Junior sister, I really need to control you

Li Yinsheng escorted Mu Xiaoyu back to the patrolling disciples' residence before returning to his bamboo house alone.

……

Meanwhile, dozens of miles outside of Bamboo Forest Peak, on an unnamed hill.

A figure dressed in the robes of a steward of Shouyi Temple, holding a compass, landed in front of a mountain wall.

If Li Yinsheng or Mu Xiaoyu were here, they would recognize that this person was another steward who followed the steward surnamed Xu when they first arrived at Bamboo Forest Peak.

This man was taciturn and kept a low profile. He never provoked Li Yinsheng, so Li Yinsheng only reprimanded the steward surnamed Xu and ignored this man.

Standing in front of the stone wall, he first used his compass to confirm that he had not come to the wrong place.

He then bowed deeply to the mountain wall, almost bending his body to the bottom, and respectfully said, "Junior Chen Rui greets Ancestor Chongyun."

For those who are usually arrogant and aloof, performing such a grand ceremony is extremely rare.

"Young man, how rude of you! You dare not kneel before me?!" A hoarse, chilling voice echoed from the stone wall.

The next instant, the steward who called himself Chen Rui felt a tremendous force descend from the sky, his knees buckled, and he immediately fell to his knees.

His knees, elbows, and forehead slammed into the ground simultaneously, forming a standard prostration posture.

"Senior... please forgive me! This is my first time meeting the True Ancestor, I... I am ignorant of etiquette... Please forgive me, Ancestor..." Chen Rui begged for forgiveness repeatedly.

"Humph."

A cold snort came from the stone wall, and the heavy pressure on Chen Rui disappeared.

"The prestigious Zhengyang lineage's number one Taoist temple has deacons who don't even know basic etiquette. They're not even as good as a random Gu slave in my Thousand Insect Valley. It seems they're all talk and no action. Hehehe..."

The voice from within the stone wall chuckled strangely: "Young man, come in."

Chen Rui looked up and saw the stone wall in front of him tremble.

He subconsciously rubbed his eyes, thinking he was hallucinating because of the imposing presence of the real person.

But the next moment, the stone wall opened up before him like two large doors.

He looked up and saw a huge silhouette, more than ten feet tall, with sprawling limbs, appearing in the night.

Only then did he realize that what stood in front of him was not a stone wall at all, but a pair of insect elytra!

This is a bizarre giant insect as tall as a building. It stands here, transforming its form, leaving only a pair of earth-colored, massive elytra resembling a mountain wall closed.

As its elytra opened, what was revealed was not its body beneath the elytra, but a deep, hollow cavity.

Chen Rui swallowed hard and stepped into the cave. His nostrils were filled with a dark, gloomy smell that was neither damp nor rotten, but made him feel uncomfortable all over.

It felt as if I were in a cave that never saw sunlight and was teeming with all sorts of damp, crawling insects.

After walking only a few steps, the view suddenly opened up before him.

In a stone chamber several tens of feet in diameter, a middle-aged man dressed in black, with tangled and spiky hair and beard, was meditating with his eyes closed.

His attire was neither that of a monk nor a Taoist priest; he wore a tattered black robe, had a string of prayer beads around his neck, and looked to be in his early forties, with two thin, centipede-like whiskers.

Chen Rui immediately prostrated himself: "Chen Rui, the steward of the Foreign Affairs Hall of Shouyi Temple, greets senior. This junior has been ordered by Patriarch Cen Yi of the temple to assist you in achieving your great plan."

"Cen Yi?" He opened his eyes slightly. "Hmph, this old thing, he's lived for almost two hundred and fifty years, and he's still dragging his feet and not dying?"

Chen Rui trembled and remained silent.

"Didn't you say you were going to send a deputy abbot to Shouyi Temple?" Master Chongyun asked with a sneer, "Why is it you, a mere steward, who has come?"

"Reporting to Senior, my senior brother just arrived at Bamboo Forest Peak tonight. He cannot leave directly, lest his actions attract the attention of the people from Huangzhu Temple and allow them to discover your arrangements," Chen Rui quickly explained.

"Discovered? What a joke!" Master Chongyun sneered. "I have kept my arrangements on that mountain hidden for almost twenty years. Even when that old codger from Huangzhu Temple came in person, he didn't find anything amiss."

"Sigh, you juniors, just admit you're timid and hesitant. Why bother with the excuse of looking out for me? Hypocritical!"

Chen Rui shrank back, but still mustered up the courage to ask.

"Senior, are you sure your Gu... spirit insects won't be discovered? My Shouyi Temple is taking a huge risk to help you this time. If this matter is exposed..."

"What does that have to do with me?" Master Chongyun retorted. "Does the Zhengyang lineage dare to come to Thousand Insect Valley to cause me trouble?"

Chen Rui's face immediately turned pale with fear, his eyes widening.

The Zhengyang lineage couldn't really cause trouble for the Thousand Insect Valley, but they were right below the lineage!

He didn't even want to think about the consequences if this got out.

He could almost see the legendary heavenly lightning, powerful enough to destroy souls, rolling overhead. Even though he was already kneeling on the ground, his legs felt weak, as if he might collapse at any moment.

"Hahaha……"

Seeing Chen Rui's terrified expression, Master Chongyun burst into laughter.

"You little brat, you're too easily teased! I was just teasing you, why are you so scared?"

"Hehehe... Don't worry, I swore a blood oath with you old talisman when we were guarding the temple. If I really tricked you, I wouldn't be any better off. We're all in the same boat."

This person speaks in a erratic manner; he was aggressive just a moment ago, but now he has suddenly become more gentle.

"Aren't we all in the same boat?" Chen Rui corrected tremblingly.

Mosquitoes can fly, so what's the point of having a boat?

"How dare you! What are grasshoppers! How can they be compared to mosquitoes!" Master Chongyun roared in anger.

"Yes, yes, senior is right! It's a mosquito, it's a mosquito!" Chen Rui echoed repeatedly.

"Hmph, alright, don't worry about hiding them. My treasures are still buried underground, sleeping in their cocoons, their breath almost completely gone, and they're also concealed by my magical artifacts..."

Master Chongyun said confidently, "Unless a Grand Master of the Divine Travel Realm appears, there is absolutely no possibility of being discovered!"

Chen Rui immediately breathed a sigh of relief.

"Alright, enough nonsense. Just remember, I want the bamboo and the training materials at Huangzhu Temple, and you want the mountain peak with the broken spiritual vein at Huangzhu Temple. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement."

"Therefore, you juniors must all do your best to get things done for me!"

"If you cause my grand plan to go awry and fail at the last minute, then you can forget about getting what you want, understand?"

Master Chongyun nodded in satisfaction as he watched Chen Rui nod vigorously.

"Young man, remember this well, I have made the following arrangements..."

……

It was late at night, in Li Yinsheng's own bamboo house.

He sat cross-legged on the bed, and with a thought, his soul flew out of his body.

In an instant, the sharpness of his divine sense was magnified more than tenfold, and he could grasp every rustle of grass and every movement of energy on the entire Bamboo Forest Peak.

Chapter 68 Alien Insects? Extraordinary Treasure!

On Bamboo Forest Peak, in Li Yinsheng's bamboo house.

After his soul left his body, Li Yinsheng's senses became much sharper. He scanned the area again and quickly realized what was wrong with the mountain.

The spiritual veins were shattered, so tens of thousands of small spiritual eyes were scattered throughout the mountain peak, and each spiritual eye was planted with a white cloud bamboo.

Logically speaking, the location of the Spirit Eye should only contain the aura of Ling Yun and Su Yunzhu.

But at this moment, in his perception, a third kind of aura was mixed in the depths of each spiritual eye.

Compared to Lingyun and Suyunzhu, this aura was extremely weak, almost completely concealed by the two.

That is why, before his soul left his body, although he could sense that something was wrong on the mountain, he could not perceive the root cause.

Even if an ordinary cultivator stood directly in front of a spirit and probed the ground with their divine sense, they would probably find it difficult to detect this extremely hidden third aura.

Even Li Yinsheng asked himself honestly, if he were to sense one or two extremely faint auras by the roadside right now, he probably wouldn't care.

But now he couldn't possibly ignore it, because although these auras were faint, there were simply too many of them.

There are as many spiritual eyes as there are spiritual eyes on this bamboo forest peak, and there are as many of these auras hidden within them, in a one-to-one correspondence.

"These auras seem to be alive, but extremely inactive..."

With a thought, Li Yinsheng plunged into the ground and headed towards the nearest spiritual eye.

Although he did not know the art of earth-遁 (earth-遁 is a type of magic that allows one to escape through the earth), his soul was naturally not hindered by grass, trees, soil, or rocks.

He descended into the earth and dispersed his divine sense, only then realizing just how vast the root system of these Suyun bamboos truly was.

The roots of these mere tens of thousands of bamboo stalks have completely connected, forming a canopy that covers the entire surface of the bamboo forest peak.

Moreover, these roots are several feet deep, and the main root located at the spiritual eye is even more than ten feet deep, much longer than the original body of the Plain Cloud Bamboo on the ground.

If you were to turn the parts of this bamboo forest peak above and below ground over, all these roots together would form a dense primeval forest so thick that the sun never shines.

After ordinary bamboo flowers and bears fruit, it withers and dies in large patches.

Li Yinsheng was a little curious—he wondered if the Suyun bamboo would wither and die like ordinary bamboo after it had formed a seed, or if it could continue to grow.

He felt that it would most likely continue to grow; if it only flourished once every ten years, it probably wouldn't have developed such a magnificent root system.

Reaching the nearest Suyun bamboo, Li Yinsheng used his divine sense to search for the exact location of the faint aura.

He burrowed several more feet underground and finally found the source of the strange aura in the latter half of the main root of the Suyun bamboo.

It was a round egg about the size of a goose egg, with a surface as dark brown as soil, and as smooth as if it had been coated with oil.

"What...is this?"

Li Yinsheng focused his divine sense, penetrated the round egg, and probed inside.

Then he realized that it was not an egg at all, but a cocoon.

Within the hard, smooth, dark brown cocoon, huddled a strange insect that resembled neither a cicada nor an ant.

At this moment, the strange insect is huddled in the protection of a hard cocoon, and its body surface is still soft. But if nothing unexpected happens, once it emerges from the cocoon, its body surface will harden rapidly, and it may even grow membranous wings.

The most peculiar thing about this insect is its mouthparts, which seem to combine the characteristics of both cicadas and ants, with both a slender tube and mandibles with sharp serrations.

"This thing couldn't possibly be something that Fellow Daoist Liang and his group raised themselves, could it?" Li Yinsheng shook his head and muttered to himself.

I've never heard of any Taoist temple that likes to play with insects, especially Huangzhu Temple, which has no such reputation.

In particular, although these insects are hiding in their eggshells, they are still absorbing spiritual energy and the vitality of the surrounding Suyun bamboo at an extremely slow rate, thereby strengthening themselves.

Huangzhu Temple would never cultivate something that would harm the Suyun bamboo.