Demoness's Art of Vengeance

“Cough…” Rong Ruihan’s throat gurgled, and he spat out a mouthful of blood, “Xiaomo?”

His vision was already substantially obscured by his own blood, and everything appeared blurry to him at times. It was only moments ago that he saw a lady who bore similar appearances to Jun Xiaomo busy avoiding fireballs in the distance, so he immediately rushed over towards her. Who would’ve thought it would actually be Jun Xiaomo in the flesh?!

“It’s me, Brother Rong. Are these injuries on your body all from the fireballs?” Jun Xiaomo asked anxiously.

Under the illumination of the Nightgleam Pearl, Jun Xiaomo could see that there was not a single part of Rong Ruihan’s body that was unharmed by the fireballs. His clothes were torn and tattered and charred in many places, while the skin underneath had become nothing more than a mangled mess. It was evident just how much he had been battered by the relentless onslaught of fireballs.

“What are you doing here?” Rong Ruihan furrowed his brows and sidestepped Jun Xiaomo’s question, “This place is extremely dangerous. What are you doing coming into this place?!”

“I was initially thinking of rescuing you from this spirit tool. Unfortunately, Dai Yanfeng trapped me inside before I could do anything.” Jun Xiaomo explained succinctly.

Just then, several other fireballs began to rush towards them, and Rong Ruihan immediately pulled Jun Xiaomo towards himself and dodged to the side. Although he managed to protect Jun Xiaomo, he had also inadvertently exposed his back to the fireball’s attack.

With a muffled groan, Rong Ruihan collapsed to the ground under the excruciating pain from the fireball’s corrosive, burning effects.

“Brother Rong!” Jun Xiaomo could feel Rong Ruihan slumping to the ground, and she reflexively put her arms around Rong Ruihan’s back, thinking to support him back up.

Unfortunately, Rong Ruihan’s back had just sustained a fresh wound from the fireball’s strike. When Jun Xiaomo wrapped her arms around his back, she inadvertently touched the raw, fresh wound, drawing yet another muffled groan from Rong Ruihan’s lips.

She immediately retracted her hand. Then, when she stole a glance at her hands, she noticed that her entire palm was covered in a striking-red colour of blood.

It was only at this moment that Jun Xiaomo realized just how much Rong Ruihan’s back was covered in his own blood.

“Brother Rong, hurry! Take this recovery pill right now.” Jun Xiaomo retrieved several bottles of recovery pills from her Interspatial Ring and poured out a few pills with her trembling hands, stuffing them straight towards Rong Ruihan’s mouth.

“No…it’s no use.” Rong Ruihan steeled his spirits and pushed Jun Xiaomo’s hands away slowly. Then, placing his palms gingerly around Jun Xiaomo’s cheeks, he looked straight into Jun Xiaomo’s eyes as he spoke, “Xiaomo, listen to me. The attacks here are periodic and cyclical. Furthermore, they would generally only target a single person. Once the attacks begin to mount again later on, I want you to apply an Invisibility Talisman on your own body and run to the right. This way, the attacks would remain here, and you would be able to hang in there a little while longer. Ye Xiuwen would never forsake you in here.”

“No! I can’t let Brother Rong remain here, dealing with all the fireballs alone. If we’re going to run, we going to run together!” Jun Xiaomo barked unyieldingly.

“Running together will never work!” Rong Ruihan coughed several times, spitting out a few mouthfuls of blood, before anxiously furrowing his brows, “If we run together, the number of fireballs around us will only increase, and we might not even be able to survive a single wave of attacks.”

“Didn’t Brother Rong say that Invisibility Talismans work in this place? If that’s the case, we can both use Invisibility Talismans!” As Jun Xiaomo spoke, she retrieved several Invisibility Talismans from her Interspatial Ring and attempted to apply one onto Rong Ruihan’s body.

“Don’t! Don’t waste your Invisibility Talismans on me.” Rong Ruihan rejected vehemently as he looked sternly at Jun Xiaomo, “I’m not sure how long its going to take them to open up the spirit tool from the outside. Xiaomo, the longer you can hold out, the more hope there is.”

“Brother Rong, I don’t know how long it’s going to take for us to leave this place either. That said, we’ve come today with the goal of rescuing you. If I leave this place alone, then everything that we’ve done up to now would be completely meaningless. Thus, please will stop ceding the opportunity to live on to me. If we’re going to leave this place, we’ll leave this place together!” Jun Xiaomo looked up and stared straight back into Rong Ruihan’s eyes as she uttered every single word with an unyielding resolve and a glimmer in her eyes.

The immense pain plaguing Rong Ruihan’s body had already begun to mess with his vision, causing things to appear blurry at times.

However, it was precisely under such circumstances that the penetrating gaze in Jun Xiaomo’s eyes became even starker and more incisive, cutting through the blurry vision and piercing straight into his heart, as though declaring that they would most certainly make it out alive!

Rong Ruihan’s heart trembled slightly. For the very first time, he recanted on his earlier intention to sacrifice himself for Jun Xiaomo’s sake, and he was once again filled with a flourishing vigor undergirding his renewed will to live.

“Alright. Then let’s escape this place alive.” Rong Ruihan caressed Jun Xiaomo’s cheeks lightly for a moment before setting his hand down again.

Then, he received an Invisibility Talisman from Jun Xiaomo’s hands and applied it onto his own body.

These were high-grade Invisibility Talismans which allowed a person to conceal both his appearances as well as his aura. Jun Xiaomo smiled, before applying a piece of the same on her own body as well.

As soon as they appeared to vanish into thin air, the spirit tool’s attacks also thinned out substantially, allowing Jun Xiaomo and Rong Ruihan to avoid the attacks with ease.

“Let’s go. We’ll take a look at whether there’s any means of leaving this place from the inside.” Jun Xiaomo addressed the still-invisible Rong Ruihan.

A spirit tool’s offensive abilities were the manifestation of a formation array when all was said and done. Spirit tool craftsmen would often inscribe complex diagrams on various parts of the spirit tools. In turn these mysterious, profound diagrams were invariably built upon the same rules that formation arrays were built on.

Thus, Jun Xiaomo sincerely believed that there might be a possibility of escaping the spirit tool’s domain on their own strength as long as she was able to locate such a formation array and deactivate it.

Even though the possibility of success was low, this was still far better than sitting idly while waiting for their deaths.

Jun Xiaomo would cling onto any strand of hope she could find!

Meanwhile, just as Jun Xiaomo and Rong Ruihan set out searching for a means of extricating themselves from the spirit tool’s domain, Ye Xiuwen had also begun to attempt his refinement of this spirit tool.

He knew that the only hope of releasing Jun Xiaomo and Rong Ruihan from the spirit tool laid in becoming the spirit tool’s new owner through the successful refinement of the spirit tool.

However, refining Dai Yanfeng’s spirit tool was easier said than done. After centuries upon centuries of its existence, the spirit tool had already begun to develop a certain sense of self-awareness. To make matters worse, the spirit tool had already devoured and absorbed a substantial amount of grievances and resentment from the souls of the persons it had trapped within its domain. At this point in time, it might be far more accurate to describe this spirit tool as a demonic tool than a spirit tool. It was most certainly going to be an uphill task if one were to overcome the vile energies swirling within it and refine it with spiritual energy.

Ye Xiuwen had already discovered this. When he first attempted to infuse the spirit tool with his spiritual energy, his probative attempt was immediately met with a fierce resistance, and he suddenly felt a burst of intense, vile emotions surge through in his mind.

Ye Xiuwen’s heart constricted, and he immediately fought hard to keep the clarity of his own mind, furiously battling against the powerful emotions of rage, hatred, resentment and grievance swelling in his heart.

Fortunately, Ye Xiuwen had always been a man of steel resolve, and he did not succumb to the influence of these intense, vile emotions. Slowly but surely, he began to suppress the vile emotions and send them straight back into the heart of the spirit tool once more.

Then, as Ye Xiuwen continued to suffuse his spiritual energy through the spirit tool, his spiritual energy began to wash away the traces of Dai Yanfeng’s spiritual energy remaining within the spirit tool.

This was an important process in refining any spirit tool – that is, to erase any traces of the spirit tool’s previous owner before indelibly etching one’s own spiritual energy onto the same.

Fortunately, the spirit tool’s previous owner, Dai Yanfeng had already passed on. Otherwise, his spiritual energy would never have been erased so smoothly and easily.

After completing the process of washing away Dai Yanfeng’s spiritual energy, Ye Xiuwen retrieved a small shiv from his Interspatial Ring and cut his own wrist.

“Martial Brother Ye!” Chen Feiyu and the other Heavenly Peak disciples looked worriedly at Ye Xiuwen. None of them could shake off the feeling that Martial Brother Ye was treading on thin ice right now.

However, Ye Xiuwen remained completely taciturn and ignored his martial brothers’ anxious cries. Instead, he calmly placed his bleeding wrist on one of the grooves on the spirit tool. As soon as he did so, the spirit tool began to absorb the energies from his body furiously.

“Ungh…” Ye Xiuwen groaned. The feeling of having his energy forcibly extricated from his body was incredibly painful, almost akin to the feeling of having one’s nerves plucked and pulled. Ye Xiuwen collapsed onto the ground as he struggled hard to hang in there.

The Heavenly Peak disciples looked at Ye Xiuwen with immense concern in their eyes. However, given the delicate situation Ye Xiuwen was in right now, none of the other martial brothers dared to interrupt him.

After all, it was far more dangerous to Ye Xiuwen if the process of refinement were interrupted midway.

This spirit tool was one that was of an incredibly high grade and quality, and the amount of energy and strength required to refine it was also commensurately much higher than most others. If not for the fact that Ye Xiuwen had already attained the advanced-tier Nascent Soul stage of cultivation, his body might already have been drained dry of all its energy by now.

Ye Xiuwen gritted his teeth and hung on bitterly. Gradually, his eyes grew more and more bloodshot, and the bulging veins on his forehead began to throb uncontrollably as well.

There was only a single thought in his mind right now – Jun Xiaomo was waiting for him to rescue her, and he could not afford to be felled by a simple spirit tool!

Perhaps it was the immense willpower that allowed him to overcome the spirit tool’s powerful force, but as the pain in Ye Xiuwen’s body gradually began to subside, he also began to discover a gentle pulse emanating from the heart of the spirit tool.

This was evidence that the spirit tool had begun to yield to his authority.

Then, after what felt like an eternity, and just as Ye Xiuwen’s strength and energy began to wane and run dry, the spirit tool suddenly let out an ear-piercing shriek, reverberating endlessly throughout his eardrums. Then, in the very next moment, an intense wave of dark energy comprising all of the vile, intense emotions within the spirit tool surged into Ye Xiuwen’s body through the spirit tool.

Ye Xiuwen’s mind went blank, and he fell straight to the ground, collapsing just beside the spirit tool.

“Martial Brother Ye!”

“Martial Brother Ye!”

The Heavenly Peak disciples ran over immediately, scrambling to help Ye Xiuwen back up.

Ye Xiuwen’s face was incredibly pale; his eyes were tightly shut; his lips were devoid of any colour of blood; and his limbs were freezing cold. The Heavenly Peak disciples were awash with distress and fright.

“Martial Brother Ye, Martial Brother Ye?” Chen Feiyu patted Ye Xiuwen’s cheeks, attempting to rouse him from his stupor.

Unfortunately, Ye Xiuwen appeared to have slipped into a comatose, and he did not respond to any of his martial brothers’ calls.

“Seems like Martial Brother Ye has completely passed out.” Chen Feiyu furrowed his brows.

“That…then has Martial Brother Ye succeeded in the refinement of the spirit tool? Will Little Martial Sister be able to escape?” Another one of the Heavenly Peak disciples wondered aloud with worry plastered all over his face.

The other Heavenly Peak disciples who heard his comments exchanged glances sheepishly, responding with nothing more than their silence.

Back in the spirit tool, Jun Xiaomo suddenly looked up and murmured under her breath, “I thought I sensed Martial Brother Ye’s aura for a moment there…”