The night was deep and quiet.
When Wei Yuan slipped into the Nether Cold Realm, he ultimately missed out on a drop of Great Fortune after all.
It was not that Wei Yuan lacked the courage, but that his hands were tied. Just after dinner, Ji Liuli had arrived unannounced. After conducting a meticulous inspection, she concluded that Wei Yuan's Dao Foundation was currently superficial and unstable, cluttered with too many mismatched odds and ends that ended up hampering his cultivation progress. Therefore, Ji Liuli solemnly warned Wei Yuan not to meddle with pointless nonsense anymore; otherwise, his foundation would have to be cleansed and tempered all over again.
Wei Yuan had no choice but to promise readily. Seeing that he was behaving sensibly, Ji Liuli handed him a small five-tiered pagoda. This pagoda was the very one she had taken from Wei Yuan's sea of consciousness back then. At the beginning, it had been a crude, three-tiered structure, but now it had become five tiers, complete with a roof, eaves, and windows—already a small pagoda possessing rudimentary suppression power. By the standards of the Palace of Grand Beginning, this pagoda on its own could qualify as an Earth Foundation.
With this prototype as a model, the ones Wei Yuan crafted hereafter would all be Five-Tier Mortal-Suppressing Pagodas, vastly increasing their power.
Before leaving, Ji Liuli finally produced the butterfly short blade and said the formations were already inscribed. However, the blade's grade was too high for the formations to hold for long, so they would only last for a single shichen.
There was no helping it then. Once he took the short blade, Wei Yuan did not dare delay in the slightest and turned straight around to enter the Nether Cold Realm.
Great Fortune was wonderful, but the pair of magic-treasure-grade butterfly blades was clearly of far greater value. There was no hesitation over which to choose—especially with Eldest Senior Sister standing beside him, eyes fixed on him with an intense gaze.
Yet having to choose one over the other invariably left some regret. The moment he stepped into the Nether Cold Realm, Wei Yuan sighed inwardly. Perhaps one day when he grew stronger, he could have it all?
When Wei Yuan opened his eyes, total darkness enveloped him—complete and utter darkness.
He had expected this; after all, he was a hundred zhang underground. Before leaving last time, Wei Yuan had dug nearly a hundred zhang straight down in one go, carving out a small chamber deep beneath the earth to lay an imprint before retracing his steps. He had backfilled the tunnel as he went, continuing all the way back to the surface, where he set a series of interlocking traps.
If the shamaness tracked him here, she would most likely trigger the traps, and the resulting blast would obliterate every trace. With the imprint concealed deep underground, it would be extremely difficult to detect.
As for the imprint the shamaness had sensed, Wei Yuan had actually taken a wisp of its aura and placed it inside a formation just two zhang beneath the surface.
Sure enough, Wei Yuan encountered no disruption upon his return this time. Choosing a different direction, he dug horizontally first and then upward, finally reaching the surface after half a shichen. Backfilling as he dug, Wei Yuan sealed the passage leading to the ground completely shut.
Emerging aboveground, he looked around. Everything was silent, without the slightest stir. A forest lay not far away, filled with twisted, withered trees devoid of leaves. Yet all of these trees were imbued with vitality; how they survived in this world was a mystery.
Wei Yuan entered the woods, threw the butterfly short blade onto the ground, and cast Shadowconceal and Formhiding to conceal himself.
The butterfly short blade twitched, then twitched again. Seeing no movement around, it suddenly leaped up and looked all around. But just as it was about to fly off, it abruptly took a sharp turn and slammed straight into a large tree, pinning itself into the trunk.
The great tree extended a long branch, wrapped around the short blade, yanked it out, and hurled it forcefully outside the woods.
The short blade seemed to let out a whimper as it tumbled a few times on the ground. It took flight once more, only to plunge headfirst and stab deeply into the soil. The ground suddenly bulged, and an armored beast emerged, turned its head, snapped the blade off its back with its teeth, and spat it violently away, coating it in a generous splatter of slobber.
The blade bounced up, but this time it dared not fly again. It shook the slobber off vigorously and began to call for its master.
Ji Liuli had sealed its ability to traverse the nether realm and tampered with its flight function—whenever its speed exceeded a certain threshold, it would randomly veer in a different direction.
The short blade was terrified right now, feeling an instinctual spiritual dread as it cried out incessantly.
Moments later, the shamaness reappeared. She came to a halt in the distance and began scanning her surroundings. Her short blade just lying on the ground like this was an obvious trap.
After lingering for a moment, she abruptly turned and walked away. In the blink of an eye, she was dozens of zhang away, showing no intention of looking back. The short blade on the ground hopped and hopped, calling out in vain, but the shamaness never looked back. Yet right at that moment, a hand suddenly reached out from the void and snatched the blade!
The shamaness in the distance was still walking, yet a new shamaness had materialized from the void! The one in the distance was actually an illusion!
The shamaness instantly drew the short blade into her bosom, leaped into the air, and threw herself toward a fissure opening in midair. However, just as her head slipped into the rift, her body suddenly froze in place, unable to move!
The pair of short blades was now heavy as a mountain, and the newly retrieved blade thrashed frantically, slashing several open wounds across the shamaness in an instant.
Then the tip of an immortal sword blazing with white-gold flames extended from the blade and pierced straight through the shamaness's abdomen!
The shamaness shrieked in agony as the clothes over her chest and belly blasted apart, repelling everything outward—including the pair of unruly short blades.
Immortal sword in hand, Wei Yuan emerged from the hilt of the short blade and slashed toward the wings on the shamaness's back. He had already realized that those pairs of wings were the key to her ability to traverse the void.
Weighing the stakes in a fraction of an instant, the shamaness fixed Wei Yuan with a piercing glare. Her six wings beat in unison, and her entire figure vanished from midair as though wiped away, causing Wei Yuan's strike to hit nothing but air.
Wei Yuan had not expected that even with such a successful ambush, he still failed to kill her. This shamaness's witchcraft was uncanny and unpredictable, placing her almost beyond defeat; killing her was difficult indeed.
Still, the primary objective of this trip was accomplished.
Wei Yuan walked over and picked up the pair of butterfly short blades. Just as he was about to store them into Ten Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, an unexpected change erupted: the bound short blade suddenly unleashed a blade ray! Wei Yuan threw his body aside with all his might, yet he barely managed to keep it from hitting a vital spot. His left leg was sliced nearly clean off at the hip!
Severing a limb in an Origin Soul state inflicted agony countless times worse than doing so to a physical body. The searing pain turned Wei Yuan's vision black, but his willpower remained steadfast. Relying on sheer instinct, he brought down a large bell, trapping the short blade beneath it before drawing it into his Dao Foundation.
Wei Yuan cradled his severed leg, trying to reattach it, but eerie black flames burned relentlessly along the wound, preventing it from fusing no matter what he did.
Meanwhile, far in the distance, the shamaness materialized out of thin air and crashed face-first onto the ground. A camp lay nearby, from which several shamanesses and Shaman Scholars rushed out. Stunned by the sight, they hurried over to help her up.
The shamaness trembled from head to toe, clutching her abdomen tightly with both hands as white-gold flames seeped through her fingers, racking her with pain so intense she could barely stand.
"Quick, take me to the altar!"
The shamanesses and Shaman Scholars carried her into the camp and placed her upon the altar. In the blink of an eye, a dark-red cloud of blood gathered above the altar, showering down drops of fragrant bloody rain that gradually snuffed out the white-gold flames.
She lay flat on her back atop the altar, panting continuously. Only after quite a while did she touch her abdomen; feeling that it was smooth, flat, and completely unblemished, she stepped down from the altar. Another shamaness brought over fresh clothes for her to change into.
Gritting her teeth, the shamaness snarled, "Inform Lord Shengxin that the one who injured his younger brother has been found. You lot, come with me right now. This time, we must never let him leave the Nether Cold Realm alive!"
The Shaman Scholars and shamanesses hastily urged, "Lady Huixin, you've just been injured. Wouldn't it be better to wait until Lord Shengxin arrives?"
"There's no time!"
The shamaness soared into the air and leaped into a fissure in the sky, with several Shaman Scholars and shamanesses flying into the rift right behind her.
Wei Yuan was currently hopping forward on a single leg. Tucked under his arm was a long cauldron; each time he hopped up, a long jet of flame spewed from its mouth, propelling him forward in flight, covering a hundred zhang with every leap. Rising and falling in this fashion, Wei Yuan put great distance between himself and his previous spot, touching down atop a small hill to survey the surrounding terrain.
Chapter 206