[Intuition has been upgraded to the Masterful realm.]

Feng Bei and Zheng Xiu worked in perfect sync. The moment Zheng Xiu so much as turned his head or jutted his chin, Feng Bei would act as if she could read his thoughts, striking to kill.

Zheng Xiu had entered garbage time.

But he didn’t dare switch back to his Main Body in the middle of things.

Young Master Zheng still had to show Feng Bei the way.

All he felt was the occasional prickle on his scalp, a tingle down his spine, or a jolt in his chest. It was all rather boring.

Every now and then, a knocking sound would come from behind them.

The knocking sound strangely caused Feng Bei’s steps to falter, but her skill was such that she could forcefully correct her direction each time, remaining unaffected.

’Someone else is following us!’

Feng Bei seemed to realize this as well. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

In the darkness, Zheng Xiu first patted Feng Bei’s cheek, then poked it three times to indicate there were three people.

Feng Bei wasn’t annoyed by the seemingly playful, childlike gesture. She nodded three times in return, showing she understood.

The two communicated silently in the dark, a perfect understanding between them.

It wasn’t until a peculiar line of small text appeared in Zheng Xiu’s vision that he finally felt a jolt of excitement.

’I leveled up!’

His [Intuition] had been upgraded to Masterful.

A little while later.

On Feng Bei’s back, the previously silent Zheng Xiu suddenly spoke.

"I think we’re almost there."

Just as Feng Bei and Zheng Xiu emerged from a cave opening, the view before them opened up dramatically.

The cave’s branching tunnels were a labyrinth, and Zheng Xiu’s guidance had been indispensable for them to find their way out.

After exiting the cave, Feng Bei should have put Zheng Xiu down.

But the strange sight before them made both Feng Bei and Zheng Xiu freeze in place.

A sky full of green fluorescent light banished the darkness, casting dappled light and shadows across their faces.

The moment was like a scene from a story: one large person and one small, you carrying me on your back as I hold on, both of us bathed in starlight from the Milky Way. It was a romantic, enchanting image.

Too bad the starlight was an oily green.

Looking closer...

Zheng Xiu felt his scalp go numb, his eyelids twitching uncontrollably.

That oily green glow wasn’t starlight at all!

They were now inside the hollowed-out walls of Danglang Mountain.

The interior of the mountain, a cavern as vast as a stadium, was plastered with round insect eggs!

The eggs were filled with liquid, the eerie green light emanating from their translucent shells. Inside, the twisted silhouettes of human figures could be faintly seen swimming about.

’This is enough to trigger anyone’s trypophobia.’

Zheng Xiu scratched his forehead. A scene like this clearly hadn’t been formed in a day or even a month.

If that Fairy Mei started performing her Shaman Dancer rituals on Danglang Mountain twenty years ago...

...how many people had she harmed in those twenty years?

The eggs before him numbered far more than just tens or hundreds. Zheng Xiu estimated there were definitely over a thousand.

He thought of the white carp from Baili Village.

Zheng Xiu was momentarily confused.

’Was the world always this chaotic, and I just never found these bizarre events because they were hidden too well?’

’Or had his changing of the past, his allowing Feng Bei and Wei Chen to live, somehow caused this tragedy to unfold upon the world?’

Tearing his gaze away from the ceiling with great difficulty, Zheng Xiu looked at Feng Bei before him, momentarily at a loss for words.

"Go! Kill the Immortal Lady, and be careful!"

Their shock lasted only a moment. Feng Bei swiftly put Zheng Xiu down, saying,

She didn’t see him as a burden; at this very moment, Feng Bei was entrusting him with an important mission.

Then.

She turned around alone, leaving Zheng Xiu with only the sight of her solitary, proud back.

"You’ve followed us all this way. Why not show yourselves?"

Feng Bei issued the invitation calmly toward the entrance.

The words had barely left her mouth.

"CAW—CAW—CAW!"

A shrill raven’s cry came in response.

A figure slowly emerged from the cave entrance, wearing a bamboo hat and leaning on a crutch. A blood-red crow was perched on his shoulder.

Under the green light, the Blood Crow’s feathers looked both red and green, making it even more sinister.

The Blood Crow seemed startled and flew about in a panic, then quickly hid among the insect eggs and vanished.

Ignoring the Blood Crow, Feng Bei looked at the newcomer.

It was a lame man leaning on a crutch.

The lame man took off his bamboo hat and chuckled, his voice hoarse. "Heheh... we don’t want to be your enemies, but if you kill the Dang Lang Fairy, that’s going to be a real headache for us!"

"Lame man, I told you. That trick of yours is useless against a member of the Twelfth Moon."

Another man appeared, also wearing a bamboo hat, his eyes shut tight. He was of a similar age to the first, his face etched with weathered wrinkles. Taking off his hat, he revealed himself to be a monk. The blind monk first complained to the lame man, then turned to Feng Bei, bowing with a grin. "Might we discuss things a bit? Turn from foes to friends? We have no intention of making an enemy of Ye Weiyang."

"Ahhhhh—"

Yet another man came out of the cave entrance, waving his arms and legs and letting out strange, sputtering cries. It was the deaf one.

No one knew what the deaf man was trying to say.

Feng Bei looked at the trio of Incomplete Technique Masters who had followed them all this way and now finally revealed themselves. She silently pulled off her gloves.

On her way here, Feng Bei had killed over twenty half-human, half-insect monsters without ever removing her gloves. But now, facing these three, she took them off.

Tossing her gloves aside, Feng Bei asked calmly, "Who are you?"

The lame man scratched his head. His hair was sparse, missing in patches as if he had mange.

He said, "That, we can’t say."

The blind man held up a finger. "How about this," he suggested. "Our two groups head back to town, the three of us will treat you, and we can bury the hatchet over a few drinks?"

"Not necessary."

Feng Bei walked toward the trio, her right eye, "Ding Wei," spinning. She nodded again. "If you don’t want to say, then you’ll never have to say anything again."

As she spoke, Feng Bei extended her five fingers forward.

"Deaf one! Watch out!"

"Blind one! Watch out!"

"Eee-yaa-yaa—" the deaf man flailed about.

This simple gesture made the trio react as if facing a formidable enemy. In an instant, the lame man slammed his crutch on the ground—THUMP THUMP THUMP—and the knocking sound was incessant.

Feng Bei, who should have been walking straight toward the trio, found herself tracing a strange arc with her steps.

"Blind one! Deaf one! Scatter!"

The lame man was Casting. His crutch stopped, then recoiled, launching him high into the air. He landed upside down, clinging to the stone wall and scuttling across it with incredible speed.

With each movement, he knocked down one of the insect eggs that clung to the stone wall.

"It’s that born Omen, the Mystic, ’Evil Star’ Feng Bei! Upper Three!"

The blind man’s tightly shut eyes opened a crack. A blood-red light spilled out, and blood trickled from the corners of his eyes.

A wave of darkness washed over her, and Feng Bei was instantly robbed of her sight. Unflustered, she simply closed her left eye, kept her right eye open, and called out a warning:

"The lame one’s Path is ’Wandering’! The sound of his crutch messes with your sense of direction!"

"The blind one’s Path is ’Ascetic Monk’! Making eye contact with him will steal your sight! Don’t look him in the eyes!"

With a single glance, Feng Bei had called out the Paths of both men.

This sent a jolt of shock through both the lame man, who was climbing at high speed on the stone wall, and the blind man, who had just opened his eyes to cast his Magic.

Though it was common for Miracle Masters to see through each other’s tricks during a fight, to be able to call them out so precisely in an instant... ’As expected of one of Ye Weiyang’s Twelfth Moon, the Evil Star Feng Bei!’

’But who was she warning?’

"Well, well," a cheerful, feminine laugh came from behind the lame man, the blind man, and the deaf man. "Thank you for the reminder, Lord Upper Three. You truly are the renowned Feng Bei."

The voice had barely faded.

Countless, nearly invisible threads suddenly bound the blind man and the deaf man, who were still standing in their original spots.

Deep indentations suddenly appeared on the filthy clothes of the blind and deaf men.

Yue Yan, a needle held between her blood-red lips, sauntered out from the cave behind them. She crooked her little finger.

"POP~" A thread that had been stuck to the back of Zheng Xiu’s neck for the entire journey was plucked free by Yue Yan’s gesture.

Behind Yue Yan was Dou Xie, covered in blood and mud, his hair a tangled mess.

Dou Xie looked even more pathetic now, with tears in his eyes as if he had suffered some great injustice. You could tell he’d been through a lot.

"You all really gave our Young Brother Xie here a hard time, bullying him so terribly," Yue Yan said, smiling sweetly at the three Incomplete Technique Masters in the center of the cavern. "I see you all carry Ravens. It seems your relationship with our Ye Weiyang is not a shallow one, is it? Lady Feng Bei is good-tempered; if she decides to kill, she kills, no idle chatter. But my temper is a bit worse. I like to ask a few questions. So, I wonder, Masters... is there anything you’d like to carefully explain to us?"

As Yue Yan spoke, she curled her middle fingers toward her palms and gave a sharp tug. The bindings on the two men’s bodies tightened instantly, slicing through their robes. Drops of fresh blood trickled down the almost-transparent threads, staining Yue Yan’s "lines" red in the dim light.

"We’re done for!"

The blind monk’s face filled with horror. He whipped his head toward Yue Yan and Dou Xie. "I’ll talk! I’ll talk! We confess! We’ll tell you everything! My lady, please don’t kill us!"

Yue Yan knew that in a battle between Miracle Masters, one must always be on their guard.

The instant the blind man turned his head, Yue Yan shut her eyes, refusing to fall for his trick.

Dou Xie, being young, wasn’t so quick. In an instant, his vision went black. Unable to see anything, he was left standing there like an idiot.

The blind man laughed. "So there’s a greenhorn over there!"

Dou Xie flew into a rage and shouted at an empty wall, "Who the hell are you calling a greenhorn?!"

He made a RUSTLING sound as he tried to flip through his book, but with his sight gone, he had no idea what page he was turning to. The blind man’s move had struck Dou Xie’s greatest weakness. The [Scholars] Path had never produced a blind practitioner. Who could be a Scholar when they couldn’t even see?

Dou Xie was frustrated to the point of tears.

Yue Yan kept her eyes closed, locating her targets by sound. Her delicate brows furrowed slightly, her ten fingers tightened, and her smile grew even wider. "If you don’t talk now... you might never get the chance~"

High up on the ceiling, the lame man steadied himself with his crutch, hanging upside down like a bat. He suddenly let out a dry chuckle.

The blind man laughed as well. "In that case, why don’t we let the deaf one do the talking? About who we are, where we’re from, and... what our connection is to your Ye Weiyang."

As he spoke, the blind man jutted his chin toward the deaf one.

"Eee-yaa-yaa-yaa—"

The deaf man opened his mouth, letting out his strange cries.

When Yue Yan heard that strange cry, she had a bad feeling. ’This is not good.’ She began to clench her fingers, preparing to slice the two men apart.

The blind man laughed strangely again. "Heh heh... I never said the deaf one... was also mute!"

Just then, the deaf man who had been making strange, sputtering noises suddenly changed his tune, speaking in a perfectly enunciated, resonant voice:

"You could loosen these threads a bit. That way, we’ll be more inclined to talk."