The wind whistled in their ears as Jiang Li and her two companions sped through the giant forest like three streaks of light.
The shouts of battle were relentless behind them, and the fluctuations of spiritual energy surged like a tide, almost swallowing their backs.
"This way!" Jiang Li turned into a side road based on her intuition, but after rushing out for only a few dozen feet, she suddenly stopped.
There was a dead end in front of us.
Ancient vines, several meters tall, intertwined like an iron cage, blocking the way; the thorns on the vines gleamed with a ghostly purple light.
It was several times thicker than the Nether Vine they had encountered on the way here, and the ferocious aura it exuded was chilling—clearly...
In their panic, they stumbled into a more dangerous and forbidden area deeper into the woods.
"Damn it!" Stone whirled around, his black iron armor slamming against the giant tree behind him with a clang. For the first time, anxiety showed on his face. "There's no way out!"
Xiao Chen swiftly turned around, gripping his spear horizontally, his gaze sweeping behind him—a dense swarm of cultivators had caught up.
Leading them were Gui Xuan, the white-robed elder of the Three Saints Sect, the remnants of the Western Region monks, and several black-robed men with strange auras. All of them stared at them like hungry wolves eyeing lambs.
"Running away? Why aren't you running anymore?" A cultivator undergoing tribulation grinned maliciously, pointing his long sword at Jiang Li. "Hand over the Heart of the World, and maybe we can spare your corpses!"
"Don't waste your energy." Gui Xuan's black mist surged around him, his voice as cold as ice. "With poisonous ancient vines in front and us blocking your way from behind, you have no chance of escape!"
The cultivators slowly approached, forming an impenetrable encirclement. Spiritual energy condensed in their palms, and their gleaming magical artifacts were aimed at the three of them. The killing intent in the air was almost tangible.
Jiang Li took a deep breath and quietly grasped Xiao Chen's wrist. The three of them stood back to back, their eyes scanning the surroundings warily—in this desperate situation, only a fight to the death was possible.
There is only one heart in the world.
Jiang Li suddenly spoke up, her voice clear and bright, with a hint of deliberate calmness, "There are so many of you, you can't possibly share it all, can you? Why don't we discuss who gets it first, and then we'll wait here and we definitely won't run away."
A sly glint flashed in her eyes—this was a last-ditch effort; if she could get them to fight over the spoils, perhaps there was still a glimmer of hope.
"Little brat, trying to play tricks?" Gui Xuan sneered, seeing through her thoughts. "Do you think we're fools? Hand over the goods first, then we'll talk about anything else!"
Other cultivators echoed this sentiment, clearly not so easily fooled.
The encirclement tightened, and the cultivator at the front could now clearly see the outline of Jiang Li's storage bag; the greed in his eyes was almost overflowing.
Jiang Li knew that if the plan failed, she could only hope for the final step.
She quietly took out an antique jade pendant, engraved with the cloud patterns of the Qingyun Sect. It was the token Lin Zhou had given her before his departure—she hadn't wanted to use it unless absolutely necessary.
With a flick of the fingertip, the jade pendant shattered.
"Click".
The faint cracking sound was unusually clear amidst the tense atmosphere.
The next moment, a soft yet irresistible white light shone above the three of them, and within the light, a figure in white robes slowly materialized.
He was a cultivator who appeared to be extremely young, dressed in a white robe, his face shrouded in a hazy halo.
No matter how much spiritual power the cultivators present used to look, they could only see a blur, as if the rules of heaven and earth were deliberately concealing his appearance.
But the moment this seemingly ordinary phantom appeared, the air in the entire dead-end alley seemed to freeze.
"Master!"
Xiao Chen, Jiang Li, and Shi Tou bowed simultaneously, their voices filled with excitement and awe at having survived such a calamity.
The visitor was none other than Lin Zhou.
Lin Zhou's gaze swept over the surroundings, then he looked at the three disciples surrounded in the middle. His tone was calm, yet tinged with a hint of mockery:
"Good heavens, after going out for some training, I've been surrounded like a mummy?"
No one dared to speak.
The cultivators present, including Gui Xuan and the white-robed elder of the Three Saints Sect—all old monsters at the Dao Inquiry Realm—held their breath, cold sweat beading on their foreheads.
They couldn't sense any powerful spiritual energy fluctuations from the white-robed phantom, yet a fear originating from the depths of their souls surged within them.
It was as if the person standing before them was not a person, but an unfathomable starry sky, where a single thought could reduce them to ashes.
"Who is this?" someone screamed inwardly, but didn't dare to move.
Lin Zhou ignored their fear and slowly swept his gaze across the crowd as if he were looking at a group of ants.
When his gaze fell on the men in black robes, his brow furrowed almost imperceptibly.
"A dog from the Upper Realm dares to swagger in front of me?"
With a casual remark, Lin Zhou didn't even raise his hand, but simply gave a soft "humph" to the black-robed men and the other two Dao Inquiry Realm cultivators with gleaming eyes.
"Buzz—"
An invisible wave spread out.
The next moment, a scene that sent chills down everyone's spines unfolded—
Those black-robed men, along with the two Dao Inquiry Realm cultivators, suddenly swelled and exploded!
"Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!"
Several plumes of blinding blood mist exploded in the crowd, splattering bits of flesh and bone onto the bodies and faces of the surrounding cultivators. The intense stench of blood instantly overwhelmed the scent of grass and trees.
Those arrogant lackeys from the upper realm and old monsters at the Dao Inquiry Realm, who were just moments before, turned into a pile of minced meat without even uttering a scream.
Dead silence.
A deathly silence.
Everyone froze in place, their faces drained of color, their pupils dilated with fear.
A single cold snort, and several Dao Seeking Realm cultivators were instantly killed?
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