Chapter 21: Breaking the Formation Part 2

“Shiyuan, open your eyes and look at me. Isn’t today the joyous day of our wedding? Have you forgotten?” Shang Si’s smiling voice sounded right by her ear once more. Lu Shiyuan’s brows eased, and for a fleeting moment, her focus slipped.

The mist seized the opening, coalescing and burrowing into her orifices with desperate fury.

In her daze, Lu Shiyuan felt a hand clamp around her throat, turning even breathing into torment. She snapped open her eyes and fixed them wide on the “Shang Si” half-crouched before her. The figure wore a glaringly red wedding robe, identical to the one from three years past.

Every feature, every glance—it was unmistakably the woman she had shared her days with these past three years.

The “Shang Si” gazed at her with eyes brimming with allure, her expression seductively captivating. One hand had already drifted gently to Lu Shiyuan’s cheek; they were so close their lips nearly brushed. But in that razor-edge instant—

“No, this is an illusion—you’re not Shang Si!” Lu Shiyuan gritted her teeth and abruptly summoned the Azure Frost Sword at her side. With a resonant hum, the blade flashed from its sheath, piercing straight through “Shang Si”’s body. The fog-wrought figure scattered to the winds in the blink of an eye.

But that strike had drained the last dregs of spiritual energy from Lu Shiyuan’s body. She toppled sideways, no longer able to hold herself up.

In the next breath, the sword clattered to the ground with a sharp ring. The fog, which had momentarily thinned, surged back together…

Lu Shiyuan slipped once more into a state where her six senses shut down.

Identical to that time three years ago in the Lotus Clear Pool, when she had fallen into qi deviation. In her haze, she felt herself dragged into another realm, back to that eternally spring-like courtyard atop Cold Mountain Summit.

Her viewpoint hovered strangely in midair. Lu Shiyuan tentatively swiveled her head and realized she seemed perched in the branches of a massive tree.

Just then, the wooden cabin in the courtyard swung open from within. Shang Si emerged in her red robes, her steps light and lively as she half-turned to address the figure behind her. “Pu Yin, that spell you taught me a few days ago? I mastered it in less than a day. It was so simple. Well? Isn’t it time you honored your promise and came down the mountain to travel with me?”

The voice drifting from the courtyard was one Lu Shiyuan knew as well as her own, yet this version—so lighthearted, laced with a touch of arrogance—was utterly foreign to her.

Shang Si back then had been young and unpolished, her sharp edges unblunted, her every inch radiating unbridled willfulness and pride.

“If you claim you’ve mastered it, then show me right here in the courtyard,” came a sudden reply from the half-open cabin door. Another woman stepped out, her tone carrying a hint of laughter tinged with exasperation.

Lu Shiyuan wasn’t witnessing this exchange between the two women for the first time. But this time, the scene was far clearer and more vivid. She could even hear their voices.

By now, Shang Si had stepped into the center of the small courtyard. Without a word in response to Pu Yin’s request, she simply raised her hand and gave it a gentle wave. Petals rained down from the sky in a cascade of pink, fluttering and drifting until they blanketed the entire yard. In moments, both women’s shoulders and clothes were covered.

The woman cupped her palm to catch half a petal as it drifted slowly earthward. She flashed a brilliant smile and turned to Pu Yin. “Well? Isn’t it beautiful?”

Pu Yin merely shook her head. “Shang Si, is this how you use the killing technique I taught you for battle?”

“Spells aren’t meant solely for fighting enemies,” Shang Si replied, unconcerned.

In the illusory vision, their interaction felt utterly natural. The easy familiarity and intimacy of their postures left Lu Shiyuan staring in a daze. She gazed blankly at the senior called Pu Yin, and suddenly the rumor circulating through the Three Realms came to mind—that she bore a striking resemblance to this woman.

Then, to her shock, Shang Si whipped her head around and looked straight in her direction, as if she could actually see her.

That single glance sent a shiver through Lu Shiyuan’s very soul.

But the young Shang Si didn’t avert her eyes. Instead, she pressed her lips together in a soft smile, laced her hands behind her back, and tilted her head toward Lu Shiyuan’s position. “A Jin, so what do you think? Am I right?”

A Jin?

The unfamiliar nickname stirred an inexplicable sense of belonging in Lu Shiyuan’s heart.

For some reason, the viewpoint—which had remained static in her previous visions—began to shift up and down moments later, as though it had understood Shang Si’s words. The red-clad woman stood motionless in the center of the courtyard within her field of vision, yet she drew steadily closer.

Lu Shiyuan sensed faintly that it was her own vantage point moving forward of its own accord, inch by inch, nearer and nearer.

Even Pu Yin, standing off to the side, now turned to look her way.

At last, Lu Shiyuan realized she wanted to speak—to ask Shang Si what was happening—but no sound would come out.

The petal shower finally ended, and Shang Si turned back to chat and laugh with the woman beside her.

Just like before, the scene began to blur and fade. Lu Shiyuan’s sealed senses gradually returned, and the noises from the outside world roused her bit by bit.

When she opened her eyes, the thick fog that had surrounded them was gone.

With some effort, she pushed herself up from the ground and sat upright. A quick scan revealed people strewn about everywhere—scattered victims of that deadly mist. Overhead, the dim stone ceiling had given way to an endless web of dense, blood-like misty threads.

Where was Shang Si?

That was the first thought in Lu Shiyuan’s mind upon waking.

She snatched up the Azure Frost Sword at her side and staggered to her feet, then began checking the fallen figures one by one.

The carnage was grim. Powerhouses from both the human and demon realms lay defeated here. Shang Si was the Ye Lord, her cultivation formidable, but trapped inside this grand array, even she faced limitations. Lu Shiyuan couldn’t be sure she had emerged unscathed.

Thankfully, Shang Si’s crimson robes stood out like a beacon. It took Lu Shiyuan little effort to confirm she wasn’t among the casualties.

If she wasn’t here, then where?

Lu Shiyuan’s fine brows knitted together. She was about to test a voice transmission when the entire space of the array shuddered.

The fabric of space itself was destabilizing. Someone was pushing back with all their might.

And among their group, only one had the power for that… Lu Shiyuan lifted her gaze, fixing it on the vast expanse shrouded in blood mist ahead.

The surge of energy that had rattled the array moments ago had emanated from that impenetrable fog.

As if to affirm her suspicion, the space quaked twice more in rapid succession.

In the next instant, the thick blood mist detonated. Blinding golden light flared, and the Ghost Head Seal—a lustrous emerald artifact—swelled to colossal size in the span of a few breaths.

Lu Shiyuan stared up at the massive seal in stunned silence, crushed by the overwhelming pressure bearing down on her. Even twitching a finger felt impossible.

She let out two heavy breaths, tightened her grip on her sword, and stood rooted in place. Her eyes remained fixed on the lithe silhouette that materialized in the sky as the blood mist cleared.

Shang Si floated there beneath the enormous Ghost Head Seal. Her eyes gleamed with an otherworldly golden radiance, her robes whipping in the wind. The floral ornament on her forehead seemed to merge with her scarlet gown, a vivid, bewitching red that made her look every bit the demon.

With the seal at its center, the blood mist within a radius of several dozen meters dispersed rapidly, as if it had encountered its natural predator. Yet wherever the golden light from the seal shone, the blood mist throughout the entire grand array was utterly drained.

Nourished by the blood mist, it seemed, the golden light blazed even brighter.

“Break for me.” Shang Si lightly raised her right arm, her voice cold and indifferent, devoid of all emotion and desire.

As if it understood her command, the massive seal surged upward the instant her words fell, slamming into the invisible protective barrier of the grand array. Lu Shiyuan watched in astonishment as fine cracks spiderwebbed across the shield that had left several great cultivators utterly helpless moments before.

One strike. Two strikes. In just two blows, the seal shattered the dreaded Ancient Strangling Grand Formation.

The array collapsed, and the illusory inner landscape it had conjured vanished in a heartbeat. Lu Shiyuan glanced sideways to find their surroundings restored to the narrow, dim mountain path from earlier.

Its task complete, perhaps, the enormous seal dimmed its golden glow the moment the array broke, shrinking back to its original size before dropping neatly into Shang Si’s hand.

She stored the seal in her Spirit Ring and descended gracefully.

Lu Shiyuan hurried forward at the same time.

But the elegant Ye Lord, who should have alighted with poised serenity, turned toward the approaching Lu Shiyuan. A smile had just begun to curve her lips when a gush of scorching crimson blood erupted from her mouth, splattering and blending seamlessly into her red gown.

“A Si!” Lu Shiyuan cried out, leaping to her side without a second thought. She caught Shang Si and eased her down to sit on the ground nearby.

Shang Si’s condition was dire. No sooner had she sat than she coughed up two more mouthfuls of blood.

Panic seized Lu Shiyuan in an instant. Ever since they had met, Shang Si had always shown her only strength and prowess, to the point that Lu Shiyuan had nearly forgotten the woman was flesh and blood, not invincible.

“Where’s the medicine from Hua Qiu? Let me find it—there should be something for internal injuries… Not sure if it’ll work on you, though…” She rummaged frantically in her own Spirit Ring, pulling out a jumble of spiritual medicines. After sorting through them carefully, she pressed one after another to Shang Si’s lips without waiting for a word.

But after swallowing just two, Shang Si doubled over and retched up another thick clot of blood.

Lu Shiyuan’s hand began to tremble as she held the next pill, her voice cracking with a sob. “Shang Si, are you badly hurt? Are you… are you dying?”

The depths of the mountain range lay in deathly silence, broken only by their ragged breaths.

Shang Si had been enduring the wild rampage of spiritual power tearing through her body from within, but Lu Shiyuan’s desperate question drew a sudden laugh from her lips.

“Shiyuan, I’m fine.” She tilted her head back slightly, her tongue darting out to lick the blood from the corner of her mouth. Her beautiful eyes curved in a gentle smile as she put on a casual air to soothe her. “Activating the Ye Capital Great Seal required mobilizing a massive surge of spiritual power. My spirit veins couldn’t quite handle the strain—they just need time to adjust.”

With that, she straightened up, plucked the remaining pills from Lu Shiyuan’s palm, and swallowed them down. “Someone was controlling this Strangling Killing Array from outside. It was gunning for me specifically. But thanks to the array master not entering it in person, I was able to break it with relative ease.”