On the way back, Xie Ziyin was contemplating the matter of storage artifacts.
The original owner had possessed one.
But during that trial mission down the mountain with Yu Xiaoxiao, the original owner had not only lost his life but also his alchemy furnace and storage ring.
He had since bought a new alchemy furnace, but the storage ring wasn’t urgently needed, and with limited funds, he had put it off.
Now, after tirelessly working shifts—refining pills, selling them, and repeating the cycle—he had finally saved up enough. It was time to buy one.
Xie Ziyin compared prices at the two cheapest places—the Hundred Ghost Tower and Qingling Market—but wasn’t satisfied with either.
Then he remembered the alchemy furnace he had bought from Wen Shuangbai.
Affordable, durable, and unbeatable value for money.
But on his Mystic Heaven Mirror page, Wen Shuangbai had vanished long ago.
He hadn’t deleted her, which meant she had deleted him.
Now, he was supposed to add her back?
Hah, not a chance.
But was he really willing to pay double for a storage ring he didn’t even like that much?
…Not really.
Honestly, this kind of penny-pinching, bargain-hunting struggle was something he hadn’t experienced since graduating university.
Being broke was tough.
After a moment of deliberation, Xie Ziyin chose to swallow his pride for the sake of saving money—and went to find Li Xingyang.
Li Xingyang was still copying medical texts.
Lately, he had been forced to absorb so much knowledge that his brain felt swollen.
Holding his dizzy head, Li Xingyang peeked around, relieved that the tyrant hadn’t returned yet, and set down his brush to relax with the Mystic Heaven Mirror.
But as he scrolled, a strange feeling crept over him. He glanced up—and nearly jumped out of his skin.
Xie Ziyin was standing right behind him, arms crossed, looking down at him with an amused smirk before extending a hand. "Hand it over."
Li Xingyang: "…"
With no choice, he reluctantly surrendered the Mystic Heaven Mirror.
Xie Ziyin took it and walked off without another word.
This time, Li Xingyang knew better than to argue. He returned to his torturous copying, two pages in, when the tyrant returned in high spirits, tossing the Mystic Heaven Mirror back at him along with a bag of spirit stones.
"Go to the outer peak in three days and pick up a storage ring for me. Nine hundred and eighty spirit stones."
Li Xingyang: "Huh?"
Wait, since when were storage rings this cheap? His had cost ten thousand!
"Oh, wait." Xie Ziyin paused mid-step, reconsidering. "Actually, don’t go. Send your other lackey instead."
Baffled but obedient, Li Xingyang agreed. Once Xie Ziyin left, he hurriedly checked the Mystic Heaven Mirror.
A new conversation had appeared.
[MysticHeaven’sStrongestIsMe: How much for a storage ring with one mu of space?]
[CheapArtisanWen: One thousand spirit stones.]
[MysticHeaven’sStrongestIsMe: Can you go lower?]
Li Xingyang: "?"
Haggling over a thousand spirit stones? Just how broke was this tyrant?
He kept reading.
[CheapArtisanWen: It’s already super cheap! At most, I can knock off ten—nine hundred ninety.]
[MysticHeaven’sStrongestIsMe: How about nine fifty? If you’re competing in the tournament, I’ll wish you first place.]
[CheapArtisanWen: Oh, thanks! I’ll take the blessing, but the lowest I can go is nine eighty.]
Li Xingyang: "??"
Since when did haggling work like this?
What kind of chuunibyou named themselves "MysticHeaven’sStrongestIsMe"? Still, the flattery was oddly charming.
Wen Shuangbai was in a great mood as she finished replying to messages on her Mystic Heaven Mirror.
Lately, thanks to her unbeatable combination of quality and affordability, her business at Qingling Market had boomed. More and more clients sought her out for artifact crafting.
Unfortunately, there was a limit to how many artifacts she could refine in a day, so now, Wen Shuangbai had the luxury of picking her orders.
She needed to repair her own broken storage ring and make new ones for her senior brother and junior sister.
So she only accepted storage artifact commissions, pushing non-urgent requests two weeks out and turning down urgent ones.
After some calculations, Wen Shuangbai realized she had already saved over ten thousand spirit stones from crafting.
If she won first place at the Thousand Mechanisms Pavilion and claimed the thirty-thousand-spirit-stone prize, she could pay off the original owner’s hundred-thousand debt within six months—with plenty to spare.
Life was looking good!
Imagining her bright future, Wen Shuangbai felt reinvigorated. She rummaged through her broken storage ring, pulling out over a dozen discarded rings.
With practiced ease, she melted them down for materials.
During the first month of reversing the Yaoling Heart Method, the pain had been unbearable.
But pain, it seemed, was something one could grow accustomed to. Now, it didn’t hurt much at all—in fact, after getting used to the reversal, it felt almost pleasant, like a deep-tissue massage on her spiritual bones. A strange, satisfying ache.
Late into the night, Wen Shuangbai pored over her crafting manual, fully absorbed in studying storage rings.
The key to storage rings lay in the spatial arrays inscribed within.
Qingling Mountain had four pavilions and eighteen peaks. The four pavilions were the Sword Arts Pavilion, Thousand Mechanisms Pavilion, Sky-Questioning Pavilion, and Medical Pavilion.
Each had its specialties, yet their disciplines overlapped in places.
The Thousand Mechanisms Pavilion, for instance, focused on artifact crafting and manipulation.
However, in the process of artifact forging, mastering talismans and formations is essential. Disciples of the Sky-Questioning Pavilion also cultivate both talisman and formation arts.
Wen Shuangbai had now mastered fusion and forging techniques quite well, but she was lacking in talismans and formations.
It was said that geniuses in these two arts could draw talismans with a single stroke and set formations with a mere placement of stones.
Wen Shuangbai couldn’t do that, but it didn’t matter—she excelled at copying and correcting.
Following the spatial formation diagram from the book, she carefully replicated it on the inner side of a ring. If she made a mistake, she would melt it down and start over.
At first, she made many errors, but with repetition and practice, Wen Shuangbai eventually managed to complete it in one go.
It was just a bit ugly—but ugliness didn’t affect its functionality!
In the end, she added a small extra feature to each of the three storage rings she crafted that night.
That evening, Wen Shuangbai stayed up all night.
Meanwhile, in a secluded courtyard of the medical pavilion, Xie Ziyin was also awake.
He sat at a table, surrounded by over a dozen medicinal herbs, including crystal feathergrass, and in the center lay an ancient wooden box.
The box was entirely black, covered in dirt, its surface worn and mottled, clearly aged. Under the dim candlelight, it appeared mysterious and eerie.
This had been left behind by the original owner’s deceased father. The original owner had buried it underground and never opened it.
Xie Ziyin had just dug it up tonight.
He reached out, his slender fingers lightly resting on the box, and could clearly sense the presence inside—restless, continuously battering against the box’s seals.
Xie Ziyin tapped the box with a knuckle and warned, "Quiet. Let me think carefully."
The disturbance inside the box seemed to grow even more intense, as if he could hear its provocative whispers.
Xie Ziyin: "Keep making noise, and I’ll bury you in the latrine."
"……" The thing inside the box seemed remarkably sentient. It gradually stilled, lying dormant in silence.
After a long pause, Xie Ziyin reached out and opened the box.
—
The 324th year of Xuantian, the third day of the sixth month, clear skies—an auspicious day for all endeavors.
Early in the morning, thousands of disciples from all directions streamed toward the main hall of Qingling Mountain. Viewed from above, the disciples resembled countless rushing streams, converging outside the main hall in a vast, dark mass.
Amid the crowded throng, Wen Shuangbai took some time to push her way to the Thousand Mechanisms Pavilion’s designated area.
She queued for a while to collect her travel permit for Mount Taihua and the artifact she had forged in the first round of the competition, then handed over items she couldn’t bring—such as the Mystic Heaven Mirror—to her senior disciples for safekeeping.
Shen Hefeng had already submitted their team roster to the sect. Once the entrance to the Mount Taihua secret realm opened, the travel permits would automatically transport their team members to the same location.
But just to be safe, after collecting her things, Wen Shuangbai hurried to the Sky-Questioning Pavilion to find Shen Hefeng.
She hadn’t waited long before Lu Jiayao arrived, along with the eldest senior brother, who was sleepwalking with his eyes closed.
Yet, despite his drowsy shuffling, the eldest senior brother didn’t bump into anyone along the way.
Wen Shuangbai and Shen Hefeng squatted nearby, watching.
Shen Hefeng chewed on a blade of grass and asked indistinctly, "What realm is your eldest senior brother at? He’s pretty impressive."
Wen Shuangbai was admiring her artifact with great fondness and replied offhandedly, "Can’t you tell?"
"You—Spirit Initiation Realm, sixth layer. Ziyin—sixth layer. Lu Jiayao—fifth layer." Shen Hefeng counted. "Me—half a layer into the Enlightened Aperture Realm."
Wen Shuangbai interrupted, puzzled, "There’s such a thing as half a layer?"
"Oh, it means I’m halfway into the Enlightened Aperture Realm." Shen Hefeng was annoyed, feeling this junior sister was utterly insensitive. Couldn’t she see he’d been stuck between the Spirit Initiation and Enlightened Aperture Realms for ages? Did she have to rub it in? "Hmph, but I can’t tell your eldest senior brother’s level."
Since they were future teammates, Wen Shuangbai saw no reason to hide it: "Eldest senior brother is three and a half layers above you."
Shen Hefeng: "……"
First, Zhuohua’s cultivation was higher than his. Then Lu Ying and Bai Lijue surpassed him. And now, even this eldest senior brother, who had appeared out of nowhere, was stronger than him!
What was going on? What kind of world was this?!
He had always been the prodigy, the child everyone praised!
Yet now, geniuses seemed to be everywhere.
Shen Hefeng began to sulk.
Yin Xuan, without even opening his eyes, accurately located his second junior sister and curled up on the ground like a lazy cat, happily feigning sleep.
Lu Jiayao enthusiastically greeted them, but seeing Shen Hefeng and Wen Shuangbai absorbed in their own worlds and paying him little attention, he flitted around like a social butterfly, mingling with others and gathering gossip.
Before long, Shen Hefeng cheered up again: "Your eldest senior brother is twenty. I’m only eighteen—in two years, I’ll catch up!"
Wen Shuangbai: "First of all, my friend, you have to survive those two years."
In the book, the villain Shen Hefeng died not long after, his cultivation forever stuck at the first layer of the Enlightened Aperture Realm.
Shen Hefeng smirked darkly. "Junior sister, did you dip your words in poison?"
Wen Shuangbai shrugged and said no more, returning to admire her masterpiece.
It was a fiery red whip, dazzling under the morning sun, so breathtakingly beautiful it could steal one’s soul.
Suddenly, something flickered in Wen Shuangbai’s vision, glinting faintly in the distance.
She instinctively looked up.
The hem of a pristine white robe, spotless as untouched snow. A hand hung slightly at the wearer’s side, its fingers slender and well-defined, as exquisite as fine porcelain.
On the index finger of that hand rested a jade-green ring, emitting a soft, luminous glow.
The shimmer Wen Shuangbai had noticed earlier came from this very storage ring.
Truth be told, the design of this ring was utterly common—many disciples in the crowd today wore identical ones.
But this particular ring? She knew it better than anyone else, because she had crafted it herself.
Among the three rings she had poured her heart into, one pale yellow had gone to her junior sister, a silver one to the eldest senior brother, and this green one—to that sweet-talking, eccentric youth.
But that white robe… Damnably familiar.
A foreboding dread clenched Wen Shuangbai’s heart.
Her head snapped up, and within her line of sight, the features of the person in white became unmistakably clear—Xie Ziyin.
Xie Ziyin’s gaze swept indifferently past Wen Shuangbai before landing on Shen Hefeng beside her. He gave a slight nod in greeting.
Shen Hefeng studied him, noting how unusually frail the man looked today. Spitting out the blade of grass he’d been chewing, he remarked sarcastically, "You look like death warmed over. What’s wrong with you?"
Xie Ziyin: "?"
Having never read the original text and only heard fragments from his junior colleagues, Xie Ziyin’s knowledge of the plot was limited. But he knew one thing for certain: "Don’t worry. I’ll probably outlive you."
Shen Hefeng: "…?"
Poisoned twice in quick succession, Shen Hefeng flew into a rage. He shot to his feet, jabbing a finger at Xie Ziyin and Wen Shuangbai as he bellowed, "Did you two sneak off to kiss last night or something?!"
Xie Ziyin: "?"
What nonsense.
Xie Ziyin fixed Shen Hefeng with a glare sharp enough to flay him alive. "Are you out of your mind?"
Meanwhile, Wen Shuangbai—still puzzling over the ring—was caught off guard. The moment Shen Hefeng’s words registered, she bristled like a cat whose tail had been stepped on. "Shen Hefeng! You—! You can shovel any crap into your mouth, but don’t you dare spew nonsense!"
Shen Hefeng, once riled, was a force of nature: "Then why are your tongues both so venomous? Ah, right—you’re engaged, aren’t you? Team up against me, will you? Bring it on! This old man can take you both!"
A murderous aura thickened the air.
This is bad. Really bad.
Yin Xuan curled into a ball and quietly slithered away.
The commotion drew the attention of the surrounding crowd.
Someone muttered, "Why are they fighting?"
"Looks like they’re from the same team," another said, craning their neck. "The competition hasn’t even started, and they’re already turning on each other."
"What’s the argument about?"
"Hard to hear, but it sounds like a married couple ganging up on someone?"
"Oho, this is why you never team up with couples! Nothing but drama!"
"Eh, let them fight. Fewer strong opponents for us!"
"…"
Amid the spectators, Lu Jiayao—who had been ready to enjoy the spectacle—suddenly froze. Realization struck, and he frantically shoved through the crowd.
No no no, that’s his team!!!
He sprinted forward, wedging himself between the three with near-tearful desperation. "Stop! Everyone calm down! There’s clearly a misunderstanding here! Just—just stop fighting… The competition’s about to start!"
