Chapter 48

Chapter 48: Mountains Crumble, Earth Splits

Jiang Li Sheng’s hands moved faster than her mind. In a blink, she’d yanked up a fistful of no-goiter herb, stuffed it into her storage pouch, then snatched two yellow-thorn tree fruits and tossed them in as well.

She moved so quickly that Chen Liu An didn’t even register what happened. His vision flickered—then a massive force wrapped around him. He let out a startled shout and vanished from where he stood.

Jiang Li Sheng wasn’t spared either. The world flashed white, her sight turning to a smear. If not for the grass and the two fruits still clenched in her hand—solid, real—she might’ve thought she’d only blinked too hard.

The ground and sky spun. When she could see again, she was inside a cave dwelling.

It was enormous and stripped bare. Aside from a table, a few chairs, and a stone bed, there was nothing—no storage, no ornaments, no tools. Only the walls: stone carved with dense, intricate text and a bagua diagram so complex it made her scalp prickle.

The cave dwelling was sealed. No entrance. No exit. She hadn’t walked in—she’d been dragged in by brute force.

“Senior Brother Chen!” she called, then called again.

No response.

Jiang Li Sheng scanned her surroundings and pieced it together. This was probably the place Shan Gao’s master had left behind the formation inheritance. Senior Brother Chen must have been pulled elsewhere—given a different inheritance entirely.

With no one to confer with, she stared at the wall of formations and did the obvious math: if she wanted out, she likely had to learn it.

And it looked impossible.

She was bone-tired. Days of running, fear, and constant tension had drained her dry. The cave dwelling felt safe, at least for now, and her eyelids wouldn’t stay open. Better to sleep, recover, then fight with the formations when she could think straight.

She yawned, dropped onto the stone bed, and fell asleep immediately.

Outside, Shan Gao’s jaw wound still refused to close. It finished off a bag of snacks, wandered over to the cave dwelling, and cocked its ears to listen. Then it slapped the barrier.

Smack. Smack-smack.

The smooth surface rippled like water under the force, spreading ring after ring. A low hum vibrated through the air without end.

Jiang Li Sheng jolted awake. Through the mirror-like barrier, she saw a huge paw hammering from outside. She sat up, irritation sharp and immediate. “What are you doing?”

Shan Gao looked furious too. “My master left a formation inheritance! You got the chance and you’re sleeping in here!”

“What’s it to you?”

“If you don’t get the inheritance, you still won’t get out.”

“Hmph. I don’t need you telling me.”

“You used some ghostly thing. My wound won’t heal. Fix it!” Shan Gao kept slapping the barrier. “No more sleeping.”

Jiang Li Sheng sucked in a breath. “You damn dog thing. Get lost.”

Shan Gao didn’t move. “No more sleeping!”

The noise drilled into her skull. Jiang Li Sheng raked a hand through her hair and swung her legs off the bed. “Where’s Senior Brother Chen? Why aren’t you bothering him?”

“He’s in the treasure vault hunting treasure and working hard,” Shan Gao snapped. “Not like you, sleeping here!”

“How could my master pick a lazy thing like you?” it kept cursing.

“Blame yourself,” Jiang Li Sheng shot back. “You chased me for days and nights. I’m tired.”

Shan Gao’s temper flared. “Lazy bum, trash, idiot. You’re a cultivator—how can you not endure a few days and nights?”

“If you let me hunt treasure, I’d work hard too,” Jiang Li Sheng retorted. Who didn’t love hunting treasure?

She did too.

But this formation—this immense, tangled array—was on the same level as the mountain-guarding grand formations of Kun Lun Sect, Qing Xu Sect, and Tai Yi Sect. How long would it take to learn?

Shan Gao didn’t care about her despair. It only leaned in harder. “Either way, no more sleeping!”

Jiang Li Sheng glared at it through the barrier. It couldn’t come in, and she couldn’t go out. They locked into a stubborn standoff, her temper rising with every slap.

In the end, she broke first. Under the relentless pounding, she could only grit her teeth, turn away, and start studying the dense wall of text.

Satisfied at last, Shan Gao stopped. It crouched outside the cave dwelling, planted itself like a guard dog, and stared in, clearly intending to watch her until she finished.

Jiang Li Sheng expected it to be like staring at a wall of nonsense. Instead, the moment she steadied her breathing and truly focused, the text before her eyes seemed to lift off the stone.

It flowed into her sea of consciousness like a tide.

Within her mind, it assembled into a bagua diagram, aligning with the one carved into the wall—layer by layer, line by line—until the two overlapped perfectly. The world around her fell away. Something vast and strange opened, as if stars and mountains and seas could all be folded into a single pattern.

Her spiritual power stirred.

Then surged.

In her spirit mansion, the reservoir she’d been storing spiritual power in twisted into a vortex. It spun faster and faster, like a storm gathering its own sky. Specks of light burst outward through the cave dwelling, and the barrier began to tremble—not from Shan Gao’s slapping, but from the pressure rolling out from her.

Shan Gao startled awake, sprang up, and sprinted away.

A heartbeat later, the barrier shattered with a thunderous boom.

Air currents erupted, spreading like a shockwave. In an instant, Bitter Mountain shuddered. The entire mountain began to shake and groan as if something deep beneath it had snapped.

Shan Gao fled in pure terror.

In the treasure vault, Chen Liu An heard the rumble too. The ground roared under his feet. He didn’t even bother stuffing more into his storage ring—he turned and ran.

Then everything came apart.

Mountains collapsed. Massive boulders rolled. The sky darkened, swallowed by dust and violent winds. The earth split open into jagged ravines.

Chen Liu An nearly plunged into the sudden fissures more than once. Panic lodged in his throat. “Junior Sister Jiang!”

He didn’t know if her inheritance had caused this, but he knew one thing: he did not want to die buried in Bitter Mountain.

The destruction was savage and fast. He dodged again and again, even burning through his high-grade artifacts—and it didn’t matter. In the storm’s brutal tearing force, his artifacts cracked and shattered like brittle glass.

Chen Liu An’s pupils shrank.

It’s over.

The storm hit. He couldn’t dodge anymore. Pain ripped across him, inch by inch, as if blades were carving him open. His body gave out. Blood poured from his seven orifices as he fell into the abyss.

At the same moment he dropped, a streak of golden light slashed in from the side, wrapped around him, and caught him—barely.

A figure descended right after, raising a protective barrier with a single sweep of the hand. The storm continued to rage, but within a ten-zhang radius beneath that barrier, the chaos could not intrude.

The air still howled beyond it, tearing the world apart, yet that small space remained unmoved—as if it refused to be broken.

Chen Liu An was alive, but unconscious. If he’d been awake, he would have recognized the person at once. In Kun Lun Sect, aside from one man, no one wore a crimson robe.