I manage female characters in all the heavens.

Sometimes in dense forests, sometimes in abandoned post stations, and sometimes even in long-dried riverbed caves.

Each contact person is only responsible for a segment of the route. During the handover, they briefly confirm the information passed in the previous segment and then continue to lead the way.

It's like a silent relay race, and the finish line is where the fragrant cardamom is.

As dawn approached, the fifth contact led Zhu Wushi to the backyard of an ordinary manor not far from the capital.

After a night of traveling over a thousand miles, Zhu Wushi finally returned to the capital. Although he wasn't physically tired, he was already quite impatient.

"Do you want to go around in circles again?" he scoffed.

"No more beating around the bush, Divine Marquis. The Heavenly Fragrance Bean is right here. There's a basement inside the manor; I'll take you down to get it," the man in black said.

"You're the last one?" Zhu Wushi narrowed his eyes, feeling a surge of anger and wanting to vent his rage.

The man in black said emotionlessly, "If the Divine Marquis wants to vent his anger, he can kill me. The deal is done, and the Heavenly Fragrance Bean is within reach. I am no longer of any use to you."

Zhu Wushi stood in the quiet courtyard, looking around. The manor was peaceful, with no hidden soldiers.

He stared coldly at the man in black for a while, but ultimately did not choose to make a move.

Led by the man in black, he entered the basement, which was very deep, extending hundreds of meters underground. He had no idea which force had dug it out.

In the basement, Zhu Wushi finally saw the Tianxiang Doukou he had been longing for.

Under the glow of the luminous pearl, a shriveled bean gleamed in the darkness on the table in the center of the basement.

Zhu Wushi strode to the table, picked up a bean to examine it, and became increasingly excited.

It is indeed Tianxiang Doukou, the real thing!

Surprisingly, the other party was quite trustworthy; they gave it as promised and didn't try to deceive him at all, making it seem unethical for him to use a fake "energy absorption technique."

However, he soon realized that he was not immoral enough.

Zizizizi!

A hissing sound reached my ears, along with the smell of gunpowder, as if a fuse was burning.

Zhu Wushi's expression changed, and he shattered the large luminous pearl embedded in the ceiling with a palm strike. Fluorescent powder immediately filled the basement, illuminating everything inside.

The entire basement was filled with a massive amount of explosives. I was so attracted by the radiant fragrance of the cardamom under the light of the luminous pearl that I hadn't even noticed it!

At this moment, the fuse had burned out, and a strong sense of crisis suddenly surged into Zhu Wushi's heart.

The man in black tossed down the tinderbox, and his usually calm voice finally showed a slight inflection as he smiled and said:

"It would be my honor to take the Divine Marquis down to hell with me."

boom!!!

In an instant, the sky collapsed and the earth cracked!

Chapter 112 Your daughter is already in my shape, I've obtained the Absorption Technique.

Boom! ...

The loud noise did not come from the ground, but erupted from deep underground, as muffled as the roar of an ancient behemoth.

The seemingly ordinary manor in the western suburbs of Beijing suddenly rose up in the darkest hour before dawn!

The blue brick walls were torn apart like paper, the pavilions and towers turned to dust in silence, and the ground of the entire manor was as if it had been violently lifted up from below by an invisible giant hand. The earth surged like water and then collapsed downwards!

Before the smoke and dust could spread, a deep purple figure shot out from the center of the collapse like a cannonball, soaring straight into the sky!

Zhu stood suspended in mid-air, his robes fluttering, his inner energy churning like boiling magma.

He looked down at the ruins of the manor below, his usually dignified face now filled with unprecedented rage.

"Very good! Very good!"

His voice was not loud, but it was like a cold winter wind sweeping across the wilderness, causing all the birds and beasts within a ten-mile radius that had not yet fled to freeze to death!

Just now, at the moment the explosives detonated in the underground chamber a hundred meters underground, Zhu Wushi's lifelong power erupted.

The Absorption Technique reversed its operation, and a thousand years of internal energy transformed into unparalleled qi, forcefully blasting a vertical channel with a diameter of about ten feet above his head!

Before the rubble and soil could even fall, they were crushed into dust by the violent true energy.

He burst out from underground in the blink of an eye; the explosion didn't even damage the hem of his clothes.

But—this was the first time in Zhu Wushi's life that he had been forced into such a wretched situation by such insidious means!

Fortunately, I still managed to get my hands on the Tianxiang Doukou.

"Heavenly Fragrance Cardamom..."

Zhu Wushi opened his right hand, and the shriveled bean in his palm was inconspicuous in the morning light, yet it carried the miracle of resurrection.

He stared at it, his eyes as complex as an abyss.

For this bean, he handed over his Absorption Technique.

For the sake of this bean, he was led around by the nose for thousands of miles like a fool.

For this single bean, if he had been even a step too slow, he would have been blown to death by a massive amount of explosives.

But it's worth it!

He realized that the other party had never intended to end the transaction after completing the Absorption Technique; they also planned to kill him as well, and the two were not mutually exclusive.

"You lured me into a secret underground chamber, blocked my escape route, and then killed me with explosives... What a brilliant scheme, truly a brilliant scheme!"

Zhu Wushi slowly tightened his five fingers, his palms clenching so tightly they cracked, yet he did not damage the Heavenly Fragrance Bean at all, protecting it with all his might.

He suddenly laughed.

The laughter started low, then grew louder and louder, and finally turned into a thunderous roar that shook the surrounding area!

"Ha ha ha ha--!!!"

Amidst his laughter, his inner energy surged skyward, like smoke rising into the clouds.

The morning sky seemed to darken as the vast energy and magnetic field of the human body converged with the power of heaven and earth, causing unusual celestial phenomena.

Dark clouds gathered from all directions, forming a huge vortex above his head!

A sudden gust of wind arose, sending sand and stones flying.

The soldiers guarding the city walls in the distance looked up in terror and saw the tornado connecting heaven and earth on the horizon, at a loss for what to do.

"Quickly...quickly report to the general! The celestial phenomena are unusual; a great demon has been born!"

"No, this kind of celestial anomaly... report it to the Emperor immediately!"

"Report my ass! The Emperor isn't blind, can't he see? Does he need you to report it?! Just guard your city walls properly, soldiers, don't worry about the Emperor!"

The riot was suppressed in an instant. Everyone thought about it and realized that whether the celestial phenomena were unusual or not had nothing to do with them, the people of the earth. Even if the end of the world came, they would just die. After all, they had nothing but their lives anyway.

Zhu Wushi hovered in mid-air, his robes fluttering without wind, releasing his millennia-old cultivation without reservation.

The lingering smoke and dust from the ruins below were drawn up by an invisible force field, swirling and rising to form a dark gray tornado that stretched from the sky to the ground around him.

"No matter who you are..."

Zhu Wushi's eyes flashed with divine light, and his voice pierced through the storm, clearly resounding for dozens of miles around:

"I will drag you out and grind you to dust, inch by inch!"

As soon as he finished speaking, he raised his hand and pressed down.

boom--!!!

The manor ruins below, along with the surrounding land, collapsed several feet downwards as if struck by an invisible giant hand. As long as rainwater accumulates, it can form a lake!

After venting his anger, Zhu Wushi slowly calmed down.

The vortex in the sky gradually dissipated, and the column of air retracted into his body, but the chill in his eyes was even more piercing than before.

……

Before that, let's go back to last night, to an abandoned post station seventy miles southeast of the capital.

This post station, built in the previous dynasty, had been abandoned for many years and should have been a place where wild foxes lived and weeds grew rampant. However, not long ago, the post station was cleaned up again and served as the last stop for Liu Sheng Piaoxu to receive the Absorption Technique for "Yunluo".

However, this post station, which has weathered over a century of storms, is now facing complete destruction.

The three-story wooden building was cleaved in two vertically by a sharp blade of light, with the two halves tilting and collapsing, kicking up a cloud of wood chips and dust.

Amidst the smoke and dust, two figures in white passed each other.

The sparks from the clash of blades were fleeting, illuminating two equally indifferent yet strikingly different faces.

when!

The blades clashed, producing a clear and crisp sound. The force, enough to cleave mountains, collided in the air, instantly creating two crisscrossing ravines on the ground, tearing the entire inn into four pieces, and the two figures bounced away from each other.

Yagyu Tajima-no-kami stood holding his sword, the blade pointing diagonally at the ground, a drop of blood sliding down from the tip of the blade.

He stared at the familiar yet unfamiliar woman a few dozen steps away, his voice hoarse as if sandpaper rubbing together:

"Piaoxu...do you really intend to fight to the death with your father for that so-called master?"

Liu Sheng Piaoxu was slightly out of breath, and a tear about an inch long appeared in the white clothes on his left shoulder, from which blood was slowly seeping out.

But there was no pain on her face, only an almost devout fervor.

She held her katana horizontally in front of her chest, the blade gleaming with a faint, ethereal blue light—a characteristic of the true qi infused into her, a level stronger than the true qi she had previously cultivated.

"Father."

She spoke, her voice clear and calm, a stark contrast to Yagyu Tajima-no-kami's hoarseness:

“You’re wrong. It wasn’t a ‘life-or-death struggle.’ You were trying to kill me, and I was protecting what my master deserved.”

She raised her left hand and gently pressed it against her bosom—where she kept close to her body a scroll of pale gold silk, which was the "Absorption Technique" written by Zhu Wushi himself.

Yagyu Tajima-no-kami's eyes were filled with pain: "What you deserved? You cheated the God of War out of it! Hyousu, do you even know what you're doing?"

"The Divine Lord is the pillar of our Yagyu family, the hope for the future of Japan! By betraying him, you are betraying the Yagyu family and the entire Japan!"

"The Yagyu family, Japan?" Yagyu Hyousuke suddenly smiled. The smile was beautiful, but it was so cold that it had no warmth at all.

"Father, do you really think that by currying favor with a marquis of the Ming Dynasty, Japan can stand up? Do you really think that once the Marquis becomes emperor, he will treat us 'barbarians' differently?"

She slowly shook her head, a hint of pity flashing in her eyes: