After lining up to receive their wooden tokens and verifying their identities, Zhu Mingyan grabbed Ning Qiubai’s hand, and the two stepped into the light curtain together.
The moment she entered, Zhu Mingyan felt a powerful force pulling at her body. After a dizzying spin, a strong feeling of weightlessness suddenly hit her.
Her face changed in shock. She quickly opened her eyes and looked down.
She was falling from more than ten meters in the air!
The wind roared in her ears. Squinting her eyes, Zhu Mingyan judged the timing of her landing, adjusted her posture, rolled twice after hitting the ground, and quickly regained her footing.
Hongzhui and Fuchuan landed behind her shortly afterward and immediately began watching their surroundings cautiously.
Ning Qiubai was not so lucky.
Unlike Zhu Mingyan, she was an alchemist with almost no combat experience, and her physical skills were terrible. The fall left her seeing stars. She lay on the ground for quite a while before recovering.
“Aren’t we incredibly unlucky? ” Ning Qiubai complained while rubbing her sore body.
“I’ve never heard of anyone entering a secret realm by being thrown out of the sky.”
Zhu Mingyan was also confused.
The only reason she had landed safely was because her cultivation had declined over the years. To survive missions, she had spent a lot of time training her body and improving her ability to dodge attacks.
But for alchemists, healers, fortune-tellers, or newly joined disciples who rarely fought, a fall like that could easily cause serious injuries even with spiritual energy protecting them.
Secret realms were meant to provide combat training opportunities, not cripple disciples.
She had entered many secret realms in her previous life and had never encountered anything like this.
“…Maybe it isn’t bad luck,” Zhu Mingyan said.
“You mean someone did this on purpose? ” Ning Qiubai quickly understood.
“They were probably targeting you.”
Zhu Mingyan thought so too. Ning Qiubai and her master were too insignificant within the inner sect to be worth targeting.
Feeling guilty, Zhu Mingyan said,
“Sorry. I dragged you into this.”
Ning Qiubai waved her hand and cheerfully slapped her shoulder.
“You know that, right? As compensation, my life is in your hands for the next three days.”
“You can trust me,” Zhu Mingyan replied seriously.
“Actually, I already have a suspect.”
She paused before continuing.
“I think it was Guan Congnan.”
…
Not far away, a group of five disciples had just landed.
Leading them was a young man around seventeen or eighteen years old. He clearly held a high position among them. While observing the surroundings, he compared what he saw with a map in his hand.
“Senior Brother Guan, where are we going? ” someone asked impatiently.
Before Guan could answer, a disciple beside him glared at the speaker.
“Quiet. My senior brother is studying the map. Wait for his instructions.”
“Yes, yes. With the map prepared by the Vice Sect Master, we’ll definitely gain a lot from this trip.”
The others immediately stopped urging him.
After studying the map for a while longer, the young man pointed toward a marked location in the northwest corner.
“We’ll go here first.”
Everyone gathered around to look.
The mark was drawn as a cave, with handwritten notes beneath it.
One disciple immediately read it aloud.
“This is—”
“Is this the Northern Jade Cave? ” Zhu Mingyan asked in surprise.
An hour earlier, after entering the realm, they had no intention of competing for first place.
After a short rest, they flipped a coin to decide which direction to travel. Along the way, they easily dealt with a few young fire chickens and fire birds and collected some spiritual plants.
Just as they were about to continue, a thick fog suddenly blocked the road ahead.
Zhu Mingyan immediately recognized it as an illusion array.
After spending some time finding the formation’s core, she and Ning Qiubai successfully broke it.
The fog disappeared, revealing the entrance to a cave.
The interior was pitch-black and impossibly deep. As they approached, a cold wind carrying damp air rushed out from within.
Searching through her memories, Zhu Mingyan finally remembered reading about the Northern Jade Cave before.
Ning Qiubai had never heard of it.
“How do you know this place? ” she asked curiously.
“The Burning Heart Secret Realm was originally obtained by my master. When I used to organize documents for him, I saw maps in his study. They weren’t detailed, but they recorded several important locations within the realm.”
“I see.”
Ning Qiubai nodded.
Zhu Mingyan continued analyzing.
“My master has a pure fire spiritual root, and this secret realm has been nurtured within his spiritual sea. Based on my guess, fire-type monsters here should be particularly powerful, while water-type monsters should be somewhat weakened.”
“According to the records, there is an underground river inside the Northern Jade Cave. A Three-Tailed Fish Dragon with two hundred years of cultivation lives there.”
“The cave is also filled with water-aligned spirits and many rare spiritual plants growing on the walls. There are plenty of treasures to be found.”
“More importantly, there is nothing else around this cave. The monsters here aren’t fire-type either, making it an unpopular destination. Aside from unlucky people who happen to spawn here, few disciples deliberately come.”
Ning Qiubai agreed.
“That makes sense. Places with too many people often lead to conflicts. My master always says that sometimes people are more dangerous than monsters.”
“In that case, let’s explore the cave.”
The two immediately agreed and entered the Northern Jade Cave one after the other.
Fuchuan and Hongzhui followed closely behind.
The cave had no light source at all.
It was dark and gloomy, making it difficult to see anything.
Occasionally, droplets of water fell from the ceiling, creating echoes throughout the cave.
Zhu Mingyan raised a small flame in her palm to provide light.
Before she could do anything else, Fuchuan suddenly pounced on her!
Caught off guard, she had no time to react.
The black dog stretched out its tongue and swallowed the entire flame in one gulp.
The cave instantly returned to darkness.
“Fuchuan! What are you doing?! ” Ning Qiubai shouted.
She was already afraid of the dark and had been walking at the back. The sudden loss of light frightened her badly.
Fuchuan immediately put on a pitiful expression, as if it were the victim.
It grabbed Zhu Mingyan’s sleeve and tugged her toward a particular direction.
Zhu Mingyan was about to scold it when Hongzhui lightly bit her ear.
That was Hongzhui’s signal that it wanted to speak.
As soon as their spiritual connection formed, Hongzhui’s urgent voice echoed in her mind.
“Don’t light a fire! The Three-Tailed Fish Dragon is nearby! ”
Boom!
The moment Hongzhui finished speaking, a deafening explosion echoed through the darkness.
Something enormous burst from the underground river.
A massive tail slammed violently into the water, turning the previously calm river into a raging torrent.
Zhu Mingyan immediately jumped backward.
At the same time, she grabbed the terrified Ning Qiubai, whose legs had frozen in place.
After calming her breathing, she spread out her spiritual sense and searched for the Three-Tailed Fish Dragon.
Unfortunately, her current cultivation was too weak to pinpoint its exact location.
Ning Qiubai quickly reacted.
She pulled a recovery pill from one of the bottles hanging at her waist and stuffed it into Zhu Mingyan’s hand.
With the pill in her mouth, Zhu Mingyan asked Hongzhui through their spiritual link,
“Does it fear light? ”
Hongzhui answered immediately.
“Not just it. There are many monsters in this cave. They’ve lived underground without seeing sunlight for years. Sudden light will agitate all of them.”
“Then they must fear fire too, right? ”
“Are you crazy? ” Hongzhui cried out in disbelief.
“There are countless spirits here, along with rare spiritual plants found nowhere else. If you release your spirit fire, you’ll wake everything up! ”
“And your spirit fire isn’t something you should casually use—”
Zhu Mingyan ignored the warning.
She bit down on the pill.
A wave of warm spiritual energy instantly spread through her body.
Extending her spiritual sense, she gathered blazing spirit fire into her palm.
After observing the underground river for a moment, she finally located the Three-Tailed Fish Dragon.
Without hesitation, she leaped into the air.
Then she raised her hand and unleashed a devastating attack directly at the creature.
A thunderous explosion shook the cave.
The entire underground river instantly began to boil as her spirit fire turned the water into steam.