After the young girl finished issuing orders to her disciples, she turned back to survey the swamp before her. In a faint murmur, she spoke to herself, "It seems that thing must be inside this chest. The previous locations were a complete waste of time—nothing but junk!"
Her voice was so low that none of the other disciples could hear a single word. They were all still buzzing with excitement for the coming battle.
The male and female disciples of the Hidden Moon Sect immediately stood shoulder to shoulder with their cultivation partners after the girl's command. With practiced ease, each pair extended one hand and clasped it together.
In an instant, the overlapping palms began radiating strange lights of blue and red. The light traveled up along their arms and spread throughout their entire bodies, bathing all six pairs of dual-cultivation disciples in light—the men entirely wreathed in red radiance while the women blazed with blue, creating a remarkable spectacle of interlocking colors. Only three remaining disciples—two women and one man—had already lost their cultivation partners, so they could only pull out a few magical tools from their belongings, making ordinary preparations at best.
Han Li lay prone atop the earthen mound. Though he hadn't heard the girl's muttered words, he had caught the female disciple's address of "Grandmaster" loud and clear, and the shock nearly made him bite his own tongue!
"Grandmaster of the Hidden Moon Sect"—what did that even mean? Han Li was no longer a clueless newcomer to the world of Cultivating Immortality. He understood this concept all too well. That was a Core Formation expert, on par with Grandmaster Li of his own sect! For someone of such caliber to appear in this forbidden zone—where no cultivator above the Foundation Establishment stage was supposed to enter—sent Han Li's mind into complete turmoil!
At that moment, seeing that all her disciples were ready, the young girl sprang into action with satisfaction!
Her delicate lips parted slightly, and she spat out her own magical treasure, the Vermilion Bird Ring. The object flew from her mouth and soared into the air above the swamp, spinning rapidly until it grew as large as an entire house. The girl then formed hand seals below and pointed a finger upward. A beam of red light shot from her hand into the ring, and in an instant the ring's color shifted dramatically—from pink to a blazing flame-red. Inside the ring's inner circle, tiny sparks of fire materialized, growing more numerous and brighter by the moment. Before long, hundreds of fist-sized fireballs of extreme heat had formed within the massive ring, raising the temperature of the underground world yet another few degrees.
Han Li watched from the earthen mound, his jaw hanging open in disbelief. Such overwhelming momentum, such terrifying power—if anyone told him this wasn't a magical treasure, he wouldn't believe it even if beaten to death.
Since the young girl could command a magical treasure, it was beyond doubt that she was a Core Formation cultivator. But how she had managed to infiltrate the forbidden zone, and why the magical power in her body was only at the peak of the Qi Refining stage — this chain of questions rolled through Han Li's mind several times over, yet he still could not find answers.
Before the girl could take her next step, however, the swamp below began to stir. From a point somewhere in the marsh, the muddy currents nearby started to churn, the disturbance growing ever wider and surging ever higher, gradually forming into a tall, swollen mound. The spectacle was quite awe-inspiring.
Upon seeing this, a flicker of confusion crossed the girl's face. In her memory, the Black-Scaled Flood Dragon had never displayed such overwhelming presence!
Yet, with the demonic beast about to reveal itself, the girl dared not hesitate. Her hands formed the Orchid Seal, and the enormous Vermilion Bird Ring — linked to her consciousness — began spinning in midair. In moments it had become a blur from the sheer speed of its rotation, and the hundreds of fireballs within had in the blink of an eye merged into a single blazing sea of crimson flame, fused completely as one.
"Go."
The girl's hand seals locked into place as the word slipped from her lips.
In that instant, the ring's spinning came to an abrupt, violent halt, and the sea of fire within transformed into a massive spiraling column of flame. It roared downward with ferocious momentum, blasting straight toward the swollen mound rising from the swamp.
But before the fire column could reach the marsh, with a muffled *plop*, a jet of ink-black water as thick as a bowl's mouth erupted from the mound of muck, meeting the oncoming flames head-on.
Immediately, a fierce sizzling erupted between the two. Great billows of steam rose in thick swathes, shrouding everything nearby in a dense fog until all had become a blur.
"That's not a Black-Scaled Flood Dragon!"
The girl's initially puzzled expression shifted dramatically the moment she laid eyes on the ink-black column of water, and she cried out in alarm.
As if in response to her words, a bizarre, piercing shriek erupted from within the white fog — "Aoo!" — and in the next instant, with a thunderous *whoosh*, a furious gale materialized out of thin air, sweeping every wisp of white mist aside and revealing the true face of the demon beast.
A pitch-black, serpentine creature covered in enormous scales appeared before everyone's eyes.
The beast was serpentine but not quite a serpent. It was not particularly large — only three or four zhang in length — yet its entire body was shrouded in a faint layer of black mist that gave it an eerie, otherworldly aura. In appearance, from head to tail, it looked no different from an ordinary black python, with the exception of its coat of lustrous, ink-dark scales.
"Ink Flood Dragon!"
The moment the girl made out the creature's features, the name escaped her lips in a stricken cry, her face clouded by a mixture of worry and surprise.