Up ahead, Wuji wound his way in and out of the jagged reefs for quite a while before finally turning his attention back to the real matter at hand. He began weighing the subtle shifts in the qi mechanisms, and his chatter with the Heart-Consuming Concubine fell off.
When the group stepped into the spot Hundred Ghosts had described, Flayer of Yin drew in a long breath, swept his gaze around, then set Gu Pin'er down against a reef. She then set up a simple restriction to block the encroaching water. Once that was done, she beckoned one of the Bliss Sect’s female disciples over.
The Heart-Consuming Concubine, hearing the movement, glanced back. She caught Flayer of Yin’s small smile as she said, “Sect Master, what do you think of this place?”
She was taken aback for a moment, but after noticing the way the reefs were laid out, she immediately understood. Smiling lightly, she replied, “It is indeed secluded… though, won’t this disturb Master Wuji?”
At the sound of his name, Wuji snapped out of the complicated flows of qi he’d been tracking. Seeing the scene before him, how could the Lustful Monk fail to understand? He quickly called out, “Not at all, not at all! This place is fine, more than fine!”
His mouth said one thing, but his eyes never left Gu Pin'er. The desire flashing in them made it plain he was eager to get the first taste.
As if anyone could miss what he was thinking. The Heart-Consuming Concubine sneered inwardly, but on the surface she was ready to go along and let him have his way. “Since Master Wuji finds it suitable, then it must be so. And after all, the early bird gets the worm. Master Wuji…”
She had only spoken half her sentence when a thunderous boom tore through the water, choking off the rest of her words.
The lakebed shook with the force of it, as if struck by an underwater quake. What had been still and quiet turned to sudden chaos. Everyone drew in their qi and whipped their heads around in alarm.
Almost at once, a voice rang out: “Xiao Zhongzi!”
“Where is Xiao Zhongzi?”
It was at this moment Heart-Consuming Concubine showed her true bearing. Just as the uproar threatened to spiral out of control, she gave a sharp cry. Her voice was not loud, but carried a strange power with it. The turbulent waters stilled as though pressed flat by an unseen hand, and the ripples vanished.
At the same time, a shadow shot out from behind a reef several dozen paces away. In a blink he was there before them, moving with uncanny speed.
As he rose, a flash of yellow gleamed from his palm, dazzlingly bright even in the dim waters below.
The Heart-Consuming Concubine’s heart jolted. The Cloudmist Stone?
There was no time to wonder how Xiao Zhongzi had slipped through the encirclement to get here. With a thought, she shifted from stillness to motion, lunging toward him.
From behind and to the side, Bone Rot Child flickered into view with a muffled sound, striking in tandem for a pincer attack.
Two masters of the True Person stage struck in concert, closing from both sides. By all reason, even a Grandmaster at the True One stage would have had to tread carefully. Yet somehow, Xiao Zhongzi’s body suddenly blurred, turning insubstantial. In the narrow gap between their converging force, he slipped through like a phantom and was gone.
Both attackers felt a simultaneous jolt of unease. Something was wrong, but they couldn’t say what.
That fleeting sense of strangeness was quickly buried by the sight of the Cloudmist Stone. They traded a glance, broke apart in twin arcs, and once again closed in for the kill.
Just then, the figure flicked his hand. A streak of yellow light flared again, shooting out like a backwards-falling star. It cut through the water and went spinning off in the opposite direction.
The Cloudmist Stone… cast aside so easily?
That strange sense welled up again inside Heart-Consuming Concubine. But there was no time to dwell on it. She caught Bone Rot Child’s eye for an instant, then her body shot backward, speed bursting into another tier. Incredibly, she overtook the flying glow before it traveled a hundred feet, and snatched it into her hand.
The moment it touched her palm, she froze in shock. A trick!
She opened her hand. What she held was no Cloudmist Stone at all, but a perfectly ordinary rock, still slick with clinging moss. It was clammy, slimy, and utterly disgusting to hold.
Her eyes went cold. The stone in her palm shattered to dust, and she lifted her gaze just in time to see the figure overtaken by Bone Rot Child, who struck mercilessly at his back.
The blow landed... yet missed.
The currents roiled with the force of it, but there was nothing there. The figure dissolved like a bubble, vanishing into thin water.
“Illusion!” the Heart-Consuming Concubine spat the word through clenched teeth. Not just illusion, but one that had already reached the pinnacle state of blending truth with falsehood.
Her heart gave a sudden jolt. She whipped around, but even before she could turn fully, the reefs scattered across the lakebed began to hum. A lattice of pale yellow light flared out from every corner, crossing and intertwining as they drew in vast torrents of qi with a rumbling roar.
The Heart-Consuming Concubine narrowed her eyes. A disturbance of this scale could not be stilled with a single shout. The intense sound and light were strong enough to drown out every other noise.
In the wake of the scattering beams came a fresh surge of primordial qi. Coming from the lakebed, it pushed forward through the rushing currents like a massive wall.
With a sweep of her emerald sleeve, the wall of water split cleanly in two. Without breaking stride, the Heart-Consuming Concubine wheeled and shot straight into the maze of reefs.
If it had been an ordinary fluctuation of primordial qi, it wouldn’t have mattered. There would at least have been a clear point of origin. But this disturbance was utterly strange, as though the entire reef cluster were shuddering at once. Hundreds of shock points flared together, enough to make one’s head spin just to look at them.
And once inside the reefs, the shifting of ten thousand currents of qi grew so tangled it could drive you mad.
Even so, the Heart-Consuming Concubine was a sect master–level cultivator, her mind and cultivation both honed to the highest tier. In such chaos, she still managed to stay calm.
She knew she was not skilled in restrictions and formations, so she wasted no effort fumbling with them. Instead, she barked coldly, “Wuji!”
Wuji’s lustful thoughts had long since scattered to the winds. At her shout, sweat sprang to his forehead. He knew if he failed to respond quickly, the backlash later would be unbearable.
Luckily, he did have real ability. After only a brief pause, his senses caught hold of something.
“Over here!”
He shouted, pointing the way. Bone Rot Child sprang up at once, and in the blink of an eye was upon the spot.
A Succubus Sect cultivator had already been patrolling nearby. When he saw the group’s attention whip toward him all at once, he froze in surprise. In that instant of distraction, pain lanced through his back. A powerful force surged into his body, driving him helplessly forward; straight into Bone Rot Child’s attack.
Halfway through his flight, the cultivator’s blood and qi ignited, and his body shrank by nearly half in an instant. Luckily his own cultivation was solid, and the attacker behind him wasn’t especially strong. That was the only reason he escaped with his life.
“Blood Burning Essence Qi Technique!”
Bone Rot Child shouted to himself, weaving a quick technique to block the man. That alone confirmed the identity of the one hiding in the shadows.
At the same moment, the Heart-Consuming Concubine shot forward in pursuit. From above the lake, the Ape Demon and Qi Wusheng, having already received word, broke the surface and plunged down.
The four of them together were more than enough to make even an expert like Ti Wujiu perish on the spot. Against someone like Xiao Zhongzi, wasn’t it already as good as done?
Just as everyone thought the outcome was decided, the restriction over the reef cluster shifted once again.
The chaotic currents seemed to steady for a heartbeat. Then the first reef exploded. The water pressure below spiked tenfold in an instant.
Under that crushing force, one reef after another shattered in turn, ripping up the lakebed. Vast clouds of sand and silt were swept into the current, staining what had been clear water into a murky yellow haze.
And with every reef that burst, thousands of qi flows twisted and collided in wild disorder.
In the blink of an eye, the qi mechanisms had shifted hundreds of thousands of times. Forget Wuji the monk, even if the three sect leaders of the Hui Xuan, Unspoken, Mystic Cycle Sects had come together, they still wouldn’t have been able to keep count.
Chaos erupted at the bottom of the lake. Everyone’s first instinct was to steady themselves by regulating their true breath and bracing against the sudden pressure from outside.
Who had the presence of mind to notice where “Xiao Zhongzi” had gone?
The Heart-Consuming Concubine’s lovely face turned ashen. She fixed her stance and glanced around, but in the murky, yellow-tinged water she could see nothing beyond a blur of shifting figures.
Just as her frustration peaked, a low whisper reached her from the side. It was Bone Rot Child: “Focus on protecting your body with your qi. Watch what I can do.”
Startled, the Heart-Consuming Concubine instantly strengthened the flow of protective qi around her body. No sooner had his words fallen than a few scarlet points of light suddenly flared in the murky waters. The raging currents seemed powerless against them, letting them drift gently downward.
The points grew denser, until it was as if crimson snow were falling, painting the lakebed with another layer of color amid the chaos.
Crimson Snow Chaos?
Even the Heart-Consuming Concubine, who had taken countless lives in her lifetime, couldn’t help but draw a sharp breath at the sight.
This kind of indiscriminate, all-devouring poison was infamous for being nearly impossible to counter. To unleash it underwater, never mind its immediate effect, was to ensure that the poison carried downstream afterward would be enough to slaughter every living creature for ten thousand li, and kill them ten times over.
Had Rot Bone lost his mind? Even if the Forty-Nine Tribulation had just passed, he couldn’t be this reckless.
Yet in the span of a thought, the falling “Crimson Snow” turned the lakebed into a swamp of blood. Countless scarlet bubbles swelled and burst again and again.
But now the Heart-Consuming Concubine actually felt a measure of relief. Bone Rot Child wasn’t a fool, after all. The way he confined the poison within such precise bounds was nothing short of masterful.
Instead of spreading wildly, the venom had been compressed to its utmost, locked within a mere ten-li stretch of the lakebed. It sank deep and interacted with itself, multiplying its lethality several times over.
How could that scoundrel Xiao Zhongzi possibly hope to survive beneath such a ruthless poison?
And besides, Bone Rot Child’s aim was not just that.