The talisman paper burned to ash on its own, unleashing a ripple of bronze purifying spiritual light that thoroughly cleansed the remaining blood-fiend aura in the hollow valley.
Bone-Melting Water, Soul-Retrieving Art, Spirit-Purifying Talisman.
Destroying the corpse, erasing the traces, and purification.
Going through the entire process was truly silky smooth.
The female cultivator and her two companions had long since gone numb. Their eyes were vacant, and their lips twitched slightly, knowing deep down that they were completely finished today.
After a lifetime of hunting geese, they had finally been pecked in the eye by one.
Chi Yuan turned around after confirming the coverage of the final wave of purifying spiritual light, her gaze sweeping quickly over the three of them.
Her expression was a world apart from how she usually looked at her junior sister, radiating a chilling intent to kill.
“I have a question for the three of you,” she said. “There are no traces of evil techniques on your bodies, which means you aren't core members of the mastermind's inner circle.”
“Yet, his willingness to let you command eight Golden Core evil cultivators proves you are by no means ordinary lackeys under his command.”
She paused, her finger lightly tapping against her scabbard.
“So, what exactly is your identity? All our intelligence on the mastermind indicates that he only trusts confidants who cultivate the Blood-Fiend Spirit-Devouring Art. Yet, none of you three have cultivated this technique, yet you were able to mobilize the majority of the assets he has accumulated over the past century.”
“This is no ordinary level of trust. Either you possess some indispensable specialty, or... he has been hiding in the shadows all along, controlling things directly.”
The lame male cultivator's mouth snapped shut.
“You must be joking, fellow Daoist,” the female cultivator squeezed out a dry laugh. “We are just ordinary rogue cultivators from Mengyang City. We were captured by the evil cultivators and forced into service...”
“Right, forced into service,” Chi Yuan nodded, cutting her off. “Forced into service to the point of commanding Golden Core evil cultivators?”
The female cultivator opened her mouth, completely at a loss for words.
Shen Qingci stood to the side, watching the scene with great relish.
Her senior sister was usually cold and quiet back at the sect, but once she switched into this serious mode, her eyes became sharp enough to pierce through all the hidden secrets of the human heart.
In the original novel, Chi Yuan had survived Blood Thorn Ridge precisely because of this keen insight.
Even when afflicted with an aphrodisiac poison and experiencing a collapse of her spiritual energy, she had still managed to reverse-engineer the weakness of the Blood-Fiend Spirit-Devouring Art by observing the flow of that devious bastard's spiritual energy, delivering a heavy blow with a single sword strike.
Now, her senior sister was perfectly fine—unpoisoned, unharmed, at full spiritual energy, and the Golden Core evil cultivators had all been executed.
She had plenty of time and energy to conduct a slow, thorough interrogation.
Shen Qingci crossed her arms, feeling delighted.
【Senior Sister looks so beautiful when she's interrogating people.】
【Tsk, another day of wanting to make a move on Senior Sister.】
Standing in place, the fake smile on the female cultivator's face finally crumbled.
She was sharp-witted. With the situation having developed to this point, the two opposite her had already deduced seventy to eighty percent of the truth.
Eight of their Golden Core fellow disciples had fallen within a single incense time. As mere Foundation Establishment cultivators, the three of them stood absolutely no chance of escaping alive.
A surge of intense resentment instantly welled up in her heart.
Why couldn't these children of great families just stay comfortably in their clans as high and mighty young ladies?
Why did they have to come all the way to Blood Thorn Ridge to muddy these waters?
The female cultivator lowered her gaze, her right hand hidden inside her sleeve as she discreetly signaled the people behind her.
Upon receiving the signal, the two pressed their tongues against their back molars. Each of them had a wax-sealed poison pill hidden there; once bitten open, it would cause instant death, leaving even a Nascent Soul cultivator no time to save them.
If they died, they could at least preserve the memories in their seas of consciousness.
The location of the Patriarch's lair, as well as the hidden agents planted in various places—these secrets must never fall into the hands of their enemies through soul-searching.
However, Chi Yuan was a step ahead of them.
She didn't even draw her sword. She merely raised her hand and tapped the air three times. Three icy sword qi shot from her fingertips, accurately striking the jaw joints of the three.
Crack!
The three crisp snaps overlapped into a single sound.
Their jaws dislocated simultaneously. With their mouths unable to close, their tongues pressed against the wax pills, but they could not bite down no matter how hard they tried.
Right after, another three streaks of sword qi shot out, this time striking their dantians.
As the sword qi entered their bodies, the three shuddered violently. Their spiritual energy surged out of their dantians like a bursting dam. Their cultivation was still intact, but with their spiritual energy scattered, they couldn't muster even half the strength to crush the wax pills.
The three slumped weakly to the ground.
Chi Yuan withdrew her hand, her expression indifferent.
Shen Qingci fished out a brocade handkerchief from her storage ring, walked over to Chi Yuan, took her senior sister's right hand, and carefully wiped her fingers.
“Dirty~”
Chi Yuan stood still, obediently letting her junior sister wipe her hands.
The handkerchief was a solid, simple color, with a tiny nine-leaf spirit-ganoderma embroidered on the corner. As it brushed over her fingertips, it carried a faint, elegant scent of spiritual tea.
After finishing the right hand, Shen Qingci took the left hand, not missing even the crevices under the fingernails.
“Sword qi isn't something I touch with my hands,” Chi Yuan said.
“Still,” Shen Qingci replied without looking up. “Having pointed at something dirty makes them dirty.”
Chi Yuan fell silent and nodded gently.
Her junior sister looked incredibly serious as she bowed her head to wipe her hands, her eyelashes casting a faint shadow beneath her eyes.
She stared for a couple of breaths before quietly averting her gaze.
After wiping them clean, Shen Qingci folded the handkerchief and put it back into her storage ring.
Chi Yuan said, “Junior Sister, have your secret guards search that person's lair.”
“Ah! I thought Senior Sister would want to find it herself.”
Chi Yuan shook her head. “I am a sword cultivator. I prefer direct combat, exchanging blow for blow, and accepting whatever the outcome may be. But in the current situation, the intelligence from the sect's Mission Hall has clearly suffered a massive oversight.”
She pondered for a moment, her divine sense sweeping over the few puddles of water in the hollow valley that had not yet completely dried up, before continuing, “The cultivation of the mastermind behind this is at least at the late-stage Nascent Soul realm.”
“The eight Golden Core evil cultivators were merely pawns he discarded. An opponent like this won't face you head-on; they will only hide in the shadows, waiting for you to step into their trap.”
“Fortunately, you came along with me today, Junior Sister. If I had charged into this hollow valley alone and faced the siege of a group of Golden Core evil cultivators, even if I could take down a few, my spiritual energy wouldn't have lasted until the end, let alone against the Nascent Soul cultivator hiding behind the scenes.”
“I suspect the reason he hesitated to act and went to such lengths to play along with us was because he saw all these items you gave me.” She pointed to the soft armor on her body.
“A Golden Core sword cultivator armed to the teeth from head to toe—even a fool can see there is a great family backing them. He was afraid that striking the young would bring out the old, which is why he had his subordinates pose as rogue cultivators to coax us away.”
Shen Qingci fell silent for a moment after listening, and then said something Chi Yuan had never expected.
“For the mission intelligence of core sect disciples to have such an error, we must have Master thoroughly investigate the Mission Hall when we return.”
“Either the people in the Mission Hall have been negligent in their management, leading to a loophole in the verification process, or... someone did this on purpose.”
“You are the second personal disciple of Wanjian Peak's Peak Master, Senior Sister. If something happened to you out here, who would suffer the most? It would be Master. For a Golden Core disciple to take on a Mystic-grade Mid-rank mission, only to run into a Nascent Soul evil cultivator and perish outside...”
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