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

The moonlight outside the cave shimmered like shards of silver on the moss.

Ye Shuli's deerskin boots crunched over the gravel, and the jade bracelet on her wrist emitted a rapid buzzing sound.

Thirty paces away, in a crevice in the rocks, the man in black robes was trying to use his mechanical prosthetics to pry open the vines—his broken spine made him look like a severed centipede.

Jiang Ye's Binding Immortal Rope wrapped around the opponent's ankle even faster than a shadow.

As the blood-stained hemp rope stretched taut in the moonlight, Ye Shuli had already used the tip of her sword to pry open the man's hood.

Dark purple scars spread from the neck to the jaw, and a faint bluish light of gears could be seen beneath the ulcerated skin.

"Which mountain peak does the old friend on the mountaintop reside on?" Ye Shuli's sword pressed against the festering wound in his throat. "The fluorescent moss oozing from your wound is the same kind that clings to Jiang Ye's sleeve."

The man in the black robe made a rattling sound, like gears jamming, coming from his throat.

Jiang Ye crouched down, holding the intact sealing wax letter between two fingers and waving it around: "When the escape array was activated, you deliberately used your prosthetic eye to brand us with a tracking mark—so eager to deliver this to our doorstep?"

“He’s waiting for us to read the letter.” Ye Shuli suddenly tapped the metal seam at the other’s collarbone with the hilt of her sword, producing a small blue spark with a clang. “The sealing wax on the letter is Xuanbing Soul, which can only be preserved in extremely cold places.”

But your prosthetic limbs are stained with crimson sand—the same mineral residue we saw three days ago when we lost the bronze-masked man at the southern volcano.

The black-robed man's pupils suddenly contracted.

Jiang Ye whistled, a spiritual flame igniting at his fingertips to illuminate the other's neck: "No wonder you're wrapped up so tightly; practicing dual cultivation of ice and fire is bound to cause blood vessels to burst, right?"

"You don't understand at all..." The man in black robes suddenly sprang up, his broken prosthetic limb aimed straight for Ye Shuli's throat.

Seven copper coins flew out from Jiang Ye's sleeve, precisely piercing seven vital acupoints on his joints.

Taking advantage of the moment, Ye Shuli pressed the malachite necklace against his chest. The instant the gemstone touched his skin, a harsh grinding sound came from inside the black-robed man's body, as if gears had stopped turning.

“There’s a theory in modern criminal investigation,” she said, looking down at the convulsing man in black robes, “that when a suspect deliberately exposes a flaw, it’s usually to cover up a bigger secret—like, the ‘Elemental Master’ leader you risked your life to protect, whose supply line to the Southern Frontier Fire Vein was actually cut off long ago?”

The man in the black robe spat out fluorescent blood foam from his throat.

Jiang Ye used the Immortal Binding Rope to strangle his neck: "When your master sent you here to die, didn't he say that Miss Ye was the best at dismantling puppets?"

Last month in Yunzhou City, she converted three hundred combat puppets into fireworks launchers.

"Impossible..." The black-robed man's mechanical eyes suddenly bulged. "The leader clearly said you were still in the Spirit Master realm..."

Ye Shuli's jade bracelet suddenly emitted a bright light, and the energy fluctuation map from thirty miles away condensed into a light screen in her palm: "Thanks to the positioning mark you brought, we can now detect five identical signal sources—do you need me to calculate how many scapegoats your leader sent to steal this letter?"

The black-robed man's pupils finally filled with genuine fear.

He stared at the increasingly hot letter in Jiang Ye's hand and hissed, "You have no idea what you're fighting against... The elemental tide is about to reverse, and the leader wants all the spiritual veins..."

A muffled sound of rocks cracking echoed from deep within the cave.

Jiang Ye suddenly pulled Ye Shuli back three steps, and the black-robed man's chest cavity exploded violently, the splattered fluorescent liquid corroding honeycomb-like holes in the grass.

The red-hot letter floated to the air on its own, and black mist suddenly seeped from the family crest on the sealing wax.

Ye Shuli slammed the jade bracelet onto the letter, and an alarm immediately blared throughout the valley: "Energy readings exceeded the limit by twenty times!"

"It seems the recipient is more anxious than we are." Jiang Ye swept away the corrosive liquid with his sleeve, and the fluorescent moss remaining on his sleeve suddenly resonated with the ground.

In the distance, the crisp sound of snow breaking pine branches could be heard, and the valley under the moonlight rippled with eerie seven-colored waves, as if countless transparent things were awakening beneath the ice.

The letter trembled violently under the pressure of the jade bracelet, and the sealing wax finally cracked open with a "pop".

Ye Shuli suddenly grabbed Jiang Ye's hand as he was about to open the letter. The moment their eyes met, the energy spectrum projected by the jade bracelet suddenly twisted into a vortex shape—five signal sources thirty miles away were rapidly approaching in an encircling manner.

Dozens of mounds suddenly rose from the ground.

Puppets flashing with various fluorescent lights burst from the ground, the sound of metal joints grinding together instantly drowning out the howling night wind.

Ye Shuli's back bumped into Jiang Ye's spine, and she could feel his muffled chuckle, his chest heaving: "This time you've really stirred up a hornet's nest."

Seven ice crystal golems led the way, and blue-white frost mist spread across the ground as they moved.

Three crimson fire golems behind them raised their arms, and magma-like liquid condensed into arrows at their fingertips.

The most troublesome were the two transparent puppets mixed in, whose movements reflected the moonlight and created blinding spots of light.

"Southwest." Ye Shuli poked Jiang Ye's lower back with the hilt of her sword. "The energy core of that earthen-yellow puppet is in the third line on its left knee." The jade bracelet on her wrist was converting the energy flow into a three-dimensional projection, a structural diagram that had been analyzed from the wreckage of the combat puppet three days ago.

Jiang Ye's Immortal-Binding Rope wrapped around the ice golem's neck, and as he propelled himself into the air, he flung out seven poisoned copper coins: "How did you know...?"

“Modern assembly lines all have standardized parts!” Ye Shuli ducked to avoid the fire arrows, her malachite necklace sweeping across the frost and freezing the ankles of the three puppets. “Their joint patterns are exactly the same as the batch we disassembled last week—strike at the heart of the problem!”

The two gradually drew closer amidst the interplay of light spots and the interplay of ice and fire.

Ye Shuli's skirt was scorched by the lava, and Jiang Ye's cuffs were covered with ice crystals, but neither of them allowed the gap behind them to exceed half a foot.

As the third wave of fire arrows struck, Ye Shuli suddenly grabbed Jiang Ye's wrist: "Do you remember the fireworks array in Yunzhou City?"

Jiang Ye's eyes suddenly lit up.

He swung out the Immortal Binding Rope to entangle the nearest ice puppet, while Ye Shuli simultaneously pressed the jade bracelet against the chest of the fire puppet.

The two opposing energies were forcibly combined, and the shockwave generated by the collision of ice and fire overturned the five puppets.

Taking advantage of the smoke and dust raised by the explosion, Ye Shuli dragged Jiang Ye towards the southwest corner.

"Three, two, one!" Her sword tip pierced precisely into the grooves of the earthen golem's left knee, the sound of gears jamming like a rusty music box.

Jiang Ye's copper coin followed closely behind, piercing the energy cores of the other two puppets, instantly tearing a gap in the encirclement.

The black-robed man's mutilated mechanical arm suddenly twitched, propping him up: "How dare you..." A hum of gears spinning at high speed came from his chest cavity, and fluorescent blood vessels under his skin began to swell.

Ye Shuli's jade bracelet suddenly emitted a sharp alarm, and the red light of the soaring energy reading illuminated the beads of sweat on the tip of her nose.

"Hold your breath!" She slapped the malachite necklace against Jiang Ye's chest with her other hand and pressed it against her own heart.

The ice and fire elements absorbed by the jade bracelet merged into a pale golden light membrane, which barely enveloped the two of them before the black-robed man exploded into countless fluorescent fragments.

The corrosive liquid sizzled as it hit the protective shield.

Jiang Ye's eyelashes almost touched Ye Shuli's nose, and he could see the data stream jumping in her pupils—the jade bracelet was analyzing the energy trajectory left by the explosion.

As the last glimmer of light faded into the night, the letter hanging in mid-air suddenly burst into flames, and the ashes pieced together half a map in the air.

"The residual energy points to the snow-capped mountains in the northwest." Ye Shuli used the tip of her sword to pick up a piece of unburnt letter paper; the ice crystal patterns shimmered with a faint blue hue under the moonlight. "The sealing wax contains coordinate parameters of the permafrost layer."

Jiang Ye picked up the black-robed man's blasted mechanical prosthetic eye, rubbing the scorch marks on its surface with his fingertips. "It has a snow wolf totem branded on it, exactly the same as the emblem of the ice transport team that went missing at the border last year." He suddenly crushed the outer shell of the prosthetic eye, and the pointer of the miniature compass that fell out was spinning wildly. "Looks like someone's in a hurry to show us the way."

A crisp sound, like a glacier cracking, came from deep within the cave.

The energy spectrum projected by the jade bracelet suddenly expanded, and five flashing red dots were converging into a ring in the direction of the snow mountain.

Ye Shuli sheathed her sword, letting the night wind blow stray hairs from her temples to her lips: "I should go meet that impatient recipient."

(End of this chapter)