"No… no!"
The phantom let out one final, unwilling shriek before scattering completely within the silver light. The skeletal remains crumbled into powder that drifted to the ground, while the black markings across Xie Zhaolin's body slowly faded away.
She trembled against the stone wall. Even though the immediate danger had passed, the silver energy's impact and her heavy blood loss left her dizzy and weak. Right then, the queen bee shot out from her spirit beast pouch, wings buzzing urgently as it hovered in front of her, its compound eyes fixed warily on the tunnel entrance.
"Shit!" Her heart sank at once. She understood the queen bee's warning immediately. Without the skeleton's suppression, the yin spirits drawn by the yinsha spring would no longer be restrained. They were probably swarming this way already!
Forcing herself upright, she swept her gaze across the fragments of bone scattered across the ground.
She didn't know what kind of consequences might come from touching those eerie shards, but right now they were her only lifeline!
Clenching her teeth, she swiftly snatched up the fragments.
The instant they touched her skin, a bone-piercing chill shot from her fingertips straight down her spine, like countless icy needles crawling inside her veins. A thin frost instantly spread over her arm, and even her breath crystallized into ice shards.
"Ugh…" She let out a muffled groan, but she refused to loosen her grip.
The shards might be dangerous, but the aura within them was the exact thing that restrained yin spirits!
Enduring the biting cold crawling up her arm, she stacked the fragments together. As more pieces gathered, the chilling aura thickened several times over, forming an invisible barrier inside the stone chamber. Her hands still trembling, she pulled out a Memory Stone from her storage ring. She'd instinctively recorded an image the moment she first discovered the skeleton.
Infusing a thread of baleful qi, the stone projected a vivid light image. The complete form of that eerie skeleton appeared in midair, whole and intact.
Click.
She wedged the Memory Stone into a crack in the stone wall so the projection hovered right above the pile of fragments.
In the dim chamber, the illusion was lifelike. Paired with the aura radiating from the shards, it looked as though the skeleton had never broken apart at all.
The howls of yin spirits outside the tunnel suddenly weakened.
Holding her breath, she sent out a worker bee to scout. Just as she suspected, the spirits lingered at the tunnel entrance, cowed by the fake "complete skeleton."
"For now, it's safe…" She exhaled, but she knew this was nothing more than a stopgap.
The aura from the fragments would fade with time, and the illusion from the Memory Stone wouldn't fool those spirits forever. She had to work against the clock.
Xie Zhaolin immediately drew out formation flags and a formation plate, then began etching array lines across the floor. Gathering baleful qi at her fingertips, she carved intricate patterns onto the frost-covered ground. It was the Soul Locking Formation recorded in the Hehuan Sect's library. The rank wasn't high, but it was naturally effective against yin spirits.
Right now, she couldn't help feeling grateful for all those sleepless nights in the library. The obscure runes from those yellowed pages were now her life-saving trump card. Once the final rune was drawn, she bit her fingertip and let a drop of blood fall onto the formation's core.
Buzz…
The array lit up at once. A pale green barrier rose from the floor, sealing the entire chamber. Runes flowed across its surface, ready to burn any yin spirit that dared touch it.
But that still wasn't enough.
She pulled out nine small flags and placed them across the chamber in nine-palace formation. This was her improved Nine Nether Gathering Yin Formation, designed to amplify and prolong the aura from the bone shards. Carefully dividing the shards into nine parts, she placed each under a flag. Once the array activated, the fragments' aura linked together, creating a stable energy field that filled the chamber.
"It worked!" She wiped the cold sweat from her brow.
The two formations complemented each other, and with the Memory Stone's illusion, she should've bought herself enough time.
When everything was ready, she held her breath and listened. Sure enough, as the twin formations ran at full power, the restless cries outside faded and eventually fell silent.
Only after extending her Primordial Soul to confirm the spirits had really dispersed did she allow herself a sigh of relief. She brushed the sweat from her forehead and turned to look at the yinsha spring, which still churned quietly. The silver light dots floating in the water had grown thinner, but deep within the spring eye, a faint azure glow flickered.
Dragging her exhausted body, she stepped closer to the spirit spring. She knew well that the yinsha spring existed because a yinsha core had formed at its heart. That core contained the spring's condensed essence, and it was her true goal.
"But right now…" She frowned, staring at the bits of bone drifting in the water.
The eerie skeleton had clearly fused with the spring somehow, leaving her uncertain if the core beneath still remained in its original state.
She pulled out a jade slip, which recorded the Hehuan Sect's detailed knowledge of yinsha springs. According to the records, a yinsha core was usually pitch black, smooth as glass, brimming with pure yinsha power. But what she saw now—the silver light spots in the water—was completely different from that description.
"Could the skeleton have altered the core's nature?" She murmured in thought.
She suddenly recalled the silver light dots she'd seen when fighting the phantom. Not only did they repair meridians, they also restrained the phantom's strength.
Her heartbeat quickened.
If the core had truly fused with the skeleton's power, its value might surpass an ordinary yinsha core by far!
But retrieving it was no easy task. She remembered what the jade slip said: the core usually lay deep at the spring's heart, connected to the spirit vein itself. Extracting it required severing that link with special methods, or else a spiritual eruption would follow.
And now, with the core likely mutated, who knew what kind of backlash would come from disturbing it?
Her fingers tapped lightly against the stone wall as she muttered to herself, "If only I could find out exactly what happened here…"
Halfway through the words, she froze. A spark lit in her eyes as her hand drifted to her temple, where the sting of the azure-violet mist still lingered.
"Wait…" she whispered. "The devouring trait of the azure-violet mist…"
Xie Zhaolin sat cross-legged at the center of the formation, forming hand seals and sinking her mind into her sea of consciousness.
Her Primordial Soul, dim as a dying flame, clung to its form. That battle with the phantom had nearly drained it all. Her sea of consciousness was like a dried lake, its faint glimmers flickering in the dark.
Enduring the searing pain ripping through her mind, she carefully probed each thread of mist, searching for possible fragments of memory. Before long, she found them—irregular cyan shards drifting across her sea of consciousness. They were the remnants of what the azure-violet mist had devoured.
"Got it!"