◎ This is a “Discern Character Through Art” question ◎
Inside the trial, Wang Jian was teetering on the edge of madness. The murderous glint in his eyes had completely overtaken his former elegance and sorrow—he seemed like an entirely different person.
Before the three from Clearwater Sect, a blank scroll of paper and ink dropped.
{Wang Jian’s final question—this is the last test.}
{The divine sense of a cultivator does not perish easily. Like a centipede, even in death, it twitches on. To subdue an evil cultivator for good, one must shatter his mind entirely.}
{Your answer will determine what follows.}
Lin Shuang raised a brow.
Meng Zi stared at the snowy white scroll in despair.
Huangfu Yuan remained silent.
{A written exam. You have one incense stick’s time.}
[…Wang Jian is truly the villain.]
[Despicable! I can’t bear to look! I wish I could go back and redo this level!]
[Why is there a written test now?]
[It follows the divine sense battle. This is time for the disciples to rest and recover. It’s both a trial and a chance to settle their minds.]
[It’s also for calculating the rewards.]
[Looks like this Wang Jian stage has very generous rewards.]
[Fake clears and real clears… the actual rewards might be shocking.]
[Mountain and Sea Sect is going to cry.]
Since this trial belonged to the Mountain and Sea Sect, the rewards would also be issued by them.
{Clearwater Sect trio has entered the written exam.}
{Note: At least two out of three must answer correctly to shatter Wang Jian’s final mental defense.}
Meng Zi exhaled in relief.
Lin Shuang and Huangfu Yuan both twitched at the corners of their mouths.
Desks appeared before them, scrolls unrolling atop each.
[We haven’t heard from any Mountain and Sea Sect disciples yet. Has anyone reached the real ending before? Passed the Q&A?]
[What happens if they succeed? I’m curious.]
[Who’s the floor master this year for the Mountain and Sea Sect? Did they reach the true ending?]
No one answered in the projection.
Atop the spectator peak of the Mountain and Sea Sect, many disciples looked awkward.
“What are you all staring at me for?!”
A mountain-like brute glared around.
“I cleared it the fastest! Who had time to think so hard?!”
“If you’re so capable, then beat my time—even your fake clear was slower than mine!”
“…”
“Senior Brother, just tell us honestly—what was your score?”
“The floor master title… is it going to go to that Clearwater Sect disciple now?”
The brute stiffened.
In the projection:
The three from Clearwater Sect sat at separate desks, divided by the massive Thousand Mountains and Rivers Screens.
Even if one screamed from their desk, the others wouldn’t hear a sound.
Even craning one’s neck couldn’t reveal what was written on the neighbor’s page.
Divine sense and vision could only focus on one’s own scroll.
Lin Shuang leaned on her hand, looking conflicted.
From the moment she’d heard Wang Jian specialized in Thousand Mountains and Rivers paintings, she should have known this artifact would come into play.
This screen—perfect for preventing cheating in exams.
She should’ve known the three of them would be separated again.
She could faintly sense it again: the mind of the elder who designed the trial.
All the information in the earlier questions truly had a purpose.
What wasn’t used in one question would resurface in the next.
{Question 1: When were you drawn into Wang Jian’s ink painting? Circle the correct answer below:
- Upon entering this stage, you were already inside the painting.
- When the Wang family servant tore open the teleportation talisman to send you to the bridal chamber.
- When you entered the embroidery room in search of Xiaofeng.
- When you were sent to the tiger demon’s location.}
Lin Shuang exhaled sharply.
These questions were the worst.
Single or multiple choice? They didn’t say.
Pressing her temples, she reviewed her memories before putting brush to paper.
[4]
[3]
[…Wasn’t it 2?]
[Where’s the Mountain and Sea Sect floor master?!]
[Stop shouting—Mountain and Sea Sect has been silent for a while now. Bro, you still don’t get it?]
Meng Zi scratched his head and chose 1.
Huangfu Yuan closed his eyes, then calmly selected his answer.
{Question 2: Where is the real Huiniang?
- The tiger demon’s mountain.
- In the painting.
- With Wang Jian.}
Meng Zi sighed in relief—finally, an easy one. He circled 3.
[A freebie question…]
[Told you, this part was meant to help disciples recuperate.]
{Question 3: Remove all falsehoods and illusions. Retell the true story.
—One incense stick’s time.
Note: All clues must be explained in your answer.}
[!]
[…]
[I’d rather fight Wang Jian again.]
Meng Zi stared at the blank paper, gritting his teeth.
His legs kicked under the desk, then curled up into his seat.
He couldn’t write a word.
“Argh—what is this trial doing?!”
He ruffled his hair.
[This question is meant to shake the disciple’s inner heart.]
Huangfu Yuan wrote quickly, completing two lines before setting down his brush.
Meng Zi pulled out a strand of hair and messily scribbled a single line:
—It was all Wang Jian’s doing.
[…]
[………………]
[I’m starting to appreciate this Meng from Clearwater Sect.]
Lin Shuang pondered for a moment, glancing at Wang Jian, then toward the screen hiding Huangfu Yuan.
Soon, she began writing.
After a careful review—no typos, clean script, legible layout.
Perfect. She stood and turned in her paper first, disdainfully handing it to the suspicious-eyed Wang Jian.
[…Whoever designed this stage is sick in the head.]
Wang Jian actually took the scroll and glanced at it—then glanced at her.
Meng Zi and Huangfu Yuan also finished.
Suddenly, ink-like patterns appeared mid-air.
{Clearwater Sect disciples have completed the written test.
Wang Jian glanced at their answers—and his expression changed drastically.
What?! You got the first question right?!}
[!]
Wang Jian, standing with ink brush in hand, staggered back a step and looked at them in disbelief.
“You figured it out… You sensed that the Xiaofeng and the tiger demon I took you to see were all figures from my paintings!”
“That’s right! Hahaha!”
Wang Jian threw his head back in laughter, his voice gradually giving way to tears and a flicker of pain.
“The real Xiaofeng… I killed her long ago…”
As he howled, a sharp crack echoed—the ink brush in his hand split down the middle.
He staggered back, fresh blood trickling from the corner of his lips.
[You uncovered the truth, triggering painful memories. Wang Jian suffers a backlash to his Dao heart.]
[……]
{First question: Two out of three answered correctly.
Correct answers: 3 – Entering Xiaofeng’s room; 4 – Being transported to the tiger demon’s lair.}
“Ah… we were supposed to pick two answers?”
Meng Zi looked utterly speechless.
[!]
Lin Shuang nodded.
From behind the desk, Huangfu Yuan narrowed his eyes, watching the bloodied Wang Jian.
“There were many suspicious things about Xiaofeng.”
She had long felt it strange that Xiaofeng was only killed after they arrived.
“And why was it that killing Xiaofeng might drop a letter fragment, or might not? The Wandering Blossom Sect only got fragments; the Mountain and Sea Sect got a single letter.”
“But we didn’t lay a hand on Xiaofeng—and ended up with all the letters?”
Meng Zi raised his head and held his forehead. “Wasn’t this about subduing someone with virtue?”
Lin Shuang: “……”
[……I thought so too.]
[Oh, because Xiaofeng was a figure in the painting. If the painting is destroyed violently, the paper tears completely. But with finesse, only a small crease might appear, and the storage pouch she carried would remain.]
[So her self-destruction—was it really just Wang Jian painting Xiaofeng exploding from outside the scene?]
[Yes, and that arrow from nowhere was also painted by Wang Jian. He didn’t want Xiaofeng to reveal the truth.]
[? But if Xiaofeng is just his creation, wouldn’t she say only what he wanted? Why would she point the finger at him?]
[……My dear, you clearly haven’t encountered how sinister evil cultivators can be.]
[?]
In the projection, Lin Shuang looked solemnly at Wang Jian.
“The blood we saw was real. We smelled it. It pulsed with divine sense.”
“Xiaofeng, Huiniang, the tiger demon…”
“You used their blood to paint, not cinnabar.”
“What?”
Meng Zi’s expression shifted. He couldn’t help but rest his hand on his blade. “You bastard!”
Then his face paled. “Wait—then I got the second question wrong!”
[!]
[……]
“If I’m not mistaken, Huiniang isn’t somewhere else,”
Lin Shuang sighed, her gaze falling upon the painting scroll Wang Jian had once held—the one they had pierced with divine sense.
“She’s inside the painting. You extracted a portion of their divine sense and sealed it within.”
“That’s why the tiger demon could roar, but only that. Why Xiaofeng could seem to respond, yet her replies were shallow and mechanical. The only unexpected moment came when I asked who Huiniang feared…”
“At that moment, she pointed—at you.”
She had pointed directly at Wang Jian.
But all of their eyes had shifted to the embroidered screen behind him.
Right then, trial text appeared, declaring they had uncovered Huiniang’s heart.
It had cleverly diverted their attention from Xiaofeng’s silent accusation—
That the person Huiniang feared… was Wang Jian.
She had once loved him.
But from early spring, something in his eyes changed. She became afraid.
Beastkin are far more attuned to danger than humans.
Whatever shifted in Wang Jian that spring triggered her instinctual dread.
“I kept wondering why the trial awarded Meng Zi points for calling Xiaofeng a liar—before we had even met her.”
“It acknowledged our answer on the spot.”
Lin Shuang looked directly at Wang Jian.
“A trial so lifelike should never behave this way.”
If Meng Zi hadn’t received that point in real-time, she might never have pieced together what was real, and what was illusion.
Her eyes gleamed. “There’s only one explanation.”
“Meng Zi didn’t need to see Xiaofeng in person—because Xiaofeng wasn’t real.”
“She was an illusion.”
[!]
[……]
[As I suspected at the time—this trial was unfair! It felt like the system was broken!]
Before the three of them even met Xiaofeng—before they had truly entered the trap—they had already exposed her lie from outside the scene.
The trial awarded points because Xiaofeng was nothing but a painted figure under Wang Jian’s brush. By stating the truth upon meeting him, they shattered the illusion he created—recognized as a correct answer by the test’s designer.
From that, Lin Shuang’s understanding became increasingly clear.
The trace of ink she had smelled in the embroidery room wasn’t emitted from Wang Jian’s agitation, but rather… because they were already inside the painting.
Old ink paintings retained a faint scent, after all.
“Xiaofeng’s emotions were one-dimensional, yet when I mentioned Huiniang’s letter, she suddenly became agitated.”
“That agitation could have come from the painter’s own emotions—or from residual divine sense left in Xiaofeng herself.”
“Perhaps… both.”
Wang Jian’s expression changed.
[!]
“When a painter infuses divine sense into a painting, emotions seep in as well.
So what remains within is not only the figure of Xiaofeng, but also the unconscious, repressed self of a highly skilled painter.”
Lin Shuang sighed.
“Her final accusation against you was just a mirror of your own emotional reflection.”
“Cultivation is, at its core, a practice of refining the heart.”
“If a cultivator commits an act against their Dao heart, they can never overcome it.
A heart demon will form—and obstruct all future breakthroughs.”
That was precisely what the pink-robed Elder had warned them about in the Mutual Trust trial, when asking which of them would die first.
Lin Shuang looked at Wang Jian, expression firm, as though she had solved the case.
“You couldn’t suppress your evil intent. You did something unthinkable to Huiniang.”
“And in that moment, you realized you’d never pass your next tribulation.
You’d be haunted by your own heart demon forever. But then you had a thought—
You weren’t a blade cultivator, or a sword cultivator.
You were a painter.”
“Since time immemorial, painters have poured their emotions into their art.
So you decided to seal your heart demon—and the victims of your crime—into your paintings.”
“As long as no one discovered the truth, your past sins would remain within the artwork.
Outside the painting, your Dao heart would appear pure.
Flawless. Untainted.”
“One painting wasn’t enough. So you painted two.
Then three.
Until your entire heart demon had been diluted across them.”
She stared into Wang Jian’s eyes.
“That’s why, now that we’ve uncovered the truth of your illusions—there’s no need for battle.
You’re already being devoured by your own heart demon.”
Exposed at last, Wang Jian collapsed onto the bed, the broken brush falling from his hand.
“Xiaofeng should have been silent like the tiger demon or Huiniang.
She was meant to say nothing at all.
That means… she was the one who carried the most of your residual divine sense—
the one that embodied your heart demon the most.”
“Her final words weren’t truly her own.
They were your years of guilt and remorse, flowing from the tip of your brush.”
“‘It was all my fault. It was all my fault…’”
“‘Huiniang was so good to me. And I… hurt her…’”
“That wasn’t Xiaofeng speaking.
That was your inner confession—what you could never forgive yourself for.”
Lin Shuang closed her eyes.
“I kept wondering why our investigation felt too easy.
Why there were no real obstacles.
Why the villain didn’t destroy Huiniang’s key letter from April.”
She opened her eyes, gazing upon the trembling Wang Jian, blood trickling down his lip.
“Now, it all makes sense.”
“What we saw wasn’t the real letter.
The real one had long been destroyed by you.
But you couldn’t destroy your own heart demon.”
“No matter how many paintings you created, you couldn’t erase Huiniang’s words from your memory.
They lived in your brushstrokes, in the corrupted divine sense of your tools,
in the image of Xiaofeng who carried your guilt—
always lingering.”
[Ink and brush may be illusions,
but the divine sense poured into a painting is not.]
[That letter from Huiniang, the one saying she feared him—
was the one memory Wang Jian most wanted to erase.
But the harder we try to forget, the more clearly it burns.
So he hid it instead.]
[When Xiaofeng was questioned, she unconsciously told the truth—
because she touched upon the painter’s original, repressed emotion.]
[…Now it all makes sense. I see it.]
Lin Shuang exhaled softly.
“When Xiaofeng’s form was destroyed, you feared we’d linger too long at her corpse and discover the truth—
so you rushed to draw us into the next painting:
the tiger demon’s lair.”
It had been so forced, so unnatural, it felt like they were being pushed by hand.
Lin Shuang took a step forward and picked up the broken brush lying on the floor.
A fifth-tier magical artifact.
“By slaying the tiger demon, it meant we believed your story:
that your Dao heart was spotless,
that all guilt belonged to the monster.”
“I’d wondered for so long—how someone with such high renown in the city could feign ignorance so poorly.
It was suspicious. Why act that way?”
She lowered her eyes and met Wang Jian’s horrified gaze.
“But now I understand.”
“The Ascension Registry attracted wave after wave of cultivators to seek Huiniang.”
“You watched them investigate, suspect the tiger demon, and destroy your painted illusion again and again.”
“Each time, you saw yourself—cleansed. The blame pinned elsewhere.
Your shattered Dao heart, steadily, began to heal.”
“These cultivators who tore down the Ascension Registry… were merely your tools—used to deceive yourself and solidify your Dao heart.”
Say a lie long enough, and even the speaker starts to believe it.
All the more so when so many others believe it too.
Over time, Wang Jian even succeeded in deceiving himself.
“Those cultivators thought they had recovered Huiniang’s body and completed their bounty mission. But in reality, it was merely a stroll through your painting. When they finished, you handed over the reward and transmitted them outside East City.”
“They never suspected anything—only thought you were too grief-stricken to speak.”
Lin Shuang took a deep breath. “That also explains why your servant was so delighted when we openly wore the Ascension Registry token.”
“Because many cultivators had already come before us. None succeeded. To the servant, all those prior applicants had failed and mysteriously vanished.”
“So when we arrived—confident, composed—they assumed we were stronger than the others, and naturally rejoiced.”
Meng Zi let out an “ah” of realization. No wonder the servant had so eagerly torn open the teleportation talisman and rushed them into the bridal chamber.
Wang Jian, hearing all this, began to weep blood from both eyes.
{Sea of consciousness trembling… his Divine Sense at Nascent Soul level is shattering bit by bit.}
Meng Zi understood now too. “That’s why the Ascension Registry was worth two points.”
Because the Ascension Registry itself was part of Wang Jian’s mechanism for escaping his heart demon.
Luring waves of cultivators to East City and deceiving them—it was all part of the plan.
[So all the scoring in this level wasn’t random. I take back what I said about the test’s designer.]
[Exactly. You can always trust the Nine Thousand Trials. Everything has its reason.]
[That means… all those cultivators who achieved the false ending were just playing along with Wang Jian! Ugh, poor tiger demon—they were serving Wang Jian’s deception! The more who believed his painting, the more they whitewashed his tainted Dao heart!]
[Sigh… this question feels too real. I don’t even feel like this was a puppet stage. What is going on?]
[Could this be based on a true story outside the trial? It’s… painful.]
The scroll in Wang Jian’s hands, along with his collapsing Divine Sense, disintegrated into ash.
Two skeletons appeared on the red bridal bed.
One small, one larger.
Both had tailbones—different in length.
Lin Shuang’s eyelids twitched.
{Congratulations. Two out of three answered correctly. Huiniang was inside the painting.}
“Wang Jian, you beast! Huiniang wrote all those journal entries—every single word was about you!” Meng Zi glared at him furiously. “You call yourself human?”
The trial felt all too real, and Wang Jian’s cruelty far too vile.
Huangfu Yuan shifted his gaze away from Wang Jian, lowering his lashes to focus on the green bricks of the floor. His lips pressed into a thin line.
“Hahahaha…”
Wang Jian let out a manic laugh, face twisted. He shut his eyes. “Then kill me already!”
Lin Shuang glanced at Huangfu Yuan, then back at Wang Jian.
“If we go by what’s been said… most of Xiaofeng’s words were born from your own heart demon.”
“That means Huiniang never sent you those letters. And the real Xiaofeng likely never existed.”
“It was you who mistook Huiniang’s journal as letters.”
Wang Jian’s eyes widened. “N—No! That’s not true!”
{Third question: Recount the entire storyline. Two out of three answered correctly.}
{Lin Shuang: correct. Meng Zi: correct.}
Huangfu Yuan’s phoenix eyes twitched.
Meng Zi looked completely stunned.
{That’s right. All the clues you found… were crafted by Wang Jian.}
Meng Zi gaped, “Shameless!”
Then he exhaled in relief, expression easing. “Damn. I actually got it right.”
[……]
[……]
Lin Shuang nodded, looking at Wang Jian with contempt laced in sarcasm.
“You only found her journals after Huiniang died.”
Wang Jian’s eyes flooded with anguish.
“That’s when you realized—her heart had never wavered. It was always with you.”
“Maybe it began when she asked you to paint the ‘Twin Tigers’ piece. Or perhaps when she urged the tiger demon to accept you and grew close to him. That’s when your suspicion took root… and you began stalking her.”
“She kept seeing you wherever she went. Over time, she became frightened.
In her diary, the way she referred to you changed—from ‘Wang Lang’ to just ‘him.’ That ‘him’… was you.”
“When she looked at you with fear and panic in her eyes, you couldn’t take it anymore,” Lin Shuang said quietly, “You believed she had betrayed you. And maybe—maybe it was one particular day, when she was with the tiger demon, that you killed them both.”
“But it was only afterward, when you read her journal…”
Lin Shuang stopped, watching Wang Jian’s devastated face.
“…that you realized just how deeply she truly loved you.”
“Unfortunately, you learned it far too late.”
Lin Shuang closed her eyes, unable to bear looking at the shattered bones on the wedding bed.
“This became the knot you could never untie—if those writings weren’t Huiniang’s secret diary, but letters meant for you, if you’d known earlier just how deeply she admired you, maybe you wouldn’t have harmed her.”
“Ah!”
Meng Zi clapped his fist into his palm.
“So all of this was Wang Jian’s lie to make up for his regret?”
Lin Shuang nodded.
“To pour feelings into art, to seal your demons into ink—he buried both his longing and remorse within.”
She looked at Meng Zi with some relief.
They had nearly failed. Fortunately, at the crucial moment, Meng Zi had answered the third question correctly.
Cold sweat.
“The Mountain and Sea Sect and the Wandering Blossom Sect only received the fragmented April letter, while all others were destroyed.”
“This proves the forged letter from that month carried the strongest imprint of divine sense.”
“In her diary, Huiniang wrote of fearing you. That fear stirred you so deeply that, when forging your reply, your emotions surged—raising the letter’s quality.”
‘I will treat you every day as if it were our first meeting’—this was a response to Huiniang’s note of fear,
not to the fabricated ‘Will you come pick me up tomorrow?’
Lin Shuang took a deep breath and looked toward the dying Wang Jian, whose spiritual sea had been pierced. His pupils were dilated, drowned in terror and despair.
His final illusion of self-deception had been ripped away.
“That’s right.”
Wang Jian’s blood tears flowed, and beads of blood seeped through his skin.
“If only Huiniang had told me not to bottle up everything… maybe this wouldn’t have happened.”
Lin Shuang stepped back in disgust. “Your filth is your own. Don’t blame others—you never deserved her.”
“You never truly understood her. You were simply intoxicated by the joy of being adored.”
“And when that admiration faltered, you turned monstrous. No matter how you looked at her, something always felt wrong.”
Her doubts had all started with Huiniang’s letters.
Clearly, Wang Jian had never truly known the poor fox spirit.
Even his later forgeries were full of mistakes.
His replies, Xiaofeng’s delivery—just desperate excuses to whitewash his crimes.
[Disgusting!]
[This is exactly the kind of degenerate demonic cultivator we cultivators must destroy!]
[I see it now—this level was on par with the five-thousandth. Everything’s clear.]
In the projection, Wang Jian coughed blood, and all the paintings around them crumbled into ash.
The spiritual energy they carried vanished. His divine sense was gone.
[His spiritual sea has completely shattered.]
[They got all three questions right. Wang Jian is finished.]
[The quiz was just a mechanism—the Clearwater Sect forced Wang Jian to face his demons in full. His false divine breakthrough, built on deceit, collapsed under backlash.]
[Never treat your Dao heart lightly. Once broken, it cannot be mended.]
As Wang Jian’s life ebbed away, Lin Shuang noticed that Huangfu Yuan’s violent mood had eased—somewhat.
But not entirely. He was still unstable.
She resisted the urge to look at him.
At that moment, the two skeletons on the bed vanished.
A kindly tiger youth with no more killing intent, and a gentle fox maiden with soft eyes appeared.
With Wang Jian’s death, the divine remnants bound to the paintings were released.
The two spirits coalesced, turning to face the three of them.
Their eyes welled with tears as they bowed deeply.
“Thank you, immortals.”
“For setting our spirits free.”
As they spoke, their figures grew faint, gradually fading into the red-draped wedding chamber.
“May the three of you ascend smoothly and cultivate without obstacle.”
{Huangfu Yuan, Meng Zi, and Lin Shuang of the Clearwater Sect have released Huiniang’s broken soul back to the heavens. Score: 100 points.}
{Clearwater Sect: Total score 270. Ranked first for this trial in a hundred years.}
{Assigned as floor masters of Yuan River Layer 3903!}
{Rewards available at Yuan River Stop.}
[Justice is served!]
[Sigh… may those two spirits reincarnate into kinder fates… Wait, this is the puppet trial—what’s wrong with me? I forgot it’s not real.]
[Still heartbreaking. For the tiger demon, the fox spirit, and Clearwater Sect.]
[?]
[Clearwater Sect placed first, and even toppled our Mountain and Sea Sect floor master… My Dao heart is hurting.]
[……]
[…………]
“No wonder she’s Senior Sister!”
Zhao Keran wiped tears from her eyes with a handkerchief.
“But this trial was just too tragic. That elder who wrote the questions is so cruel! I cried so much…”
“Ugh… this sadness is going to mess up my next cultivation session.”
Zhou Xuanwu: “……”
In the next instant, the three in the projection vanished, entering the teleportation array.
But just before the image faded, Lin Shuang turned back within the swirl of spiritual light.
Amid the ruins of the Eastern City, now collapsed from their clearing of the trial, she seemed to glimpse Huiniang and Li Wei—faint and flickering.
In their eyes, full of sorrow and gratitude, tears of blood slid down as they watched the array carry the trio away.
Their gaze passed over Lin Shuang, over Meng Zi—
and seemed to land softly on the one behind them: Huangfu Yuan.
Lin Shuang activated her spiritual sight and silently sighed.
Just before the teleportation was complete, she reached out and gripped a strand of trembling ink-black hair from Huangfu Yuan.
“At this rate, you won’t be able to hide it much longer.”
“Senior Brother Huangfu, are you really not going to tell us your story?”
Just like Wang Jian’s obsession—
his deepest demon had been the unspoken words he thought Huiniang never said.
Lin Shuang didn’t believe it was Huiniang’s fault. Wang Jian had never deserved her.
But in critical moments, she knew that not communicating could come too late.
“Whew, I’m exhausted… Huh? Lin Shuang, what did you just say?”
Meng Zi sat cross-legged in the array, sword slung over his shoulder, brain half-shut from overuse.
Huangfu Yuan silently turned, opened his storage pouch, and showed it to Lin Shuang.
She peeked in—
Inside was the pill furnace that had incinerated the corpse in purple robes.
“……”
Was that… a threat?
This big pervert!
Lin Shuang’s brow twitched.
“…Actually, I cheated just now.”
The words made Meng Zi widen his eyes.
Huangfu Yuan froze, hand halfway to stowing the pouch.
“Ah?” Meng Zi leaned on his sword. “Don’t joke like that! We’re floor masters now! There was no cheating, absolutely none!”
“I relied heavily on external clues. Without them, I wouldn’t have solved the story.”
She looked straight at Huangfu Yuan.
He said nothing.
“You’ve been acting off since we entered this trial.”
She didn’t back down.
“Senior Brother Huangfu, you were gravely injured before—but your divine sense remained intact, didn’t it? You’ve always had Soul Refinement-level divine strength, haven’t you?”
Meng Zi opened his mouth. “And then?”
Huangfu Yuan’s dark pupils glinted like crushed stone.
“Junior Sister, choose your words wisely. Teleportation arrays have failed before. Cultivators have perished.”
Meng Zi: “……”
Lin Shuang went quiet.
His voice was hoarse—because he had barely spoken during the trial.
His presence had been even lower than Meng Zi’s, far from his usual confident self.
Irritable.
When he saw the tiger demon holding Huiniang’s body, he had known the tiger wasn’t her killer—
but he still erupted with rage.
Even after Wang Jian’s death, even after seeing the fox spirit’s soul pass on, he never calmed down.
Had it not been for that emotional storm, Lin Shuang wouldn’t have instantly known Huiniang had died long ago.
Wouldn’t have figured out that the painting was drawn with real fox blood.
“…Fine. If you won’t say it, then I will.”
She raised both hands.
Huangfu Yuan lifted his own hand immediately.
But Lin Shuang was faster—
Within the distorted spiritual energy of the teleportation, she activated a reverse mirror talisman, a mute seal—
“Don’t speak! Just listen to the odd-numbered lyrics from my 108 divine threads!”
“??”
Instantly, her even and odd-numbered divine senses began to sing.
“……”
Only those close enough could distinguish between them.
The odd-numbered song sang:
“Nine”
“Thousand”
“Trials”
“Have”
“A”
“Problem”
“Sacrificial”
“Refining”
“Real”
“Bones”
“Souls”
“Used”
“For”
“Testing”
“The ground beneath us,” Lin Shuang said, “is likely a massive array forged from bones and souls.”
At first Meng Zi wanted to scream, but by the end—his sword slid from his shoulder.
Huangfu Yuan’s eyes instantly narrowed into vertical slits, blood glinting.
He slammed a palm against the teleportation array—
runes shattered with a crash!
A tidal wave of fury burst from him!
She was right!
From the moment he stepped into this level, he had sensed remnant fox spirits.
Level 3900+ was built from the souls of Foundation Establishment fox demons and a half-step Soul Refinement tiger.
What about his mother? The elders of the beast clans?
Were they on level 9999!?
Humans.
Humans—
In Meng Zi’s wide eyes, Lin Shuang whipped out a thick stack of Cloudsun Sect fire talismans.
She slapped them onto Huangfu Yuan’s violently billowing crimson hair—
Like foil around hot curlers, they sealed it tight.
Not a single strand peeked through.
“……”
His fury trembling, Huangfu Yuan lowered his crimson gaze to her.
“…Actually,” Lin Shuang said seriously, “I think I might be part of the Nine Thousand Trials too.”
His eyes froze.
Meng Zi: “……”
“?”
“!?”
Damn.
Shit.
He didn’t even know which revelation to be more shocked by!
Should they just all come at once!?
Author’s Note:
“Zhao Sect Master’s Notes, Entry 54”: “Turns out this level actually had three layers. I only realized it later.”
— Layer One, Wandering Blossom Sect: …
— Layer One, Mountain and Sea Sect: …
— Layer One, Ten Thousand Monks Sect: …
— Zhao Keran: Ah! Ink treasures reflect one’s inner heart, personality, and life experience—especially for high-level cultivators. It finally hit me!
— Mountain and Sea Sect, Ten Thousand Monks Sect, Wandering Blossom Sect: …
— Zhou Xuanwu: That’s enough. That’s enough.
Someone had guessed long ago that the Nine Thousand Trials would run parallel to the vengeance arc—and yes, that’s exactly what’s happening~
So once this arc wraps, we’ll be moving into the final stretch of the main storyline. That’s the plan!
Lin Shuang: Killing multiple birds with one arrow. All under control.
Huangfu Yuan: I knew it. Human cultivators are the problem.
Meng Zi: ???
Zhao Keran: Turns out only Meng Zi and I are the silly, naive sweethearts here.
Meng Zi: …Get out of here, all of you.
P.S.: The Nine Thousand Trials started with noble intent.
But over many generations… it’s hard to guarantee everyone remained selfless.
That said, most cultivators are still decent people! The overall tone remains light, so please read on with ease.
Awooo~ See you tomorrow.