“There’s a huge array here,” Sikong Xing explained quickly. “Meng Qiqi said we need to break this array, but it requires seven people to do so.”
“Except for us, everyone else suddenly can’t move!” she added.
Chu Tianfeng seemed to have something to say but swallowed his words when he heard “Meng Qiqi said.” “Where’s Qin Xiumo?” he asked, looking around. “If we find him, we’ll have enough people.”
“Qin Xiumo?” Meng Qi was momentarily puzzled.
“Yes,” Chu Tianfeng said matter-of-factly, his tone was firm. “If I can be here, Qin Xiumo definitely can too.”
“Then let’s find Qin Xiumo,” Sikong Xing, having fought alongside Chu Tianfeng for a while, didn’t doubt his words and immediately jumped down the city wall. “I saw him around there earlier.”
The six of them, finding the place increasingly eerie, decided not to separate, and all followed Sikong Xing down the city wall.
“Qin Xiumo,” Chu Tianfeng called out, his eyes scanning the surroundings.
“Qin Xiumo,” Sikong Xing also called.
Pei Mufeng followed behind them, walking side by side with Li Che.
Meng Qi and Yan Xuan walked in the back. She looked at Yan Xuan and asked quietly, “Are you okay?”
“No problem,” the young man replied calmly.
“Alright.” Meng Qi nodded.
“Meng Qiqi,” at that moment, Sikong Xing’s voice rang out with excitement. She ran to a black-clad man lying on the ground and turned to call the others. “He’s here.”
Qin Xiumo was just unconscious. He had fought against three people, exhausting his aura to the brink, and collapsed along with his opponents. Meng Qi placed a Beiming Pill in his mouth, and shortly after, the man lying on the ground twitched his eyelids and slowly opened his eyes.
When Qin Xiumo opened his eyes, the first thing he saw wasn’t the blue sky but a pair of slender hands. Cool fingers pressed against his forehead, and a warm stream of spiritual aura flowed from her touch, merging with the pill she had given him, spreading through his limbs and meridians into his drying spiritual sea.
A faint medicinal scent wafted from her fingertips to his nose, and the sleeve of her blue robe lightly brushed against his face. Qin Xiumo felt as if he were soaking in a hot spring, utterly comfortable. The scene before him, completely familiar, gave him a sense of security.
“You’re awake,” a clear, spring-like voice said, and the hand on his forehead withdrew. Meng Qi was squatting beside him, her large, clear eyes looking at him.
“You saved me again,” Qin Xiumo said, his voice hoarse and weak from exhaustion after a long battle.
Meng Qi handed him another Beiming Pill. “Your aura was nearly depleted, which is why you passed out,” she explained. “Once your aura is restored, you’ll be fine.”
She then stood up, happy that they had managed to gather seven people.
“Meng Qiqi,” Sikong Xing said, “now let’s talk about breaking the array.”
Qin Xiumo took a deep breath and stood up as well. He looked around and quickly asked, “What’s going on? What seven people?”
Sikong Xing, always straightforward, quickly explained the situation, concluding with, “Now that we have seven people, we can break this Seven Kills Array!”
“Seven Kills Array?” Qin Xiumo frowned and looked at Meng Qi, asking, “What is the Seven Kills Array?”
“I don’t know much myself,” Meng Qi explained. “All I know is that the Seven Kills and Seven Emotions are interlinked—forward is Seven Kills, reverse is Seven Emotions. To break the array, we need seven people. But I don’t know what it’s like inside.”
“In our Demon Realm…” Sikong Xing added, “There are seven mountains around the Starfallen Sea. My father told me that it was the Seven Kills Array. But what the Seven Kills Array or Seven Emotions Array is, I don’t know.”
“Seven Kills Array? Seven Emotions?” Yan Xuan muttered, repeating the names a few times, then said, “I seem to have seen these names somewhere before.”
“I once picked up a jade slip in the Starfallen Sea.” Pei Mufeng said, sharing his knowledge. “After handing it to the elders in my sect for study, they said it mentioned the Seven Kills. The jade slip was profound and written in the demon language, so the elders could only decipher the words ‘Seven Kills’ after much effort.” He took out a small jade slip from his storage pouch and handed it to Sikong Xing. “Here it is.”
The jade slip was a light yellow, looking warm and incredibly smooth, with a thin red line in the center. At one glance, you could tell that it wasn’t an ordinary item.
“This is a jade slip from our Demon Realm!” Sikong Xing said, carefully taking it and slowly infusing a trace of aura.
Everyone watched her expectantly. At this moment, they were all pooling their knowledge, hiding nothing, in order to break the array. Yan Xuan closed his eyes, trying to recall where he had heard about the Seven Kills or Seven Emotions Array.
“Ah!” As soon as Sikong Xing’s aura entered the jade slip, the red line on it suddenly lit up. She screamed and shook her hand violently as if burned.
“Xingxing?” Meng Qi quickly supported her arm.
Pei Mufeng raised his hand, and the jade slip fell back into his palm.
“I-I’m sorry,” Sikong Xing apologized quickly. “The jade slip rejects me…”
“Rejects you?” Chu Tianfeng, puzzled, took the jade slip from Pei Mufeng’s hand. The red line had returned to its dormant state, showing no signs of anything unusual. “This jade slip looks a bit odd.” He said this while infusing it with a trace of his own aura. The aura entered the jade slip, disappearing without a trace, as if sinking into the sea. There was no reaction at all.
“This is really strange!” Chu Tianfeng, unwilling to give up, sent another trace of aura into the jade slip, but there was still no reaction. “No reaction, but it didn’t reject me either.” He continued to play with the jade slip, flipping it over and over.
“Of course there’s no reaction!” Sikong Xing looked at the jade slip with some fear. “This is a jade slip from our Demon Realm. Look here; the red line in the middle is a demon bloodline. This means only those with demon blood can use it. But…” She hesitated for a moment, looking at her companions with whom she had fought many battles and shared life-and-death experiences. Seemingly determined, she continued, “The demon clans are numerous and separated by bloodlines. I can’t use a jade slip from a different clan.”
“So, unless we find a demon cultivator with the same bloodline as the one in the jade slip, we can’t use it. Is that correct?”
“Yes,” Sikong Xing nodded vigorously, “that’s correct. But…”
“But what?” Chu Tianfeng asked.
“There is another way,” Sikong Xing said. “The royal bloodline of the Demon Realm.”
“Huh?” Li Che was confused. “The royal bloodline of the Demon Realm?”
“Yes,” Sikong Xing explained. “In our Demon Realm, bloodlines are most important. Most Demon Monarchs have come from the royal clans. So if it’s a member of the royal clans, even if it’s not their own clan’s jade slip, as long as it’s not from another royal clan, they can still open it.”
“Moreover…” Sikong Xing hesitated again, then added, “If it’s from the current Monarch’s clan, they can use even the jade slips of other royal clans.”
“So, that means there’s no hope for us to open this jade slip now?” Chu Tianfeng said helplessly.
“Yes,” Sikong Xing agreed, also feeling a bit helpless. Although her Red Fox Clan was considered nobility in the Demon Realm, this jade slip seemed quite extraordinary. If it indeed mentioned the Seven Kills, it likely belonged to a royal clan, which was beyond her reach.
“Meng Qiqi,” Pei Mufeng took the jade slip from Chu Tianfeng and suddenly handed it to Meng Qi. “You give it a try.”
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Translator’s Note:
Sponsored chapter tomorrow!
I have added a new novel, Three Years After Falling Off A Cliff. This is a historical romance novel similar to Greetings Ninth Uncle, by the same author of Eight Treasures Trousseau and To Be a Virtuous Wife. This is a replacement novel for Daughter of the Dao and Devil Venerable and will follow the same schedule (Monday and Wednesday). Hope you will enjoy it!
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