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

Before the sand waves stirred up by the Vermilion Bird Flying Boat had subsided, Ye Shuli had already grabbed Jiang Ye's wrist with her other hand.

Fragments of the black jade fell from between her fingers, piecing together a fragmented clan emblem on the yellow sand before being crushed into dust by a sudden gust of wind.

“There is a thousand-year-old Xuanbing Terrace in the southeast corner of the Ye family’s ancestral land.” She stared at the silver-armored guards who were gradually taking on human form, and the blood that seeped from between her teeth stained the dark patterns on her collarbone. “Those are the coordinates that I just completed last month using modern surveying methods.”

Jiang Ye's spiritual energy barrier silently closed, refracting the probe light waves from the Sky-Gazing Mirror into a seven-colored rainbow.

Taking advantage of this fleeting moment of cover, he quickly wiped away the blood from Ye Shuli's lips: "Madam's feint was even more ingenious than those foxes from the Hehuan Sect."

The guard leader, twenty feet away, suddenly knelt on one knee, and the jade pendant at his waist emitted a dazzling red light—this was the highest-level wanted notice from the Vermilion Bird Guard.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, Ye Shuli pulled Jiang Ye back three steps, her boot heels precisely striking the half-buried teleportation array eye in the sand.

"Thirty li to the southeast, San Die Quan." Amidst the roar of her spiritual energy activation, she tore open Jiang Ye's clothes, pinched the blood-stained experimental pod number between two fingers, and stuffed it into his hidden pocket. "Use the water-avoidance technique you improved last time to travel through the underground river."

At the last moment of the spatial distortion, Jiang Ye suddenly turned around and shot three copper coins wrapped in spiritual power toward the Sky-Gazing Mirror.

Amidst the clanging sound, he deliberately raised his voice in complaint: "Miss Ye, you should at least choose an auspicious day to murder your husband!"

As the blue light of the teleportation array suddenly went out, Ye Shuli was breaking the jade hairpin in her hair in two.

Her memory of modern molecular materials science allowed her to pinpoint the lattice crack with pinpoint accuracy. Half of the hairpin pierced Jiang Ye's palm: "Use this as a compass for the next twelve hours."

When they fell into the damp cave, the bandage on Jiang Ye's wrist had already seeped out with purple-gold patterns—this was the protective aura possessed only by the direct descendants of the Ye family.

He stared at Ye Shuli's fingertips as she sketched a 3D map, and suddenly pulled out a bronze compass from his Qiankun bag.

“When Madam talked about the principles of Earth’s magnetic field last time, I tried to carve the tracking talisman onto the lodestone.” The spinning pointer suddenly stopped at the northeast corner of the cave. Jiang Ye used his sword sheath to poke open the stone wall covered with fluorescent moss. “Going this way will save two hours.”

Ye Shuli suddenly pressed down on his hand holding the sword.

The tactile sensation of petri dishes in a modern biological laboratory surged from the depths of her memory. Ice crystals formed at her fingertips as she traced fluorescent DNA double helices on the moss-covered stone wall: "These are symbionts of the phagocytic bacteria. Using fire will trigger a spore explosion."

As the two walked back to back through the fungal forest, Jiang Ye's grumbling mingled with the clanging of swords cutting through the air: "Once this is over, Miss Ye, why don't you open a 'Ten Thousand Whys' lecture hall for the cultivation world?"

The darkness before dawn is the thickest. The moment they emerged from the underground river, seven poisoned silver shuttles grazed Ye Shuli's tousled hair and embedded themselves into the rock wall.

Jiang Ye threw out three explosive talismans with his backhand, using the shockwave to push Ye Shuli into the shallows. The principle of modern bulletproof vests allowed him to accurately protect Ye Shuli's vitals.

"Six peak Spirit Masters, and the leader is at least an early Spirit Venerable." Under the cover of the mist, Ye Shuli slipped a miniature oxygen capsule behind Jiang Ye's ear—a diving device she had modified from her alchemy furnace. "Three stacked stones in the southeast corner. Do you remember the trigonometric functions I taught you?"

Jiang Ye suddenly ripped open his collar, revealing the quantum entanglement symbol pulsating at his chest.

This is the magical artifact they stole when they raided the black market laboratory last month, and it is now resonating with the fragment of Ye Shuli's jade pendant: "The parabolic shot that you requested, my lady, I will demonstrate it to you now."

Just as the assassins' sword formation was about to close in, Ye Shuli suddenly popped the oxygen capsule.

Her modern chemical knowledge allowed her to accurately calculate the gas expansion rate. Jiang Ye's sword, propelled by the shockwave, slashed upwards, tearing a gap in the opponent's formation.

"At the third quarter of the hour of Xu (7:45 PM), the stars shift." She suddenly shouted out the secret code they had agreed upon.

Jiang Ye's pupils contracted sharply, and his sword abruptly changed direction, turning what should have been a fatal strike aimed at the enemy's throat into a horizontal slash, the wind from which overturned the stacked stones in the southeast corner.

The earth's spiritual energy suddenly surged, triggering the electromagnetic matrix that Ye Shuli had buried three months ago.

The assassin leader's cold smile froze on his face beneath his mask—the spirit-locking array he had set up was being dismantled by the laws of modern physics.

"Let's go!" Jiang Ye grabbed Ye Shuli and leaped onto the last teleportation stone.

Before the pursuer's screams were swallowed by the spatial rift, he clearly saw a dark mark on the wrist of an assassin—a tattoo only found on the assassins of the Ye family's collateral branch.

Before the glow of the teleportation stone had faded, Jiang Ye had already leaped out of the spatial rift, stepping on the rubble.

Three poisoned daggers grazed past his ears, rising a foul-smelling wisp of smoke as they embedded themselves into the rock wall behind him.

"The third one on the left is unstable." Ye Shuli's voice, mixed with spiritual energy, pierced the eardrums.

Jiang Ye spun around and took a step, his boots precisely grinding over the old scar on the assassin's knee—a mark left by the sword energy when they raided the black market three days ago.

The assassin stumbled and bumped into his companion, and Jiang Ye seized the opportunity to throw out the modified Immortal Binding Rope.

The ropes, infused with modern carbon fiber, automatically forked in mid-air, tripping the three assassins and sending them tumbling. "Professor Ye's leverage principle really worked," he whistled, his sword tip flicking off the mask of the assassin leader.

The moment the black iron mask hit the ground, Ye Shuli's pupils contracted slightly.

On the exposed necks of those assassins, dark purple veins pulsated at a specific frequency—just like the mutated monsters she had dissected last month.

The icicles condensed in her palm into the shape of a microscope, instantly revealing the components of the Gu poison flowing in the other person's meridians.

"At the hour of Xu (7-9 PM), attack the Qihai acupoint with alkaline spiritual power!" She tossed out a jade bottle containing a neutralizing agent.

Jiang Ye flipped his sword, and the sword energy, wrapped in medicinal powder, pierced straight into the assassin's dantian.

Amidst the hissing white mist, the three assassins suddenly convulsed and collapsed to their knees.

Seeing this, the remaining four retreated quickly, but on their seventh step, they simultaneously stepped into the spiritual energy trap that Jiang Ye had previously set up—a confinement array arranged according to the Fibonacci sequence taught by Ye Shuli.

The wolf-headed assassin roared and swung his sword, but the blade was jolted out of his hand by the electromagnetic field when it touched the array's core.

"Now!" Ye Shuli's hand seals moved at a speed far exceeding that of ordinary people, and the modified Nine Heavens Thunder Technique condensed into the shape of a particle accelerator at her fingertips.

Blue and white lightning bolts cleaved down along the shortest path she had calculated, precisely piercing through the seals in the consciousness of each assassin.

Jiang Ye's sword sheath delivered the final blow at the opportune moment, a move that mimicked modern grappling techniques, dislocating the assassin's limbs.

As the last man lay unconscious in the crevice, he bent down and picked up half of a broken communication jade slip: "The frequency of these puppet assassins' control, and the one we intercepted in the lab last time..."

"The frequency amplitude difference is 0.3 Hz, and the resonance node is offset by fifteen degrees." Ye Shuli used an icicle to draw the wave equation on the ground, then pointed heavily at a certain coordinate with her fingertip. "Someone has tampered with the core algorithm of the puppet technique."

The two exchanged a glance, both seeing deep worry in each other's eyes.

Jiang Ye silently put away the Ye Clan spy token that had fallen from the assassin. The edge of the token was covered with specks of black crystal sand—a material that could only be produced in the Ye Clan's ancestral weapon-refining workshop.

Just before dawn, they finally saw the boundary marker of the Ye family's ancestral land.

The Xuanjing Stone Tablet, which should have been shrouded in a protective barrier, was now covered with spiderweb-like cracks, and the spiritual fire that had burned for thousands of years on the tablet was now only a faint glow.

Ye Shuli crouched down and touched the edge of the crack, her fingertips touching the viscous corrosive liquid—this forbidden drug from the Western Regions had just appeared in the vulnerability report of her improved defense system last week.

"The mountain-protecting formation has been destroyed from the inside." She condensed the analytical data into a light screen, and the twelve damaged points of the formation were pieced together to form a floor plan of the Ye family's main hall.

Jiang Ye suddenly pressed down on her trembling shoulder, and the quantum entanglement symbol in his palm resonated violently with a place a hundred miles away.

The sound of light footsteps came from behind the boundary marker, and seventeen or eighteen dusty-faced members of the Ye family from a collateral branch walked over, supporting each other.

The young man at the head of the group, holding the life tablet broken in two, suddenly burst into tears the moment he saw Ye Shuli: "Young Miss!"

The master's dungeon three days ago... three days ago...

The boy choked back tears as he lifted his shirt, revealing that the bright red mark on his chest had turned into a strange, dark green.

Ye Shuli's Ice Soul Appraisal Technique activated automatically, and the results sent chills down her spine—this was a hereditary Gu poison that only the direct descendants of the Ye family could be infected with.

Jiang Ye suddenly grabbed her and pulled her back three feet, creating a deep crater where they had been standing.

Half of a bronze tripod leg slowly rose from the bottom of the pit, and the tripod was still covered with a special anti-corrosion adhesive made by the Ye family library—the fragment of the clan's sacred artifact that they had just repaired last month.

A strong wind swept up the remnants of talismans scattered all over the ground, and Ye Shuli recognized several of them as bearing her improved formula.

The detector hidden in her sleeve began to alarm wildly, its pointer pointing directly towards the ancestral hall—where the remains of the Ye family ancestor who perished three hundred years ago lay dormant, as well as... her bloodline sealing system, which she had just upgraded last month.