Qin Shuying raised her head and looked toward that tall tower.
The window on the seventh floor was still lit, reflecting a blurry figure lying on its side.
Before the gate guards of Boundless City could even look up, a silver light smashed into the ground ten zhang in front of the city gate.
Gravel flew, and several Loose Cultivators queued to enter the city were knocked over by the blast wave.
Su Wan’er walked out from it. Her hair crown had long since vanished, and her black hair was loose over her shoulders.
She tossed her Identity Token to the city gate guard.
“Jiaoyue Peak, Su Wan’er.”
The crystal in the guard’s eyes flashed again and again, comparing the token’s authenticity.
The crystal in his eyes turned green; the token rebounded into her hand, and the guard silently opened the way.
At the same moment.
Lin Jingzhe was on her way.
From Jiaoyue Peak to the Southern Border, an ordinary cultivator would need half a month.
With the help of the formations along the way, she used only half a day.
The cost was that the Spirit Stones she had accumulated over many years were drained dry.
At this moment, she was traveling by Sword Flight.
Her Spiritual Power, having just broken through to Nascent Soul, surged through her Meridians like a tide.
The astral wind stirred by her Sword Flight blew askew the jade crown binding her hair; strands scattered in the wind, like a black flame under the moonlight.
The Sword Light cut across the night sky of the Southern Border, leaving a thousand-mile cloud trace behind.
On the third Underground level, in a tunnel abandoned for many years, Chu Yi was standing before a Teleportation Array.
The flame at the wick of the Glazed Lamp illuminated the intricate inscriptions on the array plate.
She was waiting for dawn, for the city patrol guards to change shifts.
Waiting for all eyes watching her, above and below ground, to relax.
Shen Mo did not plan to sit and wait for death.
He rechecked the Quiet Room.
When Chu Yi left, she had taken away everything that could be used as a weapon, but he remembered the half of a Broken Hairpin he had dropped in the Dark Channel.
That was the only sharp object on him.
He had dropped it in the pile of rotting leaves at the exit of the Secret Passage, and even now he still felt it was a pity.
His Gaze moved slowly around the room and finally fixed on the Prohibition Seal node on the window lattice.
Pale golden spiritual light circulated on the surface of the window lattice, flashing once every three breaths.
At the instant it flashed, an extremely thin crack would appear in the node’s spiritual light—that was a natural flaw in the Formation’s operation, not the arranger’s oversight, but a rhythm no Prohibition Seal could avoid.
Three breaths.
He counted silently in his heart.
One, two, three—the crack appeared, about one finger wide, gone in an instant.
Shen Mo used that three-breath crack to try to break it with Spiritual Power.
Although against the Prohibition Seal Chu Yi had set, it was like using an egg to strike a stone.
But he could wait. Xie Shilan was surely watching him and would help him.
He moved a chair over, sat before the window, and closed his eyes.
The lights of Boundless City never went out; the sky outside the tower was forever that dark purple that knew neither day nor night.
He merely counted the three-breath cycle over and over in his heart, until it became something like meditation.
His consciousness hovered between wakefulness and drowsiness; his Body was still, yet his spiritual sense was unusually sharp.
Then, he heard a voice.
Not in reality, but in the Depths of his Sea of Consciousness.
“Shen Mo.”
Xie Shilan’s voice. Her was circulating; the Dream Realm was like a net, gathering the lingering spiritual breath he had left in her Sea of Consciousness and pulling his consciousness to drift toward her.
A silhouette surfaced in Shen Mo’s Sea of Consciousness.
He saw Xie Shilan sitting cross-legged in a Quiet Room in an inn, pale golden spiritual light around her rising and falling unsteadily.
The bell at the bottom of the tower suddenly rang.
It was not a time signal.
It was Boundless City’s alarm bell.
Shen Mo stood up and walked to the door.
Outside the Quiet Room came chaotic and hurried footsteps.
Someone shouted, “Demonic Cultivators have broken in through the west gate,” and someone shouted, “It’s not Demonic Cultivators, it’s a Sword Cultivator, a Sword Cultivator from Heavenly Sword Peak.”
Then came a more distant clamor, mixed with metallic clashes and the humming of Prohibition Seals activating.
Qin Shuying.
She had not sneaked in quietly.
She was using herself as bait.
Shen Mo pressed his fingers against the door plank, feeling the footsteps fading outside.
At least half of the patrolling Corpse Puppets had been drawn away.
Chu Yi probably had not expected Qin Shuying to come so quickly, and even more so, so directly.
She thought no one dared to act in Boundless City.
But Qin Shuying never played by the rules.
Only two Corpse Puppets remained outside the door.
Shen Mo retreated two steps.
His Cultivation Level was not enough to break the Formation.
But the bell was still ringing, and the Corpse Puppets’ attention was drawn away even more.
He waited until the night-patrolling Corpse Puppets outside the window had completely gone.
He yanked open the brocade quilt on the bed, stuffed the corner of the quilt into the crack in the window lattice, and pulled down hard.
The sound of tearing fabric rose in the Quiet Room.
The brocade quilt was shredded by the Prohibition Seal’s recoil, but the torn cloth briefly blocked the Prohibition Seal node, making the crack last one extra breath.
One breath.
During those three breaths, he twisted off a wooden bar on the window lattice—that bar had long been eaten by worms, one of the few weaknesses of this old tower.
With Xie Shilan’s help, the window opened a gap just wide enough for him to squeeze out sideways.
Shen Mo landed on the flying eave outside the tower.
Beneath his feet was the abyss-like outer wall of the tall tower.
The wind carried the scent unique to Boundless City, where demonic breath and Spiritual Qi intertwined.
He did not travel by air—Foundation Establishment stage could only float a few feet and could not bear weight for long.
He edged step by step along the flying eave’s edge, fingertips hooked into the stone cracks, with dozens of zhang of empty space beneath his feet.
When the eighth alarm bell rang, he found the hidden door at the tower’s base leading Underground.
The hidden door was concealed in the shadow where the tower foundation met the city wall.
It was a rust-covered iron door carved with Array Patterns that had long since failed.
Compared with the exquisite Prohibition Seals Chu Yi had set in the tower, this place was more like a forgotten corner.
Shen Mo pushed open the iron door.
Behind the door, stone steps extended downward. The air was filled with the smell of wet soil and aged spirit ore.
He took an old oil lamp that had not yet gone out from the wall and lit it.
The lamplight illuminated the outline at the end of the stone steps: a broad underground passage, with the lingering spiritual light of abandoned Formations on the stone walls, like the taillights of dying fireflies.
This was the path Chu Yi would take tomorrow.
He walked inward along the passage.
After about the time it takes to drink half a cup of tea, the road ahead changed from a broad official road that could fit three people side by side into a narrow path where only one person could walk bent over.
At the same moment.
Boundless City’s west gate.
Qin Shuying stood on the plaza at the city gate. Her sword was not drawn, yet her aura had already cleared everyone within dozens of zhang.
Her white robe still bore the dark red traces left from killing Corpse Puppets earlier.
Her face was as calm as water.
Her Gaze passed over the layers of surrounding cultivators and landed straight on the leisurely figure above the gate tower.
Xie Shilan sat on the flying eave of the gate tower, swinging her legs.
She tossed a lotus seed into her mouth, chewed slowly twice, and the smile on her face grew more and more playful.
Her Gaze passed over Qin Shuying, over the cultivators with swords drawn on the plaza, over the empty window on the seventh floor of the tall tower, and landed in the crack of the hidden door at the tower’s base.
“Here’s a hint: Shen Mo just ran off by himself.”
Qin Shuying’s pupils constricted slightly.
“But don’t worry,” Xie Shilan pointed below her feet, “there’s another little friend Underground moving faster than him, and that disciple of yours—she’s rushing there too, so counting it up—”
She counted on her fingers.
“You’re first, Chao’er second, Su Wan’er third, she’s fourth. As for Chu Yi, well, I know she deliberately left a flaw to let Shen Mo out, but going along with it—since she wants us to surface, there’s no need to keep hiding.”
Xie Shilan patted the crumbs off her hands and gave Qin Shuying a mischievous smile.
“Run faster, or you’ll miss the good show.”
Qin Shuying’s figure disappeared from where she stood.
Xie Shilan sat alone on the flying eave, watching the ring of dust stirred up by Sword Qi at the city gate.
“Truly mad,” she commented, “but—”
She shook her wine gourd and gave a distant salute toward the Underground passage.
“Wonderful.”
The third Underground level of the tall tower.
The Teleportation Array’s base had been activated. Faint blue array light flickered in the darkness.
Corpse Puppets silently embedded Spirit Stones into the array eyes. Each Spirit Stone inserted made the Formation’s light brighten by one degree.
Chu Yi walked down the steps and handed the Soul-Locking Bottle to the female attendant waiting beside the array.
“Miss,” the female attendant said in a low voice, “your hand is trembling.”
Chu Yi lowered her head and glanced at her fingers.
They were indeed trembling.
It was not the trembling of excessive Spiritual Power consumption.
It was a kind of trembling she was not quite willing to examine closely.
“It’s fine.” She tucked her hands into her sleeves. “Activate the array at the chen hour tomorrow. No one may approach the Teleportation Array.”
“Yes.”
Chu Yi turned and walked up the steps, pausing for an instant in the shadow at the corner.
She raised her hand and put her fingertip to her nose—there still lingered the faintest trace of Shen Mo’s scent.
Soon—dawn would break.
The chen hour.
Boundless City’s sun-and-moon crystal hung forever directly overhead, spreading pale golden light evenly over the glazed tiles at the top of the tower.
Chu Yi stood before the Teleportation Array, watching the Corpse Puppets embed the last High-Grade Spirit Stone into the array eye.
Faint blue array light flowed through the cracks of the ancient stone bricks, like blood vessels crawling inch by inch across the entire array base.
The Teleportation Array was not large, about three zhang square.
The runes at its edge were Yin Su’s handiwork, and the strokes still retained the sharp aura unique to that Array Emperor.
“Miss,” the maid respectfully presented an agarwood box, “the Foundation Strengthening Pill is ready. As you instructed, a seventh-rank one was selected.”
Chu Yi took the wooden box. The box was slightly cool, and the agarwood scent was steady and restrained.
She opened the lid and glanced inside—a pill the size of a longan rested on a velvet pad, its pill patterns fine as cloud wisps.
It was indeed a top-grade among seventh-rank pills.
She had said last night that she would send someone with the pill.
Now she had brought it herself.
Footsteps came from the steps.
Very light, not quite steady. Between every two steps was a barely noticeable pause, as if even walking on flat ground he was restraining the weakness in his knees.
Chu Yi turned around. Shen Mo, supported by two female attendants, walked down the last step.
Chu Yi handed the wooden box over.
“Take it. The medicine is gently nourishing and will stabilize your sea of qi during the teleportation.”
Shen Mo did not look at the wooden box. Instead, he looked past her shoulder at the ring of faint blue array light behind her, as if confirming something.
Then he reached out, took the wooden box, removed the pill, and put it into his mouth.
“Aren’t you afraid I poisoned it?” Chu Yi asked.
“If you wanted my life, you would have taken it last night,” Shen Mo swallowed the pill.
The power of the Foundation Strengthening Pill melted into a weak warm current in his Dantian.
It could not fill the hollow left by the recently lost True Yang, but at least it made his steps a little steadier. “Besides, Miss Chu needs a living medicine guide.”
Chu Yi said nothing.
She turned sideways and made a “please” gesture.
The Nascent Soul-level Corpse Puppets silently retreated to both sides outside the array.
In their hollow eye sockets, the faint green Ghost Fire turned toward Shen Mo in unison.