"He has a fixed memory imprint in his mind that is triggered every three months. The content is a set of changing rendezvous codes and meeting points. The most recent trigger point is in seven days, at the Thousand Flavors Pavilion in the south of the city, at 3:45 PM."
Yin Wujou immediately understood her intention. "You want to use these three as bait, to impersonate them and go to the contact point, and then follow the clues to find the source."
"No," the Snow Empress shook her head. "I've already imprinted tracking talismans on the spiritual veins of these three. It's safer for them to go back and report than for us to infiltrate them. Liu Yanzhao's dark web has been operating for ten years, and its contact rules are extremely complex. Impersonating someone would only expose us. It's better to let them go back, let them return to Liu Yanzhao with the tracking talismans, and then catch them all in one fell swoop."
Yin Wujou pondered for a moment, "But those three are suicide soldiers. Once they escape, they will definitely commit suicide and will never pass on any information for us."
Snow Empress's lips twitched slightly, as if she wanted to laugh but couldn't hold it in, forming a very faint arc. "Who said I was going to let them escape?"
She took out a palm-sized jade bottle from her sleeve and poured out three dark red pills, which glowed faintly and emitted a faint herbal scent. The pills melted instantly upon entering the throat, and before the three spies could react, the medicinal power had already seeped into their limbs and bones. Their eyes were initially unfocused, but then gradually regained their clarity, even becoming more spirited than before, and their complexions even became rosier.
" Spirit-Transforming Vein-Restoring Pill." Yin Wujou gasped. "You're feeding this rare pill to assassins?"
The Spirit-Transforming Vein-Restoring Pill is a top-grade spiritual medicine for repairing damaged spiritual veins. Ordinary cultivators would find it incredibly difficult to obtain even a single pill, yet the Snow Empress fed three to the spies in one go. However, Yin Wujou quickly realized that while the pill appeared to repair spiritual veins, it actually integrated the Snow Empress's tracking talisman into every single one of their meridians. Unless they completely shattered and rebuilt all their spiritual veins, the tracking talisman would never be removed. Even more ingenious was the addition of a " Heart-Turning Grass " to the pill. This grass could prevent the spiritual veins from instinctively resisting self-destruction when the user felt a death wish, rendering them powerless to sever their own heart meridian even if they gritted their teeth.
"Three days later, the effects of the Heart-Turning Grass in the pills will wear off, and their self-destructive abilities will return," the Snow Empress said calmly. "But by then, they will have already returned to Liu Yanzhao's side, and the tracking talisman will have transmitted their location back."
She raised her hand and untied the Spiritual Power bindings on the three men. The three spies were suddenly freed, but they looked at each other in disbelief and uncertainty. They could clearly feel that their spiritual meridians were not only undamaged, but even more unobstructed and powerful than before they were injured. This abnormal "gift" made them instinctively alert, but they could not find any flaws. After circulating their Spiritual Power for several cycles, everything was normal. The tracking talisman had long since turned into the background color of their spiritual meridians, as if it were naturally hidden and invisible.
"Go." Snow Empress uttered only one word.
The three spies hesitated for a moment, but finally got up and staggered into the morning mist, quickly disappearing into the depths of the forest. They knew that no matter what tricks the other side had played, the most important thing now was to rush back to the Southern Frontier to report back and relay the news of the strange events in the old building last night and the removal of the files.
Only Snow Empress and Yin Wujou remained inside the stone house.
Yin Wujou carefully put the files away and looked up at Snow Empress: "What's next?"
"Wait." Snow Empress found a relatively flat stone in the corner of the stone house, sat down, crossed her legs, closed her eyes, and regulated her breathing. "The tracking talisman will react within three days, at which point we can pinpoint Liu Yanzhao's exact hiding place. It's not advisable to enter the city for these three days; it's safer outside the city, making it easier to react at any time."
Yin Wujou also found a pile of dry grass to sit down and took out the dossier to read it carefully again. As the morning light gradually brightened, the stone house became well-lit. He used the daylight to flip through the dense records of spiritual vein tampering page by page, his brows furrowing more and more as he read. Yun Su's records were extremely detailed, not only listing the time, location, and participants of each tampering point, but also marking the destination of each intercepted Spiritual Power —most of that Spiritual Power was directed to an underground workshop in the Southern Frontier called " Mysterious Abyss " to be used to refine a special magical artifact called " Puppet Armor." Puppet Armor could bear the power of spiritual veins and attach itself to a mortal's body, giving him temporary combat power beyond that of an ordinary person, at the cost of overdrawing his lifespan and consuming his divine soul.
Liu Yanzhao secretly crafted Puppet Armor for ten years, numbering at least a hundred. If he were to use these Puppet Armor as tools to assassinate political enemies and disrupt the court, the consequences would be unimaginable.
"Can you keep watch for three days straight without sleep?" Yin Wujou asked.
Snow Empress didn't open her eyes, only saying calmly, "I haven't slept much in three years."
Yin Wujou was silent for a moment, then said nothing more. He continued to peruse the dossier, trying to deduce the exact location of the Xuan Abyss Workshop from the fragmented spiritual vein traces. Yun Su had only marked it with the four characters " Southern Frontier Mysterious Abyss," without leaving a more precise location, but the dossier appendix contained hundreds of records of spiritual vein flow, each marked with its offset angle and Spiritual Power attenuation coefficient. Yin Wujou was always adept at reverse-engineering spiritual vein paths, so he took out his charcoal pencil and thin silk, and began to reverse-engineer the starting point of the Spiritual Power flow line by line, trying to find the true coordinates of the Mysterious Abyss underground from those altered node traces.
The calculation process was extremely tedious and cumbersome, yet Yin Wujou felt no fatigue whatsoever. His Spiritual Power was greatly depleted, and although his face was pale, his fingertips still moved steadily and accurately, and a complex spiritual vein path diagram gradually appeared on the silk. Snow Empress occasionally opened her eyes to glance at him, and seeing his almost oblivious expression, a trace of gentleness, barely perceptible to others, flashed in her eyes before she closed her eyes again and continued to regulate her breathing to recover the Spiritual Power she had consumed the previous night.
By dusk the following day, Yin Wujou finally managed to piece together a clear narrative from hundreds of disorganized documents, and used a charcoal pencil to circle a dot heavily in the center of the silk.
" The Xuan Abyss Workshop is here." He handed the silk to the Snow Empress. "Deep in the Falling Rosy Clouds Mountain Range of Southern Frontier, about forty miles from Liu Yanzhao's old residence, there is an underground river connecting them. The endpoints of all the shifting spiritual veins converge here. Although Yun Su didn't specify the location, this information won't lie."
Snow Empress took the silk and examined it closely for a moment, then nodded slightly. She knew about the Falling Rosy Clouds Mountain Range, a place perpetually shrouded in miasma, with treacherous terrain, and rumored to be haunted by the remnants of ancient Ferocious Beast, making it too dangerous for ordinary cultivators to venture deep into. Liu Yanzhao's choice to build the workshop in such a place was truly ingenious. The miasma could conceal fluctuations in Spiritual Power and deter hunters and woodcutters who might accidentally stumble upon it. Coupled with the cover of the underground river, if Yin Wujou's reverse deduction map, even if an ordinary person walked to the foot of the mountain with the map, they wouldn't be able to find the entrance.
"The coordinates are determined. Now we just need to wait for the tracking talisman to pinpoint Liu Yanzhao's exact location." Snow Empress put away the silk, stood up, walked to the door of the stone house, and looked at the darkening sky. "The tracking talisman should send its first feedback at midnight tonight."