Chapter 354

Chapter 354: Layer upon Layer

Yu Zhi Yi was about to start her inspection when a sharp whooshing sound cut through the air; her eyes tightened, and she tapped her toes to spring away from the boulder. There was nowhere solid to land, and she couldn’t fly through the sky, so she summoned her paper crane back.

The paper crane could carry her weight, but doing so burned through spiritual energy fast. Right now, she had no better choice.

Another whoosh rushed up behind her, mixed with a beast’s roar. Controlling the paper crane to weave away at speed, she flung a Heavenly Thunder Talisman over her shoulder without even looking back.

Jinlin: “!”

[This human has no sense of honor!] Feeling the terrifying force of heaven’s lightning coiled in the Heavenly Thunder Talisman, even its thick hide didn’t dare take the hit head-on, so it backed off.

Seizing the opening, Yu Zhi Yi steered the crane straight toward a section of cliff wall that seemed suspicious. On a sudden hunch, she eyed the cliff face screened off by a sheet of falling water, then drove the paper crane into the waterfall and straight at the rock.

The pain she expected never came. Instead, a roomy space opened before her, and her tense face eased. She’d guessed right: behind the cliff was another space.

In fact, the whole wasteland outside and the patch of green that came after it were illusions. They weren’t what this ground truly looked like. Whether this new pocket of sky and earth showed the real face of the place still needed checking.

Before her spread another land of clear streams and green hills. Wherever she looked, bright flowers filled her eyes. A breeze rolled over the blooms and carried a rich, not-too-sweet fragrance that felt very pleasant.

Even better was the spiritual energy here. It was dozens of times thicker than outside. She felt a cheerful surge from her dantian. Without her trying to cultivate, her dantian started on its own, eager to gulp down spiritual energy.

She quickly cut off that autopilot. This place felt strange in every way; a great temptation usually hid killing intent behind it-like those fruits outside, and like Jinlin. Until she figured out what was going on, she wouldn’t gamble.

Yet even after she walked the whole area, she found no danger at all. Outside there was a guardian beast, but in here there wasn’t a single suspicious thing-only endless, dense spiritual energy trying to pour into her body. And her body very much wanted it.

[Wait…]

Spiritual energy?

She understood: the thick spiritual energy was the trap.

If the spiritual energy here was this dense, something had to be producing it. She thought of the wasteland outside. What if the wasteland was real? Maybe whatever was in here had sucked away all the spiritual energy outside, leaving nothing to grow. If so, then a spirit-siphoning formation most likely existed.

She had a feeling that if she cracked this riddle, her mission would be done.

Closing her eyes, Yu Zhi Yi carefully sensed the spiritual energy between heaven and earth around her. At first, she felt nothing helpful because the energy was too dense-so dense she could hardly tell where it was thicker or where it was seeping out.

But she held to a rule: [If something is off, there must be a reason.] Her years at the Ministry of Justice hadn’t been for nothing. The Ministry of Justice and the Court of Judicial Review had used her skills to break cases, and from those people she’d learned a few excellent habits-like steady focus and careful observation.

Once she truly calmed herself, she caught a very subtle difference. The spiritual energy seemed to be leaking from the water ahead. The flow was so faint it was hard to detect any change, and the strange, random gusts of wind here made judgment even harder. But after she filtered out those distractions, the slight spillover of energy from the lake’s surface stayed the same.

“In the water, then,” she murmured.

This time she didn’t jump in. She searched her Spatial Talisman and found that almost everything she’d packed was useful-nothing she could toss away without a pang. Thinking for a moment, she fished out a copper coin and flicked it into the lake.

A whirlpool opened and, in the blink of an eye, swallowed the coin.

Yu Zhi Yi: “…”

[Nine twists and eighteen traps.] She remembered her master talking about secret realms. If this counted as one, then its master had a very steady hand indeed: the realm was wrapped in layer after layer.

She had a strong hunch: the next stop would be her journey’s end. But whether to go underwater was a big problem.

No one sets up this many illusions for fun. The more tricks, the more amazing the thing being hidden. That meant the closer she got to the end, the greater the danger-maybe a beast even more deadly than Jinlin. Or maybe a high-level killing formation.

[No. That’s the wrong track…] If a high-level killing formation really was down there, people like the heir apparent of Marquis Wu’an and his companions wouldn’t be able to break it. So how were they still alive? And how did they get in?

[Could my gut be wrong?] She was human, not an immortal; intuition could be wrong. This illusion also seemed able to bend a person’s thoughts-like how she’d felt hungry and thirsty earlier. At her current level, she could go without food (bigu), and she had eaten lunch not long ago. She shouldn’t have felt hungry so quickly. Yet after less than two hours on the wasteland, hunger had hit. That wasn’t normal. So trusting her gut here was risky.

When in doubt, change the approach. If there was something under the water, then drain the water and look at the lake bed.

Yu Zhi Yi rummaged in her Spatial Talisman and pulled out a stack of Water Command Talismans. Her master had left them before leaving. Sadly, she’d rarely had a chance to use them, so they’d sat untouched until now.

She set one Water Command Talisman upright between two slim fingers. With a flick of her wrist, the talisman flew to the lake’s surface. The lake heaved under its power. Soon, a rolling “water barrel” rose from the surface-over ten meters tall and several meters wide. Under Yu Zhi Yi’s will, the cylinder glided to the shore and tipped.

With one dump, the lake level dropped by more than a finger’s breadth.

It was her first time using a Water Command Talisman, so she wasn’t skilled yet. She had the sense that the ten-plus-meter column was nowhere near her limit. She flicked out a second talisman.

Her hunch proved right. The second water column was about thirty meters tall and over ten meters wide. When it crashed onto the bank, the lake sank by a large margin. Yu Zhi Yi smiled in satisfaction.