Chapter 54
Chapter 54: Great Derivation Spirit Refining
Shao Heng stepped back a few paces without making a sound.
Yu Wen was completely drawn by the Shattered Moon. He couldn’t wait and rushed forward, but at the same time, three clumps of black fog burst out from nowhere and charged at him.
“Careful!” Jiang Feng shouted. “Late-stage First Realm yin ghosts!”
At the same time, he formed seals. A giant hand of mana clenched one clump of black fog, while Bai Hong flicked a strip of blue silk from her sleeve and wrapped another clump tight.
Yu Wen jolted and was about to retreat fast, but seeing his two companions help, courage surged again.
Golden light flooded his body, making him even more hulking. He threw both fists forward and slammed them straight into the yin ghost in front of him.
Whoosh!
A streak of light shot in and split into three.
Unlike the three of them struggling, the streaks pierced through the black fog instantly, then turned into three ropes of light that bound Jiang Feng and the others on the spot.
Zhao Qing Tu walked over slowly, his expression calm and his lips curved in a faint smile.
Only then did he look at Shao Heng leaning against the wall and speak.
“Fellow Cultivator, good methods.”
“The maze map of the Soaring Moon Mirror is already complex. It also changes once every quarter-hour according to Eight Trigrams rules. There are eight total routes, but finding the one true route is the hardest. You have to constantly calculate how the maze’s directions shift.”
“I’ve fought those three fools once or twice. They don’t have the ability. Only you could do it.”
“You’re only a mid First Realm cultivator, and you can’t handle a group of late-stage yin ghosts here. That’s why you lured them over to be your pawns. As long as they stall the yin ghosts, you can seize the maze’s true inheritance. Isn’t that right?”
The three tied up by the light ropes had already been on guard. They’d suspected that this girl called Shao Heng wasn’t simple, but they only thought she was fighting over the Shattered Moon.
Three late-stage First Realm cultivators—if they were still afraid that a mid-stage cultivator could stir up trouble, then they might as well not come to the secret realm. They shouldn’t cultivate either. They should go back to the Mortal Realm and farm.
They never expected Shao Heng wasn’t after the Shattered Moon at all, but the maze’s true treasure.
Shao Heng clapped her hands.
On the face that belonged to “Jiang Yun Jiang,” there was no trace of shyness left, only amusement.
“Wasn’t Fellow Cultivator Zhao’s timing perfect?”
“With your First Realm perfection, if I cultivated a few more years, I could still deal with you. But right now, isn’t everything I did just wasted effort—doing all the work for you?”
Zhao Qing Tu smiled back. “Then I won’t refuse.”
Boom!
After answering, he didn’t hesitate at all. He charged straight toward the white vortex, but the moment he got close, a terrifyingly dense black fog lunged at him.
A yin ghost at First Realm perfection.
Zhao Qing Tu’s body erupted with starlight. Luckily, he reacted in time and blocked the yin qi striking at him.
But at that exact moment, Shao Heng flicked out a crimson blood arrow. Zhao Qing Tu couldn’t dodge. His robes were soaked through, and a rotten stench hit the nose as the yin ghost grew even more frenzied.
Even with cultivation, yin ghosts had absurdly low intelligence and acted on instinct. The moment they smelled blood, they went mad and latched onto Zhao Qing Tu without letting go.
Shao Heng secretly sent a message to Ao Chuan, “Your taste is heavy. That leftover bloodwater from spirit pork is so rank, and you liked eating it.”
“What I like is fresh,” Ao Chuan snapped back. “This is your old, rotten meat that’s been sitting forever! I wouldn’t touch it.”
While they bickered, Shao Heng was already charging toward the white vortex, and a white shadow shot out from her sleeve.
Ao Chuan was so fast that even Zhao Qing Tu couldn’t see clearly. He could only watch as the four Shattered Moon crystals vanished.
When half of Shao Heng’s body had already sunk into the vortex, she finally turned her head and smiled.
“Fellow Cultivator Zhao, I’ll teach you a line. Don’t pop the cork when the fight isn’t over.”
How could Zhao Qing Tu not understand? A female cultivator this clever was clearly not without ways to handle three late-stage yin ghosts. Pulling Jiang Feng and the others here had been for this perfection-stage yin ghost.
He threw his head back and laughed loudly. “Is that so, Fellow Cultivator?”
“Then I’ll return that line to you!”
“Northern Dipper Shifts, Starshift, Dipper Turns!”
Seven star points lit up across his body. At once, Shao Heng felt a strange spatial force surge around her.
Her face darkened immediately, Yellow Sprout mana roaring.
That eerie spatial force condensed into a silver ring and dropped toward Shao Heng, but she snapped her left hand out, moonlight like a ribbon, and her right hand out, sun brilliance like magma, and grabbed the ring directly, stopping its power from activating.
It was almost funny. When she’d been transmitted into the Mystic Moon Secret Realm, she’d been battered by spatial turbulence and had gained a bit of understanding of how that power flowed.
Zhao Qing Tu’s expression went from sunny to drizzle—then drizzle to sunshine, and now straight into a thunderstorm.
Everything happened in a flash. Seeing Shao Heng’s whole body about to enter the vortex, he could only decide on the spot. He shifted his form with starlight, moving at a terrifying speed, and barely fell into the vortex in sync with her.
The vortex vanished at once.
Only the three who had been bound by light ropes were left. They finally broke free with difficulty, each one furious, yet they still had to keep fighting that perfection-stage yin ghost.
“Shao Heng, right? I’ve memorized that face!” Yu Wen spat hard.
“It’s fine.” Bai Hong’s brows were tightly knit, her face full of fury. “She’s so young yet already mid-stage. She probably hasn’t been in the inner sect long.”
“She can hide her face and fake her name, but once we return to the sect and keep searching, narrowing the range, we’ll definitely drag her out!”
—
Meanwhile, on the other side of the vortex, Shao Heng and Zhao Qing Tu fell to the ground.
They steadied themselves almost at the same time, one with bow in hand, the other gripping his compass. In the next instant, they were about to turn on each other.
“Good methods. May I ask your name?” Zhao Qing Tu’s eyes were full of interest.
Shao Heng didn’t answer. She was about to loosen her string and fire, but she realized the place they were in started shaking.
She and Zhao Qing Tu exchanged a look, temporarily set aside their weapons, and observed the situation.
It was like they were inside a cube. All six walls were pure white, and in the center floated a scroll trimmed in gold and inlaid with jade.
[Looks decent enough for me,] Shao Heng judged.
Zhao Qing Tu tried to rely on his cultivation and seize it first, but the instant he rose into the air, some unknown force slammed him back down.
Then, in front of both him and Shao Heng, a sheet of faint light appeared, like a page of paper.
“Math?” Zhao Qing Tu glanced at Shao Heng, smugness hard to hide in his eyes.
“From your mana aura, you really do look like a disciple of the One Yuan Sect. This test is simple—whoever solves this math problem first gets the inheritance.”
“The Star-Inquiry Sect is famous for divination, the Eight Trigrams, and geomancy. Math is one of our signature skills.”
“Looks like I’m going to win unfairly.”
As if Shao Heng cared about the crap coming out of his mouth.
She stared at the light-formed page, reading carefully, her mind already breaking it down—extracting patterns, testing possibilities.
Zhao Qing Tu also immersed himself in it, beginning to analyze the problem.
To find this true exit, First Realm cultivators needed shocking memory and calculation ability. In other words, the maze was searching for someone with outstanding spiritual sense.
Zhao Qing Tu was exactly that. And after he broke through to First Realm perfection, his spiritual sense had risen greatly. The math problem that had once been like climbing to the heavens was now solvable in his eyes.
When he had finished about a quarter of the solution and was still fully focused, a force suddenly expelled him from this space.
Zhao Qing Tu looked up in disbelief.
The light screen in front of the girl had already disappeared, and she had flown up and seized the scroll.
“The Great Derivation Spirit-Refining Art?” Zhao Qing Tu’s eyes widened. “So it’s an immortal art specialized in cultivating spiritual sense. No wonder the maze and the math test were arranged like that.”
Shao Heng lowered her gaze toward Zhao Qing Tu, who had been forcibly kicked out by the space, and spoke lazily.
“Tsk, you male cultivator really can’t cut it, huh?”
“If you’re this weak, you need to practice more.”