Wang Li's eyes shone brightly as he listened.
His intuition told him that his senior sister's guess was not wrong.
"If that's the case, then wouldn't this gray Dao Hall be even more formidable?" he could not help saying.
"Of course it is formidable."
Lü Shenliang sneered. "I'm afraid only a true Primordial artifact could be this formidable, right?"
Wang Li was overjoyed. "Senior Sister, you're joking again."
But what he had never expected was for Lü Shenliang to turn on him at once, her face immediately darkening. "Who's joking with you? Sweeping through battlefields, unmatched among ten thousand cultivators—this is the unique bearing of a Primordial artifact capable of forging an Emperor's Path! Tell me, what exactly are you hiding? If it isn't a Primordial artifact like this, how could it become entangled in fate with my Golden Core? If it isn't a Primordial artifact like this, how could it affect my soul perception? For all I know, even my intuition has been manipulated by you."
"Huh?"
Wang Li was instantly dumbfounded. Only now did he realize that something seemed off, that things were somewhat different from what he had imagined.
Boom!
Before he could fully react, four streams of azure energy had already formed around him, binding his body tightly.
Almost at the same time, several cold stars flew from Lü Shenliang's hand and landed on Wang Li's body.
The True Essence within Wang Li's body was immediately suppressed beyond movement.
His entire body was lifted by those four azure currents and suspended upside down in the air.
"..."
Against an ordinary Golden Core cultivator, Wang Li might have been able to struggle a little and would not have surrendered so easily. But against his own senior sister, he had no real intention to fight at all. Naturally, his reactions were far slower than they would have been in a true battle.
"Senior Sister, what are you doing?"
He was still speechless when Lü Shenliang swept before him like the wind. She extended her right hand, and a dark-red blaze surged from the tip of her index finger like a sharp, red-hot needle. Wang Li was instantly terrified and cried out.
Yet Lü Shenliang did not answer. With a stern face, she reached out and pressed her finger against his forehead. That dark-red blaze seeped in through his brow.
Wang Li immediately felt his forehead sink, as though a dark current had suddenly appeared within his consciousness and was charging about wildly.
"The Soul Searching Technique?"
He was completely frightened now. He did not dare move, nor did he dare cry out.
He did not know what kind of Soul Searching Technique Lü Shenliang was using on him, but he knew very well that any Soul Searching Technique was exceedingly dangerous for both caster and target. If the caster could not suppress the backlash of the other party's consciousness, their own consciousness would suffer grave damage. And if the target's consciousness were shattered into a complete mess by the other party's Soul Searching Technique, that person's consciousness would fall into disorder, turning them into a true fool.
Could she really suspect that I'm secretly hiding a Primordial artifact? His head buzzed, and he felt wronged to the utmost.
Lü Shenliang, however, looked grave and was focused to the extreme.
Light continuously flickered between her hands. She casually turned Wang Li's suspended body this way and that. No one knew how many spells she cast or how many streams of light she struck into Wang Li's body, but she found nothing. Confusion and disappointment gradually appeared on her face.
Other than the Dao palace in Wang Li's sea of qi that he had described, she found no clue at all, even after searching through his fleshly body and soul.
Just as Wang Li had said, he truly seemed to have encountered nothing unusual. It was merely that an aberration had occurred while he cultivated the Profound Heaven Dao Arts.
In her perception, the gray Dao Hall within his body seemed to be nothing more than a condensation of those mixed and impure Vital Energies. There was no possibility of it concealing the aura or embryo of some other artifact.
But if that was the case, why did this gray Dao Hall possess such wondrous properties?
She truly could not make sense of it.
What left her even more speechless was that after all her strenuous spellcasting, the hazy gray Vital Energy on her Golden Core seemed to have increased by several more strands. It seemed that this investigation of Wang Li had instead caused even more entanglement in their fates.
What the hell was this?!
She could not help grabbing at her hair again.
There had not been many visitors to the Profound Heaven Sect over the years. Moreover, because of the natural barrier around its territory, the cultivators of the Profound Heaven Sect had always been lax in guarding the outskirts of their mountain gate.
As for the region closest to the lone peak, the cultivators of the Profound Heaven Sect were even more lax in their vigilance.
For the Profound Heaven Sect, it was probably best if the two oddities of the lone peak simply vanished without cause one day.
He Lingxiu appeared outside the lone peak.
The area behind her was the passage that Lü Shenliang and Wang Li often used. It was also the region within the natural barrier around the Profound Heaven Sect where the gale winds were fiercest.
Although Lü Shenliang and Wang Li seemed entirely at ease entering and leaving such a region, He Lingxiu was only a Qi Refining stage cultivator. By all reason, cultivators like her did not yet possess enough True Essence to wield even a flight artifact. For her to pass safely through such a region alone was absolutely inconceivable.
He Lingxiu approached the lone peak. As she looked at the way it stood apart from the Profound Heaven Sect's other Thirty-One Peaks, strange light gradually bloomed in her eyes.
The other Thirty-One Peaks of the Profound Heaven Sect looked brimming with spiritual charm and were indeed treasured lands for cultivation. Yet setting aside spiritual energy and spiritual charm, even in the eyes of ordinary mortals, those Thirty-One Peaks, shaped like steamed buns, seemed fit only to crawl before this lone peak, utterly unable to lift their heads.
A faint scornful smile appeared at the corner of her lips.
So long as the two people on this lone peak remained, the cultivators of the Profound Heaven Sect's other Thirty-One Peaks truly would be unable to lift their heads before it.
That being the case, the two cultivators on the lone peak must also be thorns in those people's eyes. Even within their own sect, survival must be exceedingly difficult for them.
She felt somewhat moved.
When she withdrew her gaze from the distant Thirty-One Peaks and turned it toward the lone peak before her, the strange light in her eyes seemed to condense into substance, then surged toward the space between her brows.
A flash of light flickered between her brows, as though a precious flower were about to bloom. Yet that glimmer vanished in an instant.
The flow of Vital Energy between heaven and earth suddenly slowed in her vision.
Several concealment formations fell away with soft pops, like crumbling plaster from a wall left in disrepair for years.
By all reason, from where she stood, her line of sight should have been blocked by the mountain rocks, leaving her unable to see the stone cottage where Wang Li and Lü Shenliang were. Yet within her eyes, the reflection of that stone cottage appeared with perfect clarity.
As if she were looking down from the heavens, she clearly saw what was happening outside the stone cottage at that moment.
Within the Huayang Sect, in the eyes of every elder apart from her Third Uncle-Master, she was merely a little girl with an unusual personality. But in truth, she had seen far too many towering waves and raging winds.
Yet the instant she clearly saw the scene outside the stone cottage on the lone peak, her eyes bulged wide.
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