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

The bronze gate burst open with a roar under the illumination of the star map, and the seventeen defectors were thrown to the ground by the shockwave.

Ye Shuli dragged Jiang Ye into the room, where the salty underground river water froze into ice crystals on their backs.

"This broken door has an automatic dehumidification function?" Jiang Ye coughed, supporting himself on his knees, and the blood that spilled from the corner of his mouth seeped into his sleeve.

The star patterns on his palm were fading, while the luminous stars in the dome began to twist and recombine.

Ye Shuli suddenly grabbed his collar and fell to the right, three ice spikes grazing his ears and embedding themselves in the stone wall.

The spiritual mist that was originally floating in the air was condensing into a strange humanoid shape, with colorful light spots surging within the transparent body—a sign that the spiritual energy fluctuations were materializing.

"You call this a safe house?" Jiang Ye unleashed three wind blades, but the light spots turned into fluorescent light and dissipated the moment they touched the elf.

He stumbled and crashed into the bronze cauldron, causing the ash that had settled inside for thousands of years to rise up, revealing a totem on the bottom that was identical to that on the stone tablet.

The psionic energy wave floated to the very center of the dome, and the ground of the entire holy site began to undulate in a wave-like pattern.

Ye Shuli was so shocked that she knelt on one knee. The burn mark on her collarbone suddenly stung, and the previously irregular psionic ripples appeared on her retina—they were actually miniature versions of star map trajectories.

"Three short and two long!" she suddenly shouted at Jiang Ye. The psionic energy bursting from her fingertips no longer condensed into a shield, but instead imitated the frequency of the aura around the elf.

The transparent tentacle that was about to pierce her throat suddenly stopped, trembling like iron filings attracted by a magnet.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, Jiang Ye threw out a black iron chain to entangle the elf's body, but the chain links pierced through the phantom.

The engraving on the bronze wheel on the back of his neck suddenly became hot, and the surface of the stone pillar, which should have been shattered by the chains, revealed a groove that perfectly matched the wheel.

"Use blood!" Ye Shuli tore open her collar, and blood droplets seeped from the burn marks on her collarbone, forming a thin, continuous stream.

When she injected the bloodline into the star map trajectory at a specific frequency, the elf's attack path suddenly became predictable.

Jiang Ye rolled over the seven intersecting beams of light, his bloodied hand slamming heavily into the groove of the stone pillar.

The roar of the bronze wheel was so loud it made your teeth ache, and twenty-eight golden lines were projected down from the star map on the dome.

The elf emitted a sound like a shattering chime, and its body, formed from clusters of seven-colored light spots, began to collapse.

The defectors suddenly knelt down in unison, and the burn marks on their necks resonated with the blood lines on Ye Shuli's face.

"Don't stop!" Jiang Ye used his back to shield her from the falling rocks, and the bronze wheel was already embedded three inches into the stone pillar.

His right hand, the web of his thumb torn by the recoil, still held firmly against the dragon pattern on the edge of the roulette wheel: "This thing is absorbing my spiritual energy as a lubricant!"

Ye Shuli bit her tongue, spitting out a mist of blood, and forcibly adjusted the chaotic spiritual energy fluctuations back to a fixed frequency.

When the elf shrunk to the size of a fist, it suddenly exploded, and countless particles of light flowed into the bronze wheel along the golden lines of the star map.

Jiang Ye groaned and arched his back, the wheel marks seeming to burrow into his meridians as if they were alive.

As the last bit of fluorescence disappeared, the star map of the dome perfectly formed the Azure Dragon totem.

Jiang Ye slumped in a pool of blood, panting. The star map patterns on his palm were ten times clearer than before.

Ye Shuli wiped the ice shards from her face and discovered that the defectors were carving lines on the ground with their blood-stained fingertips—the lines were exactly the same as the blue totem under the leader's mask.

Suddenly, a heavy thud came from the bronze door. The spiritual energy fluctuations that should have been blocked by the barrier were now flooding through the cracks in the door like a tide.

Jiang Ye tried to get up by leaning on the stone pillar, but the bronze wheel embedded in the groove suddenly popped out automatically and landed precisely back in the original position on his chest.

"It seems someone opened a back door." Ye Shuli stared at the dark golden energy residue seeping into the crack in the door, which was the unique material of the leader's cloak.

She bent down and picked up a piece of ice crystal, inside which was half a fragment of bronze with a totem pattern—the same craftsmanship as the roulette wheel that appeared on Jiang Ye's body.

Jiang Ye suddenly grabbed her wrist; the burning star map in the young man's palm was scorching the ice crystals.

As the icy water dripped through her fingers, the ancient patterns covered in bloodstains revealed a pattern that made Ye Shuli's heart tremble under the starlight—the same pattern of the Western Zhou Dynasty sun bird gold ornament she had seen in a modern museum.

(Continued from above)

Jiang Ye's back slammed heavily against the bronze cauldron, and a metallic taste rose in his throat.

The psionic wave sprite split into dozens of transparent tentacles, half of which he shredded with wind blades, while the rest pierced his left shoulder.

The boy groaned as he tore off the energy threads wrapped around his collarbone, his palm flames surging three inches: "Focus on finding the resonance point!"

The blood vessels on Ye Shuli's fingertips rippled in mid-air, and the overlapping star map trajectory in her retina made her temples throb.

The bronze wheel markings stained with Jiang Ye's blood were burning hot. As the seventh ice spike grazed her neck, she suddenly noticed that the arrangement of the light spots on the elf's chest was mirror-symmetrical to the inscriptions on the cauldron.

"Southeast Xun position!" She flung out three ice blades, which pierced the grooves in the stone pillar. The golden lines of the star map, which should have fallen vertically, suddenly refracted into a rhomboid net of light.

The elf's tentacles, which were chasing Jiang Ye, suddenly changed direction and crashed hard into the energy node that Ye Shuli had set up—a gap in the spiritual vein left behind in the Holy Land's defensive array.

Jiang Ye spat out the blood foam in his mouth, and the black iron chain wrapped with blue light smashed into the crack in the ground.

The originally chaotic psionic energy flow was forcibly channeled into the earth's veins, and the elf's materialized body instantly faded by 30%.

The boy pressed his bloodied tiger's mouth against the wheel on his heart, and the Kui dragon pattern suddenly came to life, devouring his spiritual power and blowing the ashes at the bottom of the bronze cauldron into a vortex.

"Now!" Ye Shuli spun around and leaped onto the edge of the cauldron, the blood beads seeping from the burn marks on her collarbone condensing into fine needles.

When she precisely pierced the twenty-eight spots of light around the elf's body with the blood needle, the seven-colored energy flowed back along the golden lines of the star map to the wheel-shaped engravings in Jiang Ye's palm.

The boy's meridians erupted with a blue light, and the bronze wheel embedded in the stone pillar trembled like a dragon's roar.

The psionic energy wave emitted a high-frequency shriek, and shards of crystal began to fall from the dome of the entire holy land.

Ye Shuli dragged Jiang Ye behind the altar, watching helplessly as the elf's last physical form was swallowed up by the wheel's markings.

The boy curled up and coughed up blood mixed with ice shards, while a miniature blue dragon phantom danced in the flames in his palm.

"Don't move." Ye Shuli tore open his soaked sleeve, and the blood seeping from the wound had a bronze rust color.

The wheel-shaped markings on the back of Jiang Ye's neck were consuming the elf's remaining energy, while the turbulent spiritual energy that should have been deadly was instead becoming nourishment for repairing his meridians.

Her fingertips brushed against the boy's burning forehead when her wrist was suddenly grabbed.

Jiang Ye's blood-stained eyelashes trembled, and he forced a weak smile: "That Star Chart Refraction move just now...did you steal my method for breaking the illusion array last month?" He deliberately made his voice breathy at the end, and as he wished, he saw Ye Shuli's ear tips turn slightly red.

The girl shook off his hand, but the ice crystals gently covered his cracked tiger's mouth.

The vibrating bronze door suddenly fell silent, and the dark gold residue seeping into the cracks solidified into eerie totems.

Ye Shuli used her ice blade to pick up a fragment and discovered that the patterns on it perfectly matched the missing part of the wheel on Jiang Ye's chest.

Just as she was about to touch the bronze fragment inside the ice crystal, the spiritual veins of the entire sacred land suddenly hummed.

The twenty-eight stone pillars simultaneously lit up with a blue light, and the elven energy absorbed by Jiang Ye transformed into a waterfall of light that shot into the sky.

The star pattern on the boy's palm spread to his forearm, intersecting with the dragon pattern on the bronze wheel to form a complete array.

Ye Shuli suddenly pressed her hand to her heart, and the golden sun bird ornament from her modern memories overlapped with the newly formed star map on the dome.

"Someone has restarted the core of the Holy Land." Jiang Ye wiped the blood from his lips, and the black iron chains seemed to sense something, pointing towards the southeast underground river.

The floating mist is condensing into a new entity, but this time it is not the seven-colored light of the elves—a humanoid silhouette wearing a bronze mask is vaguely emerging from the gray-white mist.

Ye Shuli pressed the ice crystal fragment into Jiang Ye's palm, and the star map pattern immediately burned scorch marks.

The moment the bronze wheel resonated with the fragments, a deafening sound of chains snapping echoed from the depths of the dark river.

As the girl looked at the wound on her palm that had been split open by the recoil, she suddenly realized that the totems that the defectors had carved before their deaths were the keys to unlocking some kind of restriction.

Suddenly, ripples appeared in the barrier outside the bronze door, and the psionic energy fluctuations that should have been blocked instead poured in, carrying ice and snow.

Jiang Ye dragged Ye Shuli toward the secret passage behind the altar. The moment the boy's back hit the stone wall, the bloodstains left from their previous battle suddenly bloomed on the wall into blooming Udumbara flower patterns.

"Hold on tight to me." Jiang Ye pressed the roulette wheel's engraving onto the Udumbara flower's stamen, and the entire stone wall suddenly became transparent.

Before plunging into darkness, Ye Shuli turned back one last time and saw the corpses of seventeen defectors being possessed by gray mist humanoid figures. The burn marks on their necks shone like guiding lamps—and at the end of the dark river, the faint sound of an ancient bell resonating with the bronze wheel could be heard.

(End of this chapter)