53: Chapter 53 You're enjoying swallowing this poison, aren't you?

Blue light swallowed everything.

Xia Lengbai fell heavily onto the hard ice, a dull pain radiating from her knees and elbows. Ice shards pressed through her fabric and dug into her skin, cold and painful.

She lay prone for a few seconds before propping herself up and standing, looking around.

Desolate.

This was the first thought that popped into her mind.

The sky was grayish-white, like an old cloth that had been washed too many times. There was no sun, no clouds, just a uniform, lifeless gray.

The ground beneath her feet was an endless glacier. The ice had a murky blue-gray hue, covered in fine gravel and debris; from a distance, it looked like a frozen sea of sludge.

The temperature was very low, and her breath condensed into white mist in the air. With every inhalation, she could feel the stinging pain of ice shards piercing her nasal cavity.

Her spiritual power was locked within her Dantian, like a frozen stone, completely impossible to mobilize.

Xia Lengbai wrapped her tattered outer robe tightly around herself and began to walk forward.

She did not know where she was, nor did she know which direction to take.

But she knew that staying put meant certain death—either by freezing or by being killed by whoever was chasing her.

The ice surface was slippery, and the gravel underfoot kept rolling away. She walked unsteadily, having to expend twice the effort of usual to maintain her balance with every step.

The Restriction spell mark on her forehead was still faintly hot, like a red-hot iron nail embedded under her skin, reminding her that her life was still held in someone else's hands.

After walking for about two hours, the sky began to darken.

Calling it dark was a stretch; in reality, the grayish-white sky just grew a shade grayer. The murky light pressed down, and the shadows of the glacier were stretched long, as if the ground had split open into countless black gashes.

Xia Lengbai stopped to catch her breath, then crouched down to scoop up a handful of ice shards and shoved them into her mouth.

The ice shards melted on her tongue, carrying a mineral bitterness mixed with a cold, crisp sweetness, barely moistening her cracked lips.

Just as she stood up, a golden Sword Qi swept past her side, flying right by her ear and slicing off a few strands of hair.

The Sword Qi landed on the ground, leaving a scorched black mark on the ice, with white smoke hissing from the edges.

Xia Lengbai froze.

She did not turn around, but instead slowly, bit by bit, turned her head, her peripheral vision sweeping toward the direction the Sword Qi had come from.

Ten zhang away, a figure stood on a protruding ice rock.

Lin Yun.

He had changed his clothes; no longer wearing the combat attire stained with blood and dust from before, he was now in a brand-new white robe with gold-threaded patterns embroidered along the edges.

His hair was neatly tied back, and the bloodstains on his face had been cleaned away, revealing a face so handsome it was almost demonic.

But his eyes were no longer the warm, jade-like black eyes she remembered.

They were vertical pupils.

Golden, faintly glowing vertical pupils; the pupils resembled thin, long slits, appearing particularly glaring in the dim light.

Behind him stood a woman.

Bai Lian.

She stood there quietly, head bowed, arms hanging naturally at her sides, like a puppet whose Soul had been extracted.

Her eyes were open, but her pupils were unfocused, lacking any point of vision. Her expression was as calm as stagnant water, showing no fluctuations of emotion.

Heavenly Dao Contract.

Lin Yun had taken her in using a Heavenly Dao Contract.

Xia Lengbai's heart sank a notch.

Lin Yun spoke, his voice surprisingly gentle, as if he were afraid of startling her, with a tone of deliberate softness: "Lengbai, this is your last chance."

He paused, then added: "Leave that madman and return to my side. I can pretend as if nothing ever happened."

Xia Lengbai looked at him without speaking.

She looked carefully into Lin Yun's eyes; there was no warmth in those golden vertical pupils.

The words he spoke were gentle, but his gaze was cold, as if he were appraising an item he had recovered, rather than a living person.

She tugged at the corner of her mouth.

"As if nothing ever happened?"

She repeated this sentence, her tone carrying undisguised mockery, "Lin Yun, are you serious?"

Lin Yun's brows furrowed slightly.

Xia Lengbai raised her right hand and pointed to her forehead, indicating that small, pale golden rune mark: "If you truly cared for me, you would not have left this Restriction on my forehead without removing it for me."

Her voice was not loud, but it sounded exceptionally clear across the empty glacier: "The spell mark planted by Shen Xiao is still there. If you force me to come to your side, I will suffer a backlash with every step I take."

She lowered her hand and stared straight at Lin Yun: "If you want me to go back, find a way to undo it yourself."

She appeared calm, as if negotiating a trade.

But her heart was beating nearly twice as fast as usual.

She was gambling.

Gambling that Lin Yun couldn't bear to let her truly get hurt.

Gambling that the Restriction left by Shen Xiao was clever enough—at least clever enough that Lin Yun couldn't break it in a few quick moves.

Lin Yun was silent for about three seconds.

Then he moved.

He leaped down from the ice rock, his form tracing a smooth arc through the dim light. The moment he landed, he didn't make a sound, his footsteps as light as a cat landing on a velvet rug.

He walked toward Xia Lengbai—one step, two steps, three steps—stopping only when he was two steps away from her.

He reached out his hand.

That hand was slender and fair, the nails neatly trimmed, with the fingertips faintly shimmering with a layer of pale golden light—a sign of Demonic Qi leaking out.

His fingers touched the pale golden rune mark on Xia Lengbai's forehead.

The moment they touched, the rune mark on her forehead suddenly became scorching hot.

It wasn't a slow rise in temperature, but an instantaneous jump from ice-cold to scorching heat, as if someone had pressed a red-hot branding iron against her forehead.

Xia Lengbai didn't have time to react before a crimson-gold flame erupted from the mark.

She was all too familiar with the color and temperature of that flame: Burning Heaven Pill Fire.

The moment it touched Lin Yun's fingertips, it struck like a startled viper, violently coiling around his palm and spreading up his fingers, wrist, and forearm. It moved as fast as water splashed onto paper, swallowing his entire right arm in the blink of an eye.

Lin Yun's pupils contracted violently.

His body reacted faster than his consciousness; he jerked back a step, clenched his left hand into a fist, and slammed it hard into the crimson-gold flame on his right arm, trying to use brute force to extinguish the fire.

It was useless.

Burning Heaven Pill Fire did not burn flesh; it burned the spiritual power within the Meridians.

When his punch landed, the flames didn't diminish; instead, they surged upward along the force of his blow, burning directly to his shoulder joint. It emitted a hissing sound like boiling fat, accompanied by a burnt odor that dispersed into the cold air.

Lin Yun's expression finally changed.

He let out a muffled grunt, retreating several steps, his left hand gripping the base of his right arm tightly. For the first time, his golden vertical pupils showed the contraction and trembling caused by pain.

On his right arm, the Demonic Qi hissed as it was scorched by the Burning Heaven Pill Fire, like water poured onto a red-hot iron plate, with white steam billowing from the surface of his arm.

Bai Lian remained standing in place, motionless, watching it all with empty eyes, like a lifeless statue.

Xia Lengbai stood where she was, watching Lin Yun's wretched retreat, the corners of her mouth curling into a cold arc.

She had won the gamble.

But the weight in her heart did not lift.

Because this hidden move left behind by Shen Xiao was even more ruthless than she had imagined.

She did not know when Shen Xiao had buried this seed into her Meridians, nor did she know when he had calculated that Lin Yun would come to touch this spell mark.

She only knew one thing: Shen Xiao never intended for her to be a secure hostage from the very beginning.

He had never trusted her at all.

He hadn't even considered whether she might betray him.

He had been waiting for Lin Yun to come looking for her from the start.

In this game, he wasn't playing Lin Yun's game, nor was he playing her game.

He was playing his own game.

The wind on the glacier howled, whipping up fine ice shards that struck her face like countless tiny needles pricking the skin.

Watching the process of Lin Yun gripping his right arm tightly with his left hand, his expression shifting from shock to fury, Xia Lengbai had only one thought in her mind.

Shen Xiao.

How many more hidden moves do you have?

Meanwhile, at Cangjue Mountain.

The blood Formation under Shen Xiao's feet was like a giant beast being awakened, pressing in on him from all directions.

Blood-colored light surged from the dense runic inscriptions on the ground, flowing through the air like thick liquid; with every breath, he could feel that cloying, bloody scent surging into his lungs, carrying a nauseating heat.

He had already killed four Yao Race guards.

Four corpses lay scattered at his feet, each dead in a different way; one had been stabbed through the skull from the jaw with his short sword, one had his cervical spine kicked and broken by him, and the other two had mistakenly stepped on trap runes within the blood Formation; after being knocked down by their comrades' corpses, they were burned to charcoal by the Formation's own backlash.

But his stamina was bottoming out.

Bai Lian stood at the edge of the blood Formation, her face devoid of any expression, merely raising her hand mechanically and continuously injecting spiritual power into the Formation.

Her gaze was so hollow it didn't look like that of a living person, more like a puppet on strings; clearly, after being controlled by the Heavenly Dao Contract, her autonomous consciousness had been suppressed to the lowest limit.

But this did not mean her combat prowess had decreased.

Bai Lian, controlled by the Heavenly Dao Contract, was instead even more troublesome.

She no longer had her own emotions or hesitation; all her actions had become the purest, most direct execution of commands: to kill Shen Xiao and take back the stolen memory fragments.

Her cultivation base was already approaching the Early Stage of Void Return, while Shen Xiao was merely at the Nascent Soul stage.

This blood Formation was slowly, bit by bit, draining his spiritual power to replenish her own.

He could feel his Meridians withering; every time he circulated his Cultivation Technique, it was like digging for water in a dried-up riverbed—the deeper he dug, the drier it became.

He had to think of a way.

Immediately.

Right now.

Shen Xiao gripped the short sword in his hand; fine cracks had already appeared on the blade—damage caused by the continuous, high-intensity circulation of spiritual power; if he kept using it, it would completely shatter after at most three or four more strikes.

His mind rapidly flipped through all the memory fragments he had plundered: the Silver-Bearded Old Daoist's knowledge of Formations, Nangong Li's insights on alchemy, Bai Lian's tomb-guarding Legacy...

A scene suddenly exploded in his mind.

Nangong Li.

A young Nangong Li, wearing a gray Daoist robe stained with dregs of medicine, crouched in front of a dilapidated Immortal Cave, holding a charred twig and drawing something on the ground.

In front of her was a withered blood-colored Formation; the lines of the Formation patterns were almost identical to the one before him—a Ten Thousand Spirit Blood Sacrifice Formation.

Nangong Li tapped a node on the Formation pattern with the twig.

"Many people think this line is used to extract the spiritual power of the sacrifice."

She muttered to herself, her tone carrying a kind of pedantic arrogance,

"Actually, that is wrong. Its true function is reverse infusion—pouring the Formation's own spiritual power back into the body of the controller."

She looked up, a trace of disdainful amusement at the corners of her mouth: "When those idiots set up the Formation, they never think of this; they think they are sucking other people's blood, but in reality, they are delivering their own blood into someone else's bowl."

The scene ended there.

Shen Xiao's pupils suddenly brightened.

Reverse infusion.

Pouring the blood Formation's spiritual power back into his own Meridians.

He took a deep breath, sheathed the short sword at his waist, pressed his palms together, and slowly closed his eyes.

He could feel the flowing blood-colored energy in the blood Formation touching his skin, attempting to penetrate his pores and burrow into his Meridians, dragging his spiritual power out bit by bit.

He did not resist.

He released all his defenses, allowing that blood-colored energy to surge into his Meridians.

The intense pain was like someone pouring molten iron into his blood vessels, starting from his arms and spreading all the way toward his heart along his shoulders.

He could feel his Meridians being burst open by that violent blood energy; tiny cracks appeared on the walls of his blood vessels, and fresh blood seeped out from the cracks, mixing into that scorching energy, forming a chaotic vortex within his body.

But the pain also instantly activated the potential sleeping within his body.

His cultivation base, which had been suppressed at the Nascent Soul Early Stage for a long time, collapsed with a roar like a dam breached by a flood.

Nascent Soul Middle Stage.

The barrier to his cultivation base was forcibly broken open by him using this violent Blood Poison energy.

A mouthful of black blood sprayed from Shen Xiao's mouth, landing on the ice surface beneath his feet, bursting into a dark red stain on the gray-blue ice layer and emitting a puff of white smoke.

The Meridians all over his body were stained with a layer of dark red toxic marks; that was the Blood Poison of the blood Formation.

But he did not fall.

Relying on that violent energy that had surged toward the Nascent Soul Middle Stage, he suddenly opened his eyes, formed a complex hand seal in front of him, guided all the Blood Poison energy in his body that had not yet been completely refined into the palm of his right hand, and condensed it into a dark red blade at his fingertips.

That blade had no light, no temperature, only a bloody scent so intense it was suffocating.

Shen Xiao swung the blade.

One strike.

He slashed at the weak point on the south side of the blood Formation—a node he had found during the battle earlier, where the flow of spiritual power had shifted slightly because of the Yao Race guards' corpses falling to the ground.

The blood Formation emitted a sharp, explosive sound.

Among the silver runic inscriptions on the ground, one began to crack, spreading spiderweb-like fissures outward from the center; what gushed out from the cracks was no longer blood-like energy, but gray-white waste gas.

The blood Formation was broken.

Bai Lian reacted quickly; the moment the blood Formation shattered, she raised her hands, and a ball of spiritual power as black as ink, exuding a foul stench, condensed in her palms and was smashed fiercely toward Shen Xiao.

But Shen Xiao was faster than her.

He did not block that ball of spiritual power, nor did he dodge; instead, he charged straight toward it; by the time his rapidly approaching figure was reflected in Bai Lian's pupils, he was already within three feet of her.

He did not draw his sword.

Instead, he reached his left hand into his bosom and fished out a red-gold crystal the size of a thumbprint.

That was Nangong Li's alchemy memory fragment.

Holding that fragment, amidst Bai Lian's astonished gaze, he pressed it directly into the center of her forehead.

"Aren't you looking for your memories?"

Shen Xiao's voice was hoarse, carrying a panting breath from the uncleared Blood Poison, but his tone was as calm as if he were chatting about daily life.

"Come here, I'll give you Nangong Li's memories too..."

He pushed hard, and the fragment sank beneath the skin of Bai Lian's forehead and disappeared.

"See how he knelt and begged the Alchemy Ancestral Master."

Bai Lian's body stiffened abruptly.

Her eyes were wide open, her pupils contracting, dilating, and contracting again violently, as if at that moment, two conflicting memory Systems had been stuffed into her, and her brain could not process these two completely different streams of information.

On one side were her own memories of guarding the Kunlun Ruins for ten thousand years, and on the other were Nangong Li's three hundred years of alchemy cultivation memories.

The two sets of memories were like two sharp blades, crazily cutting, colliding, and slaughtering each other in her Sea of Consciousness, producing wave after wave of intense mental shockwaves.

Bai Lian's body began to tremble uncontrollably; her lips quivered, emitting some indistinct sounds, as if she were speaking, yet also as if she were crying, ultimately turning into a low, almost beast-like roar from the depths of her throat.

She held her head and crouched down, curling her whole body into a ball, like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.

Shen Xiao did not spare her another glance.

He turned around and ran with large strides toward the northeast, following the location of the glacial rift he had seen in Bai Lian's memories.

His steps were staggering, he was covered in wounds, and he occasionally coughed up black phlegm laced with blood; he looked as disheveled as someone who had crawled out of a pile of dead bodies.

But his eyes were calm to the extreme.

He still had half a piece of dry ration he had torn from a corpse in his mouth, chewed it a few times, and swallowed.

"There is still a cup of tea's time left."

He muttered to himself, his tone indistinct, yet carrying an air of certainty.

"Lin Yun should be sending word soon as well."