Chapter 153: The Fatal Flaw Beneath a Healer’s Benevolence

The moment the five of them landed, Shen Yan felt the ground beneath his feet soften, as if he had stepped into some gel-like program buffer. He bent his knees slightly to absorb the impact and swiftly pulled the terminal interface out of his consciousness sea. The screen was still flashing: “Parsing coordinates… 98%.”

“Don’t move!” he whispered urgently, his fingers sliding rapidly through the air. “This ground reads heartbeats. One wrong step, and we’ll be deleted as viruses.”

Ye Zhao immediately raised her sword, its tip lightly tapping the ground as silver light seeped like a probe into the cracks of the patterns. She frowned. “Pressure-sensing array, three layers of nesting. Even half a fingernail’s deviation will trigger a chain reaction.”

Luo Li’s nostrils twitched, her vertical pupils contracting. “There’s a smell of rust in the air, and… the scent of decaying medicine.”

Yu Xiaotang was about to lean closer to examine the carvings on the wall when her fingertip barely touched the stone surface. A talisman line as fine as a strand of hair snapped with a sharp crack.

“Oh no!”

Before her words faded, dozens of silver needles shot out from the walls, gleaming with an eerie blue light, aimed directly at their throats and vital points.

Ye Zhao’s sword spun, weaving a dense curtain of sword qi. A series of metallic clinks rang out as she blocked all the flying needles. Luo Li raised her hand and hurled a ball of demonic fire, melting the subsequent mechanisms. However, in her panic, Yu Xiaotang instinctively slapped out a “Demon-Dispelling Talisman.” The talisman paper self-ignited, releasing a wave of energy that unexpectedly reactivated the core formation eye.

“Damn! Did I just make things worse?”

The ceiling cracked open with a roar, and a gray-green mist gushed down, carrying a sickly sweet, putrid odor—like medicinal herbs soaked in blood and fermented for a decade.

Shen Yan took a sharp breath as a red warning exploded in a popup window on his terminal: “High concentration of vengeful spirit mixed toxin detected. Inhalation for three seconds will induce hallucinatory self-harm behavior.”

His peripheral vision caught the formation diagram on the wall—it was unmistakably the “Blood Continuation Formation,” which used the essence of living souls as a catalyst to extract life force for refining longevity pills. What made his heart sink even more was a small blue lotus mark carved in the corner of the formation, a symbol exclusive to the forbidden texts of Medicine Valley.

“Pei Yue,” he called softly.

Pei Yue’s face instantly paled. She staggered back two steps, her lips trembling. “‘Thousand Bones Guiding’… Impossible. My master personally said this technique was sealed and destroyed a century ago…”

Her voice quivered, clearly shaken to her core.

The toxic mist was already nearing their noses. Yu Xiaotang coughed violently, collapsing to her knees as her gaze began to blur. Ye Zhao gritted her teeth and raised a sword curtain, but the mist could erode spiritual power barriers, like a malicious code with built-in penetration permissions.

At that moment, Pei Yue suddenly raised her hand and tore open the sleeve of her left arm.

A faint red chastity mark floated quietly on her skin, crystal clear and shimmering with a faint light.

“Saintess of Medicine Valley, bloodline seal bearer.” She bit her fingertip, letting a drop of blood fall as she traced a reverse five-element talisman pattern in the air. “With my origin’s purity—cleanse!”

A brilliant azure light erupted like spring thunder cracking frozen earth.

The toxic mist seemed to be seized by an invisible giant hand, rapidly condensing and compressing until it transformed into a pitch-black pill that thudded to the ground, wisps of black smoke still rising from its surface.

Silence fell over the chamber.

The mark on Pei Yue’s arm had noticeably dimmed, and her breathing grew weak. But she lifted her head, her gaze meeting the others directly. “I wasn’t hiding it… I just… didn’t want to believe it was true.”

Shen Yan crouched down, retrieving a Spiritual Energy sealed bag from his Cosmic Bag and carefully placing the black pill inside. He looked up at Pei Yue, his tone calm yet firm: “The people you’ve saved outweigh this pill by ten thousand times. Your hands are clean.”

Pei Yue’s eyes grew warm, but she didn’t speak, only nodding gently.

Ye Zhao withdrew her sword into its sheath, coldly surveying the surroundings: “There’s more than one Formation here. Every step must be calculated precisely.”

Luo Li’s tail swayed lightly, her ears slightly turning southeast: “There’s a heat source over there, the temperature is anomalous, unlike something naturally generated.”

Yu Xiaotang leaned against the wall to stand up, her face pale, still clutching the half-burned Talisman Paper in her hand. She stared down at her fingertips, her voice muffled: “Did I… mess up again?”

“If you hadn’t thrown that talisman, we’d already be refined into longevity ingredients.” Shen Yan grinned, “This is called extreme operation, understand? Masters grow through mistakes.”

Yu Xiaotang’s lips twitched: “Could you next time praise me without sounding like you’re insulting me?”

“Alright.” Shen Yan opened the Terminal’s map scanning mode, “From now on, listen to me, nobody touch anything randomly—especially you, Xiaotang.”

“Hey!”

The group slowly advanced forward. The patterns on the ground gradually became complex, resembling some ancient upgraded version of an anti-theft system. Shen Yan walked while using the Terminal to reverse analyze the Formation’s logic. Suddenly, an Encrypted Log segment popped up on the screen.

“Huh? This Encoding style… feels familiar.”

He narrowed his eyes, quickly decoding it, discovering it was actually a handwritten fragment from the Medicine Valley ancient text “Tianji Remnant Scroll,” recording how a Saintess was ambushed by her fellow disciples for opposing the “Blood Continuation Formation” and ultimately buried alive here.

“No wonder this Formation appears in Shadowbone Valley.” Shen Yan murmured, “It’s not a Legacy, it’s an escapee’s final testament.”

Pei Yue paused her steps: “What did you say?”

“Someone wanted to conceal the truth.” Shen Yan pointed at a deliberately chiseled inscription on the wall, “Look at this gap, the repair technique is crude, but it uses Medicine Valley’s secret ‘Reviving Mud.’ It means someone came later, trying to erase evidence.”

“But why leave this black pill?” Yu Xiaotang picked up the sealed bag and shook it, “Isn’t this blatantly telling others ‘we did this’?”

“Not for others.” Luo Li suddenly spoke, “It’s for those who know to see.”

Shen Yan’s heart trembled.

Right, such matters, only Medicine Valley’s higher-ups would know. Leaving evidence might be some kind of accusation, or perhaps… a plea for help.

He was about to dig deeper when the Terminal suddenly vibrated, popping up a new Notice: “Detected high-frequency Spiritual Energy wave reflection, hidden space exists within ten steps ahead.”

“There’s a door.” he said.

The five held their breath and approached. The wall appeared intact, but Shen Yan scanned it with a Source Code perspective and immediately discovered an invisible seam. He lightly pressed a certain depression, the stone wall “clicked” and slid open, revealing a narrow passage.

At the end of the passage was a Secret Chamber, with a bronze medicine cauldron placed in the center. The cauldron’s body was carved with twisted human faces, as if silently screaming. Underneath the cauldron lay a bamboo scroll, its edges scorched black, seemingly salvaged after someone hastily tried to burn it.

Pei Yue walked forward, trembling hands lifting the bamboo scroll.

It clearly read: “If descendants see this cauldron, please destroy it. I used my lifelong Cultivation Base to Seal its soul, yet the Blood Formation remains unextinguished, it will eventually reignite.—Medicine Valley Seventh Generation Saintess, Pei Qingluo.”

“Pei… Qingluo?” Yu Xiaotang widened her eyes. “Why does this name sound so much like yours?”

Pei Yue stiffened all over, staring fixedly at those three characters, her fingertips nearly digging into her palms.

Shen Yan silently stood half a step behind her, discreetly blocking the view of others.

“Did your ancestors have a great-aunt who went missing?” he asked in a low voice.

Pei Yue’s throat tightened: “Three hundred years ago, the seventh-generation Saintess betrayed the sect and was listed as taboo… Master never allowed anyone to mention her.”

“She didn’t betray,” Shen Yan pointed to a line of small characters at the bottom of the cauldron. “Look here: ‘With my blood as the guide, seal the Gate of Nine Netherworlds.’ She sacrificed herself to suppress this array.”

Pei Yue froze.

After a long while, she raised her hand and gently brushed over the most agonized face on the cauldron, her voice as light as a dream: “So… you’ve been here all along.”

Just then, Shen Yan’s Terminal chimed with a “ding.”

“New message received: from an unknown encrypted source.”

He opened it and found it was an image backup automatically pushed by his father’s legacy program—in the image, a young man was holding an infant, running desperately through a torrential downpour, with pursuers holding Medicine Valley command flags behind him.

On the infant’s wrist, a brand was clearly visible.

Identical to Shen Yan’s.

“Wait…” Yu Xiaotang suddenly pointed to a corner of the image. “That woman… is she wearing the robes of a Medicine Valley Saintess?”

Everyone’s gaze instantly turned to Pei Yue.

She stood frozen in place, her face as pale as paper.

Shen Yan stared at the image, a thought flashing through his mind like lightning—

When his mother fell, why did the Star-Shattering Token she tightly held point to Medicine Valley?

And why did he himself possess the long-lost “Source Code Spiritual Root” of Medicine Valley?

He slowly raised his head and looked at Pei Yue, his voice low but unavoidable: “Have you ever thought… that the two of us might have known each other long ago?”

Pei Yue’s lips trembled slightly, but before she could answer—

From deep within the Secret Chamber, the bronze cauldron suddenly emitted a dull thud.

The lid slowly shifted open a crack, and a wisp of black gas Overflowed from within, coalescing in the air into a withered, skeletal hand that lunged straight for Pei Yue’s heart.

(End of Chapter)