Purple Treasure Aura

(The update time will henceforth be changed to noon.)

At this moment, within Lin Suri's Sight-Roaming.

A procession of carriages and horses was slowly making its way through Inlaid Gold Mountain.

There were an enormous number of carriages and horses.

At the head rode a troop of cavalry, a little over a hundred men, all mounted on tall horses and clad in silver armor. They held long lances, their vitality and blood brimming with ferocity as they advanced along the winding mountain road.

Behind the cavalry came several canopied carriages, their bodies painted with gold lacquer and their roofs hung with tassels and beaded curtains that gleamed brilliantly in the twilight.

Behind the carriages came infantry, several hundred or so, carrying banners and ceremonial regalia. Their grand procession packed the entire mountain road full.

The carriages and horses slowly crossed the ridge, heading toward Yuan River Prefecture.

Chen Lingxi's heart stirred.

"Such a grand display is no ordinary official's."

The thought had barely arisen when an abrupt change occurred.

At the peak of Inlaid Gold Mountain, amid the swirling clouds and mist, a figure stepped out from the mountain.

The figure came with astonishing speed, as though he had fallen from the clouds. His body drew a long afterimage through the dusk.

He wore black robes, with a long saber hanging at his waist.

The saber had yet to leave its sheath, yet its biting killing intent crossed dozens of miles of empty space and sent a chill through Chen Lingxi's heart.

The man landed on the mountain road before the procession, directly blocking the cavalry.

A disturbance ran through the cavalry ranks. The leading general raised his long lance high, about to shout a challenge—

The man in black had already drawn his saber!

That saber light was too bright.

So bright that Chen Lingxi felt the world turn white!

Like a silver-white bolt of silk hanging down from the Ninth Heaven, it cleaved across the sky and tore the dusk in two.

Where the saber light passed, the air was ripped apart with a piercing howl. It was not a single cry, but one without end, layer upon layer, like a thousand men screaming at once.

The foremost dozen or so riders, men and horses alike, were ground into dust beneath that saber light.

Blood and flesh flew everywhere, silver armor shattered, and long lances snapped into several pieces, clattering against the ground.

"His vitality and blood could be this tyrannical?"

Chen Lingxi was stunned.

Only then did the cavalry behind react. Some reined in their horses and retreated, while others leveled their lances and charged forward. Their formation instantly fell into chaos.

But the saber-wielder had already moved.

He flitted through the crowd like a ghost. Every step forward brought another slash.

His saber techniques were not intricate. They could even be called exceedingly simple: a slash, a chop, an upward sweep, a horizontal cut.

Yet every stroke carried the terrifying force to raze cities and uproot fortresses.

Silver armor was like paper, long lances like dead branches. The cavalrymen did not even have time to scream before they were swallowed by the saber light.

Within mere breaths, over half of the hundred-odd cavalrymen were dead or wounded.

Cries of alarm came from the canopied carriages.

"An assassin!"

"Protect His Highness! Protect His Highness!"

"Quick, summon the consecrated master!"

Protect His Highness.

Hearing those two words, Chen Lingxi's thoughts abruptly tightened.

What imperial prince or royal relative was seated in that carriage?

He had no time to think further.

The saber-wielder had already cut through the cavalry formation and lunged straight for the canopied carriage.

Just then...

A streak of rainbow light tore through the distant sky!

It came with incredible speed, crossing who knew how many hundreds of miles. Like a rainbow descending from the clouds, it instantly arrived above Inlaid Gold Mountain.

Within the rainbow light was a figure.

That person's form was indistinct, wrapped in the rainbow radiance. Only a long dress and a token hanging from the waist could vaguely be seen.

Mixed within the rainbow light was a ray of true light.

This true light differed from the rainbow light. It was a pure, dazzling white, like the blazing sun high in the sky, brilliant enough that none dared look at it directly.

The true light separated from the rainbow radiance and, like a sharp sword, slashed straight at the saber-wielder.

The saber-wielder sneered.

"So there truly is an otherworldly fiend at work in the palace?"

His long saber turned in his hand, and he struck the ray of true light with a single slash.

"Boom—"

The instant the saber light collided with the true light, a blinding sphere of radiance exploded across the mountain road.

Waves of force swept outward, uprooting trees on either side and sending shattered rocks raining through the air.

The true light was momentarily halted by the saber strike, but it did not disperse. Instead, it blazed even brighter, as though enraged, and tangled with the saber-wielder.

The saber-wielder slashed several times in succession. Each slash collided with the true light, exploding into another sphere of radiance.

The mountain road was blasted beyond recognition. Rubble covered the ground, trees lay toppled, and green smoke rose from the scorched earth.

After several breaths, the saber-wielder suddenly withdrew his saber and swept back several yards.

He glanced at the distant rainbow light, then at the canopied carriage, and snorted coldly.

"I'll come back another day to kill you."

With that, he turned and prepared to leave.

Just then, the carriage curtain was lifted.

A young man stepped out from within.

He was around twenty-one or twenty-two, with red lips, white teeth, and a face like polished jade. He wore a bright yellow brocade robe, a white jade belt around his waist, and a violet-gold crown upon his head.

His complexion was pale, and there was a trace of blood on his lips. Clearly, the saber-wielder's attack had already injured him.

Yet his gaze was exceptionally composed, without the slightest hint of panic.

He held a treasure bottle in his hand.

The bottle was no larger than his palm, lustrous white throughout, with faint streams of light circulating across its surface.

The young man raised the treasure bottle over his head and gave it a light toss.

The bottle flew from his hand and hung in midair, its mouth facing downward.

Then—

A purple treasure aura burst from the mouth of the bottle!

The purple aura was so dense it was nearly solid, like a purple waterfall hanging upside down from the Ninth Heaven, dyeing half the sky violet-gold.

Lightning flickered faintly within the purple aura, crackling sharply.

The saber-wielder halted.

He turned around and looked at the purple treasure aura, his brow creasing slightly.

The purple treasure aura had already swept toward him.

The treasure aura was incomparably sharp. Wherever it passed, countless tiny cracks tore open in the air, like a shattered mirror covered in spiderweb patterns.

The saber-wielder swung his saber to block it.

The saber light collided with the purple aura, but this time was different.

The purple aura did not scatter beneath the strike. Instead, like a living thing, it coiled around the saber-wielder's long saber.

The saber-wielder's expression changed slightly. He slashed several times in succession, every stroke striking the purple aura, yet only making it tremble faintly. He could not destroy it completely.

The purple aura wound tighter and tighter, closing in from every direction and trapping the saber-wielder at its center.

The saber-wielder gave a low roar, and dazzling silver light suddenly erupted from his long saber.

He slashed out. This strike contained all his strength.

The instant saber light and purple aura collided, a deafening crash like heaven collapsing and earth splitting echoed through the valley.

The purple aura was finally cleaved apart.

The entire stream of purple aura split down the middle, turning into countless fragments that scattered through the wilderness.

Some fragments were as large as fists, others as small as grains of rice. They glimmered with a dim purple radiance in the dusk, like purple fireflies filling the sky as they drifted down toward the earth.

The young man's face suddenly turned deathly pale. He spat out a mouthful of blood, swayed twice, and fell backward.

The attendants beside him hurriedly caught him as cries of alarm rose all around.

The saber-wielder did not linger in battle. His body turned into a black shadow and vanished into the twilight in an instant.

On Inlaid Gold Mountain, there remained only corpses strewn across the ground, shattered carriages, scorched earth, and those purple fragments scattered throughout the wilderness.

Chen Lingxi stared, dumbfounded.

That purple treasure aura—was too powerful.

Powerful enough to trap a saber-wielder who had slain over a hundred cavalrymen with one strike, powerful enough to force him to exhaust all his strength merely to escape.

And that treasure bottle, that young man, that purple aura...

A faint guess arose in his heart.

"This person must be someone of immense importance."

He muttered to himself.

The saber-wielder had come suddenly and left just as suddenly.

That line—"So there truly is an otherworldly fiend at work in the palace?"—was even more thought-provoking.

Otherworldly fiend.

What otherworld?

And what fiend?

Then there was that rainbow light, the true light within it, and that saber-wielder...

Chen Lingxi felt as if his mind was no longer enough to process it all.

Just then, Lin Suri's gaze abruptly drew closer, and what Chen Lingxi saw shifted from Inlaid Gold Mountain to outside East Hall in the South Courtyard!

The golden light in Lin Suri's left eye had completely faded, while the green smoke left behind by the burning wooden eye had fully merged with his pupil.

With his hands clasped behind his back, he gazed in the direction of Inlaid Gold Mountain, the corner of his lips curving slightly upward.

The smile was faint, yet it carried a barely concealed excitement!

"A great fortuitous opportunity!"

He muttered to himself.

He paced about the room a few times, his steps so light that he seemed unlike the usual steady and inscrutable eldest young master of the marquis's estate.

Then he went to the table and picked up an incense burner.

It was the same kind of bronze-bodied incense burner Chen Lingxi had seen countless times, its surface embossed with ghost-face patterns, a stick of incense inserted at a slant within it.

The difference was that he did not light the incense this time.

Holding the burner in both hands, he closed his eyes and focused his mind. Spiritual qi slowly circulated through his dantian before flowing from his palms into the burner.

The instant the spiritual qi entered the burner, Chen Lingxi saw an incredible sight.

The spiritual qi did not dissipate. Instead, it continually changed within the incense burner, sometimes condensing into clumps, sometimes stretching into lines, sometimes folding into planes.

It continuously regrouped and arranged itself, eventually forming many shapes.

There were thirteen in total.

Those shapes were extraordinarily complex. Some resembled twisted serpents, some coiling vines, some interwoven lightning, and some overlapping mountain ranges.

Like...

[Sigils].

He recalled the three sigils Lin Suri had drawn with his sword fingers by the Yuan River that night—one gold, one silver, and one black.

The thirteen shapes before him were exactly the same in essence as those three sigils, only more intricate and more exquisite.

Chen Lingxi watched without blinking, committing to memory the routes through which the spiritual qi moved.

The sigils formed by spiritual qi slowly revolved within the incense burner, producing a strange resonance with the bronze inside its walls.

The burner trembled slightly, emitting an extremely faint hum.

Then, that stick of incense began to melt.

Starting from its tip, it gradually turned into ash, as though an invisible hand were grinding it to pieces.

The ash fell to the bottom of the burner, mixing with the sigils and spiritual qi before gradually melting into a viscous dark-gold liquid.

The liquid flowed slowly across the bottom of the burner, like mercury spilling over the ground.

Lin Suri suddenly bit the tip of his tongue and sprayed a mouthful of blood into the incense burner.

The blood fell into the dark-gold liquid and was instantly absorbed. The liquid began to boil, bubbles rising with soft gurgles.

Smoke rose from the burner.

The mist gathered above the incense burner and lingered without dispersing.

Lin Suri activated his spiritual qi again, and the mist slowly contracted before returning to the incense burner.

Holding the burner, he rose to his feet.

"A great fortuitous opportunity!"

His eyes shone brilliantly as he could not help repeating himself.

Then he pushed open East Hall's doors and strode out toward the estate.

Chen Lingxi's consciousness followed his figure, passing through covered corridors and side gates before stepping onto the long street outside the estate.

Then—

Sight-Roaming shattered.

Lin Suri had left the range of the Divine Chamber.