More Interesting Than a Sweetheart

The passage did not contain the expected cages or sinister torture devices. There was only an ordinary stone path, with dim fluorescent stones embedded in the walls on both sides, their weak light barely illuminating the way forward.

"This..." Jingyi whispered, her voice producing a slight echo in the empty corridor. "Why is it so ordinary?"

Yu'er subconsciously grabbed Qinghe's sleeve. "The more ordinary it is, the scarier it feels..."

Feng Qingping's brow furrowed. She raised her hand to signal the group to stop. "Something's wrong."

A spiritual light condensed at her fingertip as she gently probed forward. When the light touched the air ten feet away, it suddenly extinguished with a hiss. Immediately after, dense golden threads emerged, interwoven into an invisible net that sealed the entire passage tight.

"A nested array." Feng Qingping's voice was frighteningly calm. "A trapping array nested with a warning talisman, which in turn is connected to another trapping array. In total..." She closed her eyes to sense for a moment. "Seven layers."

Rong Yuying's round fan stopped mid-air. "One layer linked to another?"

"Exactly." Feng Qingping nodded. "No wonder no one is guarding it. This place is easy to enter but difficult to leave."

Li Nanzhu stared at the flickering runes and suddenly understood. "So those who were captured..."

"Even if they were lucky enough to escape their cells, they would be trapped here," Feng Qingping finished. "Waiting for the one who set the array to come and drag them back. Hah..." She gave a cold laugh. "The person who set this is certainly arrogant, thinking no one in the world could break it."

She turned to look at everyone, an unusual light flashing in her eyes. "Step back three paces. I'm going to begin."

Li Nanzhu noticed her senior sister's fingertips were trembling slightly—not from fear, but from excitement. For someone as obsessed with arrays as Feng Qingping, such a complex nested array was more of a challenge than a threat.

Feng Qingping's finger traced a faint green trail in the void, spiritual light seeping into the array nodes like gossamer threads. Her brow suddenly relaxed, and a knowing arc curved at the corner of her mouth.

"So that's how it is... Using a Nine Nether Spirit-Locking Array as the skeleton, nested with three layers of variations." Her finger tapped three spots in the void, each touch stirring a ripple of golden light. "The first layer is the Daoist Qiankun Reversal. The second is..."

Before she could finish, the array suddenly distorted. The originally orderly runes began to rearrange themselves like living creatures. Feng Qingping remained unhurried, her left hand forming a Reverse Hexagram Seal.

"As expected, there's a third variation hidden—the Southern Region's Thousand-Mechanism Lock." She turned her head suddenly, her eyes shining with excitement. "Look at the movement of these runes. Don't they look like a hundred-legged centipede?"

Li Nanzhu looked where she pointed. The swimming runes were indeed connected head-to-tail, forming countless closed loops. Even more bizarrely, each loop was slowly rotating clockwise, while the entire structure was rotating counter-clockwise.

Rong Yuying held her round fan to her chest. "A continuous cycle?"

"More than that." Feng Qingping took seven red array flags from her storage bag and quickly arranged them in the shape of the Big Dipper. "This is a living array that mimics the stars in the sky. Normal breaking methods will only make it stronger." She suddenly bit her fingertip and drew blood lines on the flags. "I have to use extraordinary means."

Rong Yuying chuckled softly. "Daoist Feng, the way you look right now, it's as if you've met a sweetheart."

Without looking up, Feng Qingping focused entirely on inserting the first flag into the ground. "This is much more interesting than a sweetheart."

Li Nanzhu felt an urge to laugh at such an inappropriate time. If the Sixth Senior Brother heard this, his iceberg-like face would probably freeze the entire passage into shards.

As a transmigrator, she knew that the Fifth Senior Sister and Sixth Senior Brother would eventually become a pair. In the later stages of the story, they were known to the cultivation world as the 'crazy couple.' Yet here was the Fifth Senior Sister saying that an array was more interesting than him...

Still, he would probably accept it expressionlessly, wouldn't he? After all, in the Sixth Senior Brother's eyes, whatever the Fifth Senior Sister said was right.

This thought briefly dispelled Li Nanzhu's internal worries. From Feng Qingping's words, she had already gathered a lot of information.

Whether it was the Buddhist traces on the wall earlier or the Southern Region's techniques embedded in this nested array, it all pointed to one fact—the infiltration of this evil cultivator force was far deeper than she had imagined.

Li Nanzhu's nails dug deep into her palm again. None of this had been mentioned in the original story. Even a butterfly effect shouldn't cause such a massive deviation... Was this simply information the original text deemed unimportant, or was there something wrong with her memory?

"Watch out!"

Rong Yuying's voice snapped Li Nanzhu's thoughts back to reality. In an instant, she saw a flash of red light!

It was a blood-colored rune!

The rune erupted from the depths of the array, flying straight for Feng Qingping's face! Feng Qingping didn't panic. Her left hand formed a seal and drew a semi-circle in front of her. The blood rune was forcibly caught in her palm, transforming into a drop of dark red liquid.

"A blood-tracing talisman." She stared at the blood droplet in her hand, a cold light appearing in her eyes. "Using blood as a guide to track someone for a thousand miles." She suddenly bit the tip of her tongue and spat a mouthful of essence blood onto the remaining six flags. "Today, I'll let you track to your heart's content!"

The six flags simultaneously lit up with piercing green light. Feng Qingping's hands moved in rapid seals. Every time she completed one, an array flag shot out, pinning itself precisely into various points of the passage.

When the seventh flag was driven into the ground, the entire passage shook violently!

The golden threads writhed frantically before snapping piece by piece, as if pulled by invisible hands.

Most shockingly, the broken threads did not dissipate. Instead, they were drawn by the flags and began to coil in reverse, eventually weaving into a giant golden lotus on the ceiling of the passage.

"Breaking an array with an array..." Rong Yuying's pupils constricted. "And the most domineering method at that..."

Feng Qingping's face was as pale as paper, but a satisfied smile hung on her lips. "I still won."

"Fifth Senior Sister, are you alright?" Li Nanzhu hurried to support her, transferring a stream of spiritual energy through her palm.

Feng Qingping shook her head. "I'm fine, just exhausted my spiritual energy." She wiped the cold sweat from her forehead. "I can only shield us from their perception for about fifteen minutes. We must hurry."

The group quickly moved through the passage. The further they went, the more the fluorescent stones on the walls changed from pale green to dark red, making the passage look as if it were soaked in blood.

Dark brown stains began to appear sporadically on the floor. Li Nanzhu made a conscious effort not to think about what they were.

"Wait." Feng Qingping, who was leading, suddenly stopped. She took a compass from her sleeve. The needle was spinning frantically, pointing directly around the upcoming corner. "Living things... many of them..."

Suisui suddenly jumped down from Li Nanzhu's shoulder, its soul fire flickering violently. Its bone claws pointed toward the corner, signaling a warning of extreme danger.

Li Nanzhu's heart tightened. A fire lotus silently condensed in her palm as the others quickly retreated into the nearby shadows.

From the end of the passage, the faint clatter of shaking iron chains could be heard...