The empty city was destroyed (16)
Ye Yingying was slightly taken aback, thinking she had misheard: "Who?"
“Gu Wusi is the one I met at the Qi family’s ancestral altar,” Wu Yue emphasized.
"...How did you come to see her?"
"Shaoling and she are in cahoots."
The news struck Ye Yingying like a bolt from the blue, deeply affecting her: "What are they doing here?"
"What else can they do? They'll try to steal our things," Wu Yue said with a sour face. "They also want the magical artifacts left behind by Zhan Yan."
“But! Brother Shaoling saved us during curfew and even took us to find Zhan Yan. Without him, Wu Yue and I might have been attacked by the prison guards,” Zhao Yuxiao said anxiously. “And that Miss Gu! Although she didn’t look well, she didn’t hurt us.”
"Moreover, Shaoling also said that they actually want to get rid of the Ghost Calculator, just like you, Miss Ying'er."
"What?!" Ye Yingying's voice rose several octaves in question. "What else did he say to you?"
He also said... he hoped you could talk to Gu Wusi.
After listening, Wu Yue snorted coldly: "That guy is very strange. I can't figure out what he's thinking at all."
Not to mention Wu Yue, Ye Yingying was also confused: "What is their relationship? When she met Gu Wusi before, wasn't she the only one acting alone?"
“Shaoling is the spirit within her sword,” Wu Yue explained. “It’s the sword that held back Yunyanqiu on the ancestral altar.”
The spirit of the weapon… Ye Yingying quickly recalled the scene at the Qi family ancestral land. What stopped Yun Yanqiu at that time was a long sword with a completely black body.
"But is it the Crimson Black Bone Sword?" Yun Yanqiu suddenly asked from the side.
“That’s his name.” Zhao Yuxiao nodded. “Shaoling said that his three souls were separated by the Ghost Calculator. His earth soul was melted into the sword, and his heaven soul and life soul were put into a wooden figure.”
"This method can suppress the evil thoughts of the demon bone, thereby offsetting its backlash against the sword master."
Ye Yingying was shocked. Separating the three souls is an extremely painful thing for a living person, comparable to the torment of forcibly separating the soul from the body. If one is not careful, the soul may be scattered.
When she was still with Ghost Calculator, the Demon Sword was just a forbidden artifact kept in the treasure vault and sealed with many layers of seals. She never expected that Ghost Calculator would use such a method to make the Demon Sword work for him.
"The separation of the three souls is an irreversible process, but Zhan Yan's illusion array allowed his souls to merge again."
"Moreover, because of this, Brother Shaoling is not afraid of the fog at all, and he can see clearly during curfew," Zhao Yuxiao added. "They have always been forced to work for the Ghost Calculator. Miss Gu has endured humiliation and hardship all these years, just so that one day she can avenge Brother Shaoling!"
"Hiss..." A series of messages bombarded Ye Yingying's thoughts, giving her a splitting headache.
She rubbed her throbbing temples, took a few deep breaths, and forced herself to calm down.
If they also wanted to kill the Ghost Calculator, why did they have to interfere with her at the ancestral altar?
What exactly was Gu Wusi's intention in fighting her for the Azure Nether True Fire at the ancestral altar? Although she eventually threw away the Azure Nether True Fire, causing the Azure Golden Hou to go berserk, her intention at the time was clearly to see them and the Azure Golden Hou suffer mutual destruction so she could reap the benefits.
Ye Yingying became increasingly confused. She tried to recall the details related to Gu Wusi, attempting to find even the slightest clue to explain her behavior.
Suddenly, a sentence Gu Wusi once said flashed through her mind—"How could someone like you possibly kill him?"
"Someone like me?" Ye Yingying calmed down and carefully considered the meaning of those words.
At the time, Gu Wusi mocked her for being naive. She didn't think there was anything profound about those words, and just thought that Gu Wusi was like that, mocking her for being weak.
But if Gu Wusi also wanted to kill Gui Suanzi, then looking back at these words would seem like she was being scrutinized.
She doesn't trust me. Ye Yingying realized that Gu Wusi's words probably meant that she still had some compassion for the Ghost Calculator.
In that case, it is indeed possible to have a talk with Gu Wusi.
Ye Yingying let out a long sigh, her gaze resolute, and said, "Since they've already invited me, I'll go talk to her."
Zhao Yuxiao was quite pleased to hear this, but Wu Yue next to him frowned slightly, seemingly not quite agreeing with the answer.
"What's wrong?" Ye Yingying asked her. "Why do you look like that?"
“I don’t like Gu Wusi,” Wu Yue said bluntly. “If you two have the same goal, it’s not impossible for you to cooperate. But they are also here for magical artifacts, and I will never compromise on that.”
"Don't forget, you're here to help me."
“Of course.” Ye Yingying nodded. “Just think of it as testing the waters, to know your enemy and yourself.”
After saying that, she calmed herself down and began to sense the spiritual energy around her, trying to find Gu Wusi's trace from the fluctuations. But strangely, the spiritual energy around her was very chaotic. Not to mention Gu Wusi, even the spiritual energy emanating from the four of them was quite different from usual.
This place certainly couldn't be treated in the usual way. With the search yielding no results, Ye Yingying began to consider other methods.
Wu Yue saw through her thoughts and immediately said, "Now that the illusion has been broken, they must be somewhere in this city. Let's go find the magic artifacts; we'll definitely run into them on the way."
"That's true..." Ye Yingying pondered, "Then where should we begin our search?"
"Where else could it be? The royal palace."
The snowstorm in Tianjin had stopped sometime ago, and the surroundings became extremely quiet, with only occasional gusts of cold wind blowing and stirring up debris from the roadside.
The desolate city was full of ruins, but fortunately the layout of the houses was almost the same as in the illusion array. The four of them followed the main road in front of the city gate and soon arrived at the front gate of the palace.
This was the very gate Ye Yingying and Yun Yanqiu had passed through when they went to see the sacrificial ceremony in the illusion. Unlike its magnificent appearance in the illusion, the gate before them was dilapidated and broken. The two open doors were covered with mottled rust and were so rotten that they creaked and groaned in the wind, sounding like a mournful cry.
The group passed through the front door and arrived at the plaza, which was completely empty; even the altar from the illusion was gone. Further on, they reached the inner door, which, unlike the front door, seemed to be blocked by something, remaining motionless with only a narrow gap allowing a person to pass through.
Wu Yue reached out and tried to push the door, but it didn't budge. The four of them had no choice but to squeeze through the gap one by one.
The interior of the palace was not quite what Ye Yingying had imagined. While wandering through the mist, she had assumed the paths were narrow and surrounded by towering walls. But in reality, the walls weren't high, and wide avenues stretched out in all directions, leading to various parts of the palace.
"This place isn't small at all," Ye Yingying remarked.
Although the palace itself was also desolate and ravaged by wind and snow, the buildings were quite intact, far better than the ruins outside.
"Hmph, it's quite sturdy inside."
Wu Yue chuckled and looked up at the tall spire not far away. She had seen this spire in the illusion as well. Shao Ling said that was the location of the main hall. He used that spire to locate her and Zhao Yuxiao and found Zhan Yan's residence in the palace.
Thinking of this, Wu Yue had a flash of inspiration and stepped forward, saying, "Come with me."
Where to?
"Didn't you want to see Gu Wusi and the others?" Wu Yue turned to Ye Yingying and said, "I'll take you to find them."
"Didn't you just say you wanted to find a magical artifact first?"
“Yes, but then I suddenly realized that the magic artifact is probably at Zhan Yan’s residence. Shao Ling knows where it is, so let’s just have him take us there.”
Do you know where those two are?
“I don’t know.” Wu Yue shook her head. “But I know another place where Zhao Yuxiao and I were taken away by him.”
Mentioning Zhao Yuxiao, the guy blinked and suddenly exclaimed, "You mean, that place where lions are kept?!"
"Locking up lions?" Ye Yingying cast a questioning glance at Zhao Yuxiao.
Upon seeing this, Zhao Yuxiao quickly explained, "We followed Shaoling earlier and discovered that he had infiltrated a merchant caravan and entered the palace."
"I was in that caravan at the time, and I discovered that they were actually selling lions to the royal palace. Ying'er, can you believe it? Several cages of lions!"
"Really?" Ye Yingying wasn't particularly surprised. "You want to go there and be picked up by him again?"
It sounds like a bit of a gamble.
“If he were smart, he would have figured it out.” Wu Yue said matter-of-factly, “That’s the only place that we both know about.”
"...Why do I feel like you two have had quite a few things going on with him?" Ye Yingying seemed rather annoyed for some reason.
Wu Yue rolled her eyes at her, finding it absurd: "If you hadn't argued with Yun Yanqiu at the inn, you could have experienced it yourself."
Knowing she was in the wrong, Ye Yingying obediently shut her mouth and followed Wu Yue to the place where the lions were kept.
Knowing the general location, Wu Yue and Zhao Yuxiao walked ahead, while Ye Yingying and Yun Yanqiu walked side by side behind.
The palace was quiet, with no sound except for the footsteps of a few people.
Feeling a bit bored, Ye Yingying would occasionally glance at Yun Yanqiu. Her actions were obvious; she desperately wanted Yun Yanqiu to notice her. But after glancing at him so many times, she realized that Yun Yanqiu didn't seem to notice her at all, which made her a little curious.
So she waved her hand in front of Yun Yanqiu's eyes, and when Yun Yanqiu reacted and looked at her, she asked, "What are you thinking about?"
"It's nothing," Yun Yanqiu said calmly. "I was just thinking about what we talked about earlier, whether Zhan Yan is really still alive."
Yun Yanqiu spoke these words in the coldest of voices, which sent a chill down one's spine.
"Hiss..." Zhao Yuxiao looked frightened and couldn't help but rub his arms.
"What are you afraid of?" Wu Yue gave him a disdainful look.
"I just find it terrifying. Think about it, Yue Le was a country thousands of years ago? If Zhan Yan were alive today, wouldn't he be..."
Wouldn't that make him a thousand-year-old monster? Zhao Yuxiao didn't dare say it, afraid of being overheard.
“It’s unlikely he’s still alive,” Yun Yanqiu said. “We guessed he was still alive earlier because we thought he could only maintain that illusion array with his enormous spiritual power if he were alive.”
"But then I thought about it, and maybe it wasn't an array at all, but a secret realm."
"Is there any difference?" Zhao Yuxiao didn't quite understand.
“The formation must be continuously supplied with spiritual energy to maintain itself, but the secret realm itself is a region formed by the distortion of scattered spiritual energy.” Yun Yanqiu patiently explained, “In other words, the secret realm is a pure land left behind by a person with strong spiritual energy after death, and it usually manifests the place that the person was most familiar with in life.”
"So, you think what we saw earlier was a secret realm formed by the overflowing spiritual energy after Zhan Yan's death?" Wu Yue concluded.
"Exactly."
A secret realm… This was the first time Ye Yingying had ever heard of a secret realm being created this way. Thinking of this, she couldn't help but ask, “If that's the case, then how did you acquire your Profound Clarity Realm?”
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