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

Before the smoke and dust from the explosion of the bronze tripod legs had even dissipated, Ye Shuli's detector suddenly emitted a sharp beep.

In the instant moonlight pierced through the thick fog, she saw the old, winding wound on the black-robed man's hand—exactly the same spot where she had been injured in the explosion at the modern laboratory.

"Do you think this thing can withstand a few energy clashes?" Jiang Ye wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and picked up the broken piece of bronze.

His back pressed against Ye Shuli's slightly trembling shoulder, and their tattered clothes brushed against the broken dragon-patterned pillar of the ancestral hall at the same time.

The black-robed man chuckled softly, accompanied by a metallic scraping sound, and the chains around the necks of the suspended tribesmen tightened even further.

Ye Shuli stared at the second-generation detector swaying at the other person's waist; it was the laboratory sample she had lost three months ago.

Seven beams of silver light suddenly tore through the mist.

As Jiang Ye pulled Ye Shuli to the right, the ground where they had been standing was now filled with ice cone-shaped energy bodies, each tip flashing with sealing patterns similar to modern barcodes.

"The robotic arm in the southwest corner is delayed by 0.3 seconds!" Jiang Ye suddenly announced during his fourth lateral jump.

His left earlobe was burned by the aftershocks of energy, and the blood spurting out as he spoke clung to the back of Ye Shuli's neck—where tiny void runes floated up.

Ye Shuli kicked away half a brick and used the momentum to leap into the air. The detector screen displayed the bloodline chart of the first patriarch of the Ye family thirty years ago.

When the woman in black raised her left hand for the sixth time to summon the mechanical arm, she precisely threw the modified explosive talisman at the southwest gear shaft.

The blue light bursting from the void was mixed with the black smoke of burning diesel fuel, and the black-robed man staggered backward, tearing off half of his hood.

Ye Shuli's pupils suddenly contracted—the arrangement of the three moles on the corner of the other person's right eye was exactly the same as the birthmark on her modern mentor's face.

"You actually installed a pressure sensor valve on the antique cauldron?" The man in black robes stared at the buzzing detector on Ye Shuli's waist, then suddenly reached out and grabbed Jiang Ye's still unhealed array pattern wound.

DNA-like light spots floated in the black mist rising from his palm, creating an eerie resonance with the genealogy enshrined in the Ye family ancestral hall.

Jiang Ye flipped over and leaped onto the broken roof beam, the still-healing wound on his back dragging bloodstains on the bricks and stones.

He gestured towards Ye Shuli, indicating the secret chamber of the family's forbidden area, while shouting, "If you can't beat them, just overturn the chessboard! Aren't you best at blowing up labs?"

Ye Shuli kicked away the incoming bronze fragments, and the detector screen suddenly switched to the modern periodic table of chemical elements.

As she threw the last three explosive talismans toward the intersection of the ancestral home's ley lines, the man in black finally revealed his first expression besides a cold smile—his raised wrist paused for half a second in mid-air.

Amidst the towering flames and the cracking of gears, Jiang Ye seized the opportunity to sever three energy chains.

As the three clansmen fell, Ye Shuli saw the blue light of the chips emerging from the back of their necks—the first-generation neural connection device she had developed before her transmigration.

"You've improved my self-destruct program." The man in black stroked the charred mechanical arm, his electronic voice trembling for the first time.

The thick fog behind him suddenly surged into a ring, and thirty-seven blood-red runes appeared in the void, their arrangement strikingly similar to the data model in Ye Shuli's graduation thesis.

Just as Ye Shuli was about to activate the detector to scan, Jiang Ye suddenly covered his burning chest with the array pattern.

Black slime began to seep from the ground beneath their feet. The slime formed patterns exactly like those on modern circuit boards, while the black-robed man's fingertips, which were forming hand seals, were wrapped with the fluorescent edge of the laboratory protective gloves that Ye Shuli was most familiar with.

Jiang Ye's knuckles left white marks on Ye Shuli's wrist, and the surrounding blue brick walls were multiplying at an eerie speed.

The black-robed figure hovered at the top of the maze, while thirty-seven illusions simultaneously raised ice spikes flashing with barcodes.

"Close your eyes." Ye Shuli pinched Jiang Ye's pulse with her hand, and the detector screen reflected a dark blue contour map on the back of her hand.

When the third illusion wall crashed in, she suddenly pulled Jiang Ye and tilted him at a ninety-degree angle to the southeast—where a broken bronze pillar was oozing real water vapor.

The fluorescent edges at the black-robed man's fingertips suddenly swelled, and the labyrinth floor cracked open into a deep abyss like a modern subway tunnel.

The void rune on the back of Ye Shuli's neck suddenly became hot. She accurately stepped on the half of the chain that Jiang Ye had thrown out, and used the force to leap towards a hexagonal spatial node that was constantly collapsing.

"Twelve steps to the left!" Jiang Ye suddenly ripped open his blood-stained clothes, and the array pattern on his chest was flashing in sync with the detector on Ye Shuli's waist.

As the eighteenth illusory ice spike grazed her ear, Ye Shuli finally touched the remaining carved window frame of the ancestral hall—it still had the cinnabar she had rubbed on it three hours earlier.

The moment the moonlight from the real world pierced through the illusion, the gears of the black-robed man's mechanical arm made a clicking sound.

Ye Shuli tore off the hairband and wrapped it around Jiang Ye's bleeding wrist. Suddenly, a 3D model of the laboratory before her transmigration popped up on the detector screen.

"It's time to close the net." Jiang Ye wiped the blood from his left eye and suddenly pushed Ye Shuli toward the bronze cauldron ruins in the southwest corner.

As he flipped and leaped into the air, the unhealed wound on his back trailed a DNA-like chain of light in the moonlight, which was precisely reflected on the second wave of ice spikes summoned by the black-robed man.

Ye Shuli's fingertips gathered the power of the void, carrying the scent of nitroglycerin. She finally completed the energy accumulation when Jiang Ye faked a fall for the seventh time.

As the man in black robes was distracted from dodging the fragments of the family genealogy that Jiang Ye threw out, the modified explosive talisman suddenly decomposed into the atomic structures of the first twenty elements of the periodic table.

"You overlooked the pressure difference!" Ye Shuli shouted, and the energy sphere, which combined modern fluid mechanics and spiritual power, exploded with a bang.

The second-generation detector at the black-robed man's waist exploded, and the ice cones with barcodes melted into molten aluminum in mid-air.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, Jiang Ye threw out three ancestral hall chains, which, with their red-hot metal, precisely wrapped around the mechanical joint of the black-robed man's left foot.

As Ye Shuli threw the last three explosive talismans at the three moles on the opponent's right eye, the Fourier transform model from her graduation thesis suddenly appeared in the void.

Amidst the earth-shattering explosion, the black-robed man's mask finally shattered completely.

As Ye Shuli looked at the face that combined the features of a modern mentor and a traitor to the Ye family, the detector suddenly emitted a piercing DNA matching alarm.

Before she could speak, Jiang Ye had already dragged her into the final, complete barrier of the ancestral hall.

"Beware of antimatter..." Jiang Ye's warning was extinguished in the aftershocks of the energy.

As the two tumbled together, Ye Shuli's detector screen froze on the chip number on the black-robed man's neck—it was the same lab sample that had been stolen on the day she crossed over.

The sound of chains snapping echoed from outside the barrier as the surviving tribesmen struggled to crawl toward the safe zone.

Ye Shuli propped herself up against Jiang Ye's bleeding chest and noticed that he was still tightly clutching half a bronze fragment engraved with modern binary code in his right hand.

"You won?" Jiang Ye spat out the pebbles in his mouth and gently hooked his fingertips on Ye Shuli's loose sash.

The new wound on his back was oozing blood that smelled of engine oil, creating a strange resonance with the gradually dissipating black mist outside the barrier.

Just as Ye Shuli was about to test the radiation level in the air, Jiang Ye suddenly pulled her into his arms.

The two overlapping wounds simultaneously emitted a pale blue fluorescence, and she then realized that the array patterns on Jiang Ye's chest had quietly reorganized into a chemical molecular structure.

"You had already..." The question was interrupted by cheers as the surviving tribesmen helped each other gather around.

As Ye Shuli gazed at the gradually emerging ruins of the ancestral home outside the barrier, she suddenly noticed that Jiang Ye had half a fragment of a protective glove with a fluorescent edge hidden in his palm—which could be pieced together with the pair on the black-robed man's hand to form a complete pair.