Chapter 36: Awakening in Frost

When Yu Xiu regained consciousness again, before even opening her eyes, she heard the distinctly noisy clamor surrounding her.

“Senior Sister!” Huangfu Hanrui’s voice carried an obvious sobbing tremor.
“Wake up, Senior Sister, please wake up! What’s wrong with you… don’t scare me like this, okay? Please, just wake up…”

“Stop wailing already!” He Xiuran cut her off, sounding thoroughly impatient.
“Both Senior Brothers are doing their utmost to save Senior Sister right now. You howling like that only distracts them—and her!”

“Xiuran,” Zuo Cheng spoke, utterly exhausted,
“Take Hanrui and look around the area. See if you can find anything unusual.”

“Where venomous snakes dwell, the antidote lies within seven steps,” Zuo Chi said solemnly.
“The poison Miss Xiu has taken is infamous, and could only have been encountered deep within the secret realm. But now that the realm has already collapsed, the antidote is very likely to be found somewhere near its entrance.”

There was another point that neither Zuo Cheng nor Zuo Chi voiced aloud: leaving Hanrui here really did nothing but create chaos.
Better to send her off with a task—to keep her away from Yu Xiu’s precarious condition—and perhaps, just perhaps, she might stumble upon something useful.

Before Hanrui could fully react, He Xiuran had already understood their intent.
Without hesitation, he grabbed her by the arm and dragged her away.
“Come on, quick! Let’s look for it!”

As Hanrui’s grumbling complaint—“He Xiuran, do you want to rip my arm off?!”—faded into the distance, the two brothers left at Yu Xiu’s side both let out nearly identical, heavy sighs.

“All four of us scoured every part of the secret realm we traversed,” Zuo Cheng’s voice trembled slightly, “yet not a single foe we encountered carried poison… Why must Miss Xiu be the one to run into such a fate?!”

“We’ve tried every kind of detoxifying pill,” Zuo Chi paced anxiously, “but she remains unconscious, showing no sign of waking at all!”

The task they had given to Xiuran and Hanrui, in truth, the brothers held little hope for.
Though they had left the job of scouting the valley entrance to their younger juniors earlier, Zuo Cheng and Zuo Chi were no hands-off seniors. They themselves had made a preliminary inspection of the place shown on the treasure map.

And they both knew—this valley, the gateway to the secret realm, had been nothing more than a desolate stretch of wilderness. It bore none of the anomalies that usually heralded the presence of great treasures.

But the poison that had struck Yu Xiu was far too strange, far too grave.
The antidote would surely be no common herb.

“If this still doesn’t work…” Zuo Cheng seemed to steel his resolve.
“Then we must bring Miss Xiu back to the sect immediately! Having an Elder diagnose her is better than us stumbling blindly like headless flies here!”

“You think I don’t want to?!” Zuo Chi clicked his tongue sharply.
“But Miss Xiu’s right hand is completely fused with this formation. Neither of us has dared attempt it—but unless we cut off her arm at the elbow, there’s no way to take her away!”

Zuo Cheng fell silent, caught in grim deliberation: should they sacrifice half her arm to save her life?

It was at this moment that Yu Xiu finally managed to open her eyes.

She was lying on the ground. The first thing she saw was Zuo Cheng’s face, drawn tight with tension and worry, hovering close to hers. Nearby, Zuo Chi’s restless shadow paced back and forth.

And beneath her right arm—which had not yet fully regained sensation—lay a crude formation of stone and earth, exposed when the riverbank boulders had shifted. It pulsed faintly with a snowy-white light, embedding half of her arm deeply within it.

“Miss Xiu?!” Zuo Cheng was the first to notice her awakening. His eyes shimmered with tears of relief.
“You’re awake?!”

Hearing his brother’s cry, Zuo Chi whirled around and crouched beside her in an instant.
“You’re awake?! Miss Xiu, how do you feel?”

Yu Xiu lifted her still-free left hand and gestured faintly, signaling the brothers not to worry.

Slowly, she pushed herself into a sitting position. Zuo Cheng instinctively reached out to steady her—but she subtly shifted away, avoiding his hand.

“…”
Silently, he drew his hand back.

Zuo Chi, however, had no such reservations. He simply pressed a steadying palm to her back, easing her movement.

Yu Xiu tried flexing her right hand. She realized that from her elbow downward, her arm had truly become one with the formation.
It was as though invisible veins extended from her forearm into the array itself, rooting into the earth below.

She glanced aside—He Xiuran and Hanrui were still nowhere in sight. Clearing her throat, she finally managed to speak, though her voice was faint.

“Senior Brothers,” Yu Xiu asked quietly,
“do you know… of the Demon Sovereign?”

Her composure in the face of her bizarre “poisoning” unsettled both brothers. Yu Xiu was always calm, no matter the place or time—but to have her very first words be a question about that figure left them thoroughly bewildered.

“The Demon Sovereign?” Zuo Cheng frowned, thinking back.
“Never heard of anything unusual. Isn’t the Demon Sovereign said to remain secluded in the Seven Souls Sect of the Demon Realm? Rarely appearing in public?”

But his thoughts wandered further—back to the suspicious incident two months ago, and to the rumors, the clues, the unspoken conjectures.

This matter had been kept from all but the Three Real Persons. No word of it had leaked.

But Zuo Cheng, as the Sect Master’s personal disciple, had access to intelligence beyond what most ever knew.

Pressing his lips tightly together, he finally looked Yu Xiu straight in the eye and asked:
“Miss Xiu… have you… seen the Demon Sovereign?”