Chapter 61 The monsters are all her old buddies

Ji Mingran slowly took off the cane that had transformed into an ornament from his waist, held it horizontally in front of him, and loosened his fingers.

The short cane fell half an inch before stopping, seemingly suspended by an invisible rope, trembling and spinning slightly in the air. After a short while, the swaying cane floated steadily, pointing eastward.

"Over there." Ji Mingran stared in the direction his cane pointed and followed it, trudging forward through the desert, his steps uneven.

The cane pointing the way indicates that Zhu Shibai is also in this illusion.

Each member of the small group possesses at least one magical artifact personally crafted by Zhu Shibai. As long as they are in the same illusionary realm, they can gather around Zhu Shibai by following the direction of the magical artifacts.

The sun was scorching, the heat was unbearable, and the oxygen was thin in this post-apocalyptic world; you would get tired after just a few steps.

Even cultivators who are different from ordinary people will become more and more exhausted the longer they stay in the desert. Their consciousness will be eroded without them realizing it, and they will eventually collapse into the yellow sand and become part of the sand.

However, Ji Mingran didn't need to worry about not being able to get out. This desert was very familiar to her. She just needed to find her companions and lead them away.

Having identified the direction, Ji Mingran walked at a leisurely pace.

"What an ugly thing!"

From a great distance, Ji Mingran could hear Guan Wangzhen's disdainful voice.

They were just ahead. Ji Mingran was overjoyed and quickened his pace.

Caught off guard, a fierce heat wave rushed towards him, stirring up a cloud of yellow sand that clung to Ji Mingran's black hair and robes as they flew backward.

This is the force of the wind generated by the fierce attack.

Ji Mingran's gaze turned solemn, and a golden light flickered. Within the desert, a point of light moved rapidly, flashing every ten meters.

A girl in red, wielding two swords, confronts three two-meter-tall, thin, skeletal monsters with human heads.

The decayed head, with only half a blackish-purple face remaining, looked as if it had been crushed by a heavy object. The face was shaped like an inverted triangle, and the features were twisted, squeezed, and displaced. The corner of the mouth split to the ear, dripping thick green saliva. The saliva fell onto the yellow sand, scalding a blackened hole that seemed to be burning with gunpowder.

The monster's body was as white as steel, its arms were like blades, and it moved extremely fast. In a few moments, it moved in front of Shen Qingluo and kicked with its leg bones. Shen Qingluo spun her blade to block it. The sharp white bones collided with the long blade, producing a piercing metallic scraping sound.

The other two monsters pounced from the left and from the air, respectively.

At the critical moment, the monster in front of the longsword was suddenly entangled and pulled away by the yellow sand, while the monster on the left was hit by a white light and sent flying.

Shen Qinglu knelt down and leaned back, using her two crossed swords to block the attack that came from the air.

The twin swords trembled violently from the heavy blow. Shen Qingluo frowned and launched a fierce attack, sweeping across the target, aiming for her left shoulder.

Chen Qingluo immediately cut off the blade, discarding it and rolling away to dodge.

Before the longsword hit the ground, it transformed into raging flames, instantly engulfing the enemy who was launching a fierce attack.

Three long, two-meter-tall figures slowly emerged from the raging flames.

Shen Qingluo's expression was cold and stern. She reached out, and raging flames spun in the sky before returning to her hand and transforming back into a long sword: "That won't work either."

She said to the two people behind her.

One person stood crookedly with their arms crossed, another stood upright like a pine tree, and together with Shen Qingluo, the three of them confronted the three monsters opposite them.

"You can't kill it by chopping, you can't kill it by burning, you can't kill it by ramming." Guan Wangzhen scratched his head, his fiery red hair a mess: "Troublesome."

As he was speaking, he suddenly gasped, his expression contorted, and the arm that had been scratching his hair fell limply to his side.

The sky-blue sleeves that should have covered the arms were torn off, revealing deep wounds that exposed bone, with blood flowing freely and the skin around the wounds swollen and turning a dark purple.

The numbness in his arm intensified, and Guan Wangzhen asked Zhu Shibai, "And you?"

A man in a sky-blue robe stood in front, four gruesome bloodstains clearly visible on his back. Zhu Shibai said in a deep voice, "The poison is spreading; we need to finish this quickly."

Shen Qingluo's gaze sharpened. "They must have a fatal weakness. Keep looking!"

The attack came crashing through the air, the air whistling as it was compressed. The three figures flashed, and the yellow sand where they had stood collapsed and was shaved in half.

Upon seeing their targets disperse, the three-headed monsters, which had launched a swift attack, immediately split up to give chase.

The fiery red hair was truly eye-catching in the vast desert. Guan Wangzhen hadn't gone far when he felt a sharp, air-piercing attack approaching from behind. He made a hand seal, and the yellow sand around him suddenly flew up, forming a wall just seconds before the attack landed, blocking the blow.

On the other side, Shen Qingluo, who was moving rapidly forward, suddenly twisted and leaned back, raising her knife in front of her to block the falling bone blade. The twisted, swollen, and decaying inhuman features were close at hand, and the dark, lifeless emptiness met her eyes.

With a sudden thrust of her twin blades, Shen Qingluo was pushed back dozens of meters in an instant, leaving deep marks in the yellow sand beneath her feet.

The monster facing her was incredibly strong. Shen Qingluo clenched her fists tightly, gritted her teeth, and exerted all her strength to resist. The hilts of her twin swords were deeply embedded in her palms, but the monster's hand bones pressed the twin swords closer and closer to her neck.

“One.” Guan Wangzhen, who had been waiting nearby, placed one hand on the sand and the other hand with two fingers bent. The monster was instantly swallowed up by the vortex of yellow sand.

Zhu Shibai shouted, "Watch out!"

The yellow sand that had been sinking in front of Guan Wangzhen swelled up in waves, and the monster buried in the sand burst out of the sandfield, tearing its huge mouth as it rushed towards Guan Wangzhen.

The distance was too close, and the monster was too fast; Guan Wangzhen couldn't dodge in time.

Zhu Shibai was holding back the monster chasing Guan Wangzhen, allowing the latter to escape and deal with the monster pursuing Shen Qingluo. He was already stretched thin fighting two monsters alone. Shen Qingluo was on her way to help him and couldn't turn back in time.

The sandstorm stirred up by the monster completely isolated Guan Wangzhen from the other two.

The view was completely blocked.

Only Guan Wangzhen, amidst the sandstorm, witnessed the girl suddenly appear and shield him from the horrifying attack. Facing the twisted and terrifying inhuman monster charging towards him, she remained calm, flicking her elbow backward, twisting her waist, and throwing a punch.

The fist struck the monster squarely, plunging straight into its gaping mouth, thrusting upwards and all the way to the top, bursting through the monster's skull.

The monster instantly lost all movement, its body limply hanging in the girl's hand.

Guan Wangzhen was so startled that he lost his footing.

She, she, she started with that mouth that was drooling with disgusting, poisonous saliva, and went straight in from the inside out to smash the monster's head.

The monster's dark green liquid dripped from Ji Mingran's fist, and Guan Wangzhen covered his eyes and exclaimed, "Grandma, you're so ruthless!"

She withdrew her fist from the monster's mouth, and the monster's corpse was immediately swept away by the sandstorm. She calmly released her grip, examined the small dagger that had been transformed from her cane in her palm, and muttered to herself, "It's definitely more effective than bare hands."

The wind and sand howled, whipping his grey robes and long, jet-black hair. Guan Wangzhen snapped out of his daze and cast a cleansing spell on Ji Mingran, finally suppressing the sandstorm.

He raised his voice and turned to the other two people who were fighting the monster, saying, "Grandma Ming has arrived!"

After engaging the monster in battle for over a dozen rounds, Shen Qingluo drew her sword and swept it horizontally upon hearing this. The sword wind and heat wave bombarded the monster, knocking it back dozens of meters away, where it collided violently with another monster that had been knocked back.

Shen Qingluo's gaze swept towards the direction from which the other monster had attacked.

Zhu Shibai met her gaze and nodded calmly.

The two of them flashed to the left and right diagonally in front of Guan Wangzhen.

They silently formed a triangle around Ji Mingran, protecting her in the center.

Their positioning was natural and practiced, as if they had worked together countless times.

"Have they... dealt with each other many times?" Seeing this, even the disciples of the Dingsheng Sect looked at each other with puzzled expressions.

They remembered that their grandmasters had hardly ever met each other. Even in the only possible public class for newly recruited disciples, they attended at different times. Even when the three of them went on missions together, they each led a small team and acted separately, rarely seeing each other.

Not to mention that the young master of Luanfeng had only recently emerged from seclusion.

After guessing for a long time without finding the answer, the disciples of Dingsheng Sect could only conclude that this was probably the unspoken understanding between masters.

In the first competition, the four scattered individuals finally gathered together.

Shen Qingluo visibly breathed a sigh of relief, her tone gentle: "You've finally arrived."

Zhu Shibai smiled slightly and said softly, "We've gathered everyone." He glanced at the remaining two monsters and said, "If nothing unexpected happens, this illusion will be the final illusion of the Realm of All Beings."

In the final illusion, all the remaining participants gathered here. The three companions would definitely gather around him, so as soon as Zhu Shibai arrived, he stopped in place and waited for the three of them.

Unexpectedly, three monsters suddenly appeared. He struggled to fight them off alone. Just when things were at their most dangerous, Guan Wangzhen arrived and blocked a fatal blow for him, but Guan Wangzhen was seriously injured in the arm, while Guan Wangzhen was wounded on the back.

Fortunately, Shen Qingluo arrived in time, and the three of them fought against the three monsters together, but the outcome was still undecided.

Blue light emanated from the center, gently enveloping the four people.

Guan Wangzhen's blood flow to his arm slowed down, Zhu Shibai's back wound gradually healed, and Shen Qingluo's swollen palms gradually flattened.

"A Spirit Healing Array." A cultivator on the viewing platform exclaimed softly upon witnessing this scene, "So she's an array master."

The doubts that Ji Mingran's success was purely due to luck lessened slightly. Spiritual cultivation is a major component of the competition; once it begins, there are only two ways to leave the competition: victory or defeat.

If a participant is injured during the competition, they must resolve the injury themselves. Therefore, those skilled in healing, talisman cultivation, and alchemy are equally valued in the competition.

If a sect does not have such cultivators, it can only make up for the deficiency by purchasing enough spiritual artifacts, talismans, and pills.

“I remember that three hundred years ago, when the chief disciple of Dingsheng Sect, Linfeng, led a group of medical cultivators to leave for Liuhuan Valley, the medical cultivation lineage of Dingsheng Sect was completely severed. No wonder they value this little ancestor so much; it turns out she can use the Spirit Healing Array.”

"It can be considered to play some role; it's not entirely useless."

"But it's just Qi Refining after all, so the healing effect is only enough to stop the bleeding. With such a low cultivation level, you still need to rely on others for protection, which is a burden."

"Did anyone see how she got here? How did she suddenly emerge from the storm with Guan Wangzhen?"

"It's just in time that she arrived. Disciples of the same sect always find a way to gather. But her arrival was quite opportune. Guan Wangzhen killed one of the monsters. Otherwise, if everyone had to fight one monster like before, how could they have freed up their hands to protect her?"

After much discussion, the onlookers still talked about her luck: "All the other disciples encountered monsters and were eliminated one after another, but she didn't encounter a single one before she gathered with her fellow disciples. She's really lucky!"

In the first-class seats, the gazes of the team leaders shifted back and forth between Nanmen Hong, the former chief disciple of the Dingsheng Sect's Linfeng Peak and the current leader of the Liuhuan Valley, and Dong Lu, the current peak master of the Dingsheng Sect's Linfeng Peak.

These two former fellow students were identical in that they remained unmoved and expressionless.

Unable to discern anything, the team leaders refocused their attention on the competition.

The four stood still to heal their wounds. The remaining two monsters would not let them go, but their attacks were always blocked by something invisible, and could not hit the four.

The Vajra Formation shattered layer by layer, only to be repaired by Ji Mingran.

Watching the monster frantically moving around, searching for a way out, Shen Qingluo asked, "How did you deal with that monster just now?"

Guan Wangzhen looked strange and remained silent for a long time.

Ji Mingran naturally replied, "Oh, the fatal point is inside their skull. It's easier to find by looking upwards from their mouths. As long as the fatal point inside their skull remains, they will live and die."

Shen Qingluo nodded: "Knowing the fatal point makes things easier." With that, she raised her twin swords and charged forward to slash.

Zhu Shibai waited for his back wound to heal, slightly curious: "How did you know their fatal points?"

Ji Mingran said, "I've encountered them before." She had faced the mantis-like mutant before her countless times and had killed an innumerable number of them.

The mutants were all familiar old buddies to her.

"I'll go too. Let's finish this quickly and maybe we can get out." With his shoulder injury slightly healed, Guan Wangzhen couldn't contain himself and wanted to rush forward to fight alongside Shen Qingluo.

But Ji Mingran pressed him down, saying, "No rush, let's wait for the wound to heal first."

Her gaze fell upon the distant city, its skyscrapers faintly visible, standing silently on the edge of the desert.

The destination is just ahead.