"Have you heard of it?"
Everyone's gaze fixed on Xunmeng.
Xunmeng casually flicked the abacus with her fingers, her gaze shifting slightly. She sighed helplessly and smiled, "I seem to have heard of it, but I can't recall."
Bai Shengyi glanced at her. "If you can't remember, then forget it."
She then asked, "Xunmeng, can you now locate Ximen Hongchun?"
After failing to find him in the Peach Blossom Secret Realm, Bai Shengyi suspected that Ximen Hongchun might have also returned to the Flowing Light Secret Realm.
Xunmeng, seeing that Bai Shengyi didn't suspect her, breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps it was due to her family's heritage; before speaking, she couldn't help but try a divination. To her surprise, it indicated great ill omen and heavenly secrets. It meant that if she spoke, it would be detrimental.
"I'll try." Xunmeng calmed her emotions, rapidly moved the abacus, and a mysterious, ethereal radiance enveloped her.
After a moment, she opened her eyes. "Fellow Daoist Ximen has likely encountered his own opportunity. There is no immediate danger to his life."
"Then, shall we wait for Feng Wuya to emerge, place the last box, and then depart? What do you think?" Bai Shengyi asked.
The other three had no objections.
Seeing this, Bai Shengyi decided to rest and recuperate.
Since she entered the secret realm, the Reincarnation Brush had remained silent, and she was quite worried.
Bai Shengyi's consciousness sank into her spiritual sea and she was startled to realize that what was once a pitch-black spiritual sea now seemed to have countless stars suddenly born within it.
Green or red stars twinkled in the darkness, resplendent and varied.
"Little Reincarnation?"
Bai Shengyi circled her spiritual sea but couldn't find the Reincarnation Brush's本体. She frowned slightly.
"Master, are you looking for the Boss again?" The Qingtian Dream Vine seemed to be woken by Bai Shengyi and asked softly.
Bai Shengyi: "Mm, does Little Vine Leaf know where it is?"
It was truly strange; it wasn't in her dantian either.
"The Boss went to your Sea of Consciousness."
"Sea of Consciousness?"
Bai Shengyi was slightly taken aback. She suddenly recalled, yes, for cultivators, they possessed divine souls and spiritual senses, and the place where the divine souls and spiritual senses resided was the Sea of Consciousness. Once cultivators reached the Golden Core stage, they could communicate and even cultivate using their divine sense, though this secret art was rare.
She had not stopped cultivating her mental power, so she thought she would only have a spiritual sea and not a Sea of Consciousness.
"It is indeed the Sea of Consciousness, a very spacious place. The spiritual energy within makes the Vine feel very comfortable. Little Vine Leaf also wants to go in, but the Boss kicked it out."
Little Vine Leaf subtly complained to Bai Shengyi, wanting her master to realize that it was the most useful.
Whether it was cleaning the courtyard, tidying things, or setting up illusions to fight bad guys, Little Vine Leaf could do it.
Bai Shengyi didn't notice the Qingtian Dream Vine's little intentions. She turned around her body several times and finally found the so-called Sea of Consciousness at the edge of her spiritual sea. It was half crystalline jade green and half deep, dark blue, and the Reincarnation Brush was slumbering within the jade green.
Bai Shengyi was relieved to confirm that the Reincarnation Brush was merely sleeping. After leaving the Sea of Consciousness, she glanced again at the black mist in her dantian. She couldn't tell if it was her imagination, but she felt the black mist seemed to have grown larger.
"Shengyi? Shengyi? Fellow Daoist Feng is out!"
Bai Shengyi opened her eyes from her meditation to see Feng Wuya slumped on the ground, weakly propping himself up with his hands behind him, looking up and wailing with no will to live, "I'm exhausted! This isn't picking up money, it's clearly trying to take my life!"
"What happened?"
Chu Tianle, while usually bickering with Feng Wuya, actually cared about him.
Feng Wuya said with a mournful face, "It was a Heart-Questioning Illusion inside! It specifically targets the things you are most unwilling to face and torments you! To put it this way, Chu Tianle, that illusion we encountered in the Eastern Yue Forest a few years ago was not as terrifying as this!"
Despite the trouble, Feng Wuya was still very grateful, "However, when I form my Golden Core in the future, I won't fear the Heart-Questioning Tribulation."
"That's good then." Bai Shengyi was also happy for Feng Wuya. The Heart-Questioning Tribulation was a minor lightning tribulation that needed to be endured during Golden Core formation. However, due to its peculiar nature, almost ninety percent of cultivators got stuck at this stage, leading to failed Golden Core formation.
After Feng Wuya rested, the group set off towards the location Xunmeng had divined.
"There's no path?" Bai Shengyi looked at the surging, vast river before her and said to Xunmeng, "Could it be underwater?"
"No, I calculated it to be next to a fire-attribute spiritual item... Hmm? I can't calculate it again! Strange, what's going on?" Xunmeng's brow furrowed deeply, and she immediately sat cross-legged on the ground.
However, after a long while, she still couldn't calculate anything.
"How strange, I can't capture any heavenly secrets at all." Xunmeng's delicate and pretty face was full of confusion. This was the second time.
It was acceptable that she couldn't calculate Bai Shengyi's whereabouts, as Bai Shengyi was a person, and a person's future held myriad changes. But why could she no longer even accurately measure the location of inanimate objects?
"Could it be like before, when we were in Peach Blossom Realm, and there were spatial fluctuations near the placement point, which is why it's unclear?" Bai Shengyi opened the jade slip. "Look, the light spot on the jade slip is also gone."
"Let's search." Hua Xueji spoke little. After saying that, he leaped into the river with a splash.
"Hey! Hua Xueji!" Bai Shengyi couldn't even stop him.
Chu Tianle said, "I'll go down and take a look too." Saying this, he also jumped in.
Bai Shengyi, Xunmeng, and Feng Wuya searched along the riverbank.
Bai Shengyi looked around, but she couldn't detect any area with spatial fluctuations. Instead, this place was very strange.
"It's clearly close to the water source, so why are all these plants withered?"
Feng Wuya had obviously noticed it too. He pinched the dry grass roots, and curiously dug down a layer of soil, only to find that the soil was also dry and hard.
Bai Shengyi: "Not only that, have you noticed that the river water is flowing upstream?"
"This..." Xunmeng looked over in surprise. The rolling river water was indeed flowing upstream, but because they had only been paying attention to the area in front of them, they hadn't noticed it before.
"Won't Chu Tianle and the others be in trouble?" Feng Wuya worriedly stood up.
Just then, a massive vortex suddenly appeared in the river, churning up waves more than three meters high, crashing towards the three of them like a tidal wave.
"Be careful!"
Bai Shengyi cried out in alarm. The Reincarnation Brush drew a stroke in the air, attempting to block the river water with spiritual energy. Unexpectedly, the river water completely ignored the spiritual energy barrier and continued to surge down.
"Splash!"
Everyone was drenched.
"The light spot lit up!" Xunmeng reminded.
Bai Shengyi looked. On the jade slip, the light spot on the right was extremely bright.
At that very moment, Hua Xueji and Chu Tianle broke through the water and shouted urgently to the three, "Run!"