Shen Qingci stared at the woman in the mirror who was trampling on talismans and laughing maniacally, then turned her head blankly.
She looked at her aunt.
Shen Tinglan fell silent for a moment, raising a hand to touch the tip of her nose. “Ahem... Shuyan isn't usually like this.”
Shen Qingci didn't believe her.
“Once she gets serious, she has a bit of trouble holding back,” Shen Tinglan said, carefully choosing her words. “The members of the Shen family, after all, have a bit of... in their bones.”
Trouble holding back???
Shen Qingci glanced at the water mirror again.
In the mirror, her clan aunt Shuyan was fighting with high spirits, her face filled with an unbridled madness.
The more she looked, the more she felt this had absolutely nothing to do with “trouble holding back.”
This was clearly a complete lunatic.
Could it be that this was passed down through the Shen family bloodline?
Shen Qingci quietly retracted her gaze, silently crossing out her previous assessment of her clan aunt Shuyan as “gentle” and “sensible” in her mind.
And added a new note: A total badass once the fight starts.
Shen Tinglan cleared her throat, steering the conversation back on track. “The array node of the Floating Light Dragon-Prisoning Array can still hold for another half an hour. Does A-Ci need your aunt to make a move?”
“That guy still has one Body Integration sword qi left.” As she spoke, there was an eager, restless look in her eyes.
Shen Qingci felt that her aunt's state was also faintly off. She nudged her butt slightly to the side.
“No need, Aunt. Aunt Shuyan can handle it on her own.”
Shen Tinglan clicked her tongue, her tone laced with regret.
In that case, she could only find Old Seventeen to spar with when they returned to satisfy her itch.
...
When the second sword qi was completely worn down, the exploding airwave tore the clouds within a radius of several hundred miles into shreds.
The Black Scale Armor on Fu Mingyuan's body was completely ruined, its fragments clattering as they fell.
He was blown away by the shockwave, tumbling several times in mid-air before barely stabilizing himself, spitting out a mouthful of blood mixed with fragments of his internal organs.
Opposite him, Shen Shuyan's robes had also been shredded to pieces by the sword qi, revealing her form-fitting silver soft armor underneath.
The surface of the armor was engraved with overlapping tortoise-shell patterns, with only a fine crack running across her chest.
Shen Shuyan looked down at the crack and tapped the soft armor twice with the back of her hand, making a clang-clang sound.
“I'll have to buy Old Seventeen a drink when I get back. This craftsmanship of his really is flawless.”
She tied her tattered outer robe around her waist, looked up at Fu Mingyuan, and smiled. “Sect Master Fu, your sword qi is quite potent. Too bad you only have one left. I haven't even had my fill of testing this tortoise shell yet.”
Looking at that smiling face, only one thought remained in Fu Mingyuan's mind: This woman is a lunatic.
Using Body Integration sword qi to test talismans, treating her life as a game—not only was she not afraid at this point, but she was actually getting more excited the more they fought.
In his thousand years of cultivation, he had seen people who didn't care for their lives, but he had never seen someone who treated courting death as a form of entertainment.
He squeezed his last life-saving trump card in his hand and spat a mouthful of essence blood onto his palm.
The essence blood transformed into a bloody mist, enveloping his entire body.
The spiritual energy in his dantian began to flow backward, his meridians bulging one by one, and spiderweb-like blood veins spread across his skin.
He was burning his source, pushing himself to the brink of self-detonation.
They wanted him dead?
Fine!
He would drag someone down with him.
Fu Mingyuan's bloodshot eyes stared intently at Shen Shuyan.
This crazy woman had thrown over ten thousand talismans; her inventory had to be nearly empty.
Once a talisman cultivator ran out of talismans, how would she block his self-detonation?
If he could survive this wave, he still had a Void-Escape Talisman left behind by the ancestor, which was enough to tear through the trapping array and escape.
He would head west, hide his identity, and cultivate for a few hundred years. With his mid Soul Transformation stage foundation, it was not impossible for him to make a comeback.
Shen Shuyan saw right through his plan.
Without any haste, she dabbed a lingering drop of blood onto her brow and formed hand seals.
With her left palm facing upward in front of her dantian and her right index and middle fingers pressed together pointing downward, she drew a vertical line across her brow.
“With the spirit terrace as the guide, and the blood covenant as the proof. Ten thousand talismans, return to your positions!”
The vertical mark on her brow suddenly snapped open, looking as if she had opened a third eye.
The fragments of the ten thousand Mystic-grade High-rank talismans that had exploded earlier swept back from all directions. Wrapped in lingering spiritual light, the fragments reconvened around her.
The talisman paper was restored, and the talisman runes reconnected. One after another, they densely covered half the sky.
Shen Shuyan flipped her hand, retrieving three hundred Earth-grade Mid-rank talismans from her storage ring.
The moment Fu Mingyuan saw that stack of talismans, his pupils shrank.
He had been in charge of the Azure Cloud Sect for a hundred years, yet the entire sect's treasury only held forty Earth-grade Mid-rank talismans, which could only be used in the event of a sect-destroying crisis.
Yet a mere side-branch elder of the Shen family could casually pull out three hundred of them.
By what right?
He refused to accept this! He refused!
Shen Qingci had joined the Azure Cloud Sect for barely two years, all things considered.
An Eldest Young Lady of a hidden great family had only come to the sect for amusement. How much sincerity could she possibly have?
In the cultivation world, mutual deception, masters turning against disciples, and fellow disciples killing each other had been the norm since ancient times. Had he not seen enough of it?
What had Jinglian ever given her?
A few cultivation techniques, or a few sword forms?
Was this sentimentality really worth several Earth-grade talismans?
And what was the Shen family even after? To kill a Soul Transformation Sect Master, the Earth-grade talismans they threw in were enough to buy three medium-sized spirit stone veins.
No matter how they calculated it, it was a massive loss.
He couldn't understand it.
He would not understand it even in death.
Shen Shuyan did not give him time to ponder any further.
The ten thousand Mystic-grade talismans spread out above her head into a circular talisman array, while the three hundred Earth-grade Mid-rank talismans hovered at the innermost layer. Their spiritual lights linked together, condensing into an inverted talisman bell.
She pressed her hand down.
The talisman bell plummeted...
The ten thousand Mystic-grade talismans ignited simultaneously, closely followed by the three hundred Earth-grade Mid-rank talismans.
A five-colored spiritual light soared into the sky, illuminating the entire void as bright as day.
The shockwave swept in all directions, shattering the twelve layers of illusion corridors of the Floating Light Dragon-Prisoning Array, and even the trapping array itself shook violently.
In the center of the talisman light, Fu Mingyuan let out a hoarse, furious roar, “Shen Qing—”
His physical body shattered piece by piece in the spiritual light, starting from his limbs, to his torso, his dantian, and his sea of consciousness...
At the very last second, his soul tried to break free from his body to escape, but it was sealed in place by a Soul-Suppressing Talisman, swallowed up by the talisman light along with the self-detonating spiritual energy.
The talisman light dispersed~
In mid-air, only a cloud of slowly dispersing ash remained.
Shen Shuyan stood where the ash fell. The ten thousand Mystic-grade talismans that had been flying around her were completely burned away, leaving only a small stack of the three hundred Earth-grade Mid-rank talismans in her hand.
Two more fine cracks had appeared on her soft armor, but it was otherwise intact.
She counted the remaining talismans and scoffed, “I ended up using five extra.”
She teleported to the place where Fu Mingyuan had fallen and raised her hand to gather the dispersing soul into her palm. Reaching into her sleeve, she pulled out a small black clay jar to store it inside, sealing the opening with a Delusion-Severing Talisman.
“Let the soul return to silence, and the skeletal remains return to the earth. Fu Mingyuan, the grudges of our lifetime end here. Do not disturb these mountains and waters in death.”
She pressed her fingers together to draw a rune on the jar.
“This place has clean mountains and pure waters; it cannot tolerate filthy things. Whether you leave is up to you, but whether you stay is up to me...”
Pressing her fingertip against the mouth of the jar, the final rune settled, and the clay jar fell silent.
Shen Shuyan put the small jar into a separate storage bag, tied the opening tightly, and wrapped the outside with two more layers of sealing talisman paper.
Having done all this, she wiped the ash from her hands and turned to walk toward the flying vessel.
The twenty Nascent Soul guards had already cleared the vessel.
Shen Shuyan walked through the empty air, instructing the guard commander, “Withdraw! Let's go see the Eldest Young Lady.”
Rate on N.U.
