Cohabitation with Sword Spirit

Chapter 388 - 123: Inner Sect and Outer Sect CPs

Wang Jiu is someone who takes things very seriously. After calculating the bill, he immediately chased after the trio who tried to dodge the bill, demanding payment for the meal. As for his meticulous spirit of comparing each person’s consumption to the bill in hand and collecting the fees, Shen Yueying and the others could only cooperate with a mix of laughter and frustration.

However, when Wang Jiu calculated the final bill and returned a spirit stone to Lu Xin, the expression on her face was a spectacle of rapid and varied changes.

Wang Jiu is not skilled in reading human expressions — just like how humans find it difficult to judge whether a grinning gorilla is happy or angry, he couldn’t fathom Lu Xin’s thoughts at all. He only judged from her tightly clenched pink fist, which instantly crushed the precious spirit stone into powder, that Lu Xin was probably in a state of extreme excitement.

Perhaps it’s due to a child’s inherently lively nature, in Wang Jiu’s impression, this stepmother of Shen Qingming’s indeed belongs to the very vivacious type among humans.

However, compared to visiting the secluded Shen Ruoshi, the children’s meal at the barbecue shop was just a subplot of a subplot. Although Lu Xin’s expression was twisted, displaying a fierce look, she managed to suppress her anger and let her personal emotions give way to more important matters.

The urgent task now is to have Li Fengyun meet Shen Ruoshi and clarify what happened twenty years ago.

The children’s meal bill can be settled slowly.

——

Shen Yueying led the group into the Inner City Lord’s Mansion, bypassing numerous illusion mechanisms with the City Lord’s Seal in hand. After pushing open a small bedroom door, their eyes suddenly brightened, revealing a cloud-enveloped barren mountain, with a towering, precipitous mountain ahead and a pit leading to endless depths at the foot of the mountain.

The entrance of the pit was about ten meters high and wide, sealed with a ghost-faced stone door. The stone door appeared to be at least a thousand years old, and the originally exquisite ghost face engraving was severely eroded, yet it did not diminish the ferocity of the ghost face.

Just approaching this ghost face, one could feel an invisible wave spreading that shook one’s spirit. Around a hundred meters from the cave entrance, Lu Xin was already breathing rapidly, instinctively holding onto Li Fengyun’s hand, and within ten meters of the entrance, even Shen Yueying’s steps became heavy, as if each step forward required a hundred times the effort.

Only Li Fengyun and Wang Jiu were completely unaffected, walking step by step to the ghost-face door.

Behind them, Shen Yueying sighed lightly: "This is where Father secluded himself. This place is a Chaos Battlefield sealed by the Shen family ancestors millennia ago; its inner space links to endless chaos. Usually... only family members who commit serious crimes are kept here for punishment. But Father went a step further, contaminating this place into a Heart Demon Illusion Realm, forcing himself to constantly battle to the death with his heart demons within the illusion realm. In such a battlefield, even without discussing whether he’d still have the clarity to converse when you find him, nor whether dialogue would achieve results, I fear once you cross this door, you’ll be lost in the Heart Demon Illusion Realm. So I ask one last time, Fengyun, are you sure you want to go?"

Li Fengyun nodded without hesitation: "Of course."

At the same time, Lu Xin quietly squeezed Li Fengyun’s hand.

Then she said, "Fengyun, go ahead without worry, I’ll wait for you outside."

Saying this, she took the initiative to let go and retreated to Shen Yueying’s side.

Shen Yueying glanced at Lu Xin, quietly took a half-step aside.

Lu Xin silently followed.

Shen Yueying stepped another half-step aside.

Lu Xin continued to follow.

Finally, Shen Yueying couldn’t help but laugh: "Why are you following me? Can’t you block the ghost-face door’s pressure alone?"

Lu Xin retorted without a change in expression: "You’re blocking me!"

"Blocking you? So sorry for being this tall."

"Who said anything about height?"

Seeing that Lu Xin was about to explode in anger again, Shen Yueying quickly left her aside and turned to Li Fengyun: "If you feel you can’t hold on, use this to call me. I will manipulate the array from the outside to get you out."

Saying this, Shen Yueying handed a red handkerchief embroidered with a few delicate words to Li Fengyun.

Lu Xin glanced suspiciously from the side: "What’s written on that?"

Li Fengyun examined it seriously for a long time and said sternly: "I don’t know."

"You..." Lu Xin gritted her teeth in hatred at first, but immediately sensed there was a catch and started glaring at Shen Yueying fiercely.

Shen Yueying innocently said: "It’s something passed down through the family, I don’t recognize it either. All I know is it’s a token that can bring someone out from beyond the ghost-face door."

Lu Xin would have to have brains made of lard to believe such nonsense. Yet, being illiterate, she could only grit her teeth in frustration.

Fortunately, Wang Jiu observed clearly from the side and said: "That’s the encryption script commonly used within Shen City. Translated to the common script, it means a token of love."

Lu Xin was genuinely about to explode this time: "What!?"

Shen Yueying was equally surprised: "What!?"

"Quit acting like you didn’t know!" Lu Xin nearly jumped up to punch her in the nose.

Shen Yueying smiled and said, "I really don’t know. I got it from my father, and I even teased him about using a red handkerchief at his age. But he said he got it from our ancestors..."

Before she could finish her sentence, Wang Jiu spoke up, "Judging by the change in the fabric’s quality, it should have been produced within the last six months, and based on the residual scent, it has been in your possession and use over 99% of the time."

Shen Yueying’s face flushed instantly, and she snatched the red handkerchief back from Li Fengyun’s hand: "Sorry, I took the wrong one. I’ll look for the one my father gave me when I get back."

"Are you treating us like fools!?"

"Is it not allowed to take the wrong thing!?" Shen Yueying said, full of righteousness, "My sister also met Fengyun because she took the wrong thing back then."

"So you did it on purpose?!"

As the two were about to start fighting again, Li Fengyun interrupted with, "I’m going in first." In a flash, his figure turned into a stream of light and disappeared through the eyes of the ghost face.

Wang Jiu looked at the Ghost-faced Sect door and felt a sense of déjà vu, so he said, "I’ll go take a look." He also activated the Divine Sword Body and entered through the door.

As the two left, the two women outside suddenly felt extremely bored, even Lu Xin’s anger subsided a lot.

With Li Fengyun gone, Lu Xin no longer found Shen Yueying as annoying. Although her personality made one want to fight her to the death, in some respects, Shen Yueying was also pitiful.

Though neither she nor herself was any match for Shen Yue’e, Shen Yueying still took over Shen Yue’e’s position and even had a son—what was his name again?

In short, compared to herself, Shen Yueying truly gained nothing—she lost to Shen Yue’e twenty years ago, never competed against Lu Xin since, and now could only resort to giving someone her personal handkerchief for self-deception. When you think about it, it’s quite sad.

Thinking about this, Lu Xin couldn’t even muster any anger and gazed at Shen Yueying with a gentler look.

This made Shen Yueying feel quite uncomfortable, "What are you looking at?"

Lu Xin shook her head and said nothing.

"Hmph, shorty."

Upon hearing this, Lu Xin did not get enraged as usual, but instead looked at Shen Yueying with even more compassion.

The feeling of experiencing a superior gaze from below the chest was akin to biting into Guanyin soil, which brought Shen Yueying both pleasure and spite. She ground her teeth but was helpless—she couldn’t just slap Lu Xin dead here, nor could she turn and leave. If Li Fengyun encountered real danger inside and she couldn’t step up in time, she’d regret it for life.

So Shen Yueying could only endure it, standing in place, forced to bear the torment of the shorty’s gaze, hoping that Li Fengyun would hurry back and take Lu Xin away!

——

On the other side, after passing through the ghost face door, Li Fengyun and Wang Jiu were instantly transported to a new world.

An unexpectedly astonishing Heart Demon Illusion Realm.

To the Celestial Divine Sword, the Heart Demon Illusion Realm was not unfamiliar. During the Jiuzhou Immortal Demon War, countless Great Cultivators could not bear the reality of Jiuzhou’s collapse and were tainted with an evil curse by the Demon Race, their Primordial Spirits shattered, leading to the eruption of large Heart Demon Illusion Realms. Cultivators of that time were well-cultivated, and once these Illusion Realms expanded, they would engulf an area of a hundred to even a thousand miles. Back then, under Wang Jiu’s lead, the Jiu Immortal Venerables cleared a considerable number of these Heart Demon Illusion Realms.

Within the Illusion Realms, reality and dream twisted, nightmares thrived, and scenes of unimaginable purgatory became reality. Many under-trained cultivators, once entering, had their wills shattered, eventually melting into the realm, becoming part of the nightmarish tapestry.

Shen Ruoshi’s cultivation, though not on par with those Heaven Shattering Realm Immortal Venerables of the Immortal Demon War, still ranked as a solid middle force at the Sea Overturning Realm, enough to create a formidable Heart Demon Illusion Realm.

Yet upon entry, they found not an infernal reality but a serene and harmonious dreamlike town.

The town was small, with only a few hundred people, but every street and building was spotless, as if from a picture perfect illusion. The townsfolk walked with an air of elegance, the men handsome, the women beautiful, all with graceful smiles that spoke of absolute contentment.

Upon seeing this, Li Fengyun was stunned: "Xiangzhou Dream Model Town?"

As a representative of the Seven Great Noble Families attending the Heaven-Reaching City’s Saint Sect conference, the Saint Sect proposed an ideal society that seemed just like this...

Yet on closer inspection, it slightly diverged from the imagery displayed by the Saint Sect Leader at the time...

While Li Fengyun was puzzled, Wang Jiu had already completed an initial analysis of the Heart Demon Illusion Realm.

"Character count 1342, models rigid and mechanical, low activity level. Based on resource allocation patterns, efficacy suggests they are background extras; Illusion Realm density is concentrated, small in scale, comprehensive judgment indicates a character-driven illusion realm with an 85% probability."

Li Fengyun listened, bewildered: "What do you mean?"

Wang Jiu tried to explain it in a way humans could understand: "You don’t need to worry about such complex matters, just follow me."

"Understood."