Chapter Forty-Six: Breaking the Deadlock

At the very moment when Lu Chenyuan’s mind was ensnared, one of the demonic cultivators let out a sinister laugh, transforming into a streak of shadow and lunging straight toward him!

Upon witnessing this, Shangguan Chuci’s exquisite brows shot up in alarm and anger. How could she not realize that Wei Zhuo, having noticed her every effort to shield Lu Chenyuan, was deliberately using the tactic of besieging Wei to rescue Zhao?

With a sweep of her form, Shangguan Chuci moved like a drifting cloud, intending to reach Lu Chenyuan ahead of the assailant and break his encirclement. Yet Wei Zhuo, having calculated every move, had no intention of letting her succeed so easily.

With a flick of his brush, the remaining shadowy figures conjured from ink closed in from all directions like soldiers receiving an order. Blades gleamed and wove a net, cutting off any passage between her and Lu Chenyuan completely.

“Brother Lu!” Shangguan Chuci cried out involuntarily, desperate and furious.

Her heart burned with anxiety, but she knew she could not force her way through. This painted formation, where illusion and reality intertwined and spiritual senses were linked, was a deadly trap—disturbing any part would trigger the whole. Without a flawless plan, to charge in recklessly would not only fail to save him but would doom herself as well.

At that thought, she gritted her teeth, resolve flashing in her eyes.

“So be it! Since you wish to see whose methods are superior, I’ll open your eyes!”

She formed an unusual seal with her left hand, and with a flick of her right, closed her eyes entirely.

In that instant, all the flashing blades and suffocating murderous intent around her seemed to dissolve into nothingness. Her consciousness plunged into her spiritual sea within her dantian.

There, amidst the neon-lit mirage, a strange fire composed of zeros and ones blazed even fiercer, pushing back more of the surrounding murky flow. The cacophony of maddened whispers grew, yet within a ten-zhang radius, everything became clearer than when her eyes had been open.

The painted formation, in her mind, was no longer an impenetrable deathtrap. Instead, it was a web of logic, woven from countless causal threads. Every move of the demonic cultivators, every arc of a blade, even the subtle ebb and flow of energy with each stroke of Wei Zhuo’s brush—all became data streams she could calculate and predict.

More crucially, as she pushed the fire of logic to its utmost, her vision expanded, and on the great scroll hanging upon the wall, she detected an almost imperceptible flaw in the seamless black energy. That flaw was precisely where Wei Zhuo, in fully activating the formation, had to use his very essence—blood and soul—to patch the core node!

“There it is!”

Suddenly, Shangguan Chuci moved.

Instead of advancing, she retreated, charging directly into the trio of demonic cultivators who were closing in on her.

Seeing her neither dodge nor evade, all three wore savage grins, their steel blades descending in unison.

It seemed she would surely meet a tragic end, her blood staining the ground.

But just as the blades were about to strike, she abruptly ducked, sliding impossibly half a foot to the side.

The change came too swiftly; the three attackers, having committed to their strikes, could not pull back in time. With a series of sharp hisses, the blades tore her garments and drew a spray of blood, but the force behind them was spent—she suffered only shallow wounds.

Biting down in pain, Shangguan Chuci’s hands moved unfalteringly.

She drew from her bosom a jade pendant, scarcely an inch in size, its surface smooth as lamb’s fat. Carved upon it was a pair of yin-yang fish, tails joined, ancient and unremarkable in appearance.

With a crisp command, “By decree!” she activated the pendant.

Suddenly, it blazed with dazzling light!

Shangguan Chuci felt as if an invisible door had been forced open in her mind—a torrent of information, far vaster than usual, surged into her sea of consciousness.

Her strikingly handsome face turned deathly pale, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. Within her mental city, illuminated by the logic fire, countless lights at the periphery went out in swaths under the onslaught, swallowed by impenetrable darkness.

Such was the price of unleashing this treasure.

Yet the cost brought an astonishing reward.

“Go!”

She flung the jade pendant. It flew so swiftly that a visible wave of white energy trailed in its wake.

The target was not Wei Zhuo, nor any of the demonic cultivators, but a seemingly ordinary ink mark, resembling dead wood, on the painting itself!

Wei Zhuo’s withered face finally contorted in abject terror. Never had he imagined that she could discern the vital flaw in his art.

He tried to defend, but it was too late.

With a tearing sound, as if tough silk were being ripped, the pendant pierced the painting, striking the deadwood mark dead center!

Instantly, the entire scroll flickered and shook. Mountains collapsed, dead trees turned to ash, and countless ink lines snapped and scattered like broken kites, before exploding into a storm of black motes that faded into nothingness.

Wei Zhuo reeled as if struck by lightning, vomiting a mouthful of blood. Cracks split his papery face, and he nearly collapsed.

In the rear courtyard, every ink-forged shadow dissolved into foul-smelling puddles, vanishing without a trace.

Only one true demonic cultivator remained, blade raised against Lu Chenyuan.

Deprived of the formation’s support, his attack faltered, giving Lu Chenyuan the chance to break free.

Lu Chenyuan, rather than retreating, countered with a backward slash, forcing his opponent several steps back.

Thus, the overwhelming slaughterous formation was, in an instant, shattered by Shangguan Chuci’s earth-shattering gambit.

But she, too, had paid a heavy price.

Having forced her way through the blades, she had avoided mortal wounds, yet her right arm had been caught—blood welled from a gash running from shoulder to elbow, staining her moon-white silk shirt a shocking red.

“Master Chu!”

Lu Chenyuan, alarmed, rushed to steady her.

But as his gaze fell upon her wound, his pupils contracted.

Within the gash, there was not ordinary flesh and blood, but instead a network of intricate, interwoven patterns! Fine lines crisscrossed beneath her skin, faint light pulsing along them, like the schematic of some hidden mechanism beneath human skin, emanating a chilling, inhuman strangeness.

Her left hand, the one that had held the jade pendant, from wrist to fingertip, had become half-real, half-illusory. At the edges of her flesh, quivering spikes of light flickered, as if the hand were not of flesh and blood but a bubble of light on the verge of collapse.

Lu Chenyuan’s emotions were tangled and complex.

He could not fail to see that, to save him, Shangguan Chuci had resorted to her most guarded technique—and this bizarre transformation was the cost she bore.

Perceiving the horror and concern in his gaze, Shangguan Chuci bit her lip, enduring the searing pain and the turmoil of her spirit, and managed a stiff smile.

“Brother Lu… do not worry…”

Her voice was weak but resolute, “I… I can still hold on… For now, let’s finish off that half-baked paper-crafter.”

Before she finished speaking, the grievously wounded Wei Zhuo let out a strange, twisted laugh.

It began faintly, then rose and rose, finally exploding into utter madness.

Both Lu Chenyuan and Shangguan Chuci felt a chill of foreboding.

Slowly, Wei Zhuo raised his head. Half his face had become cracked, ghastly white parchment. His eyes, now blood-red, fixed on them with venomous hatred and fury.

“Excellent… truly excellent…” Wei Zhuo rasped. “You have destroyed my ‘Night Banquet at Zhenhai’, my life-bound treasure… Now, I will drag you both to hell, to become eternal ink-wraiths buried with my art!”

He paused, then did something no one could have anticipated.

He raised his blood-dripping bone brush and, without hesitation, drove it straight into his own left eye.

With a sickening squelch, blood and brain matter spattered.

And then, with a voice twisted by agony and madness, he enunciated three words, each syllable heavy with doom:

“The… Second… Gate!”