Chapter 306: Edict Map

Pei Ye suddenly felt that he had left that purple bamboo realm. That poisonous flame that pressed the mind-spirit from time to time disappeared, and the feeling of being unable to distinguish between truth and illusion also disappeared. The fog and purple bamboo all disappeared here, and the outside air had never been so relaxed and pleasant.

And here... were traces of more than a hundred people occupying it.

Compared to the silence of the emptiness in the bamboo forest, these traces were so numerous that they were dazzling, and it was impossible to describe them one by one—what would be left if more than a hundred people lived in one place, that was what it looked like here.

But there were also some things that were not normal, for example, a large number of broken, blood-stained clothes.

They fixed Pei Ye's gaze at the very beginning.

Large and small, men, women, old, and young. Their owners didn't even leave a single hair, and together with the various relics before their death, they were all abandoned and piled here.

There were also some people who were restricted to a fixed area, about twenty or thirty of them. They had once been motionless and locked there, but it was hard to say they were prisoners—from the residual traces, their status was even the highest part.

Pei Ye gasped and approached, looking around at all this, and when that familiar fire talisman entered his eyes, he finally understood what kind of place this was.

The place where the evil sect that Zihuang had accidentally entered once occupied, they had once prepared here to go to welcome the Qiongqi that was about to descend.

No wonder the Immortal Platform in the Divine Capital didn't find their traces after receiving the news... they had been occupying this secret realm, and before leaving, they also took back all the traces from the outside.

But this was not entirely a place for hiding and throwing away. Pei Ye moved his gaze to the center, where there was a ritual-like remnant—in the middle of the open space, a high stone tablet was built. On the side facing the high platform, there was a circular, mirror-like depression, quite huge, about seven chi in diameter.

I don't know what they used it for, but it was already empty now.

But this was not the time to check this place carefully. The young girl was still fighting alone with that Divine Son above, and the time in the mind-spirit could not be counted by the outside world. Perhaps in the next moment they would decide the winner.

Pei Ye turned around to climb the platform again, but just as his field of vision swept across the pile of old clothes again, something suddenly fixed his gaze.

A piece of men's silk clothing.

These dirty and scattered clothes were mostly gray coarse cloth, because the Candle Sect kidnapped people mostly in poor areas and mostly sought people without support. And they were mostly dirty and muddy, also because of the long days of traveling through Xincang.

But this one had good fabric and was clean on the surface. It was clearly washed. More importantly, beside it, there was a huge luggage bag thrown there.

Pei Ye was stunned for a moment, and then he reacted to what this was.

Zhang Zijing's relics.

He and Zihuang accidentally entered here and died. After the Candle Sect cleaned up the traces outside, they threw everything in here.

Pei Ye's muscles and bones were broken at this moment. He wanted to take a step but staggered again. He only gasped and gestured with his bleeding finger, and the Black Chi immediately understood his meaning, swept over, and picked up this luggage bag to dissect it.

The Candle Sect clearly hadn't searched it. Various miscellaneous items were scattered on the ground, and among all the big and small sundries, Pei Ye bit onto the long one at a glance.

A scroll of calligraphy and painting two chi wide.

Pei Ye took it with trembling injured fingers, and blood had already dripped onto it from his chin first.

————

Li Piaoqing entered the state of mind from reality for the first time.

Entering Spirit.

The falling sensation made her mind-spirit, which had long been unable to bear the burden, feel tearing pain again. And when she finally stood here and opened her eyes, she tightened her pupils in suffocation again.

She had not used the Transmitting Heart-Candle many times, but she also knew that such a scene was definitely not what a person's state of mind should look like.

There was nothing that could be called a shape. Broken, collapsed, buried, flying... it was like a city built of dead wood being rubbed and rotten by two big hands. This was the shape of this state of mind now.

Li Piaoqing was standing on a broken stone slab, and just half a zhang away, the street collapsed into an abyss of ten thousand zhang. Thousands of houses and buildings were broken and dead, as if born in the underworld.

This should be a projection of Xiangzhou City, but outside the distant city, it was not a thoroughfare in four directions, but a vast mountain shadow.

On that mountain shadow, twelve dragon-python-like shadows wound in the sky, like upside-down growing tree roots.

And the place where they gathered, a slender and delicate figure looked down from there.

Clearly it was a distance of unknown length, clearly its body size was only slightly larger than herself, but Li Piaoqing could clearly perceive the gaze cast by those golden pupils. It was so close at hand, so piercing through everything, as if this ruined city was just a pearl in her palm.

Li Piaoqing suffocated deeply and withdrew her gaze.

This was all the substance of this state of mind.

And in the gaps left by these substances, secluded blue gorgeous liquid filled everything.

From under Li Piaoqing's feet, which were within reach, crawling over old wall pieces, passing through broken window urns, spreading onto the vast mountain shadows, it was strange and gorgeous like blood vessels, pulsating on this dust-covered, withered, and rotten broken stone and dead wood.

They came from the void further away and empty.

—Outside this ruined city, in the place where there were no more substances, only large pieces of boundless, boundless gorgeous blue remained.

Like a sea full of jellyfish, like the sky reflected in the water. Gorgeous, bizarre, viscous, surrounding the mountains and cities here.

But this was still not the end of everything. When casting the gaze to a more vast and high place, it was pitch black.

That seemed to be the boundless in the boundless. It was like a curtain, from top to bottom, from left to right, wrapping the entire bizarre and gorgeous state of mind.

Facing such blackness, the vast mountain shadow was like a grain of dust, and the boundless sea was just a cup of water.

Such deep pitch-black deeply attracted the young girl. She couldn't see what it was, only feeling her soul was about to drift into it. Since entering the range of the purple bamboo, all the high and vast, deep and indifferent, truth and illusion, and the unseen and unheard... all gathered there.

She was obsessed for a long time, until suddenly, Chunshou rang with a clear sound in her heart. She woke up in shock and found with a cold sweat that she had already stepped one foot into that gorgeous and dead silence.

Li Piaoqing immediately withdrew her steps and no longer looked at all this that was difficult to describe. She had clearly felt its erosion on her already thin and brittle mind-spirit.

She didn't have much time.

Before her own mind-spirit couldn't support it, she had to pierce through Yi Danjun's heart poison first and annihilate everything here.

Since Yi Chengxin was transmitting the edict at this time, it meant that Yi Danjun's state of mind had not completely collapsed, and that most fragile and fatal place must still exist.

If the Candle Sword had been completed, it could naturally lead her to find it, but the young girl could only rely on herself at this time.

Fortunately, Yi Danjun had personally left this weakness on the altar.

"【Edict Child】: Yi Danjun

【Candle Sword】: Affection.

【Heart Poison】: Love, in the painting pavilion."

Li Piaoqing recalled this line of inscription, then where was the "painting pavilion"...?

Li Piaoqing looked around. Everything in sight was ruined and bizarre, and there was no place that hadn't fallen.

The painting pavilion was naturally the Linjing Painting Pavilion.

The young man had told her this name. He said this was the residence of Western Tian in Xiangzhou City, which was later turned into a painting pavilion by Yi Danjun for him. The young man had killed that Mr. Zhang here.

But she didn't think to ask for its location.

She didn't even know her current location.

This was after all not Bowang, but a completely unfamiliar city.

Li Piaoqing tried hard to calm her thoughts. She remembered that Western Tian was not rich, and being able to set up a residence in the prefecture city, it would not be in a very prosperous place.

But "painting," especially the "painting" of a famous master like Western Tian, wanting to consume it was a threshold in itself. She also remembered the young man saying that after leaving the Linjing Painting Pavilion, he ran back to the Seven-Nine City.

So it wouldn't be in the West City.

And it was mostly not in the North City.

So was it the Dongcheng or the Nancheng?

Li Piaoqing thought quickly while shuttling through this dangerous withered ruin, identifying the residual remains around, trying hard to find clues that could be supported.

Suddenly her gaze focused, and she stopped her steps on a crossbeam.

Half a plaque was submerged in the gorgeous blue, only revealing a faded character at the end.

Platform.

Just this one character was enough. After arriving in Xiangzhou, the young girl had confirmed the location of the government office and the Immortal Platform for the first time. This handwriting existed in her memory.

So this was the Nancheng.

Li Piaoqing immediately remembered a dialogue in the letter of Yi Danjun and Western Tian—"I don't intend to be close to him, so I specifically sought this place to settle down."

This sentence came from Western Tian's mouth. The "him" in the sentence was Western Tian's father with whom he had a distant relationship. The "County Annals" said he was a military captain, which was a scattered official position with no duties in the army.

According to her experience of walking among the powerful and noble for a year, such people with official positions but no duties who were eager to move upward mostly worked in the government office, seeking social interaction as a stepping stone.

And the Xiangzhou government office was right beside the Immortal Platform.

Therefore, Western Tian's residence was in the Dongcheng, but the land price in the Dongcheng was the most expensive. Western Tian was afraid he could only seek a remote and quiet place—this was also his preference.

Li Piaoqing's heart was connected in an instant. She took a deep breath and left this place.

Withered ruins, bizarre liquids, gorgeous blue and pitch black. Li Piaoqing gritted her teeth and shuttled through them under heavy pressure. Those high and vast pressures that pressed down all the time, and the abysses she would fall into if she wasn't careful, didn't need to be mentioned. What made the young girl frown the most was that the directions of east, west, north, and south were not clear at all in this state of mind. She had to regulate her direction by what she saw at all times, and many times, she didn't know if her last choice was correct.

Shuttling forward in such deep, bizarre, and collapsed ruins, the heavy pitch-black in the sky seemed to be pressing down constantly. Li Piaoqing had already doubted several times whether she had really taken the wrong road, or whether she had already missed it—because no matter where she walked, the sight was the same oppressive underworld scene.

But she had no way to infer, nor way to confirm, and could only purse her lips and continue forward, believing that she was still walking on the correct road.

That suppressed heart poison had begun to surge, forcing her to the limit.

————

Under the high platform.

Pei Ye unfolded the scroll.

He finally saw this "Immortal Painting" that Zihuang and Zhang Zijing had been obsessed with for several years and had thrown themselves into Xincang.

Pei Ye remembered the corner that Zihuang had shown him.

—A section of winding dragon shadow probed down obliquely from the sky, with neither head, claws, nor tail appearing in the painting. It was covered with smooth and fine scales, and was round and slender, with no shape of top, bottom, left, or right. Two extremely thin and long secluded blue fine lines climbed irregularly on this body. In the lower half of the scroll, there was a mountain shadow, clouds, high trees, blue birds, and clear sky, etc., filling the remaining space.

Now this scene was fixed on the upper right of the scroll in his hand.

Pei Ye moved his eyes slowly, and thus saw the most divine, secluded, and gorgeous scene in his life, which was indeed heart-shaking.

Those towering mountains, clouds, high trees, etc., were absolutely not things drawn as foils—if any flying bird was taken out, it would absolutely be a most wonderful masterpiece.

But such a gorgeous painting brush that didn't avoid complexity piled thousands of masterpieces into a mountain scene, but it only occupied two parts of the edge below this scene.

And in the center of the scene, it was a brushwork like an immortal and close to a god.

Precisely because the towering mountains were already enough to make people look up to, and precisely because the mountain scenery on the edges was too real and delicate, the vastness in the middle revealed such power that squeezed people's hearts.

It was just the sky and the winding dragon shadow.

But it was more vast than the towering mountains on both sides, almost like a python pressing on an ant hill—but that was not a dragon.

After this scroll was completely presented before him, Pei Ye discovered that it was not that the upper right corner didn't include the head, claws, and tail, but that this slender form didn't have these three things at all.

It was far longer than the proportion a dragon should have. Looking from afar, it was like a woman's hair—exactly the same as the tentacles winding out from the Divine Son.

Pei Ye didn't know what this was. Even if it was tentacles like an octopus, it was too slender.

It extended to the very top of this scroll. There, the pitch-black and majestic shape revealed a corner suffocatingly. Pei Ye couldn't see what it was, only seeing that this long tentacle piercing through heaven and earth seemed to grow there.

He watched quietly for a while, exhaled lightly, and moved his gaze to the lower edge of this painting.

Below was only a piece of deep black.

This painting was still incomplete. I don't know if Western Tian's mortal brush couldn't depict it, or if it didn't reveal itself to him completely at all. In short, the scenery between the long tentacles and the vast mountains seemed to be shadowed by something and didn't reveal its appearance to the viewer.

And above this shadow, Pei Ye finally saw the center of this painting.

It was a tiny human figure, standing on a high platform, stretching his palms high, receiving the long tentacles falling from the nine heavens.

And a little higher up, an abrupt and regular circular blank space appeared there again. The secluded blue fine lines on the dragon whiskers originated from here, the closer, the denser.

Pei Ye's gaze lingered on this back for a long time, and he gently gathered this scroll.

"This should be the 'Edict Map'... where would its true trace be?" The Black Chi said in a low voice.

"..." Pei Ye answered in a low voice. He suddenly gritted his teeth and strode up the high platform, the blood left behind forming a messy winding path.

"I know what it's afraid of." He gasped, his gaze looking high at Liuli who was struggling to break free from the lock, "Can you tell Piaoqing to hold on, I will... go help her immediately."

————

In Yi Danjun's state of mind.

Li Piaoqing was really about to run out of oil and light. She had long known that she should withdraw.

The pressure borne by the mind-spirit had long exceeded her limit, but she also clearly knew that she was the only hope for everyone's survival now.

She must find Yi Danjun's heart poison, ignite it, and thoroughly annihilate this state of mind.

Originally, she was prepared to face the Divine Son alone, and now it was just advancing the original plan.

She supported herself with her will and Chunshou like this, swaying and moving forward in the state of mind full of dangers, and almost fell into the abyss several times.

Finally, after another persistence of gritting her teeth, a different light in her field of vision made the young girl suddenly stop her steps.

A bit of warm orange light.

She suddenly released her tense body, took a breath, cleared her eyes again, and swept toward that side.

Finally, she stepped on a real, solid ground.

She raised her head and looked at this small building.

This was the only normal and complete thing in this state of mind. In this land, the climate was a spring night that had just entered warmth, the candles were picked up, the warm wind brushed past, and small grass sprouted from the cracks in the stone slabs.

The orange candlelight in the building reflected on the windows.

The woman's heart poison was the last intact place in her state of mind.

Li Piaoqing looked at the plaque on her head, "Linjing Painting Pavilion," the four elegant characters were exactly the same as the inscription on Western Tian's old painting.

She took a light breath, stretched her arms, and pushed open the building door.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 307 =====