At the very moment Lu Li shattered the Puppet, deep within a hidden cellar beneath Yang City, a slender figure seated cross-legged with a mask suddenly trembled.
The woman’s eyes snapped open, revealing beneath the silver mask a pair of cold, pitch-black eyes—strikingly beautiful yet devoid of warmth.
In those black eyes behind the mask burned a fierce pain.
Yet, more than pain, they held shock and disbelief.
“Lu Li… Master? How… how could he appear in Yang City…”
Clearly, the female thief’s consciousness had just fully returned from that destroyed Puppet.
The last image the Puppet transmitted was that handsome face under the cold, lonely moonlight—both familiar and strangely distant, with brows faintly lined with murderous intent!
That image burned like a red-hot iron, deeply seared into the woman’s mind as she clutched her unscathed abdomen and chest, her emotions roiling violently.
The sensation of the spirit sword piercing through her body was so scorching, so unforgettable, it almost shattered her usually cold composure.
“Ah… Master, Master…”
The woman’s painful wails summoned countless swirling Black Demonic Qi around her.
“No… no! Something’s wrong! Where exactly did the error occur? By rights… Master should be secluded on Duanqing Peak, spending his days in meditation, instructing that troublesome Feng Lingshuang in cultivation!”
“Why has Lu Li… Master suddenly descended the mountain and meddled in matters here in Yang City?”
Clutching her head in anguish, the black-clad woman’s mind flooded with endless questions.
But beyond these doubts, what weighed most heavily on her was…
“Gong Shangyu… That troublesome second sister just won’t leave me alone…”
“She came looking for trouble years ago. Is she some kind of stubborn tick? Always chasing me relentlessly…”
“Since Master is now involved with her, it means the second sister must have recognized him already. Looks like… I need to accelerate the plans I previously laid out.”
“After all, her sealing technique was a huge pain. If I hadn’t been prepared in advance, and had the system’s protection, I might have been sunk in the gutter without even knowing how my Puppet clone was destroyed!”
At that thought, her slender fingers instinctively clenched tightly, knuckles paling from the force.
She had initially assumed the “Xuling Sect dispatching cultivators to Yang City to investigate the disappearance” was merely some senior brothers or sisters from other peaks within the sect, or perhaps unknown outer disciples or guest officers who posed no threat—perfect for testing the Puppet’s combat data and buying time for the final phase of her plan.
Yet, she never imagined that the one who came to investigate in the end would be her Master…
“Damn it… the entire plan’s been thrown into chaos!”
Just as the woman’s thoughts raced, rapidly assessing the current situation,
the stone door of the secret chamber was quietly pushed open, and a shadow staggered inside.
He clutched his right arm tightly, blood seeping between his fingers, clearly badly wounded.
Under his arm was an unconscious figure still clad in Miss Zhou’s pink dress—Gu Qingying.
“Reporting to Your Excellency, I have brought the last child with the Yin Body needed to complete the formation!”
The male thief’s tone carried a mix of relief from finishing the mission, but mostly lingering fear.
The woman slammed her fist on the floor in fury and scolded the black-clad man before her.
“Hmph! You still have the face to speak! Do you know that you just caused me to lose a Puppet?”
“My apologies…”
The man knelt, unable to meet her gaze.
“I ask you! What exactly is the truth behind the Xuling Sect sending people to Yang City to investigate? How much have you still hidden from me?”
The woman’s voice hummed coldly behind her mask, emotionless yet piercing as her icy eyes locked on him.
“That swordsman—what is his identity? What’s his name? Who else accompanies him?”
Clearly flustered by the disruption of her plan, she didn’t even look at the girl the man carried and instead immediately interrogated about Lu Li.
The male thief was taken aback by the sudden barrage.
Feeling the invisible pressure above, he forced himself to answer despite the pain in his arm.
“Respectfully, Your Excellency, I did not deliberately withhold information, but I truly did not expect that the one from Xuling Sect would so quickly get entangled with the Dan Ding Pavilion and even begin investigating us…”
“The swordsman is said to have the surname Lu, presumably of Zhujifeng Master strength. As for other details, the Gongxun Hall of Xuling Sect hasn’t disclosed anything, so I don’t know…”
“All I know is his name is Lu Li, and he’s accompanied by a delicate-looking Refining Qi disciple who also wields a sword!”
Hmm?
Lu Li… so it really is Master!
The black-clad woman’s brows furrowed tightly beneath her mask.
She immediately scolded the man,
“Trash! You hold a high position in Yang City, yet you don’t even know the name of the newly risen Zhujifeng Master from Duanqing Peak?”
“What good are you to me? Do you know that everything we do in the city is right under the righteous sect’s nose—like walking a blade’s edge with blood on the lips?”
“Your slip-up nearly exposed our entire plan!”
As she cursed silently, she pondered the man’s words: that delicate-looking sword disciple by Lu Li’s side—who could it be?
Hiss…
Delicate-looking?
Could it be… that troublesome Feng Lingshuang has also come…
And with Gong Shangyu here too…
Could the two of them have already recognized each other, maybe even allied?
“Heh heh… Master, Senior Sister, Second Sister—what a tangled web of fate! Never expected… in this life we’d run into each other so quickly, and in such a way.”
Taking a deep breath to suppress her turbulent emotions, the woman turned her gaze toward the chamber’s center.
There stood a bizarre Festival Altar, upheld by countless pale skeletal arms, slowly rotating.
At the altar’s core, thick, inextinguishable black corpse energy writhed like a living thing, tightly entwining a roughly three-foot-long, black spindle-shaped treasure.
Its surface was veined like blood vessels.
Surrounding the altar were countless black coffins and withered, skeletal living corpses.
The corpse energy inside those coffins and animated corpses was being extracted and refined by a subtly precise formation, continuously feeding energy to the spindle-shaped treasure at the center!
“The Xuling Sect’s higher-ups have personally intervened. Exposure here is only a matter of time. We cannot linger,”
the woman’s voice regained its prior icy decisiveness.
“The Yugu Dun Kong Shuttle’s ritual refinement is at its final stage. Inform the Yin Corpse Sect members to take the collected corpse energy and evacuate Yang City quickly to transfer elsewhere!”
“What a pity… this is about to become a perfect corpse-raising ground. If only I had another six months, I could fully refine this Yugu Dun Kong Shuttle to the ninth stage…”
She lifted her head and gazed at the ceiling with a hint of melancholy.
Sigh…
Master, you really did come at the worst possible time…