Chasing the evil cultivator into the cavern, Yunxi frowned. The entire place reeked of nauseating blood and rot. Evil qi billowed with it, probing to seep into her body, only to be blocked by her robe.
Almost the instant she stepped inside, Yunxi locked onto Xiao Lei, who was struggling to climb out of the blood pool. The sight was wretched. An abnormal flush burned on her face, her robe barely covered her body, and a flash of gray crossed her pupils. Yunxi judged she was only a step away from falling to evil.
Meanwhile, more than thirty puppets controlled by evil cultivators closed in, encircling Yunxi. Gray irises glared at her, awaiting orders.
Yunxi's voice was cold. "Thanks for bringing me in."
The Nine Nether Dragon Umbrella spun in her hand. Blades of wind lashed out toward the puppets. The evil cultivator seemed to recognize the umbrella's power and, the moment the blades flew, leapt into the blood pool.
In the next heartbeat, the puppets that escaped the blades charged at Yunxi and began to self-detonate their Golden Cores, attempting a suicide strike to take her with them.
Yunxi had sensed the problem the moment the man dove into the pool. When the first puppet rushed her, the energy fluctuation gave it away. She cursed him as despicable, snapped a red cord around Xiao Lei's wrist, and at the instant of the explosion, whisked the unconscious girl into her space.
Almost at the same time that Yunxi and Xiao Lei vanished, the entire blood pool chamber became rubble under the chain of Golden Core blasts. Yunxi's wind blades had shredded nine of every ten puppets, but with the realm's suppression on her cultivation, three managed to complete their suicide order and raze a hundred li to the ground.
Yunxi stayed in her space only a moment. She cast an isolation shield over Xiao Lei, flicked a mote of Mystic Thunder Violet Flame into her body, then slipped out again. That evil cultivator had to die.
Dian Dian was still stunned until Yunxi told it to track the fleeing man. Only then did it twitch its nose and work at parsing the scents in the air.
Yunxi looked at the evil qi spilling from the ruined blood pool and frowned. Left unchecked, it would contaminate the entire realm fragment and turn this place into a paradise for evil cultivators. She roused Zi Yan from slumber.
"Zi Yan, I need your hand."
Zi Yan stirred in Yunxi's palm like someone waking, then, sensing the situation, drifted toward the thickest miasma without explanation.
In the next breath, the violet flame plunged in like fire meeting oil, racing across a hundred li to burn away the scattered evil qi. Yunxi again felt spiritual power drain from within, but this time it remained within her tolerance.
She hovered above the sea of fire under the shelter of the Nine Nether Dragon Umbrella, divine sense sweeping every inch of the secret realm, hunting the fleeing man.
Every creature in the realm wanted to bury itself. The danger was so palpable that all they could do was shiver and clamp their mouths shut, not daring to make a sound that might draw Yunxi's eye.
Dian Dian sent a frustrated transmission. "Master, the scattered evil qi masked his smell. Did he already leave the realm?"
"No. He cannot be faster than me."
Yunxi was certain. A chain of Golden Core self-detonations could wound her, but it would also kill an equal peer among evil cultivators. She had a space. He did not.
Which meant he was hiding in some extremely secret place to avoid the blast. He would have to come out.
Just then, Zi Yan's lazy voice sounded in Yunxi's sea of consciousness. "Master, there is a fish that slipped the net."
The very moment Yunxi's divine sense locked on, a battered figure burst from the earth to flee and was instantly wrapped in violet fire.
"No. Please, no."
The scream was so shrill Yunxi rubbed her ear, and the beasts of the realm tried to flee even farther.
Under the lick of Mystic Thunder Violet Flame, the evil cultivator turned to ash.
The scattered miasma burned away as well. Only then did Zi Yan, satisfied, coil back into a single violet flame, return to Yunxi's palm, and sink into her dantian.
Yunxi descended slowly. Surveying the scorched ground, she accepted the chore before her. She waved her sleeve to scatter a great swath of low-grade spirit seeds, drew a gathering-spirit sigil in the air and pressed it into the earth, then cast a wide rain technique to coax the seeds to sprout. Only then was she content to stop.
She released her capsule house again and moved Xiao Lei out of her space. The whole process was smooth as silk, without alerting the girl, who at that moment was being tormented by the Mystic Thunder Violet Flame.
A moment ago Xiao Lei had dragged herself from the blood pool. The next, it felt like she had been thrown into a volcano. She soaked in molten agony. Every inch of skin, every vein, every meridian burned and burned again. She screamed hoarsely and rolled across the floor.
No matter how she cried, no one answered. She struggled to escape, but could not leave the small square of space. When the fiery thread surged into her sea of consciousness, she no longer had the strength to wail. She clutched her head and waited for death.
Yunxi watched, helpless in her own way. If the evil qi already threaded through Xiao Lei's body was not uprooted, it would eventually erupt. Then Xiao Lei would fall and become an evil cultivator.
Before Zi Yan awoke, the alien fire Yunxi had sent into Xiao Lei's body had only burned by instinct, battering at the corruption. Now that Zi Yan was awake, it controlled the edge, sparing meridians while searing the taint. But the evil qi that had slipped into the sea of consciousness was cunning and tried to dodge the flame.
At the critical moment, Yunxi sent a thread of voice into Xiao Lei's sea of consciousness. "Xiao Lei, I came at your brother's request to save you. Your brother is not truly fallen. Everything he did was to infiltrate the evil cultivators.
If you die here or become a puppet, he will hate himself for life and destroy himself as well. You must hold on."
Perhaps the words worked. Xiao Lei's scattered consciousness stirred. She bit her lip hard again, forcing herself to remain awake.
One stick of incense later, the Mystic Thunder Violet Flame drifted free of Xiao Lei's body and returned to Yunxi's hand.
Yunxi withdrew the alien fire and murmured by her ear, "Xiao Lei, you can sleep now."
Only then did Xiao Lei faint in peace.
Yunxi cast a Dust-Cleansing Spell for her, changed her into a fresh robe, and slipped a healing pill into her mouth before sending her into a room to rest.