Exploring the treasure trove invites perilous trials, where wit and courage unravel the puzzle, astonishing all.

The moment the bronze doors slammed shut, an abrupt silence enveloped Shen Yi.

He stood upon the translucent ice-jade steps, the air thick with the distinct pine-resin scent of ancient spirit-wood. Yet, the pulsating rhythm of the dragon-blood tree branch inside his storage bag grew increasingly clear, as if something were burrowing along his meridians toward his temple.

"System, initiate danger alert." He flicked away the mist clinging to his shoulder; the greyish vapors emitted a faint, mournful wail before falling to the ground as withered leaves.

*Ding—*

The "Divine Tree Meets Spring" skill tree began to spin frantically, and the previously dull "Withered Wood Armor" icon suddenly pulsed with an emerald luster.

Before Shen Yi could take a closer look, the ice-jade beneath his feet fractured into a spiderweb pattern. High above, the seventy-two night-luminescent pearls embedded in the mouths of bronze beast heads pivoted in unison.

As the sound of air being pierced erupted, Shen Yi instinctively rolled toward the stone pillar on his left. Three profound-iron arrows grazed his neck and hammered into the floor. The Ya-zi beast carvings on the arrow tails blazed with red light, instantly scorching the ice-jade for a radius of ten feet.

"Damn it, that’s quite the 'warm' welcome!" Shen Yi backhanded his waist to unsheathe a vine whip—a magical tool woven from the Ghost-Cry Vines he had earned as a system reward.

The tip of the whip swept past the nearest bronze lampstand. The fireflies sleeping within were startled awake, transforming into a sky full of flowing embers that collided with the second wave of arrows.

Amidst the crisp sound of metal clashing against metal, a faint sneer drifted through the air.

Shen Yi’s pupils constricted.

The laughter had clearly originated from the coiling-dragon pillar in the southwest corner. Yet, when he flung three poison-tipped caltrops in that direction, they only struck a vanishing corner of black fabric—the exact material Mo Yu often wore.

The arrow formation suddenly shifted its rhythm. The profound-iron arrows, which had been descending in straight lines, began to weave like serpents; some even split mid-air into fine, barbed needles.

Shen Yi’s back slammed into a display shelf, and he caught a glimpse of the eyes on a jade qilin statue turning a full half-circle.

"So that’s where you are!" Biting his tongue, he sprayed a mist of blood. Upon touching the essence blood, the Ghost-Cry Vine surged in size, and the barbs along its length bloomed into vibrant red flowers.

The moment the vines ensnared the jade qilin, a sound of shattering porcelain echoed from the southwest. Seven poison arrows that had been stealthily aiming for his heart lost their trajectory, skewing wildly into the wall.

Hidden in the shadows, Mo Yu nearly crushed the formation disk in his hands. He had used an Invisibility Talisman to hide in the "Xun" position of the formation, expecting to watch the wild brat be pierced by a thousand arrows. Who would have guessed that when Shen Yi sprayed his blood, a few droplets had splattered onto the trigrams at the edge of his disk?

"Struggling in vain." With a sinister smile, he rotated the black jade ring on his finger. Thousands of silver threads descended from the treasure vault's dome. These ice-silkworm threads, soaked in moonlight dew, were meant to restrain spirit beasts, but now they wove a inescapable net, forcing Shen Yi into a dead end behind the display shelf.

Shen Yi’s back pressed against the cold wall. Between the arrow formation and the tightening silkworm threads, three deep, bone-exposing lacerations appeared on his right arm.

Worse still, his dantian began to throb with pain—the system was frantically draining his spiritual power, and the dragon-blood tree branch in his bag extended roots that crawled along his meridians toward his heart.

"Don't add to the chaos, ancestor!" He slapped the restless storage bag, suddenly noticing that a brick on the third tier of the display shelf was glowing an unnatural, ghostly blue.

That was... the "Nine-Palace Shifting Brick" recorded in the *Manual of Heavenly Craft* three hundred years ago!

Memory struck like lightning. Back when he lived in the beggars' den, an old blind man loved to ramble about various obscure mechanisms. Once, while drunk, he had said, "If you encounter the Nine-Palace Killing Array, just flip the chessboard."

Shen Yi whipped the Ghost-Cry Vine toward the beam overhead. As the vine coiled around the gilded crossbeam, he vaulted up, his boot heel slamming hard onto the blue brick.

The moment the brick depressed, the entire display shelf flipped over with a roar, revealing a moss-covered secret compartment behind it.

The formation disk in Mo Yu’s hand suddenly became too hot to hold. He watched helplessly as Shen Yi, who should have been caught in the net, disappeared behind the rotating mechanism wall. Furthermore, the Soul-Devouring Gu he had pre-planted in the compartment was so terrified by something that it retreated back into its ceramic jar.

"How is this possible?" He stroked the crack that had suddenly appeared on his formation disk. The path of the fracture was identical to the bloodstain Shen Yi had sprayed onto the trigrams.

Even more eerily, a dragon-like tremor emanated from the depths of the vault, as if some ancient seal were awakening.

Shen Yi was currently collapsed in a damp corridor. The beads of blood seeping from his arm dripped onto the floor, only to be absorbed by winding red veins in the stone cracks—those veins seemed to come alive, surging crazily toward a statue chained at the end of the dark chamber.

*[Ding! Ancient spirit seed fluctuation detected.]*

The system interface popped up automatically. Shen Yi looked at the "Blood Sacrifice Stimulation" skill that had suddenly lit up. Before he could even curse, he heard the sharp whistle of ice-silkworm threads cutting through the air above.

Mo Yu’s cold laughter echoed from all directions: "Fellow Daoist Shen’s talent for hide-and-seek is truly worthy of the forbidden arts you’ve stolen..." Forced by the silkworm threads, Shen Yi fell backward in the corridor, the back of his head slamming against the bricks.

Staring at the silver threads weaving into a net above, he suddenly remembered the palm-sized black turtle shell in his storage bag—a defensive treasure awarded by the system when he grew the Millennium Profound-Ice Grass last month.

"Turtle son, it's your turn to shine!" As he rolled to the right, he flung the shell. The pitch-black object expanded in the wind, instantly transforming into a translucent light barrier that enveloped his entire body.

As the ice-silkworm threads sliced against the barrier, sparks flew, emitting a screeching sound like sand being stir-fried in an iron wok.

In the shadows, Mo Yu’s pupils contracted. He recognized this as a protective treasure refined from the dorsal shell of a North Sea Black Turtle. There were no more than three in the entire Immortal Sect’s inventory; how could this wild cultivator...

"Got you!" Shen Yi grinned toward the southeast, his blood-stained canine tooth dazzling in the dim light.

The trajectory of the silkworm threads attacking the barrier had connected into a clear Eight-Trigrams map on the system’s holographic display—the unnatural fluctuation at the "Xun" position was clearly the eye of the formation.

The Ghost-Cry Vine ensnared three profound-iron arrows that were still firing poison needles, and Shen Yi swung his arm in a full circle, hurling them toward the Xun position. The airflow created by the arrows overturned three bronze lamps. The moment the lamp oil splashed onto the formation disk, Mo Yu could no longer maintain his Invisibility Talisman and stumbled into view.

"A wild breed like you dares to use Immortal methods?" Mo Yu’s wide sleeves fluttered, shattering the incoming poison needles, but the jade pendant at his waist suddenly split in two. He looked down at the core of the formation disk rolling on the floor; the blood droplets on it were tracing the trigrams, forcibly changing the "Dead Gate" into the "Life Gate."

Shen Yi seized the opportunity to lunge for the mechanism hub behind the display shelf. He used the Ghost-Cry Vine to choke the jade qilin, turning it a half-circle. The vault’s dome echoed with the roar of gears interlocking, and the seventy-two night-luminescent pearls fell in response, exploding into a brilliant rain of light in mid-air.

"My Heavenly River Pearls!" Mo Yu’s scream was drowned out by the sound of the collapse.

When the last trace of the ice-silkworm threads vanished into blue smoke, Shen Yi sat panting beside the overturned antique shelf, watching the sealed jade boxes rolling on the floor—each one pulsed with blood-red runes, as if something living were struggling beneath.

On the white jade plaza outside the vault, Gao Yao was using the tip of her sword to carve the seventh "Zheng" character into the ground. The barrier set up by Elder Lingxian flickered, making her heart race; the sudden tremor from just moments ago had nearly made her crush the heart-guarding mirror she wore.

"Fellow Daoist Shen is a man of great fortune." Feng Yi leaned against the coiling-dragon pillar, his words tinged with an indescribable sourness. The new Cloud-Flow pendant at his waist suddenly flashed with a faint light—a precursor to a sect transmission talisman.

Gao Yao ignored him, leaning closer to the barrier. When that familiar figure stumbled out from the smoke and dust, she realized she had bitten her lower lip until it bled.

Shen Yi’s tattered cuffs revealed a bandaged forearm. Fresh wounds were still oozing blood, but that didn't stop him from flashing a "done" gesture at the group.

"Show-off," she turned her head and chided lightly, but the corners of her mouth couldn't hide their upward curve. The healing pill clutched in her sleeve was burning hot from her palm—it was a top-tier spiritual medicine she had specifically traded for at the alchemy room this morning.

Shen Yi met Gao Yao's eyes through the barrier before she could look away, and his throat felt itchy. Frost clung to the girl's raven-feather-like eyelashes; she must have been standing in this frozen wasteland for at least two hours.

He fished out a Crimson Fruit he had swiped and tossed it over. The vibrant red fruit traced an arc in the air, landing perfectly in Gao Yao’s instinctively opened palm.

"It's sweet, want to try, Senior Sister?" He flicked a piece of jade debris off his shoulder, his roguish smile tinged with a hint of ingratiation. The way she glared reminded him of the thorny Scarlet Rose in his system space—beautiful, yes, but sharp.

When Mo Yu’s cold laughter drifted from the depths of the ruins, Shen Yi was busy studying a bronze box carved with Taotie patterns. The laughter sounded like a viper crawling up his spine, making his neck hair stand on end.

In the shadows ten steps away, three black-clad figures wearing Nuo opera masks were slowly manifesting. They stepped with the same Nether-Step as Mo Yu, and the black jade tokens at their waists glowed with blood-red light.

"Fellow Daoist Shen, you don't think..." Mo Yu pried the last spirit stone from the broken formation disk, his sinister gaze sweeping over Shen Yi’s blood-stained collar, "that the Netherworld Palace only sends gifts in pairs, do you?"

The darkness deep within the vault surged violently. A chill, colder than the ice-silkworm threads, crept along the floor tiles. Shen Yi gripped the suddenly scorching dragon-blood tree branch. The system’s warning tone exploded in his consciousness, and the black turtle shell in his storage bag vibrated frantically, as if it had sensed a truly terrifying existence—