For an entire day, Shangguan Yunzhu and her sole remaining teammate, Lu Renjia, traversed the vast Sand Sea, cutting a path through constant obstacles and clearing endless waves of demon beasts, all to find the entrance leading to the core area of the Secret Realm.
Just as the shadows of the sun lengthened and the Sand Sea was dyed in gold, Lu Renjia’s face suddenly flashed with wild joy.
Pointing toward a massive gateway atop a distant dune that shimmered with strange Condensed Light, his voice trembled with excitement: “Yun Zhu Junior Sister, look! It’s the core area entrance!”
“Mhm.” A ripple of emotion rose in Shangguan Yunzhu’s heart as well, but her face maintained its eternal coldness and aloofness. Only in the depths of her eyes did a faint, nearly imperceptible flash of joy flicker.
“We finally found it. Let’s go in quickly. I don’t want to stay in this hellhole for another second.” Lu Renjia had long since had enough of the sand in his mouth and the sticky feeling all over his body.
Before his voice even faded, he rushed impatiently toward the gate of light.
However, the moment his feet stepped onto the seemingly ordinary Green Rock area before the gate—
Hum.
Countless complex and profound array patterns suddenly lit up on the ground. Blinding light instantly wove into a massive net of radiance, firmly trapping Lu Renjia within.
“An ambush?!” Lu Renjia’s pupils shrank. Despite his shock, his reaction was not slow. He let out a roar, instantly leveling his Black Iron Staff before his chest.
The Ling Power within his body surged frantically, and layers of Ling Power shields covered his entire body like a tortoise shell.
Almost simultaneously, the sky and earth changed color. Within the array space, hundreds of blinding beams of light condensed with the aura of destruction emerged out of thin air without warning.
The moment Lu Renjia’s startled gaze caught them, these lethal beams shot toward him like a torrential rain, accompanied by the shrill whistle of tearing air.
“Damn it!” Outside the array, Shangguan Yunzhu’s expression darkened. Her jade-like hands formed a seal, and the Sword Box on her back hummed.
Several sharp streaks of Swordlight whistled out, hacking fiercely at the array shield enveloping Lu Renjia.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
The sound of clashing metal was ear-piercing. However, the array shield was as solid as a rock. No matter how the Flying Swords hacked and slashed, it only produced ripples and remained completely unmoved.
Such a hard turtle shell. If I can’t find the Array Core, I won’t be able to break it with brute force alone.
Shangguan Yunzhu felt a surge of anxiety.
Just as she was racking her brain for a way to break the array and was at her wit’s end—
The complex array patterns surrounding Lu Renjia, along with those lethal beams of killing intent, suddenly receded and vanished like a ebbing tide. It was as if they had never existed.
In their place, only a solitary wooden Scoreboard remained, lying quietly on the Green Rock.
Shangguan Yunzhu’s heart sank abruptly.
Lu Renjia had been eliminated.
Although she didn’t have much affection for this frivolous teammate, seeing him eliminated right before her eyes caused a chill of shared grief to quietly crawl up her spine.
However, the crisis was far from over.
“Hum—!”
Almost at the same moment the first array disappeared, a second, larger, and more complex array diagram lit up beneath Shangguan Yunzhu’s feet like the mouth of a predatory giant, swallowing her whole.
The array light flowed, and the space shifted.
Shangguan Yunzhu stood within a bizarre array space, warily scanning her surroundings.
“Oho! I didn’t expect it, I really didn’t. To think that waiting for a rabbit to hit a tree would actually catch such a big fish.” A playful voice rang out.
Light and shadow distorted within the array as three figures slowly solidified, surrounding her in a triangular formation.
The leader was none other than the personal disciple of the Tiangong Peak Lord—Ling Yi.
“Tiangong Peak…” Shangguan Yunzhu’s brow furrowed. She recognized the newcomer instantly, and alarm bells rang in her heart.
“Haha! It truly is an honor. I didn’t think small fry like us would be worthy of the great Junior Sister Shangguan’s notice?”
Ling Yi laughed triumphantly, his gaze unabashedly sweeping over the isolated and helpless Shangguan Yunzhu.
Seeing that she remained as cold as frost, he continued leisurely, “Junior Sister, this array is called the ‘Three Talents Spirit-Severing Array.’ It is formed by nesting a Trapped Dragon Array within two Thunder Law Killing Arrays.”
“They are interlinked and possess infinite power. Out of consideration for our shared sect, this Senior Sister advises you: if you don’t want to suffer physical pain, you’d better obediently hand over your Scoreboard. Otherwise… heh heh.”
“Humph! Wishful thinking!” Shangguan Yunzhu let out a cold snort as her aura suddenly exploded. Crimson flames, like lotuses in full bloom, instantly swept across her body.
She tapped the ground with her toes, and the Sword Box on her back swung open. Dozens of Flying Swords wrapped in blazing fire shot out like a meteor shower, screaming through the air toward Ling Yi and his companions.
However, a bizarre scene unfolded.
The moment the Flying Swords were about to pierce their targets, the space seemed to be distorted by an invisible hand. Those dozens of sharp streaks of Swordlight vanished into thin air.
***
In the next instant, carrying an even more ferocious aura, they emerged behind Shangguan Yunzhu, turning back to strike their master.
Shangguan Yunzhu’s heart jolted. At the critical moment, she forcibly severed her Ling Power connection with the Flying Swords and shifted her body several feet to the side like a phantom.
Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle.
The scorching Flying Swords passed almost against the tips of her hair, nailing themselves fiercely into the ground where she had just been standing, their blades still humming and trembling.
“Alas…” Ling Yi shook his head with mock pity, his face full of the arrogance of someone who held victory in his grasp.
“Junior Sister, why bother? This array is mysterious; space is inverted, and Ling Power is disordered. It cannot be broken by brute force.”
“Your points are something we of Tiangong Peak will graciously accept. If you must blame someone, blame yourselves for not being careful enough when picking your route…”
Before his voice could fall, a sudden change occurred.
“Blazing Sun — Purifying the World.”
A low shout, as cold as an Ice Spring, rang out from within the array.
Shangguan Yunzhu, though in a desperate situation, showed no sign of panic. Instead, her hands formed a seal, and the flames surrounding her instantly turned from crimson to a blinding pure white.
A terrifyingly high temperature capable of destroying heaven and earth erupted.
Boom—Rumble—
It was as if a miniature sun had exploded at the center of the array. The pure white flames turned into a furious tide that incinerated everything, expanding outward in a ring from her position. Wherever it passed, the air distorted continuously under the scorching heat.
Those seemingly indestructible array patterns, the hidden array foundations, and even the Ling Power veins that composed the array were like snow under a blazing sun in the face of this absolute power and extreme heat.
They didn’t even have time to struggle before they were instantly vaporized, burned away, and turned into nothingness.
The array barrier that shrouded the world shattered inch by inch like fragile glass with a “crack,” vanishing into thin air.
Outside the array, the triumphant smile on Ling Yi’s face froze completely. His mouth hung open wide enough to fit an egg, and his eyes held nothing but boundless shock and confusion.
The… the array… was… burned away?!
He watched Shangguan Yunzhu as she stepped slowly out of the flaming embers, her clothes fluttering and her person unharmed.
His Adam’s apple bobbed with difficulty as he squeezed out a smile that looked worse than crying: “Uh… Junior Sister Shangguan… that… it was a misunderstanding, all a misunderstanding! Can we… can we settle this peacefully?”
The answer he received was three streaks of cold Swordlight that were fast to the extreme.
Swish! Swish! Swish!
Ling Yi and his two companions didn’t even have time to mount a proper defense before the Scoreboards on their bodies simultaneously erupted with blinding teleportation light, and they were instantly eliminated.
Compared to their array-building abilities, their combat skills were a complete mess; the three of them combined couldn’t block a single move from Shangguan Yunzhu.
Shangguan Yunzhu walked forward expressionlessly and picked up the three Scoreboards from the ground. Sweeping them with her Ling Shi, her lips curled into a look of undisguised disdain.
Three people, working this long, and only forty points?
Clearly, these three had been squatting here since the start of the Grand Competition, setting up arrays to wait for victims rather than hunting demon beasts.
She put away the tokens and also picked up the token Lu Renjia had dropped, her heart remaining calm.
Regardless, even a mosquito’s leg is meat, no matter how small.
She stayed no longer. Her figure turned into a streak of crimson light, shooting without hesitation into the core area entrance of the Secret Realm that shimmered with mysterious light.
However, Shangguan Yunzhu did not notice that shortly after she stepped into the gate of light, behind an inconspicuous sand dune in the distance, two sneaky little tails poked their heads out.
“Senior Sister… she went in.” Gantang lowered her voice, her eyes sparkling with excitement.
“Mhm,” Lu Qiancha’s lips curled slightly, his gaze deep. “The mantis stalks the cicada… it’s time for the oriole to take the stage. Let’s go, follow her.”
The two of them shifted, blending into the wind like grains of sand, silently following behind as they too disappeared into the gate of light of the core area.