In that instant, streams of subtle and profound information poured into his consciousness like running water.
The flow was not fast, yet the depth of knowledge about the Mist-Hidden Grotto-Heaven’s restrictions was staggering.
It held not only the methods for opening, closing, and controlling the restrictions, but also the insights and explanations left behind by generations of the grotto-heaven’s masters.
Anyone else would likely have been overwhelmed and left in a daze.
But Li Xun was different. He was already a master of restrictive arts, versed in the techniques of many sects, and had his own independent understanding. He would not lose his way so easily.
Now, in this mysterious manner, he was absorbing and drawing on the experiences of accomplished cultivators, and it was a rare chance to sharpen and refine himself. The benefit to his cultivation was beyond measure.
As the knowledge flowed in, Li Xun naturally applied what he had learned to the restrictions around him.
His true breath moved on its own, and the restrictions within the Mist-Hidden Grotto-Heaven answered in kind.
In the eyes of Shui Die Lan and Gu Pin'er, the mist over the small lake before the pavilion suddenly thickened. Within the haze, only the faint outlines of the scene remained.
Then, with a sharp “zzii” sound in their ears, the three scenic window openings of the pavilion were instantly covered by a perfectly smooth film of light. It blocked what was behind them, yet at the same time projected a far broader view.
Shui Die Lan, sharp-eyed as ever, swept her gaze across and immediately caught a familiar sight: the little stream on the hillside; the very gateway through which they had entered the Mist-Hidden Pavilion.
The scene flashed by in an instant, but it was enough for Shui Die Lan to realize what these projected views were showing.
“Stop-At-The-Forest!” she breathed.
The perspective shot upward and widened, revealing an almost endless expanse. Even someone as well-traveled as Shui Die Lan could not help but be astonished.
It turned out that with this valley as the center, the Stop-At-The-Forest alone stretched across nearly a thousand li. And these manor-like compounds were not confined to this valley; there were dozens of them scattered across the entire thousand-lirange.
The scene shifted once more. The mountains and forests remained, yet their feel was distinctly different.
Shui Die Lan paused for a moment, then understood. Their view had already moved past the borders of the Stop-At-The-Forest and into the Southeast Forest Sea. The sight flashing before her eyes left a bitter taste in her mouth.
She had definitely been there before. Yet at that time she had noticed nothing at all. A vast space spanning a thousand li had been hidden away in the wilderness without leaving the faintest trace. For countless ages, no one had discovered it.
Many sects knew how to use concealment restriction that could hide mountains or swallow seas, often to protect their ancestral scriptures, magical treasures, or immortal’s caves.
But for the Mist-Hidden Pavilion to bury an entire region a thousand li across without the slightest sign, this was a heavenly technique on the level of creation itself. No wonder the place was worthy of its reputation as an ultimate hidden realm.
At this moment, Shui Die Lan could sense the dense primordial qi around the pavilion bursting forth like water from a high reservoir with its gates thrown open.
Layer upon layer of restrictions within and around the valley acted like carefully designed river channels, guiding that vast primordial qi step by step into its proper places, without a single leak or trace of chaos.
With that change, the Stop-At-The-Forest outside the Mist-Hidden Pavilion immediately took on an entirely new appearance.
It wasn’t just the thickening shrouds of mist, nor merely the forests now brimming with qi and life.
Beneath all those outward signs, the true danger lay hidden. With the sudden influx of primordial qi, the layers of restrictions had been raised by several levels, and when combined with the naturally formed “Lost Fragrance,” they merged seamlessly together. Within that drifting haze, lethal killing intent lay concealed.
Even Shui Die Lan felt a chill when she saw it.
I’ll have to ask exactly which path led us inside later… so this is the Mist-Hidden Pavilion’s real face! she thought, glancing at the one beside her who was controlling the restrictions.
But at a single look, her heart jumped. Hundred Ghosts’ expression was anything but good.
Not merely unfavorable. It was terribly grim.
The information transmitted through the stone table to Li Xun was fine. The way he learned on the spot and controlled the restrictions was fine as well. The real problem lay in his misjudgment of his own condition before attempting it.
It’s important to understand that, with both internal injuries and poison clashing against one another, his organs were already emptied of strength. Earlier, he had also forced out his potential with an overbearing technique. Worse, his subconscious still relied on the experiences of using the Heaven’s Nether Yin Pearl, neglecting the immense strain that the Nether Puppet’s presence in the outside world was placing on him.
These few factors alone were enough to break him. And yet he had gone on to seize control of the restrictions, driving the colossal primordial qi accumulated over thousands of years and forcing it back into place.
What difference was there between that and trying to move a mountain with bare hands?
Even with preset restrictions guiding the process, there could not be the slightest slip. The sheer effort it demanded had already reached an astonishing level.
That alone would have been difficult enough, but most of Li Xun’s focus was tied up in deciphering the incoming information, leaving him blind to the state of his own body.
At first, only a thin trickle of his strength was being drawn away, and he hardly noticed. But at a certain moment, when he instinctively tried to gather his true breath and push for more power, nothing answered. That was when he realized something was terribly wrong. Far too late.
He shifted his attention inward, and what he saw made his heart sink again and again.
The cycle of the Bottomless Nether Ring was moving even more sluggishly than when he had first been injured, and the yin fire coursing through his body had been drained to the last drop.
His limbs, bones, meridians... all of it was empty. He had not a shred of strength left.
The technique sustaining his Nethermyst Shadow Body was still running, but whatever energy it drew in was instantly consumed, leaving it unable to keep up.
In that condition, the Nether Puppet was the first to collapse. The glow in Nether One’s eyes dimmed, and in the next breath his figure dissolved into the void, gone without a trace.
At the same time, the vast network of restrictions outside, already halfway through its transformation, suddenly lost its driving force. It first stalled, then instinctively drew even harder on his dwindling energy.
In the blink of an eye, Li Xun was almost drained of all his blood and qi, left on the verge of becoming nothing but a dried-up corpse.
The change came so fast it didn’t even give him time to feel fear, let alone react. Just as the shadow of death closed in, his heart suddenly gave a violent thump.
Bang!
It was like a thousand great drums struck at once, the shockwave sending every vein in his body boiling.
Li Xun had never felt his heartbeat this way before. He could clearly hear the creak of his blood vessels stretching and contracting, and the hiss of blood surging through them.
He could even sketch the shape of his beating heart just by following the sounds.
And in that moment, another presence, sharper and clearer than ever, surfaced in his mind.
The Yinfire Pearl?
Of course. He had been hiding a Yinfire Pearl deep within his heart aperture all along. It was the condensed life’s cultivation of Master Ghost, once the strongest expert of the Shadow-Devouring Soul Sect.
From the very beginning, that pearl had been Li Xun’s greatest shield against the erosion of the Blood Nightmare.
After he mastered the Unmoving Evil Heart and dispelled the Blood Nightmare’s corruption, the Yinfire Pearl sank into the deepest recess of his heart in a way so subtle and mysterious it was almost impossible to detect.
Even when Li Xun’s heart was pierced through a few times, it never revealed the slightest trace of itself. Over time, he often forgot the pearl was even there, feeling it only now and then when cultivating the Nether Yinfire.
Not long ago, when the Heaven’s Nether Yin Pearl was gravely damaged, Li Xun had to use his own body as the medium for summoning puppets. At that time, the Yinfire Pearl had stirred faintly in response.
Now, only a short while later, with his life force nearly spent, the pearl reacted again. But this time, the response was far, far stronger.
In his perception, the Yinfire Pearl slipped out of his heart with an ease that felt both calm and deliberate. It followed a hidden pathway straight into the Bottomless Nether Ring, where it began to spin in that vast, silent, and mysterious inner space.
Using inner sight, Li Xun watched as threads of firelight peeled away from the pearl’s surface, spreading outward in expanding rings of radiance. In an instant, they filled every corner of the Bottomless Nether Ring. For the first time, Li Xun realized that this space, which had always felt like a world unto itself, also had limits.
Ash-gray flames burst out from the Nether Ring and surged through Li Xun’s empty meridians and acupoints. One wave after another washed through him. In those hollow channels, where all vitality had been stripped away, this rush of energy was no different from a full, thorough cleansing and rebirth.
His meridians, acupoints, and blood vessels all cleared at once under the timely flood of Yinfire, like a life-saving rain. The feeling of dying and then being pulled back to life was impossible to exaggerate.
In the span of a single heartbeat, he went from drained of blood and qi to brimming with strength. The force of the restriction could no longer threaten him. Soon, it stabilized and resumed its natural cycle, the suction fading on its own.
It was at that very moment that a second layer of firelight peeled away.
Li Xun froze. Before he could even react, the razor-sharp intuition honed through sixty years of constant cultivation gave a piercing alarm. A chill spread deep into his bones.
He suddenly remembered: Ghost Master, the most dazzling genius the Shadow-Devouring Soul Sect had seen in thousands of years, was the only man ever known to ascend Zuwang Peak head-on and challenge Zhong Yin.
Though he was utterly defeated and died in the attempt, that single feat still eclipsed even today’s foremost figure of the demonic sects, Luo Moshi.
From that alone, one could imagine the depth of Ghost Master’s cultivation.
If just one thin layer of firelight from the Yinfire Pearl—the condensed essence of Ghost Mister’s cultivation—was enough to restore him completely, then what would happen if more layers peeled away?
Before he could work it out, the third, fourth, fifth… all the way up to the ninth layer flared off in succession. The intervals grew shorter, and the power of the Yinfire swelled higher with each wave.
When the dimmest, ninth layer finally broke free, the force it released was greater than the sum of all the others combined. It detonated in a single instant. Li Xun didn’t even have time to groan before blacking out.
His body felt as if it had been torn apart, or else burned to ashes. The sensation was one he knew all too well.
In a daze, he seemed to glimpse once more the twisted shadows writhing in a mist of clouds, hear the shrill winds screaming past his ears, and sink again into that despair so deep it crushed his organs, turning them inside out, grinding them to pulp with a chorus of shrieks.
Qingyin, you betrayed me!
Through the haze came the image of a figure in a pale-blue gown, walking slowly toward him. Her clear eyes burned hotter than fire as they fell on him.
And yet, he could not overlook the layers of distance and indifference in her gaze.
Just like before, they brushed past one another without stopping.
Qingyin, you betrayed me!
As if hearing his cry, the woman turned her head. That cold, sharp curve of her lips cut across like the edge of a blade.
His heart went cold, then flared with sudden fury. He struggled hard, as if he could rip the pain off his body and hurl it back at her, so that… so that bitch could feel exactly what it was like!
His blood turned to venom, eating into every part of him. Yet he was laughing madly. It was coming off, it was coming off!
Every bit of his suffering, he would throw it back, press it onto that bitch, for all eternity!
Strange voices echoed again and again in Li Xun’s mind, repeating without pause: “If I ever have even the slightest thought of betraying Immortal Master Qingyin… then may she be the one to cut off my head with her own hand!”
Cut off my head with her own hands…
He froze, then roared: “Why me? Zhong Yin, you bastard, tell me why it had to be me! What gave you the right to trick me, to play me like this? Don’t you dare say you didn’t know. You can’t fool me anymore!”
Exhausted from shouting, he lifted his head to the sky. There, he saw Zhong Yin’s eyes, smiling as they sent down a faint, mysterious breath of energy, drifting bit by bit straight into his heart.
He muttered under his breath, “You… bastard turtle…”
The eyes above seemed to twist into a bitter smile, yet that cool stream of energy kept flowing, endless, seeping deep into him.
In a haze, Zhong Yin’s voice rose, distant and refined, just like when he sat atop Zuwang Peak, wrapped in sword-aura strong enough to defy heaven and earth, and spoke to him the techniques he had tailored for him: Bone-Meridian Heartlink.
Li Xun slowly opened his eyes. A wave of pain crashed over him at once, so fierce he nearly blacked out again.
In the darkness, Gu Pin’er’s terrified, despairing face flickered into view, only to be shoved aside. A moment later, Shui Die Lan’s lovely features surfaced.
“Are you all right?”