The Child Who Survived

Lin Zhiyue and her group's search of the residence lasted for nearly an hour.

The disciples searched every corner inside and outside the courtyard walls. Ultimately, as expected, they dug up the skeletal remains of five children from the ground in five directions: east, south, west, north, and southeast.

Each body was curled up and buried in a shallow pit, with faint scars left from when their spiritual roots were ripped out still visible on their bones.

The final location was in the northwest direction, and Lin Zhiyue went to inspect it herself.

When her spiritual energy swept downward, her heart leaped—under the ground, there was actually a faint trace of breath.

Without a second thought, she brushed away the dirt with her bare hands and pulled the tiny body out from the bottom of the pit.

The boy's face was as pale as paper, and his spiritual root had already been gouged out. Without a word, Lin Zhiyue immediately channeled her spiritual energy into his body, not daring to let it break for even a fraction of a second.

She ran all the way to Ye Qingwu with the child in her arms. Ye Qingwu clearly had not expected any child to survive either. Stunned for a moment, she quickly took him, cradling him in her arms to carefully check his pulse.

The other senior brothers and sisters gathered around, holding their breath as they stared at the child's pale little face, their hearts in their throats.

Only after Ye Qingwu fed him a Rejuvenation Pill did a faint trace of color finally return to his nearly bloodless cheeks.

Everyone present let out a collective sigh of relief, followed by a deeper sense of heartache—such a young child... what did he do to deserve this?

What a pity. This child might have originally had a destiny for cultivation. Now that his spiritual root was gouged out, let alone cultivating, his future constitution would likely be even weaker than that of ordinary children. Lin Zhiyue felt a pang of sadness in her heart.

The design of the Nine-Turn Spirit-Sustaining Array was truly insidious. It actually used the bones and blood of children as a foundation, then burned the origin of cultivators' spiritual roots, and finally used a massive amount of essence blood and spiritual energy to fully activate the formation.

Qi Sui had already laid down six formation eyes and captured cultivators to extract their spiritual root origins.

However, actually driving the formation still required a massive amount of spiritual energy. That was why he had not activated it directly, choosing instead to continuously capture new cultivators to drain their spiritual energy. He wanted to receive a greater backlash of spiritual energy to feed back into himself the moment the formation started.

The system's light screen suddenly popped up, a layer of pale gold light shimmering along its borders: 【Task "Go to Yunting City to participate in the investigation and suppression operation, and make at least one critical contribution during the operation" has been completed. Dusk Rose · Gilded Cloud Waves unlocked. Full set of Dusk Rose collected. Set skill "Thousand Shadows of Dusk Rose" unlocked. Skill Description: Upon activation, conceals the user's form and splits into multiple clones. The user can swap positions and teleport between the clones and the true body at will. During its duration, movement trajectories are extremely difficult to track. Cooldown time depends on spiritual energy consumption.】

Lin Zhiyue let out a soft breath as she looked at the prompt on the system's light screen.

The full Dusk Rose set was finally complete. With the Gilded Cloud Waves in hand, the skill description for Thousand Shadows of Dusk Rose—concealing form, multiple clones, and arbitrary teleportation swaps—meant that combining these three in combat was practically equivalent to having a whole new assassin-style playstyle.

Seeing that the boy's condition had finally stabilized, Lin Zhiyue discussed with her senior brothers and sisters and decided to return the children's remains to their respective families tomorrow.

Ye Qingwu then added that she would send a message to the City Lord's Manor in advance. When the time came, people from the City Lord's Manor would lead the way, and consoling the families and distributing compensation would also be handled by them.

Lin Zhiyue nodded upon hearing this—this was indeed the most secure way.

The disciples were carefully backfilling the six shallow pits. Some used spiritual fire to incinerate the bone fragments and crystals one by one, and the residual formation runes of the array gradually faded in the firelight.

The spiritual fire slowly burned out, leaving only a few scattered, dark red sparks flickering in the ashes.

Bound by spiritual energy, Qi Sui was brought up from the basement and placed on a relatively dry patch of ground in a corner of the courtyard.

He was completely curled up in his dusty brown old robe, his burned body casting a rugged silhouette under the moonlight. His only visible eye was half-closed, as if he no longer cared about anything happening around him.

Ye Qingwu handed the little boy over to Liu Fengyao.

She standing before a writing desk in the center of the courtyard, she spread out a sheet of spiritual letter paper and wrote down the entire sequence of events stroke by stroke.

Lin Zhiyue stood on the stone steps a few paces away, watching the words she wrote hover over the paper.

“The identity of the primary culprit in the Yunting City demonic cultivator incident has been confirmed. He is Qi Sui, the former Patriarch of the reclusive Qi family and the younger brother of Junior Brother Yanchen. After the destruction of the Qi family, Qi Sui's spiritual root was shattered, and his body was severely burned. He fled to Yunting City with his remaining followers and secretly set up the Nine-Turn Spirit-Sustaining Array, using children's bones and blood as a foundation and cultivators' spiritual roots as a catalyst, attempting to reconstruct his spiritual root through evil arts. He abducted several low-level cultivators and six children with spiritual roots in the city to fuel the formation. Fortunately, it was not fully activated and has been stopped in time. Qi Sui and his followers are now completely under control, awaiting the sect's judgment.”

Having written the final character, Ye Qingwu folded the spiritual letter, placed it inside an envelope, and flicked her wrist. The letter transformed into a streak of green light, shooting into the night sky toward Tiance Palace.

She stood before the desk, watching the streak of light disappear into the edge of the clouds.

Lin Zhiyue stepped down from the stone steps and stopped at the edge of the courtyard, her gaze shifting toward Qi Sui. The relationship between Master and his younger brother... why does it look even worse than that of mortal enemies?

Suddenly, Qi Sui spoke from the corner. When he opened his mouth, his voice was cracked and raspy, as if forced out of a torn throat, but Lin Zhiyue still clearly heard those few words: “See... Qi... Yan...”

He wanted to see Qi Yan.

Lin Zhiyue stood under the corridor and watched him for a moment before turning her head to look at Ye Qingwu. Ye Qingwu fell silent for a short while, then nodded slightly, her voice quiet but clear: “This is a grievance between them. Send a message to your master and see if he is willing to meet him. If he is not, there is no need to force it.”

Lin Zhiyue retrieved a transmission jade talisman from her sleeve—it was given to her by Qi Yan, who had told her she could message him if anything happened, though she had never actually used it before.

She held the jade talisman, silent for a few breaths. Injecting her spiritual energy into it, she spoke to the talisman, “Master, there is a man named Qi Sui who wants to see you.”

The jade talisman flashed and fell silent for a moment. Then, Qi Yan's voice echoed from it: “I will not see him.”

Just as Lin Zhiyue was about to put the jade talisman away, Qi Yan's voice sounded again, half a beat slower than before, as if he were weighing his words: “If you want to know anything, ask your senior sister.” The light of the jade talisman died out.

Ye Qingwu had been quietly watching Lin Zhiyue from the moment she pulled out the jade talisman to send the message.

At this moment, her hand holding her sword paused slightly. However, she did not show much emotion on her face.

She knew better than anyone the weight that past carried for Qi Yan. After those memories were sealed away, he had never opened them himself, and no one else had ever dared to bring them up in front of him.

And now, he was telling his young disciple to ask her—

On the other side, Qi Sui heard those words from the jade talisman. There was no change in expression on the only half of his face that could move, as if he had expected this answer all along.

He did not speak again, merely closing his single open eye slowly, as if he had already exhausted all his strength just to speak.

It was not until the hour of Yin that the group withdrew to the City Lord's Manor.

The City Lord of Yunting personally came out to welcome them, arranging an entire side courtyard for the Tiance Palace disciples to stay. He also ordered the manor's physician to treat the only surviving child.

The spiritual physician said it was fortunate they had found him early; had he been buried for another half a day, it would have been too late.

Lin Zhiyue stood in the courtyard for a moment before turning around to walk toward Ye Qingwu's room.

Ye Qingwu's door was half-ajar. The oil lamp inside was already lit, its warm yellow light spilling through the gap in the door, casting a soft, gentle glow over the blue bricks of the corridor.

Lin Zhiyue stood at the doorway, raising her hand to knock twice. Only after hearing a voice from within call out “Come in” did she push the door open and walk inside.