If it were anyone else, they might not know what this item was, but Qin Yu knew it crystal clear.
This was the crystallization of all spiritual-enhancing elixirs, essentially the concentrated, crystal version of the Heavenly Origin Sacred Fruit.
While it might not hold much practical value for those who cultivated spiritual energy, for someone like Qin Yu who practiced spiritual power, it was an absolute game-changer.
Carefully stowing the storage bag away, Qin Yu stepped out of the room feeling like a guilty thief caught in the act.
It seemed she truly lacked the temperament of a protagonist, feeling such profound guilt just for unearthing a moderately useful treasure.
As soon as she stepped outside, however, she froze in her tracks because waiting for her by the doorway was none other than Yu Qingya.
What was going on here? Qin Yu felt a wave of surprise. Shouldn’t Yu Qingya be leading the team right now? After all, Yu Qingya possessed the highest cultivation level among everyone entering the secret realm and was the youngest sect leader, so surely she should be staying close to her disciples.
“Older Sister, why are you out here?” Qin Yu asked, looking at Yu Qingya with mild astonishment.
Yu Qingya offered a gentle smile. “I simply could not feel entirely at ease leaving you behind, so I handed the team’s command over to Su Qing and came straight out to find you.”
It was a perfectly acceptable and logical explanation, yet for some reason, Qin Yu felt a faint sense of dissonance, though she pushed the thought aside for the moment.
The two of them walked and chatted along the way until they reached an area where the black fog grew increasingly dense, at which point Qin Yu abruptly halted her steps.
Turning her head, Yu Qingya looked at her with a puzzled expression. “Xiaoyou, why did you suddenly stop walking?”
Fixing her gaze on the person wearing Yu Qingya’s face, Qin Yu let out a cold laugh. “Cheng Xia, since you have already chased me all the way here, is there really any need to keep hiding behind someone else’s appearance?”
Qin Yu’s tone was piercing and glacial. Clearly, she intensely disliked anyone daring to wear Yu Qingya’s face to deceive her.
Even though she knew the person before her was a fake, for some reason, the sight of it left a deeply unsettling itch in her heart.
“Oh?”
With a flick of her hand and a twist of her body, the figure before her shed the disguise, reverting to her own alluring face while an expression of intense excitement bloomed across her features. “You are becoming more and more interesting by the day. But tell me, how on earth did you manage to see through me?”
Being recognized did not annoy Cheng Xia in the least; if anything, it only fueled her eagerness to test her mettle.
Perhaps this was simply how villains thought, always so wonderfully bizarre and eccentric.
“You clearly do not understand Yu Qingya at all. You only knew that our relationship is close, so you assumed the shape of her to lure me out. What you failed to realize, however, is that she is a person of immense responsibility. She would never abandon her companions and disregard their safety merely for the sake of personal attachments. On that single point alone, you gave yourself away from the very beginning.”
As she finished speaking, Qin Yu understood where her initial sense of discomfort had stemmed from. While the sight of that face had initially startled her, she knew deep down that Yu Qingya would never shirk her duty toward her disciples.
After all, back at the Lotus Pavilion when other sects had hovered like wolves eyeing their prey, how could Yu Qingya possibly abandon the safety of her teammates just to wander off looking for her?
“Is that so? How unfortunate. Still, are you not feeling the least bit heartbroken knowing she didn’t actually come looking for you?” Cheng Xia asked with a smirk.
She found it genuinely baffling. Her illusion technique had always effortlessly fooled countless individuals, yet this young girl had unraveled it with just a few sentences.
And upon learning that the other person had not come to search for her, the girl showed no trace of sorrow or disappointment. Was every old adage about human selfishness entirely false after all?
“You lack that level of stature, so naturally you can never reach that realm of thought.” Qin Yu sneered. “However, if you only came here to sow discord between our relationship, I advise you to turn right back around.”
Qin Yu knew the other woman’s motives couldn’t possibly be as simple as just commenting on her dynamic with Yu Qingya. Under normal circumstances, Cheng Xia should be trying to drag out the time to maximize her own safety margin. But Qin Yu simply could not stomach hearing anyone speak ill of Yu Qingya, leaving her with zero patience to spar with her verbally.
“I truly never imagined you wouldn’t let a single word spoken against her slide.” Cheng Xia’s lips curled into a grin. “In that case, I will give you two choices: either I kill you right here, or you come with me.”
Cheng Xia felt supremely confident in her position. Anyone with half a brain knew how to choose; while not everyone was terrified of death, very few people actually wanted to die.
To her utter astonishment, however, Qin Yu’s next words twisted Cheng Xia’s expression into one of sheer distortion.
“I choose death. Go ahead and kill me.”
Maintaining her calm, indifferent expression, Qin Yu simply stood there quietly watching Cheng Xia without a shred of terror in her eyes.
Now it was Cheng Xia’s turn to feel bewildered. During their previous encounter, the person standing before her had fought desperately while trying every ounce of self-control to hide her jitters, yet she had still managed to pick up on the girl’s underlying tension.
Back then, a large crowd of people had been present as well. Today, however, the girl stood entirely alone, yet radiated zero emotional turbulence whatsoever.
“Are you not afraid? This time is completely different from before, and I will not hold back,” Cheng Xia threatened, attempting to intimidate her.
Yet Qin Yu’s expression remained utterly unruffled, as if the memory of being beaten to a pulp last time belonged to a stranger entirely.
“Cheng Xia, make your move.”
Defying expectations, Qin Yu refused to dodge this time. Instead, she took the initiative and lunged straight at her opponent.
Never expecting the girl to attack so abruptly and with such lightning speed, Cheng Xia was caught off guard and forced back two paces before she could fully react.
A triumphant smirk tugged at the corner of Qin Yu’s lips. It seemed her deduction had hit the mark.
Flustered and enraged, Cheng Xia immediately unleashed a ferocious, aggressive barrage of counterattacks.
After trading blows for several intense rounds, both of them were breathing heavily. Panting, Cheng Xia spat out, “Qin Yu, stop struggling in vain.”
Ignoring her entirely, Qin Yu posed a pointed question instead: “Cheng Xia, your current strength shouldn’t exceed the sixth level of spiritual power, am I right?”
Cheng Xia’s countenance shifted drastically, entirely caught off guard by how effortlessly the girl had zeroed in on her fatal weakness.
Indeed, if a barrier suppressed spiritual energy in this domain, it naturally suppressed spiritual power as well. That was precisely why Cheng Xia had resorted to intimidating Qin Yu, hoping to force her back to the foreign clans voluntarily.
By doing so, she could avoid exposing her suppressed strength while successfully capturing Qin Yu to use as living nourishment or a pawn for her people. Never in her wildest dreams had she expected her limitation to be exposed so quickly.
Even so, what if her power had been capped below the sixth level?
“Qin Yu, even with my strength suppressed, dealing with you is still more than enough!” Hatred dripped from Cheng Xia’s eyes, her body trembling slightly with incandescent rage.
“Is that so? Why don’t you take another look?”
A playful, mocking smile crept onto Qin Yu’s face. She was toying with her opponent like a cat playing with a doomed mouse, except this time, the roles had been completely reversed.
Struggling to mobilize her spiritual power, Cheng Xia was horrified to discover that the majority of her reserves had already been depleted. The realization struck her like a bucket of ice water: Qin Yu had deliberately provoked her into executing continuous heavy attacks earlier simply to bleed her dry of energy.
“So what if you drained me? Do you seriously intend to drag me down with you in a mutual destruction pact?” Cheng Xia figured that even in her weakened state, her foundational strength gave her the upper hand.
Before she could finish the thought, however, Qin Yu retrieved a Heavenly Spirit Pill, crunched it down between her teeth, and chewed. “What about now?”