Upon hearing Patriarch Golden Vajra Warrior’s words, Xu Qing looked thoughtfully at the distant palace complex. Then he looked at the Captain, noting his excited expression, and the fact that he seemed just on the verge of rushing toward the palace. The crazy look in his eye seemed different from how he looked when going after ordinary treasure.

This is how Eldest Brother looked back during the Nethersprite heist. Apparently, he’s really obsessed with stealing things from female cultivators.

Surprised, Xu Qing couldn’t hold back from asking the Captain for more details.

The Captain smiled proudly. “You don’t understand. Let me tell you, little Ah Qing, based on my experience, female cultivators always have a lot of treasures. Especially the really pretty girls. It’s the result of countless men competing to give them the best gifts. I saw this thing over and over again in my previous lives. Think back to Nethersprite. She was just like that, right? She had tons of treasures.”

Xu Qing thought back to Nethersprite’s mansion grotto and all of the countless items she had there.

“In the past,” the Captain continued in a very meaningful and heartfelt tone, “I would shamelessly give all sorts of gifts to girls to get them to like me. Later on, I made a promise to myself to help female cultivators share the burden of having so many gifts around. Do you know what the most important quality of a good person is, little Ah Qing? It’s being helpful! Kind and helpful! And that’s what we’re doing now. Being very helpful.”

Xu Qing was somewhat taken aback. Although the explanation seemed strange, the Captain’s facial expression and manner of speaking were very confident. And thus, what he said made a lot of sense.

“Oh, you!” the Captain said. “You’re just too young! That’s why you don’t understand. Trust me, I’m right about this. As your Eldest Brother, do you think I would try to scam you or something?” The Captain patted Xu Qing’s shoulder. “Let’s go. As you mentioned, we have no more than three days until the third wave is all here and the red moon awakens. We need to make the most of those three days. And we’re going to start by finding whatever treasures are in this palace.”

Licking his lips, he sent the severed hand flying toward the phoenix-shaped palace complex.

Because of the impending awakening of the red moon, Xu Qing decided not to ask any more questions.

Thus, the severed hand flew over the ground of flesh, getting closer and closer to the palace. At a certain point, a tremor passed through the hand.

At the same time, Xu Qing and the Captain sensed something dangerous up ahead. Through the cracks between the fingers, they could see the huge wall of flesh circling around the palace, creating a barrier to entry. Beyond that wall of flesh was the palace complex, which was made of nine palace buildings. There were no guardian statues, and the roaring of mutant beasts was actually less loud here than in other places.

“It’s too quiet,” Xu Qing whispered.

The Captain nodded. “Something’s off here.”

They exchanged a glance, and then Xu Qing gave orders to his shadow, causing it to stretch out to gather information. The Captain bit off one of his fingers. When he spat it out of his mouth, it turned into a crystalline worm that sped in roughly the same direction as the shadow. Xu Qing wasn’t surprised by this ability, as the Captain had already used it numerous times during their explorations.

By combining their surveillance abilities, they could usually identify dangers and avoid them.

As the seconds ticked by, Xu Qing’s shadow neared the wall surrounding the palaces, while the Captain’s finger, now a worm, veered in a slightly different direction. Eventually, the finger reached the wall and tried to fly over it.

As it did, violet light flickered, and the crystalline worm lurched to a halt midair. Then, it was sliced into ribbons, almost as if invisible blades had slashed at it. The crystalline worm had very strong life force, though, as the ribbons just became smaller individual worms that continued onward. However, there wasn’t just a single line of defense to deal with. Powerful warding spells erupted, and the ribbons were shredded into ash. Then a powerful force of expulsion sent the ashes back to the area outside the wall. And yet, there was more. After the worms were turned into ashes, a sealing power erupted from inside the wall, which clamped down on the area where the ashes had scattered.

The air there rippled and distorted, and an eye which had previously been invisible was suddenly revealed, then squashed out of existence.

The Captain grunted and coughed up some blood.

Frowning, he said, “I can’t believe this place has the power to resist the Ancient Dao Righteous Bestowal Edict. Little Ah Qing, this place is no simple palace complex!”

Meanwhile, Xu Qing was also having trouble. When his shadow reached the wall, it screamed as it was severed by some powerful force. Of course, the shadow was inherently vicious. The portion that had been severed quickly self-detonated, breaking itself into countless smaller fragments that raced in all directions.

Unfortunately, that action elicited a response from an even more powerful set of warding spells. A terrifying shockwave burst out of the wall of flesh, along with violet light. As it swept over the countless tiny fragments of the shadow, they screamed as they were wiped out of existence. And the shockwave continued onward, apparently looking for the source of the shadow fragments.

From a distance, Xu Qing and the Captain saw dazzling violet light and an icy will rushing toward them. As the violet light spread out, it became so dense it started to turn black, until everything in front of them was completely dark.

The two of them were about to flee when, all of a sudden, the violet light tumbled backward, so that the area in front of them turned bright and radiant again.

The surviving portion of the shadow by the wall hastened back to Xu Qing, where it trembled and sent him emotional fluctuations of embarrassment and terror.

“Scared… can’t get… in.”

Surprised, Xu Qing looked at the area beyond the wall of flesh, his heart pounding.

Off to the side, the Captain was panting for breath. “Well, this is annoying, little Junior Brother. I wonder who lived here back in the day. That was really tough, especially the violet light which—”

“Eldest Brother,” Xu Qing interrupted, “I feel like this place… is familiar. Did you hear that just now?”

Stunned, the Captain looked at Xu Qing. “Familiar? Hear something?”

“A sigh came from that violet light just now,” Xu Qing said softly.

The Captain reached out and grabbed Xu Qing’s arm. “Little Junior Brother,” he said in a serious tone, “we don’t have a complete understanding of all the species that exist in this world. After the broken face of the god came, a vast number of grues and other terrifying creatures came to exist. That includes gods, plus other indescribable entities. You might think I act like a crazy person, but the truth is that every single job I’ve taken you on was something I spent a lot of time preparing for, taking into account all sorts of intelligence reports and other clues. But Forbidden by the Immortal is different.

“I actually don’t know much about this place. If we’ve run into something that you can hear, but others can’t hear… well, that seems to indicate this thing is extremely dangerous. That’s especially true considering how unique I am. If I can’t hear something, then… it means we need to be very careful.

“I think we should forget about getting into this place. Let’s wait until the sleeping god is dead, and then we can decide if it’s worth it to come back and try again.”

It was rare to hear the Captain talking like this. In fact, Xu Qing couldn’t remember any other time in which the Captain would hold back from trying to gobble up a juicy morsel. That went to show how unusual the situation was.

Xu Qing nodded. However, just as they were about to leave, he noticed that, beyond the wall of flesh, inside the palace complex, there was a person standing amidst the violet light.

It was a woman.

She wore a violet gown, and the light around her almost looked like a plum flower. She was spectacularly beautiful as she stood there alone, looking straight at him. There was something so familiar about her gaze that Xu Qing’s mind was battered by waves of shock.

“Little Junior Brother!” the Captain said. Noting Xu Qing’s vacant expression, he shook him.

Xu Qing shivered and looked at the Captain. Then he looked back at the palace complex, except the woman was gone. What was more, the entire area surrounded by the flesh wall was turning blurry, almost as if it were about to decompose into nothing. 𝘳𝑎.𝗇t

This wasn’t a unique occurrence. The same thing had happened in other places that Xu Qing and the Captain had visited on their journey so far. Apparently, when the ancient seals were broken, and outside energy entered, it had a huge effect. Items which normally wouldn’t have survived for so long would finally return to the state they should have reached long ago, and simply disappeared.

Looking somewhat dazed, Xu Qing murmured, “Did you see her, Eldest Brother?”

Seeing Xu Qing in that state got the Captain even more nervous, especially since he hadn’t seen a thing.

“Let’s get out of here, little Junior Brother. We need to go back, right now. There’s something really strange going on here!”

“I’m fine, Eldest Brother,” Xu Qing said softly. He was still looking at the decaying area beyond the wall, and thinking back to what just happened. He also thought about how his heavenly dao didn’t give him any warning about this place being dangerous. “Eldest Brother, can you help me out with something?”

“What are you planning to do?” the Captain said. He suddenly had an idea of what was about to happen.

“Given how fast that area is decaying,” Xu Qing said, “by the time the sleeping god dies, it’ll be gone. Therefore… I’m going inside to take a look around. You wait for me here.”

“Absolutely not!” the Captain said, shaking his head. “I refuse!”

Xu Qing looked at the Captain. “If I don’t go in to look around, I’m going to regret it. Besides, my heavenly dao isn’t giving me any warnings. It should be safe.”

A long moment passed, and then the Captain sighed. “We’ll go in together!”

“Captain, the power in there is dangerous to you. It’s dissipating, but it will still affect you. If we stick together, I won’t be able to go in.”

They went back and forth a bit before the Captain reluctantly agreed. At that point, Xu Qing took a deep breath and had the severed hand swallow him.

Because of the warding spells, it wasn’t possible to just walk into the palace complex, so Xu Qing’s idea was to enter the hand and then have the Captain throw the hand over the wall. If the area beyond the wall wasn’t decomposing, then he would have waited to find a safer means of entry. But right now, he was running out of time.

And the reason was that the figure he had seen was none other than Arch-Immortal Plumdark, who absolutely, positively should not be in this place.

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