“I know you have a trump card.”
Ru smiled, her serpent tail smashing the dead leaves strewn across the ground into pieces.
“Is it the Cangwu Secret Realm?”
Wu Yan mulled it over silently in her heart.
She had only used the Soul Governance Art inside the Cangwu Secret Realm.
Perhaps there was some peculiar method through which Ru had seen her using the Soul Governance Art back then, from the demonic ape’s eyes.
“I should give you a warning, girl. If that fellow truly regains his strength, forget about you—even your master, your junior sister, or the entire Piaomiao Sect advancing together wouldn’t have the slightest chance of victory.”
Ru swayed her slender waist and slithered up close to Wu Yan.
Clearly, whether it was the conversation just now or the ones to come, she didn’t want Xue Zun, who was not far behind, to overhear.
“Why?”
“Hm?”
“Why are you telling me this? Aren’t you two on the same side?”
“Hehehe, same side?”
Ru’s laughter swelled in Wu Yan’s ear.
“No one stays on the same side forever, right? Miss Wu. In this world that devours people without spitting out their bones, it has always been so.”
Ru’s words made Wu Yan’s body stiffen.
Her ink-black eyes collided head-on with those laughter-filled vertical pupils.
The two gazed at each other in silence for a long moment.
“What do you really want?”
“I just want to help you.”
Ru replied as if it were only natural.
“After all, you’re pleasing to my eye. I don’t want that relic Xue Zun, who couldn’t be uglier, to kill you.”
“When I freed him, I did a bit of tampering on him. When the time comes, as soon as I sense your cultivation rising, I’ll immediately activate every backup plan.”
“I promise you, as long as everything is in place, you’ll definitely be able to defeat him.”
Yan coldly watched Ru’s gorgeous face as if looking at a corpse.
With Ru’s cultivation, even cultivating another 100 years, she still couldn’t possibly know of Yan’s existence.
The only one who might was the “That Lord” she kept talking about.
What nerve—exhausting every scheme just to lay a hand on her person.
Once she took back her body and settled Wu Yan properly, she would make this creature, neither human nor demon, wish for death but never find it!
*
“Huff…”
Yu Qingyao panted heavily, gulping in mouthfuls of air.
Although more than half of her Soul Origin remained, her body was already on the verge of failing under the constantly surging cultivation.
Blood seeped from her seven orifices, but was soon evaporated by the grayish-white flames surrounding her.
The intense pain that kept coming from her Sea of Consciousness had begun to blur her vision.
“I can’t fall here. Senior Sister and Master are still behind me!”
“You still haven’t collapsed?”
Xue Zun looked at Yu Qingyao’s right hand, which gripped her long sword but hung limp and powerless, and raised an eyebrow.
Though Yu Qingyao’s suddenly surging strength did catch him somewhat off guard, everything was still well within his control.
In the blink of an eye, a long whip several meters in length condensed in his hand.
“Die!”
The instant his voice fell, the long whip, like a flood dragon emerging from the sea, lashed toward Yu Qingyao with crackling sounds of tearing air.
Wu Yan felt her heart clench, and when she cried out, her voice broke.
“I’m sorry, Yan.”
Wu Yan’s voice, laced with apology, rang out in the Sea of Consciousness.
Yan’s vermilion eyes flew wide open in an instant.
“Wait, dead wood! You promised this Lord! You clearly said you would never lie to this Lord!”
Yan’s reaction was enormous, her voice distorted beyond recognition by rage.
Yet more than rage, it was… panic.
“I’m sorry. This is the first time I’ve lied to you, and it’s the last.”
In the Sea of Consciousness, the light orb that had lain dormant at the very top suddenly shattered.
A pure white current, in just the span of a blink, swept across the entire Sea of Consciousness.
Wu Yan’s Soul Origin—so painstakingly patched by the Soul Shaping Grass, still riddled with pits and hollows—was set ablaze in that instant.
And the formation that had bound Yan for so long turned to ashes along with the burning of Wu Yan’s Soul Origin.
This was the first time Yan had ever been completely freed.
It should have been a truly joyful occasion, yet she couldn’t muster the slightest excitement.
She drove her dark red Demonic Chi, weaving through the cold-white swirls.
“You didn’t expect the seal to be completely destroyed at this moment, did you?”
Yan began muttering to herself.
“You actually dared to deceive this Lord. Once this Lord deals with that annoying bug outside, this Lord is going to teach you a good lesson, dead wood!”
bam!
Yan suddenly crashed into something and could not advance half a step no matter what.
It was the same kind of barrier as the one in the Cangwu Secret Realm!
“Dead wood, open the door for this Lord!”
Yan shouted furiously, hammering her fists against the transparent barrier, but there was no response.
“Dead wood, open it for this Lord!”
“Dead wood, don’t act rashly! This Lord doesn’t want the body anymore, just stop!”
Yan’s voice gradually softened until, in the end, she no longer even said “this Lord”—the phrase that was perpetually on the tip of her tongue.
“I’m begging you, Wu Yan. Don’t leave me…”
“I don’t want to be alone anymore…”
Unfortunately, Wu Yan could no longer hear her voice.
Unlike the last time the Soul Governance Art was used, the reaction this time was far more intense.
Whether it was the pain of burning her Soul Origin or the surge in cultivation, both far surpassed anything before.
Unlike Yu Qingyao’s Soul Governance Art, Wu Yan’s cultivation was already high to begin with, and after being tempered through the Medicine King Valley incident, her body was not something ordinary cultivators could measure up to.
Thus, in just a few breaths, Wu Yan’s cultivation had already broken through the Late Divine Transformation Stage and, still trending upward, brushed against the Body Integration Stage.
With a single slash, a cold-white crescent arc severed the arm with which Xue Zun held his long whip.
The long whip still dancing in midair lost its master’s grip and, carrying the severed arm along, flew off in another direction.
“Who?!”
Before Xue Zun could react, a foot in a short boot had already driven into his lower abdomen.
Immediately after, his body flew backward, accompanied by searing pain.
Mid-flight, Xue Zun glanced down.
His lower abdomen, along with his stomach, had been forcibly kicked into a horrific bloody hole.
Inside, his large intestine, lungs connected by only a thin strand of tissue, and half a stomach were exposed to the air.
Just as he mobilized his Magic Power to repair the damage, the Magic Power in his body went awry at that very moment.
Not only did it refuse to flow in the direction he willed, but it rampaged recklessly through his body, as if bent on tearing him apart completely.
“Damn it, settle down!”
Xue Zun gritted his teeth and snarled in a low voice.
He then reached out to the Blood Sea, attempting to suppress the abnormality in his body.
However, to make matters worse, the unbreakable connection between him and the Blood Sea was severed!
Xue Zun’s face darkened.
He didn’t even spare a thought for the Wu Yan who had beaten him to this state, and instead looked straight up at the sky.
The Blood Pillar behind him that connected to the Blood Sea had vanished.
The Blood Sea that had once blotted out the sky and the moon was receding at a visibly rapid pace.
The blood mist covering the clouds dispersed like an ebbing tide.
A bright full moon hung high in the night sky, its cold moonlight spilling downward, illuminating the Piaomiao Sect laid waste in every direction.
Moonlight fell on Xue Zun’s face.
He was stunned for a moment, then abruptly covered his face and burst into loud laughter.
“Hahahaha! Well done! Truly well done!”
That always-smiling face surfaced in his mind.
No wonder she had kept calling him “Lord,” yet always addressed him as “you.”
No wonder the swarm of demons she had sent collapsed at a single blow.
No wonder she had been so at ease letting him come here.
So, from the very moment he had been released, he was nothing more than a discarded pawn.
“Senior… Sister?”
Her body had reached its limit, and the Soul Governance Art had been forcibly halted by external factors.
Through her haze, Yu Qingyao seemed to see Wu Yan’s face.
It wasn’t Yan’s face, but rather what the young Wu Yan she had seen in the secret realm would look like, all grown up.
“Rest well, Qingyao.”
“Leave the rest to me.”