Fairy, don't go! I have a mod.

"I sensed the monster's aura shatter from up there, and then Xiao Mu's spiritual energy fluctuations became more and more stable, so I knew there was definitely no problem on your end."

"I have complete faith in you; you can definitely solve this."

After she finished speaking, she tilted her head slightly to look at the figure in black and greeted him naturally.

"Oh, isn't this Guan Jiu'er? Long time no see."

Yun Qingyao flew upwards alone.

Just now in the underground palace, she was completely focused on Mu Tianmiao, kissing and hugging him, reluctant to leave, and didn't care about her own injuries at all.

Now that they were out of that oppressive, bloody space, a cold wind blew, and the intense pain from the backlash of the Violent Spirit Pill in their chest belatedly surged up.

My heart felt like it was being repeatedly pulled by a red-hot wire, and every breath made my internal organs ache.

The plants that had once attacked them so fiercely on both sides of the cave have now all withered and died.

The dark red vines hung shriveled on the rock face, like dead snakes that had been drained of moisture.

She gritted her teeth, poured her remaining spiritual energy into the Azure Frost Sword, and accelerated upwards.

When Yun Qingyao flew out of the crack and stood on the ruins outside the entrance to the secret realm, she saw the disciples of the Qingyun Sect boarding the boat one after another.

The sails of the flying boat were already halfway raised, and several disciples in charge of the final preparations were counting the number of people. The teleportation array patterns were faintly visible on the bottom of the boat.

Everyone noticed her.

Those gazes that usually met with mockery or disgust now seemed unusually complex.

No one spoke, no one whispered, and no one spoke sarcastically.

Yun Qingyao's current appearance is truly terrifying...

He was almost entirely covered in blood, with dried bloodstains remaining in his seven orifices. His clothes were tattered, and his body trembled slightly as he stood, as if he might collapse at any moment.

Several female disciples who were neither particularly close nor hostile to her exchanged glances and quickly came over to support her arms.

The old Daoist nun Jingkong floated down from the bow of the boat and arrived in front of Yun Qingyao in a few steps.

She reached out and put her arm around Yun Qingyao's shoulder, then probed her body with her spiritual energy. Her aged fingers suddenly stiffened.

Meridians were severed, the heart meridian was damaged, and the spiritual energy in the dantian was so depleted that only a thin layer remained...

What horrified her even more was that the injuries were clearly caused by taking a Violent Spirit Pill that far exceeded the body's tolerance limits...

But a mysterious force is reviving... not too bad...

Jingkong opened his mouth, as if to say something, but ultimately swallowed the words back down.

He simply switched the whisk to his other hand and gently patted her back with his thin but warm palm.

"Get some rest."

Yun Qingyao burst into tears.

It wasn't the low sobbing she'd heard in the underground palace before; it was a burst of tears that had been suppressed for too long, finally breaking free. Her shoulders trembled violently, tears smeared the blood on her face, and her voice was hoarse, as if it had been rubbed with sandpaper.

"They're all dead... Xiao Shen is dead too... I'm all alone now..."

Jingkong didn't speak, but patted her back gently, his aged fingers brushing through her disheveled hair, as if comforting a wounded cub.

She sighed deeply in her heart.

Just surviving is good enough.

On the flying boat, Bai Lingyin stood by the ship's side watching this scene, her fingers clenched so tightly in her sleeves that they turned white.

Her face still wore that dignified and concerned expression, but the resentment and anger deep in her eyes, no matter how well she tried to hide them, could not be completely concealed.

Chapter Sixty-Six Elder Lin... I am not worthy...

Deep inside the cave, Mu Tianmiao huddled in a corner, wishing he could embed himself into the stone wall.

Lin Yanluo's anger almost materialized; the spiritual pressure of a ninth-level Nascent Soul cultivator surged around her, and with each step she took forward, the pebbles beneath her feet were crushed into dust.

Chen Zisu stood to the side, her arms crossed over her chest, still with that gentle and tender demeanor, but her gaze toward Guan Jiu'er held a more complex scrutiny.

She also vaguely sensed something.

From the moment we entered the secret realm, everything felt off, every coincidence occurred, and all our attention was deliberately diverted.

When connected in series, they all point in the same direction.

"Speak!"

Lin Yanluo roared, her voice echoing throughout the underground palace.

Guan Jiu'er did not offer any explanation.

She crouched among the wreckage, rummaged around for a moment, and finally pulled something out from under a broken petal.

It was a twisted heart, still beating weakly, its surface covered with dark purple veins and fine barbs.

She clenched her fingers tightly, crushing the heart to pieces. Thick, black blood dripped from between her fingers, precisely landing on the jet-black longsword at her waist.

The dark patterns on the sword were activated by the black blood, slowly illuminating with a dark red light, as if dried-up blood vessels were beginning to flow again, absorbing every last drop of the black blood into the sword.

After doing all this, Guan Jiu'er stood up, walked to Lin Yanluo and Chen Zisu, put her legs together, bent down, and respectfully performed a standard disciple's bow.

Her voice remained cold and indifferent, the mask concealing all her expressions, yet every word was crystal clear.

"Elder Lin, Elder Chen, I spread this rumor... There was no Thousand-Year Cicada at all..."

"I didn't expect you guys to get involved..."

"I never imagined I would almost kill my junior brother..."

She removed her mask, revealing a face of unparalleled beauty.

Her face was completely bare of makeup, yet she was so beautiful that it almost took your breath away.

Her features were so exquisite that it seemed as if the Creator had painstakingly sculpted them stroke by stroke over a thousand years. Her eyebrows were like distant mountains, her eyes like cold pools, and her eyelashes cast a faint shadow on her eyelids when they drooped.

But at this moment, her beautiful face was filled with exhaustion and guilt.

His eyes were bloodshot and his lips were dry and white, clearly indicating that he hadn't had a proper rest in a long time.

The mastermind behind this fake secret realm that stirred up the two great continents of Zhongzhou and Nanzhanbuzhou and tricked thousands of cultivators into a deadly trap, now stood before the two elders of the Immortal Shadow Sect.

Standing before the two elders of the Immortal Shadow Sect, she shed all pretense and revealed her true self.

Mu Tianmiao peeked out from the corner, carefully examining this senior sister who had appeared countless times in her master's words.

This is Guan Jiu'er, the mischievous witch Guan Jiu'er, the senior sister of the Immortal Shadow Sect who disappeared thirty years ago.

When his master mentioned her before, he had imagined countless images of her in his mind: flamboyant, arrogant, and invincible.

But standing before him at this moment was a woman who was utterly exhausted, filled with extreme guilt, and whose back was slightly hunched.

He silently sighed to himself: So beautiful... No, no... This isn't the time to be lustful...

Lin Yanlu really wanted to punch her.

Her fists were clenched so tightly that her knuckles cracked, but looking at Guan Jiu'er's face, she couldn't bring herself to do it.

But images of her childhood involuntarily flashed through my mind.

When she first came to the Immortal Shadow Sect, she was just a little girl with her hair in two buns, timidly following behind her and calling her Sister Lin.

He pestered her to forge him the most beautiful short sword...

Guan Jiu'er was so cute back then...

Unlike now, after thirty years of silence, he comes back and causes such a huge incident...

Lin Yanluo sighed heavily and slammed her fist into the hammer handle.

"Why didn't you inform the sect first! Don't you know that our Immortal Shadow Sect is extremely protective of its own members?!"

"Our sect is so large, even if you've gotten into some huge trouble, surely we can protect one of your disciples! You..."

Guan Jiu'er lowered her head, her voice even softer than before.

"I didn't think the news would spread so quickly this time..."

"I originally intended to only involve the people from the Southern Continent in this scheme, but I didn't expect the news to leak so widely that even the people from the Central Continent arrived so quickly."

“I can’t open the secret realm alone. If I do, this flower fairy will advance to the perfect state... until she reaches the perfect Nascent Soul stage or even the Divine Transformation stage…”

Lin Yanluo's face darkened.

"So you're sending all these people in as cannon fodder to break the Flower Fairy's state?"

Guan Jiu'er continued, "I'm sorry, Elder Lin, I had no choice."

“If I had informed you before the disciples entered, you certainly wouldn’t have allowed them into the secret realm… that could have caused the plan to fail…”

Chen Zisu sighed softly. There was no questioning in her gentle eyes, only heartache for her child who was suffering so much outside.

"Are you still hunting those things?"

Guan Jiu'er nodded.

Her voice was soft, but every word seemed to be branded onto her soul by some deep-seated obsession.

"This is my life's goal! To cleanse the cosmos of all pollution... I'm willing to give anything for it!"

Lin Yanluo gave a cold laugh.

"What about us?"

Her voice suddenly rose and trembled. Her spiritual pressure, which was at the ninth level of the Divine Transformation Realm, could no longer be suppressed, and the rubble of the entire underground palace flew wildly around her.

"If one day, in order to deal with the pollution of the starry sky, we are also involved... and your master is also involved, will you kill us too?"

Guan Jiu'er fell silent.

Silence is the answer...

Lin Yanluo trembled with rage. She stomped her foot and flew into the air like a cannonball, slamming her fist into Guan Jiu'er's stomach.

It wasn't spiritual power used, just pure physical strength, but it was a punch thrown in anger by a body cultivator at the ninth level of the Nascent Soul stage.

Guan Jiu'er was blasted into the opposite stone wall, and rubble fell down, burying half of her body in the ruins.

Upon seeing this, Chen Zisu and Mu Tianmiao rushed forward to pull Lin Yanluo away.

One person hugged her waist, while the other held down her hand holding the hammer, afraid she would throw another punch.

But Lin Yanluo's punch, though seemingly fierce, actually didn't use any spiritual power at all; even the Sky-Piercing Hammer remained standing in place.

Guan Jiu'er coughed as she stood up from the pile of rubble. Apart from some dust on her robes, she was almost unharmed.

She sat awkwardly on the ground, head down, shoulders trembling slightly.

A moment later, she took something out of her bosom...

It was a short sword with crooked patterns engraved on its scabbard. The craftsmanship was not exquisite, but the material was excellent, and it still gleamed coldly after thirty years.

That was the one Lin Yanluo personally made for her when she first arrived at the Immortal Shadow Sect.

Guan Jiu'er held the short sword in both hands, her voice hoarse and trembling.

"Elder Lin, I am not worthy, I..."

Lin Yanluo looked at the short sword, and her eyes suddenly reddened.

How could she not recognize that sword? She had forged it herself.

She carved every pattern on the sword hilt herself.

She looked at Guan Jiu'er kneeling on the ground, her voice trembling, yet still carrying that fierce, mischievous energy.

"You'd better keep it. If you lose it, you can forget about ever returning to the sect..."

Chapter Sixty-Seven Riding on someone's neck

Just then, the rubble that Guan Jiu'er had smashed fell down, revealing a deep cave behind the stone wall.

Something was faintly glowing inside the cave. The light was not dazzling, but it carried a sense of timeless weight.

The four of them stopped what they were doing and looked in that direction at the same time.

Mu Tianmiao's heart skipped a beat as she remembered the message in the system notification.