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

The digital watch emitted a blinding red light on Ye Shuli's wrist as it counted down, and the phantom of the Spirit Guardian suddenly twitched its scepter.

Amidst the clanging of bronze chains, Jiang Ye, lying behind a stalagmite ten feet away, gritted his teeth and pulled out the last three glow sticks. The wound on his knee was oozing the same indigo liquid as the Guardian's Scepter.

"The southeast corner stone wall!" he suddenly shouted.

Ye Shuli rolled away to dodge the sword light slashed by the cultivator leader. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jiang Ye's hastily drawn arrow on the surface of the stalagmite with syrup—the direction of which was directly towards the 404 code jumping at the bottom of the Guardian's Scepter.

The guardian spirit's ice crystal scepter grazed Ye Shuli's hair for the third time, but just as it was about to strike her left shoulder, it strangely veered to the right.

Taking advantage of the moment, Ye Shuli stepped on the half of the bronze chain that had rolled to the ground and used the momentum to leap onto the three-meter-high altar pillar.

The totem patterns on the surface of the broken pillar resonated with the fluorescent triangles at the edge of her shadow, forming pale golden ripples of spiritual energy.

"I see!" She pressed her hand against the groove at the top of the column, her knowledge of modern engineering mechanics rapidly reorganizing in her mind.

The seventeen types of magic arrays observed in the past few days have a strange correspondence with the concrete load-bearing structure. Every three attacks by the guardian are accompanied by a flow of spiritual energy back to the left stone wall.

The cultivator leader's heavy iron sword cleaved the stone slab where she had just stood, and the twenty-three cultivators took the opportunity to form a dragon-trapping formation.

Ye Shuli suddenly released her right hand from the crystal dagger, letting the weapon fall into the center of the fluorescent triangle at her feet.

The moment the dagger touched the ground, nine fluorescent dots simultaneously emitted blue light, turning the ground within a five-meter radius into a semi-transparent grid pattern.

"Three o'clock position, slope 32 degrees!" Jiang Ye mumbled a reminder, biting the last half of the glow stick between his teeth.

Ye Shuli's fingertip gathered spiritual energy that precisely struck the supporting stone in the northeast corner of the altar, and the millennium-old black rock cracked along the stress line she had calculated.

A three-ton boulder rolled down the sloping array lines, instantly creating a breach in the cultivators' Dragon-Trapping Array.

The phantom of the guardian spirit suddenly froze for half a second, and the ice crystal at the top of the scepter reflected the bronze door mark on Jiang Ye's lower back, which was burning hot.

Taking advantage of the moment, Ye Shuli tore off the silver chain around her neck from which the company access card was hanging. The blood-stained card brushed against the 404 code at the bottom of the Guardian Scepter, producing a slight buzzing sound like a USB drive being inserted into a computer.

"Now!" Jiang Ye suddenly splashed the glow stick syrup at the cultivator leader.

The moment the viscous liquid touched the bronze chain behind his ear, the phantom of the wise man from the spirit relic reappeared.

This time, the withered finger pointed directly at the guardian's heart—where red numbers, flashing in sync with the countdown on the digital watch, were faintly visible.

Ye Shuli spun around and kicked away the two attackers, her blood-stained clothes brushing against the crack in the code stream that was being reassembled.

The company logo flashed twice in the void before suddenly twisting and transforming into a PowerPoint flowchart that she hadn't had time to save before she traveled through time.

As the 33rd countdown beeped, the icy blue orb of light accumulated in the Guardian's Scepter was already aimed at her right ankle, which she couldn't retract in time.

The moment the icy blue orb struck Ye Shuli's ankle, the warning pop-up on her wristwatch suddenly materialized.

A semi-transparent system interface lay between her and the guardian, and the cracks on the surface of the light sphere perfectly overlapped with the Bagua diagram they had deciphered in front of the bronze gate three days ago.

"Don't touch those data streams!" Jiang Ye suddenly jumped out from the pile of rubble.

The indigo liquid seeping from his knee wound dripped onto the remains of the glow stick, instantly evaporating into a cloud of caramel-scented smoke.

The Guardian Scepter of the Spirit God suddenly turned, and the attack trajectory that was originally locked on Ye Shuli suddenly changed ninety degrees, heading straight for Jiang Ye's back.

Ye Shuli endured the burning pain in her ankle, rolled over and jumped up, the remaining crystal fragments in her hand slicing through the system pop-up window.

The PPT flowchart that Jiang Ye had stayed up all night to create before his transmigration suddenly materialized into physical chains, binding the guardian's scepter that was about to strike Jiang Ye.

The shockwave from the collision of the two forces knocked over five nearby cultivators, and the countdown on the digital watch suddenly jumped back to 60 seconds.

"Are you crazy?!" Ye Shuli dragged Jiang Ye into the crack in the altar.

The lingering psionic energy at her fingertips burned the blood-stained collar of the other person, while three meters behind her, the ground was being blasted into a deep crater by the guardian's ice crystals.

Jiang Ye suddenly ripped open his collar, revealing the same 404 code pattern as the Guardian's Scepter below his collarbone: "That syrup just now... cough... it was an encryption algorithm I traded for from the Sage's Phantom three days ago..."

His explanation was interrupted by the angry roar of the cultivator leader.

Twenty-three cultivators simultaneously bit their fingertips, and dark red liquid suddenly seeped from the remaining patterns of the Dragon-Trapping Formation.

Ye Shuli noticed that the direction of the blood flow perfectly matched the direction of the cracks in the altar—the location of the main load-bearing beam that she had marked on the construction drawings before she transmigrated.

"Retreat to the southwest corner!" She grabbed Jiang Ye's belt and rolled to avoid him.

Three bronze chains grazed their backs and drove into the ground, the runes at the ends of the chains being identical to the anti-counterfeiting coating on the back of her company's access card.

Ye Shuli suddenly pressed the blood-stained card onto Jiang Ye's collarbone code, and the pop-up warning suddenly turned into a progress bar loading screen.

The phantom of the spirit guardian suddenly trembled violently, and the ice crystal at the top of the scepter began to play the surveillance footage of the day they crossed over.

Ye Shuli seized this 0.3-second opening, and the spiritual energy gathered in her palm, wrapped in modern binary code, struck the red numbers beating in the guardian's heart hard.

"boom--"

The moment the shockwave sent the seven cultivators trapped in the Dragon-Trapping Formation flying, Jiang Ye suddenly grabbed three pieces of broken stone.

The stone, coated with syrup, struck the cultivator leader precisely at three acupoints behind his ear—the very nerve nodes that Ye Shuli had explained using an acupuncture model three days prior.

The burly man stood frozen in place, holding the heavy iron sword, when suddenly the bronze chain behind his ear emitted a blue light.

"Look up!" Jiang Ye pointed to the dome while wiping blood from his nose.

The previously static star chart suddenly began to invert, and seventeen golden lines automatically extended from the fluorescent triangle at the edge of Ye Shuli's shadow.

The points where these rays of light connect correspond exactly to the seventeen anomalous energy points she marked on the ruins sand table before she crossed over.

The guardian spirit emitted a jarring roar like mechanical gears, and the 404 code at the bottom of the scepter suddenly split into four illusory bronze doors.

The digital watch on Ye Shuli's wrist emitted a piercing beep. The moment the countdown reached zero, the company access card suddenly merged with Jiang Ye's collarbone code into a silver-blue vortex.

"Hold on tight!" Ye Shuli wrapped her arms around Jiang Ye's waist.

The sword energy slashed by the cultivator leader grazed her back, and the few strands of hair that were severed were swallowed by the vortex before they even hit the ground.

The moment the two fell into the torrent of data, they saw the phantom of the Spirit Guardian reaching out to grab the edge of the vortex—in the center of that hand covered with code patterns, the logo watermark of Ye Shuli's former company was clearly imprinted.