Chapter 237: Water Mirror Memories, The First Sword Qi

On the reddish-brown cliff face, a massive crack yawned open before her. The fissure was wide enough for two or three people to walk through side by side. Rather than calling it a crack, it was more accurate to call it a cave.

What made Lian Mu hesitate wasn’t the darkness inside, but the web of sticky mucus stretched across the entrance.

This mucus was exactly like what she had encountered on the cliff earlier, but here it was much thicker and clearly fresher.

Lian Mu paused for a moment, uncertain.

How was she supposed to get through?

She had no doubt that if she walked straight in like this, by the time she reached the Red Scorched Circle, there’d be nothing left of her but bones.

Holding her sword, Lian Mu considered whether to use a burst of Moonlight sword qi. After thinking it over carefully, she decided against it.

Instead, she raised her hand, channeled spiritual energy into her sword, and stabbed the blade into the mucus web, forcefully burning it with her energy.

The mucus hardened rapidly upon contact with heat, forming a translucent crystal. With a powerful strike, Lian Mu shattered the entire web in an instant.

“Hey, Xuan Che, there aren’t any weird Demonic Creatures in this cave, are there?” Lian Mu asked.

There was no response from the Thousand Mechanisms Pagoda. The black mist at her fingertips had also vanished, which meant there were limits to Xuan Che’s ability to communicate through the pagoda. Once the time was up, the connection was forcibly severed.

She would have to wait until he woke up again.

Lian Mu tucked the Thousand Mechanisms Pagoda into the cloth pocket sewn inside her robe and stepped into the cave.

Whether there were Demonic Creatures or not, she had to see for herself.

As soon as she entered, darkness enveloped her. A small flame flared to life in her palm, casting light throughout the cave.

The moment the fire ignited, the surrounding stone walls reflected its warm orange glow.

When she saw what lay inside, Lian Mu immediately grew alert.

There were no grotesque or powerful Demonic Creatures here. Instead, the cave walls were covered in large patches of silvery-white material, clean and clear, as if she had stepped into a space made entirely of liquid mirrors. Once lit, the cave reflected her image from every angle.

Lian Mu blinked in surprise. She could sense a faint trace of Demonic Qi coming from the walls.

She slashed at the wall with her sword. The mirrored surface split apart, but quickly flowed back together like water, leaving behind a trail of silvery-white mucus.

These were Demonic Creatures.

Lian Mu narrowed her eyes. She used the same method she had used on the mucus before. Part of the mirrored surface hardened and fell off after being burned.

The gap quickly sealed itself again.

So the mucus on the cliff and at the cave entrance had been left behind by these things.

However, even after being attacked, these Demonic Creatures didn’t retaliate. Instead, they dumbly focused on repairing themselves.

It seemed they were merely a cluster of low-level Demonic Creatures.

Lian Mu picked up a fallen shard and examined it closely.

“…”

Wasn’t this exactly like the ice crystal Shen Wuxie had slipped on?

The only difference was that the ice crystal emitted cold, while this one was hot. They were the same substance, just formed under different types of spiritual energy.

Suddenly, Lian Mu realized who had dropped that ice crystal. It had to be Qian Songshi. Among all the Water Spiritual Root Chief Disciples, he was the only one who liked to catalyze his spiritual energy into ice.

Had he encountered these Demonic Creatures too?

No wonder there was mucus on the cliff. It might have been Qian Songshi’s attack that drove them back into the depths.

Lian Mu looked ahead. All she could see were endless reflections, bouncing in every direction, as if she were walking through a corridor of water mirrors.

She frowned and stabbed several more times at the same spot. More shards fell.

This time, she saw herself in one of the fragments.

The shard was like an image-recording stone, capturing the moment she struck at the mirror, freezing just before the surface shattered, and then looping the scene over and over.

Lian Mu: “?”

These Demonic Creatures… could they store memories?

The shard in her hand had just formed, so it only recorded her own image. But what about the others? Could they contain even older memories?

Curiosity sparked within her. She continued forward and broke off another piece after walking some distance.

Within the broken water mirror, two cultivators were locked in a standoff with a demonic beast. Just as they were about to defeat it, they were ambushed by the Demonic Creatures and torn apart, limbs flying.

She knocked off another shard. This time, the image showed the edge of Mist Sea Cliff at sunset, the sky awash in red. A massive fish leapt from the foggy sea, its body covered in countless eyes that spun and locked onto everything around it.

It was the Thousand-Eyed Fish Demon.

Lian Mu saw the creature in its true form. Compared to the corpse lying on the cliff now, its living presence was far more terrifying. Even just watching the image made her scalp tingle and filled her with instinctive dread.

She moved on. Out of the corner of her eye, a flash of red caught her attention.

Lian Mu stopped instinctively. In one of the smooth mirror surfaces, a streak of bright red liquid was slowly flowing.

That was when she realized the mirror surface was moving.

She reached out and gently touched the red streak. Ripples spread across the mirror like water.

Lian Mu stabbed at the red liquid. A small crystal shard broke off, but the red continued to flow within the mirror barrier.

This shard was different from the others. It was the only one that contained a color other than silver.

She held the fragment in her hand. The scene inside was still Mist Sea Cliff, but this time the Thousand-Eyed Fish Demon wasn’t in the sea. It lay motionless on the cliff’s edge.

A figure in blue stood atop its massive body, tall and straight, robes fluttering. The gemstone at the center of his violet-gold jade crown shimmered, making him look like an immortal.

Lian Mu froze. Just as the man was about to turn around, the image cut off. She didn’t get to see his face. The memory in the shard had ended.

She immediately chipped off another piece, but the image didn’t connect. The flowing mirror had already carried away the next part of the memory.

When the final shard fell, the low-level Demonic Creatures finally reached their limit. The entire cave began to shake. Instead of healing, the cracks spread outward like a spiderweb from the broken point.

Sensing something was wrong, Lian Mu stuffed the shards she had collected into her spatial pouch and sprinted forward.

Fortunately, the water mirror Demonic Creatures didn’t occupy a large area. They seemed to be temporarily nesting here, all clustered together, without extending deeper into the cave.

Once Lian Mu escaped their territory, all the mirrored surfaces behind her shattered, and the mucus sealed off the path back.

There was no turning back now, even if she wanted to.

Lian Mu let out a breath of relief, grateful she had moved quickly. Any slower, and she might not have made it out alive.

After calming herself, she didn’t waste any time and pressed on. She could study the image projections later. Life, after all, only came once.

This part of the cave was much more normal. The deeper she went, the narrower it became, but she didn’t encounter any more Demonic Creatures, which was already a stroke of luck.

She didn’t know how long she had been walking, but Lian Mu started to feel increasingly hot. Sweat soaked her body, and with her fox-fur cloak on, the heat became unbearable.

She touched the rock wall. It was scalding.

Lian Mu had a Fire Spirit Root, so ordinary heat shouldn’t have affected her. But this heat felt like it was roasting her bones.

The last time she felt something like this was… in the Fire Lava Cave of Thousand Spirit Peak!

She punched the stone wall, revealing a gap that glowed with orange light. Underground fire.

A fissure, underground flames… all these signs felt so familiar.

“Xuan Che, where exactly does this path lead?” Lian Mu couldn’t help knocking on the Thousand Mechanisms Pagoda. “You better not be setting me up.”

The Thousand Mechanisms Pagoda remained silent. A deathly silence hung in the air.

Lian Mu was a bit speechless. She had actually forgotten to ask Xuan Che this crucial question.

Please don’t let this path lead to the Red Lotus Fire Cavern.

The fire in the Fire Lava Cave of Thousand Spirit Peak could melt even a first-grade Spirit Artifact on contact, let alone the place where the flame originated.

Forget about entering the Red Lotus Fire Cavern—just passing by the mouth of the cave could be enough to burn her to ashes.

If that really was their destination, then Xuan Che must have misunderstood something about her. Sure, she didn’t stop the Red Fire Green Phoenix from clinging to her all the time, but that didn’t mean she was completely immune to fire.

Lian Mu’s heart tightened. She continued forward cautiously, only relaxing once she had passed through the scorching zone.

After a while, another stretch appeared. This time, a dense black mist loomed ahead, obscuring the deeper parts of the cave.

Within that black mist, she sensed a powerful surge of Demonic Qi. Fortunately, the fox-fur cloak she wore concealed her presence, so the Demonic Creatures within hadn’t noticed her yet.

Lian Mu’s gaze sharpened, her grip tightening around her sword. This must be what Xuan Che meant by the use of the first sword strike.