The Qingming Spirit Seed must be hidden inside.
Circulating her spiritual energy, she tapped her feet against the trunk and leaped up onto a branch, stopping before the bulging knot.
The bark on the surface of the knot had cracked open, emitting a continuous cyan glow through the crevices.
Su Mingyuan felt even more excited.
It seemed the Qingming Spirit Seed had not been taken by anyone yet.
As long as she obtained it, she could still claim this opportunity from the original book for herself.
She reached out her right hand and reached directly toward the center of the cyan light.
Just as her fingertips were about to touch the cyan glow, a powerful force suddenly exploded from the heart of the tree.
“Bang!”
Caught off guard, Su Mingyuan's entire hand was instantly blasted back.
A searing pain flared from her fingers.
Unsteady, she stumbled back several steps, nearly falling off the branch.
Su Mingyuan hurriedly grabbed a nearby branch to barely steady herself.
She looked down at her right hand.
Her palm and fingers had turned bright red, with faint wisps of cyan spiritual light clinging to her skin, as if she had just been scorched by flames.
“How could this happen?”
Su Mingyuan clutched her right hand, her face full of bewilderment.
The original book had clearly never mentioned that the Qingming Spirit Seed would actively reject her.
In the original book, Su Mingyuan's acquisition of the Qingming Spirit Seed had gone smoothly without encountering almost any danger.
Why couldn't she even touch it this time?
Could she have used the wrong method just now?
Unwilling to accept this, Su Mingyuan circulated her spiritual energy to protect her right hand and prepared to reach toward the tree knot once more.
But right at that moment, the entire secret realm suddenly shook violently.
“Rumble—”
The ancient tree beneath her feet lurched violently.
A muffled roar echoed from the distance, as if some massive entity were moving deep underground.
Fissures split open across the ground as the nearby trees swayed incessantly, shedding vast showers of leaves from their branches.
Caught completely unawares, Su Mingyuan nearly lost her footing.
She tightly gripped the tree branch next to her, her face filled with panic.
“What's going on?”
“There was no scene like this in the original book at all?!”
Meanwhile, down in the subterranean cavern, the spirit vein that had been radiating cyan-white light had completely vanished.
Yun Heng stood where the spirit vein had originally rested, holding the Mountain-River Spirit-Nourishing Box in her hand, unable to suppress the smile beaming across her face.
She had been worried earlier that because the spirit vein was buried so deep and possessed an unknown, massive volume, it would be difficult for her alone to extract it intact.
She hadn't expected the Mountain-River Spirit-Nourishing Box to be even more useful than she had imagined.
She only needed to pour spiritual power into the box and align its internal spatial array with the spirit vein, and a powerful suction force would spring forth from inside.
The rocks surrounding the spirit vein had cracked open on their own, and the portions buried deep underground were pulled out bit by bit.
The entire process hadn't damaged the spirit vein in the slightest.
Although Yun Heng didn't know what rank this spirit vein was, she could see it extending across a vast distance inside the Mountain-River Spirit-Nourishing Box.
Cyan-white spiritual light filled the interior of the box, with dense spiritual energy constantly flowing inside, showing no signs of dissipating.
With this spirit vein, the spiritual energy in the shattered realm would surely increase significantly.
In the future, no matter how many people joined the shattered realm, she wouldn't have to worry about running low on spiritual energy.
This trip to the Qingming Secret Realm was more than worth it.
Not only had she triggered the clue to repairing the Tianheng Broken Sword and found the Azure Sword Marrow, but she had also subdued two mid-stage Nascent Soul spirit beasts, Qingxiao and Canglan.
And now she had even obtained an entire spirit vein.
Holding the Mountain-River Spirit-Nourishing Box in her hand, Yun Heng was delightedly pondering where in the shattered realm she should place the spirit vein when the ground beneath her feet suddenly jolted.
At first, the tremor was extremely subtle.
Yun Heng paid it no mind, assuming it was merely a slight loosening of the surrounding rocks after the spirit vein was extracted.
However, in the next instant, the entire subterranean cavern shook violently.
“Rumble—”
A massive volume of gravel and rock cascaded down from the cavern ceiling.
Stumbling slightly, Yun Heng hastily circulated her spiritual power to steady herself.
She raised her head, her expression a mix of bewilderment and shock.
“Is this an earthquake?”
“Can secret realms even have earthquakes?”
Before her words fully faded, an even more violent tremor surged from beneath her feet.
Fissures cracked open across the ground, and the area where the spirit vein had been buried rapidly collapsed downward.
Large cracks also spread across the cavern ceiling.
A boulder several times taller than a person broke loose from above and hurtled down toward Yun Heng's position.
Yun Heng executed the Void-Stepping Movement Technique, instantly vanishing from the spot.
The boulder slammed heavily into the ground with a deafening crash, showering broken stones in all directions.
Dodging the flying debris, the look on Yun Heng's face gradually shifted.
No.
This wasn't a normal earthquake.
The entire cavern was collapsing.
Moreover, the vibrations were expanding into the distance, and even the surrounding space had begun to display subtle tremors.
A strong sense of crisis suddenly rose in Yun Heng's heart.
It wasn't just the cavern that was collapsing.
The entire Qingming Secret Realm was collapsing!
Realizing this, Yun Heng was utterly shocked.
Where would she find the time to keep examining the spirit vein inside the Mountain-River Spirit-Nourishing Box? She quickly stowed the item into her storage bag.
She needed to leave this place immediately.
Yun Heng looked up at the cave ceiling, where rocks continued to fall.
As the fissures multiplied, a small opening had caved in from above.
Faint light shone through from outside.
Executing the Void-Stepping Movement Technique, Yun Heng dodged the falling debris plunging toward her and shot upward toward the opening.
After flying out of the subterranean cavern, before she could even land steadily on the ground, the Qingming Command at her waist suddenly vibrated violently.
A ray of light shot out from the token, forming a light screen before her eyes.
【The Qingming Secret Realm is unstable and on the verge of collapsing.】
【In half a column of incense, all trialists will be forcibly teleported out of the secret realm.】
Looking at the text before her, a slow question mark appeared on Yun Heng's face.
The secret realm really was collapsing?
But why would a perfectly fine Qingming Secret Realm suddenly collapse?
It had existed for who knows how many years and only opened once every few decades; no similar incident had ever been heard of in the past.
Yun Heng glanced down at the Mountain-River Spirit-Nourishing Box stowed inside her storage bag.
Surely it couldn't be because she had taken a spirit vein, right?
The moment the thought surfaced, Yun Heng dismissed it herself.
She chuckled softly.
How could that be?
The secret realm's sudden collapse was ten to one due to some problem elsewhere.
Besides, the Qingming Command would forcibly transport everyone out in half a column of incense.
She just needed to wait a short moment.
Just as Yun Heng felt at ease, another violent vibration came from her waist.
She frowned.
Hadn't the notification from the Qingming Command already finished?
Yun Heng looked down, only to realize that it wasn't the Qingming Command vibrating, but the Tianheng Jade.
The Tianheng Jade shook continuously against her waist, almost floating up as if drawn by some force.
The body of the jade pointed unwaveringly toward a single direction.
Yun Heng looked in the direction indicated by the Tianheng Jade.
Not far away, the awakened spirit tree was swaying continuously amid the shaking of heaven and earth.
Beside the tree stood two people.
One was lying on the ground without the slightest movement.
That was likely still the unconscious Xie Wujiu.
The other person stood by Xie Wujiu's side.
Because Yun Heng was quite far away, she couldn't immediately make out the person's identity.
The vibration of the Tianheng Jade continued to intensify, clearly urging her to go over.
After brief consideration, Yun Heng walked toward the Cyan Spirit Tree.
Once she drew closer, she finally clearly saw the other person's appearance.
Su Mingyuan?
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