"There's someone else?!"
The Commandery Governor, the Mo Family Patriarch, and the Nine Nether cultist were all shocked. They had prided themselves on pulling the strings from the shadows as masters of the board, so how had they ended up trapped instead?
Who was lurking in the dark?
They deployed all manner of methods.
The Commandery Governor tried to mobilize the chains hidden behind his back, but no matter how hard he tried, the chains seemed nailed into the space behind him, completely motionless.
Tattooed across the Mo Family Patriarch's arms were the eighteen classical weapons. These were actually eighteen weapons he had personally forged. In the past, they had never failed him, but now, they had all fallen dead silent, not a single one responding to his call.
The Nine Nether cultist tried to summon the ghostly apparitions concealed inside his body, but those apparitions seemed to have encountered something of immense horror, cowering inside him and shivering violently.
All three realized that the person who intervened was no ordinary figure. This ability to disregard physical reality and casually alter local rules... was it the Body Integration stage?!
Were Dao Seeking Sect disciples this extravagant when traveling, accompanied by Body Integration stage grandmasters?
Regret surged in the hearts of both the governor and the Mo Family Patriarch. They had only come to steal a Phoenix Blood Stone; how on earth had it stirred up so much trouble, dragging in the Nine Nether Cult and now a Body Integration powerhouse?
Seeing Su Yiren finally step in, Meng Jingzhou scrambled to his feet in fright and bolted over to seek her protection.
He was the only person in the room capable of moving.
Lu Yang whispered to Li Haoran, "If she decides to force herself on you, you wouldn't have any way to resist. Why don't you just give in?"
"That way she'd only get my body, not my heart!" Li Haoran replied with righteous indignation, though his heart was actually pounding like a drum.
Su Yiren was gentle and gracious, like a considerate older sister. If he truly did yield to her, it didn't seem like the worst thing in the world.
Su Yiren pushed open the door and looked at the three people she had immobilized. Lu Yang, Meng Jingzhou, and Li Haoran followed behind her, feeling an immense sense of security.
"Who would've thought, Governor Shi!" Lu Yang opened with an outright frame job. "Not only are you colluding with the Phoenix Clan, you're even colluding with the Nine Nether Cult! Your crimes are heinous, and I've recorded it all with an image-recording orb!"
"Hey, hey, hey, you can't just throw accusations around!" The governor's expression twisted.
"Ah, right, right, right! He's definitely colluding with the Phoenix Clan and the Nine Nether Cult—I can testify to it!" The Mo Family Patriarch seized the chance to kick him while he was down.
"Let's get acquainted. I'm Lu Yang, a disciple of the Dao Seeking Sect."
"Meng Jingzhou, disciple of the Dao Seeking Sect."
"Li Haoran, disciple of the Dao Seeking Sect."
Su Yiren said nothing. While she was easygoing before Li Haoran, she was not so pleasant in front of outsiders.
"We originally just wanted to see what secrets this Phoenix Blood Stone held, but who knew we'd hook such a big fish."
Lu Yang pulled off the Nine Nether cultist's mask; the man had an ordinary appearance.
"You said earlier that you wanted to refine the phoenix into a corpse puppet. Explain what's going on, and I might spare your life." This was no trivial matter. The corpse of a Body Integration stage phoenix was right beneath their feet. Never mind refining it into a corpse puppet—if the phoenix so much as turned over, it would spell total doom for Luofeng Commandery.
The governor looked thoroughly grim as well. If the Nine Nether Cult actually pulled this off, his days as commandery governor would be well and truly over.
The Nine Nether cultist burst into laughter. "Now that I've been caught by you, could my life even be spared?"
"Senior Su, please search his soul," Lu Yang said, seeing that the man had no intention of talking, and directly asked Su Yiren to act.
Su Yiren stepped forward and pressed her finger to the cultist's forehead. Her brows furrowed. "He's not a living person. He's a corpse!"
The cultist's eyes glazed over lifelessly, and his body rapidly decayed until nothing remained but a pile of white bones.
This was a common trick of the Nine Nether Cult: animating a corpse while controlling it from behind the scenes. Once discovered, they severed the connection, causing the corpse to rot away instantly without leaving a single trace. They were notoriously difficult to catch, but the people present simply didn't know much about the Nine Nether Cult.
"Trying to run?"
Su Yiren struck again. Harnessing the might of the Body Integration stage, she enveloped the entire Luofeng Commandery in her rules—not an insect could enter, not a bird could leave. She was determined to ferret out the Nine Nether Cultist.
Controlling a corpse had a limited range; the perpetrator couldn't possibly have fled Luofeng Commandery.
To let someone escape when separated by two whole major realms would be far too humiliating.
Losing face herself wasn't the issue, but losing face in front of Li Haoran was unacceptable!
She spread her divine sense, sweeping across every inch of Luofeng Commandery's soil.
In ordinary circumstances, a rogue Body Integration cultivator sweeping their divine sense over a city at will would be seen as a provocation against the Great Xia Dynasty, but given the circumstances, no one would hold Su Yiren accountable.
"Found you!"
Su Yiren soon locked onto several suspicious cultivators with her divine sense. Yet whatever restrictions were placed on those individuals, the moment Su Yiren immobilized them, they dropped dead on the spot.
"So ruthless?"
The governor's face turned ashen. "I've heard that the Nine Nether Cult believes in the existence of the Nine Nether, where death is merely another cycle of reincarnation and nothing to be feared. Because of that, the Nine Nether Cult is made up of desperate fanatics—extremely dangerous!"
Through her divine sense, Su Yiren discovered formations hidden inside dried-up wells belonging to many prominent households. Interlocking and meticulously arranged, they formed a massive overarching formation that must have been meant for refining the phoenix.
"No, the cultists who died weren't at the Soul Formation stage. The true mastermind hasn't been found yet!" Su Yiren realized. Those who perished were merely pawns under the mastermind.
"Underground, inside the phoenix's corpse!" Lu Yang was the first to think of it. The ancient phoenix had been at the Body Integration stage in life; a corpse of that caliber could isolate divine sense scans of the same level.
Su Yiren had thought of this too, but she didn't move.
"Senior Su, what's wrong?" Lu Yang asked in confusion. Burrowing underground shouldn't be difficult for a Body Integration cultivator, right? Surely a Body Integration grandmaster knew a few simple earth-burrowing spells?
"Exactly, Senior Su, please hurry down! If the Nine Nether Cult finishes refining the phoenix, Luofeng Commandery will be doomed," Li Haoran urged as well.
Su Yiren considered her wording for a moment, then said, "My methods... might not be quite what you imagine."
Su Yiren took a deep breath to compose herself. With things having come to this, she could no longer pretend to be some dainty, well-bred lady.
Clenching her fist, she smashed it straight into the ground, punching out a hole wide enough for a person, and then leapt down into the depths.
Lu Yang, Meng Jingzhou, and Li Haoran stared with wide eyes and gulped. Senior Su Yiren's methods... didn't quite match her delicate and frail appearance.
They suddenly remembered a question they had previously overlooked.
"What field of cultivation does she specialize in?"
Meng Jingzhou found the sight of the giant pit especially familiar. Why did this method look so much like his master's?
The three exchanged glances, an absurd suspicion surfacing in their minds: "Could Su Yiren... be a body cultivator?"
Deep underground, a phoenix with vivid crimson feathers lay quietly prostrate, as if it had only just died. Suddenly, the formations left aboveground by the Nine Nether Cult activated one after another. The phoenix's eyes lit up with a jade-green glow, and Phoenix True Flame ignited all around it, burning out a vast subterranean cavern.
"Since you've discovered me, then let's go down together!" The Nine Nether cultist's voice rasped from the phoenix, hoarse and frenzied.
Though he said that, the regret burning in the cultist's heart was beyond words.
Lay down the formations, steal a Phoenix Blood Stone, resurrect the phoenix, and overturn Luofeng Commandery—what a perfect plan it had been! Simple, easy to execute, flawless, and undetected.
How the hell did stealing a single Phoenix Blood Stone involve a Body Integration cultivator guarding it?!
Is this damn Phoenix Blood Stone of yours really that valuable?! Huh?!
"Even though resurrecting the phoenix in haste won't restore it to its peak, it's more than enough to overturn Luofeng Commandery!" Now that things had come to this, the cultist threw all caution to the wind.
"I know you're at the Body Integration stage, but so what? Are you a formation cultivator or a talisman cultivator? It doesn't matter! Before you can completely stop the phoenix, it'll be more than enough time for me to destroy Luofeng Commandery several times over!"
Engulfed in true flames, the phoenix cried out in the underground cavern. Spreading its wings, it carried an endless force of destruction, resembling a rebirth through fire.
The Nine Nether cultist was just about to control the phoenix to shoot into the sky, only to discover that the phoenix couldn't take off no matter what.
"What's going on?"
He scanned outward with his divine sense and discovered that Su Yiren was pinching the phoenix's beak with one hand, holding it so firmly that no matter how violently its wings flapped, it couldn't rise even half an inch.
"Fly?" A cold sneer appeared on Su Yiren's delicate face. Gripping the phoenix's beak with one hand, she slammed it downward with tremendous force, violently smashing the phoenix into the ground.
The Commandery Governor and the Mo Family Patriarch, bringing Lu Yang and the other two down through the punched-out hole, arrived just in time to witness Su Yiren hurling the phoenix down—a spectacle brimming with both grace and raw violence.
Li Haoran swallowed hard. If he actually married her, would he even survive?
Chapter 227