Chapter 360 Plant Spirits, Beast Spirits

Taiyi, the abyss of Wujian Mountain.

The influence of the Yin-Yang Pisces appearing in the Underworld Lake has spread to every corner of Taiyi. The Abyss of No Return, originally a gloomy place filled with death energy, where the omnipresent lightning strikes are solemn and dangerous, is now filled with snow falling everywhere, melting as soon as it hits the ground, leaving no trace.

Yu Sui looked up against the fierce wind, which blew her clothes and hat off, revealing her fair face. She squinted and turned her head to avoid the wind blades.

Mei Liangyu, who was walking in front, turned around and put the hat back on her: "You can stop in front of the waterfall, I'll go in alone."

Yu Sui frowned slightly. He hadn't mentioned before that he was going to venture into the Weak Water Green Mud by himself.

Mei Liangyu coaxed in a low voice, "I'm not sure if I can get in with so many people. You stay outside. If something happens to me, I can only rely on you to save me."

Yu Sui then nodded in agreement.

Before leaving, Mei Liangyu handed her three puzzle boxes: "Just in case, you can load up this ferry while you're outside."

"What are you guarding against?" Yu Sui asked.

Mei Liangyu said, "To prevent me from releasing the Weak Water Green Mud."

Yu Sui held three mechanical boxes in her hands. Mei Liangyu looked up into the distance. The mountain walls on both sides were almost vertical, insurmountable, and smooth, as if they had been cleaved open by a sharp sword, with no rocks in sight.

They stood in a crevice in the valley, at the end of which was a huge waterfall that seemed to hang from the sky.

The Thousand-Foot Waterfall, at this height, should have been a rushing torrent with a mighty roar, but what Yu Sui and the others saw was quite gentle, with a soft, soothing sound. The water flowed into the mountainside rather than outwards.

It seems that inside the white waterfall curtain cave lies a bottomless, mysterious cave.

"The reason why the cliff face is so smooth is because it is sealed with spells by famous Taoist masters and ghost Taoists. If I am inside and have to break the seal, the Weak Water Green Mud will break through these cliff faces and instantly fill this valley."

"The ferry will prevent you from being submerged by the Weak Water and Green Mud, and from being corroded by the Death Qi," Mei Liangyu continued. "In the past, there was nothing that could withstand the Weak Water and Green Mud, but since I committed the crime, the mechanics have developed a ferry that can block the Death Qi."

Yu Sui looked back at Thousand-Foot Cliff. Although the valley didn't look like anything special now, it felt eerie as soon as you entered, making you think of something sinister.

"If the Weak Water Green Mud is released, will it affect other places?"

Mei Liangyu said, "Yes."

Yu Sui asked in bewilderment, "Wouldn't that mean Master and the others would have found out?"

Mei Liangyu added, "As long as we don't spill over the Thousand-Foot Cliff, we won't disturb the Dean and the others."

The senior brother didn't consider what the outside world would think. If the overflowing of the Weak Water and Green Mud from the Thousand-Foot Cliff might swallow others, Mei Liangyu didn't care at all.

Yu Sui noticed it but didn't say anything, just nodded.

She thought to herself that it would take some time for the Weak Water Green Mud to overflow from the Thousand-Foot Cliff, so she turned back to look through the Tibetan Armor Scroll to see if there was any way to do so.

After explaining things to her, Mei Liangyu walked towards the waterfall alone.

Just as the man was about to disappear into the waterfall, Yu Sui called out to him, "Senior Brother!"

Mei Liangyu turned around and looked at him, her eyebrows slightly raised.

Yu Sui smiled at him, her eyes bright and lively: "Don't worry, I'm here."

The person who used to seem weak and harmless now exudes a strong sense of security, making people unconsciously choose to trust her.

Mei Liangyu seemed to pause for a moment, then smiled and turned to enter the waterfall.

Seeing Mei Liangyu enter the waterfall alone, Wei Ren asked Yu Sui with some surprise, "Aren't you going?"

Yu Sui handed over the mechanical box and said, "I want to assemble the ferry."

"What ship?" Wei Ren asked, puzzled.

Yu Sui gave the other two mechanism boxes to Wei Ren and Wan Qi. The three of them got together, took the tools, and started assembling the ferry according to the blueprints.

Now that Xue Mushi's body has shrunk, he is treated like a child. No one asks him to do any work, and he is left to sit quietly and circulate his internal energy.

Upon entering the Wujian Mountain Abyss, Xue Mushi asked Mei Liangyu about returning to simplicity and authenticity. After examining his Five Elements Qi, Mei Liangyu directly asked him how he had learned this Heavenly Secret Technique.

The boy frowned, as if trying to think and recall: "Suddenly... it seemed that the Qi and the five elements in my body suddenly erupted and merged."

Mei Liangyu looked at the Myriad Manifestations Heavenly Thunder mark on his body again and said, "You have been subjected to the Myriad Manifestations Heavenly Thunder for several days. The internal energy accumulated by the thunder is too much and has not been fully transformed and integrated, so you cannot use the Return to Simplicity technique freely."

Xue Mushi instinctively replied, "Then what should we do?"

"Let your light core remain still and release its energy," Mei Liangyu said. "Before all the Heavenly Thunder Qi you have accumulated has been integrated, do not use any of the Nine Stream Techniques on your light core. Wait until the energy has been released completely before you can use them."

Xue Mushi did as Mei Liangyu said, and it worked. So he sincerely thanked her.

Seeing Mei Liangyu walk towards Yu Sui and the others, he belatedly realized that Mei Liangyu knew about the three days and three nights of the Myriad Manifestations Heavenly Thunder.

Afterwards, he quietly asked Yu Sui, who frankly replied, "When I felt the empathy, my senior brother was right next to me."

Xue Mushi's expression became subtle.

Yu Sui didn't need to say anything more; Xue Mushi understood everything.

Mei Liangyu knew they possessed a strange fire and were destroyers of the world, but Nangong Sui did not kill Mei Liangyu to silence her.

Unlike others, everyone else thought that once Mei Liangyu regained her memories, she would never be able to like Yu Sui again.

Xue Mushi was worried that Yu Sui didn't actually like Mei Liangyu that much, and just needed a target to keep herself in check.

It just so happens that Mei Liangyu has a close relationship with Shui Zhou and can learn information related to the strange fire.

So Xue Mushi asked Yu Sui, "Do you really like him?"

Xue Mushi asked cautiously, afraid that he might guess correctly that Nangong Sui's affection for Mei Liangyu was just a lie he was using.

Yu Sui saw through Xue Mushi's thoughts at a glance and couldn't help but laugh: "No one in this world likes my senior brother more than I do."

It was at that moment that Xue Mushi realized that Nangong Sui seemed different from before.

Thunderclaps would occasionally boom in the sky, as if they were right next to his ears. Each time, Wei Ren would be startled, look up, roll his eyes, and then continue working.

Wan Qi wanted to slack off, so he said he was going to check on the unconscious Ji Meng. He stayed for half an hour, but Wei Ren kicked him back one after another.

"Nangong Sui is hammering nails, how dare you slack off?" Wei Ren scolded.

Wan Qi then turned to look at the girl sitting at the bow of the boat and found that Yu Sui was flipping through the Hidden Armor Scroll, with a circle of golden spirit words floating around her.

"Is the Weak Water Green Mud about to leap out from both sides of the Thousand-Foot Cliff?" Wan Qi looked up and asked Yu Sui above.

Yu Sui leaned out of the boat: "That's what my senior brother said, just in case."

"Are you looking for a way to stop it?" Wan Qi asked again.

"More or less." Yu Sui rolled her eyes, reached out and grabbed a word spirit that had transformed into a golden butterfly, and said, "I'll give it a try. You and Wei Ren should finish building the ship first."

Wan Qi thought for a moment and then said, "Weak Water Green Mud is death energy. The Ghost Daoists have death talismans that can draw out death energy. Compared with other schools of thought and techniques, this is their greatest advantage."

After listening, Yu Sui nodded thoughtfully and looked at Wan Qi: "Do physicians know everything about the existence of all 'qi'?"

"More or less," Wan Qi said, rubbing his nose. "But I don't know everything."

"Why do you think the Ji family is researching the Qi of No Owner?" Yu Sui gestured for him to look at Ji Meng beside him.

Wan Qi actually started thinking about Yu Sui's question: "From what you said, the Ji family is a prominent medical family in Qingyang. People who practice medicine like to study Qi, which is a kind of cultivation pursuit. If you thoroughly study different types of Qi, you can solve many problems."

After hearing these words, Yu Sui thought of Shi Yuezhen.

During her time at the clinic, she was in charge of almost all the disciples who came to the clinic.

"Ji Meng exhibited bestial behavior, which may have been inspired by the Taoist idea that 'all things have spirits.' Plants and trees are spirits, and all beasts are spirits; the former refers to flowers and plants in the context of medicine and agriculture, while the latter refers to insects and beasts in the context of Taoism and agriculture."

Wanqi simply stood still and started chatting with Yu Sui, leaving Wei Ren to work alone at the stern.

"The Ji family certainly isn't worried about the source of the herbs; they can refine them themselves. I guess Ji Meng's beast-like behavior is due to the extraction of the qi of insects and beasts, which is also what the farmers refer to as qi marrow."

Wan Qi pointed to his forehead: "In the cultivation of agricultural sorcerers, this place is called the Sea of ​​Marrow, while when they refine insect beasts, they call this place the Qi Marrow."

Yu Sui stood at the bow of the boat, listening attentively. Even the golden spirits flying around her stopped and sat in a row. The girl looked so well-behaved that it made people want to confide in her even more.

Wan Qi said, "The Ji family likely extracted the marrow of the insect beasts and transformed it in the sorcerer's body with medicine. I don't know if they were to harmonize the five elements of energy circulating in the light core with the marrow, or to refine it and transform it into unowned energy that can be used by living people."

"By utilizing the transformed unowned energy, one can cultivate various schools of techniques. In this way, one will not be limited by talent. As long as there is enough unowned energy, one can use different nine schools of techniques."

Upon hearing this, Yu Sui's face showed only surprise and admiration, as if she were learning for the first time that there was such a way to cultivate the Nine Streams Technique by exploiting a loophole in the talent rules.

She raised her voice, speaking in a relaxed and cheerful tone: "You were able to guess even these things; you're practically a genius disciple of the medical school!"

"I'm just guessing based on some records of various schools of thought, and this kind of conjecture is just wishful thinking." Wan Qi put down what he was holding, took out the Listening Wind Ruler, and showed it to Yu Sui. "This is a medical record annotated by our dean. I was looking through this before, and I wasn't being lazy. You see, all the past medical sages and many instructors of the thirteenth realm believe that the method of mastering the Qi of No Master, avoiding talent, and cultivating the techniques of various schools of thought is wishful thinking."

"Using the method of the Hundred Beast Spirit would require sacrificing the lives of countless insects and beasts. Medical practitioners, farmers, and Taoists have all explicitly prohibited it, but the Ji family probably doesn't believe in such superstitions and is still on the path of trying it out."

Yu Sui asked, "Do you think the Ji family will succeed? Ji Meng has already transformed into a beast and can also extract the Qi of No Owner. He has no memories of when he was transformed into a beast, and he is in a state of no owner, conforming to the Qi of No Owner."

"Whether it will succeed or not is hard to say." Wan Qi frowned in thought. "Unless the Ji family has other unknown methods."

Yu Sui thought to herself, "The Ji family has managed to keep this a secret for so many years; they must be quite determined. Whether the extraction of 'ownerless energy' from the medicine-making figures was the Ji family's own idea or Emperor Qingyang's is hard to say."

Grandmother Nangong and Grandmother Ji have a good relationship; they seem to be like sisters. I wonder if they will share this news.

If Grandmother knew, the resource the Nangong family could provide to the Ji family would likely be the Hundred Beast Spirits. The Yan state was known for its agriculture, and the agricultural resources the Nangong family plundered from Yan might be shared with the Ji family.

Assuming the Ji family's experiments on human subjects were also conducted by the Nangong family, then Emperor Qingyang would have no way of knowing.

Yu Sui played with the golden spirit in his hand, lost in thought.

Exhausted and covered in sweat from hammering and banging on the stern, Wei Ren straightened up, looked up at the thunder, and found that Wan Qi was still standing there chatting with Yu Sui, without moving an inch.

Wei Ren shouted angrily, "Wan Qi! Why aren't you coming to help!"

Startled by the shout, Wan Qi was about to move when Yu Sui turned to Wei Ren and said, "We haven't finished talking yet, you go ahead and do your thing."

Wei Ren: "..."

Wan Qi pretended not to see Wei Ren's murderous gaze.

Wei Ren listened to their conversation for a while and was speechless. "You're talking about farm animals and insects. You'd know more about this than you would a disciple of a medical family."

But then I thought about it again, and Wan Qi, this disciple of the medical family, really does have some skills. Maybe he knows more than I do.

Wei Ren cursed under his breath, but had no choice but to continue working. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a child sitting on a rock, lost in thought, releasing his inner energy. His curses intensified.

Xue Mushi seemed to notice the exhausted Wei Ren, and slowly jumped off the rock. Despite his small stature, he held out his hand to Wei Ren and said, "How about... I do it?"

Without the slightest hesitation, Wei Ren looked at the eleven or twelve-year-old boy in front of him and said, "Then you do it."

Xue Mushi was hit hard by the hammer thrown at him, and fell to the ground while still holding the tools.

Wei Ren had already left gracefully: "You do a good job, I'm going to try out the Enchanted Serpent again."

Xue Mushi scrambled to his feet and, carrying his tools, went to the stern of the boat to start tinkering.

After resting in the corner for a while, Wei Ren squatted down in front of Ji Meng, gathered his energy, and continued to use the Enchanting Serpent on him.