"We can only try methods one by one," Rong Yuying said softly. "It's better than just sitting here waiting for death."
Before she had even finished speaking, Feng Qingping had already crouched down. Her slender fingers hovered three inches above the chains, the glow from the night-luminescent pearl reflecting off her focused profile, outlining a cold, elegant silhouette.
"Let me try some restriction-breaking runes first," Feng Qingping said. A wisp of green spiritual energy condensed at her fingertips. The light flowed between her fingers like a living thing, moving across the surface of the chains as she attempted to trace a complex restriction-breaking array pattern.
However, the moment the spiritual energy touched the chains, it vanished without a trace, like a drop of water falling into a desert. Feng Qingping's brow furrowed, and the light at her fingertips brightened a bit more. "This spirit-siphoning iron really lives up to its reputation. I can't even carve runes on it."
Unwilling to give up, she tried three different restriction-breaking techniques, but each time she could only watch helplessly as the spiritual energy she had worked so hard to condense was swallowed by the chains.
Biting her lip, she looked at Feng Weilan. Seeing him look back at her with a comforting gaze, Feng Qingping took a deep breath to calm herself and pulled out an array disk, attempting to use it to enhance the power of her runes.
Yet, the result remained the same. As soon as the spiritual energy touched the chains, it was instantly absorbed.
"It's still no use," she said, shaking her head. "The restriction on these chains is too strong. My cultivation isn't high enough."
Rong Yuying waved her round fan and sighed softly. "Let's try brute force." With a flick of her wrist, she took a sharp dagger from her storage bag. The blade glinted with a cold light. "This is a spirit-breaking blade, specially designed to counter various restrictions."
She pressed the dagger against the chain and sliced down hard—
"Clang!"
Sparks flew, but only a shallow white mark was left on the chain.
"Tsk." Rong Yuying frowned. "Even a spirit-breaking blade can't cut through it?"
Qinghe took out her own dagger and tried to pry the lock open. The moment the dagger touched the chain, it snapped into two with a loud crack.
"This..."
She looked at the broken blade, momentarily speechless.
Li Nanzhu rested her chin in her hand, thinking. "How about we try fire?" She pulled a fire talisman from her storage bag and stuck it onto the chain. The flames roared, but after a moment, the talisman's spiritual energy was swallowed whole, and the fire went out.
"What about an explosion?" She pulled out an explosion talisman. Only after ensuring that Feng Qingping had set up the soundproofing array and a protection array did she inject spiritual energy and stick it on.
After a thunderous boom, the chain remained completely unmoved, though the rocks at the end of the chain were shattered to dust.
"Talismans don't work either." Li Nanzhu shook her head helplessly.
Suisui hopped over to Feng Weilan's wrist out of curiosity, opened its tiny mouth, and bit down with a snap.
The next second, Suisui let out a series of pained squeaks and hopped back, rolling around in Li Nanzhu's arms while clutching its mouth. Li Nanzhu hurriedly checked its teeth. "Are you okay?"
Suisui let go of its mouth with its little paws and pointed at the chain, then at its own chipped front tooth. Li Nanzhu felt a pang of heartache for the little creature.
Left with no other options, the group began searching through their storage bags again for anything they could use. Li Nanzhu, however, stared at her alchemy furnace, lost in thought.
"Fifth Senior Sister," Li Nanzhu suddenly looked at Feng Qingping. "Do you think the power of a furnace explosion could blow it open?"
Feng Qingping was taken aback. "Are you sure?"
"I'm not sure, but we can try." Li Nanzhu pulled out a palm-sized alchemy furnace from her storage bag. "I swiped this from the alchemy room. I have plenty more, so we can blow them up as much as we want."
Feng Qingping pondered for a moment before nodding. "It's worth a shot, but we must set up a protection array. Otherwise, if the mine collapses, we'll all be buried alive."
"Wait," Feng Weilan spoke up, a rare occurrence. "The blast radius of a furnace explosion is much larger than an explosion talisman. Even if you succeed in breaking the chains, I'm afraid I'll be broken too."
Li Nanzhu arched an eyebrow. Sixth Senior Brother was talking quite a bit all at once. It seemed he was truly worried about surviving the evil cultivators only to die in her explosion.
"We have to try something." Feng Qingping was surprisingly receptive. Without waiting for Feng Weilan to say anything else, she quickly deployed her array disk, setting up layers of protection specifically around his wrist to avoid injuring him during the blast.
Feng Weilan: "..."
Fine, everything would go according to Qingping's plan.
Li Nanzhu took a deep breath. She never expected that the very thing she used to fear most would actually come in handy now.
If refining pills required immense patience, then causing a furnace explosion was something that could be done at will... at least for Li Nanzhu.
She simply tossed a few unstable spirit herbs into the furnace, controlled the fire, and quickly performed a series of hand seals. The furnace soon began to emit a dangerous hum, and its body turned glowing red.
Just moments before the explosion, she accurately tossed the furnace toward the chains—
"Boom!"
The violent explosion shook the mine, causing dust to fall from the ceiling. However, once the smoke cleared, the chain was still perfectly intact, with only a few scorch marks on its surface.
"No, it's not powerful enough." Li Nanzhu frowned. "I need to try again."
Catching a glimpse of Feng Weilan's tensed shoulders out of the corner of her eye, she quickly suppressed the urge to smile and forced herself to focus on the problem at hand.
She proceeded to try three different combinations of spirit herbs. The final explosion was so powerful it made the entire mine tremble.
Feng Qingping was forced to reinforce the protection array to prevent a cave-in. Yet, even after such a fierce explosion, the chains remained motionless, without so much as a crack.
Rong Yuying lightly fanned herself. The Hehuan flowers embroidered on the fan's surface quivered slightly amidst the fluctuations of spiritual energy. "It seems this spirit-siphoning iron is even more troublesome than the rumors suggest."
She looked at her junior sisters, who were still trapped, a flash of worry crossing her eyes.
Just as everyone was at their wits' end, Li Nanzhu refused to give up and searched her storage bag once more. Her fingertips suddenly brushed against something cold. She paused for a moment, then pulled out a familiar jade bottle—it contained those strange pills from Xiao Yan's alchemy room.
At the time, Liu Qingyang had been uninterested in them, so Second Senior Brother and Seventh Senior Brother had stuffed them all into Suisui's stash to make her happy. After a long journey, these pills had eventually ended up back in her hands.
Thinking of the bizarre effects of Xiao Yan's pills, Li Nanzhu's eyes lit up—maybe one of these could actually work!
She immediately sped up her search, bottles and jars clinking against each other. After a moment, she finally pulled one from the pile and looked closely—
"Softie pill...?" Li Nanzhu murmured.
Was it what she thought it was?
Li Nanzhu took out the jade bottle, trying to find instructions for use.
Unfortunately, there were no other clues on the bottle besides the name. The color of the pills inside was equally strange; not only did they emit a pink glow, but upon closer inspection, they didn't look like pills... they looked more like jelly?
Li Nanzhu smiled helplessly. This was truly her master's style of alchemy—he always loved making pills into all sorts of bizarre forms.
So... could this softie pill really turn a person as soft as dough?
She stole a glance at Feng Weilan. Seeing that his brow was still furrowed in obvious discomfort, she finally sighed.
—Actually, there was nothing to hesitate about.
After all, she knew the things her master refined better than anyone, didn't she?
The worst-case scenario was that Sixth Senior Brother would temporarily turn into a puddle of mush. Her master's creations never disappointed her.
"Sixth Senior Brother," Li Nanzhu spoke up. "I have a pill here that might be useful, but..." She suddenly paused, staring at the floating pink aura on the pill's surface.
"It might... make you look a little less than human. Do you want to gamble?"
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