After Lu Ying and Wen Feng left, the onlookers gradually dispersed.
From the shadows, Li Zhuohua was the first to stand up and ask, "Shall we return to the Endless House?"
"Today’s market is just two streets away—it’s bustling with activity!" Lu Jiayao looked at his teammates eagerly. "Should we go check it out?"
Wen Shuangbai was in high spirits today. Knowing that she would soon begin closed-door cultivation—likely followed by the next round of trials—she considered this her only chance to rest. She nodded. "Sure, since we’re already here, might as well."
The others had no objections.
In the crisp autumn air, under a gentle sun, the streets were lively. The six of them took a secluded path, strolling leisurely toward the market.
The narrow path was flanked by dense, untamed foliage, sunlight filtering through the leaves and casting dappled shadows on the ground.
As they walked, the group naturally split into three smaller clusters.
Li Zhuohua and Shen Hefeng led the way, listening to Lu Jiayao recount his recent adventures—until Shen Hefeng began nitpicking, sparking an argument between the two.
Annoyed by the bickering, Li Zhuohua grabbed both juniors by the collar and impatiently demanded they settle it with a fight, offering to referee.
Meanwhile, Wen Shuangbai and Xie Ziyin walked in the quieter middle section.
Amid the background noise of Shen Hefeng and Lu Jiayao’s squabble, Wen Shuangbai lowered her voice, avoiding Xie Ziyin’s gaze with slight guilt. "You asked me to take care of your carnivorous flowers, right?"
Xie Ziyin brushed a withered leaf from her hair. "Mm. What about them?"
Wen Shuangbai hesitated, opening and closing her mouth before finally asking, "Do you want the good news or the bad news first?"
Xie Ziyin glanced at her, already suspecting many had died. But it didn’t matter—those flowers had been cultivated for her sake anyway.
"How many died?" he asked.
"Seven," Wen Shuangbai answered earnestly. "Only one is left."
Xie Ziyin nodded, unfazed. "Cause of death?"
"Not sure. They were fine the night before, but by morning, seven had vanished." She sighed. After he’d gone to such lengths to bring her sworn brother back, she’d managed to kill his flowers. "I suspect the last one ate them, but I have no proof."
"It’s fine," Xie Ziyin said. "Death is normal. I’ll check on them later."
Just then, Yin Xuan, who had been lagging behind, drifted closer and drawled, "But I have a problem."
Xie Ziyin tilted his head. "What could you possibly have a problem with?"
Having pieced together the truth about Wen Feng, Yin Xuan came to confront him. "Junior Brother Xie, did you drug me with sleeping incense?"
Xie Ziyin remained unshaken. "Got proof?"
Yin Xuan: "..."
Before Shen Hefeng and Lu Jiayao could even throw a punch, Yin Xuan and Xie Ziyin were already fighting.
Wen Shuangbai half-heartedly urged them to stop while swiftly retreating to secure the best vantage point.
Hearing the commotion, Li Zhuohua abandoned the two hesitant fighters and dashed back excitedly. "I’ll referee! I’ll decide the winner!"
Shen Hefeng followed, nudging Wen Shuangbai. "Little Wen, scoot over. Make room for this old man."
Wen Shuangbai: "..."
Lu Jiayao chimed in, "Shuangbai, save me a spot too!"
Exasperated, Wen Shuangbai snapped, "Can’t you find your own spot?"
"Yours is the best!" Lu Jiayao rummaged through his storage ring and pulled out snacks he’d bought for the team in Wuzhou.
Soon, the three of them were munching on melon seeds while enjoying the show.
Somehow, the situation escalated until even the snackers and the referee were dragged into the brawl.
In the end, the group never made it to the market. Instead, they had an all-out brawl in the alley, dusted themselves off, and grumbled their way back to the Endless House before sunset.
On the way, they ran into Cao Xing, who was escorting Four Hundred Coins back. He scolded them, "How old are you? Fighting like toddlers? Shouldn’t you be cultivating? The Purple Flame Sect next door has been quietly training this whole time!"
Well, that night, the six of them hit the books—hard.
---
After entrusting Wen Feng to Lu Ying, Wen Shuangbai could finally focus entirely on her cultivation.
She had hit a bottleneck, and the key to breaking through lay in mastering the third level of the Yaoling Heart Method.
Determined, Wen Shuangbai rolled up her sleeves and resumed piecing together the scattered fragments left behind by Ye Qingrong in Star Moon Valley.
The fragments were likely part of the heart method, and as the puzzle took shape, she could sense a faint resonance from the same source.
Strangely, as she stared at the nearly completed framework of pictograms, the temperature around her suddenly spiked. In an instant, it felt as if she were trapped under a scorching summer sun, her skin burning.
Beads of sweat rolled down her forehead. Wiping them away, she suppressed her rising irritation and dry throat, carefully placing the final fragment in place.
After days of effort, the puzzle was complete.
The once-disjointed pictograms now pulsed with life, trembling violently before breaking free from the paper!
The characters erupted in a blinding golden light, like the midday sun, and shot straight into Wen Shuangbai’s spiritual sea.
Her face paled. The searing pain made her feel as if her veins, bones, and blood were being scorched dry.
She pushed the chair aside and sat on the floor, closing her eyes to endure the agony as she focused inward.
In her spiritual sea, the characters transformed into moving images—a woman’s silhouette in countless poses, each accompanied by different incantations and hand seals.
"The blazing sun at noon, flames burning fiercely."
"Heaven and earth, a great kiln; the sun’s embers cook the sixth moon."
"All things tempered within… fields boiling like broth…"
The silhouette was familiar—it was Ye Qingrong.
This was the third level of the Yaoling Heart Method!
Ignoring the pain, Wen Shuangbai immersed herself completely, studying every movement and absorbing every word, oblivious to time.
---
During Wen Shuangbai’s closed-door cultivation, Four Hundred Coins wasn’t allowed to disturb her, so Xie Ziyin temporarily took care of it.
One day, the little spirit dragged a bag of spirit stones—taller than itself—through the open window, stumbling as it climbed inside.
It jumped onto the table and made its way to the little drawer it had vehemently demanded Xie Ziyin clear out for its exclusive use. Removing the tiny key hanging from its neck, it struggled to unlock it, then mustered all its strength to pull the drawer open before kicking its earned spirit stone pouch inside.
Hmph! It had already saved up three pouches, and its little treasury now boasted a whopping five hundred spirit stones! From now on, if it wanted new clothes, it wouldn’t need its master to foot the bill!
Exhausted, the little wooden figure lay down on the table to rest, rolling onto its side to chat with the star-shaped stone placed there as a lamp.
Indeed, during this time, Xie Ziyin had been using the starstone as a light source—eco-friendly and budget-friendly.
Mid-conversation, it heard Xie Ziyin call out, "Come here, I need your help."
Four Hundred (its nickname) sighed: Why was it always so busy?
The little wooden figure scrambled up from the table and trotted over, stopping at Xie Ziyin’s feet and tilting its head up to look at him.
Xie Ziyin’s hands were covered in bite marks from the man-eating flower. As he bandaged himself, he asked Four Hundred, "What’s this flower saying?"
After some investigation, he confirmed that this particular man-eating flower had devoured others of its kind and was exceptionally vicious, attacking anyone who came near.
He suspected the flower had developed a trace of spiritual awareness.
Realizing this, Xie Ziyin had sought out Old Man Ye earlier that day. The old man took one look and immediately wanted the flower, even offering to buy it at an exorbitant price.
But Xie Ziyin refused. Old Man Ye left in a huff, tossing him a book on spiritual plant cultivation before storming off.
Like magical artifacts, spiritual plants could develop sentience, but such cases were exceedingly rare on the Xuantian Continent.
According to Old Man Ye, for some unknown reason, ever since the emergence of the Sacred Tower five hundred years ago, the Xuantian Continent had been unable to cultivate any spiritual plants with sentience. Nowadays, not a single one remained.
This man-eating flower might very well be the only one left—perhaps even the last of its kind.
After listening for a while, Four Hundred wrote: [It can’t speak yet. It just keeps screaming ‘Aaaah!’ randomly.]
Xie Ziyin: "..."
---
Time passed day by day. Late autumn arrived, and after a night of wind and rain, the maple trees covering the mountains outside Qingling Academy shed most of their leaves.
Meanwhile, inside the Endless House, twenty-some days in the outside world translated to over two hundred days within—nearly a full year.
Wen Shuangbai had maintained the exact same posture, sitting in meditation for almost an entire year.
The moment the woman opened her eyes, a flash of golden light flickered in her pupils, bright as the sun.
Thanks to the third layer of the heart technique, she had advanced from the early stage of the Tribulation Transcendence realm to the middle stage.
When Wen Shuangbai first transmigrated into this world, she had learned that the Xuantian Continent’s seven major cultivation realms had two nearly insurmountable gaps.
The first was the initial realm, the Spirit Awakening stage.
Whether one could enter this stage determined if they remained an ordinary person or became a cultivator—only one in ten succeeded.
The second was the fourth realm, the Tribulation Transcendence stage.
Positioned in the middle of the seven realms, this stage served as a bridge between the lower and higher realms. Out of ten thousand cultivators, only one could cross it and enter the higher realms. The elimination rate was staggeringly high.
Now, she saw it for herself.
Even the third layer of the heart technique left behind by Senior Ye Qingrong, with its extraordinary power, had only allowed her to take a small step from the early to the middle stage. The higher she climbed, the harder it became. How, then, was she supposed to progress from the middle to the late stage, and then from Tribulation Transcendence to the Great Ascension realm?
Wen Shuangbai pondered her future but couldn’t come up with an answer, so she gave up and decided to focus on the other puzzle piece while her momentum held.
With the experience from the first piece and the minor breakthrough in her cultivation, she managed to assemble the second map in just one night.
The next morning, in the Endless House’s main hall...
Eight people—seven humans and one sentient brush—gathered around the table, staring at the map spread across it, all lost in thought.
The map was utterly bare, marked only by a few simple lines and a circle drawn at one location.
Wen Shuangbai genuinely couldn’t make sense of it. Holding a steaming bowl of egg and scallion noodles loaded with meat, she asked between bites, "Where is this?"
The group exchanged glances before their eyes eventually settled on Elder Cao, then shifted to Pavilion Master Xu.
Pavilion Master Xu tapped a rolled-up storybook against her palm, thinking for a moment before speaking in cryptic terms: "This drawing is too simplistic, and its meaning cannot be divined. It’s as if the creator didn’t want anyone to recognize the location—but once you arrive, you’ll know. Do you understand what I mean?"
Lu Jiayao felt dizzy. He had listened, but it was as if he’d heard nothing at all: "No."
Li Zhuohua saw right through it: "So you’re saying you don’t know either?"
"...You brat." Xu Jingshu chuckled before scolding her lightly. "You could say that. If the heavens’ secrets refuse to be deciphered, then don’t force it. The fourth round of trials begins in three days. You’ll have to figure it out yourselves then."
With that, Pavilion Master Xu left.
Seeing this, Cao Xing took Four Hundred with him, planning to have the little brush help with paperwork before the trials started.
Wen Shuangbai watched her brush head off to work with satisfaction before turning back to the map she’d pieced together, musing aloud, "Could it be a treasure map?"
Li Zhuohua shot her junior sister an approving look—truly kindred spirits!
"I think so too." Li Zhuohua pointed her sword at the circled spot. "This might be a sword tomb, hiding countless legendary blades!"
Wen Shuangbai had a different preference: "Or maybe a spirit stone mine."
If so, they’d strike it rich!
Shen Hefeng, ever the pessimist, offered his take: "In my opinion, it’s more likely a ghost tomb—cursed ground swarming with vengeful spirits. Heh heh heh."
The other five: "......"
Wen Shuangbai’s good mood was thoroughly ruined by the gloomy Taoist. Setting down her empty bowl, she turned to Lu Jiayao, the group’s most well-informed member: "How has my father been doing in the Lu family lately?"
With the trials about to start, she wanted to treat herself to a lavish meal at Drunken Immortal Pavilion beforehand—courtesy of her father—and maybe snag some of their famous wine.
But before she could voice her plan, Xie Ziyin cut in: "Don’t even think about it."
Wen Shuangbai: "??"
Lu Jiayao then dropped a bombshell: "Elder Wen has gone missing!"
Wen Shuangbai: "Huh?"
"Junior Sister Shuangbai, we miscalculated! Lu Ying did treat Elder Wen well, but the Lu family isn’t under his control yet—his father is still the patriarch." Lu Jiayao recounted the events with animated glee. "Lu Ying is the only son, but he has hordes of cousins. His uncle alone spawned a whole litter! After his poor performance in the Sacred Tower trials, his uncle’s faction was already dissatisfied. Now that he’s brought Elder Wen home and started doting on him like a second father, even the patriarch is upset."
"Junior Sister, you wouldn’t believe the drama in the Lu family while you were in seclusion. They’ve had so many fights, and in the end, Elder Wen just... vanished." Lu Jiayao couldn’t resist adding, "Lu Ying’s still searching. Between looking for Yu Xiaoxiao and Elder Wen, he’s got his hands full."
Wen Shuangbai sighed. "Lu Ying is truly devoted."
Despite being under a love spell, they still couldn't forget the female lead.
Yin Xuan added, "I couldn't find my master either."
But since Lu Ying was still alive and kicking, Yin Xuan wasn’t too worried about his master’s safety.
Wen Shuangbai sighed regretfully, "Well, my feast is ruined."
She guessed that her father had probably been detained by Lu Ying’s father.
Tsk, what a mess.
With her father missing, Wen Shuangbai returned to her room to continue consolidating her cultivation.
Three days later, the six of them ate and drank their fill before setting off together for the Sacred Tower to begin the fourth round of the competition!
