The sea surface was calm and peaceful, with immortal bamboo flowers of various colors floating on the water one by one, bobbing up and down, made crystal clear and translucent by the moisture.

Su Zhuyi surrounded herself with a spiritual energy barrier and entered the sea. There were too many immortal bamboo flowers in this seawater, making the spiritual energy around the Sea-Listening Pavilion particularly rich, which had some concealing effect. Immortal bamboo flowers were quite valuable. When she came here thirteen years ago, she had marveled at how wealthy the Suyue Sect was. Now thinking about it, their purpose was to conceal something in the sea, though she didn’t know what it was that was worth using such methods to hide.

Su Zhuyi became somewhat interested. Could it be some immortal treasure?

She expanded her divine sense to carefully perceive, then walked toward the bottom of the Sea-Listening Pavilion.

Suyue Sect was divided into two parts: Wenxiang Ridge and the Sea-Listening Pavilion. The Sea-Listening Pavilion looked as if it floated directly on the sea surface, but these pavilions and towers were built on a small island. When Su Zhuyi reached below the sea surface, she saw the island submerged in water, along with many azure mosses and dark brown seaweed, standing vertically and hanging down, thin and long, like old tree roots directly penetrating through to the sea bottom’s silt.

Su Zhuyi circled the Sea-Listening Pavilion once. She discovered that the entire bottom of the Sea-Listening Pavilion was covered with such seaweed, densely packed to form a natural barrier that even divine sense couldn’t penetrate. She didn’t know what was hidden inside.

She reached out wanting to part the seaweed to create a small gap, but withdrew her hand just as it was about to touch the seaweed. She silently called for her sword ancestor, and when the Broken Sword appeared in her hand, Su Zhuyi smiled with satisfaction. In these few years, the sword ancestor wasn’t as aloof as before – out of ten times, she could still summon it five times.

Using the Broken Sword to part some seaweed roots, Su Zhuyi immediately smelled a faint bloody scent.

She frowned, sending her divine sense through the parted gap to look, and saw a bloody hand.

A female corpse was entangled in the seaweed. Because the seaweed was too dense, her face and body couldn’t be seen clearly. Only that hand was relatively visible, appearing to have died not long ago.

The Suyue Sect had thousands or tens of thousands of female cultivators. After fighting with Hehuan Sect until only those ten or so people remained, where had the other female cultivators gone? The living ones should have been taken away by the Hehuan Sect, but there must have been deaths, too. Yet Su Zhuyi hadn’t seen a single female corpse at the Sea-Listening Pavilion. Could it be they were thrown into the sea and all fed to this disgusting seaweed?

She turned to another direction and used the Broken Sword to part some seaweed to look inside. This time she saw another corpse. This skeleton should have died long ago, with only a bone frame remaining. Thus it stood out somewhat among the dark green seaweed. The lustrous white bones emitted a cold light in the seaweed pile, and those hollow skull eye sockets seemed to emanate infinite resentment.

Sheathing her sword, Su Zhuyi showed disdain on her face. Suyue Sect claimed to be righteous, yet beneath their sect was such a disgusting and vicious place. Compared to Hehuan Sect, they were about the same, but at least Hehuan Sect was openly evil, while this Suyue Sect was secretly wicked.

This seaweed pile should contain a Yin-gathering array. Female corpses were thrown into it, the roots absorbed their blood and flesh, then cultivated some beauty-preserving holy object. This was probably Qu Ningsu’s purpose – that person only obsessed over cultivation and appearance. Though Su Zhuyi wasn’t certain what the array’s exact purpose was, she could guess roughly.

The place with the densest spiritual energy was here, but how to search for it? Did she have to drill into that seaweed pile? Just thinking about it was disgusting.

Su Zhuyi cast a Blazing Palm technique, burning through several seaweed roots, but it didn’t have much effect.

She thought for a moment and used sword techniques instead, managing to cut through some and even causing a corpse to fall, slowly sinking to the sea bottom. But the vitality of this seaweed was somewhat beyond Su Zhuyi’s expectations. She was surprised to discover that the cut seaweed regrew in no time, wrapping even tighter than before.

What kind of seaweed was this? Su Zhuyi considered herself well-informed, but now she didn’t know what this thing was. Had anyone discovered the secret beneath the Sea-Listening Pavilion in her previous life? She seemed to have never heard such rumors. At that time, she was in a secret realm and missed out on dividing the spoils. When she came out, the Suyue Sect had already fallen apart, everything inside looted clean, and the sect burned to the ground. She had come to look once, then, but hadn’t even seen the Sea-Listening Pavilion, so now she had no idea.

She still had some explosion talismans in her bag. Su Zhuyi thought for a moment, took out three array plates, then took out explosion talismans to arrange around the seaweed roots, planning to set up an array formation near the roots to enhance the explosion talismans’ power. Just as she was setting up the array, her communication talisman sounded. Su Zhuyi heard Qinghe ask, “Haven’t found it?”

Having Qinghe come help would be much faster.

But the resentment below was quite deep, the bloody smell thick, and who knew how many corpses were hidden in this seaweed. Su Zhuyi thought for a moment and said, “Don’t come down. There’s a very disgusting array formation down here. Many women should have died inside. I’ll think of a way. If I can’t get it out, forget it. Don’t stand around stupidly up there – go gather things. Remember to move those Floating Life Mirrors.”

“Mm.” Qinghe glanced at the Floating Life Mirrors in the courtyard and responded indifferently.

The two sides were still in a stalemate. He directly used a capturing technique to grab the Floating Life Mirrors, then slashed out with his sword, splitting Qu Ningsu’s defensive magical treasure! The sharp sword intent had reached Qu Ningsu’s forehead, making her whole body tremble, her throat dry, unable to make a sound. It was as if her body were being gnawed by countless ants. Fear made her face even more twisted, and pus seemed to overflow from the bulging veins on her face.

“Who?” The Hehuan Sect cultivators were both shocked and angry. Just then, a voice said, “Whoever it is, they’re a friend, not a foe. Suyue Sect’s fate is sealed. I promised someone that your sect master’s life absolutely cannot be spared, but I don’t care about your lives. Give up resistance, join Hehuan Sect, and I’ll spare your lives.”

The speaker was Hehuan Sect’s Sect Master Xunhuan. He wore a dark blue robe with trim, bound his hair with a square kerchief, and held a goose feather fan. When speaking, he waved the fan to cover half his face, revealing a pair of peach blossom eyes with thick lashes, black and bright eyeliner as if dyed with ink, and narrow, upturned eye corners that appeared very seductive and charming. While speaking, he glanced at the rooftop. That sword qi seemed to have come from the roof, but looking now, there was complete silence there – that person had already left the rooftop.

Xunhuan’s brow furrowed slightly, then his gaze fell back on the Suyue Sect disciples. After his words fell, several Suyue Sect cultivators gave up resistance, while Qu Ningsu maintained a dazed expression with lifeless eyes, as if completely numb.

That sword intent remained at her forehead, shattering her meridians inch by inch, but not taking her life. However, the current Qu Ningsu was already not far from death.

Why? Why had it become like this?

In such a short time, it had become like this?

Her backing was gone, her face ruined… Cupping her cheeks with both hands, Qu Ningsu went mad, clawing at the bulging veins on her face, scraping until her face was covered with blood mixed with pus, looking extremely disgusting. Xunhuan covered his eyes with his fan and shouted, “What are you standing around stupidly for?”

A female Hehuan Sect cultivator beside him directly raised her hand and threw out a silver shuttle. The shuttle turned into cold light and entered Qu Ningsu’s forehead. Her movements froze, then she fell heavily backward with a crash, collapsing to the ground.

In the room, Qinghe, who was expressionlessly stuffing spirit stones and magical treasures into his storage treasure, paused for a moment, then picked up another magical treasure and casually tossed it into his storage bag. Just then, a huge explosion from the sea bottom made Qinghe’s expression change slightly.

He immediately transformed into a black sword light and flew toward the Sea-Listening Pavilion.

At the sea bottom, Su Zhuyi had triggered the array formation.

But just as the array formation activated, Su Zhuyi felt a red light suddenly appear within the seaweed. That red dot shot toward her rapidly. Su Zhuyi didn’t dare take it head-on, nor did she dare deflect the red dot. Instead, she blocked with the Broken Sword!

The red dot hit the sword and exploded like fireworks – pop, pop, pop, pop. Countless silver needles, blocked by the Broken Sword, flew back out and densely pierced into the seaweed. If she had swung her sword to slash just now, the direction of the exploding silver needles would have been uncontrolled. In that case, she would have easily been struck by the silver needles.

Each silver needle was coated with deadly poison. Once struck, she would be in danger.

There was a living person hidden in the seaweed.

Hiding in the shadows, preparing to kill her. Though the explosion talismans she prepared were powerful, the person inside probably wouldn’t die for the time being.

Unexpectedly, she had just left Luoxue Peak when she encountered Xueluo Sect assassins. Could it be Su Qingxun? Thinking about it, that was impossible. The current Su Qingxun was at most at the Ningshen Stage or Foundation Building stage. Even if she had already started carrying out missions, she absolutely couldn’t take on a mission to assassinate her. After all, Su Zhuyi had already formed her core and become a Golden Core three years ago.

Xueluo Sect was of the demonic path, capturing children everywhere for bloody and cruel training to cultivate assassins. Among the assassins, there was a group of death warriors. Many powerful cultivators in the cultivation world would light a heart-blood soul lamp for their beloved disciples and relatives. If such a soul lamp was lit, the final scenes of their life’s end and the soul aura of their killer would be recorded. In other words, as long as you killed someone, you would be hunted to the ends of the earth by their elders. So under normal circumstances, people wouldn’t easily make moves against such disciples.

The death warriors of Xueluo Sect existed specifically to kill such people.

They had only one mission in their lifetime.

Kill the target, and they would also die.

This way, even if the deceased’s elders wanted revenge, it would be futile because the killer was already dead, dying completely clean without leaving a trace of clues. Now, this person who had just ambushed her had a ninety percent chance of being a Xueluo Sect death warrior. Unexpectedly, someone had sought out Xueluo Sect to take her life. They thought highly of her.

In her previous life, Su Zhuyi was the sole survivor among that group of children from Changning Village. In the end, she became the sharpest blade in Xueluo Sect.

She knew Xueluo Sect’s attack methods like the back of her hand. What was just shot out was called Pear Blossom Misty Rain. This magical treasure was extremely powerful and could be used three times total. Now it had been used once, so that person could still use it twice more.

He was hiding in the shadows, hiding in that seaweed. The explosion just now caused such a commotion, yet this seaweed still wasn’t greatly damaged – only the outermost layer had broken considerably, but now it was beginning to slowly recover.

Did that person think hiding in this seaweed made him safe? That he could look for opportunities to ambush her?

“Naive.” Su Zhuyi sneered coldly. Just as she was about to take out a communication talisman to have Qinghe look for any strange plants in the Sea-Listening Pavilion, she saw a black shadow appear directly beside her. The moment he appeared, all that seaweed seemed to be blown far back by the sea waves. The seaweed that had been hanging vertically was now slanting away in a sheet.

Oh, this sinister thing even had spiritual intelligence. She had thought the resentment inside would actively approach Qinghe, this source of all evil, with the Longquan Sword, but unexpectedly, they knew to avoid him…