Interrogation and Coercion

Wang Li's eyes lit up as he listened.

He had a gut feeling that his senior sister's guess was correct.

"If that's the case, doesn't that mean this gray Dao Hall is even more formidable?" he couldn't help but say.

"Of course it's formidable."

Lü Shenliang let out a cold laugh. "Perhaps only a true Primordial artifact would be this powerful, right?"

Wang Li was overjoyed. "Senior Sister, you're joking again."

But to his utter surprise, Lü Shenliang's face suddenly darkened. "Who's joking with you? Dominating battlefields, unmatched by ten thousand cultivators – this is the unique aura of a Primordial artifact capable of forging an Emperor's Path! Tell me, what exactly have you been hiding? If it weren't a Primordial artifact like this, how could it have entangled my Golden Core in a fate connection? If it weren't a Primordial artifact like this, how could it affect my soul perception? You might have even manipulated my intuition."

"What?"

Wang Li was stunned. It was only then that he realized something was amiss, and things weren't quite as he had imagined.

Boom!

Before he could fully react, four streams of green energy materialized around him, binding him tightly.

Almost simultaneously, several cold glints flew from Lü Shenliang's hand and struck Wang Li.

The True Essence within Wang Li's body was instantly suppressed.

He was lifted by the four streams of green energy, hanging upside down in the air.

"..."

If he were facing an ordinary Golden Core cultivator, Wang Li might have been able to struggle a bit and wouldn't have surrendered so easily. But facing his own senior sister, Wang Li had no real intention of fighting. As a result, his reaction was much slower than it would have been in a real battle.

"Senior Sister, what are you doing?"

While he was still speechless, Lü Shenliang moved like the wind and appeared before him. She extended her right hand, and a dark red flame emerged from her fingertip, like a scorching sharp needle. He cried out in alarm.

Lü Shenliang didn't answer. With a stern face, she reached out and touched his forehead. The dark red flame seeped into his forehead.

Wang Li immediately felt a heavy sensation in his mind, as if a rampaging undercurrent had suddenly appeared within his spiritual sense.

"Soul Searching Technique?"

He was completely intimidated and dared not move or cry out.

He didn't know what kind of Soul Searching Technique Lü Shenliang was using on him, but he knew very well that any such technique was extremely dangerous for both the caster and the target. If the caster couldn't suppress the backlash of the target's spiritual sense, their own spiritual sense would be severely damaged. And if the target's spiritual sense was shattered by the caster's technique, they would become truly foolish, with a disordered mind.

Is she really suspecting I'm hiding a Primordial artifact? His mind buzzed, and he felt incredibly wronged.

Lü Shenliang, however, looked solemn and extremely focused.

Light flickered continuously in her hands as she casually rotated Wang Li's suspended body. She cast countless spells and shot numerous beams of light at him, but found nothing. A look of confusion and disappointment gradually appeared on her face.

Apart from the Dao Palace in his Sea of Qi that Wang Li had mentioned, she found no clues after searching his physical body and soul.

Just as Wang Li had said, he didn't seem to have any special encounters; his cultivation of the Profound Heaven Dao Arts had simply gone awry.

The gray Dao Hall within him, as far as she could sense, seemed to be merely a condensation of mixed Vital Energy, and there was no possibility of it concealing the aura of other artifacts or a special physique.

But if that were the case, why was this gray Dao Hall so miraculous?

She truly couldn't understand.

What made her even more exasperated was that after all her strenuous efforts, the layer of hazy Vital Energy on her Golden Core seemed to have increased slightly. It was as if her exploration of Wang Li had led to even more fate entanglements.

What in the world was this!

She couldn't help but start pulling at her hair again.

Not many visitors came to the Profound Heaven Sect over the years, and due to the natural barrier surrounding the sect's territory, the cultivators of the Profound Heaven Sect had always been lax in their defenses of the outer areas.

For the region closest to the solitary peak, the cultivators of the Profound Heaven Sect were even more negligent.

It would be best for these two anomalies on the solitary peak if they were to disappear inexplicably one day.

He Lingxiu's figure appeared outside the solitary peak.

Behind her lay the passage that Lü Shenliang and Wang Li frequently used, and it was also the area within the Profound Heaven Sect's natural outer barrier where the protective wind was most fierce.

Although Lü Shenliang and Wang Li navigated such areas with ease, He Lingxiu was merely a cultivator at the Qi Refining stage. Logically, a cultivator like her wouldn't even have enough True Essence to control a flying artifact. Her ability to pass through such an area safely by herself was absolutely astonishing.

He Lingxiu approached the solitary peak and gazed at its isolated stance among the other thirty-one peaks of the Profound Heaven Sect. Her eyes gradually began to gleam.

The other thirty-one peaks of the Profound Heaven Sect appeared full of spiritual energy and were indeed prime locations for cultivation. However, if one disregarded the spiritual energy and essence, even from the perspective of an ordinary person, these thirty-one peaks, shaped like buns, seemed only fit to prostrate themselves before this solitary peak, unable to lift their heads.

A sneer of disdain touched her lips.

As long as the two people on this solitary peak existed, the cultivators of the other thirty-one peaks of the Profound Heaven Sect truly wouldn't be able to hold their heads up in front of this solitary peak.

This meant that the two cultivators on the solitary peak were thorns in the eyes of those people. Even within their own sect, their survival must be extremely difficult.

She felt a sense of melancholy.

When she shifted her gaze from the distant thirty-one peaks to the solitary peak before her, the brilliance in her eyes seemed to solidify and surge towards her brow.

A flash of light appeared on her forehead, as if a precious flower was about to bloom, but the light instantly vanished.

The flow of Heaven and Earth Vital Energy in this world suddenly slowed down in her sight.

The illusion arrays crumbled like plaster on an old, dilapidated wall.

Logically, her position should have obscured her view of Wang Li and Lü Shenliang's stone hut, with the surrounding rocks blocking her line of sight. Yet, the reflection of the stone hut was clearly visible in her pupils.

It was as if she were looking down from the heavens, seeing with perfect clarity what was happening outside the stone hut.

Within the Huayang Sect, in the eyes of all the elders except her Third Uncle-Master, she was merely a young girl with a unique personality. But in reality, she had already weathered far too many storms.

The moment she saw the scene outside the stone hut on the solitary peak, her eyes widened in disbelief.