The sound of the stream gradually faded behind her.
Bai Qingxue walked along the stream for about the time it takes to brew a cup of tea, then stopped at a bend in the water.
She turned her head, glancing in the direction she had come from.
Han Muchun had not followed.
In the clearing between the tree shadows and the shimmering water, there was only the soft rustle of wind through the leaves, no other trace.
Bai Qingxue withdrew her gaze. This time, instead of continuing along the stream, she turned toward the slope on its left.
The slope was covered in a thick layer of fallen leaves; her boots sank slightly with each step, making soft crunching sounds.
Bai Qingxue used the incline to climb a dozen steps, passing through a patch of low shrubs. The terrain receded behind her, revealing a woodland entirely different from the shrubs she had just traversed.
If the previous patch of shrubs represented everything growing, this dense forest felt like everything was sinking.
The atmosphere here was completely different from the coastline.
After Bai Qingxue passed through the shrubs, the terrain began to gently rise.
The soil underfoot changed from damp sand to firm earth.
The tree canopy overhead blocked most of the daylight, with only scattered fragments of light filtering through the leaves, casting shifting patterns on the ground.
The air was filled with the scent of plants and damp earth, mixed with a faint trace of spirit beast aura.
These auras were scattered, like sand dispersed by the wind, posing no threat, but enough to indicate that the forest was not empty.
Bai Qingxue slowed her steps.
Her spiritual sense extended forward like fine threads, weaving through gaps in tree trunks, skimming over low shrubs, and trailing along the ground.
The auras of the guardian spirit beasts gradually became clearer in her perception.
Two or three were in the direction of the stream, moving slowly, while one lay dormant about a hundred paces ahead, as if waiting for something.
Bai Qingxue did not detour.
She continued forward, not altering her pace in the slightest due to these so-called spirit beasts.
And when the dormant aura suddenly lunged out as she approached, Bai Qingxue merely sidestepped.
At the same time, Bai Qingxue slightly raised her right hand, her fingertips tracing a brief arc in the air.
It was a small Stone-Armored Lizard.
Its scales were covered in a layer of gray mineral plating, and its limbs, though short and thick, were surprisingly agile.
The moment it missed, it twisted its body, sweeping its tail horizontally toward Bai Qingxue's ankle.
Bai Qingxue simply pressed down the arc traced by her fingertips.
Cold energy precipitated from the air along the path of her finger, and before the Stone-Armored Lizard's tail could touch her, its entire tail was frozen solid by a layer of thin ice.
The Stone-Armored Lizard's movements abruptly halted. It struggled once but couldn't break free.
Then it struggled again, and a fine crack appeared in the ice, but new frost immediately covered it.
Bai Qingxue did not continue her attack, nor did she linger.
After all, the Stone-Armored Lizard was not her target, and entanglement with this spirit beast would only waste time.
Bai Qingxue walked around the Stone-Armored Lizard with its frozen tail, continuing toward the direction of stronger spiritual energy.
A few muffled, low growls came from the forest behind her, then silence fell once more.
The ice would take about half an hour to melt in the sunlight; by then, Bai Qingxue would surely be long gone.
When the second Stone-Armored Lizard pounced from the tree canopy to her side, Bai Qingxue had already sensed its movement half a breath beforehand.
Bai Qingxue did not stop; she merely shifted her shoulder, letting the Stone-Armored Lizard's sharp claws graze past her robe, while her Frost Moon Chant subtly swayed at her waist.
The Stone-Armored Lizard's body then stiffened in mid-air, turning into a hurled stone that crashed into the nearby shrubs.
The shrubs shook violently a few times, then stilled.
Bai Qingxue continued forward. After a few skirmishes, aside from a few shaken-off dry leaves clinging to her hem, there was no other trace of combat.
The further she walked inward, the closer the spiritual vein's aura became.
Although the aura was not strong, it was remarkably stable.
This aura was like a straightened thread, one end tied to a fixed point, the other constantly drawing nearby cultivators with its faint presence.
And now, Bai Qingxue could feel that thread converging about two hundred paces ahead of her, forming a small, clear point of light.
When Bai Qingxue passed through the last patch of low grass,
a stone platform appeared in her vision.
The stone platform was not large, about ten feet square, built entirely of grayish-blue stone, and covered in a thick layer of green vines.
The vines climbed from the base of the stone platform, weaving through the rune patterns carved into its surface, as if tracing some ancient design in their own way.
Suspended in the center of the stone platform was a pale blue token.
The token was about the size of a palm, crystalline throughout, with a faint halo of light slowly flowing around its edges, like a star encased in a thin film of water. The spiritual vein's aura emanated from this very token.
However, two groups of people stood in the clearing around the stone platform.
Bai Qingxue stopped, standing by an old tree at the edge of the grass, not rashly entering the clearing.
She recognized the attire of the group on the left: star-patterned robes, clearly disciples of the Falling Star Pavilion.
There were three of them in total. The leader was a delicate-faced female cultivator, holding a short staff embedded with a dark spirit stone at its tip.
It was unclear what methods they possessed, but they had somehow detected Bai Qingxue.
The leading female cultivator's gaze lingered on Bai Qingxue for a moment, as if she recognized her.
Then her brow subtly twitched, and she whispered something to her companion beside her.
The group on the right wore dark gray martial attire, with uniformly styled longswords hanging at their waists.
They were from the Northern Underworld Sword Sect.
There were also three of them. The leader was a burly male disciple, whose cultivation aura was noticeably stronger than the Falling Star Pavilion female cultivator's, already approaching peak Foundation Establishment.
He stood there, arms crossed, like an unmoving wall.
Seeing that she had been exposed, Bai Qingxue emerged from the forest.
Upon seeing this, the female cultivator from Falling Star Pavilion made the first move.
She turned her head, whispered a few more words to her companions behind her, then put away her short staff, nodded slightly in Bai Qingxue's direction, and then turned, leading her companions away from the clearing along a forest path.
The edge of the clearing was silent for a moment.
Now, only the three from the Northern Underworld Sword Sect remained, standing opposite Bai Qingxue across the trampled grass, less than ten zhang apart.
The male disciple from the Northern Underworld Sword Sect seemed to only just notice Bai Qingxue at this moment.
He glanced at Bai Qingxue, then at the pale blue token slowly rotating on the stone platform, and let out a sneer.
“Someone from the Xuantian Sect?”
His voice was neither loud nor soft, carrying an ill-concealed disdain. “You think you're worthy of taking a spiritual vein node like this? Be smart and leave on your own, save yourself the embarrassment.”
Bai Qingxue did not reply.
She simply stood her ground, watching her opponents from ten zhang away.
Bai Qingxue's gaze was calm and steady, as if standing here was no different from standing anywhere else, as if the other party's words were merely a gust of wind passing her by.
The male disciple's brow furrowed.
He clearly had not anticipated such a reaction.
The expected arguments, excuses, or displays of weakness were absent, which only made him feel more irritated.
“Tsk.” The leading male disciple drew his sword.
The sound of the sword leaving its sheath was exceptionally clear at the edge of the silent clearing. He held the sword in his hand, its tip pointing diagonally at the ground, and looked at Bai Qingxue.
“Since you won't leave, I'll have to make you.”
Seeing the opponent draw his sword, Bai Qingxue had no intention of wasting words.
A battle it would be.
Bai Qingxue raised her right hand and drew the Frost Moon Chant from her waist.
The flute traced a short arc in the air, then rested horizontally before Bai Qingxue's lips.
When the first note sounded, the first tiny ice bead condensed on a branch of the old tree at the edge of the clearing.
The ice bead shimmered in the sunlight for a moment, then silently shattered into powder, scattered by a wind from an unknown direction.
The second note was lower than the first, as if rising from deep underwater.
Cold energy began to spread across the ground, not a violent, surging chill, but like a thin film of water slowly creeping over the green grass, pressing each blade of grass into a slight bow.
The male disciple from the Northern Underworld Sword Sect seemed to sense something amiss.
He looked down at the tip of his boot.
A thin layer of white frost had already condensed on the leather surface of his boot, and the frost was now slowly spreading upward, advancing from his boot tip toward his instep.
The man took a step back.
But before that step could land, the third note sounded.
The third note was shorter than the previous two, like the sound of something being gently snapped.
The cold energy contracted in that instant, all the chill clenching as if by an invisible hand, then released precisely in one direction.
The male disciple from the Northern Underworld Sword Sect's sword-wielding hand was the first to freeze.
The white frost spread from his fingertips to his palm, and then from his palm to his wrist.
Although the frost spread slowly, it was incredibly sturdy, as if nothing could stop its advance.
The leading man originally tried to channel his power to shake it off.
However, when his spiritual power surged from his dantian toward his wrist, the cold energy seemed to have anticipated his path, locking down the meridian channels of his entire arm an instant before his spiritual power arrived.
His spiritual power, halfway through its surge, was forcefully blocked, like water crashing against a thickening ice dam.
An immense pain spread within his arm, and the man's fingers stiffened.
His five fingers were then forced open, the sword hilt slipped from his palm, the blade flipped in mid-air, tip downwards, and then clanged onto the frost-covered grass.
The entire clearing fell silent for a moment.
Only the lingering reverberations of the sword hitting the ground still trembled in the air, like the echo of some reply.
The male disciple looked down at his hand frozen in mid-air, at his fingers still held in the posture of gripping a sword, but now unable to hold anything.
He tried to flex a finger; his knuckles emitted a faint cracking sound, like ice being forcefully squeezed, but he couldn't close his hand.
Bai Qingxue lowered her flute.
The flute spun once between her fingers, then she tucked it back into her waist. Her movements were natural, as if she had completed something that needed no further confirmation.
“I'm taking the token.”
Hearing this, the other two sword cultivators did not rashly engage Bai Qingxue in battle. Instead, they both drew their swords, shielding the injured man behind them.
However, Bai Qingxue regarded their drawn swords as nothing, simply walking directly past the two of them.
Her frost-white hem brushed against the frost-covered grass blades, making a soft rustling sound, a stark contrast to the preceding silence.
Bai Qingxue no longer looked at the three men; she simply reached out toward the pale blue token suspended in the center of the stone platform.
When her fingertips touched the halo around the token's edge, the thin light subtly rippled, then contracted, as if memorizing Bai Qingxue's aura.
Bai Qingxue put the token into her storage bag, tied its opening, and then followed the path taken by the Falling Star Pavilion disciples out of the clearing, entering the depths of the dense forest on the other side.
Bai Qingxue's footsteps gradually faded into the forest, like a straightened thread being reeled in, each segment reducing the sound until it was completely inaudible.
As for the male disciple from the Northern Underworld Sword Sect, he remained standing.
He was currently looking down, at his frozen fingers, at the sword lying on the grass, and at the white frost slowly melting from the tip of his boot.
His knuckles were slowly regaining sensation, but this recovery brought not comfort, but a dense, tingling, stinging pain, like countless fine needles pricking from within his skin.
However, being a cultivator, even enduring such pain, he gritted his teeth and made no sound.
Yet, despite the pain, he still knelt.
His right knee touched the ground, and the frost-covered grass immediately showed a dark, damp mark from his knee.
The man raised his head, looking in the direction Bai Qingxue had disappeared, his lips moving as he uttered a few suppressed, very low sounds.
“Xuantian Sect... Bai Qingxue... I will remember this.”
The clearing was silent for a moment.
His two companions recovered from the shock, quickly stepped forward. One knelt to support his shoulder, while the other bent down to pick up the sword lying in the grass, wiping off the grass bits and water stains from the blade with his cuff.
“Senior Brother... are you alright?”
A companion asked in a low voice, tinged with hesitation.
The male disciple did not reply.
He merely lowered his head, looking at his hand.
The frost was melting, turning into fine water droplets that trickled down the curves of his knuckles.
He slowly clenched his fingers, then released them, repeating the action several times.
“Let's go,” he said hoarsely. “Forget about that token for now.”
They supported each other as they retreated from the clearing.
Their footsteps gradually faded into the forest, until only the soft rustle of wind through the branches remained, and the slowly dissipating halo of light left on the stone platform after Bai Qingxue had taken the token.
Higher up in the dense forest, a person in black stood on a horizontal branch of an old tree.
Zhao Yue stood at the end of a horizontal branch barely thicker than a wrist, his posture as steady as if he were on flat ground.
The wind ruffled his robe, yet his figure remained perfectly still.
His gaze withdrew from the clearing, like a leaf plucked from a branch by the wind, then falling into shadow.
He turned, walking along the branch deeper into the forest. The branch swayed slightly after he left, as if finally shedding a weight that didn't belong to it.
The dense forest grew quiet once more.
Sunlight filtered through the gaps in the canopy, casting scattered patterns of light on the ground.
Zhao Yue's silhouette grew fainter and fainter in the forest shadows, until it was completely swallowed by the layers of branches and darkness.
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