Chapter 345

Zhao Yi used to call Li Zhuiyuan "Ancestor" as a playful tease. However, ever since Li Zhuiyuan inherited the last remnant of Zhao Wuyang's spirit, the teasing acquired an odd legitimacy.

Every time one chose a side, it marked a new round of decisions based on self-interest.

When self-interest and personal loyalty were placed on opposite ends of the scale, it was undoubtedly a test of human nature.

Zhao Yi was fortunate.

He greatly valued the bond he had cultivated with Li, and Li, in turn, was always generous when it came to matters of profit.

Between Young Master Lu of the Four Xuan Sect and Li Zhuiyuan, who should he choose?

Hesitating for even a second longer would be disrespectful to his own life-or-death situation!

Liang Yan's flexible sword whistled through the air, and Liang Li's dagger caused a distortion in vision due to its extreme heat. Both descended rapidly at the same time.

The four individuals from the Four Xuan Sect now sensed an intense life-or-death crisis.

After all, they were a "lantern-lighting" team forged by major powers in the martial world. While other teams would have simply resigned themselves to death in this situation, they still managed to struggle, demonstrating what true resilience meant.

"Crack!"

The luminous pearl in Lu Xuan's hand instantly developed numerous cracks, and wisps of white light rapidly emanated from it, binding him and the three people around him together.

The white light turned reddish because the vital essence and blood of the four individuals were siphoned out and converged upon the cracked luminous pearl.

In an instant, a phantom image strikingly similar to a Xuanwu (Black Tortoise) enveloped the four individuals.

With formations as bones, feng shui as flesh, destiny as blood, and puppets as skin, the inheritors of the four great families of the Four Xuan Sect forcibly performed a secret art using the luminous pearl as their foundation. More precisely, it was a form of sacrifice.

Liang Yan's flexible sword struck the tortoise shell. On the chests of the four individuals below, sword marks appeared, as if raked by claws, causing them to bleed profusely. Liang Li's dagger stabbed out with high frequency, creating numerous blood holes on the bodies of the four individuals below.

The Liang sisters held nothing back this time, yet wounds that should have been fatal were no longer deadly.

Seeing this, Zhao Yi forcibly stopped his downward momentum, simultaneously allowing his body to briefly hover for a longer period while forcefully elevating his already charged killing blow by another level.

This action was a huge burden for him, but he knew that even if he descended now, his attacks, like those of the Liang sisters, would only land on the tortoise shell, merely inflicting more terrifying-looking injuries on the four individuals.

He was unwilling to accept this outcome; he would rather wait, hoping Li could help tear open another small gap.

At this moment, the Xuanwu's head showed a tendency to rise, holding its breath, on the verge of erupting.

Once it spewed its energy into the air, it would replicate the scene from above the museum yesterday, and seasoned Xuanmen practitioners throughout the Luoyang region would sense it.

A dead end had actually been revitalized by the four of them.

As long as they endured this round, they could reorganize, regain their composure, take their positions, and establish a new multi-layered defense. Simultaneously, a signal had already been sent, awaiting the arrival of others.

By then, although they wouldn't achieve their goal of monopolizing the benefits tonight, the ones who would die would no longer be them.

The formation flag in Li Zhuiyuan's right palm cracked, and the spirit of the black flood dragon moved again. Behind the young man, a deep, pitch-black gate appeared.

Chen Xiyuan, who was already standing behind the young man, turned her head. She could sense the unusual nature of this gate; despite being merely a simple illusion, it gave her a bone-chillingly cold sensation.

Even though she hailed from the Dragon King's lineage and possessed extensive knowledge, she still failed to recognize it as the Ghost Gate of Fengdu Hell.

This was because a normal person simply wouldn't think in that direction.

How could the Ghost Gate of the Great Emperor of Fengdu appear anywhere else in the human world?

Li Zhuiyuan raised his right hand, knelt on one knee, and slammed his right palm onto the ground in front of him.

The cumulative burden, building layer upon layer, finally surpassed the young man's breaking point at this moment.

Two trickles of fresh blood flowed from the corners of Li Zhuiyuan's eyes.

The Twelve Edicts of Fengdu: Four Ghosts Bear the Sedan.

What was being gambled on was the critical instant; what was being sought was the opportune moment for a decisive kill.

When the opponent suddenly raised the stakes, one had to immediately put down new chips in response to prevent the predetermined outcome from changing.

Four eerie pressures assailed them, and the souls of the four individuals seemed to be constrained by invisible chains, violently dragged downwards.

"Thud!"

Among the four who had been standing, apart from Lu Xuan, who was immobilized by the giant eye, the other three all knelt down.

The Xuanwu phantom above them clearly paused its head-lifting motion, and ruptures also appeared on its tortoise shell.

Zhao Yi descended.

His body, like a swimming dragon, sliced through the opening and entered.

His right hand was already covered in black flood dragon skin, and because he had accumulated power for too long, the skin and flesh on it had chapped, looking like "cuts" from a severe winter freeze.

Fortunately, he had finally waited for this second opportunity; Li had never disappointed him in this regard.

To catch the bandits, first catch their ringleader; in a team fight, eliminate the opponent's formation master first.

Especially since cracks had actually appeared on the luminous pearl in this guy's right hand.

What a heinous crime! It was already wrong to steal someone's property, but how dare they damage it right in front of my little brother Yuan when the rightful owner was trying to reclaim it?

Zhao Yi's flood dragon claw struck Brother Lu's head.

"Smack!"

The "good brother's" head exploded instantly, looking just like a watermelon specially brought to crack open in celebration on the day of sworn brotherhood.

Even so, Zhao Yi still didn't feel it was secure enough; his claw's momentum undiminished, it continued to delve deeper from the neck.

Formation masters often had weak physiques, which was why they needed layers of protection from teammates. But this time, Zhao Yi was treating Brother Lu, the formation master, as if he were to be utterly pulverized.

The flood dragon claw sliced into the chest, the chest exploded, and it continued downwards, severing Lu Xuan's entire body into two mangled halves.

Zhao Yi clenched his other hand into a fist and swung it forcefully forward, unleashing a powerful blow that seemed to "equally distribute its blessings" upon the scattered body parts.

"Boom!"

The "good brother" was completely pulverized into dust.

With Lu Xuan dead, the Xuanwu phantom above them dispersed, and the other three all suffered backlash. Then, as if by tacit agreement, they fled in different directions.

With the death of their "lantern-lighting" leader, their generation's journey through the martial world was considered over.

At this point, survival was paramount.

This was also because Zhao Yi had been too focused on dealing with Lu Xuan, insistent on killing him completely, and hadn't had time to target the other three. Otherwise, he could have at least smashed one or two more heads.

It was still not too late to remedy the situation, but Zhao Yi didn't do so.

He stood his ground, stretching out his hands. Two phantom black flood dragon claws extended, seizing the luminous pearl and purple-gold compass that were about to fall from the air, and retracted them into his palms.

The luminous pearl was covered in cracks. Even though the sacrificial secret art had been interrupted, the cracking had not stopped.

There was nothing to be done about it; this item likely possessed a certain spiritual quality that triggered it to actively protect its master during a life-or-death crisis, making it inherently extremely difficult to acquire intact.

Fortunately, the purple-gold compass was perfectly intact.

As soon as he held it, its cold and austere touch seemed to proclaim its extraordinary nature.

A smile appeared at the corner of Zhao Yi's mouth.

Li's small handmade compass could finally be replaced.

That damned little compass was utterly counterintuitive to use; every time, he had to manually calculate to correct its errors.

Although Zhao Yi was busy tallying his gains and giving his "good brother" an air burial, the three who had escaped hadn't gotten far.

The Liang sisters' second wave of attacks arrived. Run Sheng, Tan Wenbin, and Lin Shuyou, all bound by the young man's red thread, had already spread out to the periphery.

Severely wounded, suffering from sacrificial backlash, and with Lu Xuan dead, they, who could only leverage their strength through cooperation, had now fallen into disarray.

The Liang sisters cooperated seamlessly, while Run Sheng and the other two formed a suppressing formation. Soon, with hardly any cost, they completely eliminated the remaining three individuals.

Chen Xiyuan's red lips parted slightly. She could hardly believe her own eyes.

A killing trap set for her had actually been broken just like that?

What had just happened made this young girl, who had always navigated the martial world in a dominant manner, feel very strange and intrigued.

In the past, her elders had not failed to constantly admonish her, nor was she a pampered young lady from the Dragon King's family who never did any work.

When she first began her "lantern-lighting journey," she, too, had felt uneasy and apprehensive. But after discovering that the evil entities she needed to suppress and the competitors who revealed intentions to move against her all became lambs to the slaughter within her domain, she fell into a kind of inertia.

Her path had been too smooth. She understood all the principles and could articulate them perfectly, yet her gaze remained as clear and pure as that of Li Zhuiyuan's university classmates.

Her classmates had not yet left their ivory tower, while she had always carried her ivory tower with her.

In contrast to the brutal scene Zhao Yi had created, White Crane True Lord's method was more refined. He examined each corpse, twitching his nose in the air to check for any hidden remnant souls.

As it turned out, there really were; not just one, but almost all three of them had tacitly chosen to do so.

One had hidden a remnant soul in a thumb-sized doll, another in a scroll carried on their person, and the last in their eye.

The opponent in the last battle was White Crane True Lord. At the time, White Crane True Lord had sensed that something was amiss; the guy seemed to be intentionally trying to smash his head against the True Lord's golden mace.

Recalling it now, it turned out this guy wanted White Crane True Lord to smash his eyeball out for better concealment. What he didn't expect was that little brother Yuan had given instructions to leave the bodies as intact as possible when killing, so they could check for hidden items.

White Crane True Lord placed the doll on his fingertip, held it under his nose, and with a strong inhale, a fragmented human face was drawn out from within it and sucked into his nasal cavity.

The True Lord leaned his neck back. "Whew, this feeling is like using a snuff bottle, a bit intoxicating."

Pinching his nose, the True Lord then dug out another's eyeball, shook it in his hand, and was about to pop it directly into his mouth like a candy bean.

But then he glanced at little brother Yuan, and then at Three Eyes.

The boy muttered, "These spirit mediums are such a hassle."

He had no choice but to place the eyeball in front of him. His right hand conjured a phantom trident, and he poked it into the eyeball, like using a toothpick to extract snail meat.

After a few pokes, the remnant soul inside was finally pricked out, and the True Lord swallowed it in one gulp.

"Haaah."

Comfortably twisting his shoulders a few times, the boy unrolled the painting. The scroll itself was only the size of a child's arm, but when unrolled, it unfolded further, revealing a Go chessboard diagram inside.

The True Lord didn't use forceful methods on this one, fearing he might ruin the chess diagram.

Just then, Zhao Yi walked over. His eyes narrowed, and with one hand, he touched the chess diagram. In that hand, wrapped in flood dragon skin and emanating a black aura, he clutched a terrified remnant soul.

"Come, open wide."

The True Lord glared at him, anger flashing in his vertical pupils.

Zhao Yi didn't insist. He released his hand, and the remnant soul tried to escape. The True Lord reached forward, recaptured it, and popped it into his own mouth.

Tan Wenbin was in charge of searching the corpses. Besides the chess diagram in the True Lord's hand, he also found a set of slender calligraphy brushes and a stack of palm-sized shadow puppets on the other two individuals.

The chess diagram was still somewhat useful; when it was inconvenient to sit outside during rain, Li Zhuiyuan could use it to play chess with A-Li indoors.

The brushes could be taken back for A-Li to use as paintbrushes, and the stack of shadow puppets was made of good material, which could be used to make a set of clothes for each of the three White Crane Boy puppets at the dojo.

Although he had been poor his entire life, at his current level, some items were no longer useful to the young man. Shadow puppets were for making automatons, but he already had talisman armor; brushes were for calculating fates, but he had the red thread.

What truly caught his eye were the two items in Lu Xuan's hands.

As the "lantern-lighting" leader of this generation of the Four Xuan Sect, he must have been the only one pre-bestowed with his family's true treasures.

When Zhao Yi walked over with the spoils of war, Chen Xiyuan, standing behind the young man, showed obvious vigilance towards him.

Zhao Yi: "Miss Chen, it seems you have quite a deep misunderstanding of me. As you can see, we are on the same side."

Chen Xiyuan: "But just now, you were clearly still with them."

She was helping the young man to be vigilant. If Zhao Yi could betray that side, he could naturally betray this side as well.

In Chen Xiyuan's mind, Zhao Yi's defection tonight actually deepened her preconceived notions of him.

Zhao Yi saw through Chen Xiyuan's thoughts.

Yet he couldn't explain, especially not in front of Li.

He felt that Li was likely taking advantage of her simple kindness.

Therefore, he couldn't ruin Li's good image in her heart.

What Zhao Yi didn't know was that he was mistaken. Because he hadn't personally experienced it, he didn't know the true extent of this Chen family girl's kindness.

Li Zhuiyuan himself was finding her a bit hard to handle now.

Even during a life-or-death crisis and the height of battle, she was still thinking about being a live-in son-in-law.

Li Zhuiyuan wiped the corners of his eyes with the back of his hand. The blood had stopped flowing; it was a minor issue that a little rest would resolve.

The young man said to the woman behind him, "I have Jianlibao in my bag."

"Okay."

Chen Xiyuan opened the hiking backpack and rummaged through it. Sure enough, it was there.

She took out the Jianlibao, opened it with a fizz, and drank it herself.

After finishing it, she commented, "It's too sweet. I don't like it."

Zhao Yi blinked and echoed, "It is indeed excessively sweet."

The young man took the purple-gold compass from Zhao Yi, and after a brief inspection, he said:

"Good stuff."

This item could not only provide assistance when setting up formations but also serve as a multi-purpose formation core to sustain formations, and even pre-store temporary instant formations.

At this moment, Li Zhuiyuan felt that he was truly unsophisticated.

Zhao Yi turned his head away, afraid he might burst out laughing. Primarily, every time he saw Li touching good items, it was exactly like a child of that age receiving an an expensive new toy.

The young man placed the purple-gold compass on the ground and then asked, "What about that luminous pearl?"

Zhao Yi: "It's in this state now; it can't be repaired. It will likely turn into a pile of dust after daybreak."

Li Zhuiyuan took the luminous pearl into his hand, inspected it, and nodded, agreeing with Zhao Yi's assessment.

What a pity. This was a formation artifact no less valuable than the purple-gold compass.

Zhao Yi: "But even if it turns into pearl powder, it's still very valuable. Look at these cracks—isn't there still a dark red color inside? This thing has passed through countless generations' hands, and there's no telling how many times it's undergone sacrifices like before. Each time, some essence remained.

This pearl powder is a top-grade external wound medicine. Li, keep it well. Perhaps I'll have to ask you for some to treat my injuries in the future."

Li Zhuiyuan: "This amount seems to be only enough for one use, doesn't it?"

Zhao Yi: "It's an incredibly precious and rare item! You only need to apply it to critical wounds, just enough to sustain a life."

Chen Xiyuan, still holding her unfinished Jianlibao, spoke:

"He's right," she said. "This kind of item is very difficult to come across, because the methods for intentionally cultivating it go against human principles."

It was created through sacrifices by generations of Four Xuan Sect members. If one wanted to cultivate it oneself, they would have to personally kill people to nourish it, and not just ordinary people, but Xuanmen practitioners.

Li Zhuiyuan handed the cracked luminous pearl in his hand to Chen Xiyuan, saying:

"Here."

"Oh, okay."

Chen Xiyuan took the luminous pearl and helped place it in the young man's hiking backpack, meticulously zipping it up and fastening the buckles.

This girl sometimes understood what people said, and sometimes she didn't.

When used to describe an animal, it's a compliment, indicating intelligence.

Li Zhuiyuan disliked repeating himself, but in front of her, it always seemed necessary:

"What I mean is, take this luminous pearl, grind it into powder, and apply it to every single wound on your entire body. Don't miss a spot."

Chen Xiyuan: "I... didn't mishear?"

"You didn't mishear."

"Little brother, this is very precious. Are you really giving it to me, your elder sister?"

"Mm-hm."

"I'll just take a little, as he just said, apply it to the critical wounds."

"I've applied medicine to your entire body, so I know how severe your external injuries are. The only reason you can stand here now is because you activated your domain; otherwise, you'd be confined to bed, unable to move.

I've estimated that the amount in this one luminous pearl is just enough for you."

Chen Xiyuan looked at Li Zhuiyuan with some hesitation.

She felt she truly couldn't understand him. He was so poor he had to rely on becoming a live-in son-in-law to acquire resources, yet he was still so generous towards her.

She had also seen the scene of Li Zhuiyuan playing with the purple-gold compass earlier. In her opinion, the compass was indeed very good, but nothing extraordinary. Yet, the young man had acted as if he had never seen such a fine item before.

This meant that his poverty was absolutely not faked.

Li Zhuiyuan deepened his voice: "If I tell you to use it, just use it. Now, take it out."

Although this luminous pearl was indeed precious, as long as it could quickly help Chen Xiyuan heal her injuries and restore her combat strength, it would be worth it.

This wave had just begun, and with her help by his side, the young man would have the confidence to seize greater gains.

Zhao Yi did not speak to dissuade him, nor did he find the young man's actions strange. He had long since deeply understood Li's generosity.

But soon, a sudden warning sign arose in Zhao Yi's heart.

He watched Chen Xiyuan, who was taking the luminous pearl out of the young man's bag again, and thought to himself:

"Even the unofficial positions are being fought over these days."

This chapter is 5k words; the missing word count will be added tomorrow. Please rest assured, "Dragon" (the author) will not trick you with chapter numbers to pad the word count.

Let me explain the reason for the unstable updates and more frequent short chapters these past few days.

I had my blood sugar tested recently, and the numbers were very high, showing signs of developing in an undesirable direction. So, I had to stop drinking all beverages. Previously, I was used to writing a 10,000-word chapter in one sitting, which typically took about 8 hours of typing without breaks for food, relying on sweet drinks to sustain myself. After suddenly cutting those out, I couldn't maintain the rhythm of typing those large 10,000-word chapters anymore. Therefore, I've had to divide what would have been one chapter into two writing sessions and publish them as two separate chapters.

I will adjust as quickly as possible and strive to resume the 10,000-word chapter typing rhythm from before. Sending tight hugs to everyone!