It was good that those resentful seaweed knew to avoid them, saving Su Zhuyi from having them pounce on Qinghe and causing him to lose control.
Su Zhuyi turned her head and saw Qinghe’s eyes glowing with an eerie green light, showing an expression of seeing something delicious yet having to forcibly restrain himself.
Her mouth twitched, and she spoke up: “Someone just ambushed me, hidden inside this seaweed.”
Qinghe silently withdrew his gaze, raised his hand, and a sword light flew from his palm, instantly cutting through a patch of seaweed. But the next moment, he frowned as, upon contact with the seaweed, resentful energy spilled out, causing him to quickly retreat several zhang away.
“This seaweed can block divine consciousness, even I can’t see clearly what’s inside,” Qinghe said coldly from afar.
Su Zhuyi nodded in agreement, then said: “You stay there, don’t let whoever’s inside escape, and keep watch over this seaweed.”
“What about you?” Qinghe asked.
“I’m going up to take a look.”
With that, Su Zhuyi headed toward the water surface. She discovered that the seaweed suddenly began rustling and trembling, countless tendrils seeming to grow legs and wanting to escape. She immediately said, “Hold it down!”
Qinghe nodded.
He released his aura, and the seaweed immediately stopped moving.
Su Zhuyi felt relieved and surfaced, landing inside Tinghai Pavilion. There was no one in Tinghai Pavilion, and the Hehuan Sect cultivators hadn’t come down either. She sensed someone watching her, looked up, and saw Sect Master Xunhuan standing at the peak of Fragrance Mountain, looking at her.
He was still holding that goose feather fan, still covering half his face, only revealing a pair of fox-like eyes. At this moment, those eyes were slightly curved, as if smiling at her.
Su Zhuyi ignored him and directly entered a room.
Xunhuan was someone with good judgment. With Qinghe standing there like a pillar, his aura so strong, he wouldn’t be foolish enough to come down and fight them. After all, the reason the Hehuan Sect could make Dong Fushang Sect so overwhelmed in such a short time and devour Suyue Sect was because of them. Su Zhuyi didn’t believe Xunhuan couldn’t recognize the aura on Qinghe’s body, and as long as he recognized it, he shouldn’t act rashly.
She could safely go in and search.
There were too many plants inside Tinghai Pavilion.
The teleportation arrays were all golden hibiscus flowers, and the rooms also had many water lilies, along with various spirit plants floating on the water surface. For a moment, she couldn’t tell which one was the problematic one. Su Zhuyi walked around the entire Tinghai Pavilion without discovering anything unusual. She stood quietly in place, holding her breath and concentrating for a long time before hesitantly heading toward a room.
She vaguely felt that something was hidden in this room.
But for a moment couldn’t sense what exactly it was.
Su Zhuyi didn’t dare touch anything herself. That seaweed was so strange, whatever was on it must be even more dangerous. Therefore, after entering the room, Su Zhuyi didn’t even use her divine consciousness, directly taking the Broken Sword to tap here and there in the room, making the things in the room ring with ding-dong sounds.
Broken Sword: “…”
There was a pot of narcissus on the table.
On another small side table was a pot of ink bamboo. The room also had a blue and white porcelain fish tank with tender green water plants and several small fish inside. In the middle of the room was a small round pond, where the floor had been dug into a circle, with seawater directly below, containing two lotus leaves and one water lily…
Su Zhuyi’s Broken Sword tapped around at the various bottles and jars in the room, but didn’t touch those few plants much. Moreover, her walking steps weren’t random wandering, but moving through the room with specific steps. After circling three times, several floor tiles on the ground faintly protruded high, as if the wooden materials on the floor had been pushed up.
It was this room, and there was even a killing formation set up inside. If she touched the wrong items, the killing formation would activate, and she’d be in danger.
Su Zhuyi walked to the narcissus and murmured: “These narcissus roots do look somewhat similar.” Then she reached out, about to touch the narcissus shoots…
Her peripheral vision caught sight of that small thing in the fish tank. Just as Su Zhuyi was about to grasp the narcissus, she directly threw the Broken Sword, inserting it into the fish tank.
Although the Broken Sword was only half a sword, it was a broad sword with a very wide blade. When it landed in that small fish tank, it was like a mountain, though a crooked mountain, with the broken hilt stuck in the corner.
Only then did Su Zhuyi walk to the side of the mountain and say to the small white dot in the corner of the fish tank: “Stop pretending, it’s you.”
She initially thought it was a plant, but for plants to develop some intelligence was too difficult. Suyue Sect had very shallow foundations – Qu Ningsu was the first sect master of Suyue Sect, and this sect had only been established for three to five hundred years. How could they possibly nurture an intelligent plant, especially a malicious one? So it should be an animal. She pretended to grab the narcissus and indeed saw that a small clamshell revealed a flaw, slightly opening its mouth. That’s when she used the Broken Sword to insert into the fish tank, using the blade to jam the clamshell that wanted to close.
“You absorbed those female corpses, then what?” After Su Zhuyi asked, she saw the clam shell simply open its mouth and spit out a black pearl with a smacking sound. It wanted to run after opening its mouth, but the fish tank was small, the Broken Sword blocked both ends, pressing it against the tank wall, and that Broken Sword seemed to have infinite power, making it completely unable to escape.
Su Zhuyi patted the fish tank and said: “Don’t struggle, do you know what sword this is? An ancient divine sword. You’re just a small clam shell, and you still want to run?”
Su Zhuyi felt the Broken Sword was getting impatient, so she naturally praised it thoroughly, then continued: “Come on, I don’t know how you control those seaweed below, but you know there’s a living person inside, right?”
Su Zhuyi chuckled softly, “First kill that person, then we’ll discuss other matters.”
Su Zhuyi understood the Xueluo Sect too deeply. She knew that even leaving someone alive wouldn’t allow them to catch whoever was manipulating things behind the scenes. First, he was just a death warrior from Xueluo Sect who didn’t know who his employer was at all. Second, as soon as he failed and fell into enemy hands, he would directly self-destruct and die. So after Su Zhuyi realized the opponent was a death warrior from Xueluo Sect, she never thought of extracting any information from his mouth. While he hid in the seaweed where she couldn’t kill him, Su Zhuyi didn’t want to let him go. Since this clamshell was related to the seaweed below, she naturally wouldn’t miss this opportunity – kill the person first, then talk.
The clamshell’s body moved, and with its swaying, the entire Tinghai Pavilion shook several times. Then its white shell gradually developed ring after ring of black patterns. After a moment, it consciously spit out another black pearl, with a faint intention of pleasing Su Zhuyi.
That black pearl wasn’t ordinary – its spiritual energy was exceptionally rich. What was more interesting was that, perhaps because it had absorbed too much resentful energy, the light around the black pearl seemed to have a peculiar soul suggestion effect. By consuming such black pearls, one could become more beautiful and maintain eternal youth.
“Don’t you love beauty? Don’t you want to become more beautiful?” A voice suddenly appeared in her mind. “Raise me, and I can make you more beautiful. Moreover, I can freeze your appearance at its most beautiful moment – time will never leave any traces on your face.”
“Don’t you want to become more beautiful?”
That voice repeated over and over in her mind, affecting her spirit. However, Su Zhuyi suddenly smiled: “But I think this face of mine is just right – there’s no way to make it more beautiful.”
That fool Qu Ningsu was bewitched by such temptation?
Unfortunately, Su Zhuyi had no interest in this clamshell or the pearls.
“What’s hidden in that seaweed below?”
When Su Zhuyi asked this, the clamshell realized she wouldn’t be bewitched, so it desperately vibrated trying to break free from the Broken Sword’s restraint. Black malevolent energy appeared around its body, looking like it wanted to fight Su Zhuyi to the death. Qinghe’s voice came from the communication talisman: “The seaweed below is acting strangely. What’s the situation up there?”
It seemed that Qinghe was below, suppressing this clam shell’s foundation, so although it desperately wanted to tear her apart, it was restrained by Qinghe and had no means of attack.
Su Zhuyi flicked her wrist, injecting spiritual energy into the flying sword. Then the flying sword turned, directly grinding the clam shell to pieces. The moment the clam shell shattered, Qinghe’s voice also came over: “Those tendrils are broken, I’m temporarily avoiding them.”
“Mm.” Su Zhuyi responded, then directly dove to the seabed.
One corpse after another sank to the bottom along with the broken tendrils. The surrounding seawater changed from azure blue to dark green, and the immortal bamboo flowers on the surface instantly withered, fully demonstrating how concentrated the resentful energy was here. When the tendrils were almost completely broken, Su Zhuyi saw something shiny under Tinghai Pavilion.
It was a ring that looked like it should be a soul weapon.
Soul weapons were created when powerful cultivators neared the end of their lifespans but didn’t want to completely vanish into dust. Before death, they would gradually divide and strip away their primordial spirit, refining magical treasures while injecting their primordial spirit into them. The moment the magical treasure was successfully refined was also when their physical body’s vitality was completely extinguished and their primordial spirit fully entered the soul weapon.
Soul weapon refinement was extremely harsh and almost impossible to succeed. Throughout history, Su Zhuyi had read so many books and only knew of one or two soul weapons. The vast majority of cultivators who wanted to keep their primordial spirit alive this way had their primordial spirit perish before their physical body, essentially killing themselves.
Unexpectedly, she could encounter a soul weapon here. The primordial spirit inside this soul weapon must have been a famous, mighty figure when alive. But after death, if too much time passes, the primordial spirit will gradually disappear. Even soul weapons are the same. Since it had already tempted others to commit evil, this proved that the soul weapon’s master, regardless of whether they were righteous or evil in life, had now become an evil entity.
However, seeing that it could only control and tempt others in such a small range was sufficient proof that this soul weapon had existed in heaven and earth for too long, and the primordial spirit had become very weak.
If it was just that level of soul temptation in Tinghai Pavilion, it couldn’t bewitch her at all.
Nevertheless, Su Zhuyi still didn’t rashly reach out to grab it. She was always quite cautious. Instead of extending her hand, she used the Broken Sword to tap it, knocking the ring several times before cutting through that mass of seaweed and letting the ring fall directly onto the sword.
The Broken Sword also had extremely strong pressure. It truly was a precious sword that surpassed immortal swords. Using it to suppress a soul weapon ring that looked ancient and unremarkable with little spiritual energy was perfect.
“Hold it down properly, Sword Ancestor!”
Broken Sword: “Hmph.”
Su Zhuyi held the sword level and slowly moved outward. She hadn’t walked far when she discovered the ring flew up, directly crashing toward her heart, but it couldn’t even break through her defensive barrier.
Sword Ancestor, you actually couldn’t suppress a broken ring!
Just then, Su Zhuyi heard a voice: “Liuguang Mirror, Liuguang Mirror…”
After repeating it twice, the ring’s light dimmed and fell directly into the sea. Su Zhuyi stood stunned in place. The primordial spirit in this soul weapon – he also knew about the Liuguang Mirror?
He could even sense the Liuguang Mirror on her body?
Who exactly was he? What relationship did he have with the Liuguang Mirror?