Merfolk

In the blink of an eye, night had deepened and the village had fallen silent.

Everyone living here was an ordinary mortal. Yan Jue had not been afraid at first, but just now, at the village chief’s house, she had seen a mysterious man in black.

From the man’s appearance, Yan Jue guessed he was either a loose cultivator or someone from a small sect outside the Six Great Immortal Sects. Because he wore a cloak that concealed his aura, she couldn’t tell how strong he was.

So she still couldn’t let her guard down.

She and Qi Xianqing both donned cloaks that suppressed their auras, blending into the darkness around them.

Using the cover of night, the two of them quickly arrived at the most remote courtyard in the village. They had chosen this place because it was the least likely to draw attention.

Qi Xianqing looked up. “There’s a formation.”

Yan Jue was puzzled. “But if it’s a formation, shouldn’t there be light outside it?”

“For example, green light for a beginner formation, blue light for an intermediate one…”

That was what Qi Xianqing had told her last time.

Qi Xianqing: “This is a high-level illusion formation. It’s different from ordinary formations. Illusion formations require at least the fifth realm to set up, and their purpose isn’t to keep people from entering. It’s to trap anyone who forces their way in within an illusion.”

The world was vast, and there were far too many things Yan Jue had never heard of.

She stared at the formation for a long time. “I’ll go in…”

Before she could finish, Qi Xianqing said, “I’ll go.”

Yan Jue frowned slightly. “It’s too dangerous.”

They had come here together. Watching Qi Xianqing take the risk while she waited safely outside just didn’t sit right with her.

Qi Xianqing thought for a moment. “This kind of formation is indeed dangerous. That’s why I’ll send a puppet in.”

Yan Jue blinked. “A puppet? You know how to use a clone technique?”

A clone technique meant splitting off a portion of one’s Divine Sense and controlling an avatar to act in one’s place.

It was extremely difficult to cultivate. Some cultivators spent hundreds of years in bitter training before they could refine a clone that was as good as the real body.

Since when did Qi Xianqing know how to do that?

Qi Xianqing took a puppet out of her Qiankun bag.

The puppet was made of wood. Its facial features were unnaturally twisted, and in the center of its body, the character for “substitute” was crookedly written.

Yan Jue stared for a moment, then immediately recognized it.

This puppet had also been one of the magic items they had taken out of the Demon Lord’s treasure pouch that day.

At the time, neither of them had known what it was for. They hadn’t expected Qi Xianqing to have already figured it out now.

Qi Xianqing: “I asked my mentor. This puppet is called a clone puppet. So long as a cultivator infuses it with Divine Sense, it can act in the cultivator’s place. It can be used during missions.”

So that was it. This puppet was essentially a cultivator’s clone.

Qi Xianqing added, “But there is a drawback.”

Yan Jue: “Mm?”

Qi Xianqing said coolly, “Once a cultivator injects their soul into the puppet, the true body can no longer move. If the true body encounters danger, it’s hard to react in time.”

“I can send the clone in, but my true body will remain here.”

She looked at Yan Jue. “When the time comes, can you protect me?”

In the silence of the night, Qi Xianqing’s voice was very soft, carrying an almost tender note that struck Yan Jue right in the ear.

Yan Jue only felt her ears burn. She hurriedly lifted a hand and rubbed them hard. “Mm.”

“Don’t worry, Senior Sister.”

Yan Jue: “I’ll stay here and guard your true body.”

After saying that, she couldn’t help but pause.

She was a fox demon, after all; so why, when facing an Immortal Spirit Physique, did she not want to bite it to death in one mouthful?

Qi Xianqing’s true body was right here, like a sheep under a wolf’s watch.

Qi Xianqing gave Yan Jue a long look, then her Divine Sense sank.

The puppet on the ground, with its odd shape, slowly expanded. Then, with a flash of spiritual light, it finally transformed into Qi Xianqing’s appearance.

Qi Xianqing nodded lightly at Yan Jue, then leaped upward with graceful ease, landing atop the courtyard wall.

Her true body remained here.

Yan Jue sat down in front of her, drew Drifting Ice from its new sword sheath, and vigilantly watched every direction.

-

Qi Xianqing lightly leaped onto the wall. What met her eyes was a narrow pond.

Another pond.

Earlier today, in another family’s courtyard, Yan Jue had also seen a pond.

In a fishing village by the sea, every household’s back courtyard had a pond. That was far too strange.

Qi Xianqing knew something was probably hidden in the pond; it was simply concealed by the formation.

Her expression tightened. She jumped down without hesitation.

The instant her body passed into the back courtyard, the sky seemed to ripple with a barely perceptible fluctuation of formation energy.

Rustle, splash.

Qi Xianqing instinctively closed her eyes. Blue light suddenly surged before her vision, and then she heard the sound of water.

In the next instant, her entire body was submerged in cool, dark seawater.

This illusion was actually simulating the ocean.

Qi Xianqing floated in the seawater and slowly opened her eyes, holding her breath and steadying her mind. In an instant, the salty water rushed into her eyes, bringing a wave of stinging pain.

Qi Xianqing formed the Water-Repelling Seal and opened her eyes again.

Before her stood a glittering imperial palace.

The palace was ancient and imposing; faintly visible around it were streets scattered like stars in every direction.

In the dim light, it looked especially grand and magnificent.

Only, this imperial palace had been built underwater; countless schools of fish swam through the halls, and there was no sign of any human.

The fish came in many varieties and colors, bright as a rainbow.

A few sea sharks also moved among them. One of the sharks seemed to catch Qi Xianqing’s scent; its tail lashed violently, and it charged at her at once.

Under the light, the shark’s black, beadlike eyes looked especially ferocious, and its jagged teeth were terrifying.

Its massive tail whipped wildly as it moved, its body slicing through the water like a sharp blade.

Qi Xianqing’s clone didn’t have Zhuying with it, so it couldn’t stand up to the shark head-on.

But Qi Xianqing wasn’t panicked.

She knew that in an illusion created by a formation, panic was the worst thing she could have.

So when the shark charged her, Qi Xianqing sprang upward, stepped directly onto its back, and took from her sleeve a rough, uneven stone.

This was a magic item Yan Jue had just given her, and it turned out to be unexpectedly useful.

The rare stone known as the Seven-Lights Stone flashed brilliantly in the air. Qi Xianqing flicked her wrist, and it smashed straight toward the formation’s eastern Jia-Yi gate.

Suddenly, Qi Xianqing seemed to sense something, and her pupils contracted slightly.

Her true body seemed to have been picked up.

What was Yan Jue doing?

…

Though Qi Xianqing’s soul had left her body, her true body still remained seated in meditation.

Yan Jue had originally been guarding beside Qi Xianqing, but she suddenly heard footsteps coming from over there.

A man in a short jacket, dragging a fishing net, walked this way.

The place where they were sitting was against the wall; it had been fairly well hidden, but if the man came around the back courtyard wall and passed by here, he would eventually spot them!

Yan Jue turned to look at Qi Xianqing. After a slight hesitation, she immediately wrapped an arm around the girl’s soft waist and lifted her, hurrying to the other side to avoid the man.

Qi Xianqing’s true body had originally remained in a meditative posture, but after being picked up by Yan Jue, she naturally went soft and collapsed into Yan Jue’s arms.

Yan Jue carefully shielded Qi Xianqing’s head and finally found a more hidden place to sit down.

…

Qi Xianqing beckoned with her right hand, and the Seven-Lights Stone whistled back to her. She caught it in her hand, then sprang into the air. With a sharp burst of force from her wrist, she threw it again; the Seven-Lights Stone shot through the water once more and crashed into the formation’s wounded gate.

The surrounding illusion formation was already showing signs of collapse.

Even cultivators needed to breathe.

But this formation simulated seawater, and Qi Xianqing had been submerged in the ocean, so of course she couldn’t breathe. After fighting for so long, her vision had begun to darken, and the spiritual energy circulating through her was nearly exhausted.

The two sharks over there seemed to have sensed Qi Xianqing’s weakness and swam toward her in wild delight.

Just as those sharp teeth were about to pierce her arm, Qi Xianqing suddenly widened her eyes, stepped down on the shark’s head with her right foot, and flipped through the air. In the blink of an eye, she appeared behind the shark, reached out to seize its tail, and hurled it violently into the sky!

The shark conjured by the formation apparently hadn’t expected such a move; it was thrown straight out and smashed into a distant stretch of blue.

In an instant, everything around her shattered!

The formation began to crumble.

All of it happened without a sound.

Qi Xianqing steadied her spiritual energy and watched the surrounding ocean gradually vanish.

What appeared before her eyes was only a courtyard, and at the center of that courtyard was a narrow pond.

The water in the pond was obviously not clean; patches of moss clung to parts of its surface.

Just now, she had simply been standing in the pond, swaying back and forth, hacking at things that had never even existed.

If someone had looked in from outside, the scene would have been rather eerie.

Qi Xianqing was still worried about her true body. Her Divine Sense sank at once and returned directly to it.

The moment she returned to her body, Qi Xianqing opened her eyes warily, only to find Yan Jue sitting in front of her, staring intently ahead.

The girl wore a green-blue pleated dress and held the Immortal Sword Drifting Ice in her hand, her expression solemn.

In truth, when cultivators used clone techniques, they always chose a relatively hidden environment.

After all, once the soul left the body, it was far too dangerous.

Thankfully, Yan Jue wasn’t that kind of person.

Qi Xianqing stared at the back of Yan Jue’s pale neck for a long while, then reached out and patted her shoulder.

Yan Jue was startled by the sound and quickly turned around, meeting Qi Xianqing’s clear eyes.

Yan Jue asked, “Did it go smoothly?”

Qi Xianqing: “It went smoothly.”

Qi Xianqing looked at her a couple more times, then stood up. “Let’s go. We’ll take a look inside.”

The two of them soon reached the top of the courtyard.

Yan Jue looked down and saw a person sitting in the small pond in the courtyard.

She froze slightly.

It was a stunning beauty, with long golden hair loose over her shoulders, skin as white and smooth as jade, and features with a deep-set structure completely different from that of Han people. She was breathtakingly beautiful.

Perhaps because the formation had been broken, the woman was swimming back and forth in the pond, her face full of fear and terror.

Qi Xianqing put away the puppet and jumped down directly.

Only when Yan Jue drew closer did she finally see the person in the pond clearly.

The woman was extremely beautiful, but she could not be considered human at all.

From the waist down, she had a huge fish tail, swishing restlessly back and forth.

A merfolk!