Yang Liangyu followed Yan Yu into the clearing. Instantly, both of the guards snapped their heads toward them. They readily pointed their spears at the pair as if they had anticipated intruders and had been prepared for some time.

"How much do you know about demonic cultivators?" Yan Yu suddenly asked her.

The guards, both of them likely stronger than her—though she didn't know their exact stage—looked at each other, nodded, and attacked. The man wearing rumpled yet pristine green clothes lunged with his silver spear, the tip glowing with a green aura, as if anyone touched by it would be poisoned. Her clan member also lunged; his spear glowed, not with a green aura, but with an orange fire. Yang Liangyu's heart thumped upon seeing these attacks. While she was a cultivator, she had never fought before, and if not for Yan Yu's reassuring aura, she would have turned around and bolted.

Yan Yu conjured a thin black sword in her right hand, then looked at her, as if wondering why she hadn't answered her question.

"Demonic cultivators? I don't know much about them," Yang Liangyu hurriedly answered. "I know they are evil."

"Evil, yes. All of them are inherently evil," Yan Yu said while flicking her sword toward her clan member. Instantly, the fire on his spear extinguished as if it were a mere candle blown by a strong wind. He looked surprised, but didn't stop his momentum.

"Their path to power is to sacrifice other people," Yan Yu added.

She flicked her black sword once again, and two ice arrows materialized in front of her. The arrows were detailed, with pretty engravings around them, one depicting a crane. Though she didn't see the full detail because a mere fraction of a second after they were conjured, they flew toward the enemies, creating a low humming sound like bees.

"Demonic cultivators are also cowardly. So much so that they usually have tricks to preserve their lives. Some of them opt to possess other people, turn themselves into spirits or undead, split their souls and enter them into multiple vessels, and many more. I despise each of them. They are my enemies."

Yang Liangyu processed this information while watching the two arrows fly straight toward their intended targets. The man with the rumpled green clothes tried to swat the arrow with his spear, but the arrow suddenly accelerated and sunk deep into his forehead, piercing his brain and freezing his serious expression forever. Her clan member was wise enough to try to dodge the arrow, but as if the arrow were death itself and could not be outrun, it accelerated and landed on his right side, piercing deep enough that only the tail remained outside.

Glancing to his side, he gritted his teeth and tried to lunge at Yan Yu, as if refusing to accept that he had been hit so easily, and trying to repay her manyfold. Yan Yu just stood there; she didn't try to dodge or deflect the attack. Instead, when the tip of the spear was just mere centimeters from her nose, the man suddenly stopped, as if his body were paralyzed. His eyes widened, his face scrunched in agony, but before he could scream, ice bloomed from his side, grew, and instantly swallowed him whole until he became a block of ice with a spear sticking from the inside.

As if nothing had happened, Yan Yu stepped to the side, away from the man she had just frozen to death, and continued walking. "I do not know the name of the demonic cultivator that attacked your empire, but I know that he is the type that stuffs his soul into a treasure."

Yang Liangyu's eyes lingered for a moment on her deceased clan member, trying to engrave his face into her soul, vowing to find out who he was and why he had betrayed the clan. Then she turned her head and followed Yan Yu into the cave.

Her heart thumped inside her ribs when she successfully processed what Yan Yu had said. A demonic cultivator that stuffs his soul into a treasure. Since this cave was the enemy's base, then that demonic cultivator's soul was probably inside. Which meant that if they successfully destroyed the treasure, then the demonic cultivator would die!

Yan Yu looked behind, and upon seeing her happy and excited face, said, "Do not think that it would be easy. There is not a single demonic cultivator that leaves the treasure containing their soul unguarded."

"But you have killed the guards."

"Two of them, yes, but there are more, and each demonic cultivator is crafty. They create traps around and within the treasure that contains their soul. This specific demonic cultivator has one tricky trap that became the reason why I brought you here."

"You brought me here to disable that specific trap?" An understanding dawned on Yang Liangyu.

"Indeed," she nodded.

"Why me? Am I the only one who can disable it?"

Since Yan Yu had brought her specifically, it implied that only she could disable this trap. Yet, this explanation was strange. While she was, and still is, a princess, she didn't have any special ability, technique, or anything special about her. If someone described her as a mere little princess from a little empire, some of her people would be mad, but she knew that it was true. There was nothing extraordinary about her. So much so that the only notable thing about her was her appearance, and even this strength of hers would be lost if compared to other princesses from bigger nations or empires. Not to mention that she knew a sect that was full of beautiful women, so much so that they were called fairies. Compared to them, she was just a speck of dust.

Realizing that Yan Yu wouldn't answer her question, Yang Liangyu pressed forward. "There's no way I can disable a trap from a demonic cultivator."

"You can, and I will help you," Yan Yu said.

"What if I fail to disable that trap?"

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"It would spell disaster, so don't fail."

That's so unreasonable. Expecting her not to fail, while she didn't have any competency in disabling a trap, was like expecting a rock to turn into gold. She was doomed to fail!

Still, she clenched both of her fists. If there was no one but her who could disable that trap, she needed to succeed. But to succeed, she couldn't just do things blindly. She needed information and guidance.

"Tell me more about this trap," Yang Liangyu said, her voice as hard as cold iron, her eyes lighting up with determination. The qi inside her body churned as if it, too, felt her determination and strengthened her.

Yan Yu stopped and looked at her for a full second. In this full second, Yang Liangyu felt that the woman in front of her was just seeing her for the first time, as if all this time she had just been a wind trailing behind her, but now she was truly human and deserved her attention. For the first time since they met, Yang Liangyu felt that she had equal footing with Yan Yu, even if her logical mind realized that nothing had changed about this situation, that she was still a princess from a little empire, while Yan Yu was a disciple from one of the strongest and most prestigious sects in the world.

"Keep your calm." Yan Yu turned and began to walk again, and Yang Liangyu followed her again. But in a brief moment, so short that it was probably an illusion, she thought she saw her nod a little, as if she acknowledged Yang Liangyu.

Soon, they entered deeper into the cave. Above the roof of the cave, black smoke moved as if it were an upside-down river. Its stench was horrible, like smoke from burning thousands upon thousands of maggots that had eaten rotten blood. In front of them, a yellow light flickered like a candle from one of the roads that forked into two. Yan Yu unhesitantly went to the right path, and Yang Liangyu followed her as if she were a little child following her mother.

Once they stepped onto the right path, what greeted them was a view that made Yang Liangyu open her eyes wide, her mouth agape, and she instinctively closed her mouth with her hand.

In this room, there was a sound of chatter, a song, and happy laughter, as if it were filled by a group of robbers celebrating their successful robbery. But there was no such view in this room.

While the sounds were like that, the view was different. From the roof of the cave, dozens of stalactites grow downward, resembling the fangs of a giant beast. On each of the biggest stalactites, a chain was tied, spiraling downward, round and round. At the end of each chain, tied to one of their ankles, was a human being. Their heads had been chopped off, and blood fell from them like eternal red waterfalls, pooling on the ground, creating a shallow sea of red. Their right sides had already rotted. White maggots crawled on their bodies, chewing and eating them. Flies circled around them, creating a disgusting hum. But their left sides, especially their left arms, now rose as if they realized there were intruders. Their base was still that of a human, but from the elbow below, or rather, up, it formed into a snake. Some of them were red snakes, some of them were blue snakes, some of them had skin as black as charcoal, and many, many more.

They began to hiss, their eyes piercing the two of them, as if they were birds trying to eat their eggs.

"Is this the trap?" Yang Liangyu asked, her qi cycling through her body and strengthening her.

"No. Mere guards."

The snakes attacked in unison. They snaked through the air and came at them like a closing wall. Each of them opened their mouths wide, revealing gleaming fangs that had dangerous qi around them.

Yan Yu materialized hundreds of blue arrows around her, and with a flick of her wrist, the arrows moved as if they were birds, also creating a wall and hitting the snakes. Some of them successfully pierced the snakes, some crushed the heads of the snakes as if the arrows were blunt and the enemies' bodies were soft, but some arrows even bounced off them.

Yan Yu calmly conjured many, many more arrows. Each of them gleamed with light blue light, and cold air began seeping into the area, making Yang Liangyu feel that winter had come, and she was unprepared for it.

Since not all of the snakes had been killed by the first volley of arrows, she thought that this fight was not one-sided, that Yan Yu needed to put more effort into killing the enemies. She was mistaken. Each of the arrows, whether they successfully pierced snakes or not, froze the snakes. The ice began growing in their bodies as if it were some kind of parasite. Some of the snakes shook their bodies to shed the ice, but the more they moved, the more aggressive the ice became. There was no escape from Yan Yu's ice. Some of the snakes attacked desperately at Yan Yu despite almost all of their bodies being encased by ice, but before it could close in, with its mouth wide open, the ice successfully won the battle by swallowing the snake entirely.

Right now, of the hundreds of snakes that had tried to attack them, none were moving. All of them had been frozen and encased with a thick block of ice. They were still hanging in the sky, creating a formation of crisscrossed ice, like a weaving of chaotic thread, one that almost looked like a wall that would be hard to pass unless they could insert themselves into a gap only as big as a plate.

Yan Yu flicked her wrist once again, and the ice--the snakes--suddenly exploded into snow. Each of the snowflakes brought the temperature down. They swirled until they decided to coat each centimeter of the cave with them. The pool of blood had been frozen. There were no hanging bodies from stalactites; the chains that had tied them had been destroyed, and they were encased with a fine layer of ice.

Yang Liangyu inhaled deeply. Each of the snakes was stronger than her. Yet, Yan Yu dispatched them so easily, as if they were mere nuisances. Once again, Yang Liangyu realized how far apart normal cultivators were from cultivators from great sects.

"Let's go," Yan Yu said, stepping on top of the ice calmly.

Soon, they found the source of the flickering light. It was truly a simple white candle. It stood atop a little rock, and was quite tall, almost as high as her waist. This candle was protected by a golden cage. This cage was protected by a bubble of qi, transparent, but occasionally rippling with energy. This bubble, in turn, was protected by a huge mouth of a deep-sea fish, one with a lure, with the tip of it glowing brightly. This deep-sea fish was bigger than her, and its eyes were focused on both of them. It looked like it could close its mouth and protect the candle, yet, aside from its eyes, it didn't budge, as if it were just a statue with realistic eyes. The black smoke materialized on the roof of the cave. It appeared suddenly, as if the candle had bypassed all the obstructions covering it and directly scorched the ceiling.

Yan Yu pointed her thin black sword at the candle. "I'll try to attack it and activate some of the traps. You move right behind me."

Yang Liangyu complied, and from around Yan Yu's feet, a huge wave of snow materialized and rushed. The deep-sea fish snapped its jaws so fast that the result made the cave tremble. The wave of snow hit the deep-sea fish, but instead of throwing the fish, the fish was rooted in its place, as if it could not move.

The wave of snow that hit the fish created a layer of ice on the jagged skin of the fish, and when the wave finally passed through, the deep-sea fish, instead of being encased in a block of ice, had its entire body frozen like an ice sculpture, as if the cold had not only frozen its skin but seeped into its very being and frozen its bones, muscles, and organs.

The frozen statue of the deep-sea fish began to crack. Lines began forming, and soon, the deep-sea fish exploded into a fine dust of ice, revealing the candle protected by the golden cage and a rippling bubble of qi.

Yang Liangyu held her breath. Yan Yu had said she would try to activate some of the traps, so any moment now, the traps would be activated.

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