The Strange Blue Crystals

The group continued forward, but the evil aura around them grew increasingly thin.

At the rock wall, Rong Yuying lightly brushed her fingertips against the stone. It felt cold and dry, without even a trace of malevolent energy remaining.

She mused privately, 'Evil cultivators can't just vanish into thin air... unless they never intended to fight us here.'

"Strange." Daoist Master Yu Heng swept his horsetail whisk, sending out a wave of spiritual energy. "There isn't a single ripple of evil aura within ten miles."

Pei Ji's long sword left its scabbard as he scanned the surroundings warily. "It's too quiet."

Cang Dongqing stood in the middle of the group, her hand tight on her sword hilt. She should have been relieved that she was no longer being targeted by Rong Yuying now that her talismans were exhausted, yet this eerie silence made her skin crawl.

Even she couldn't help but wonder: 'Those evil cultivators... what exactly are they plotting?'

"Senior Sister!" Yu'er suddenly pointed to the ground. "Look at this!"

Everyone looked down to see fragments of dark red crystals scattered across the charred earth, glinting with a blood-like luster in the dim light.

"Blood-fiend crystals?" Daoist Master Xuan Shuang leaned down to pick up a piece. The moment her spiritual energy touched it, the fragment hissed and turned to ash. "These are containers used by evil cultivators to store malevolence, but it looks like they were violently destroyed."

Rong Yuying's eyes flickered as she stepped forward to inspect them. "That's right. These are the same things we saw in the underground tunnels, the components those evil cultivators used for their arrays."

"Could... could Junior Sister Li and the others have done this?" Yu'er asked hesitantly.

"The people from the Five Elements Dao Sect?" Li Nanyi sneered. "With just those few in the Golden Core and Foundation Establishment stages? You think they could cause this much of a commotion? You certainly think highly of them."

Yu'er's cheeks flushed with anger. "Li Nanyi! You—"

"Enough," Rong Yuying interrupted coldly. She snapped her round fan shut, the ribs pointing directly at Li Nanyi's nose. "Does Junior Brother Li need a silence spell to keep that mouth of his quiet?"

Her gaze swept over the members of the Sword Heart Sect, her eyes full of mockery. "Or is it that the disciples raised by the Sword Heart Sect are only capable of sarcasm and have no real skill at all?"

"Rong Yuying!" Pei Ji barked. "Watch your words!"

"My words?" Rong Yuying chuckled. "Compared to someone who can't stop talking about others being overconfident, I'm being very polite."

Seeing the tension, Cang Dongqing quickly stepped forward and said softly, "Senior Sister Rong, Fifth Senior Brother is just worried that everyone might make a misjudgment..."

"A misjudgment?" Rong Yuying gave her a half-smile. "Then why don't you tell us, Junior Sister Cang, how these blood-fiend crystals ended up shattered?"

Cang Dongqing choked on her words, her fingers unconsciously twisting her sleeves.

She felt a surge of secret resentment. 'Rong Yuying... you clearly don't know either, yet you insist on using me as a target!'

Daoist Master Yu Heng sighed and flicked his whisk. "Quiet, all of you."

The pressure of a Nascent Soul cultivator descended, instantly silencing the group.

"Continue forward," he said somberly. "The truth will be revealed soon enough."

As the group advanced, the signs of explosions on the ground became more frequent. Shattered blood-fiend crystals were mixed into the charred soil, as if the entire area had been thoroughly purged by some violent force.

"This power..." Daoist Master Xuan Shuang knelt down, her fingers trailing over a crater several feet deep, her brow furrowed. "It would take the full strike of at least a Nascent Soul cultivator to cause this kind of destruction in the Blackwater Marsh."

Daoist Master Yu Heng's expression was grave. "But I haven't heard of any Nascent Soul masters coming to the Blackwater Marsh recently."

Rong Yuying gently swayed her round fan, her gaze sweeping the area.

"Could this... have been done by Little Zhu'er and the others?"

But on second thought, the highest cultivation level in Li Nanzhu's group was only at the Golden Core stage. It was impossible for them to cause such destruction. Unless...

"Is it possible a Nascent Soul elder is following them?"

Rong Yuying tapped the fan ribs with her finger as her thoughts became clearer.

'The Five Elements Dao Sect may have declined, but they still have a cultivator at the late Soul Transformation stage in charge...' Her eyes flickered. 'How could such a large sect not have a Nascent Soul elder protecting them in secret? If not for that, how would they dare let a few young disciples venture into the Blackwater Marsh alone?'

This thought became increasingly clear in her mind. Looking around, from Daoist Master Yu Heng's grim face to Daoist Master Xuan Shuang's thoughtful expression, it was obvious that everyone else had reached the same conclusion.

They believed they were approaching the truth, unaware that they were heading in the opposite direction from the facts.

Meanwhile, several miles away on a patch of charred earth—

"Suisui, eat quickly!"

Li Nanzhu was half-squatting on the ground, holding a fragment of a crystal that pulsed with a faint blue light. Feng Qingping was using her sword tip to poke at another larger crystal, while Feng Weilan squatted nearby recording something. Jiang Yifan was slowly recovering his spiritual energy while keeping watch for any movement.

"The energy in this thing is really strong," Feng Qingping remarked.

"We have Suisui to thank for this," Li Nanzhu said with a smile.

The clock turned back half a day.

In the charred crater after the explosion, Li Nanzhu slowly stood up while bracing her hands on her knees. The weakness from her exhausted spiritual energy made her vision go dark. Feng Weilan still held his long blade, warily scanning the surroundings.

"Is it completely dead?" Feng Qingping kicked the charred remains of a tentacle near her feet; the thing crumbled into powder with a crack.

Suisui suddenly hopped into the center of the crater, its bone claws digging frantically into the earth, kicking up clouds of black dust.

"Suisui?" Li Nanzhu leaned over curiously. "What are you looking for?"

Suisui didn't look up, its claws digging even faster. Suddenly, there was a crisp clink. It pulled a thumb-sized blue crystal from the soil and held it up to Li Nanzhu like a precious treasure.

"This is..." Li Nanzhu took the crystal. It felt cold to the touch, and liquid-like energy flowed slowly inside it, emitting a soft glow in the dim crater.

Feng Qingping leaned in, her brow furrowing slightly. "This looks a bit like the blood-fiend crystals, doesn't it?"

Li Nanzhu handed the crystal to Feng Qingping for a better look. Feng Weilan and Jiang Yifan also approached.

"It looks like a blood-fiend crystal, but it seems different..."

As a refinery master, Jiang Yifan dealt with various ores constantly. However, he had never seen this type of crystal before; even he couldn't identify it immediately.

Li Nanzhu rubbed the crystal and spoke slowly, "The texture is indeed similar to blood-fiend crystals. Even the feel of the tentacles I touched earlier was similar. I suspected those tentacles were conversion devices for the blood-fiend crystals..." She suddenly looked up. "So, are these blue crystals the original form that was blasted out by the explosion?"

"Most likely," Jiang Yifan nodded. "The high temperature from the mother nest's explosion probably burned away all the impurities."

Feng Qingping's eyes lit up. "Then this could be an undiscovered rare material! Hurry, let's see if there are more. The mother nest was so big, there can't be just one!"

The four of them immediately scattered, searching carefully through the charred earth.

Before long, Feng Qingping dug out three pieces from under the remains of the mother nest, Jiang Yifan pried two out from a rock crevice, and even Feng Weilan used his blade tip to pick out four or five blue crystals of varying sizes.

Suisui burrowed through the soil, soon digging up a small pile. Its bone claws clattered as it counted the loot, its ghost fire flickering high in excitement.

"If I use these to research new array disks..." Feng Qingping's eyes shone as she hugged a pile of blue crystals. "Maybe my array skills will reach a new breakthrough!"

Even the usually calm Jiang Yifan had a glint in his eyes. His obsession with rare materials was evident from the fact that he had ventured into the Blackwater Marsh alone.

Not to mention, this was a rare material of this caliber.

The way the four of them looked at the blue crystals was like hungry wolves eyeing a piece of meat.

Good stuff!

To the side, Suisui suddenly let out a series of clicking sounds!