A magical journey of a sharp-tongued woman and a goofy man

Jiang Ye grabbed Ye Shuli's wrist with his other hand, and the liquid metal formed a closed loop between their touching skin.

The nanoprobe emitted a piercing shriek, and the mechanical wristwatch suddenly resumed operation, projecting a holographic screen—the humanoid creature entwined with glowing vines, its core shimmering with the same dark patterns as the two artifact fragments they had collected.

“The Material Guardian.” Ye Shuli stared at the energy curves dancing on the light screen. “It has a quantum entanglement reactor inside.” She ran her fingertips along the side of her wristwatch, adjusting the energy wavelengths of the three jade pendant fragments to be in sync.

Suddenly, a cold white beam of light burst forth from the core of the Xuan Tie wood, precisely piercing the vine knot on the chest of the humanoid creature.

Amidst the violent tremors, the tribal sage emerged from the shadows, leaning on his serpentine staff. "These fluorescent vines grow by absorbing lies." His tattooed face turned towards the east side of the altar, where a totem corroded by the fluorescent liquid lay. "When suspicion reaches its breaking point, the guardian will go completely berserk."

Ye Shuli caught a glimpse of the jealous representative retreating three zhang away.

The man's hand, hidden beneath his animal-skin cloak, pressed against the communication jade slip. The rhinoceros horn box hanging at his waist was only slightly different in color from the old priest's—it was a replica of the tribal sacred object that had been lost this morning.

“I need the Mystic Ice Soul to stabilize the energy field.” She suddenly raised her voice, and her wristwatch converted the sentence into an encrypted data stream and sent it to the tribal sage.

When the wise man obediently shook his head to indicate that the stock was depleted, the pupils of the jealous man hidden behind the stone pillar suddenly contracted.

?

At the medicinal spring on the west side of the tribe, Jiang Ye stopped a tribeswoman who was trying to pour fluorescent powder into the spring.

He deliberately let half of his sleeve get soaked in the steam from the medicinal spring, revealing the gruesome wound from the vines he'd sustained the night before: "Your tribe's Purple Marrow Ointment for treating external injuries is made with the venom of Soul-Eating Ants, isn't it?"

The woman paused, her hand gripping the bone bottle.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, Jiang Ye flicked out the magnet hidden between his fingers, which accurately struck the communication jade slip she had hidden in her hair.

Half a talisman fell out from the shattered jade piece—it was a draft of an expulsion order imitating Ye Shuli's handwriting.

“Soul-devouring ants molt every thirty years, and the secretion during molting is the antidote mucus.” Jiang Ye wiped his sword with his blood-stained sleeve, watching the other party’s face turn deathly pale. “The so-called wound medicine you brought this morning used the venom from before molting, didn’t it?”

In the shadows of the altar, Ye Shuli used a clever trick to activate a malfunctioning program.

On the false energy map projected by the wristwatch, the blue dots representing the reserves of Xuanbing Soul flashed wildly.

When the representative of the jealous party approached the so-called "treasure trove" with a replica of the sacred object, the Xuan Tie Mu Xin suddenly reversed the direction of its magnetic field.

With a "snap," the fluorescent coating on the surface of the counterfeit peeled off, revealing dark red curse runes underneath.

The subtle changes in these runes drawn with the blood of demonic beasts were perfectly synchronized with the growth rhythm of the vines on the guardian's body.

When the tribal chief arrived with his twelve iron guards, he saw black mist seeping from the counterfeit rhinoceros horn box at the waist of the Jealous One's representative.

"It seems someone needs an explanation more than we do." Ye Shuli flung out a bone knife wrapped in liquid metal, the tip of which pierced the other person's cloak.

The communication jade slip hidden in the secret bag was still vibrating, with the latest message displaying: [Confirmed that the Mystic Ice Soul is on the third pillar of the altar.]

The tribal sage raised his serpentine staff at the opportune moment, and the amber inlaid in the staff head revealed the surveillance footage from the previous night: the jealous representative had mixed some kind of powder into the tribe's campfire, and it was after that that the fluorescent vines began to riot.

"The star chart shows that the third pillar is the Gate of Death." Ye Shuli suddenly turned the projection on her wristwatch, and on the real energy spectrum, a scarlet dot representing danger was jumping below the seventh pillar of the altar.

The Jealous One, who had already reached the third pillar, froze in place. Suddenly, a crack appeared in the ground beneath his feet, from which a viscous, fluorescent liquid gushed forth.

The humanoid guardian suddenly emitted a sharp buzzing sound, and the vines on its chest attacked the counterfeit holy relic as if they were alive.

Just as everyone was blinded by the bright light, the data stream on Ye Shuli's wristwatch finally completed its final analysis—the receiving terminal of the communication jade slip was actually bound to the tribal chief's personal jade pendant.

As the fluorescent liquid spilled over the deerskin boots representing the Jealous Ones, Ye Shuli's wristwatch suddenly emitted a prism-like beam of light.

Holographic projections intertwined to form a data network above the altar, performing particle-level comparisons between the powder scattered from last night's campfire and the cursed runes of the replica relic.

"Ninety-three percent match rate." The mechanical voice was exceptionally clear in the silence.

The tribal chief gripped the jade pendant at his waist, and the vines that had been wrapped around the guardian suddenly changed direction, coiling around the leg of the jealous representative like venomous snakes that had smelled blood.

Ye Shuli kicked away the imitation rhinoceros horn box that had rolled to her feet, revealing the dark patterns engraved on the inner wall: "Red copper soaked in bone-corroding powder will produce a nerve-numbing poisonous mist when it comes into contact with the sap of fluorescent vines." She deliberately crushed the inner layer of the box with the tip of her shoe, and the spilled blackish-red powder came into contact with the fluorescent liquid on the altar floor, instantly creating a sweet and pungent smoke.

The black iron shields of the twelve Iron Guards immediately formed a barrier, and the tribal chief's jade pendant emitted a dazzling blue light in the poisonous fog.

With a clang, the communication jade slip slid out of the sleeve of the Jealous One's representative, the latest received instruction projected above the poisonous fog—a secret order encrypted with the patterns on the leader's jade pendant.

"It seems there's more to the story behind the Guardian's rampage." Jiang Ye appeared at the edge of the altar at some point, carrying an unconscious tribal woman in his hand.

He casually tossed aside half a broken bone bottle, the fluorescent powder remaining at the bottle's mouth resonating with the poisonous mist on the altar floor, exploding into tiny purple sparks in the air.

The tribal sage used his serpentine staff to stir up sparks, and the image in the amber suddenly fast-forwarded—in the scene, the jealous representative was stuffing some kind of crystal into the gap of the pillar of the chief's tent.

Ye Shuli immediately pulled up the energy scan chart on her wristwatch, and the red dot representing the curse energy completely overlapped with the location of the crystal.

"This is the principle of graphene conductivity in modern society." She traced the current path on the hologram with her fingertip, and the crystals actually formed a complete energy-stealing device.

The leader, his face ashen, drew his sword. The moment the blade cleaved the pillar, twenty-three miniature crystals clattered and fell to the ground.

When the last crystal was crushed by the Iron Guardian, the vines on the Guardian's chest suddenly contracted into a ball of light.

Two fragments of the divine artifact flew out of Ye Shuli's arms automatically, forming a stable triangular energy field with the sphere of light.

The jealous man turned to stone amidst screams, and the poison needle he flung out in his final struggle was frozen in mid-air by Jiang Ye's magnetic field.

As the wisteria blossoms fell softly by the medicinal spring, a tribal woman suddenly blocked Jiang Ye's path.

A new bone hairpin adorned her hair, engraved with a courtship totem, and twelve silver bells on her wrist trembled gently with her breath: "I can grant you access to the entire tribe's elixir bank."

Jiang Ye was applying anti-rust oil to the Xuan Tie sword when he heard this, so he tapped the scabbard against the stone wall of the spring.

The holographic projector hidden in the secret compartment turned on automatically, playing a loop of the video of the woman secretly sprinkling fluorescent powder into the medicinal spring the day before.

"Your tribe's courtship ritual," he said, using the tip of his sword to lift the venom sac of the soul-devouring ants hanging from the woman's waist, "requires bathing in the juices of ninety-nine kinds of poisonous insects on the night of a full moon?" Suddenly, he flicked his wrist and thrust at his left shoulder, the blade deflected by a nano-protective shield half an inch from his skin. "Unfortunately, I'm most afraid of insects."

Ye Shuli's voice came from behind the ancient tree: "By the way, the Soul-Devouring Ant venom sacs need to be stored at minus twenty degrees Celsius." She tossed over a jade box emitting a chilling aura, catching precisely the venom sac Jiang Ye pretended to accidentally throw. "The one you have has been ineffective for three hours—want to try the freshest one?"

The tribal woman staggered backward, looking at the protective shield pattern that appeared on Jiang Ye's neck.

That was clearly the symbiotic defense system developed by Ye Shuli, which could only be activated under conditions of complete trust.

As she finally fled, covering her face, Jiang Ye was using a laser pointer to carve a silhouette of two people on an ancient tree—Ye Shuli in modern clothes and him in ancient clothes bumping into a Coca-Cola can.

The astronomical instrument inside the stone chamber suddenly stopped working, and the tribal sage inserted his snake-patterned staff into a crack in the ground.

Sixty-four dominoes, engraved with strange symbols, floated automatically, forming a constantly changing three-dimensional matrix.

Just as Ye Shuli's watch scanned the third set of data, the dominoes suddenly all fell into a Bagua pattern.

"The answer lies in the space between shadow and light." The wise man shone the amber tip of his staff onto the dominoes, and dark patterns similar to the fragments of the divine artifact appeared on the ground. "When the stars reach the position of Tianquan, I need to see the perfect fusion of two completely different systems of energy."

Ye Shuli crouched down and touched the dark pattern. The temperature curve returned by the nanodetector conflicted with the quantum entanglement model.

She suddenly ripped off Jiang Ye's leather wristband and used a laser to burn out a micro-circuit diagram on it.

When the wristband was thrown towards the center of the domino array, the ancient dark patterns and modern electronic patterns created a brief resonance in the interplay of light and shadow.

But the wise man shook his head and flicked his sleeve, and all the dominoes instantly turned to dust.

He pointed to the star map on the stone chamber's dome, where the Twenty-Eight Mansions of this era suddenly overlapped with the cantilevered structure of the Milky Way: "The knowledge you brought is the key, but the lock needs to be recast."

As the night wind howled through the cracks in the rocks, Ye Shuli stared at her triple reflection on the planetarium.

Modern physics formulas and mystical array diagrams collided fiercely in her mind, and she suddenly realized that those artifact fragments might not just be energy carriers—they might themselves be the embodiment of some kind of equation that transcends time and space.