Chapter 37: Secrets of the Iceflame Flower

Zuo Chi was still mulling over which senior members of the sect might have dealt with the Demon Lord Bu Xiwei before, and whether they might know who her master was, when he suddenly heard his younger brother’s words. His eyes widened round:
“What?!”
Who had seen whom?!

The person in question, however, was far calmer than Zuo Chi. Yu Xiu simply nodded, speaking neither fast nor slow:
“In the final region of this secret realm, I saw—through a dream—a vision of the Demon Lord from long ago, and also of her master.”

This time, Yu Xiu did not intend to hide anything.
But as for her earlier entanglement with the present-day Bu Xiwei, Yu Xiu chose not to mention it.

Zuo Chi finally let out a sigh of relief.
“You scared me—I thought for a moment…”

He hesitated, then decided to reveal something in turn:
“Miss Xiu, do you remember that time our master joined forces with Real Person Cangling and Real Person Tianshuang? You and Junior Sister Hanrui were present, but my brother and I weren’t. You should have seen it.”

“The three Real Persons deliberately sealed that matter away, but to us personal disciples, they placed no restrictions. The origin of that incident… was that the Demon Lord broke into the Five-Spirit Sect’s guardian formation by force.”

Here Zuo Chi’s brows knit in puzzlement:
“Ever since the founding of the Seven Souls Sect, the Demon Lord herself has never once left her sect. If the Demon Realm had anything to communicate with the Immortal Realm, the emissaries sent were always other high-level figures of the demonic path. She never appeared herself. So why did she suddenly break into our Five-Spirit Sect?”

“And why did the three Real Persons choose to suppress the news? By rights, the sole sovereign of the Demon Realm slipping unnoticed into the Five-Spirit Sect is an extremely grave affair. Yet the three masters all lifted it heavily and set it down lightly, as though some special contract existed between them and the Demon Lord herself…”

The way Zuo Chi kept respectfully calling her “that venerable one” made Yu Xiu waver for a moment.
For the Bu Xiwei she had personally seen and interacted with was… lively and spirited. When the two of them were together, Bu Xiwei seemed far more like the younger one.

This led Yu Xiu, unconsciously, to forget that even if she added together all her lifetimes, she would not match even a fraction of Bu Xiwei’s years—let alone that Bu Xiwei was a reborn soul.

The Demon Lord’s exact age was never clearly recorded in the Immortal Domains of the Five Spirits, but by various scholarly calculations, it should be somewhere between 1,800 and 2,300 years.

Seeing the genuine trace of puzzlement on Yu Xiu’s face, Zuo Cheng finally relaxed as well.
“…So long as you only saw her in a dream, that’s fine.”

Zuo Chi, too, reined in his wandering thoughts and refocused on what mattered most.
“Miss Xiu, what exactly did you encounter in this secret realm?”

Yu Xiu truthfully recounted her experiences to her two senior brothers, leaving out only the fact that Bu Xiwei had once been possessed by her own mysterious master. She merely spoke of seeing the scene where Bu Xiwei, in her weakest hour, had struggled side by side with her teacher.

The scars hidden in Bu Xiwei’s past—or perhaps one might say her weaknesses—were not for others to know.

From Zuo Chi and Zuo Cheng, Yu Xiu also learned the general outline of their own journey.
As she had expected, neither of them had ever seen the vast snowy wasteland, nor the pale-red flower. The two of them together had cleared more than ten regions, all of the straightforward type—caves, wine cellars, graveyards—where one merely had to defeat enemies along the way to pass through.

Zuo Chi and Zuo Cheng had thought Yu Xiu poisoned because, while unconscious, her spiritual power was in extreme disorder. But Yu Xiu soon deduced that it must have been a side effect from absorbing that pale-red flower.

After she awakened, the spiritual energy within her meridians gradually calmed, which greatly eased the brothers’ worry. Still, the issue of her right arm being trapped in that strange array remained unresolved.

Yu Xiu studied it herself for a while, pondering, before proposing a lead:
“Do either of you have any ice-type talismans or artifacts? Snow-type would be best, but water-type may also suffice.”

Ice and snow attributes were exceedingly rare. Snow was a branch of ice, rarer still. Both, however, traced their origin back to the water element among the Five Spirits.

Given that this secret realm was undoubtedly tied to Bu Xiwei and her master, and that its core was suffused with imagery of ice and snow, Yu Xiu suspected they might be the key to breaking her predicament.

If no such items could be found, water-based ones were still worth trying.

Zuo Chi, like the sect leader Huangfu Haode, possessed a heavenly gold spiritual root. Zuo Cheng bore a variant thunder root. Among the five personal disciples of the Five-Spirit Sect, only Yu Xiu lacked a heavenly or variant root. Even Huangfu Hanrui had a heavenly wood root.

Though neither brother possessed ice attributes, Zuo Cheng did carry some water-based talismans in his pouch. Soon he produced a snowball talisman.

Yu Xiu accepted them with her left hand, offering thanks, and slapped the talismans onto the crude array.
Brilliant white light from the snowball charm interwove and sank into the formation. Before long, Yu Xiu was able to pull her right arm free.

“Excellent!” Zuo Chi exclaimed. “As expected of you, Miss Xiu—always able to find an alternate path!”

Zuo Cheng smiled as well, though he still dared not be careless. Producing a spirit tool capable of measuring a cultivator’s state, he insisted Yu Xiu test herself again, lest any hidden harm remain.

At that moment, He Xiuran and Huangfu Hanrui also rushed back. Seeing Yu Xiu safe, both burst into cheers of relief.

Meanwhile, Zuo Chi and Zuo Cheng collected samples of the array materials, along with the surrounding soil, water, and stone near the secret realm’s entrance. They planned to bring them back for the elders to examine—since this place was linked to the Demon Lord Bu Xiwei, caution was only proper.

As for the pale-red treasure Yu Xiu had absorbed, its true effect remained unclear. She only felt the liquid lingering within her meridians, like a mortal who had overeaten—bloated, in need of time and seclusion to refine it properly.

Being the only one among the five to reap such benefit left Yu Xiu uneasy.

“Ah, think nothing of it!” Zuo Chi waved his hand. “Opportunities belong to those who obtain them. That’s the accepted rule of the cultivation world!”

“And this isn’t the first time we’ve ventured together,” Zuo Cheng added kindly. “When the gains fell to us before, you never quibbled.”

“Exactly, exactly!” Huangfu Hanrui bobbed her head like a pounding garlic pestle. “Senior Sister, you may have gotten the treasure, but you suffered for it too! You didn’t see how terrifying you looked while unconscious—your spiritual energy was raging madly, as if ready to explode and tear you apart! I almost thought—”

He Xiuran quickly clapped a hand over her mouth, cutting off the ominous words of “never seeing Senior Sister again.”

“Senior Sister has already formed her golden core. If anything, she’ll only shield us even more from now on—we’ve hardly lost out!”

The companions all willingly yielded the fortune to Yu Xiu. With a wry, helpless smile, she said nothing more, only silently marking these debts of kindness in her heart. Every favor must one day be repaid.

***

The five returned by spirit-barge to the Five-Spirit Sect without further incident.

Huangfu Hanrui and He Xiuran went straight to Sect Master Huangfu Haoran to report their safety, while Zuo Chi and Zuo Cheng immediately accompanied Yu Xiu to seek out the master of Tianshuang Peak—Real Person Tianshuang.

Real Person Tianshuang was a rare cultivator who pursued both paths of cultivation, and was the sect’s most accomplished healer. Given Yu Xiu’s unusual situation, the brothers felt it best to consult her.

The simultaneous arrival of three personal disciples startled the Tianshuang attendants, who rushed to announce them, fearing something grave had happened.

Tianshuang Peak was the busiest of the five, yet Real Person Tianshuang herself was among the most unoccupied of the peak lords—matched only by Real Person Chiyang.

Chiyang roamed endlessly, no one knowing where he was. Tianshuang, however, was reclusive by nature and seldom appeared. Thus, when the three entered Tianshuang Palace, they found only the lonely figure of Real Person Tianshuang, dressed in drifting white, playing a guqin in the empty hall.

Aside from medicine, her other cultivation was the Dao of Music.

Yu Xiu had only seen her once before, back when she first built her foundation. Her impression had been of a fairy-like woman, white-robed and ethereal. Seeing her again today, that impression was unchanged.

Zuo Chi cupped his hands and explained their purpose. Throughout, Real Person Tianshuang did not lift her eyes once, her attention wholly on the instrument beneath her fingers, ignoring the three disciples completely.

Only after finishing the piece did she speak, her voice cool:
“The young one in red has only tempered herself through tribulation. The Iceflame Flower is an immortal material long lost to the world. To have encountered it is your fortune.”

Though they had kept a respectful distance, Real Person Tianshuang had no need to look closely. With a single glance, she pierced straight through Yu Xiu’s body and identified the very nature of the pale-red flower she had absorbed.