"No!"
The black robed elder let out a shrill scream. His whole body jerked violently, his eyes bulged, and black blood seeped from all seven orifices. He felt like a massive invisible hand was tearing and stirring his Primordial Soul, ripping countless shards of memory away and forcing them open.
Fragments of memories, secrets, cultivation methods, everything was dragged out like a spinning lantern reel. The agony went far beyond any physical torment, it struck straight at the soul's origin.
Soul Searching was a forbidden technique recognized throughout the Cultivation Realm, cruel and dangerous in every sense.
For the one subjected to it, the lightest outcome was a damaged Primordial Soul turning them into an idiot. The worst was complete annihilation. For the one performing the technique, they also had to endure the impact of chaotic memories, and if their divine sense wasn't strong enough, they could suffer a deadly backlash.
Elder Chou stood a short distance away. When she saw the brutal scene, her pupils tightened and her fingertips turned cold. Even someone as experienced and cold hearted as she was still felt a chill crawl up her spine when witnessing a Soul Searching up close.
This Elder Mo really had no taboos at all. And the way he used Soul Searching so casually… where in the world had he come from? His methods looked even more extreme than a demon cultivator's.
A few breaths later.
With a dull thud, Xie Zhaolin let go. The black robed elder's body collapsed like an empty husk, his eyes hollow. His soul had already scattered.
She closed her eyes and quickly digested the information ripped from his memories.
Details about Heisha Valley's main base, the structure of their members, several hidden treasure points, and a few sinister cultivation techniques.
The information was messy, but it had value. What concerned her most was the part about the valley master and several locations suspected to house precious treasures. She kept those firmly in mind.
She flicked her hand, summoning the black banner that had fallen to the ground.
The banner felt icy cold, and faint wails of countless trapped souls echoed from within. It was indeed a genuine evil artifact.
Xie Zhaolin studied the banner, her expression thoughtful.
Its refining method was cruel and violated all heavenly principles, but its power wasn't bad. If she ran into a troublesome situation or needed to hide her identity, releasing this banner and letting the malicious spirits attack the enemy might catch someone completely off guard.
After all, the souls sealed inside were real, their resentment was sky high, and their power was nothing to scoff at. Used properly, even an evil artifact could become a sharp blade.
She stored the banner without hesitation.
Elder Chou watched everything silently. Her lips moved slightly, but in the end she said nothing.
Xie Zhaolin picked up the storage bags left by the other fallen cultivators, then flicked her fingers and released several balls of true fire. The five corpses were burned to ash, erasing all traces of the battle.
"Let's go." Xie Zhaolin didn't intend to linger.
Elder Chou nodded. The two chose a direction completely different from their original path, vanished in a flash, and were gone.
Maybe fortune really had shifted a little. The traps and assassins they had encountered earlier seemed to have exhausted their bad Luck.
During the next few days, the journey went unexpectedly smoothly.
Occasionally they ran into beasts guarding spirit herbs or triggered leftover restrictive traps. Before Elder Chou could step in, Xie Zhaolin already rushed forward and settled everything in a matter of breaths.
Crisp, clean, and efficient.
After killing a beast, Xie Zhaolin harvested every valuable material and picked the protected spirit herbs without leaving anything behind. She never showed the slightest intention of sharing.
Elder Chou followed quietly, showing no dissatisfaction.
She understood. Elder Mo wasn't doing this to protect her. It was the most practical approach. In a secret realm full of dangers, fights had to end quickly to avoid wasting spiritual energy or drawing the attention of other cultivators or stronger beings.
As for who the spoils belonged to… whoever acted got them. This was one of the unspoken rules of the Cultivation Realm.
Besides, given their fragile and mutually wary cooperation, it was perfectly normal that Elder Mo neither trusted her nor wanted to divide the spoils. Being able to follow and use Elder Mo's strength to explore the secret realm was already a benefit in itself.
The journey remained uneventful.
That day, the two were moving through a region filled with strange jagged rocks. Xie Zhaolin remained vigilant, scanning her surroundings while silently calculating in her mind.
She recalled her past lives' entries into the Tianxu Secret Realm.
The place was vast beyond measure. Each opening slightly altered the teleportation locations, but the core region and several well known dangerous and treasure rich areas always remained roughly in the same positions.
"Northeast… there should be a cold ravine with an icy spring at the bottom. Ice Soul Lotus grows there. It's excellent for ice cultivators or for tempering the Primordial Soul. Last time it opened, the Xuantian Sect got to it first.
Southwest… the meteorite ruins. That place is unstable, but rumor says Star Gold once appeared there. Dangerous, but worth checking."
Locations she'd heard of or personally failed to get in her past lives flashed through her mind.
Most of them slipped through her fingers back then because her strength was lacking, her Luck was bad, or someone beat her to it. Now that she was back, with far more power and actual foresight, maybe she could take some of them.
But… those places weren't her real target this time. Her true goal lay deeper, within the most mysterious part of the secret realm. A place shrouded year round in chaotic mist, known as the Tianxu Core.
According to scattered rumors from her past life and ancient records she researched after, the greatest treasure of the Tianxu Secret Realm wasn't any individual item. It was an ancient inheritance cave, a place that had supposedly never been opened.
Rumor said it belonged to the ancient sect Tianxu Palace, which had long vanished, and that inside lay an unmatched inheritance pointing straight at the Primordial Force.
The problem was the entry conditions were impossibly harsh, and the cave's location was unstable. Every time the secret realm opened, no one could find it, or even if they found it they couldn't enter.
But the secret realm was too huge.
The place where they were now was somewhere she never explored deeply in her past life. To move toward any of the known treasure points or the core region, she needed to confirm their exact location first and plan the route properly.
While she was thinking, Elder Chou suddenly stopped and whispered, "Elder Mo, something's ahead."
Xie Zhaolin immediately focused and looked forward.
Hundreds of meters ahead, on a relatively flat clearing among the stone forest, faint spiritual light flickered. Violent spiritual pressure and the sound of intense fighting echoed through the air.
It looked like cultivators were fighting.
A lot of them.