The martial brother and sister exchanged a few more pleasantries, and Zhou Yuanshen handed Wen Jingshu another storage bag.
Inside were nothing but talismans—all kinds of them.
“These are the talismans the four of us brothers prepared for you. We talisman cultivators don't have much of anything else, but we have more talismans than anyone!”
“Don't hold back when you're fighting. Use them whenever you need to. We've got plenty more where those came from.”
Wen Jingshu swept her gaze over the storage bag. Good grief, there had to be at least twenty thousand talismans in there.
For a moment, Wen Jingshu did not know whether to laugh or cry.
Compared to the chaotic mess at Hidden Star Peak, these senior brothers from Talisman Peak could actually be considered close to her.
At least when she went out, she still received things they had prepared for her.
Little did she know that in her past life, without Yun Xiange's interference, Lin Yunan and Fu Sinian had also doted on her to no end. Every time she went out, the two of them would practically raid Beili's private treasury to give her gifts.
Unfortunately, in this life, an otherworldly soul had arrived and messed up all these relationships...
Lin Yunan: I prepared something this time too, I just couldn't find her, okay?!
After the two parted ways, Wen Jingshu passed by Jiangyuan Valley. Feeling an itch for battle, she couldn't resist going to challenge a demon beast alone again.
This time, she was soloing a mid-grade third-rank demon beast, which was equivalent to a human cultivator at the mid Golden Core Stage.
She took turns using the 《Xianguan Sword Art》 and the 《Thunder Brake Sword Art》, her lightning element interspersed with a dense wood element.
Ultimately, there was a difference of an entire major realm between them. Without using her absolute trump cards, Wen Jingshu still ended up injured.
Just as she was exerting all her strength to kill the demon beast, a world-destroying aura suddenly surged from behind her. Making a split-second decision, Wen Jingshu whipped out a defensive magic treasure while simultaneously hiding inside the Shengsheng Bead.
With a thunderous boom, everything within a hundred-li radius of Wen Jingshu was razed to the ground.
The terrifying aura even disturbed the spiritual demons deep within Jiangyuan Valley.
An eighth-rank spiritual demon, the Nine-Elk Deer, trod upon the air with elegant steps. Its physical form was no different from an ordinary deer, with snow-white fur and lustrous antlers, looking delicate and seemingly devoid of any offensive capability.
It lowered its head to sniff the surrounding scent, stomped its front hooves on the blasted, ruined ground, and snorted.
“Damned human cultivators, how dare they run wild in Jiangyuan Valley. Go find out who did this.”
As soon as the voice, neither clearly male nor female, fell, the demon beasts hiding in the shadows responded one after another and dispersed in all directions.
High-level cultivators were not allowed to make a move in Jiangyuan Valley. Similarly, high-level spiritual demons were not permitted to enter human cultivator territory to kill without authorization. This was a rule they had mutually observed for ten thousand years.
Now, someone actually wanted to break this rule.
...
The power of that blow just now was equivalent to a full-force strike from an early stage Mahayana Stage cultivator. The defensive treasure Wen Jingshu had used was refined by Zhang Moheng, and it contained a trace of spatial Dao Charm. Coupled with the impact of the strike, it had actually warped space, creating a spatial rift.
Hiding inside the Shengsheng Bead, Wen Jingshu felt a wave of turbulence outside before the entire world fell silent once more.
With a wave of her hand, a water mirror displayed the scene outside, but it was a vast expanse of white; she could see nothing at all.
Sensing no danger outside, Wen Jingshu cautiously emerged from the Shengsheng Bead, only to be greeted by a rush of cool, refreshing air.
Although the spiritual resonance here was extremely dense, Wen Jingshu could not absorb it.
“It's not spiritual qi, nor is it immortal qi...”
Wen Jingshu followed her intuition in one direction. After taking only a few steps, she felt as though she had reached the end.
Wen Jingshu: ?
Even if it was an illusion array, there was no reason for it to be only a few meters wide, right?”
The Shengsheng Bead stirred again. Carrying the Boundary-Breaking Bead and the Hunyuan Bead, it flew up into the sky and vanished in the blink of an eye.
Wen Jingshu hastily channeled her spiritual energy to give chase. Guided by her contract with the beads, she found a stone hovering in midair.
The stone was black, radiating the exact same spiritual resonance as its surroundings. When Wen Jingshu reached out to touch it, the black stone suddenly moved, shooting straight toward her dantian.
The cool spiritual resonance enveloped her completely. A wave of numbness washed over her bones, and her third bone actually succeeded in shedding its mortal form!
The numbness continued—the fourth, the fifth, the sixth... This unknown spiritual resonance had actually helped her shed five more immortal bones directly! Combined with the previous two, she had now successfully shed seven immortal bones!
Even her wood immortal root had grown another layer, and a second layer was faintly starting to form.
Her lightning spiritual root was also transformed by this spiritual resonance, its quality rising once more.
Wen Jingshu had a premonition that with just one opportunity, she would definitely be able to temper her heavenly lightning spiritual root to unlock a mutated attribute!
Wen Jingshu was overjoyed. Before she could even study the stone, she saw it merge with the Shengsheng Bead.
The last time the Shengsheng Bead met the Boundary-Breaking Bead, it had completely obliterated everything she had stored inside it. Was it doing this again?
Before Wen Jingshu could react, she sensed a wave of rejection from her surroundings. When she opened her eyes again, she was back in the cultivation world.
Without taking the time to see where she was, Wen Jingshu checked her surroundings to ensure no one was around, then hurriedly entered the Shengsheng Bead to investigate. To her surprise, she found that the interior of the bead had undergone earth-shattering changes.
The most direct and visible change was the sky.
Previously, the Shengsheng Bead was merely an isolated space surrounded by a vast expanse of white. Now, however, a blue sky stretched above Wen Jingshu's head.
In the distance, she could even see continuous stretches of mountains, rivers, and lakes, though an invisible barrier blocked her path.
As for other changes, Wen Jingshu had yet to perceive them for the time being.
Wen Jingshu had always believed herself to be well-read, thinking she would know a thing or two about any strange or bizarre occurrences she encountered.
Now, it seemed her horizon was still too narrow.
Oh well. For now, at least, there were no downsides.
With the crisis averted, Wen Jingshu was in no hurry to leave the Shengsheng Bead. She sat cross-legged, resting her chin on her hand as she fell into deep thought.
She reviewed everything that had happened from the moment she took the Intelligence Awakening Pill up to the present, but she truly could not figure out which mighty cultivator wanted her dead.
She believed she had disguised herself very well and had not made any enemies. So who was the person trying to kill her?
Could it be a past enemy of the Wen family?
Wen Jingshu could not make sense of it. She had no intention of keeping this assassination attempt a secret, so she took out her transmission stone and briefly informed Wen Shuyi of the situation.
Upon hearing that Wen Jingshu had actually faced an assassination attempt, Wen Shuyi anxiously pressed:
“How are you? Are you hurt? Where are you now? I'll come find you right away.”
“Who dares to lay a hand on my sister? I will issue a kill order right this instant!”
Wen Jingshu quickly stopped her:
“Sister, things are still unclear right now. If you make a huge fuss and issue a kill order, the perpetrator might not dare to show their face again.”
“Since I joined my master, I have mostly been using the identity of Wen Jingshu. If it isn't an enemy of the Wen family, then the mastermind must be in the Qingyun Sect.”
Fu Sinian? Yun Xiange?
It definitely wasn't either of them.
The former didn't have the capability to hire a Mahayana Stage cultivator, and the latter didn't have the intellect for it.
If Yun Xiange had such means, would she have been foolish enough to attack her directly in the secret realm?
With those two ruled out, the reborn Bai Han was the most suspicious.
However, Bai Han had no backing either. Even if Luo Yunting had seen through him as a reborn soul, when did he reincarnate? What was his relationship with her in her past life? Wen Jingshu still had no way of knowing.
Hearing Wen Jingshu's words, Wen Shuyi was still somewhat uneasy and said, “Don't go out for experiential learning during this period. Return to the Pill Sect. The Pill Sect is the safest place.”
Knowing her sister was just overreacting out of stress, Wen Jingshu chuckled and said, “Don't worry, Sister. I have plenty of life-saving magic treasures on me.”
Judging by how Wen Jingshu was able to escape that strike completely unscathed, she indeed possessed some extraordinary treasures on her.
Although Wen Shuyi was her older sister, she also knew better than to pry into opportunities she shouldn't ask about. What she needed to do was trust her younger sister's judgment.
The young woman sighed. She had also thought a lot in this short span of time, and finally said, “While you are outside... be careful in everything you do.”
After the sisters chatted for a bit longer, Wen Shuyi put away her transmission stone and took out a tenth-grade pill recipe she had once found in a secret realm.
This pill was called the Immortal Pill.
As the name suggested, any cultivator who consumed this pill would immediately ascend to the Immortal Realm on the spot!
Before her own ascension, she had to refine this pill.
This way, even if Wen Jingshu were trapped in a desperate situation, she could consume the Immortal Pill and directly ascend to immortality!