"I will go with the Young Sect Master," Elder Hua said. She struggled to rise, her hands pressing into the damp stone floor as her limbs trembled with the effort. "Even though my injuries aren't fully healed, I still have some strength left to—"
"No." Young Sect Master Yu Xiaotang turned around and looked at her. Her gaze was sharp, and her tone remained firm and decisive. "Elder Hua, you're staying here."
"Young Sect Master," Elder Hua said urgently, her voice cracking. "That black-robed person and Ling Chuan aren't weak. Their methods are strange and unpredictable. You're going alone, and you—"
"Precisely because of that, you can't go," Yu Xiaotang said, cutting her off. "In your current state, forcing yourself to follow won't help at all. It will only distract me because I would have to protect you. You would become a burden."
The words were blunt, sounding a little cold in the quiet cave, but the elder knew she was telling the truth.
"But…" Elder Hua's face showed a deep unwillingness to remain behind.
"There's no but." Yu Xiaotang shook her head. "Your task is to quickly sort out the xuesha power inside your body and recover as soon as possible. Even regaining one or two tenths of your Nascent Soul strength would be better than how you are now. And I need you to grow stronger, and I need it to happen fast."
Her gaze burned with an intense light as she looked straight at the elder. "The future of the Hehuan Sect depends on you. I need you."
Elder Hua's body trembled at the weight of those words. Excitement and a fierce resolve flashed through her eyes. "Yes. I won't fail the Young Sect Master's trust."
"Good." Yu Xiaotang nodded. "Just in case, take this."
She flipped her wrist, and a jade pendant emitting a faint, ethereal white glow appeared in her palm. She had already transferred the power of the system's group concealment halo into the jade. She pressed it straight into the elder's hand, the cool stone clicking against her palm.
"Take it."
"This… this is the Young Sect Master's life-saving item. I can't accept it," Elder Hua said in shock, her fingers curling tentatively around the jade.
"Take it," Yu Xiaotang said sharply. "This place isn't absolutely safe. With this, as long as you don't expose yourself on purpose, you can avoid most detection. I won't need it for this trip."
That statement was half-true. The concealment halo was useful to her, but right now, ensuring the absolute safety of the woman before her mattered more. A Nascent Soul cultivator who knew many of Yu Xiaotang's secrets was far too important to lose in a place like this. She needed her to recover and become future support, not a burden that needed constant protection, and certainly not a weak point the enemy could exploit.
"Remember this. Without my summons, or before your injuries heal, you're not allowed to leave this place," she said as a final reminder, her voice echoing off the limestone walls.
"Yes…" Elder Hua's eyes reddened as she nodded hard. "Young Sect Master… please be careful."
"I will." Yu Xiaotang didn't say anything else. She turned into a streak of light and vanished from the cave, her silhouette racing toward the White Water Pool in the northeast. She had to get there as fast as possible. Senior Sister Liu Shaoyu and the others were probably in serious trouble.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the rift valley, the Hehuan Sect disciples wrapped in the light of the teleportation talisman felt the world spin around them. After a brief, nauseating sense of weightlessness, the scenery changed completely.
"Cough, cough… pfft." The moment she landed, before she could even see her surroundings, Liu Shaoyu spat out a mouthful of dark blood. Her face instantly turned paper-white, and her aura sagged as her spiritual energy fluctuated wildly. Forcefully burning her essence blood to activate the teleportation talisman early had severely damaged her vitality.
"Senior Sister Liu!" A female disciple beside her stepped forward and hurriedly supported her.
She violently shook the hand off. Her blood-stained lips trembled with rage as she lifted her head, her bloodshot eyes locking onto Hua Wuying, whose face looked just as bad as hers.
"Hua. Wu. Ying." She spat out each syllable like a curse. "You useless idiot who can't accomplish anything and only ruins everything."
"What did you say?" Hua Wuying was already shaken by the appearance of the elder's so-called remains. Now, being cursed to her face by someone who usually kept her head down in front of her, her anger exploded.
"I said you're stupid. Useless," Liu Shaoyu shrieked, ignoring the stabbing pain of her injuries.
"That jade hairpin was obviously suspicious. It was a trap meant to mess with your mind. Couldn't you see that?"
"That was Elder Hua's artifact!" Hua Wuying roared back. "It had her essence blood on it. That aura, that filth…" Thinking of the ruined hairpin made her heart ache again with a mix of grief and fury.
"So what if the artifact was broken? So what if it was tainted with baleful qi?" Liu Shaoyu snapped. "The Young Sect Master personally went to save the elder. With the Young Sect Master's methods, how could those two thieves succeed so easily? That hairpin was clearly meant to provoke you, to make you lose control. To make you, you brainless thing… cough, cough."
She broke into another violent coughing fit, her small frame shaking.
"I…" Hua Wuying was left speechless. Thinking back on the heat of the moment, a trace of cold regret crept into her heart. Why hadn't she thought it through? Why had she let anger cloud her judgment so completely?
"But…"
"But what but," Liu Shaoyu shrieked, cutting her off. "That directional teleportation talisman needs time to activate. You and I both know that. With all the junior sisters helping, if we had just held on a little longer—even ten more breaths—once the formation stabilized, the teleport would have completed smoothly. We all could have left without a single scratch.
And what happened? Because you lost focus, the formation core destabilized and gave the enemy an opening. I was forced to burn my essence blood and activate the teleport early. Otherwise, we would all be dead back there right now.
See this? Look at us now. If all it did was cripple my vitality, that would be one thing." Her gaze shifted to the spot where Su Yue had been standing, a space now completely empty. Tears welled in her eyes, and her voice turned even more shrill. "But those bastards even took Junior Sister Su. She… she is probably…"
She didn't finish the sentence, but everyone understood the implication. Falling into the hands of those two calamities, and being left behind alone, Su Yue's fate was obvious.
"I… I…" Hua Wuying was completely choked by the barrage of accusations. Her face turned an azure shade before going deathly pale. She wanted to argue, to say the enemy was too cunning for them to handle. But that shattered, blood-stained jade hairpin, and that lingering aura belonging to the elder, really had been the direct reason she had lost control. If not for that, the formation wouldn't have been breached so easily, and Senior Sister Liu Shaoyu wouldn't have had to sacrifice her essence blood.
Looking at the injured sect members around her, then at the deathly pale face and the blame in the other woman's eyes, overwhelming guilt and regret flooded her chest. She opened her mouth, but no words came out.
"Enough. What is the point of saying all this now," another disciple with lighter injuries said tearfully. "Where are we? What do we do now?"
Everyone finally snapped out of their grief and argument and looked at the world around them. This wasn't the dry, hidden cave they had expected. Instead, it was an area filled with heavy moisture and dim, filtered light.
Under their feet was damp black rock that felt slick with slime. Not far ahead lay an endless stretch of water shrouded in faint, swirling white mist.
A pool? No. Calling it a pool felt wrong. It looked more like a dead, silent lake stretching into the gloom. The water was an eerie gray-white color. The surface was perfectly still, yet it made their hearts tighten for no clear reason. The air carried an indescribable stench of decay and stagnant mud.
"This is… White Water Pool?" one disciple said uncertainly. "The teleportation point was supposed to be a dry cave nearby…"
Liu Shaoyu's expression changed. She forced herself to stand straight and carefully sensed the spiritual aura of the surroundings.
"The teleport was interfered with," she said grimly. "Was it that black-robed person's final attack, or is there something wrong with this place itself?"
A strong sense of unease rose in her heart. White Water Pool, according to the map the Young Sect Master had given them, was right on the edge of a dangerous area known as Corpse Burial Abyss.
This was absolutely not a good place.