In this temple in the mountain, there is no distinction between day and night. The light of the eternal lamp fills every corner of the mountain, making this strange temple covered with a layer of holy silver frost.

After staying here for three days, Yu Yi was able to tell the time.

Because the group of people in the Ji family, who were revered as the immortals by the monks of later generations, would play music and sing, recite scriptures and worship outside on time every morning, more punctual than the uncles and aunts who dance in the square.

After the ceremony, the head of the Ji family would enter the mountain alone and come to the temple. The doors and windows inside and outside the temple would be sealed, and the eternal lamps in the room would be lit, reflecting the gold-painted totems in the temple, floating with dazzling light arrays.

Yu Yi couldn't see clearly what they did in the light array. In about a quarter of an hour, the patriarch of the Ji family would lead the group of Taoist children out.

The Taoist children were holding the same black jade boxes as the day before, which they would deliver to the alchemy furnace outside at noon.

Yu Yi watched the group of people walk out of the temple and into the long corridor. Each little Taoist child was about the same height. In fact, they looked similar, too. They were very formal and would only follow orders.

The only person who could give them orders, besides the patriarch of the Ji family, was Xue Chenjing.

The Taoist children all respectfully called him "Young Master", but according to Yu Yi's observation, it would be better to say that these Taoist children were regulating Xue Chenjing's every word and action rather than Xue Chenjing giving them orders.

The Taoist children would ask for instructions on what to do and when. If they didn't get the right answer after asking, they would just circle around Xue Chenjing like malfunctioning puppets. They

would not happily carry out the orders until he gave the right orders.

Puppet children are not living people after all, and ordinary people would never be constrained by such things.

But the young master was very soft-hearted, and he even cared about these little clay sculptures and couldn't bear to see them in trouble.

Yu Yi turned her head to look at the young man sitting in the temple with his back to her. Xue Chenjing was sitting in the middle of the temple, looking up at the holy and compassionate priest, with the ends of his hair hanging to the ground, forming winding curls on the marble tiles.

Today's scene was exactly the same as yesterday, and the day before. She even ran out to listen to the brother and sister whispering at the end of the Ji family team.

Even their conversation was exactly the same.

Yu Yi plucked the red-crowned crane's neck feathers and sighed, "They repeat the same day every day."

She searched the surroundings and found that it was just as Xue Chenjing said. She couldn't get out of here. The only one who could communicate with her intermittently was him.

Yu Yi walked into the temple and squatted in front of him. She looked at the boy's extremely pale face and skillfully inserted the green bamboo sword into his body.

The signal between the two of them was really bad, but after Yu Yi tried many times, she firmly believed that sticking the sword into him could increase the probability of them getting through the call.

See, this time, Xue Chenjing felt it.

He lowered his eyebrows and closed his eyes, touching his heart. The eternal lamp under the priest's seat was reflected in his dark pupils, and there was no projection of other people. However, he seemed to see her, and said to the void: "You haven't left yet? It seems that he should be very busy outside."

The young man smiled lightly, and his smile was different from before. The corners of his lips were slightly raised, and the clean smile melted in his eyes, like a pool of clear springs touched by the spring breeze, rippling with sparkling waves.

In the past three days, Yu Yi often saw him smile, to those stupid puppet Taoist children, and to her, an outsider of unknown origin.

He exuded a gentle and pure temperament from the inside out, which was very difficult to fake.

Before, in order to win her favor, when Xue Chenjing acted nice and clever in front of her, he would also pretend to smile gently, but the smile never reached his eyes, and he was unwilling to do so.

He was really a completely different person from before, either his acting skills were really good, or they were really two completely different people.

But Yu Yi couldn't be very sure, after all, the time they spent together was very short, too short to see the essence through the phenomenon.

Yu Yi pondered, turned his head and glanced at the red-crowned crane next to him, and said: "Brother He, why didn't you peck him this time? Do you also think they are a little different?"

Brother He made a "click" sound and nodded.

Yu Yi held the sword with both hands and spoke close to the sword, trying to transmit her voice waves through the Green Bamboo Sword, "Who is he outside? Is it another Xue Chenjing? Did he imprison you here and then occupy your body?"

The young man listened carefully for a moment, not knowing how many words he heard. He murmured, "Xue Chenjing? Chenjing."

He opened his mouth, held the name on the tip of his tongue and repeated it twice, with some nostalgia in his eyes, "I haven't heard this name for a long time."

Yu Yi felt puzzled and wanted to ask in detail, but saw a figure suddenly rolling in from outside the temple like a storm.

The person who came had beautiful slightly curly black hair, and the ends of his hair flew when he ran fast. The two bright red-gold headbands were mixed in his hair, and he was close to her in an instant.

Two identical faces appeared in Yu Yi's eyes, but one face was quiet and gentle, with the silver frost of an ever-burning lamp reflected in his eyes.

The other face had a murderous look, and her face was imprinted in his pupils. His eyes were vicious, as if he was going to open his mouth and eat someone in the next moment.

Such a sharp contrast made it possible to tell the difference between them at a glance.

"Xue Chenjing!" Yu Yi drew his sword and chopped him on the head.

Xue Chenjing had suffered several setbacks before, so he was prepared and dodged by twisting his body. At the same time, something stretched out from the shiny marble tiles under his feet and wrapped around Yu Yi's body with ease.

This was in his heart, so how could he be easily hurt again.

The cold and slippery feeling wrapped around Yu Yi's hands and feet like a cocoon, and the red-crowned crane was also drawn into the tentacles, and the croaking sound became dull.

"Are you a mouse? You can get into anything!" Xue Chenjing said unhappily, and stretched out his hand to her with a gloomy face. A fierce light was revealed in his eyes, and at this moment he obviously wanted to kill her.

But in the end, he gritted his teeth and held it back, just covering her eyes.

The cold and damp palm firmly attached to her face. Yu Yi's eyes suddenly fell into darkness. She heard the young master's question, "Who is she to you?"

Yu Yi felt herself being pulled hard, and her back pressed tightly against the cold and damp body behind her.

Xue Chenjing's sliding Adam's apple leaned against her ear as he spoke. With an extremely disgusted tone, he snorted and said, "You will never know."

Then, a gust of wind swept her ears.

When the palm covering her face loosened, she had already left the strange mountain temple and came to an unfamiliar alcove.

The concave platform was not big, like a round basin, surrounded by walls on all sides, with a furnace in the middle.

The furnace was bright and molten iron was flowing like magma, like a crater about to erupt, just looking at it could burn one's retina.

The endless fire spread out from the furnace, and was sealed in the concave basin by the talisman array carved on the walls on all sides, making it extremely hot here, and even the air was distorted.

Every breath Yu Yi took was like swallowing a mouthful of charcoal. She was having a hard time breathing and asked with difficulty, "Where is this place?"

Xue Chenjing, however, seemed not to feel any heat at all. He was standing very close to the furnace, and the boiling fire made his figure blurry and distorted, as if he was about to melt.

"The quenching table in the swordstone." Xue Chenjing replied nonchalantly, his attention focused on the furnace in the center.

The air around Yu Yi began to smoke, which was the water vapor evaporated from the tentacles wrapped around her.

The fiery temperature quickly penetrated into the tentacles, and the transparent tentacles were burned red, finally revealing their true appearance in Yu Yi's eyes.

Her eyes widened, and a large group of dancing tentacles were reflected in her shocked pupils.

These tentacles spread out from the soles of Xue Chenjing's feet, crawling all over the place, turning this concave basin into a nest of tentacles and anacondas.

Wet mucus hung everywhere, and even the boiling fire in the furnace could not evaporate the transparent and sticky liquid.

The air was filled with the sizzling sound of the tentacles wriggling. Yu Yi had heard this sound before.

They looked similar to octopus tentacles. The thickest part was thicker than her waist, and there were suction cups on their abdomens that opened and closed. The back, which was steamed translucent by the furnace fire, was painted with golden waves like sea waves.

Yu Yi raised the green bamboo sword and stabbed at a tentacle that was entangled with Senior Brother He. The tip of the sword hit the golden lines on the back of the tentacle and slid away.

The sound of metal and stone was sharp, and the sword light sparked on the tentacle. The golden lines on the tentacle expanded angrily, and when it swung across the ground, it easily scraped a deep gully on the ground.

Yu Yi could see clearly that it was not a pattern, but a piece of hard scales.

Xue Chenjing turned his head to look at her after hearing the sound of the sword, revealing a smug expression on his face, and snorted: "Don't think of cutting it off this time."

Yu Yi: "..." Good guy, she said that when she came into close contact with these tentacles last time, she clearly didn't see these snake-like things on them.

Could it be that Xue Chenjing can still evolve? ?

What kind of messed-up novel is this? What kind of monster is she going to have a happy ending with?

"You'd better not move, otherwise I will kill that stupid bird on the spot." Xue Chenjing threatened in a deep voice.

Senior Brother He screamed sharply, and he knew the situation and didn't dare to move again.

Yu Yi retracted the Green Bamboo Sword and sat in this strange flesh nest. Her whole body was entangled by these tentacles that looked like both snakes and octopuses, and she was covered in wet and cold mucus.

She said with great disgust: "What on earth are you? Do you think you are a Pokémon or a Digimon?"

Xue Chenjing didn't understand what she was saying, and the system immediately explained: "Master, Pokémon and Digimon are both cartoons, equivalent to those comic books for young children in the world. The little babies in them can evolve into stronger forms, just like the snake scales that the master adds to the defense of the tentacles."

Although the heroine's favorability towards the host has fallen to a new low, the system still tries to cheer up its host and exaggerates: "They are all super cute, master, the heroine compares you with them, she is exaggerating your cuteness!"

Yu Yi: "???" She is not, she didn't! She just wanted to test whether Xue Chenjing was also a time traveler.

Can this damn system not over-interpret it.

Xue Chenjing snorted disdainfully and muttered, "Who needs her to brag?"

Anyway, she only has a 2% favorable impression of him now.

He raised his hand and stroked a thick tentacle beside him, and all the tentacles on the table began to wriggle, forming two firm meat coils, imprisoning the red-crowned crane and Yu Yi separately.

"Stay still." Xue Chenjing said, then turned and walked towards the quenching table in the middle. The scorching heat distorted his body.

Because he was too close to the furnace, his hair spontaneously ignited, bursting into flames like broken stars, and the flames licked the hem of his robe and the hem of his sleeves at the same time.

Every step Xue Chenjing took was accompanied by a "hissing" sound from under his feet. It was like the sound of raw meat being put on a grill during charcoal grilling.

He finally walked to the quenching table in the center, stood at one end of the furnace, lowered his eyes and stared at the dazzling flames below. The magma molten iron that was burned to a bright yellow color was churning in the furnace.

Then, without any warning, he leaned over and jumped in.

Yu Yi looked at the sparks flying in the furnace through the layers of overlapping translucent tentacles in shock. The flames engulfed his figure in an instant.

She found it a little difficult to understand. Xue Chenjing went to great lengths to please her in order to unlock the plot and enter the sword-suppressing stone. He wouldn't have come here just to jump into the fire pit, right? No matter how afraid of the cold he was, he wouldn't go to this extent.

Did he want to forge a sword? This was the first time she saw herself jumping into the furnace to sacrifice the sword.

Yu Yi thought thankfully, it was okay for him to jump, luckily he didn't drag her down with him.