Chapter 125: The Uninvited Gardener

“Stop!”

A crisp, cold shout, laced with astonishment and fury, suddenly echoed through the spacious medicine bath chamber.

Mu Qingli’s movements stiffened abruptly. She slowly turned her head.

Standing gracefully by the doorway, a white figure had appeared, seemingly from nowhere.

Long, silver-blue hair framed eyes as gentle as flowing water. Her white immortal gown remained pristine, untouched by a speck of dust.

“Oh, it’s the Holy Maiden of Penglai Immortal Palace.”

At this moment, Bai Zhileng’s usually gentle and serene face was etched with shock, fury, and a profound sense of lingering dread.

Bai Zhileng had been restless all night.

Ever since bringing Shen Zhaoqing back to Penglai, her heart had been tormented day and night by the conflict between guilt and her master’s command.

She always felt that transforming someone who was once so vibrant and fearlessly dedicated, even to the point of sacrificing their life, into a soulless puppet was an unforgivable sin.

Tonight was the final evening before the grand furnace-opening ceremony.

Ultimately, she couldn’t shake her unease. She had intended to sneak a peek, hoping no one else would be around, but she never expected to stumble upon such a horrifying scene.

A green-haired girl, who had seemingly materialized out of nowhere, was attempting to force a lump of black, ominous-looking venom into Shen Zhaoqing’s mouth.

Though the black substance exuded astonishing spiritual energy, in the eyes of Bai Zhileng, a Grandmaster of Alchemy, its violent essence was no different from the most potent, gut-wrenching poison for the currently soul-sealed and physically frail Shen Zhaoqing.

One gulp, and not only would Shen Zhaoqing fail to be refined into a pill, but she would also explode and perish on the spot, her divine soul utterly annihilated.

In an instant, boundless rage and murderous intent overwhelmed all of Bai Zhileng’s gentleness and pretense. Regardless of who sent this assassin, or what their objective was, she would not permit it.

“Boom!”

Bai Zhileng didn’t utter another superfluous word. She pointed her right hand like a sword, and the tips of her index and middle fingers instantly glowed with hundreds of silver light points, each the size of a grain of rice.

These were the Hundred Herbs Divine Needles!

Each silver needle contained her Soul Transformation Realm cultivation and an extremely potent yin medicinal power capable of sealing meridians and severing souls.

“You villain! Prepare to die!”

Her words had barely faded when the hundreds of needles, fine as ox hair, shot toward Mu Qingli’s back with a tearing shriek that ripped through the air. There was no holding back in this attack.

Mu Qingli felt the chilling murderous intent emanating from behind her, a power strong enough to make her hairs stand on end. Her emerald cat-like eyes instantly narrowed into dangerous slits.

She slowly moved the ‘Dragon Dung Spirit Soil’ away from Shen Zhaoqing’s lips, carefully retracting it back into the Qiankun Pinecone.

Then, she stood up, turned around, and faced the silver needle rain head-on, an onslaught capable of piercing mountains.

Her face showed no fear. Instead, it was filled with an extreme fury, akin to a ‘flower thief’ caught red-handed and then unjustly accused.

‘How dare you!’

‘You wretched white-skinned thief!’

‘Not only did you destroy my potted plant, but now you want to eliminate me, the legitimate gardener, too?’

‘You stole my soil and now you want to smash my pot?!

‘Do you truly believe that her Jianmu clan subsists on mere vegetables?!

Mu Qingli didn’t even bother with her precious shovel. With a slight wrinkle of her small nose, her fair, tender foot impatiently stamped on the floor.

“So noisy!”

Just that single stomp.

Puff, puff, puff, puff, puff, puff—!

The impossibly hard floor of the medicine bath chamber, paved with thousand-year-old cold jade, instantly transformed into soft mud. Countless emerald-green vines, like hormone-infused pythons, burst forth from the ground.

These vines didn’t grow haphazardly; instead, they rapidly wove themselves into a gigantic, thick, pitcher plant wall right before Mu Qingli, complete with countless tiny, dense hairs.

Indeed, it was the kind of plant that specifically devoured insects.

However, each pitcher plant on this wall had its pocket gaping open, revealing a dark, cavernous interior that exuded a sweet, yet dangerous, aroma.

Bai Zhileng’s vision was sharp enough to confirm without a doubt that these were demonic plants!

The hundreds of silver needles, each imbued with the might of the Soul Transformation Realm, plunged into this ‘pitcher plant wall’.

There was no earth-shattering clang, no flash of spiritual energy exploding.

Only a series of soft ‘plop’ sounds, like mosquitoes being struck by an electric swatter.

Upon contact with the slippery digestive fluid inside the pitcher plants, the spiritual light on the silver needles rapidly dimmed at a visible rate. In the end, they vanished like mud oxen entering the sea, digested completely without even a single bubble rising.

Bai Zhileng’s pupils contracted sharply.

‘What kind of divine ability is this?!

‘Each of her Hundred Herbs Divine Needles had been refined for a century, imbued with extreme yin medicinal poison, specifically designed to break through protective true essence. Even a Body Cultivator of the same realm would be instantly incapacitated by such an attack.

‘Yet this green-haired girl actually blocked—no, *ate*—them all with a pile of worthless weeds!’

“Gurgle~” The pitcher plant wall let out a satisfied burp.

Mu Qingli clapped her hands, looking at Bai Zhileng with an expression of disdain.

“What’s wrong with you? How can you just scatter needles everywhere? Don’t you have any public etiquette? What if you hit my flowers and plants?”

Bai Zhileng: “…”

For the first time in hundreds of years, cracks appeared in her Dao heart, which had always been as still as an ancient well.

“What do you mean, ‘hit your flowers and plants’? You call these things that can devour Soul Transformation Realm magic tools ‘flowers and plants’?!”

‘And besides, aren’t *you* the one trying to force an unknown object into *her* mouth? Even a thief yelling ‘stop thief’ isn’t done this way!’

“‘You monster, cease your nonsense!’”

Bai Zhileng formed a hand seal with her jade-like fingers, her figure vanishing instantly like a ghost. The next moment, she reappeared beside Mu Qingli.

She no longer used wide-range attacks. Instead, her five fingers formed a claw, wreathed in a thin, faint green glow, striking directly at Mu Qingli’s Jianjing acupoint.

This was ‘Meridian Severing Lock,’ a renowned grappling technique of Penglai. Once caught, one’s true essence would be immediately sealed, rendering even the greatest divine ability useless, leaving one with no choice but to surrender.

She had discerned that while the green-haired girl’s cultivation was bizarre, she could still be subdued by injuring her physical body.

Any living creature inherently possessed meridians and acupoints.

However, her calculations proved futile. Facing this lightning-fast grab, Mu Qingli didn’t even lift an eyelid; she merely swayed her shoulder gently.

“Crack.”

With a soft sound, her entire body twisted in a bizarre manner, like a supple willow branch, at an angle that completely defied human anatomy.

Bai Zhileng’s assured strike brushed past Mu Qingli’s clothes, grasping only empty air.

“Trying to loosen my soil? Your technique isn’t good enough.” Mu Qingli pouted, then swiftly slapped back with an open hand.

The slap looked soft and utterly devoid of force, yet Bai Zhileng felt a huge sense of crisis wash over her. She pulled back and retreated without hesitation, only to see trails of emerald-green afterimages left in the air where Mu Qingli’s palm had passed. Several tiny green spores silently drifted away.

Bai Zhileng broke out in a cold sweat.

‘Parasitic spores! This is a talent unique to ancient plant spirits, incredibly malicious. Once they attach, they will take root and sprout within a cultivator’s body, draining all their cultivation!’

‘Just what is the origin of this girl?!

Suddenly, the small medicine bath chamber became an arena for two Soul Transformation Realm powerhouses.

However, this battle was exceptionally frustrating.

Bai Zhileng’s exquisite medical arts focused on grabbing, striking specific points, and sealing meridians. Yet, Mu Qingli’s body was as slippery as a loach, with no fixed ‘acupoints’ to target.

When Bai Zhileng scattered ‘Demon-Melting Powder,’ potent enough to instantly incapacitate Nascent Soul cultivators, Mu Qingli took a deep breath, then evaluated with a look of intoxication: “This fertilizer tastes pretty good, though the nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium ratio is a bit off. Affects the flavor, you know.”

Bai Zhileng: “…”

She then drew upon the frigid energy within the cold jade floor tiles, transforming it into dozens of ice snakes in an attempt to freeze Mu Qingli.

Mu Qingli pouted her lips, blew a breath, and sunflowers, swaying in the breeze, sprouted uniformly from the heads of those ice snakes.

The scene, for a moment, was utterly comical.

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