A Faint Echo

"Father, don't worry. I've searched many times already. Nothing will happen to me."

"Once I collect a few more bottles of Li Chen, I'll..."

"Who are you? I don't understand what you're saying. No, don't talk to me..."

"Ah! Ah! I don't want to die here! I want to go back. I want to go home..."

After the Taiyi Golden Glow, several stray voices suddenly welled up in Wu Ming's mind, then vanished in a flash. Only the final, heart-rending wail lingered, echoing long after.

Was this... the Li Yao's memories from when it was alive?

If he killed a Li Yao with his sword, would he inherit some of its memories? But absorbing those memories was practically the same as listening to the Li Yao recite its last words inside his mind... Didn't that count as breaking a taboo?

Yet that final strike against the Li Yao was clearly why the Immortal Guiding Envoy had gone to such lengths to make the three young masters come here in person and finish it off.

The youth gripped his magical sword tightly and fell silent. Only when Han Gang touched his throat did he speak, his voice low and tinged with surprise. "Ranxiang Workshop's magical swords are this powerful...? You needn't dwell on it. The Li Yao Echo does more good than harm. Once we're back, I'll teach you how to refine it."

As he spoke, he beckoned behind him. Two black-clad, masked Immortal Guiding Envoys quietly stepped forward, each carrying a porcelain bottle. They turned the mouths of the bottles toward the Li Yao's remains, and wisps of black smoke rose from the ground.

A moment later, all that remained on the ground was dried mud. Not a trace of the Li Yao could be found.

Nearby, Zhang Miao's face was sorrowful as she bowed toward the ground.

Han Gang sighed. "It's too soon to mourn... Never mind. Let's leave this place first. Once a Li Yao dies, more of them will gather."

With that, Han Gang used Divine Movement again, pulling Wu Ming along with the Solidification Array as they sped toward the distant direction lit by the Blazing Feather Flag.

They rode the wind and parted the mist, moving even faster than before. But just as they were about to break through the fog and reach the Blazing Feather Flag, Han Gang suddenly stopped, nearly making Wu Ming's vision go black.

"Well now, you certainly have Immortal Fate on your side. On your first visit to the Moli Immortal Mansion, you've already stumbled upon such a curious encounter!"

As he spoke, Han Gang stepped aside, clearing their view. Not far ahead lay a girl in purple, slumped on the ground, covered in mud and blood. Her right hand was twisted at an unnatural angle... She had clearly met with an accident here and been badly injured.

When she saw them, delight appeared on her face. She struggled to get up, calling out again and again... But with the Art-Sealed Wax Pills in place, not a sound could reach their ears.

The girl's answer, however, was a blazing punch.

Han Gang's punch looked unremarkable, but the faint flames around his fist instantly evaporated the muddy water and damp air within dozens of meters. The girl took the full force of it and was burned to nothing, bones and all!

"Whew..." After the flames died down, Han Gang looked distinctly weary. "This thing is dangerous. I won't leave it for any of you."

Wu Ming nodded slightly, though his brow furrowed despite himself.

Of course he wasn't so naïve as to mistake the girl they'd encountered for an ordinary human. In fact, in this Heavenly Absolute Immortal Mansion, where the rule was don't talk to strangers, even if they happened to meet fellow explorers, their first response absolutely couldn't be to call out without thinking. They had to get away as fast as possible, lest they be mistaken for something else!

This place was a true dark forest. Anyone who failed to respect that basic rule could be treated as a Li Yao! The girl in purple might have looked pitiful and helpless, but she was nothing more than a Li Yao with a more convincing disguise—and all the more vicious for it.

It was just that this girl Li Yao seemed to look exactly like the one he had just killed with the Taiyi Golden Glow...

"Once you lose your way in the Moli Immortal Mansion, you'll never know another day's peace," Han Gang said. "I once killed my senior brother here with my own hands. Then, over the next ten years, I killed him seventeen more times. Next time we run into him, I can point him out to you."

Wu Ming could only remain silent.

Han Gang's explanation immediately brought concepts like dungeons, NPCs, and repeated respawns to mind... But he really wasn't in the mood to joke about it.

The basic setup of this Moli Immortal Mansion was downright monstrous.

"Enough. We're almost at the Blazing Feather Flag. Once we're back, we'll explain everything in detail."

As he spoke, Liu Sanlang suddenly tilted his head to one side, a flicker of struggle crossing his face.

Yi Yi raised an eyebrow in surprise, then sighed and struck Liu Sanlang on the back of the neck, knocking him unconscious. He called He Lu over and held a White Talisman above Liu Sanlang's head. Before long, wisps of gray fog were drawn out of him.

Han Gang looked amused. "The Liu Family's Third Young Master has some skill. He even knows how to read lips. A pity that his cleverness outwitted him. In the Moli Immortal Mansion, knowing more isn't always better."

As they spoke, the two masked men in black gathered the few remaining scraps of the Li Yao's corpse into their porcelain bottles. Then, guided by the Blazing Feather Flag, the group hurried out of the Immortal Mansion. Nothing else went wrong along the way.

When they stepped back onto the soft, sandy earth of the Grey Plains, Wu Ming felt a weight lift from his heart. Then exhaustion surged through every limb!

The whole trip had taken less than two hours, and he'd been pulled along by the Solidification Array the entire time. He hadn't even needed to walk under his own power; he'd only exerted himself once, when finishing off the Li Yao. Yet at that moment, it felt as though he'd completed an entire day of Gujian Sect training...

Enough to make him want to do another round right away!

Unfortunately, his teammates clearly couldn't keep up with him. The moment they left the Immortal Mansion, Liu Sanlang and Zhang Miao both slumped over, barely able to walk.

As Yi Yi reached out to remove the wax pills from everyone's ears, he smiled. "Exhaustion is inevitable. While you're in the Moli Immortal Mansion, you're constantly tainted by Li Chen and lose the essence of the living world. No art or array can block it out. The only thing you can do is keep track of the time and get out promptly. But once you return here, regular treatment with an incense bottle will have you back to normal in no time. There's no need to worry too much."

After a pause, Yi Yi clapped his hands and said, "You all did better on your first trip into the Immortal Mansion than I expected. You haven't been cultivating for long, and your cultivation levels are still lacking, but you obeyed orders and showed sound judgment when it came to danger. It seems the Liu Family had good reason to press the Immortal Mountain so hard to send us as your protectors. We won't let you down. We'll make sure you reap a rich harvest from the Moli Immortal Mansion!"

"But before we start dreaming about the future, let's take care of today's business. Come with me to the White Jade Pavilion, and we'll settle the spoils from this trip to the Immortal Mansion."

--

Not long afterward, eight people sat in a circle in the courtyard of the White Jade Pavilion. Two porcelain bottles sat in the middle.

"The bottles contain the Li Chen we collected this time," Yi Yi said. "According to the rules, we split it fifty-fifty."

As he spoke, Yi Yi drew one bottle toward himself and pushed the other to Liu Sanlang.

Liu Sanlang didn't refuse. The one who had truly put in the effort to secure the Immortal Guiding Envoys from Luohuang Mountain this time was the Lineage, not Liu Sanlang himself. So the Li Chen collected in the Immortal Mansion naturally had to be returned to the Lineage as recompense.

Li Chen existed only in the Moli Immortal Mansion, a profoundly unusual substance. When it tainted a person, it was a sinister curse that could turn them into something inhuman without their knowledge, until they ultimately became a Li Yao.

But if extracted and collected the right way, it was also the finest of heavenly treasures. Many pills and magical treasures required it in their refinement, and ancient pill recipes unearthed from Immortal Mansions were especially demanding of it.

The right way... was to kill a Li Yao and plunder it from the corpse. The portion removed from a living person, or drawn directly from the world within the Immortal Mansion, didn't count.

The Immortal Mansion was already dangerous enough, and one also had to fight Li Yao that had been among the strongest of their peers while alive. The difficulty of collecting Li Chen went without saying. So even though it came from a Qi Refining Immortal Mansion, and its outer reaches had been explored by thousands upon thousands over the past few centuries, Li Chen still commanded a high price.

Of course, to either the foremost Aristocratic Clan in Wu Prefecture or the many Immortal Guiding Envoys, no matter how high the price of Li Chen climbed, it was only a bonus. Something else mattered far more.

After they had divided the Li Chen, Yi Yi's expression turned solemn. "For what comes next, I need the three of you to promise you won't tell anyone. Of course, there's no need to swear an oath. We have our own way to ensure this doesn't leak. We just have to inform you in advance."

After speaking, he took a dark red booklet from his robes. The words Guili Art were written on its cover.

Yi Yi opened the cover. The thin booklet contained only a single page, with roughly seventy or eighty characters.

But the words couldn't be read. They were perfectly clear to the eye, yet seemed veiled by a layer of gauze; no matter what, he couldn't pronounce or memorize them... In an instant, Wu Ming understood. This was the method they used to ensure the secret wouldn't get out.

You could look, understand, and use it—but you couldn't tell anyone else.

So it was a ban on secondhand copies... As a longtime fan of digital editions, Wu Ming had no objections. He soon became absorbed in contemplating the text.

The Guili Art was extremely concise because, in essence, it did only one thing: refine the Li Yao Echo.

That was, the wail of the girl in purple as she died, which still lingered in Wu Ming's mind.

The process was so simple and quick that by the time Wu Ming realized what had happened, the voice in his mind had already faded into silence.

In its place, the Mana in his body was like a fire fed with fuel, suddenly burning brighter and fiercer!

Thank you so much to Cai Bu Shi Qi Yue for the character reward! And thanks to Xiexie Ni 23tv, Book Friend 20230404214320799, Scarecrow in a Windbreaker, Er Ri Jiu Ge, Ting Ge Hu Yu, and Ouyang Shang, former chief disciple of the Spirit Sword Sect, for your rewards!

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