Feng Miaojun’s gaze flickered slightly. Not daring to fix her eyes on him, she pretended to continue examining the stone wall while slowly moving toward his side. At their level of cultivation, the spiritual perception was astonishingly acute—she feared that if she looked at the King of Yan even twice more, he would awaken.
Six zhang, five zhang, three zhang… The distance between them grew increasingly close.
Feng Miaojun gathered her soul power while regulating her breathing and suppressing her killing intent.
Just two more steps, and she could launch her attack. Eliminating the King of Yan would ensure eternal peace for New Xia and the Wei Kingdom. Even with Feng Miaojun’s temperament, she couldn’t help feeling tense at this moment.
Then, she noticed the King of Yan’s eyeball move slightly.
He didn’t look directly at her, but his peripheral vision had likely caught her.
She sighed softly. This cunning old fox’s sense of danger was even more accurate than a woman’s sixth sense.
What a pity, what a pity indeed. With such a perfect opportunity at hand, she couldn’t seize it.
Sure enough, just as she sighed, the King of Yan chuckled, “How now? Shouldn’t Changle be infinitely joyful?” If they could comprehend the heavenly text on the walls, their future cultivation would progress with incredible smoothness, like having an unfair advantage. Which cultivator wouldn’t be ecstatic about this? Why was Feng Miaojun sighing instead?
He had indeed awakened. Feng Miaojun gently shook her head. “No matter how profound our understanding, being able to leave is what truly matters.” She pointed at the glowing imprint. “This thing drains soul power too viciously. Our soul bodies aren’t as solid as the Heavenly Demons’, so we can’t remain trapped here for long. Otherwise, we won’t even have the strength to attempt an escape.”
“The Heavenly Demons tried for several hundred years, so they must have found a solution.” The King of Yan agreed with her assessment. “Look at the writing on the stone walls—it all seems to be done by one person.”
This was something Feng Miaojun had already discovered. The dense markings on the stone walls were all from the same hand, or rather, the same Heavenly Demon’s hand. This was an incredibly vast project, involving countless algorithms and volumes of information, too much even for a Heavenly Demon to remember without writing it down.
But they both knew that an entire race had been confined in this stone chamber. Could it be that the other Heavenly Demons were merely observing?
Feng Miaojun ran her hand along the stone wall. “It was very powerful.” Pressing her fingertip against it, she could tell these were all marks made by fingernails. To achieve with mere fingernails what even divine weapons and sharp tools could not, the writer’s power was self-evident. “And it wasn’t just one person breaking the seal.”
The King of Yan was slightly stunned. “What do you mean?”
“Heavenly Demons are empathic spiritual beings,” Feng Miaojun said softly. “As long as they’re willing to open their minds, all the Heavenly Demons here can sense the thoughts and emotions of their kin.”
In other words, every Heavenly Demon could participate in this task. The law calculations on the wall were the crystallization of all Heavenly Demons’ collective wisdom, yet could be inscribed through the hand of just one of them. No need for disputes, no need for explanations, no need for carefully chosen words to understand each other, and no need for lifelong learning to acquire knowledge from others—truly achieving “all for one, and one for all.” When they gathered together, they could form a collective consciousness, evolving at a speed unimaginable to ordinary people.
What a strange yet marvelous existence!
“However, the one qualified to handwrite heavenly text here must hold a very high position among the Heavenly Demons.” Feng Miaojun pointed to the last wall. “Look there.”
Beside the glowing imprint were several inconspicuous patterns, greatly reduced in size.
But when the two saw them, they both pressed their lips tightly together.
These few patterns closely resembled the imprint.
On the other five walls, each detail of the imprint had been dismantled for calculation. But on this wall, the patterns had been reintegrated.
“They’re not identical,” Feng Miaojun stared intently for quite a while before exclaiming, “These are imprints created by the Heavenly Demons themselves! They deciphered the meaning of the divine symbol patterns and recombined them!”
Indeed, just as the turtle imprint, Yu Haizhen’s pendant, and the stone chamber’s seal all belonged to the same language system, these patterns inscribed by the Heavenly Demons possessed the same divine essence, yet with different details.
Different details represented completely different meanings.
The King of Yan’s voice was slightly hoarse with excitement: “This is the key to their escape?”
Over three hundred years ago, the Heavenly Demon City attack incident occurred, and later generations believed it was because the Haoli Empire’s national power had declined, making it unable to suppress these evil demons. Now it seemed another key factor had emerged.
“I believe so.” Feng Miaojun didn’t lift her head as she examined each pattern one by one. “But the imprints here are all incomplete.”
The King of Yan was slightly surprised. “What?”
Feng Miaojun didn’t answer but looked even more carefully, even bending down to examine those inscribed in the cracks on the ground.
The King of Yan stood to one side with his hands behind his back, showing no intention to ambush her, though his gaze flickered as he contemplated unknown thoughts.
After a very long time, she finally straightened her back and let out a long breath. “The imprints drawn by the Heavenly Demons are mostly defective and incomplete.” From “understanding” to “application” was a long journey that even beings as intelligent as the Heavenly Demons couldn’t bypass. Their attempts had mostly failed.
“Only this one,” she pointed to an imprint in the upper right, her voice ringing clear, “can be called perfect and flawless.”
She truly hadn’t yet mastered all the Heavenly Demon symbols, but she could judge the completeness of the imprints. The Heavenly Demons had drawn symbols for three hundred years, and only this one was a finished product. Feng Miaojun murmured, “Why didn’t they draw a second or third one?”
“Because they no longer needed to—this imprint alone was enough to help them escape,” the King of Yan interjected. “We should try it too before the seal grows stronger.”
This was called using one’s methods against them. The divine beings used symbols to seal the Heavenly Demons, and the Heavenly Demons also drew divine symbols to counter and break the seal.
The light of the seal was indeed growing brighter. Perhaps it was because it had been dormant for too long and needed time to activate. But this also proved that it was extracting more and more soul power from them, making itself increasingly powerful.
If they remained here any longer, both would weaken to the point of death.
Feng Miaojun, unusually without objection, nodded and said, “Together.” With that, she and the King of Yan each extended a palm and pressed it against the imprint drawn by the Heavenly Demons.
Though they had been fighting to the death before, in this predicament they had no choice but to work together. The two exchanged glances, both taking a light breath as they simultaneously transferred their soul power.
Sure enough, the Heavenly Demon imprint immediately radiated a dark red light.
As the red and green lights mingled and reflected off each other, they discovered that all six walls were covered with fine green lines, each thinner than a blood vessel. Arranged densely, they resembled the meridians of a human body, emitting a faint glow.