Ning Chengyi returned and told Bibi Dong what he had learned. She immediately told him to slip into the secret chamber under cover of night.
Bibi Dong regulated her condition, felt the divine power within her briefly suppress the poison, and had Ning Chengyi lead the way.
Once they returned, Ning Chengyi examined the area and gently pushed where the recess lay. The stone door instantly opened a crack just wide enough for one person to enter safely.
"Stay behind me," Bibi Dong said.
Ning Chengyi nodded, and the two stepped inside, one behind the other.
At first, it was extremely narrow, barely allowing a person through. Now Ning Chengyi truly understood what those words meant.
After they had walked for a dozen or so minutes, the passage widened enough for four people to pass through. They exchanged a glance and proceeded even more cautiously in the faint light.
"Look, what's that?!" Before long, by the dim glow cast by the moon-night pearls on the walls, Ning Chengyi spotted a stone chamber.
Soul Power drifted through the area around the chamber.
At the very center stood a stone platform, with two strange flowers growing in its middle.
"The Twin Spider Brightflower!" Just as Ning Chengyi was puzzling over it, Bibi Dong exclaimed beside him, blurting out its name.
A twin bloom grew on a single stalk, pitch-black throughout. Its peculiar petals, patterned like spider silk, breathed in and out, drawing in the Soul Power drifting around it.
That Soul Power carried a pure, shadowy darkness, its flow shifting as the flower absorbed it.
"I'll try." Bibi Dong stepped forward immediately, but less than three paces away, her feet felt as though they weighed a thousand pounds.
The next second, crimson flooded her cheeks. Her eyelashes trembled, her pupils abruptly dilated, and her body began shaking violently.
"I can't pick it. Hurry..." Bibi Dong turned her head with difficulty and spoke.
Fellow cultivator Ning immediately rushed forward, dashed to the flower, and plucked it in one tug.
"What should I do?" he asked, supporting Bibi Dong.
"The poison inside me is resisting it. The two nourish and counteract each other by nature. Just crush it and feed it to me."
"Huh? How do I feed it to you?" Ning Chengyi froze. How else was he supposed to feed her?
Bibi Dong's face instantly grew redder. "You need to wrap this toxin in Soul Power before it can enter my body, so... after crushing it, wrap it in Soul Power and pass it into my mouth with yours."
Ning Chengyi fell silent for a moment after hearing that.
"What are you standing there for? Hurry!" Bibi Dong said coldly, looking at the stunned Ning Chengyi.
"Oh." He took Bibi Dong away from the stone platform and seated her on a large rock. Using the implements she had brought, he crushed the flower as though mashing garlic, then wrapped it in Soul Power to keep its medicinal essence from escaping and prevent the Twin Spider Nether Flower from sensing it.
As Ning Chengyi's hot breath washed over her face, Bibi Dong wrestled with herself for a few seconds before opening her mouth.
The medicinal liquid entered Bibi Dong's mouth carrying his breath. As it grew hotter and hotter, a layer of white frost gradually formed over her body.
"So cold!"
"...Keep giving me the rest of the medicine."
Ning Chengyi had intended to stop, but once the medicinal liquid lost the protection of his Soul Power, it dispersed directly into Bibi Dong's body.
The next second, without warning, waves of red flushed over her entire body, followed by patterns emerging across her skin.
"Hot!" Bibi Dong's eyes looked crazed, gleaming scarlet. She tore open her top, exposing pale skin to the air as wisps of vapor rose from her body.
After delivering the final mouthful, Ning Chengyi breathed a sigh of relief. Looking at Bibi Dong before him, his face immediately reddened slightly.
They really look like those big steamed buns from the northeast.
As the Twin Spider Brightflower entered her body, the two forces made Bibi Dong tremble. Alternating cold and heat battled inside her.
Had the Rakshasa Divine Power not held her together, the impact of this immortal-grade medicinal herb might already have torn her internal organs to shreds.
Bone-piercing cold, then flames consuming her body!
By now, Bibi Dong's mind had begun to grow hazy. Her hands tore haphazardly at her clothes, exposing broad expanses of luminous white skin beneath the stone chamber's dim light. The spider patterns on her body brightened and dimmed, flickering in and out of sight.
Ning Chengyi hurriedly averted his gaze, the tips of his ears burning hot. Yet his hands dared not falter for an instant. He firmly supported her swaying body with one hand, anxiety filling his eyes.
"Hold on!"
He spoke in a low voice, trying to restore some measure of clarity to Bibi Dong.
But most of Bibi Dong's awareness had already been swallowed by the clashing poisonous forces. The words reaching her ears were indistinct and hazy.
Her body leaned uncontrollably against Ning Chengyi, her forehead pressing heavily into his shoulder. Shudders of alternating heat and cold passed through their touching skin.
The stone chamber was utterly quiet, filled only with her faint, pained gasps and the distant sobbing of the night wind through cracks in the stone. It was sheer torment.
Ning Chengyi gritted his teeth and forced down the chaotic thoughts in his heart. He activated his second martial soul, and the softly shimmering Phantom Butterfly Spirit Tide quietly appeared.
Translucent Phantom Butterflies circled the two of them, scattering a gentle rain of butterfly dust. Soft spiritual energy brimming with life enveloped Bibi Dong's body layer by layer, helping cushion the damage the two poisons inflicted on her flesh.
After being transformed by the Moonlit Perching Butterfly Flower, the Phantom Butterflies could now not only neutralize poison but also stabilize the underlying vitality of damaged meridians. Although their effect on others was negligible, with Bibi Dong before him, Ning Chengyi could not afford to worry about that.
As the Phantom Butterfly Spirit Tide settled over Bibi Dong, her violent trembling eased a little, but the two poisons inside her continued their deadly struggle.
"It's still not enough... My Soul Power is suppressed by the Nether Flower's poison. I can only wear it down little by little."
Bibi Dong struggled to open her eyes. Her scarlet pupils were half-lidded, her lashes soaked in cold sweat and stuck along her eyelids as she spoke weakly.
She turned her head with effort, her gaze passing Ning Chengyi to settle on a protrusion encased in rock behind the stone platform.
Earlier, her attention had been entirely drawn to the Twin Spider Brightflower, so she had failed to notice it. Now that the medicinal pulp had entered her body and suppressed the poison, a little clarity returned to her mind. At last, she noticed the protrusion constantly leaking a faint golden glow.
"What's that?"
Ning Chengyi turned to follow her gaze.
When they entered, that strange, spider-shaped flower had immediately stolen his attention, making him overlook the area behind the stone platform.
A mass of gray-black rock encased something. Fine strands of gentle golden spiritual fluctuations flowed continuously from its cracks. There was no violent pressure of Soul Power, yet those intangible spiritual ripples alone cleared the mind and made the spirit tremble.
"It's a Soul Bone!"
Bibi Dong's low exclamation carried a trace of disbelief. Even as she suffered the backlash of the potent poison, shock still flashed through her eyes.
"And it isn't an ordinary body Soul Bone. It's a mental-type Soul Bone. Judging by these fluctuations, it's probably thirty to forty thousand years old!"
The Spirit Condensation Wisdom Skull!
Soul Bones were exceedingly rare, and mental-type skull bones were rarer still-one in ten thousand.
Ning Chengyi's second martial soul, the Phantom Butterfly Spirit Tide, already depended heavily on spiritual power. If he obtained this Wisdom Skull, the Phantom Butterflies' abilities would surely undergo a qualitative leap.
"So what they said was true!" Ning Chengyi exclaimed.
"Don't go over there yet." Bibi Dong reached out and grabbed Ning Chengyi as he prepared to rise and investigate. Cold sweat streamed down her forehead. "There's movement outside the stone chamber!"
Even though her cultivation had fallen to the Soul Ancestor level, the physical senses of her Titled Douluo body still far surpassed those of ordinary people.
Faint vibrations from a jumble of footsteps traveled through the ground. Rough shouts and curses gradually seeped through the cracks around the stone door into the sealed chamber.
It was the Fierce Wolf Group!
Before you continue