Though Shi Qinglu maintained her bravado, a faint thread of unease had begun to stir deep within her heart.
Something was clearly wrong. By all reasonable calculations, Jiang Chen should have succumbed to the poison by now. She had laid down thirty-six separate poison formations, and even if he had managed to avoid most of them, he could not possibly have dodged every last one. Even if he were powerful enough to endure the initial assault, the toxins would have been steadily corroding his body this entire time, growing weaker by the hour, his combat strength eroding until he was nothing more than a tiger with its claws and teeth pulled.
Yet the scene playing out before her eyes was utterly impossible to reconcile with that expectation.
Those bizarre vines possessed not only tremendous constriction power but also a bewildering array of transformation abilities that confounded Shi Qinglu's perception. As the most outstanding genius of the younger generation in the Hundred Sacred Ground, she excelled in every regard — her mental cultivation was far beyond that of ordinary cultivators. Yet even with her formidable spiritual sense, she could not penetrate the illusory shifts and real forms of those vines. That alone spoke volumes about the sheer sophistication of the Divine Ability Jiang Chen was employing.
This was not how a man poisoned to the brink should behave — not even close.
Shi Qinglu's mind churned with shock, but she was, after all, a leading figure among the younger generation. After a brief moment of astonishment, she forced her composure to settle once more.
Geniuses of her caliber never relied on just one or two trump cards.
A frigid gleam flickered across Shi Qinglu's face. In the next instant, a strange, oddly shaped talisman appeared in her hand. She began to chant in a low, incantatory voice: "Heaven and earth destroyed, all living things annihilated, not a blade of grass survives…"
The moment the talisman unfurled, a vortex formed around her body and expanded outward at terrifying speed. A dreadful erosive force surged outward in every direction, spreading like a wave.
The corrosive power was utterly dominant. Everywhere it reached, the grass, the trees, the vines — as though struck by some dark magic — withered in an instant, rapidly decaying into brittle husks.
Jiang Chen had been channeling the Ice Fire Demon Lotus, and the moment he sensed this fearsome erosive force, he did not dare treat it lightly. He knew at once that this destructive energy was more than capable of annihilating the Ice Fire Demon Lotus entirely. A jolt of alarm ran through him, and he retracted his Divine Ability without hesitation, withdrawing the Ice Fire Demon Lotus before it could be overtaken.
He understood perfectly that if he were even a beat too slow and allowed the erosive force to engulf all of his Ice Fire Demon Lotuses, their foundations would be destroyed — and even Jiang Chen himself would struggle to restore them.
Even he had to admit that the Poison Consort Shi Qinglu truly had some tricks up her sleeve. The destructive power of that talisman alone was enough to qualify as a half-divine level annihilation force.
However, Jiang Chen quickly determined that this erosive power was most devastating against plant spirits. While it was still effective against other living beings, its potency dropped significantly against anything that was not flora. As for magical artifacts and treasures, the corrosive force evidently had no effect whatsoever.
With that realization, Jiang Chen simply stepped out from his concealed position and landed outside the range of the erosive wave, regarding Shi Qinglu with a half-smile.
A flash of disbelief shot through Shi Qinglu's eyes as she stared at him. The sight was clearly beyond anything she had imagined.
She never would have guessed that Jiang Chen was truly, completely unscathed.
"How is this possible? How could he rescue Wu You without a scratch on him? All thirty-six poison formations were clearly triggered. Once activated, no one can evade them through speed alone! And even if he had all manner of anti-poison tools, with the sheer variety of my poison sources — five elements, eight gates — it's impossible for him to counter every single one!"
Her mind reeled with sheer disbelief.
Because of Jiang Chen's fearsome reputation, Shi Qinglu had deployed her most powerful methods when setting up these poison formations. She had used every last trick in her arsenal. Before leaving the Hundred Sacred Ground, she had even brought along many of the prized treasures held in reserve by her particular lineage — all of it laid down for this one moment.