"Alright…" With bloodshot eyes, Jun Li opened the lid of her cauldron for what she hoped was the last time, at least, until she left the Earth Dragon's Grave. "Good…!" Looking over the blood in her cauldron, which shone with unnatural clarity, like a pure, flowing metal, she tipped the cauldron over, allowing it to spill into a prepared crater.

  In the span of a dozen hours, Jun Li had rendered down the mutant beast's blood to the point that even she couldn't distinguish it from Little Yun's.

  Due to the state Little Yun was in, Jun Li elected to render her result into a medicinal bath. 'Although I don't want you to drown, so…' Stowing her cauldron, Jun Li shifted Little Yun's body, moving the vials that had long since fed their silver into the snake's body.

  "Wake up." Jun Li sat next to Little Yun's head and commanded it, to no immediate response. 'Hah… has it been too long? This place really messed them up…'

  "Come on… wake up and follow along like you always do." She jostled the snake, feeling around its body for any sign of life, and although her heart sank momentarily at the inevitable thoughts that crept into her mind, she did indeed feel the meek warmth and pulse of her companion.

  "Damn it…" Although she didn't want to prove it to herself, Jun Li believed she knew Little Yun's nature and the nature of their relationship.

  With only a moment's hesitation, Jun Li reached into her Spatial Ring. "This is who you're following, right?" She quickly tore open her wrist with a knife, allowing blood to flow down the snake's head with alarming speed.

  As if in response to the warmth and scent, Little Yun's tongue flicked out. "Figures…" As Jun Li muttered to herself, the snake slowly stirred, pulled away from its paralysis by the influence of the old immortal, Tanxueshe.

  However terrible the lingering will of a great Demonic Beast like the Earth Dragon was, especially for a young Magical Beast, it couldn't compare to that of a true Immortal.

  Little Yun's eyes cleared; the invisible haze of fear that had blinded the snake had been blown away by a new influence. When the snake's eyes peered about, free of anxiety and unease, the first thing it saw was the indescribably sombre expression on Jun Li's face.

  It didn't know how to interpret those complex, human emotions. That expression represented something beyond the cognition of a Magical Beast.

  Little Yun watched as Jun Li's lips moved, saying something it didn't understand. Even so, the intent behind her words buried itself into the snake's mind, overwriting the banalities of its bestial instinct.

  Slithering to where it was pointed, Little Yun slowly descended into the crater of glassy, reflective blood, its eyes almost not understanding the liquid nature of the still, reflective surface.

  Feeling a heat that bordered on pain, the snake swam on instinct, but couldn't fully leave the crater under its obligation. It would stay here until either it was recalled or the blood was gone.

  Even as the comforting presence of Tanxueshe faded from the serpent, and the painful gaze of the Earth Dragon's traces returned, it could not go against its instructions. It would stay here, focusing on the Earth Dragon, inundating itself once more with its lingering intent, and allowing it to guide the blood's energy.

  Although Little Yun didn't understand these instructions fully, it knew how to follow them.

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  … … … … … …

  Walking over a pillar of the grave's northern cauldron, Jun Li's brows furrowed tensely without her knowledge, an uncomfortable weight forming in her gut.

  Her interaction with Little Yun had left her feeling more wretched than she had in a long time, and the criticism of the Immortal who called himself 'Junzi' in front of her continued to weigh on her.

  She didn't believe his actual words carried any weight. Despite his incalculably powerful past, to her, he just sounded like a madman.

  'Some non-killing doctrine? What the hell is that supposed to be? Weren't you a Cultivator?' She clicked her tongue. 'You reached the peak of the mountain and threw away the tools you used to climb, then you look back and shame the rest of us for using tools ourselves? What shit…!'

  A deep rumbling in the air shook Jun Li's body, sending dull pain through her barely healed injuries, injuries that only reminded her more of 'Junzi.'

  Looking up, Jun Li was not surprised to see where her feet had led her.

  Looming far over her, an immense beast craned its neck down, its maw slowly peeled back to reveal its reddened gums, and its deep growling shook the very air.

  The wolf-like beast did not take kindly to Jun Li's intrusion on its pillar, and even sensing her Cultivation, it didn't back down.

  "Good… good…" A semblance of energy returned to Jun Li's downcast expression, an unsightly smile appearing on her face. Ice bloomed across her right arm, spreading out like a long, enclosed gauntlet, and thickening to great proportions.

  Shifting her frozen arm, Jun Li allowed it to melt momentarily under the pressure of her movements, forming gaps and folds as she curled and extended her arms and fingers, just enough to allow her a full range of motion before she ceased the ice's melting.

  "I need to blow off some steam…" Clenching her now gauntleted fist, Jun Li looked up, matching the beast's gaze and speaking insincerely. "Sorry, but the cost is your miserable death."

  … … … … … …

  "Will you be alright…?" Far away, in the eastern reaches of the Earth Dragon's Grave, Gao Feng was tended to by Qian Ruo and had only just begun to recover enough to stand. "...Yeah… my body isn't as injured as my dignity."

  His injuries from the technique Jun Li used to incapacitate Qin Yihua and Guan Heng had been severe, to the point that it was a miracle he was able to stand against her in the moment.

  Looking out of the shallow cave, Gao Feng peered down the sheer cliff that lacked anything a mortal human would call a foothold. "You sure picked a hell of a spot…" Gao Feng sighed as he looked out over the rocky, pockmarked wastelands that defined the Grave's east.

  Although the rifts and cliffs that covered the landscape were problematic for most creatures to navigate, they were barely an inconvenience for the massive burrowing insects that swarmed below the surface of these wastes.

  Sitting down at the edge of the cave, his legs dangling off the sheer drop, Gao Feng let out a sigh. "Shit…" The resentment he felt when bedridden no longer felt like something that 'couldn't be helped,' and intensified to the point he couldn't stand it. "Shit…!"

  Gritting his teeth, Gao Feng planted his fist into the stone beside him and felt an agonizing tension bloom in his lungs. The humiliation of being patronized, the indignity of being favored and ignored by an enemy who didn't take him seriously.

  "That… damn bitch…!" His heart rose in his chest, strangling him with a hateful fury he had never known. Although Gao Feng had fought many who had looked down on him and suffered the insults of many onlooking crowds who scorned him, nothing had pained him as terribly as Jun Li's words.

  "You're not getting out of this place in one piece…" Grasping the escape talisman on his robe, Gao Feng tore it off, pulling a great strip of fabric away in the same pull, before throwing it out of the cave. Within seconds, the talisman vanished from his sight.

  "Cousin Qian…!" Gao Feng called out, turning his head. "I, uh… yes?" She hesitantly responded, feeling some unease at how rapidly his demeanor had worsened and his intensity had risen.

  With a smile as stiff and vague as stone, Gao Feng spoke. "...You're gonna help me do some stupid shit!"