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

The blood-red palm print at the edge of the crack gleamed eerily in the golden light.

Ye Shuli's fingers, which were resting on the bronze cauldron, suddenly tightened, and the gold bracelet on her wrist collided with the cauldron, producing a clear and melodious sound.

Jiang Ye wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and suddenly pressed down on her trembling shoulder—a muffled thud of chains being dragged came from underground.

The arrow fragments, formed from ethereal matter, suddenly floated in mid-air, twisting and piecing together a human-shaped outline.

Fragments of the bronze mask flowed upstream from the depths of the crack, fitting perfectly onto the blurred face.

When the last piece of dark blue metal covered the left eye, a suffocating pressure exploded in the air.

"The Ye family's youngest daughter?" A hoarse voice echoed as gravel slammed against the ruins of the laboratory.

The moment the evil leader stepped out of the crack, the golden powder from the Buddhist prayer beads on the ground suddenly ignited, burning two rows of eerie blue walls of fire on either side of his black brocade boots.

Ye Shuli felt a chill run down her spine as fragments of memory from the massacre of her clan three hundred years ago screamed in her mind.

Jiang Ye took a half-step to block the most intense pressure, the Thunder Pattern Sword humming under the strain in his palm: "The old man is quite particular about appearances." He ran his thumb across the blade, crimson blood seeping into the Thunder Pattern, and the sword suddenly burst forth with dazzling lightning.

The movement aggravated the wound under his ribs, and the smell of blood mixed with the smell of burning filled the air.

As the halberd formed from the power of the underworld pierced through the air, Ye Shuli was staring at the jade pendant at the leader's waist.

The black jade carved with the Taotie pattern perfectly matched the crack in the half-piece of broken jade in her arms.

The instant Jiang Ye's lightning net collided with the halberd, a blood-red array suddenly appeared on the laboratory floor—each attack trajectory resonated with the surging nether energy from the cracks.

"He's using the evil energy of the earth's veins!" Ye Shuli spun around to avoid the flying pebbles, and the nano-net launched from the golden bracelet wrapped around the three attacking bone spikes.

Each time these attacks hit the ground, the ghostly matter in the cracks boiled even more violently.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jiang Ye being thrown back and crashing into a stone pillar, the Thunder Pattern Sword carving a half-foot-deep scorch mark on the bluestone surface.

Jiang Ye spat out a mouthful of blood, then suddenly grinned at the leader of the Netherworld: "I heard that you loved to eat children when you were sealed away?"

No wonder he's still a short, stocky guy after three hundred years. "The instant the thunderstorm exploded around him, seven nether chains simultaneously pierced his left shoulder."

As the blood dripped onto the array patterns, Ye Shuli saw that the blood droplets were rolling towards the cracks along a specific trajectory.

"Can't you just shut up and save your life?!" Ye Shuli flung her gold bracelet, deflecting two chains, and suddenly felt a burning pain on her wrist.

The lotus mark that appeared when she awakened her psychic powers was faintly visible under her skin. She suddenly realized that the attack trajectories completely overlapped with the nodes where the earth's energy flowed.

Jiang Ye's deliberate act of contaminating the array with blood is disrupting the balance of energy flow.

The Netherworld leader let out a laugh like an owl, and the Netherworld energy ball gathered in his palm suddenly split into twelve ghost faces: "The game is over." As the ghost faces roared and pounced towards Jiang Ye's heart, Ye Shuli suddenly pressed the golden bracelet into the center of the array diagram previously drawn with the Buddha Bone Golden Liquid.

The nano-gold wires absorbed the residual Buddha light and condensed into a translucent short blade in her palm.

"Catch!" Jiang Ye caught the lightning-patterned scabbard that was thrown to him and used his last bit of spiritual power to activate the lightning-avoiding pattern on the scabbard.

The moment the Netherworld Ghost Mask collided with the lightning barrier, Ye Shuli slid along the ground toward the edge of the crack.

The lotus mark on her wrist shone with a bluish-gold light, and she could feel the spiritual energy that had been dormant within her surging wildly.

The leader of the Netherworld finally changed his expression.

He shattered Jiang Ye's defensive barrier with a flick of his sleeve, and his well-defined hand reached for Ye Shuli's nape.

At the critical moment, half a broken stone tablet suddenly fell from the laboratory dome, and the inscription on the tablet was the evil-suppressing incantation passed down by the Ye family.

Taking advantage of the momentum, Ye Shuli flipped over and leaped into the energy vortex above the crack, and the lotus flower on her wrist suddenly bloomed.

As the cyan-gold spiritual energy spread along the crack lines, cracks suddenly appeared in the dark brocade boots of the Netherworld leader.

He looked down at the lotus phantom rising from the crack, and for the first time, the sound of teeth grinding came from beneath his bronze mask: "You actually managed to awaken..."

Jiang Ye's thunderstorm collided with Ye Shuli's spiritual energy above the crack, and the resulting turbulent energy surge swallowed up the second half of the sentence.

As the laboratory floor began to collapse, Ye Shuli saw the Taotie jade pendant slowly peeling off from the waist of the Netherworld leader.

A burning pain suddenly shot through the lotus on his wrist, as some dormant power was awakening deep within his spiritual veins.

Ye Shuli's wrist bone was almost burned through by the lotus mark.

The cyan-gold spiritual energy wove a net of light within the cracks, and the boiling, ghostly matter emitted a corrosive sound upon touching the light threads.

She suddenly realized that each filament of light precisely pierced the energy node—this was the very same diagram from the "Understanding Earth Veins" she had deciphered in the Ye family's secret chamber three days prior.

"Jiang Ye!" She swung her golden bracelet, binding the three attacking bone spikes. The nano-mesh melted and reformed in the Netherworld energy. "Use your blood to stain the Kun position array eye red!"

Jiang Ye's eyes suddenly lit up as he was suspended in mid-air by the Netherworld Chains.

He bit his tongue, spraying the blood mist mixed with spiritual energy onto the Thunder Pattern Sword.

Amidst the exploding lightning on the sword, the seven chains snapped instantly.

Using the momentum of his fall, he flipped his wrist and plunged the blood-stained scabbard into a crack in the ground.

The crimson array suddenly twisted and deformed.

The blood, which had been rolling along a specific trajectory toward the crack, now surged toward the scabbard as if it had encountered a magnet.

The wall of eerie blue fire beneath the Netherworld leader's feet instantly extinguished by two inches, and the cracks on his black brocade boots had spread to his kneecaps.

"How dare you—" The Netherworld leader's roar shook the rubble from the dome, and the twelve ghost faces reformed in his palm.

But this time, the fangs of the ghost mask had only grown half an inch before they were torn to pieces by the golden bracelet that Ye Shuli flung out.

The cyan-gold light network has covered two-thirds of the crack area.

Ye Shuli could feel each strand of light drawing away the power deep within her bloodline, and the evil-suppressing incantation from the family's secret chamber three hundred years ago suddenly surfaced in her mind.

She caught the Thunder Pattern Sword that Jiang Ye threw at her with her backhand. The moment the blade cut her palm, the lotus mark suddenly projected a three-dimensional energy spectrum of the entire laboratory.

"The earthquake is in the northeast corner!" She threw the blood-stained gold bracelet into the air.

Almost as soon as she spoke, Jiang Ye lunged toward that direction, the sparks from the Thunder Pattern Sword igniting the remaining golden powder from the Buddha's bones.

The leader of the Netherworld finally staggered back half a step.

The jade pendant at his waist emitted a crisp sound like porcelain cracking, and the ghostly substance surging from the Taotie pattern was blocked back into the crack by the light net.

When Jiang Ye's third bloodline stained the center of the formation, the entire earth vein formation groaned under the strain.

The laboratory suddenly fell into an eerie silence.

The suspended remnants of the underworld fell with a rustling sound, and the surging energy flow in the cracks seemed to be choked by an invisible hand.

Ye Shuli noticed spiderweb-like cracks appearing on the bronze mask of the Netherworld leader—beneath which was clearly a beast mask with the same pattern as the Taotie jade pendant.

"Now!" Jiang Ye's thunderstorm and her psionic net converged simultaneously.

The protective black mist surrounding the Netherworld leader dissipated like the receding tide, revealing his withered body encased in black armor.

When Ye Shuli's gold bracelet pierced through his left shoulder, he finally saw that the jade pendant was engraved with a variant of the Ye family crest.

The moment the thunder cleaved the dome, the white-haired old man appeared, stepping on the fallen stone tablet.

The jade pendant floating in his hand resonated with the cyan-gold light net in the crack, and the half-piece of broken jade in Ye Shuli's arms suddenly flew out on its own.

"By the bloodline of the Ye family, we bear the weight of heaven and earth." The old man pressed the jade pendant into the gap in the broken jade, and the complete Taotie jade pendant burst out with dazzling white light.

Ye Shuli felt the power in her spiritual veins being instantly drained, only to be filled with even more abundant energy in the next second.

The cracks began to close at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The leader of the Netherworld let out a trapped beast's roar, its withered claws reaching for the jade pendant that was fusing together.

Jiang Ye's Thunder Pattern Sword slashed down from the sky, and the sword wind, carrying golden powder of Buddha bones, forced him back three steps.

"Keep making a scene!" Jiang Ye wiped away the blood scabs covering his eyes, and lightning condensed into a spiral at the tip of his sword. "Weren't you just going to eat children?" His sarcasm was drowned out by the roar of the energy vortex, but Ye Shuli could see that his wrist, corroded to the bone by the Netherworld substance, was still holding the sword steadily.

The moment the jade pendant was fully fused, a complete evil-suppressing array appeared on the laboratory floor.

When Ye Shuli pressed the jade pendant into the array's core, the entire mountain range resounded with the clear sound of jade chimes.

The Netherworld leader's armor began to peel away piece by piece, revealing his decaying body covered in incantations.

“It’s time to take our final bow.” Jiang Ye suddenly grabbed Ye Shuli’s wrist and pressed the lotus mark on her palm onto the hilt of the thunder-patterned sword.

A beam of light, interwoven with lapis lazuli and purple lightning, shot into the sky and pierced the chest of the Netherworld leader. The venomous roar that should have dissipated three hundred years ago finally came to an abrupt end.

As sunlight streamed through the collapsed dome, Ye Shuli noticed that black energy was seeping from Jiang Ye's wounds.

Just as she was about to raise her hand to check, the other party grabbed her wrist and spun her around: "Alive and kicking, no missing limbs." Jiang Ye grinned, revealing bloody teeth, while his fingertips secretly drew a talisman on her back to block the aura of the underworld.

The white-haired old man finished forming the last hand seal over the closing crack, and when he turned around, his gaze fell on Ye Shuli's wrist.

The lotus flower mark is fading from its bluish-gold color, and dark red patterns are emerging instead.

He glanced hesitantly at the now completely silent jade pendant, and finally let out a sigh as it dissipated in the morning light.