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

As the blue light from the teleportation array dissipated, Ye Shuli was knocked back half a step by the oncoming psionic particles.

Jiang Ye reached out and supported her shoulder. Three bronze coins slipped through his fingers and landed with a crisp metallic tinkling sound.

“The Big Dipper is offset by seventeen degrees.” He frowned as he stared at the arrangement of the coins. “Even the magnetic field in this wretched place is distorted.”

Ice crystals spread outwards from the soles of Ye Shuli's boots, freezing the dark golden spiritual energy flow beneath her feet into translucent veins.

She gazed at the inverted cone-shaped mountain peak suspended in the air, where the compressed, liquid psionic energy surged along the mountain's ravines, converging at the top into a dazzling ball of light.

The icy blue pattern on the back of his neck suddenly burned hot, and the ancient painting in his storage ring vibrated through the leather.

Jiang Ye pulled out a piece of braised meat wrapped in oil paper, took a bite, and pointed vaguely at the ball of light: "See that? That thing is as bright as an LED light, it's definitely you..."

"Shut up." Ye Shuli flicked an ice shard and sliced ​​off half a piece of meat from his hand, the sauce sizzling as it splashed onto the glowing moss.

She was all too familiar with this feeling of oppression—like when she was observing particle collisions in the lab, some kind of energy beyond comprehension was calling to every cell in her body.

The climb was more bizarre than expected.

The psionic energy flow sometimes manifested as physical steps, and at other times as a black hole that devoured light.

Jiang Ye was jolted back by the suddenly disappearing steps for the fifth time, cursing as he pulled out a fragment of the Nuo mask from the gray-clad man of the Xiao family: "Believe it or not, I'll use this thing as a skateboard..."

"Quiet." Ye Shuli suddenly pressed her hand to her chest; the icy blue patterns on her collarbone were resonating with the light cluster at the mountaintop.

The ancient painting in the storage ring was shockingly hot, and the soul-guiding lamp in the painting flickered, reflecting her pale face.

As the last spiritual energy barrier was pierced by the ice crystals, Jiang Ye suddenly grabbed her cloak: "Wait!" He bent down and stared at the broken bronze chain in the crevice of the stone. "This is a spirit-sealing lock specially made by the Ye family twenty years ago."

Ye Shuli's pupils contracted slightly.

Memories suddenly surged up—when she was seven years old and pushed into the forbidden area, she had seen the bronze chain key dangling from her father's waist.

The ice crystals grew uncontrollably three inches, shredding the rusty chain into dust.

A prismatic crystal was suspended in the center of the light cluster, and Ye Shuli heard a high-frequency hum as soon as she got close.

Modern physics knowledge automatically translates at this moment—this is clearly a Bose-Einstein condensate formed by psionic energy.

The moment she reached out, eight thousand six hundred spiritual pressures simultaneously slammed into her spine.

"Shuli!" Jiang Ye's shout seemed to come through a curtain of water.

He watched helplessly as the ice crystal armor shattered layer by layer on her body, and the blood that had just seeped out was evaporated into red mist by psionic energy.

The Nuo mask fragments in the storage ring suddenly became hot, and black mist was seeping from the cracks on the back of the ancient painting.

Ye Shuli laughed amidst the pain of quantum entanglement.

This felt so much like the night her uncle locked her in the ice cellar, when she huddled in a frosty corner reciting the periodic table.

The psionic energy surged forcefully into her meridians, but she used modern chemistry to dismantle the energy structure—phosphate groups combined with psionic particles, and the tricarboxylic acid cycle reversed its operation…

"Keep cursing..." she coughed up blood and turned her head, "You're not the best at making up rhymes..."

Jiang Ye's palm, clutching the fragments of the Nuo mask, bled. He grinned and yelled, "Ye family girl, foul temper, ice-cold tongue but soft heart!" His off-key voice startled a few wisps of rampaging spiritual energy. "If you want to know how powerful I am, I'll blast villains into the air!"

Ye Shuli laughed until even more blood foam appeared.

The collarbone lines have spread to the heart, perfectly matching the sealing marks inside the crystal.

As the final torrent of spiritual energy poured down upon her, she heard Jiang Ye's voice suddenly change: "The painting! The ancient painting is glowing!"

A star map identical to that in the ancient painting appeared inside the crystal, and Ye Shuli, on a sudden inspiration, bit the tip of her tongue.

A blood curse, incorporating modern cryptographic thinking, was drawn in mid-air, and the sealing runes that had troubled her for two lifetimes suddenly became decipherable.

The psionic energy surged into her consciousness as binary code, and amidst the excruciating pain, she finally grasped a switch—

Jiang Ye's bronze coin nails all stood up.

As he watched the surging icy blue spiritual flames around Ye Shuli, he suddenly recalled Xiao Mingyuan's dying words: "Do you think you can escape fate without paying a price?"

The fragments of the Nuo mask in the storage ring were getting hot, and new branches quietly emerged from the cracks on the back of the ancient painting.

When Ye Shuli's fingertips finally touched the core of the crystal, all spiritual energy suddenly stopped.

A wave beyond sound swept across the mountain peak, and Jiang Ye saw two clusters of icy flames flash deep within her pupils, while at the same moment, blood tears flowed from the scarlet pupils of the tower a hundred miles away.

The moment Ye Shuli's fingertip sank into the crystal, the rampaging spiritual energy suddenly became docile.

Jiang Ye watched as the energy flows that were about to tear her meridians were now flowing into her major acupoints at precise angles—this girl had actually used modern mathematical modeling to dismantle the psionic structure.

"Mid-stage Spirit Master!" Jiang Ye exclaimed, clutching the scorching hot bronze coin nail.

The ice crystals that had formed on Ye Shuli's hair began to turn pale gold, and the frozen spiritual energy veins beneath her feet were unfolding layer by layer in accordance with the Fibonacci sequence.

He took out a jade tablet engraved with counting rod symbols and discovered that the values ​​on it were increasing exponentially.

Ye Shuli stood with her eyes closed at the center of the energy storm, the lines on the back of her neck extending to behind her ears.

She integrates modern chemical knowledge into the operation of psionic energy—fixing psionic particles with phosphate groups and accelerating energy conversion through the tricarboxylic acid cycle.

The ancient painting in the storage ring suddenly unfolded, and the soul-guiding lamp in the painting actually formed a quantum entanglement with the star map inside the crystal.

"Spiritual Master Realm!" Jiang Ye was thrown to the ground by the shockwave, and fragments of the Nuo mask left scorch marks on his palm.

He saw Ye Shuli's ice crystal armor reassemble into a hexagonal structure similar to graphene, in which psionic particles flowed in a superconducting state.

The spiritual energy within a hundred miles formed a vortex, and even the grease from the braised meat in his arms was glowing.

When the third advancement halo exploded, Jiang Ye's expression finally changed.

The bronze coin nailed to his palm melted into liquid, and the bloodstains on the fragments of the gray-clad man from the Xiao family's Nuo mask suddenly came to life, spelling out the two blood characters "Spirit Lord" in the air.

He remembered the new cracks on the back of the ancient painting and suddenly shouted towards the eye of the storm: "Shuli!"

Don't touch the back of the scroll...

Before she finished speaking, an ice-blue corona erupted around Ye Shuli.

She incorporated modern cryptography into the ancient seal, rewriting the restrictions on the crystal core with binary code.

The pinnacle of spiritual energy began to collapse, and all the energy surged into her body as if being swallowed by a black hole—the pressure of the Spirit King realm caused Jiang Ye to smash through three pieces of mountain rock.

The sound of bells echoed throughout the heavens and earth.

When Ye Shuli opened her eyes, her pupils had already transformed into flowing nebulae.

She raised her hand and froze time and space within a hundred miles, the illusory images of modern high-rise buildings sealed in the ice crystals overlapping with the pavilions and towers in ancient paintings.

Jiang Ye spat out the pebbles in his mouth and discovered that his initial bottleneck as a Spiritualist had broken through on its own under the pressure.

"What's so special about this?" He grinned, wiping his nosebleed. "When one person attains enlightenment, even their chickens and dogs ascend to heaven?"

Ye Shuli withdrew her aura and landed, her boot heels striking the ice with a clear, bell-like sound.

The ancient painting in the storage ring suddenly burst into flames, revealing a hidden star map in the ashes—clearly the cantilever structure of the Milky Way.

She pressed her throbbing temples; the data stream from the laboratory explosion in her past life was synchronized with the star map.

Jiang Ye leaned closer and smelled blood: "Your back..."

“Energy materialization.” Ye Shuli touched the raised ice crystal patterns on her spine with her backhand. “Like the magnetic flux quanta in a superconductor.” She was suddenly pulled into an embrace that smelled of braised meat, and Jiang Ye’s body temperature transmitted a little warmth through the ice armor.

"Congratulations, Ye, you academic genius." He rested his chin on her head and chuckled. "Now, even a sneeze from you could kill eight Spirit Venerables."

A blood-red tower thousands of miles away suddenly collapsed.

The star map in the ashes of the ancient painting was projected into the night sky, forming a spot of light resembling the constellation Orion.

Just as Jiang Ye was about to take out some more braised meat, he suddenly noticed black mist seeping out from the frozen spacetime rift in Ye Shuli's body—the mist was outlining the same eerie smiling pattern as the Nuo mask fragments.

"Look to the east!" Ye Shuli suddenly turned around.

The darkness before dawn was torn apart by something, and the Milky Way star map and the soul-guiding lamp in the ancient painting formed a Möbius strip in the sky.

The icy blue lines on her collarbone suddenly stung, as if someone had carved words into her skin using the structure of a DNA double helix.

Jiang Ye took out three new copper coins to perform divination, only to find that all the coins were spinning upright.

He stared at the lingering nebula-like pupils on the back of Ye Shuli's neck, and suddenly hummed an absurd tune: "Climbing to the summit is easy, guarding the mountain is hard, the star map reverses ninefold barriers..."

The ice crystals cracked with spiderweb patterns beneath their feet, and the pinnacle of psychic energy began to crumble.

Ye Shuli grabbed Jiang Ye's wrist and teleported into the air, watching as countless glowing mosses formed the Ye family emblem from twenty years ago.

As the last rock fragment plunged into the sea of ​​clouds, a crimson arrow suddenly appeared on the star map in the sky, pointing straight to the northern glacier.

"The price Xiao Mingyuan mentioned..." Jiang Ye chuckled, stroking the scorch marks on the Nuo mask fragments. "It doesn't mean we have to clean up the mess, does it?"

Ye Shuli stared at the Milky Way star map that appeared in her palm, and suddenly condensed the ice crystals into a microscope shape.

When her psionic energy focused down to the nanoscale, she saw familiar chemical equations etched on the edge of the star map—the very formula for synthesizing superconducting materials that she had failed to complete in her previous life.

As the first light of dawn appeared in the east, the last wisp of spiritual energy flowed into Ye Shuli's dantian.

Jiang Ye suddenly pulled out a piece of dark, braised meat: "A victory celebration?"

"How much are you hiding in your arms...?" Ye Shuli's rant was interrupted by the sound of an explosion.

The piece of braised meat transformed into gold in the aftershocks of psionic energy, emitting a blue light similar to that emitted when a nuclear fusion device is activated.

The two looked at each other for three seconds and suddenly laughed at the same time.

The laughter dispersed the remaining energy clouds on the mountaintop, revealing the vast psionic continent stretching for thousands of miles below.

Jiang Ye's bronze coin nails had somehow formed a DNA double helix model, casting dappled shadows in the morning light.

As the last ice crystal melted, Ye Shuli heard a buzzing sound like particles colliding in her ears.

She gazed at the blood-red star map above the northern glacier, knowing that this battle across time and space had only just begun.