentment as she looked at Yuan Nuhe.
“Wasn’t that because of you?”
Yuan Nuhe slapped away a resentful spirit, his emotions spiraling out of control. “I’ve put up with you for a long time! If I hadn’t wanted to use you as the main soul for the banner, I would have…”
Halfway through his sentence, he stopped abruptly.
Yuan Wen’s expression shifted, her resentment gradually turning into pure malice.
“What did you say?!”
She lunged forward, no different from the other spirits, frantically chasing and biting her own brother!
Yuan Nuhe cried out in misery as he desperately defended himself. He could barely hold off the attacks, but he was unable to fully defeat these spirits.
After all, his power came from the Thousand Soul Banners. With several banners unleashed against him, winning was incredibly difficult.
Watching the scene of “sibling affection,” the master and disciple pair had strange expressions, unsure of what to say.
The plan was a success. The power of the Thousand Soul Banners was significant. Yuan Nuhe being mauled by the very spirits he had refined and dying here could be considered karmic retribution.
Half an hour later, Gu Xianyu finished off the dying Yuan Nuhe with a single sword strike. She felt as though she were in a dream.
“Master, did we… just finish the mission like that?”
“Not only did you finish it, but you also exceeded expectations.”
Jiang Tong said, “If he hadn’t been so confident, he might have died a bit slower.”
“I feel like he was even weaker than his sister…” the girl muttered as she tucked away the Thousand Soul Banners.
“No.”
Jiang Tong looked at the banners with wariness. “It’s that these evil artifacts are too powerful…”
The Holy Soul Sect… two hundred years later, that sect no longer existed.
What kind of existence was it in this era?
***
The master and disciple went to the stream to get their horses and galloped along the water toward the Shangyuan Sect.
A day later, Gu Xianyu returned to the Shangyuan Sect. When she turned in the Thousand Soul Banners and Yuan Nuhe’s head, the entire sect was shocked.
A disciple at the middle stage of Foundation Establishment slaying an evil cultivator at the early stage of the Golden Core was practically a fairy tale.
Even if she had used a trick to win, looking across the entire Qingyang Province, very few people had that kind of courage.
In the version of events Gu Xianyu provided, she naturally omitted Jiang Tong’s existence. She only said she had killed the younger sister, and to save her own life, the sister had revealed everything.
The Sect Leader personally came forward to reward her and expressed interest in recruiting her further, but Gu Xianyu politely declined.
Jiang Tong clearly remembered the faint hostility in Yao Xining’s eyes as she stood to the side while Gu Xianyu spoke with the Sect Leader.
The master and disciple returned to their life of cultivating in the mornings and gathering aquatic plants in the afternoons. Their days gradually became peaceful.
Besides her daily cultivation and gathering plants, Gu Xianyu also successfully obtained five stalks of Sword Heart Grass and impatiently began her secluded meditation.
When the Sword Core underwent a transformation, the person’s appearance and temperament would also change, as if they were being reborn.
The girl was full of excitement, though it was unclear if it was for the strength or the beauty.
Jiang Tong yawned and waited for three days. On the morning of the fourth day, amidst the sprawling dawn light, the room door opened.
“Ma… Master…”
The girl called out softly. Wearing a white dress, she walked out looking somewhat shy.
Jiang Tong looked up and was momentarily stunned.
The girl’s skin had become even fairer, and the slight immaturity in her features had faded, replaced by a faint, cool elegance.
Those eyes were no longer silly but were covered with a layer of icy clarity.
She had grown taller as well, slightly revealing the snowy peaks of her chest. Under the reflection of the morning glow, she looked increasingly radiant and moving.
An indescribable sense of familiarity washed over him, a feeling of déjà vu, as if they had known each other a long time ago.
Pinching the corners of her skirt, the girl slowly turned in a circle. The white dress fanned out like petals. She smiled at him in the morning light.
“Master, do I look good?”