71: Chapter 71 The Deal, the Brand, and the Returning Pursuers

Shen Xiao's pupils shrank abruptly, and he was about to retreat.

That cold will that had scanned him suddenly shifted direction.

Without pausing, without hesitation, like a precision robotic arm switching workstations after completing a routine inspection, the vast, near-terrifying will withdrew from his Sea of Consciousness and turned to focus on Xia Lengbai beside him.

Hum...

On the surface of the mercury light orb floating above, countless tiny runes lit up simultaneously for an instant, and then a thumb-thick strand of silver light separated from the main body of the orb, like a cold silkworm thread, drifting and hovering three inches in front of Xia Lengbai.

Xia Lengbai instinctively took a half-step back, her left hand already gripping the hilt of the spare short blade at her waist.

But the strand of light had no intention of attacking; it merely condensed, coiled, and took shape before her. Within three breaths, it formed a blurry, non-male, non-female humanoid light silhouette.

The light silhouette had no facial features, only a rough outline, like an empty shell template left behind after a person had been drained of all "personality."

It floated in mid-air, and under the dim blue light, it cast a twisted, elongated shadow on the ice wall.

"Latecomer."

The voice did not come from the "mouth" of the light silhouette, but instead exploded directly in the deepest part of Xia Lengbai's Sea of Consciousness, like a piece of cold iron crashing into a calm lake.

Xia Lengbai shuddered, a needle-like pain piercing the center of her brows.

"You have touched the Restriction and awakened the terminal. You must pay a price, but you may also obtain a qualification."

The voice had no fluctuations, like a program that had been repeatedly executed for millions of years outputting predetermined sentences, every syllable carrying the unquestionable weight of rules.

Shen Xiao listened from the side, his expression gloomy.

His System was nearly paralyzed at this moment; large swaths of gray function icons in his Sea of Consciousness were like striking electricians, hanging there, unable to move.

But he heard every word the light silhouette said clearly.

Terminal.

That word again.

It was exactly the same as the cold synthesized voice that had invaded his Sea of Consciousness just a moment ago.

"Price: A portion of your Divine Soul will be bound by the 'Tomb Guardian Seal.' You must never proactively reveal the truth about this place or the core of the heavenly dao chessboard for the rest of your life. Violators will suffer soul annihilation."

Xia Lengbai's face turned deathly pale.

Soul annihilation.

It was not at the level of the Physical Body turning to ash, but rather having even the chance of Reincarnation completely cut off, with one's very existence erased from all Karma.

If an ordinary Cultivator had said this, she might have treated it as a threat, but when this will spoke, Xia Lengbai felt her Divine Soul trembling instinctively, as if those two words themselves were a noose about to tighten.

"Qualification: You may obtain the 'Ice Soul Profound Light' Legacy, temporarily borrow thirty percent of the terminal's authority to suppress the foreign poison in your body, and receive guidance to leave this Formation."

After speaking, the light silhouette fell silent.

There was no urging, no pressure, just floating there quietly, like a printer in standby mode waiting for the user to press "Confirm."

Above the Ice Cave, muffled sounds of the ice layer cracking came faintly, like distant thunder.

Xia Lengbai stood where she was, her lips pressed into a sharp line.

She looked down at her right wrist; the cyan-black poison, stimulated by the dense, cold aura, was like a waking viper, slowly and firmly spreading up along her Meridians, having already crawled to the position of her elbow.

The frostbite on her left shoulder was also continuously worsening, devouring her remaining combat power with every breath.

Then she turned her head to look at Shen Xiao.

Shen Xiao was panting while supporting himself with one hand on his knee; the bloodstains from his seven orifices had already dried and scabbed. The expression on his face was hard to define as vigilance or mockery, but the blood-red color in his eyes had not yet faded, and something was surging violently in the depths of his pupils, like a pressure cooker that might explode at any moment.

Xia Lengbai did not ask, "What do you think?"

At such a life-and-death moment, she never needed others to make decisions for her.

She withdrew her gaze and looked back at the light silhouette devoid of any personality. When she spoke, her voice was hoarse but decisive, resonant like quenched iron:

"I accept."

The instant her words fell, the light silhouette moved.

It raised its hand and pointed a finger.

A strand of ice-blue light shot out from its fingertip, landing precisely in the center of Xia Lengbai's brows.

"Ugh!"

Xia Lengbai's whole body trembled violently, and a forcibly suppressed cry of pain squeezed out of her throat, as if someone had driven a red-hot nail into her crown.

Her entire body tilted backward uncontrollably, her knees went weak, and she nearly collapsed directly to the ground.

Shen Xiao instinctively reached out to support her, his fingertips just touching her icy arm.

A suffocating chill poured back along the contact surface, stinging him so much that he recoiled his hand abruptly.

At the center of Xia Lengbai's brows, a complex, dazzling ice-blue mark suddenly appeared, like an ice flower that bloomed and withered in an instant on a snowfield, flashing once before disappearing deep into her skin.

At the same time, a massive amount of information, like a flood from a broken dam, frantically surged into her Sea of Consciousness...

The cultivation method for the Ice Soul Profound Light.

Precise control over the cold spiritual power of heaven and earth.

Combat experience and Formation knowledge accumulated by generations of Gravekeepers in the ten-thousand-year Legacy.

And... a strand of ice-cold energy so pure it was nearly liquid, surging down along her Meridians like a precision-guided missile, crashing into the cyan-black poison on her right wrist.

"Hiss!"

Xia Lengbai gasped, and the cyan-black color on her right arm was forced back at a speed visible to the naked eye, retreating from her elbow to her wrist, then from her wrist to below her knuckles, and finally being tightly compressed into a small lump at her fingertips, like a trapped beast locked in a cage—although it was not completely eliminated, it could no longer stir up any trouble.

She supported herself on the ground and stood up straight, her movements still stiff, but the aura around her was completely different.

If she had previously been an old sword full of cracks, barely maintaining the illusion of sharpness, then at this moment, she was more like a prism chiseled from ten-thousand-year black ice—cold, transparent, and refracting a deep, cold light that no one dared to look at directly.

Shen Xiao narrowed his eyes to size her up, inwardly complaining.

This woman's strength had recovered by at least forty or fifty percent, and she had also obtained the orthodox Legacy of the White Lotus.

Her capital to turn hostile later had thickened by another layer.

Then he had no time to think about these things.

Because that mercury light orb "looked" at him.

It was not a real "look"; the light orb had no eyes, and it hadn't even turned in his direction.

But Shen Xiao just felt that he had been locked on, scrutinized, and marked.

Deep in his Dantian, the Dark Gold Core, covered in cracks, trembled violently, as if sensing some power that was of the same origin but more powerful and more fundamental.

A scanning sensation, cold to the marrow, forcibly intruded, passing through his fragile Meridian defenses and heading straight for the System halo in his Sea of Consciousness.

The System alarm sounded sharply:

[Warning! Unknown high-level permission protocol intervention detected!]

[System peripheral defense layer breached!]

[Injecting marker... Injection complete.]

Shen Xiao subconsciously "looked inward" at his Sea of Consciousness.

He saw that on the outside of the halo representing the System, a faint, almost imperceptible silver border had quietly appeared.

The silver color was as thin as a spider thread, but it seemed welded to the surface of the halo, emitting the exact same cold aura as the mercury light orb above.

The last line of the System log was highlighted in striking red:

[Unknown high-level protocol marker attached.]

[Partial core data access permissions restricted.]

[This marker has tracking and positioning functions.]

[Removal method: Unknown.]

Shen Xiao stared at those lines for a full three breaths.

The chill in his heart was a few degrees lower than the temperature of this ten-thousand-year ice dome.

Tracking. Positioning. Monitoring.

This Gravekeeper terminal had hung a lock on him and even installed a GPS on the lock.

He was now not just a host for the System, but had become an observation sample for this so-called "Gravekeeper terminal."

Every move he made would likely be continuously uploaded through that silver border to some high-dimensional database he couldn't possibly understand.

"Shen Xiao?"

Xia Lengbai's voice pulled him back to reality.

She had already walked to the side of the remains and was looking at him, the ice-blue mark on her brows flickering. There was a bit more scrutiny in her eyes; after obtaining the Legacy, her sensitivity to the surrounding spiritual power had obviously increased significantly. It was impossible for her not to have noticed Shen Xiao's abnormal reaction just now.

Shen Xiao did not explain.

Such things were useless to explain and would only expose more information.

He just twitched the corner of his mouth, revealing an expression that couldn't be called a smile: "It's nothing, the System is acting up again. What about you? That brand."

Before he finished speaking.

BOOM!!!

Above his head, separated by tens of zhang of ice and rock walls, a violent, near-materialized explosion suddenly erupted!

The entire ice dome trembled violently, and the hanging dark blue ice shards collided crazily like wind chimes, emitting sharp, piercing "ding-ding" sounds, while ice debris fell like a blizzard.

Immediately after, there was a series of dense ice-collapsing sounds, as if someone were using an invisible giant hammer to smash down from above, each sound closer, louder, and more destructive than the last.

"Shen Xiao!"

A cold, furious, and familiar voice, carrying the vast and surging power of Heavenly Fate Luck, pierced through layers of ice walls and poured into the ice dome like rolling thunder:

"Xia Lengbai!"

"You cannot escape!"

"The Heavenly Dao guides us; this place shall be your burial ground!"

Lin Yun.

Shen Xiao and Xia Lengbai looked up at the same time.

Shen Xiao's mouth twitched.

He could hear it; the concentration of anger in this voice was no longer at the "had my Opportunity stolen" level, but at the "had my ancestral grave cuckolded" level.

It seemed that Lin Yun had suffered quite a bit in the outer Formations set up by the White Lotus while tracking them all the way here.

Moreover, his ears keenly captured that at the same time Lin Yun's voice fell, at least three different spiritual power fluctuations came from above.

He didn't come alone.

He brought at least an entire elite squad.

Xia Lengbai's expression also changed.

She had just obtained the Legacy, and her cultivation hadn't been fully digested yet. Facing a Lin Yun blessed by Heavenly Fate was already difficult enough, let alone when he had brought people with him.

Just at this moment.

Before the receding light silhouette completely merged into the remains, the last trace of its will swept across their Seas of Consciousness:

"The pursuers have broken the outer Formation; this place is about to be permanently sealed."

"The exit."

"The ice wall behind the remains."

"Leave quickly."

As the last word fell, the mercury light orb dimmed and contracted rapidly like a receding tide, turning into a slender strand of silver light that submerged into the center of the female remains' brows below.

The last trace of flowing mercury luster under the skin of the remains completely went silent.

She turned back into a cold, ten-thousand-year-dead corpse, sitting there peacefully, her expression serene, as if everything just now had been nothing but an absurd hallucination.

Only the slight warmth remaining at the center of Xia Lengbai's brows and the cold silver border in Shen Xiao's Sea of Consciousness silently reminded them that all of this was real.

The sound of the collapse above was closer.

Shen Xiao turned around, his gaze falling on the ice wall behind the remains that looked completely normal, and then he looked back at Xia Lengbai.

Xia Lengbai was also looking at him.

The two looked at each other for a breath, without a word of nonsense.