At night, the Forbidden Palace lost so of its dayti grandeur, but gained a mysterious, almost sinister air. It felt like a monstrous beast lying in wait, its mouth wide open, silently daring the clueless to wander in.
Li Xun was following Yin Wanderer through the darkness, not quite sure what they were doing in the depths of the palace at such a late hour. Especially since they hadn’t exactly entered through the front door—they’d quite literally dropped in from the sky. That... probably wasn't the most appropriate way to visit, right?
Yin Wanderer wasn’t saying anything, and Li Xun didn’t dare to ask. He just kept his head down and quietly followed behind.
Finally, Yin Wanderer ca to a halt. Li Xun leaned in, trying to keep his voice light: “Master-Aunt?”
Yin Wanderer waved her horsetail whisk, signaling him to be quiet, then motioned with her eyes for him to look ahead.
Li Xun narrowed his eyes, focusing in the dim starlight. All he could see were swaying shadows of trees and snowflakes dancing in the wind. Nothing else.
He scratched his head and looked back.
Yin Wanderer gave a faint smile and pointed. “That’s the imperial treasury. Most of the mortal world’s treasures are stored right there. Worth billions. Tempted?”
Li Xun shook his head. Mortal treasures were just that—jade, paintings, calligraphy... sure, they were worth a fortune in the human world. But in the Tongxuan Realm? Just shiny toys with no real use. Nothing worth getting excited about.
Ever since he’d set his goals straight, Li Xun had gotten really good at knowing what mattered and what didn’t. He wasn’t so easily swayed anymore.
But just as he shook his head, a strange feeling crept up on him—like sothing wasn’t right. He’d already reacted though, so it was too late to take it back. All he could do now was accept it, and let his mind race to figure out what exactly felt off.
Yin Wanderer didn’t care what he was thinking. Her smile stayed on, but in her eyes... in her eyes, there surged a gloom vast as ten thousand miles of stormclouds— like the blizzard from the night before: beautiful and pure on the surface, yet beneath it all lay a cold, a chill that could kill.
Amid his fear, he heard Yin Wanderer speak softly:
“True, you’re not tempted. But... soone else is.”
Li Xun blinked, turned to look again—still nothing. Yin Wanderer’s smile deepened. “Co.”
She drifted forward like a cloud, light as air, not disturbing even a speck of snow. It was like she was out for a nightti stroll. But the mont she moved, Li Xun distinctly heard a low, strained groan from the surrounding air.
In a daze, Li Xun felt like a blizzard had just swept through.
Two figures appeared out of nowhere, like they’d been yanked from the void. Their eyes locked onto Yin Wanderer, full of shock, maybe even despair—then went blank.
Their bodies were flung back like rag dolls as if struck by a giant invisible hamr. They smashed into the distant stone pavent in unnaturally crooked and twisted postures. But when they hit the ground, there wasn’t a single sound. Just silence. Creepy, skin-crawling silence.
Yin Wanderer hadn’t even lifted a finger. But sohow, those two people were very, very dead.
Li Xun sucked in a sharp breath. That... that was just the tip of her unfathomable power, wasn’t it?
Yin Wanderer didn’t spare the corpses even a glance. To her, they were no different than fallen leaves. She just kept walking, unhurried, toward the treasury. Li Xun took a few deep breaths to calm himself, then hurried after her.
Even with his modest cultivation, Li Xun could tell—sothing was off now. Ever since those two were killed, the air around them felt... wrong. He couldn’t explain it, but it was like the atmosphere had thickened, curdled.
It wasn’t just the sll—it was the feeling in the air. Like an invisible pressure bearing down on them. Like a pot of water starting to boil, filled with li and a few drops of dark, poisonous liquid.
Then—boom—that toxic soup exploded.
It was like soone slamd a brick into Li Xun’s skull. His mind went blank, and he toppled backward. Sowhere in that dizzy fog, he heard Yin Wanderer’s soft, cryptic chuckle drift into his ears.
His thoughts were unraveling fast, nearly blacking out—until—
Ding—
A crisp, clear sound echoed in his mind. Like a tiny droplet in a secluded, age-old cavern, falling with a soft plink onto a still, stagnant pool, sending out slow, rippling waves that expanded in tranquil silence.
Li Xun’s mind snapped clear. His eyes flew open.
Just in ti to see another figure scream and get hurled away.
“You might not be tempted—but that doesn’t an everyone in the Tongxuan Realm can say the sa.” Yin Wanderer’s voice was warm and smooth, yet sohow cutting straight to his heart. “Especially those lazy scavengers, always dreaming of sothing for nothing. They treat this place like their personal warehouse. Disgusting.”
The mont her voice faded, the last figure collapsed to the ground like a sack of rotten flesh. Not a single bone intact.
Li Xun lay flat on the ground, not daring to breathe too loudly. The whole fight had taken re monts. It didn’t have the scale of that trial on Tiandu Peak—the Thousand-mile Firecloud—but the impact? Nearly just as terrifying.
From start to finish, Yin Wanderer hadn’t shown any obvious moves. Yet four Tongxuan cultivators had died on the spot—and in completely different, equally bizarre ways.
It was chilling.
“The palace sure is lively tonight,” Yin Wanderer said with a faint smile, her eyes returning to Li Xun as she looked down at him from above. “That slap—was it worth it?”
Li Xun shook his still-dizzy head and slowly pushed himself up from the ground. Hearing her words, he didn’t even have the energy to give a bitter smile. His gaze swept over the four corpses nearby—clean kills—and another shiver ran down his spine.
Those four hadn’t stood a chance against Yin Wanderer. They were crushed without ever getting to make a move. But to Li Xun, any one of them would’ve taken everything he had just to survive. What hit hardest was this: cultivators from the Tongxuan Realm had actually snuck into the mortal realm just to play thief. If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he’d never have believed it.
And yet, he couldn’t exactly speak up about it. Admitting it would bruise his pride, and keeping quiet didn’t sit right either. In the end, he just gave a vague hum of acknowledgnt and changed the subject.
“Master-Aunt… who were those people?”
“Just so rootless drifters with no sect or backing,” Yin Wanderer replied easily, clearly not bothered. She even followed his lead and shifted topics without a fuss. “Killing them won’t stir up trouble. From now on, they’re all yours—good material for practice.”
Li Xun managed a half-smile, but he still didn’t get it. These rogue cultivators—why would they co all the way to the imperial city of the mortal realm to steal? Didn’t they feel the sha?
To that, Yin Wanderer explained lightly:
“The mortal world may not have many valuable items, but the imperial private collection still holds its share of fine things.
"These people have neither sects nor allies, nor a grand technique to manifest countless avatars. There are things that require imnse manpower to gather, only the millions of mortals under the imperial court’s rule can manage to obtain them... Naturally, the circumstances differ for those who belong to established sects and schools."
Li Xun blinked. What exactly are these things that supposedly require the effort of "millions of mortals" to gather?
But Yin Wanderer didn’t elaborate, and he didn’t dare ask. He just silently followed her up the steps leading to the inner treasury.
At the top, he saw more than a dozen guards sprawled out, unconscious, limbs twisted all over the place. None of them stirred. Yin Wanderer didn’t bother waking them either—just gave her horsetail whisk a casual wave, and the massive lock on the treasury door clicked and fell off. The doors swung open with a low groan.
Inside was a large hall, sparsely furnished with neatly arranged tables and chairs. Li Xun had barely taken a glance around when silver threads—thin as spider silk—flashed in the dark. A faint clack-clack of chanisms followed, and in the shadowy corner of the hall, a hidden passageway slowly revealed itself—a tunnel.
So that’s the real way into the treasury.
All the traps and tricks—interesting, but not all that exciting to Li Xun. What did catch his attention was the heavy sound of breathing coming from within the passage.
Only then did he realize: the real guards were down there. They were probably useless too—but still better than the unconscious ones outside.
A young eunuch's head popped up from the tunnel entrance. The mont he saw the two people standing in the hall, his eyes widened in shock. He scrambled out and bowed hurriedly.
“Greetings, National Preceptor! Greetings, Master Li!”
Yin Wanderer didn’t even glance at him and walked straight down the steps. Li Xun pointed back toward the entrance, silently signaling the eunuch to clean up outside. The eunuch was sharp—he nodded imdiately and scurried off.
When Li Xun stepped into the tunnel, he realized it wasn’t just a single passage. At a glance, more than a dozen pitch-black corridors branched out in all directions, stretching who-knew-where.
Another layer of defense, Li Xun thought. If these tunnels branch off again halfway, anyone trying to break in would either need ridiculous luck or inside intel—otherwise they will definitely not escape the fate of getting lost.
“There are a few items in the treasury you’ll want to take a look at often in the future,” Yin Wanderer said calmly, leading him down one of the corridors.
Take a look? You an risk my life taking a look! Li Xun thought bitterly, heart sinking as he followed. Yin Wanderer made it sound so casual, but he felt like his scalp was about to freeze over. Still, he kept nodding along.
She really did seem to have eyes that could read straight into his soul.
She truly seed to have eyes that could read straight into one’s heart—she completely knew what Li Xun was thinking.
“Of course, your current cultivation is embarrassingly low," she added after he agreed. "If you run into a real expert, you won’t stand a chance. I’ll give you a few magical items, and pass on a supre technique—so you’ll at least have sothing to defend yourself.”
That finally made Li Xun breathe a little easier. “Master-Aunt, you truly are wise.” he said with heartfelt sincerity.
As they spoke, they passed through four separate corridors and finally arrived at the heart of the treasury.
Now this was imperial-grade.
A stone door, thick as a fortress wall, slowly opened—powered by a dozen burly guards cranking heavy winches. The thing must weigh tens of thousands of pounds. Li Xun sized it up and realized: if he ever had to sneak in quietly, it’d be a serious headache.
The inner treasury lay dozens of ters underground—huge and ticulously built. Treasures were neatly arranged by category: rare artifacts, exotic materials, precious items stacked everywhere. Anything pulled from here would fetch a fortune in the mortal world. Gold alone filled an entire chamber—not that it was useful to cultivators, but the glittering mountain of it was still impressive.
Li Xun wandered through, just taking it all in, until they reached the lowest level—a pill refining room.
“These are all kinds of pills, dicinal powders and rare spiritual herbs accumulated by emperors over the generations… No need to look at them, though. They’re just useless trash,” Yin Wanderer said, yanking his gaze away. “Look over there.”
Yin Wanderer pointed toward a stone table behind the pill furnace. Atop it sat two objects—one of them, a transparent crystal vial, was itself a rare treasure. It contained a small amount of rose-pink liquid, shimring faintly with a pearlescent glow. Within that gentle luster, there was a hint of pale green, and the two colors shifted subtly as the light passed through. It was strikingly beautiful.
Next to it lay a corroded iron plate, about a finger’s width thick. The edges were jagged, clearly broken, and at a glance, it looked like nothing more than scrap tal.
The contrast between the two items was jarring—one dazzling, the other pitiful. Placed side by side, they gave off an almost absurd sense of imbalance.
Li Xun instantly understood: these were what Yin Wanderer wanted him to guard. Instinctively, he could tell that neither was ordinary, though he couldn’t say why. He turned toward her, hoping for an explanation—but this ti, she offered none.
She simply gave him a reminder: “Your master and I will be leaving the capital for a few days. These two things… we won’t be able to keep an eye on them. You’ll take over for now.”
Li Xun’s eyes widened. “Master-Aunt, where are you going?”
As soon as the question left his lips, another thought sprang to life: They’re leaving? Then this is my chance to escape. With the Blood Nightmare threat mostly under control now...
But just as that idea sparked, Yin Wanderer’s gaze swept over to him. Her smile deepened, now laced with sothing far more knowing.
“You really want to know?”
Li Xun’s heart jolted. That fleeting thought of escape shattered like glass. He wasn’t stupid—he saw the warning behind her smile. He quickly shook his head.
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