The earthen hut had walls built of soil and a scattering of broken bricks and stones. Inside was only a single room. A stove sat in one corner, while two bedrolls were laid out on the other side—one for an adult, and a smaller one that seemed meant for a child.
Aside from that, the room held only a few scattered odds and ends: several chipped bowls and dishes, and a chipped water vat.
A few dried greens sat on the stove, dried out so long ago they had turned completely brittle.
From this room alone, one could tell that the owner had been exceedingly poor, living within bare, impoverished walls. Yet everything was arranged neatly and swept spotless. An indentation had even been pressed into the child's bedroll, as if one could still picture a child curled up asleep within it.
Yet the room was far too clean—it had clearly been swept often, completely unlike the other rooms nearby.
Wei Yuan's divine sense swept across the entire room. At the straw pillow of the adult's bedding, he found a wooden comb and a wooden hairpin. "It looks like a woman lived here alone with her child," he said. "There are no traces of a man."
With circumstances like these and living in such an environment, a woman raising a child alone would have had an exceptionally difficult life. Still, this was inside a palace complex, so there might have been other factors at play.
Sun Yu stepped into the earthen hut and sniffed deeply. "A lot of medicinal aroma lingers here," he said. "It spent quite some time in this room."
Sun Yu followed his nose as he walked, finally coming to a halt beside the child's bedroll. "It stayed on top of this," he said with certainty.
Wei Yuan was somewhat puzzled. Even if a monster needed to find a nest, it should not have chosen a child's bedroll. There was a larger one right next to it, and other buildings even had proper beds and bedding, unlike this hovel with only dry straw and two hemp blankets riddled with holes.
After everyone swept the area with their divine sense, they still found nothing. Yet Wei Yuan remained unwilling to give up. He crouched before the child's bedding, brushed aside the straw, and discovered a wooden doll. Half of the doll's head had been hacked away; judging from the marks, it had been struck many times with a very blunt knife.
Ever since obtaining the Bodhi Before the Buddha, Wei Yuan's spiritual perception had grown sharper. He faintly sensed a bloody, damp, yin chill emanating from the puppet, as though entangled with threads of karma. He casually put it away.
The group left the earthen hut and tracked the scent through the air, following the lingering traces of medicinal aroma and alchemical fire. The monster had doubled back in several circles; perhaps seeing that Wei Yuan and the others were not pursuing aggressively, it headed straight out of the palace city.
The group was in no rush, maintaining their vigilance at all times. The monster was terrifyingly fast; chasing it at full speed would only leave them vulnerable to an ambush.
The moment Wei Yuan stepped beyond the palace city, a warning bell suddenly tolled in his heart, and he moved to cast a protective incantation. But just as the light of the Daoist art flared, a slender shadow whipped across him!
Wei Yuan grunted. Stamping his foot, he turned the earth to steel to temporarily trap the shadow. Immediately, the Demon-Suppressing Pagoda manifested and plunged straight into the ground. At that moment, the pagoda turned from tangible to incorporeal, so even the spell that had turned the earth to steel could not impede it.
Then, a crimson immortal sword appeared in Wei Yuan's grip. Holding the sword reverse-handed with both hands, he plunged it into the earth right up to the hilt!
A shrill shriek erupted underground. Two streams of black qi shot out, whipping across Wei Yuan, before the creature fled swiftly through the subterranean depths, vanishing in the blink of an eye.
Wei Yuan pulled up the immortal sword. An inch of black liquid coated the tip—thick, viscous, clinging as if about to drip yet never falling. Looking at this black liquid, he felt a wave of resentment rush over him. Howls and wails seemed to echo in his ears, and his vision blurred.
Just then, the Demon-Suppressing Pagoda rose before Wei Yuan. The bronze lamps adorning a mid-tier level of the pagoda lit up one by one. As their light fell upon Wei Yuan, it immediately illuminated wisps of black qi.
The black qi quickly dissolved under the lantern light. The few wisps that could not be melted away were drawn into the Demon-Suppressing Pagoda.
Wei Yuan's mind eased, and he stood up. Suddenly, sharp pain wracked his body. Looking down, he discovered three new wounds where flesh turned outward in bruised black-and-blue, constantly weeping dark fluid.
Ji Liuli handed over three more pills—one to replenish qi, one to regenerate flesh, and one to neutralize poison. Each pillbox was exquisitely crafted and looked decidedly expensive.
Sun Yu treated Wei Yuan's wounds on the spot. To everyone's exasperation, however, as a prized disciple of the Hall of Xuanming, Sun Yu had brought no healing medicine for this journey; his person was laden only with all manner of bizarre poisons.
The monster possessed terrifying offensive power. Had those three strikes landed on anyone else, they would have been severed in two. Only Ji Liuli could have withstood them with her physical body; even Feng Tingyu would have fallen slightly short.
After a brief delay, the group resumed their pursuit. This time, having struck the monster, Wei Yuan had developed a subtle, instinctual connection to it and vaguely knew its general direction.
The Crimson Night Immortal-Slaying Sword was forged from the seven strands of sword qi born alongside the nascent celestial laurel tree. It was fundamentally a sword of supreme yin and extreme cold. Now, a wisp of sword intent was firmly attached to the monster, guiding Wei Yuan in its direction.
Beyond the palace city, it was only a dozen or so li to the edge of the grotto-heaven fragment. The monster lingered ahead, with nowhere left to run. Even so, Wei Yuan did not dare lower his guard in the slightest.
The creature was indeed ferocious. That shriek at close quarters had shaken Wei Yuan's origin soul; had an ordinary Dao Foundation cultivator heard it, their foundation might have shattered on the spot.
They had not gone far when Wei Yuan suddenly shouted, "Watch out!" In his perception, the creature was closing in at alarming speed!
Before his shout faded, it had already materialized above them, letting loose a piercing screech directly at the group!
This screech instantly stirred up countless tiny vengeful spirits within several hundred zhang around them. Though the grotto-heaven was shattered, many minuscule creatures still clung to life within it. Now, the souls of every insect, ant, and small beast were pulverized by that shriek, severing all signs of life for several li around.
A searing pain lanced through the origin souls of Wei Yuan and his companions, leaving them swaying on their feet. The creature's shrieking contained an attack aimed directly at the soul; if one's resolve wavered and their willpower collapsed, the shriek's power would multiply several times over.
Such a shriek was potent enough to destroy a dharma idol, clearly the monster's lethal trump card. Yet after swaying a few times, not a single disciple from the Palace of Grand Beginning collapsed.
Ji Liuli went without saying; the Nine-Layer Demon-Suppressing Pagoda was a premier origin soul treasure combining offense and defense. Zhang Sheng possessed an invincible heart and an unyielding will forged like steel, so the shriek could not shake him at all. Feng Tingyu upheld the traditions of the Hall of the Bright King, with a thick layer of muscle inside her head guarding her origin soul.
Sun Yu was slightly weaker, yet he had developed the Demon-Melting Soul-Extinguishing Incense and possessed an exceptionally deep understanding of the origin soul. He regularly consumed pills to bolster his soul defenses, so in terms of origin soul resilience, he was already at the level of a dharma idol.
Among them, the one with the weakest origin soul defense was actually Wei Yuan. However, while his defenses were lacking, his origin soul was immensely thick. A shriek sufficient to roar other cultivators to death several times over only left Wei Yuan slightly dizzy.
Failing to fell its targets in one blow, the shadow monster sought to flee once more. But the Demon-Suppressing Pagoda had already rippled out a ring of golden light that visibly disrupted it as it swept past. Feng Tingyu's blade and Sun Yu's alchemical fire struck the creature simultaneously, dealing it another heavy blow.
Finally, a fine drizzle drifted down from the sky. The creature shrieked piteously, clearly grievously injured by Zhang Sheng's sword strike. Caring for nothing else, it turned and fled. This time, the group did not hang back, pursuing right on its heels.
Several li flashed by in moments. Before Wei Yuan's eyes appeared two graves, one large and one small. Wheeling around, the shadow monster dove straight into the smaller mound.
Both graves were exceptionally crude—merely mounds of earth hidden among shrubs and scattered rocks. Had it not been for two wooden tombstones, one could not have told they were graves at all.
Having reached this place, the shadow monster ran no further. It merely hid underground, as if this were its final lair.
No one knew what lay buried within the subterranean tomb, nor was anyone willing to fight underground against a creature that could move through the earth at will. Thus, after a brief discussion between Ji Liuli and Zhang Sheng, they decided to slay it with a formation.
Ji Liuli immediately suspended the Demon-Suppressing Pagoda above the graves to cut off the monster's retreat, then quickly laid out the formation with Zhang Sheng. Sun Yu and Feng Tingyu were positioned at the yin and yang formation eyes, becoming part of the array itself.
The formation was remarkably intricate. Wei Yuan studied it for a long while before barely recognizing it as the Northern Dipper Soul-Refining Formation.
Once the formation was set, Sun Yu spat out a ball of dark green alchemical fire, which Ji Liuli gathered in her palm. Wei Yuan vaguely recalled that when they first entered the Palace of Grand Beginning, Sun Yu's alchemical fire had been a bright blue-white; now it had turned into a somber, heavy dark green.
Ji Liuli set the alchemical fire in the center of the formation and activated the grand array. Instantly, the center of the formation turned unfathomably deep and dark, and a dazzling star manifested above, casting its starlight down into the gloom.
The subterranean monster gave a shrill howl and surged up from the center of the formation, only to collide headlong with the alchemical fire. Flames instantly engulfed its body, finally revealing its true form.
A crimson sword light flared in Wei Yuan's grasp, slicing toward the monster like a streak of flowing light. At the final instant, his hand suddenly trembled, but the sword light was too swift, sweeping through the creature's body in a flash.
At the four corners of the formation, four immortal swords were already suspended. They had begun falling before the creature had even broken out, and by the time it showed its head, the four swords descended in succession.
With every falling sword, the creature's vitality plunged drastically. In the blink of an eye, all four swords had struck, and its life force dwindled step by step until it finally ran dry.
The creature crashed to the ground. To everyone's shock, it was a little girl who appeared only six or seven years old. She wore a white dress—tattered, ragged, and stained with blood.
Having fallen, she seemed to crawl toward the larger grave purely on instinct, murmuring, "...I'm back. Don't chase me away again... I'm... scared..."
Her life had already ebbed away. After crawling two steps, she moved no more, one small hand dug deep into the dirt.
Silence fell.
After a long moment, Wei Yuan finally asked, "What is going on here?"
Ji Liuli's expression was grave. "She died a long time ago. I just don't know why she turned into a monster."
Sun Yu stepped forward to examine the girl's corpse. "It's not a corpse ba. Her physical body is still very fresh, as though she only died a month ago."
Wei Yuan's first reaction was that this was impossible. The grotto-heaven had shattered several years ago, and the oldest battle scars in the main hall were from two or three years past.
Sun Yu pondered for a moment, then said, "Either there is some secret treasure beneath here that keeps a body from decaying, or she was possessed by a powerful yin spirit that kept her flesh intact. But look here."
Sun Yu lifted the girl's arm and rolled back her sleeve. The tiny arm was bent and deformed in several places, resembling a twisted branch.
Sun Yu said grimly, "This arm was broken more than once. The fractured bones were never treated; they were left to mend on their own, only to be snapped again once healed."
A heavy, stifling feeling weighed on Wei Yuan's chest. He walked up to the two graves and looked at the tombstones.
The tombstone of the larger grave was carved with: *Tomb of Xu Shiqi.*
Before the smaller grave, it read: *Tomb of Beloved Daughter Shu Xinyi.*
By now, Ji Liuli had finished surveying the surrounding terrain. "There is very likely a land of absolute yin below," she said. "Only that could spawn a yin spirit of this magnitude."
"How could a land of absolute yin exist inside a grotto-heaven?" Sun Yu asked.
Ji Liuli replied, "Someone made it."
Wei Yuan said immediately, "Dig! Dig it up and let's see just what kind of land of absolute yin this is."
Chapter 286