"You can see it?"
The girl's clear, sweet voice rang beside his ear.
She couldn't see that thing?
Had that sword strike just now been purely on instinct?
Was it only that white jelly skin she couldn't see, or could she not see any of the strange creatures in those cells?
A thousand thoughts churned through Ye Wuyou's mind. This was probably the first time he had ever thanked those revolting years in the workplace for training him to respond so quickly.
"See what?" he immediately asked back, his eyes puzzled.
Could whether someone could see those creatures have nothing to do with their cultivation realm?
He, too, could only see them because of what the narrator called a "deception of the eyes."
The girl did not answer. Her gaze merely shifted away from him to the distant passage swallowed by darkness, then to the corpse on the floor.
She walked over slowly and pulled her sword out of the floor.
Then she returned to Ye Wuyou's side, smoothed her skirt, and sat down, closing her eyes to rest.
Her aura no longer seemed sharp. The oppressive pressure that had made Ye Wuyou uncomfortable was gone, and she had returned to her icy demeanor.
The dim candlelight flickered faintly over the two of them, making their shadows dance across the nearby wall.
For once, the chaotic narrator in his head did not pop out to run its mouth. Ye Wuyou thought it over and decided he needed to open the conversation himself.
"That corpse on the floor was a colleague of mine... was something controlling him just now?" Ye Wuyou asked at an appropriate moment.
Above all, he needed to find out exactly what was being held in this Heavenly Prison.
There was no helping it. Even with the original owner's memories, he still knew very little about the Heavenly Prison.
The Heavenly Prison had eight levels. Previously, he had only ever heard about as far down as the second, where the inmates were all criminals. Though there was no shortage of vicious monsters among them, compared with this level, they seemed rather unqualified.
The girl rested with her eyes closed for a while before slowly opening them, a trace of fatigue showing in her gaze.
"A... a-an anomaly."
She was stumbling over her words again...
Did she only stop stuttering when she drew her sword to kill someone?
From her answer, Ye Wuyou now knew that she called that thing an anomaly.
The narrator, however, called them Great Dao Remnants.
Still.
"What's an anomaly?" Ye Wuyou still did not understand.
"I... I don't know. They've a-al-always been around. Th-that's what my master said."
Her answer was not entirely useless to Ye Wuyou. At least he knew that these creatures called "anomalies" had existed for a very long time.
"So, do we have any way to leave this place?"
The girl's gaze turned hesitant, as though she did not know whether she should tell him.
At the sight, Ye Wuyou's heart lurched.
The girl said nothing, but began scratching marks into the floor with her sword tip.
She drew a series of simple stacked boxes and marked the first and second levels with a D.
The third, fourth, and fifth levels were marked C and B.
The sixth and seventh were marked A and B.
Four grades.
Even grade A guards could only go as far as the seventh level on duty?
Ye Wuyou really had not known any of this before. He had never even met one of those grade A big shots.
Then what about the remaining level?
The girl's sword paused before she wrote "Prison Warden" on the eighth level.
Oh, as expected of the final level. Only the Prison Warden could enter. The inmates must be some seriously formidable fellows.
Hmm...
I remembered that the Prison Warden had been away when the Heavenly Prison fell into turmoil. Otherwise, they wouldn't have temporarily drafted grade D personnel onto the front lines...
"Surely we can't be that unlucky, hahaha." Ye Wuyou looked at the girl and struggled to smile.
Expressionless, the girl pointed at Ye Wuyou and herself, then tapped the eighth level with her sword tip.
Fine, fine, fine. So this was how we were playing it.
[Hehehe, feeling yourself toyed with by fate, you turn toward the stone wall behind you. Strange and wondrous patterns cover its surface. This is the end of the passage, but could it be the exit from the eighth level?]
Good. The lousy narrator had finally provided some useful information about their surroundings.
Ye Wuyou dragged his exhausted body upright, then pressed himself against the stone wall behind him.
The candlelight was dim. Without getting right up against the wall, he truly would not have noticed the strange symbols carved into it, along with patterns he could not understand.
Was it really the exit?
Excitement flickered in Ye Wuyou's eyes. He turned toward the girl, only to meet her gaze.
"Do you think this could be the exit?"
"Yes."
"Then is there a way to get out?"
The girl did not answer. Once again, she raised her sword and began writing on the floor.
The meaning was simple, but Ye Wuyou's heart gradually went cold.
Ordinarily, even from outside its doors, only the Prison Warden could enter the eighth level of the Heavenly Prison.
They were inside the prison. The patterns and symbols on the wall formed an array that imprisoned this level's "anomalies," and it could not be opened.
At least, Ye Wuyou and the girl could not open it right now.
Still unwilling to give up, Ye Wuyou knocked on the stone wall. When he found that it produced no echo whatsoever, he abandoned the idea of following Andy's example.
Never mind whether he could dig through it. Even if he could, wouldn't he starve to death first?
As though noticing his anxiety, the girl continued writing on the floor.
"Don't worry. This isn't the problem... the situation in the Heavenly Prison has already been reported to the higher-ups. The Prison Warden is a Fifth Realm wielder of great Divine Abilities. He can get back very quickly."
A Fifth Realm wielder of great Divine Abilities?
All the Heavenly Prison's guards had some degree of cultivation.
The first realm was the Hidden Origin Realm, the Second Realm the Cave Illumination Realm, the Third Realm the Jade Gleam Realm, the fourth the Open Sun Realm, and the Fifth Realm was apparently called the Jade Balance Realm?
Only those in the third realm or above could be called wielders of great Divine Abilities.
As for him... he had used connections to inherit his father's job. He was not even in the first realm, still stuck in the Body Tempering stage below it.
Those damned nepotism hires.
Ye Wuyou stopped agonizing over the wall and sat back down beside her, asking,
"The Prison Warden is in the Fifth Realm? What about you? What realm are you in now?"
"Th-the third realm."
Ye Wuyou felt rather ashamed.
The girl before him looked only fifteen or sixteen, yet her cultivation realm was far above his.
Comparing yourself with others really could drive you to your grave.
Ye Wuyou thought for a moment, then took a deep breath and exhaled a mouthful of stale air.
A person had to live with some pride.
He leaned back slightly and said,
"Your name."
"Huh?" The girl looked surprised and bewildered. She froze for a moment before catching on and stammering,
"Lu, Lu Caiwei."
"Is cultivation difficult? Are there any tricks to it?"
"It depends on t-t-talent... and aptitude," the girl said quietly.
"Do you cultivate so quickly because your aptitude is really good?"
"P-p-per... haps. B-but I don't cultivate quickly... th-that's why I was expelled from the Lineage."
Huh?
A fifteen- or sixteen-year-old in the third realm was already bad enough to be expelled from her Lineage?
How was Uncle Wang, still in the first realm at fifty, supposed to feel about that?
Ye Wuyou did not understand, so he continued asking.
"Why did they expel you from your master's school?"
Lu Caiwei hesitated for a while. Rather than speaking again, she wrote on the floor with her sword tip.
"I reached the first realm very quickly at first, but then I developed a strange illness. The energy inside my body inexplicably dissipated completely. No amount of cultivation helped, and I wasted several years."
The girl's sword tip paused. For some reason, she frowned in pain.
"What happened afterward?"
"After I left the Lineage... my illness went away, and I joined the Heavenly Prison."
After hearing such a miserable, winding tale, Ye Wuyou felt deeply encouraged.
He made a few calculations in his head, then turned to her.
"Could you check my aptitude for me?"
Lu Caiwei hesitated for a while, then wrote,
"I can get a rough idea. Hold out your hand."
As she said this, Lu Caiwei held out her own hand as well.
The image of their fingers intertwining that Ye Wuyou had imagined never materialized. She merely touched his wrist lightly, as though taking his pulse.
For some reason, Ye Wuyou noticed that her hand was trembling slightly.
Why was her hand shaking? Parkinson's?
And what was that glittering thing on her hand?
Ye Wuyou looked up at Lu Caiwei, whose brows were knitted like an old traditional physician taking a pulse, then glanced at her slender fingers and asked,
"Are you married?"
"Huh... n-no." Lu Caiwei was startled by the question.
"Then what's that ring on your hand?" Ye Wuyou pointed at her ring finger.
"A... an accessory." For some inexplicable reason, Lu Caiwei's reply sounded rather weak.
[Bullshit! This woman's spouting utter nonsense!]
[No matter. It is merely a wretched Spirit Absorption Ring, with the remnant soul of a woman in the Sixth Realm attached to it. Never mind a remnant soul—even were she still alive, you would not fear her in the slightest. With a casual gesture, you could make her play the flute and sing for you, pluck the zither and compose melodies.]
The same barking as always...
Still, that explained everything.
A genius girl at the start, followed by a mysterious loss of cultivation, mockery from her kin, a forced departure from her Lineage, and then cultivation that advanced a thousand miles a day...
Such a powerful sense of déjà vu!
Ah... I should have thought of it sooner!
I had a cheat, and so did you. Yours was mighty! My cheat was no match for yours!
Ye Wuyou felt rather frustrated, hating only that this fortuitous ring encounter had not been his. It was far more useful than a narrator that could do nothing but bark!
The girl's brows were tightly knitted.
Watching her expression, Ye Wuyou grew inexplicably worried.
"How's my talent?"
"It's... it's all right," Lu Caiwei said softly.
What kind of answer was "all right"? How was that any different from "whatever"?
"Then how does it compare with yours?" Ye Wuyou persisted.
Lu Caiwei froze, closed her eyes, then opened them again. She raised a hand and made a gesture.
"It's... it's all right... j-just a tiny bit worse."
A tiny bit?
Ye Wuyou was just about to speak when his gaze swept across her cheek.
The glaciers in her once-cold eyes had melted, mist clouding them as a clear tear slowly slid from the corner of her eye.
For some reason, the girl seemed lost in a daze.
Ye Wuyou paused, then waved a hand in front of her face with a puzzled expression and asked,
"Why are you crying?"
Before you continue