A streak of sword light directly slashed toward the alluring woman who had jumped out from the space, startling her into a soft gasp as she once again transformed into petals and vanished.
“Ah, I came here with good intentions this time, could you not be so rough?”
The scattered petals converged once more within the space, the woman wearing a rather strained expression as she pleaded for mercy.
“Don’t make things difficult for me, I don’t want to get involved in this mess either, but the big shots above have given orders.”
None of the Venerables present believed a word she said.
After all, this one was also an old swindler who had roamed the cultivation world for many years.
Almost everyone who had trusted her had been swindled clean down to their last thread.
“Yanghong, what exactly do you all want to do!”
The Venerable from Wanhuagu, whose honorific was Yanghong, gave a light cough, flipped her wrist, and pinched a Liu Ying Stone in her hand.
Then, a young girl dressed in colorful skirts was projected into the space by the Liu Ying Stone. This time, it truly was Hua Jian.
“Naturally, it’s for her.”
The other three Venerables present looked at the image of the girl projected by the Liu Ying Stone with strange expressions.
As the three disinterested parties, they felt this version of Hua Jian seemed more harmonious than Hua Jian in her normal state.
It was as if Hua Jian was originally meant to look like this.
“You want to fight me for her too?” The Lingcaifeng Master asked indignantly.
It was one thing for the Jade Pool to fight her for a person, after all, Hua Jian was indeed the Jade Pool’s type. But why was Wanhuagu barging in to meddle?
To fight her for Hua Jian, Wanhuagu was even willing to use something so powerful. What was the meaning of this!
It had to be known that among the sects of the cultivation world, Wanhuagu’s seniority wasn’t particularly high.
Moreover, because they bore the name of the Magic Path, they couldn’t act openly and aboveboard.
Their foundation was completely incomparable to that of the Saint Sect.
That plant enveloping the Secret Realm would be considered a treasure at the level of a sect-protecting treasure even within the Saint Sect.
For Wanhuagu, it was possibly the only one of its kind in the entire sect.
Yet Wanhuagu had directly taken out such a treasure for Hua Jian’s matter, which truly left the Lingcaifeng Master somewhat puzzled and frustrated.
She just wanted to take in a disciple. Was this really so difficult!
“Lingcai, if you’re willing to teach her, we would naturally be happy, but she must be a member of our Wanhuagu.”
Venerable Yanghong cupped her hands toward the Lingcaifeng Master in apology.
“Perhaps you all are unaware, but our Wanhuagu was the first to take notice of Hua Jian. You are all latecomers.”
The Lingcaifeng Master and Venerable Fenghua had somewhat anticipated this point.
After all, the cultivation method Hua Jian practiced was indeed very similar to Wanhuagu’s, especially Hua Jian’s retreat technique, Feihua Dun.
It couldn’t be said to be exactly the same as Wanhuagu’s Feihua Dun, but it could be said to be cast from the same mold.
At most, Hua Jian’s Feihua Dun was just more colorful and looked more advanced.
“She doesn’t know you noticed her first.”
“Doesn’t she know now? Besides, even if we really gave it, would you dare to take it?”
Venerable Yanghong pointed at the phantom behind her, which was currently engaged in a great battle with the Saint’s avatar.
This is something that can fight a Saint’s avatar. We dare to give it, but do you dare to take it?
Hua Jian’s current identity is not that of a prodigiously talented disciple, but rather akin to an extremely dangerous spirit item.
Once it goes out of control, the resulting impact would be unimaginable.
“Then we absolutely cannot let her fall into your hands!” The Venerable of Tiandao Sect said coldly. “Such a threat must be destroyed rather than fall into the hands of the Magic Path!”
Venerable Yanghong sneered, “Then destroy it. I’d like to see if your big talk matches your actual strength.”
She spoke politely with the Lingcaifeng Master out of respect for her, and also because making relations too tense wasn’t good.
But what does your Tiandao Sect amount to? Does Hua Jian have any relation with you for you to speak?
“Let me tell you the truth. If the fight over there continues, Hua Jian won’t be harmed, but none of the geniuses you have inside the Secret Realm will survive.”
“Only by quickly making that Saint’s avatar stop will you have a chance to mend the fold after the sheep is lost. Don’t think about other things. We’ve even brought out something like this, could we possibly let you find another way?”
—
Flying through the shattered Secret Realm space, Linglong arrived by Hua Jian’s side.
The current Hua Jian was gradually losing her human form. After connecting with the branches and leaves descending from the sky, her body was continuously transforming in a non-human direction.
Colorful sprouts broke through from within her body, blooming into lovely little flowers on her skin’s surface.
The floral patterns on her chest came to life. They tore open the clothing over Hua Jian’s chest and bloomed upon it.
This was a flower that should not exist in this world, one whose likeness would not even be found in the Hundred Flowers List.
It combined the characteristics of all the flowers Hua Jian had ever absorbed—the Illusory Dream Flower, the Dragon Blood Vine, the White Flower… Clearly a stitched-together product, yet it gave off a sense of harmonious coexistence, as if this was exactly how it was meant to be.
Xia Hui had not told Linglong how to awaken Hua Jian. She only told Linglong to communicate with her heart.
This definitely didn’t mean the physical heart. The meaning should refer to Soulforce.
But, how was she supposed to enter Hua Jian’s Godsoul Space?
Her gaze fell upon the flower on Hua Jian’s chest. The main body of this flower was the Illusory Dream Flower.
If that was the case, she should be able to enter Hua Jian’s Godsoul Space through this place.
Thinking this, Linglong slowly approached Hua Jian. Just as she was about to reach Hua Jian’s side, the branches and leaves descending from the sky finally reacted.
They began to move toward Linglong. Sharp branches, one after another, tore through space as they approached her.
But just as they were about to touch Linglong, these branches seemed to receive some command and retracted again.
‘Does this mean they don’t want to hurt me?’ Linglong didn’t ponder it too much. In that case, she couldn’t let down this opportunity Hua Jian was giving her!
Speeding up, she rushed to Hua Jian’s side. Linglong caught a whiff of a somewhat familiar, delicate fragrance—this was the floral scent Hua Jian usually carried.
But now, with the activation of the flower on Hua Jian’s chest, this floral scent also carried an effect that stirred the Soulforce.
Linglong began to follow the guidance of this effect. Her Soulforce gradually sank into a mist. Just before succumbing to sleep, she suddenly remembered something.
‘It seems I’m still flying in the sky. If I lose consciousness like this, will I just fall straight down?’
Before she could figure out the answer, her consciousness was completely swallowed by the mist.
And just as her body was about to begin falling with the disappearance of her consciousness, colorful vines grew out from Hua Jian’s body, binding Linglong and pulling her to Hua Jian’s side.
—
“Mmm…”
Shaking her head vigorously to dispel the dizziness, Linglong stood up from the drastically changed Godsoul Space and looked ahead.
If Hua Jian’s Godsoul Space was previously a grassland, now it had become a place resembling a mysterious tree hollow.
The sky was covered with lush branches, leaves, and vines, while the ground was densely packed with blooming flowers. Don’t ask how branches grew in the sky; they just did.
After all, it’s a Godsoul Space. Not following rules is quite normal.
“Miss Linglong?”
A somewhat doubtful voice came from behind Linglong.
Linglong turned her head to see a little girl with butterfly wings standing behind her, looking pleasantly surprised.
Wasn’t this A Meng’s human form?
Before Linglong could ask, A Meng grabbed her hand. “Miss Linglong, go quickly and see Hua Jian! She’s become so strange!”
Hearing it was about Hua Jian, Linglong hurriedly followed. Soon, they traversed this sea of flowers and arrived at the place where Hua Jian was.
Because the Godsoul Space had changed so drastically, Linglong didn’t know what this place originally was.
In any case, Hua Jian was currently wrapped in layers of emerald green branches and leaves in a very strange posture, like a person parasitized by plants.
“It started turning into this not long ago. I wanted to wake her up but couldn’t succeed. I wanted to go out and find help but couldn’t get out either…” A Meng explained anxiously, grabbing the antennae on her head.
After realizing she couldn’t help Hua Jian, she had thought about going out to find help.
But for some reason, Hua Jian’s Godsoul Space seemed to have entered a locked state.
No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t break out.
Fortunately, Linglong had now entered from outside the Godsoul Space, giving her a helper to discuss things with.
“Why is she like this?” Linglong asked A Meng as she stepped forward and began pulling at the branches and leaves on Hua Jian.
After pulling a couple of times, Linglong found these branches and leaves had already fused with Hua Jian’s body.
If she wanted to dig Hua Jian out from them, the scene might have been rather bloody.
“Are you asking why Hua Jian lost consciousness? I guess she probably received too much information in a short time, causing an overload of data in her Soulforce, triggering a self-protection state.”
In other words, Hua Jian was currently in a state of system failure. The redundant data in her head needed to be cleared out.
“Pull these branches and leaves off her?”
“Yes, but I can’t do it alone.” A Meng immediately nodded.
These branches and leaves were the manifestations of those colorful branches and leaves outside.
It was they who kept feeding information to Hua Jian, preventing her from recovering from the system failure.
What they needed to do now was to cut away all these branches and leaves on Hua Jian, stopping the attack of junk information.
“Then let’s hurry!”
Knowing the solution, Linglong stopped being careful and directly used the Dragon Race’s favorite method of solving problems with brute force.
Grabbing those vines and pulling with all her might, she directly uprooted the branches and leaves from Hua Jian’s body.
In reality, this scene would have been incredibly bloody and terrifying. The branch she pulled out was rooted deep in Hua Jian’s waist.
This pull would likely have snapped Hua Jian’s waist in reality.
But this was the Godsoul Space. After pulling out this branch, the gap on Hua Jian’s body instantly healed.
On the other side, A Meng also picked up a knife and began pruning the branches on Hua Jian, her speed not lagging behind Linglong’s at all.
As they continuously dealt with the branches and leaves, the uprooted and severed ones kept reconnecting with Hua Jian.
Linglong finally understood why A Meng had said she couldn’t solve Hua Jian’s problem alone.
The speed at which the branches and leaves reconnected with Hua Jian was faster than A Meng’s processing speed. Only now, with Linglong added, did their combined speed surpass the reconnection rate.
Fortunately, these branches and leaves never resisted, single-mindedly only wanting to reconnect with Hua Jian.
Otherwise, Linglong and A Meng might truly have been unable to handle them.
As the number of branches and leaves on Hua Jian gradually decreased, the pupils in her eyes finally shifted from empty and lifeless to bright.
Freed from the interference of redundant data, Hua Jian could finally reboot her system.
As her consciousness gradually recovered, Hua Jian’s first sensation was pain—there wasn’t a single place on her body that didn’t hurt.
And hunger—a ravenous hunger that made her want to devour everything in the world.
‘Wait, I think I’m still fighting something?’
It was precisely these things that had rendered Hua Jian’s consciousness blank. Her meager Soulforce couldn’t possibly process so much information. In the end, she could only operate on instinct.
Now, with the gradual decrease in input information, the pressure on her Soulforce finally fell below the threshold of her self-protection, allowing her to recover.
Her vision focused. She saw Linglong and A Meng diligently pulling things off her. Sensing her own physical state, she immediately understood the situation.
“Whew, you two keep helping me pull. Let me think about how to resolve the current situation.”
“The vines outside are accelerating the destruction of the Secret Realm. Do you have a way to make them stop?” Linglong asked while grabbing a vine that was trying to reconnect to Hua Jian.
Hua Jian thought back and realized this seemed to be a reaction driven by instinct during her period of blank consciousness.
Because she was very hungry, instinct drove those branches and leaves to accelerate devouring the Secret Realm.
And it was impossible for her to slow down all the vines throughout the Secret Realm.
Those vines were the culprits that caused her system failure. She shouldn’t even think about controlling them.
“No, the areas I can control are very few. The other areas can only act on their own.” Hua Jian shook her head in response.
“The Secret Realm is beyond saving. All I can do is lift the spatial entrapment around here so you can withdraw from this place.”
At this moment, Hua Jian also realized the precision of Wanhuagu’s plan.
They simply hadn’t given Hua Jian a second choice. If she wanted to save people, she could only lift the spatial entrapment here to let them out.
As for this Secret Realm, its fate as her snack was already sealed.
“Let me find which vine controls this area…”
Hua Jian currently felt speechless. She was just an ordinary person, yet now she had to do the work of a computational unit. It was really asking too much.
With thousands upon thousands of vines surrounding her, finding the ones that controlled the center of the Secret Realm would require considerable effort.
Grabbing a few vines and connecting them to herself, Hua Jian sensed the information they transmitted and immediately pulled them off.
‘Not these.’
These excluded vines she directly tossed to Linglong, asking her to keep watch over them.
After dozens of attempts, Hua Jian finally found, among these vines, the information for the branches and leaves in the central part of the Secret Realm.
She quickly connected these branches to herself and immediately issued the command to lift the spatial entrapment.