Found It

Qi Yan had come to investigate the secret realm three days ago. Before this, the secret realm had never been opened to the public, and the disciples of Tiance Palace were the first batch to enter today.

If a sect disciple had taken this two-thousand-year-old Purple Xuan Grass, the timing wouldn't match up.

Qi Yan might indeed have toured the secret realm during his investigation, but given his cultivation level and personality, he would absolutely never harvest a high-age spiritual plant that had developed intelligence. That was a universally acknowledged taboo in the cultivation world, as it would burden one with karmic obstacles.

What was more, the Purple Xuan Grass said its sister had disappeared half a month ago. Qi Yan hadn't even set foot in the secret realm at that time.

“Half a month ago,” Lin Zhiyue murmured, lowering her voice. “Before your sister went missing, was there anything unusual? Or did someone different enter the secret realm?”

The Purple Xuan Grass shook its leaves, as if trying hard to remember. “That night, the ground shook slightly. It was very gentle, but I felt it. Then, my sister's aura vanished the next day. I thought she had just wandered off, but I waited for many days and she never came back...”

Lin Zhiyue reached out and gently touched the topmost leaf of the Purple Xuan Grass. The moment her fingertip made contact, an extremely weak fluctuation of spiritual energy traveled from the leaf, carrying a childish, dependent, and panicked emotion.

The little grass trembled slightly under her touch but did not shrink away.

“I will help you look,” Lin Zhiyue said. “Even though I'm not a fairy, I can try to help you find your sister. Tell me where she usually goes, and I'll go check it out.”

The Purple Xuan Grass fell silent for a moment. Then, its topmost leaf turned slightly, its voice carrying a trace of tentative hope: “Are... are you really willing to help me?”

“Yes,” Lin Zhiyue nodded. “I promise you.”

Lin Zhiyue gently dug up the Purple Xuan Grass, roots and all, keeping them fully wrapped in a clump of moist mossy soil.

She found an empty jade box she had brought with her, lined it with a layer of soft moss, carefully placed the Purple Xuan Grass inside, and dripped two drops of water onto it. The leaves of the Purple Xuan Grass unfurled slightly, and it whispered a soft “thank you,” its voice a bit steadier than before.

“Where does your sister usually like to stay?” Lin Zhiyue asked, cradling the jade box.

“To the south,” the topmost leaf of the Purple Xuan Grass tilted in a certain direction. “She likes places with dense spiritual energy. If you walk in that direction for a bit, there's a stone wall. The spiritual energy near it is the densest in the entire secret realm. My sister used to go there often.”

Following its direction, Lin Zhiyue crossed the meadow and walked through a small patch of low shrubs. After about fifteen minutes, a stone wall covered in thick vines indeed appeared ahead.

The vines were layered and intertwined, completely shrouding the entire stone wall so that even the original color of the rock was invisible. Only a hint of greyish-brown texture occasionally showed through the gaps.

The concentration of spiritual energy in this area was indeed significantly higher than elsewhere. Inhaling it brought a crisp, sweet sensation, as if even her breathing was being slowly nourished.

“My sister's aura cuts off here,” the Purple Xuan Grass's voice drifted from the jade box, carrying that sob-like tone again. “My last connection to her was here. Any further, and there's nothing.”

Lin Zhiyue stood before the stone wall and observed it carefully for a moment.

The vines were thick and dense, but there was nothing special about them—just a wall of ordinary wild vines. She placed her hand on the vines, and with a thought, the passive wood affinity of the Golden Cascade, Entwined Flowers naturally began to operate. As if sensing something, the vines slowly wriggled and parted to both sides on their own, revealing the greyish-brown rock surface behind them.

The stone wall was very ordinary.

There were no mechanisms, no cracks, and no spiritual rune carvings. It was just a face of natural mountain rock, rough and solid to the touch.

Lin Zhiyue tried to channel spiritual energy into the stone crevices. The spiritual energy seeped in without any resistance and dispersed just as easily, like water poured onto sand, eliciting no reaction whatsoever.

She furrowed her brows, preparing to try another direction, when she suddenly felt something stir inside her system space.

She extended her divine sense into the space to take a look and froze. The pitch-black stone, its surface covered in silver patterns, was hovering in midair. The silver patterns were no longer a static, cobweb-like shape; instead, they slowly flowed as if they had come alive, emitting a faint blue glow that shrouded the surrounding items in the space with a hazy blue halo.

Before she could react, the black stone drifted toward the edge of the space, as if sensing a powerful attraction.

With a thought, Lin Zhiyue retrieved the black stone. The moment it landed in her palm, it violently broke free, flying out of her hand and crashing straight toward the stone wall.

The air in front of the stone wall seemed to be torn apart by something, letting out a muffled boom.

A ripple of faint blue light spread out from where the black stone was embedded in the rock. Like a pebble thrown into water, the ripples expanded from the point of impact, and wherever they passed, the rock on the surface of the stone wall began to crack, peel, and recede to both sides.

The crack widened further and further, finally opening a gap half a person wide in the center of the stone wall. A faint glimmer of light leaked from the depths of the gap, and a wave of spiritual energy, several times denser than that outside, surged out, carrying a moist scent of mixed vegetation and earth.

Standing in front of the gap, Lin Zhiyue's heart skipped a beat. She reached out to retrieve the black stone embedded in the wall. The silver patterns had already returned to their static state, and the blue light had faded. It lay quietly in her palm, as if nothing had happened.

She stored the black stone back into her space and poked her head in to look through the crack. Inside was a narrow passage that wound its way into the depths, with a faint halo of light shimmering at the end.

The excited voice of the Purple Xuan Grass drifted from the jade box: “My sister's aura! It's inside! I can feel it!”

Lin Zhiyue took a deep breath and squeezed sideways through the crack. After walking through the narrow passage, her vision suddenly opened up, and she froze in her tracks.

Behind the stone wall was a hidden stone chamber. There was a natural fissure in the ceiling of the chamber, allowing sunlight to filter down and shine directly upon an extremely tall Purple Xuan Grass in the center. This grass was dozens of times larger than the one she had outside. Its leaves were broad and unfurled, its entire form enveloped in a faint purple spiritual light. The spiritual energy accumulated over its years of growth was so dense it was visible to the naked eye, condensing into a halo of tiny specks of light along the edges of its leaves.

It stood quietly in the center of the chamber, its roots buried deep within the spiritual soil on the ground. Its state was stable, but its overall aura was somewhat weak, as if it had been trapped by something for too long and had not received proper nourishment.

There was a dried-up trace of spiritual runes on the stone wall, looking as though some restriction had once been sealed here, which had now mostly cracked and peeled away.

The leaves of the elder sister Purple Xuan Grass swayed slightly, as if responding to the external aura, or perhaps awakened from its deep slumber by the sound of the stone wall opening.

The younger Purple Xuan Grass poked the tip of a leaf out from the jade box and cried out with a sob in its voice, “Sister!”

The tall Purple Xuan Grass trembled, and its leaves slowly turned toward the direction of the voice.