Ye Huohuo felt a gust of chilling wind behind her and instinctively pulled Li Mohan to the ground with her, pressing his head down beneath her. A Cheng and Fang Fang were also quick-witted individuals; sensing danger, they both dropped to the ground.
As they lay there, a wave of dark energy swept over their prone bodies.
Because Ye Huohuo had Li Mohan pressed beneath her, her body was slightly higher than the others. It was this slight elevation that caught the brunt of the dark energy.
A frigid, sinister energy, like countless unseen insects, burrowed into Ye Huohuo’s pores. Every pore felt as if it were being pricked by needles, and the sudden assault sent a wave of pain throughout her body. Ye Huohuo clenched her fists tightly.
Unfortunately, her hand was pressing on Li Mohan’s head. This sudden clench caught his thick, black hair, and Li Mohan, yanked by her grip, couldn't help but let out a low cry. “Ye Huohuo, you’re asking for death!”
Ye Huohuo was trembling uncontrollably from the pain, barely able to register Li Mohan’s curses. “Don’t move! This dark energy is poisonous!”
These few words were gritted out from between her teeth.
It was only then that Li Mohan realized what Ye Huohuo had shielded him from. “Are you alright? Are you poisoned?”
As he spoke, he tried to get up. But as soon as he lifted his body slightly, Ye Huohuo forcefully pushed him back down. “Don’t move. Listen, no matter what happens, don’t get up!” httpδ:/m.kuAisugg.nět
A drop of warm liquid fell onto the back of Li Mohan’s neck, accompanied by a faint, sweet, and metallic scent.
Was this… blood?
Li Mohan couldn’t help but try to turn his head to look at Ye Huohuo, who was on top of him. But before he could, he felt the weight on him lighten. Ye Huohuo pushed herself up with her hands, executing a perfect flip to stand.
Previously, only half of her body had been covered by the dark energy. Now, Ye Huohuo was completely enveloped. Her seven orifices felt as if they were being churned by sharp blades, the pain reaching its absolute limit.
Fang Fang, who was lying on the ground, saw Ye Huohuo not only fail to dodge but actually stand up. She clutched her mouth and shouted, “Ye Huohuo, you’re reckless! This dark energy is poisonous!”
But when she saw Ye Huohuo’s current state, she almost bit her tongue.
When they had emerged from the Big Dipper formation earlier, Ye Huohuo’s hair had returned to its normal length, just past her shoulders.
Now, her hair was growing at an astonishing rate, already past her waist and still lengthening downwards.
Her face was as pale as paper, and her eyes had almost no whites left, appearing as dark as bottomless abysses, as if they could instantly suck in one’s soul.
“You have seals? You’ve opened all your seals?! Such a powerful aura is going to attract…” Fang Fang’s words were cut short as the dispersed dark energy began to converge.
It formed a massive sphere of dark energy, completely enclosing Ye Huohuo. As a result, Fang Fang and the others were no longer suppressed by the dark energy.
“What’s going on? What happened to Huohuo?” Li Mohan was the first to stand up. Looking at Ye Huohuo, faintly visible within the sphere, and her current appearance, his usually calm face was filled with disbelief, mingled with deep concern.
Fang Fang and A Cheng also stood up. A Cheng had seen Ye Huohuo with waist-length hair in the formation. But after they came out, her hair had returned to normal. He had thought he was hallucinating.
But Ye Huohuo’s hair was now nearly reaching her heels. This…
“Wasn’t what I saw in the formation an illusion?”
The gazes of the three were fixed on Ye Huohuo. None of them noticed a figure cloaked in dark energy standing behind the sphere.
They didn’t see it, but Ye Huohuo’s eyes were locked onto him. “I truly underestimated you. I spared your life last time, and I never expected you to refine your body into a vessel for storing poisonous dark energy. I wondered how you could still move after I pierced your chest.
So that’s it! You can no longer be considered human! Killing you is not taking a life!”
Ye Huohuo’s hair cascaded down like a black waterfall, reaching her heels, draping her like a luxurious fur coat, except this lustrous hair was all her own.
Upon hearing Ye Huohuo’s words, Li Mohan and the other two finally noticed the shadowy figure. They turned their heads to look, finding it truly difficult to equate that thing with a human.
This was the skeleton man Ye Huohuo had previously pierced through the chest. At this moment, the skeleton man was even more terrifying than when he first appeared. The skin, already clinging to his bones, looked as if it had been dehydrated, cracking into pieces. From these fissures, dark, poisonous energy seeped outwards.
That dark energy was still gathering around Ye Huohuo.
“Kill you! Kill you!…” The skeleton man’s feet shuffled incrementally towards Ye Huohuo, his voice hoarse as he repeated the words, “Kill you!” as if a tiny person were trapped in his belly.
“What’s going on? Is… is this still human?” Li Mohan was momentarily at a loss. He directed the question to Fang Fang beside him, feeling his powerlessness once again. Before he met Ye Huohuo, both his work and life were under his control.
But after meeting her, this feeling of helplessness had surfaced more than once, much to his chagrin.
Fang Fang’s brows were tightly furrowed as she looked at the skeleton man. “This can no longer be called a human; it should be called a living corpse, and a poisonous one at that. This person must have undergone extremely cruel refinement, forced into this state while alive, with his very soul also refined.
His sole purpose in coming here is…”
Fang Fang didn’t finish her sentence, gesturing with her chin towards Ye Huohuo within the dark energy. Her meaning was clear.
“What can we do? We can’t just watch like this. Haven’t you lived for a thousand years? Can’t you deal with this ‘living corpse’?” Li Mohan rarely spoke so much to Fang Fang.
Normally, Fang Fang might have been excited, but she had no mood for it now. She shook her head solemnly. “I am a魅 (mei), and that is a 尸 (shi). I can do nothing against him.”
“Then what about Huohuo? She was in so much pain from just a little exposure to the poisonous gas…” Li Mohan’s heart ached with a mixture of sourness and pain as he recalled her trembling uncontrollably from the agony while he was beneath her.
His chest felt heavy and constricted, an uncomfortable tightness.
Fang Fang looked at Li Mohan’s expression with a hint of amusement. “Oh, I didn’t expect the Great Iceberg to know how to care for someone!”
“You…” Li Mohan’s eyes flashed with displeasure, but he quickly suppressed it. “Do you have any solutions?”
Fang Fang noticed Li Mohan’s displeasure. Recalling the chilling feeling from before, her heart grew cold, and she dared not be too presumptuous. She dropped her previous expression and straightened her demeanor. “She can’t feel pain right now. Didn’t you see her hair? This is what it looks like when all her seals are open. Earlier, in the Big Dipper formation, her hair was waist-length, which was a state of her seals being half-open.
I truly didn’t expect this little girl to have such high cultivation at such a young age. Her master must have worried himself sick over her, coming up with the idea of sealing her cultivation.”
“Why would they seal her cultivation?” A Cheng, who had been listening, was completely bewildered and couldn't help but ask.
“Silly boy, this is the secret of the Xuanmen practitioners. They would never reveal it, even if beaten to death. If I hadn’t lived for over a thousand years, I wouldn’t know. You’ve asked the right person,” Fang Fang said with a touch of smugness. “Do you know what would happen if Ye Huohuo’s master hadn’t sealed her true strength?”