A perilous trial reveals a desperate impasse, as Shen Yi uses his wisdom and courage to overcome the difficulties.

As Shen Yi’s boot heel crushed the third formation-mark crystal, a familiar scent of spikenard suddenly drifted from the thick fog.

He shoved the dragon-scale fruit back into the front of his tunic with a backhand motion. The friction of the rind against his collarbone sparked a burst of heat that made the outer edge of his eyebrow twitch—this wretched system was getting so temperamental it even made the fruits throw tantrums after an upgrade.

"Fellow Daoist Shen, watch out!" Lingyun’s startled cry was chopped into fragments by the warped space.

A dozen ice prisms grazed the back of his neck and pierced the stone wall, the exploding ice shards unexpectedly coated with dark spots of demonic corruption.

Shen Yi wiped a droplet of blood that had splashed onto his earlobe, the skin beneath his fingertips burning hot from the restless jade slip throbbing within his sea of consciousness.

Ever since it had drunk its fill of the trial token’s spiritual energy last night, that blood-stained object had been thrashing about in his mind, trying to burrow toward the direction of the snow peak.

"Among this batch of new disciples, I doubt even a handful will manage to last three incense sticks' time," Elder Xuanfeng’s voice drifted from outside the array. The gilded trial token vibrated at Shen Yi’s waist, carrying the elder’s deliberately lowered words straight to his ears. "Young Master Jian Chen specifically added thirty-six interlocking lethal arrays to the *xun* position."

Hearing this, Shen Yi almost laughed out loud, raising a foot to kick over a stone puppet lunging straight at him.

The eye-of-the-array spiritual stone rolling out from the rubble emitted an eerie purple glow—the exact color of the thunder patterns on Jian Chen’s natal sword.

Taking advantage of a gap while dodging the ground-spike array, he tossed the spiritual stone to Haoyu, who was cowering in the *kan* position. "Catch! My braised pork knuckle money at the Drunken Immortal Pavilion depends entirely on this."

Deep within the dense fog, crimson formation marks suddenly flared. In the shattered reflection of a water mirror he collided with while retreating, Leng Shuang’s sneering face flashed past.

This senior sister, who always loved wearing moon-white pleated dresses, was currently holding a blood-stained formation banner, the tip pointing straight toward the direction of the ice silk that Gao Yao had used to bandage him yesterday.

The system warehouse suddenly emitted a harsh, shrill chime as twenty scarlet fruits in the planting space simultaneously burst, their juices pooling on the spiritual soil to form an arrow pointing toward the *zhen* position.

"Shen Yi, what are you spacing out for!" The vajra talisman Haoyu hurled shattered two wind blades, but he himself was flipped flat onto the ground by the rebounding formation runes.

Wincing and baring his teeth, he fished out an oil-paper package. "Catch!"

Half a piece of osmanthus cake brushed past the poisonous vine array and landed in Shen Yi’s palm, its cloying sweetness laced with the bitterness of the seven-leaf crane-roost poison.

He licked away the residue on his fingertips, remembering how Gao Yao had tied his trial token this morning, her slender, leek-white fingers deliberately winding an extra half-circle around the gilded clasp—a clasp that was now being woven into a cocoon by the threads of blood leaking from the jade slip.

The mist suddenly surged like boiling water, and eighty-one star paths intersected overhead into a net.

Staggering, Shen Yi steadied himself against a stone pillar carved all over with prohibitory seals, only to discover that a depression in the pillar’s surface matched the missing fragment of the jade slip with absolute precision.

A taste of rust rose in the back of his throat, and the system’s light screen flashed a stark red warning at that very moment: [Spiritual vein grotto-heaven is under attack by unknown energy. Countdown to spiritual plant mutation: two quarters of an hour.]

"Playing it this big?" Shen Yi wiped away the bloodstain at the corner of his mouth, then suddenly tore open his tunic and pressed the scorching dragon-scale fruit hard against the stone pillar.

The juices from the bursting pulp flowed along the carved prohibitory lines, actually corroding a fist-sized hole into the bronze surface.

Through the gap, Jian Chen could be seen standing on the observation platform, the formation disk pierced by his natal sword frantically draining the spiritual energy of the trial grounds.

Haoyu’s voice-transmission talisman slipped into his sleeve right at that moment: "That dog Jian Chen is sucking dry the earth-vein spiritual energy! Three disciples in the Xuanming sector have already passed out!"

Shen Yi groped for the chilling porcelain vial in his lower back’s hidden pouch—that was the Nine-Turn Soul-Returning Powder Lingyun had secretly slipped him.

Fine beads of water suddenly materialized on the surface of the vial, condensing into Gao Yao’s unique frost-flower imprint.

With a flick of his finger, he shattered the ice crystal and backhanded the porcelain vial straight into the center of the *qian* position’s lethal array.

***

Amidst the exploding clouds of medicinal mist, the jade slip finally broke free from the restraints of the storage pouch.

That blood-stained object hovered in mid-air, illuminating the surrounding formation runes down to the finest detail.

Shen Yi’s pupils constricted sharply—those so-called immortal sect prohibitions were unmistakably of the same origin as the spell seals suppressing ancient evil entities in the demonic tombs.

"Found you." A faint chuckle escaped his lips as the tip of his boot crushed the last array core disguised as a blue brick.

The very instant the fog dissipated completely, twenty-eight unconscious disciples were suspended in mid-air, sucked up by the sword array, each of their chests linked to a wisp of purplish-black spiritual energy.

The system light screen flickered frantically, and the mutated spiritual plants in the planting space began to devour one another.

Pressing a hand against the trial token at his waist that was on the verge of melting, Shen Yi drove the jade slip directly into the gap in the stone pillar just as Elder Xuanfeng announced the suspension of the trial.

As the stone wall collapsed with a deafening roar, he shaped his mouth into a silent word toward the observation platform.

The formation disk in Jian Chen’s hand shattered in response, the flying fragments piecing themselves together into a crooked word of "Thanks" upon the bluestone floor.

When Shen Yi vaulted out of the fog wall, stepping over the ground littered with crushed ice, he happened to run right into the wine goblet falling from Jian Chen’s hand onto the observation platform.

Amber-colored wine meandered along the cracks of the dark jade bricks, staining the final stroke of that "Thanks" so it looked precisely like a lame centipede.

"This is impossible!" Leng Shuang pinched the wooden hilt of her formation banner until it snapped in her grip, her moon-white skirt hem stained with a few droplets of dark red.

Realizing something, she abruptly whipped her head around to look toward the southeast corner of the trial grounds—there, thirteen disciples who should have been unconscious were being propped up straight by Lingyun with silver needles, every single one of them having a dragon-scale fruit peel pasted to the back of their neck.

Elder Xuanfeng’s beard trembled under the illumination of the night-pearls like spider silk in the wind: "Breaking a nine-fold interlocking lethal array in two quarters of an hour—this record, I fear, not even the one from back then..."

"The elder flatters me." Casually tearing open his tunic, which had been half-corroded by the poisonous vines, Shen Yi revealed the unhealed wound on his collarbone.

The contours of the cyan jade slip faintly bled through the dark red scabs, emitting an alluring, eerie luster under the moonlight. "It’s just that the gilded clasp of this trial token isn't very sturdy—Gao Yao, did you skimp on the craftsmanship this morning?"

Before his voice had even faded, a pale-blue band of ice silk wrapped around his wrist.

The momentum of Gao Yao hurling herself into his arms forced him to take three steps back, the cold fragrance of snow-soul flowers in her hair mingling with a warm breath of blood straight into his nostrils.

The girl’s fingertips pressed against the hidden injury three inches below his ribs, her spiritual energy muffled by tears: "Say another word of nonsense and I’ll freeze you into an ice sculpture right at the mountain gate!"

Just as Shen Yi was about to tease her, he suddenly noticed the strip of ice silk coiled around his waist trembling slightly.

The cheek Gao Yao buried in the crook of his neck exhibited an abnormal chilliness, and her spiritual energy circulation was a fraction more sluggish than usual.

Lowering his gaze, he caught sight of the dark pattern on the girl’s sleeve—the stamen of that twin-lotus flower tinged with a faint purple hue, precisely the color of the thunder pattern on Jian Chen’s natal sword.

"Fellow Daoist Shen is truly remarkable." Leng Shuang approached closer at some unknown moment, her skirt brushing against the shattered jade on the ground and kicking up a delicate chime of bells. "Only... that earth-vein spiritual energy of the trial grounds..."

Before her trailing notes could finish hanging in the air, the observation platform violently shuddered.

All twenty-eight unconscious disciples opened their eyes simultaneously, their pupils dancing with the same purplish-black flames originating from Jian Chen’s formation disk.

The bone of the braised pork knuckle Haoyu had just finished gnawing dropped to the ground with a clatter, his greasy fingers jabbing toward the southeast corner: "Brother Yi! Those fruit peels!"

With a flick of his wrist, Shen Yi hurled three scarlet fruits, their bursting juices drawing crimson-gold arcs across the night sky.

The fruit rinds, which should have been withered, suddenly grew wildly into thick vines, wrapping the rampaging disciples into twenty-eight emerald cocoons.

***

The system light screen flashed crazily within his sea of consciousness, the mutated spiritual plants of the planting space sinking their root systems directly into the fractures of the jade slip.

"Trouble Fellow Daoist Lingyun to fetch some realgar wine." Saying this, Shen Yi tore off half a sleeve and rapidly drew talismans using Gao Yao’s ice silk as a canvas.

Vermilion mixed with the juice of the dragon-scale fruit seeped into the fabric, and within the rising blue smoke, distorted formation trajectories emerged. "Haoyu, go bury three thunder-bolts in the *zhen* position, the kind dipped in osmanthus cake."

Jian Chen’s natal sword suddenly emitted a dragon-like roar, and when the arc of lightning slashed toward the back of Shen Yi’s heart, Gao Yao’s ice-soul sword had already intercepted the seven-fold sword shadows.

Amidst the ice crystals burst forth from the collision of their spiritual energies, Shen Yi caught a clear view of the half-section of the formation banner sliding out from Leng Shuang’s sleeve—the demonic qi lingering on the banner surface was an exact match for the prohibitions on the trial ground’s stone pillars.

"Catch!" The thunder-bolt hurled by Haoyu was wrapped in oil paper, bursting into a cloying, sweet fragrance in mid-air.

Shen Yi smoothly slapped the completed talismanic spell toward the ground, and within the exploding golden light, a complete array-pattern network materialized.

Those attack trajectories that had initially appeared chaotic pieced themselves together in the blue smoke into an inverted ghostly-face totem.

Elder Xuanfeng’s gasp of shock was drowned out by the roaring thunder: "This is the demonic tomb’s..."

"Lend a hand, Elder!" Abruptly pulling Gao Yao along to spin and evade a splitting fissure in the earth, Shen Yi pushed her toward the array-core position.

Understanding instantly, the girl bit down on her fingertip, and as a bead of blood fell into the ice silk, a thousand frost flowers bloomed.

The cold wave spread along the formation markings, freezing the rampaging spiritual energy into crystal-clear ice sculptures.

The system alarm ceased abruptly, and the mutually devouring spiritual plants inside the planting space suddenly grew quiet.

Wiping the cold sweat from his temples, Shen Yi noticed that the newly sprouted tender shoots near the cracks of the jade slip were greedily sucking in the spiritual energy of the ice sculpture.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Leng Shuang quietly retreating into the shadows, leaving faint purple marks on the bluestone bricks swept by her skirt.

"Today’s victor, Shen Yi!" Elder Xuanfeng’s announcement stirred up an uproar.

As Haoyu bounced over to hook an arm around his neck, Shen Yi caught a whiff of realgar mixed with the scent of braised pork knuckle in the collar of his tunic.

Lingyun was administering acupuncture to the unconscious disciples, the medicinal beads dangling from the ends of her silver needles echoing the twin-lotus flowers on Gao Yao’s sleeves.

"Don't move." Abruptly pressing down on his wrist, Gao Yao condensed ice crystals at her fingertips and applied them directly to his wound.

As the girl lowered her gaze, the shadow cast by her eyelashes fluttered slightly. "You intentionally used your wound to draw the lightning just now..."

Shen Yi let out a soft chuckle, pulling a snow-soul flower out from behind his ear as if performing a magic trick.

The moonlight pierced through the semi-transparent petals, reflecting a cluster of purple lightning curled up tightly at the heart of the flower. "Isn't this preparing a return gift for our Senior Sister Leng?"

The night wind swept fallen leaves across the observation platform, and Shen Yi suddenly turned his head to gaze toward the northwest corner.

The damaged formation banner gleamed with an eerie luster under the moonlight, and fresh finger marks were faintly visible where the pole had snapped—that arc of the curve was undeniably what a woman would leave wearing a jade thumb-ring.

Gao Yao’s ice silk fluttered without wind, wrapping around his little finger and giving it a gentle tug.

Looking down, Shen Yi saw the lingering anxiety within the girl’s eyes and smiled, tucking the snow-soul flower into her hair.

The instant the flower stem brushed against her dark hair, the system light screen abruptly popped up a new notification: [Mutated spiritual plants have fused with the demonic tomb’s prohibitions. Unlocked new species: Demon-Devouring Vine.]