"Boom—!"
Feng Qingping's array disk erupted with a blinding spiritual light as a shockwave of spiritual energy precisely leveled the most conspicuous crystal pit.
Simultaneously, Jiang Yifan controlled his magic tool to sweep across the ground while Feng Weilan's blade light followed closely, slashing out three deep gouges. Li Nanzhu threw out three freshly drawn explosion talismans she had just finished. To an outsider, the four seemed to be in the middle of a fierce, chaotic brawl, but in reality, every strike landed precisely on a crystal pit that needed to be concealed.
"Quick! Another round!"
Li Nanzhu barked a low command, her hands blurring as she formed seals. She hurled out her Samadhi True Fire lotuses. They appeared to fly in a disorganized mess, but each fire lotus flew with pinpoint accuracy toward the hollows where residual crystal spiritual energy lingered.
"Kacha, kacha!" Suisui crouched on her shoulder, its bone claws rapidly gesturing to guide their aim while its soul fire jumped violently.
Feng Qingping also rapidly manipulated her array disk. With a muffled boom, the ground near her began to slowly collapse.
"Fourth Senior Brother!" Feng Weilan slashed his long blade horizontally. The blade qi dipped sharply the moment it grazed the edge of Jiang Yifan's sleeve, flipping over an entire layer of blue-tinted soil. "Three inches deep!"
Jiang Yifan understood immediately. The unearthed soil was instantly shredded to dust, leaving not a single trace of spiritual energy behind.
"There's more on the left!" Li Nanzhu suddenly spun around and fired a talisman straight at Feng Qingping's face.
Feng Qingping didn't dodge. Her array disk hummed as it deployed a light screen. The talisman exploded the moment it touched the screen, but the shockwave strangely diffused in a fan shape, turning three hidden crystal pits to the west into ordinary dirt holes.
"Perfect!" Feng Weilan's long blade suddenly left his hand, whistling past Jiang Yifan's back. "Get down!"
Jiang Yifan ducked in tandem. The long blade carried a fierce wind as it hacked into the earth, completely scrambling the patterns of the final remaining depressions in the ground.
Suisui wasn't idle either.
It suddenly leapt from Li Nanzhu's shoulder, plunging its bone claws into the ground and vibrating violently. Fine ice crystals seeped through the cracks in its bones into the soil, freezing all the crystal dust that was nearly invisible to the naked eye.
"Time to wrap this up."
Feng Qingping seized the opportunity to toss out eight array flags. The flags landed and formed an array, completely scrambling the aura of the entire area!
Even if a Nascent Soul cultivator used their divine sense to investigate, they would only think a chaotic battle had just taken place here.
"Three, two, one..." Li Nanzhu suddenly lowered her voice. "They're here!"
The four locked eyes and instantly shifted the rhythm of their combat.
Feng Weilan's blade suddenly "lost control," slashing toward Jiang Yifan's neck. Jiang Yifan appeared to dodge narrowly, but his movement happened to expose the last suspicious patch of ground to the blade qi.
"Stop!"
Rong Yuying's voice carried from a hundred meters away. At that moment, Li Nanzhu tumbled clumsily to the ground, her talisman "accidentally" slipping from her hand and landing right at Feng Qingping's feet.
"Boom—!"
The explosion looked fierce, but Feng Qingping had long since protected herself with her array disk. Amidst the dust kicked up by the airwaves, the four quickly exchanged glances—all traces had been scrubbed clean.
"Have you all gone mad?!"
Rong Yuying's round fan flew through the air with a whistling sound, but it turned into soft light the moment it reached the four. Behind her, Daoist Master Yu Heng's spirit-binding rope was already in flight, and the disciples of the Sword Heart Sect stood with swords drawn, ready for a confrontation.
However, the four in the field acted as if they hadn't heard a thing.
"They've been tainted by evil energy!" Li Nanyi shouted loudly, his long sword pointing directly at Li Nanzhu. "I knew the people from the Five Elements Dao Sect couldn't be trusted!"
Cang Dongqing spoke with feigned anxiety, "Martial Uncle Yan, should we restrain them first?"
Before she could finish, Li Nanzhu suddenly spun around and pulled out three more talismans from nowhere, firing them at Jiang Yifan, only for them to be precisely cleaved apart by spiritual energy in mid-air.
"Something is wrong." Daoist Master Xuan Shuang suddenly held back Elder Yan, who was about to strike. "Look at their eyes."
Indeed—though the four were fighting so hard that sand and stones were flying everywhere, Li Nanzhu's pupils were crystal clear. Feng Qingping even had the leisure to roll her eyes at Jiang Yifan.
"Stop!" Elder Yan roared again. "What are you doing!?"
The response he got was Feng Weilan's blade light suddenly hacking into the ground. It looked like it was aimed at Feng Qingping, but it actually pulverized the last few traces of residual crystal energy. Only after confirming all evidence was destroyed did the four stop simultaneously.
"Sister Rong?" Li Nanzhu brushed non-existent dust from her sleeves and put on a surprised expression. "When did you all get here?"
A dead silence fell over the area.
Suisui poked its head out from Li Nanzhu's collar, its bone claws still covering its ears—even though it didn't have any.
The three elders of the Sword Heart Sect were about to demand what this skeleton was, but they suddenly remembered the sour expressions on Immortal Venerable Ling Xiao and the Sect Leader's faces when they returned last time, and they promptly shut their mouths.
"You..." Rong Yuying's grip on her round fan faltered, and it nearly fell to the ground. "You weren't being controlled?"
"Controlled?" Feng Qingping blinked. "We were just sparring."
Jiang Yifan calmly stowed his magic tool. "We just came up from underground and had some realizations, so we decided to exchange pointers."
"Sparring?!" Li Nanyi's voice went up an octave. "Who spars by trying to kill each other?!"
Feng Weilan slowly wiped his blade. "It's a tradition of our Five Elements Dao Sect."
The excuse was so poor that even Suisui couldn't bear to listen. It hid in Li Nanzhu's arms and silently covered its non-existent ears with its bone claws.
"A tradition of the Five Elements Dao Sect?" Li Nanyi sneered, his sword tip pointing at the crisscrossing marks on the ground. "Then what's with these pits? You spar by specifically bombing the ground?"
Li Nanzhu didn't bat an eye. "The Earth Vein Resonance Technique, a secret of our sect."
"Bullshit!" Li Nanyi was so angry the veins on his forehead bulged. "What kind of secret technique would—"
"Junior Brother Li." A cold light flashed across the surface of Rong Yuying's round fan. "Watch your language."
Suisui took the opportunity to poke half its skull out from Li Nanzhu's arms. Its ghostly fire flickered, and its bone claw quietly made a victory sign—though no one could understand the hand gestures of a skeleton.
Yan Zhengqing's face was dark as his divine sense swept over the area once more.
Those seemingly chaotic sword scars and explosion pits were all perfectly placed to cover up the original excavation marks. Even more strangely, the spiritual energy fluctuations of the entire area had been deliberately scrambled by some kind of array, making it impossible even for him to reconstruct the truth.
"Junior Sister Li." It was Rong Yuying who took the lead in changing the subject. She folded her fan, her expression becoming serious. "What exactly happened in the underground tunnel? And what was that explosion from before?"
Li Nanzhu knew this was the real issue.
She composed herself and answered seriously, "Sister Rong, as you know, we were originally looking for Fourth Senior Brother..." She glanced at Feng Qingping and the others before continuing, "As a result, we were attacked by things they were breeding. And those things the evil cultivators were raising... according to my senior siblings' research, those evil cultivators are likely using living humans and demonic beasts... combined with demon qi for experiments!"
"What?!"
The faces of Rong Yuying and the other direct disciples changed instantly. Even the expressions of the six Nascent Soul elders grew heavy.
"That's impossible!"
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