Chapter 2224: Chapter 2268: Mysterious Girl

"Could this young girl have been deliberately left on the ship by the Mysterious Great Sage for Alchemy?" Jiang Fan thought.

"It’s you," the young girl said, a look of surprise crossing her face as she murmured, "To think your Invisibility Technique is so profound."

Jiang Fan looked surprised. "You know me?"

The girl covered her mouth with a smile. "Jian Wuming, the newcomer and the rising star. Who wouldn’t know you?"

"Is that so?" he thought.

Jiang Fan didn’t overthink it. Glancing around the massive Alchemy Room, he asked, "Fairy, could I borrow your Alchemy Room for a while?"

A hint of surprise flickered across the palace-dressed girl’s face. "You want to perform Alchemy?"

"I don’t have that kind of skill," Jiang Fan replied. "I just want to borrow this spacious area to cultivate."

"I see," the palace-dressed girl thought, a trace of disappointment welling up in her heart. She nodded. "As long as you don’t damage the facilities here, use it as you please."

Jiang Fan’s face filled with gratitude. He leaned closer to her and said, "Fairy, please keep this a secret for me and don’t tell anyone. Also, I need absolute quiet when I cultivate. Please let me be alone for a while."

As he spoke, he grabbed her delicate hand and stuffed a Space Storage Device into her fair, tender palm.

The palace-dressed girl let out a chuckle. "Are you that afraid I’ll peek at your cultivation?" She swept her senses into the storage device and was visibly moved. "Ingredients for the Taiqing Pill?"

Jiang Fan smiled but didn’t say a word.

The palace-dressed girl gave him a meaningful look. "You really have a lot of good things. Alright, take your time cultivating. I won’t disturb you."

Tucking the Space Storage Device into her sleeve, she gracefully walked away, pulling the cabin door shut behind her as she left.

Watching her leave and listening until her footsteps completely faded away, Jiang Fan finally murmured in relief, "Now I can cultivate in peace."

He immediately sat down cross-legged and took out a small bundle filled with colorful flower petals. These were the petals he had looted from Pianrou after knocking her unconscious. This flower possessed extreme hallucinogenic properties, capable of easily subduing even those in the One Calamity Realm. Pianrou had relied entirely on this flower for her human trafficking operations.

With a flash of his eyes, he summoned the Wind God Order Flag, manipulating a gust of wind to scatter all the petals in his hand to every corner of the room. The petals drifted safely to the ground—except in the northwest corner, where a single petal suddenly froze in mid-air.

Jiang Fan sharply noticed this. He waved the Wind God Order Flag again, and a gale swept all the remaining petals toward that spot. Every single petal froze in that exact area, gradually outlining a human silhouette. A moment later, the young girl in the pink palace dress appeared, her eyes completely glazed over.

Jiang Fan scoffed, stood up, and walked over to her, pinching her soft, dewy cheek. "I knew you were up to no good! Don’t you know that curiosity killed the cat?"

He pulled open her sleeve and took back the Taiqing Pill ingredients he had just given her. "This is for breaking your promise. You’re not getting any of this! Just stand here, face the wall, and think about what you’ve done!"

He spun the young girl around to face the wall. Just in case the petals’ effects wore off, he took out the talisman he had previously used for sealing Yuwei and slapped it right on her forehead. "Stay put!"

With the palace-dressed girl dealt with, Jiang Fan finally began his cultivation. With a mere thought, he released the eerie, black Soul Refining Hall.

A terrifying, bloodcurdling roar suddenly erupted from within, shaking him to the core.

"What kind of vicious creature is inside?" he wondered, feeling a chill in his heart.

For safety, he summoned a full set of Array Stones to protect his body and brought out the Hell Soul Bell to defend his soul. Only after making ample preparations did he carefully push open the ancient, rusted doors of the hall and disappear into the darkness.

CREAAAK—

The heavy doors swung shut on their own without any wind. Meanwhile, the palace-dressed girl who was supposed to be "facing the wall" suddenly moved!

She casually reached up and tore the talisman off her forehead. The glazed look in her eyes had vanished, replaced by crystal clarity. "He certainly has a lot of tricks!"

She brushed the petals off her dress, rubbed her cheek where it was still red from his pinch, and scoffed. "Does he have any idea who I am? How dare he pinch me?"

Then, she examined the black hall before her, a look of surprise crossing her face. "The Soul Refining Hall of the Daqian Divine Kingdom. Isn’t this Jian Wuchou’s belonging? How did it end up in Jian Wuming’s hands?"

"Jian Wuchou, Jian Wuming..." she repeated the names, then laughed and shook her head. "Even his name must be fake, right?

"Still, he sure has a lot of nerve. Even if the soul-tempering power of this Soul Refining Hall is less than ten percent of its peak, it’s not a place someone in the Divinity Transformation Realm can just waltz into. Even a Sage in the One Calamity Realm would have to carefully weigh whether they could endure the pain of Soul Refining before entering.

"He’s not even afraid of dying in there. Well, I can’t just watch him die."

With her hands behind her back, she strolled up to the hall, but she didn’t enter right away. Instead, she waited for the right opportunity—the moment when Jiang Fan would be in dire straits and desperately need someone to save him.

As for Jiang Fan, upon entering the hall, he was engulfed in pitch-black darkness, unable to see his own hand in front of his face. A sinister chill seeped into his pores, making him shudder involuntarily.

Even more bizarrely, the ghostly wails and demonic howls he had heard from outside were completely gone, replaced by dead silence. It was as if everything he heard earlier had been an illusion.

With a flicker of thought, he summoned the Light God Command Banner and softly shouted, "Bright as day!"

In an instant, the Light God Command Banner blazed like a sun, radiating a blinding light that illuminated the entire hall until it was as bright as day. Jiang Fan could finally see his surroundings.

However, as he swept his gaze across the room, his hairs stood on end!

The ground around him was crawling with a dense, dark mass of bizarre and grotesque monsters. Thick, viscous liquid dripped from their bodies, exuding a foul stench that pierced straight into the depths of his soul. Their facial features were fierce and demonic, their gaping maws lined with rows of jagged teeth.

Under the cover of darkness, they had all silently slithered right up to him. Looking out, they resembled a circular black ocean! The closest ones were mere feet away! Jiang Fan had been completely surrounded by a horde of viscous monsters without even realizing it.

Fortunately, they were terrified of the light. The moment the room brightened, they immediately scattered and fled in all directions.

Once the immediate area was clear, he realized he was standing on a circular platform. Surrounding him was a hollowed-out mountain belly. Carved into the mountain walls were black caverns of various sizes, inside which lay corpses in diverse states. Some were already reduced to skeletons, some had rotted into sludge, while others looked as fresh as if they were still alive.

A chain was fastened around the neck of every single corpse, showing that they had been trapped and left to die inside these caves. Looking around, there were at least ten thousand such caverns. Clustered together like a honeycomb, the sight was enough to trigger anyone’s trypophobia.

The viscous monsters retreated back into the corpses, vanishing into the darkness while emitting low growls that resonated on a soul level.

Jiang Fan finally understood—these viscous monsters were the souls of the living beings who had been trapped and died here. Unlike normal souls in the outside world, their souls didn’t turn into spots of light and fade into the unknown. Instead, they were forever imprisoned in this hall, never to find peace or reincarnation. Over the long years, their souls had progressively demonized, mutating into these ugly, ferocious, viscous beasts.

"What exactly is the origin of this Soul Refining Hall?" he thought. "How can it contend with the Heavenly Dao and forcefully detain the souls of the living?"

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