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

As the purplish-black powder on Ji Linyuan's fingertips was scattered by the night wind, the grilled eel barrier in Jiang Ye's palm suddenly exploded with salt frost.

Seizing the fleeting fluctuation of spiritual energy, Ye Shuli pulled Jiang Ye onto the glowing green vines—the escape route she had secretly created.

"The mutated vines will leave tracking marks." Jiang Ye wiped the blood off his arm, and the wound stopped bleeding instantly when the vine sap touched it.

They crouched in the canopy a hundred meters away, watching Ji Linyuan summon his three-headed dog to sniff out footprints, but their presence was suddenly disrupted by a surge of spiritual energy.

Ye Shuli pressed the jade slip against the tree trunk's growth rings: "The source of the disordered spiritual veins is in the northwest." The silver bracelet on her wrist reflected a star map, and Jiang Ye suddenly tore off half of his sleeve to wrap the bracelet.

The runes embroidered on the dark red fabric collided with the star map, transforming into a blurry humanoid phantom—pointed ears, wings of light, and surrounded by fine snow-like crystals of spiritual energy.

“A wise man,” they both said in unison.

Jiang Ye pulled out the last three pieces of dried eel from the oil paper package: "That should be enough as scout stones."

They walked for about fifteen minutes through the phosphorescent mushrooms when the humus suddenly churned up like boiling water.

Seven spirit beasts with grotesquely long bone claws burst from the ground, their dark green pupils swirling with out-of-control spirit patterns.

Jiang Ye spun around and flung out the dried eel. The crispy skin ignited upon contact with the spirit, burning out three walls of fire.

"Step back!" He shoved Ye Shuli with his backhand, and the moment the dragon bone umbrella opened, the twelve ribs of the umbrella burst forth with blue light.

The first rat-headed beast to pounce crashed into the umbrella, its fangs scraping against the surface with a piercing sound.

Ye Shuli's fingers flew, forming hand seals, and thorny vines sprouted from the ground, entangling the two toad-like monsters.

Jiang Ye's right shoulder suddenly burst open with blood.

The leopard-like beast's tail hook pierced the umbrella's surface, and the droplets of blood dripping from the hook tip condensed into icicles in mid-air.

Ye Shuli's pupils contracted sharply, and the silver threads on her bracelet swelled into whips, shattering the ice shards while wrapping around the throats of the three monsters.

The green vines burrowed into the ground from her sleeve, and the next second, countless sharp spikes burst out from under the monster's belly.

The horde of spirit beasts let out mournful howls like the cries of infants, and the dissipated spirit energy formed a vortex.

Suddenly, a palm-sized ball of light emerged from the center of the vortex, its round body trailing a comet-like tail.

The little creature circled Ye Shuli three times before suddenly stopping at her blood-stained sleeve and touching the bloodstain with its transparent tentacles.

"Don't move." Ye Shuli pressed down on Jiang Ye's hand, which was about to form a hand seal, and let the little elf lick the bloodstains.

As the blood droplets turned into powdery mist within its body, the spirit suddenly swelled to the size of a lantern, and a mark identical to the jade slip star map appeared on its belly.

Jiang Ye tore open his blood-stained clothes; ice crystals were eroding the muscle at the wound site. "Use this." He chewed up some blood-clotting grass and applied it to his shoulder; the bitter, fishy liquid mingled with the aroma of eel seasoning. "Wouldn't the Wise Man's hometown be teeming with these little things?"

The elf nudged the back of his head and suddenly shot an arrow of light toward the northwest.

The clouds that were hit cracked open, revealing a suspended inverted pyramid structure.

As they stepped onto the bluestone slabs at the base of the building, blue light suddenly seeped from all their wounds, and the ice crystals on Jiang Ye's shoulder transformed into butterflies that flew toward the top of the tower.

A wise man with white hair reaching the ground was watering a moon orchid, but the plant in the flowerpot was actually half a mutated vine.

He cut off the most beautifully blooming flower and tucked it into Ye Shuli's still-bleeding cuff: "We're a quarter of an hour later than scheduled."

Ye Shuli touched the undried bloodstains on the back of the petal—it was the same piece of clothing that had splattered on Jiang Ye when he was injured.

As the wise man turned around, she caught a glimpse of the spiritual patterns appearing on the back of his neck, which were exactly the same as the markings on the elf's belly.

The moon orchid at the wise man's fingertip suddenly shattered into ice crystals, and the blood droplets seeping from the petals on Ye Shuli's sleeve floated in mid-air, condensing into tiny hexagonal crystals. "Three hundred thousand years ago, the spirit realm and the human realm were one." He brushed aside his falling white hair, and the spiritual patterns on the back of his neck rippled in the moonlight.

Jiang Ye suddenly pressed his left shoulder wound—the scattered ice crystals were resonating with the festering sores.

Ye Shuli's silver bracelet emitted a buzzing sound, and the mark on the elf's belly began to rotate clockwise, arranging the suspended blood crystals into a fragmented star map.

"Someone triggered the core of the Returning Ruins Formation prematurely." The wise man flicked his finger, shattering the brightest blood crystal. The fragments refracted seven light spots that were projected onto the wall. "Do you see those dark spots?"

Each spot of light corresponds to a node of the spiritual vein that has been devoured.

Jiang Ye suddenly ripped off the thread at the hem of his clothes, and the blood-soaked silk thread automatically coiled into a simple compass.

When the pointer pointed to the dimmest spot of light in the northwest, Ye Shuli's silver whip suddenly straightened into an arc—that was the direction they had come from.

“It’s time to set off.” The wise man put the withered vines back into the flowerpot, and the vines suddenly grew so long that they wrapped around the ankles of the two men.

Jiang Ye instinctively reached for the dried eel at his waist, only to find that the vines were repairing the wound on his shoulder.

The bloodstains seeping from Ye Shuli's cuffs were absorbed by the vines and condensed into blood-red dewdrops on the leaves.

The elf suddenly smashed through the glass window.

When the two chased after it, they discovered that a deep abyss had opened up directly beneath the inverted pyramid structure.

The dried eel that Jiang Ye threw out ignited with a ghostly blue flame in the darkness, illuminating the dense ancient runes on the rock wall—exactly the same as the spiritual patterns on the back of the sage's neck.

"stop!"

The black-robed figure emerged from the shadows of the crack, the blood-red skull embroidered on its chest devouring the surrounding spiritual energy.

Jiang Ye smelled the putrid fluctuations of spiritual energy and suddenly grabbed Ye Shuli's hand, pressing it against his own wound.

He slammed his blood-stained palm onto the ground, and the burst of blood mist instantly condensed into an ice shield.

Three poisoned bone arrows were embedded in the ice, and the vengeful spirits wrapped around their fletchings let out shrieks.

Ye Shuli flicked out her silver whip, which wrapped around the nearest man in black robes, and green vines burrowed into his seven orifices from the tip of the whip.

As the screams rang out, Jiang Ye had already slid to the leader's side using the ice shield.

"You? You think you can take me?" The leader grinned and waved his skull scepter, and suddenly white bone chains emerged from the ground.

As Jiang Ye leaned back to dodge the chains, the tip of the dragon bone umbrella pierced the ruby ​​at the top of the scepter.

The moment the cracks spread, Ye Shuli's vines wrapped around the leader's ankle.

The shard exploded and shards grazed Jiang Ye's cheek, but he caught one with his other hand.

The blood-stained fragments reflected the moonlight and pierced the leader's right eye with pinpoint accuracy.

While the other party covered his eyes and screamed in pain, Ye Shuli's silver whip had already wrapped around his neck, and the green vine at the tip of the whip suddenly bloomed with poisonous flowers.

The pursuers staggered and fell in the poisonous fog, while their leader transformed into black mist and vanished into the crevice.

Jiang Ye wiped the blood off his face, suddenly turned around, grabbed Ye Shuli's waist, and leaped to the right—the ground where they had been standing had turned into a whirlpool of quicksand.

"You're quite clever, little darling." A flippant male voice came from above.

The silver-haired man hovered in mid-air atop a peacock formed from spiritual energy, its twelve tail feathers pointed directly at Jiang Ye's back. "Little Li'er, how about considering a partner that won't bleed?"

Suddenly, the silver thread on Ye Shuli's wrist snapped, and the thirty-six silver needles went straight for the peacock's eyes.

Taking advantage of the moment, Jiang Ye flicked off his blood-stained sash. The talismans on the fabric ignited upon contact with the wind, producing thick smoke with a pungent eel smell.

The instant the silver needle pierced the peacock's phantom, he grabbed Ye Shuli and jumped into the still-open crevice.

During the fall, Jiang Ye suddenly pulled out an oil paper package.

The last half of the dried eel expanded into a parachute under the influence of spiritual power, and light spots similar to the Sage's Star Map appeared on the surface of the parachute.

Ye Shuli discovered that the umbrella ribs were absorbing the resentment from the cracks, and the umbrella surface was gradually turning an ominous dark red.

"Hold on!" Jiang Ye suddenly cut his finger, and the blood seeped into the umbrella ribs, causing a violent tremor.

As the parachutes exploded into pieces, the recoil propelled them into a suddenly appearing teleportation array.

The silver-haired man's roar was swallowed up by the array's light, and the last thing that came into view was the counter-clockwise rotating mark on the elf's belly.

The two fell into a cave covered with fluorescent moss, and Jiang Ye's shoulder wound started bleeding again.

Just as Ye Shuli was about to check, she suddenly noticed that the blood droplets were floating and forming an arrow pointing to the underground river deep in the cave.

Seven lotus lanterns floated on the river, their wicks burning from the mutated vines in the wise man's flowerpot.