The Mirror of Startling Beauty: Her courtiers are everywhere

The sky over Yaoguang City grew darker and darker.

That sinking darkness was not twilight, but a thick tide of ink surging upwards from below the horizon.

Inch by inch, it devoured the last remaining light of day.

In the city's streets and alleys, ninety percent of the glass lamps had gone out, with only a few remaining teetering precariously on the eaves.

The lamplight was dim and dim, unable to illuminate the darkness three feet away.

The flames on the Three Lives Tree finally burned through the last layer of its canopy.

Silvery flames licked the last leaf.

This sacred tree, which had guarded Yaoguang City for a thousand years, let out its final sigh as it lay dying.

The silver light reflected in the eyes of every citizen of Yaoguang City who looked up, turning their pupils a pale, despairing white.

"The Three-Life Tree... has disappeared."

In the crowd, an old man knelt down shakily.

His voice carried a numbness, as if all his strength had been drained away.

"The spiritual essence is gone. The spiritual essence pool has also dried up."

"What should we do with Yaoguang City? Should we run away?"

A young woman is holding her baby tightly in her arms.

The infant, still in swaddling clothes, was completely unaware of what was happening. He was only awakened by his mother's trembling and let out a soft cry.

The crying was exceptionally clear on this deathly silent street, like a needle piercing everyone's heart.

"Escape? Where can we escape to?"

A man who looked like a merchant slumped down by the roadside, leaning against the cold stone wall, looking up at the increasingly dark sky.

His lips moved a few times, as if he wanted to say something, but in the end he only managed to squeeze out a hoarse whisper that was almost inaudible.

"This Yaoguang City is our only refuge. Outside of here, all we're left with are the Corrosive Worms; death is inevitable either way."

No one answered him.

On the long street, everyone was looking up at the sky.

Their eyes held fear, resentment, and despair, but not a thought of escape. It wasn't that they didn't want to escape, but that they had nowhere to run.

This underwater city, submerged at the bottom of the lake, is the last sanctuary left to them by the Flowing Cloud Medicine God.

With the Pure Land gone, they were left with only darkness surrounded by gnats.

"Master, why didn't they escape?"

Jiu Fangzhi stood beside the old Taoist priest, his black robes fluttering in the wind.

The mechanism box was fully unfolded, and sixty-four black iron shields slowly rotated around him.

The spirit patterns on the shield lit up and then went out, then went out and lit up again, like sixty-four hearts that refused to admit defeat.

His voice was very low, as if he was afraid of being heard by those who had reached the point of utter despair.

"escape?"

The old Taoist priest sat cross-legged in front of the remaining withered stump of the Three Lives Tree, his back ramrod straight.

His gaze swept over the panicked faces on the long street, and a bitter smile appeared on his lips.

"This Yaoguang City is an ark built for them by the Flowing Cloud Medicine God. If the ark sinks, where can the ants on board swim to?"

"Outside are mealybugs, and in the sky are mealybugs too. Since their ancestors' generation, there has been no way out."

He slowly shook his head.

"So what the old Taoist priest was guarding wasn't a single tree, but these people, the last roots."

Jiu Fangzhi remained silent.

He simply rearranged the array of the mechanical shields, and the shattered fragments of the shields were drawn back into place by spiritual power, piecing them together into a tighter defensive line.

He didn't turn around, but glanced at the crack behind him out of the corner of his eye. It was an entrance to the withered stump of the Three Lives Tree that the old Taoist priest had torn open, so narrow that only one person could pass through at a time.

Tang Xixue disappeared into that crack, and no one knows how much time has passed since then.

Just then, silvery dust surged forth like a raging tide.

The Pavilion Master of Fengxiao stood in the very center of the light tide, his body surrounded by silver light like thousands of silver rivers winding around him.

Her steps were neither hurried nor slow, each step firm and steady. Her cloak fluttered slightly in the wind, revealing her icy face.

"Where is that little girl?"

Her words reached the ears of everyone present clearly.

It was as clear and cold as an ice spring striking a rock, carrying a nonchalant indifference.

"Could it be that they went to search for the elixir of immortality?"

She raised her hand.

The Silver Dust Gu rapidly condensed in her palm, transforming into a semi-transparent, silver-white longsword.

The sword has no physical form; only the ever-flowing silver dust whistles through it.

"I have come here not to kill, nor to destroy a city. I have come solely to achieve immortality."

The sword tip was raised, pointing at Jiu Fangzhi and the old Taoist priest one by one.

"Whoever blocks my path is my enemy."

"You are no exception."

Her gaze fell on Jiu Fangzhi's mask.

"Junior brother."

The two words that came out of her mouth carried no trace of camaraderie, but rather were as if she were flipping through an old, worn-out book.

I turned to a certain page and casually read out a name that seemed insignificant.

Jiu Fangzhi gazed at the sword.

The sword was silvery-white, thin and cold, like a piece of ice crystal that had been stripped of all its heat.

The hand that handed him his first medicine manual back then in the medicine hut of Shenyao Valley.

Now that hand is holding the sword, its blade pointing at him.

"Second Senior Sister."

He spoke.

The way he uttered that title felt as heavy as lifting a stone that had been pressing on his heart for years.

"I didn't stop you. Never."

Jiu Fangzhi's voice was serious.

"I've simply chosen a different path from yours. If you're willing to take that path, I accept it. You choose immortality, I choose her."

"Between you and me, it's never a matter of right or wrong, it's a matter of direction."

All sixty-four mechanical shields around him hummed in unison at the same instant, and the spiritual patterns on the shield surfaces lit up to their fullest brightness.

"But you're going to touch her today."

"Then it's not a difference between you and me. It's a matter of life and death between you and me."

Fengxiao Pavilion Master glanced at him.

"Fine."

Her voice was indifferent.

"She will eventually come out. The moment she does, the things will belong to me."

"As for the two of you."

Her gaze held only a condescending, cold indifference, as if she were scrutinizing ants.

"I'll hold out for as long as I can. I also want to see how long the world's most talented mechanic and a dying old Taoist priest can stand under my sword."

A silver sword light slashed down.

That sword strike had no moves, no variations, only a pure and despair-inducing crushing force.

Where the sword passed, the air was torn apart, and the roof tiles on both sides exploded. The fragments were swallowed up by the silver dust before they even hit the ground.

Wherever the sword light reached, even the bluestone slabs creaked under the weight.

A deep ravine stretched from the feet of the Pavilion Master of Fengxiao Pavilion all the way to the Three Lives Tree, like an unhealable scar that had been cleaved open by this sword.

Jiu Fangzhi's mechanical shield went to meet it.

A muffled, deafening explosion rang out on the long street.

The mechanical shield crumbled layer by layer under the erosion of the silver dust, and the spirit runes broke inch by inch in the face of absolute power.

The fragments flew like rain, tearing his robes.

Stone fragments flew everywhere, sparks flew in all directions.

One piece of the shield shattered, then another.

But he didn't back down.

They didn't retreat an inch.

He knew Fengxiao Pavilion Master's current cultivation level better than anyone else.

She paid a price, exchanging it with the Heavenly Dao for power sufficient to crush everything.

This battle was never a fair fight from the start.

They were willing to trade their lives for time, to build walls with their bones, to buy their junior sister a little more time.