“I don’t know the exact refinement process. I only know it is extremely complicated—the difficulty is comparable to reviving a deceased cultivator.”
He Qingyuan lifted her cup and took a sip of water. Her gaze drifted out the window.
Outside, the moon was bright and the stars sparse; the night was exceptionally clear.
“Back to the main topic, Fellow Daoist Mu. Consort He must have given you more instructions than just this, right?”
Mu Xinlian nodded. He Shu had indeed left other instructions.
“Young Miss did tell me other things, but one of them was to return an item.”
She took out the night-luminescent pearl Shen Qingci had given her and handed it over.
“Other than that, there was nothing else. Please help deliver it to Young Master Shen on my behalf.”
“Understood. I will deliver it to Lord Shen intact.”
After handing over the night-luminescent pearl, Mu Xinlian did not linger. She left in a hurry.
Once the door was closed and she had confirmed Mu Xinlian was far away, He Qingyuan took the night-luminescent pearl from her robe and examined it carefully by candlelight.
“There’s a faint spiritual-power aura. It seems a miniature array is inside.”
The array inside the pearl had self-destructed after He Shu read the message. The one now inside had been set up by He Shu using Mu Xinlian’s spiritual power and contained a new message from her.
This array also had a self-destruct function, so He Qingyuan abandoned any thought of peeking ahead.
“I should just deliver it to Lord Shen directly.”
He Qingyuan bit her fingertip and squeezed out a drop of blood. She then channeled her spiritual power to begin forming the framework of an array in the air.
The array produced no spiritual-energy fluctuations at all. It was one of the secret communication methods developed by Southwind spies for hidden messaging.
She sent the suspended drop of blood into the center of the array from a distance. Instantly, a basin-sized portal of spiritual power flickering with faint blue light appeared out of thin air.
On the other side, Shen Qingci was in his room sorting the items he needed to take with him when a spiritual light suddenly flashed in his mind.
Sensing that He Qingyuan was constructing a spatial channel, he immediately released his divine sense to cover a ten-li radius.
After confirming the surroundings were completely safe, he bit his own fingertip, flicked out a drop of blood, and began forming his own array.
The two arrays took shape at the same time. Under an incomparably profound force, they linked across the void and connected.
“This is… the night-luminescent pearl I gave He Shu last time? Why is she sending it back?”
A trace of puzzlement crossed Shen Qingci’s face.
He guessed that He Shu must have something she could not say in front of Mu Xinlian or He Qingyuan, so she was using this method to pass on a secret message.
Using the same technique He Shu had employed, he unlocked the array. He sent his divine sense inside.
Just as he expected, the night-luminescent pearl really did contain a message left by He Shu.
After listening to the entire contents, he leaned against the wall and lowered his head in deep thought.
In the message, He Shu had given Shen Qingci two instructions.
The first was to make a trip to Inclined Moon Immortal City.
The second was to prepare a sufficient amount of spirit stones in advance.
Preparing spirit stones was understandable to Shen Qingci. It was probably to prepare for possible battles ahead.
But the amount He Shu wanted him to prepare seemed a bit excessive.
“Five million high-grade spirit stones… Even if I emptied thirty years of savings, I still wouldn’t have that much.”
“Are Nascent Soul battles really this expensive…? Casting one divine ability consumes nearly a hundred thousand high-grade spirit stones.”
Shen Qingci had personally witnessed two Nascent Soul battles.
One was the life-and-death duel sixteen years ago between two famous Nascent Soul rogue cultivators of the Southwind Immortal Kingdom—Xu Tiansong and Bai Ting.
The other had been back in Flowing Flower Immortal City, when He Shu fought the near-Body Integration Water Flood Dragon.
He had watched with his own eyes as He Shu used a divine ability in front of everyone to heavily injure the Water Flood Dragon.
At the time he had simply thought it was incredibly powerful.
Now that he knew one of He Shu’s divine abilities consumed true yuan equivalent to a hundred thousand high-grade spirit stones, he was truly shocked.
A hundred thousand high-grade spirit stones equaled one million mid-grade spirit stones—almost an entire year’s income for a Golden Core family.
Shen Qingci had also mastered divine abilities, yet casting one only consumed true yuan equivalent to two thousand high-grade spirit stones.
The difference was nearly fifty times!
“Forget it. No point thinking about it now. I’ve already decided to leave the Jade Water Immortal Kingdom. A bit of spirit stone wealth is just an external object.”
He could still just barely produce five million high-grade spirit stones.
Besides, he believed that with his contributions, the rewards he would receive upon returning to the Southwind Immortal Kingdom would far exceed five million high-grade spirit stones.
“But why did He Shu ask me to go to Inclined Moon Immortal City?”
He Shu had not given any specific details in the message.
She had only said vaguely, “Once you arrive, you’ll know what to do.”
Shen Qingci knew of Inclined Moon Immortal City. It was not far from Cloud Mist Immortal City.
With a few transfers through large teleportation arrays, he could reach it in at most two days.
It was located near Drunken Moon Lake and was famous for producing resources such as moonlight fruits and falling-star wood.
Drunken Moon Lake had not formed naturally.
It was a spectacle created thousands of years ago after the great battle between Hua Haichuan and Yin Xiangyue.
Shen Qingci searched his mind for information about Inclined Moon Immortal City and was certain there were no Southwind spies stationed there.
This was strange.
He Shu had asked him to go to Inclined Moon Immortal City, yet there were no allies there and she had given him no clues.
Still, from the tone of her message, the city seemed very important to her.
“She wouldn’t tell me to go there for no reason. Could she have made some arrangements there long ago?”
Unable to figure it out, Shen Qingci decided to set out immediately to investigate. Sorting his belongings could wait until later.
While Shen Qingci hurried anxiously toward Inclined Moon Immortal City, He Shu was tied to a chair enduring interrogation.
A basin of ice water was splashed over her. Wet strands of hair clung to her skin.
She looked utterly disheveled.
There were no wounds on her body, yet it was covered in countless fine needles—an eerie and horrifying sight.
He Shu’s head hung low. The bone-chilling ice water had not woken her; she had clearly fainted.
Seeing that the ice water was no longer effective, Hua Yanyun switched methods.
The miserable girl bound to the chair immediately began convulsing violently.
“Glug glug glug glug…”
Intense stinging pain stimulated every acupoint on her body.
He Shu foamed at the mouth from the electric shock, but the agony also dragged her back from unconsciousness.
“He Shu, are you still unwilling to speak?”
Hua Yanyun stopped the technique and watched the girl, who was gritting her teeth, with cold eyes.
Three hours had already passed. In those three hours Hua Yanyun had tried countless interrogation methods, yet she still could not pry open He Shu’s mouth.
At the beginning, when asked about her undercover experiences, He Shu would occasionally let a few words slip.
But the moment Hua Yanyun started asking about other Southwind spies or anything concerning He Xiu, He Shu became as mute as a fish and refused to utter a single word.
He Shu remained tied to the chair.
Even though Hua Yanyun had stopped the electric shock, her muscles still twitched uncontrollably.
This was not the first time she had been electrocuted, but the last session had been far more intense than all the previous ones combined.
It had literally shocked her awake from a death-like faint.
The light in her eyes had dimmed considerably.
The prolonged inhuman torture had left her breathing extremely weak.
Forcing her muddled mind to function, He Shu—after nearly two hours of torment—finally stopped making incoherent groans of pain.
She managed to speak a complete sentence.
“Ptooey… Hua… Yanyun… you… want… to get information… out of me… dream on! Cough cough cough cough…”
Her voice was as faint as a mosquito’s buzz. It would not have been surprising if she drew her last breath in the next moment.
“Truly stubborn and deluded…”
“You could be spared all this pain if you simply gave Us one clue. Why would you rather endure such torture than reveal even the slightest piece of information?”
Hua Yanyun’s tone sounded almost helpless. She genuinely did not know what else to say.
Soul-searching techniques were ineffective on He Shu.
Even imitations from other paths could not dig out a single memory.
The characteristics of the Mystic Soul Pure Sound Physique were far too unreasonable.
Yet precisely because soul-searching was impossible, Hua Yanyun had no choice but to rely on physical torture to extract information.