As the fierce battle raged on, a turning point emerged, and the system’s aid shattered the enemy’s resolve.

Night Shadow’s articulated fingers swept through the air, and the bronze bells at the four corners of the ancestral hall shattered into dust simultaneously.

Hundreds of black-robed cultivators dove down like a swarm of crows. Shen Yi pulled Gao Yao behind him, sweeping his Green Bamboo Sword in a half-moon arc. "Take the village chief to the cellar!"

"Do you think I'm made of paper?" Gao Yao bit her fingertip, smearing a line of blood across her blade. The sudden flare of brilliant light from her sword pinned three of the black-robed figures to the stone well curb.

As the foul-smelling black blood splattered onto Shen Yi’s lapels, he caught the familiar scent of jasmine—that silly girl had tied an exorcism sachet to her sword tassel again.

Lie Feng’s twin axes whirled like a cyclone, cleaving two black-robed cultivators at the waist. Before their severed limbs could hit the ground, they dissolved into black mist and began to reform. He spat on the ground and cursed, "Brother Shen, is that exorcism grass you planted actually working?" Before he could finish, the village chief’s ankles were suddenly ensnared by the mist. Lie Feng’s pupils contracted; he slammed into the old man like a cannonball to shove him clear, but in doing so, he was pierced through the left shoulder by a blade of mist.

"Lie Feng!" Shen Yi’s bamboo sword was shredded by the swirling shadows, and the bronze fragments embedded in its hilt began to hum.

He saw the village chief stumble toward the fallen warrior. The white-haired old man tore into the black mist with his bare hands, his calloused palms instantly becoming a mass of mangled flesh.

System warning boxes flickered frantically in his mind; his spiritual power gauge had hit rock bottom.

Gao Yao’s sword energy wove a protective web of light in front of them. The girl’s rapid breathing brushed against Shen Yi’s ear. "Don't lose focus!" The red tassel of the mandarin duck knot at her waist moved of its own accord, blocking a bone spike aimed at Shen Yi’s heart.

Shen Yi suddenly grabbed her blood-stained hand and quickly drew a wheat-ear pattern on her palm—their agreed-upon secret signal.

"Buy me three breaths of time!" Shen Yi rolled beneath the ancestral hall’s altar and sank his consciousness into the system space.

On the virtual interface, a red warning flashed: [Insufficient Spiritual Power]. Without hesitation, he tapped on a gray package in the corner of his storage—a survival blind box he had traded ten acres of spirit fields to obtain.

[Consume 50% of spiritual power to plant "Chaos Spirit Seed." Confirm?]

Shen Yi stared at Gao Yao, who was struggling to hold the line outside. Her hair ribbon had been sliced in half, and strands of dark hair, matted with blood beads, clung to her pale cheeks.

As Night Shadow’s skeletal phantom began to coalesce once more, he slammed the confirm button. "Blow it all to hell!"

In the real world, a tender sprout suddenly burst from the palm of Shen Yi’s hand.

The black-robed figures besieging Gao Yao froze in unison. From the cracks in the stone floor beneath their feet, countless emerald vines erupted, their leaf edges shimmering with the same inscriptions found on the bronze fragments.

"Close your eyes!" Shen Yi lunged forward to cover Gao Yao’s eyes.

The flower buds at the tips of the vines exploded into bloom. In a blinding flash of golden light, eight hundred exorcism charms detonated, turning the ancestral hall into a golden cocoon.

***

Night Shadow’s defensive aura collided with the golden light, the sound of corrosion ten times more intense than before.

"Interesting." A pale, smiling half-face was revealed beneath Night Shadow’s shattered mask. He carelessly flicked away a fingertip that had touched the golden light. His glass-like pupils reflected the bronze fragment suddenly glowing at Shen Yi’s waist. "So the formation eye is in..." Through the hole in the ancestral hall’s dome, thin moonlight leaked down. Night Shadow, wearing black silk boots, trod over the ashes of the exorcism charms, his hem embroidered with dark gold Taotie patterns fluttering without a breeze.

As Shen Yi retreated, he knocked over the incense burner on the altar. The bronze fragment at his waist grew scorching hot—its faint, ghostly light resonating strangely with the jade pendant at Night Shadow’s waist.

"Little mouse, you're quite good at hoarding food." Night Shadow tapped the edge of his mask with his fingers. The shadows under the eaves suddenly twisted into dozens of skeletal hands, which swept toward Shen Yi’s crown with a stench of rot.

As Shen Yi rolled, his hand brushed against a stone brick. The wheat-ear-shaped spirit pattern on his palm flared, and the brick transformed into a golden shield shaped like a sheaf of wheat.

The skeletons' claws struck the grains of wheat, sending sparks flying. Shen Yi’s web of his hand went numb from the impact, and a system prompt exploded in his ears: [Temporary item "Shield of Harvest" remaining uses: 1]

Gao Yao’s sword tip grazed Night Shadow’s ear, slicing off half of a green jade earring.

Night Shadow tilted his head to dodge the energy, snapping his wrist to fling three bone nails. They hung in mid-air with a strange stillness just before piercing the girl’s throat—the wheat seeds Shen Yi had thrown had somehow woven themselves into a necklace of wheat ears around her neck.

A ripple finally appeared in Night Shadow’s glass-like pupils. He clapped his hands and laughed softly, "Such deep affection; I almost hate to tear you two apart."

Shen Yi took the opportunity to snap the small gourd hanging from his waist, and emerald vines erupted from its mouth.

These system-upgraded spirit-devouring vines were meant to bind enemy meridians, but they shrank back as if encountering a natural predator.

Night Shadow ignited ghostly blue flames at his fingertips, turning the vines to ash instantly. The lingering flames licked at Shen Yi’s sleeves, searing a blackened wheat-ear pattern into the fabric.

"Shen Yi, look out!" Gao Yao suddenly threw her personal jade pendant.

The pendant shattered into ice crystals in mid-air, freezing the ground for three inches beneath Night Shadow’s feet.

Shen Yi saw the blood spilling from the corner of the girl’s mouth, and his heart tightened—that was an Ice Soul Jade used by disciples of the Yaochi Immortal Sect to save their lives, requiring thirty years of cultivation to produce a single piece.

Night Shadow tapped his toe against the ice, and cracks instantly spread like a spiderweb.

Shen Yi used the moment to roll toward the debris of the altar, suddenly realizing that the bronze fragment was pulsing in rhythm with Night Shadow’s jade pendant.

When the black mist erupting from Night Shadow’s sleeve turned into a hydra and lunged, Shen Yi had a flash of inspiration. He pressed the fragment into a groove on the altar—a mechanism he had accidentally discovered while fixing the table for the village chief yesterday.

A bronze formation map suddenly emerged on the floor of the ancestral hall. Night Shadow’s jade pendant flew toward the eye of the formation, beyond his control.

Shen Yi watched the beams of light intersecting in mid-air. The system storage suddenly popped up an item: [Ancient formation fragment detected. Consume all spiritual power to activate "Shennong Appraisal"?]

***

"Ah Yi, catch the sword!" Gao Yao’s exclamation and the system prompt exploded at the same time.

Shen Yi instinctively tilted his head. Night Shadow’s bone blade grazed his ear and buried itself in the wall; a few strands of severed hair mixed with blood droplets fell onto the formation map.

The formation patterns suddenly turned blood-red. In the dizziness of his spiritual exhaustion, Shen Yi dazedly caught a glimpse of a cinnabar mark flickering beneath Night Shadow’s mask—it was seven parts similar to the Shennong totem on the system interface.

Night Shadow suddenly groaned and retreated, his black sleeves scorched by the formation light.

Shen Yi seized the opportunity to grab the hovering jade pendant. It felt cold to the touch, like holding water from a frozen pond—it wasn't jade at all, but the bone fragment of some demonic beast!

The Shennong Appraisal in the system storage trembled violently. The remaining spiritual power spontaneously formed chains of green-gold wheat ears, forcibly twisting the bone fragment and the bronze fragment together.

"You’re courting death!" Night Shadow finally shed his smile, the black mist around his body hardening into solid armor.

Shen Yi felt his internal organs burning. Layers of system warning boxes obscured his vision.

Gao Yao’s sword wind struck from the right, Lie Feng’s blood-stained axe cleaved the black mist on the left, and the village chief actually raised his hoe to smash at Night Shadow’s back—the hoe was clearly an ordinary iron tool, yet it shimmered with the light of the spirit spring water Shen Yi had secretly poured on it yesterday.

The moment Night Shadow raised his hand to blast everyone away, Shen Yi caught the flaw in the sea of blood mist.

There was a crack in the black armor over Night Shadow’s heart, and one could faintly see that what pulsed inside was not a heart, but half a bronze shard—it would fit perfectly with the Shennong Appraisal fragment in his system storage to form a complete disk!

Shen Yi swallowed the metallic taste of blood in his throat, pressing his trembling fingers against his drained dantian.

A loud cock-crow suddenly rang out from outside the ancestral hall. The first ray of dawn pierced the window lattice, and Night Shadow’s armor hissed with a teeth-grinding sound under the sunlight.

The system screen flashed with a golden prompt: [Dawn buff effective. All spirit plant effects increased by 300%.]

"All in." Shen Yi reached for the mutated seed in his pocket, bought last night with every single merit point he had. He didn't even notice his fingertips being sliced by the sharp thorns on its surface.

Night Shadow’s bone blade had reached within three inches of his brow. Gao Yao’s heart-wrenching scream seemed to come from a great distance away.

The bronze formation map absorbed his blood, and suddenly, an ancient pressure filled with the aura of the primordial age erupted...