Xu Yangyi was none the wiser, but just as he fixed his eyes on the ship’s cargo, in a corner of New York and a certain place in China, two people opened their eyes at the same time.

Clack… 

A pair of blood-red high heels stepped into the doorway of St. John’s Cathedral. In the early morning, a woman wearing a black western-style changpao with a white standing collar was in the heavy mist. The blackness around her eyes seemed to be smeared with eye shadow. Step by step, she walked towards the cathedral, one that could be said to be among one of Earth’s Ten Major Churches.

She

 was Chinese.

Wherever she walked, all the flowers and plants leaned down to her waist. Before she even reached the cathedral, the priest, pastor, and nun were already drenched in cold sweat, their white teeth tightly clenched as they stood at the door.

In the middle of them was a woman in a suit. Her expression was incredibly solemn, and her chest was rising up and down. With great vigilance, she watched the woman in black walking through the mist.

“The Devil… This is the actual Devil!” The woman’s voice was somewhat shaky. Her fiery gaze was penetrated by extreme alarm. “She’s not in her true form, but… this form makes me feel like I’m facing a Grand Duke… What in the world is this monster?!”

“Something like this was actually hiding in New York! Why haven’t I felt it all these years?!”

The woman in black stood in front of the cathedral. It was unknown why, but besides them, no one else was present. She unhurriedly looked at the surrounding birds and the verdant trees. In the end, she turned to face forward.

“Put down the magik treasure in your hand.” She indifferently looked at the woman in the suit. “Vatican City’s paladin, Jenny Jeanne.”

Jenny didn’t reply. Her hands were tightly balled. In her palm, there was a crystal-like object. The exterior couldn’t be seen, since it was being firmly held in her palm, but it was very sharp. As long as she exerted her strength, the object would possibly break her skin.

“Allow This Palace to guess, that is a Holy Vestige? Whose? Jesus? No, if it were such an item, I truly wouldn’t have dared to come. Judas? Not that either… John? Yes… the Holy Vestige of Johann Schleyer, the tenth generation disciple whom John was most pleased with… oh… it is already a spirit treasure? No wonder you dare to come out and show your strength…”

[1]

“Since you know…” Jenny said.

“Then what of it?” The Chinese woman’s changpao rose freely of the wind, and she said in an apathetic voice, “Such an object can at most destroy this avatar of mine. I will soon come out… and at that time, your generation’s Pope will be far, far from being my opponent. Granted that I destroy everyone in your Vatican City, it would merely depend on whether I was in the mood to or not.”

“Lay down your arms, and let us talk properly. If not…” Her gaze gradually chilled. “There’s no need for us to talk.”

“Devil… you should go to hell!” the priest stammered out.

The Chinese woman shot him a pitying look. “Disgusting zealot.”

After Jenny’s complexion changed a few good times, she finally gritted her teeth and put her hand in her pants pocket. “You’re… Chinese… One of those things called ‘demons’. We call those things ‘devils’... China really is a dreadful country. In the present era, something like you actually still exists…”

“Who I am is not important. Do something for me, and I will immediately leave America,” the woman in black said emotionlessly. “Find someone for me, a man. Using your way of naming, his name is Yangyi Xu.”

“I can sense he is coming to New York… After you find him, notify me at once.”

She raised a hand and a little azure fish flew out. However, it transformed into the palm-sized spirit-body of a Kun Peng in midair and launched straight at Jenny. Before Jenny even had time to react, a strange talisman formed in front of her.

“Remember, don’t disappoint me.” Done speaking, the woman in black strolled away, step after step, from the cathedral.

“Sir Paladin…” The priest gritted his teeth as he looked at the talisman. “T-This is heresy… S-She is a terrible devil! Even I can feel that she is much more terrible than the Devil himself!”

Jenny looked at the talisman. She said nothing for ages, but didn’t take the talisman either.

Far away, the woman in black looked to the sky somewhat complicatedly and eventually murmured, “Twenty years…”

“In twenty years, you came out from Inside…. I practically find it hard to imagine…”

But at the same time in Xichuan Province, ten thousand meters high in the sky, a pair of old eyes flickering with endless shadow also opened above Chengdu.

“Your Excellency Ancientpine?” At his side, a middle-aged man who Xu Yangyi had never seen immediately asked.

“Nothing.” Ancientpine insipidly brushed the sleeve of his gown. His figure was like a shadow, and he disappeared from the Heavenraiser Palace in an instant.

In the next second, he appeared beyond the cloudbank. The vigorous wind blew on clothes, causing them to all ripple in the air.

He didn’t speak, but instead extended his hand out for a long, long time. Only then did his brows furrow together.

“It is you…” His gaze distantly looked to the land of the far west behind the boundless white clouds, and he muttered, “Twenty years… you have finally returned…”

“Will you come to me… come to China… to demand justice?”

“Any who are connected to me all possess a sliver of karma in darkness. Core Formation… is to seek the Dao of Karma. Because of this I can slightly feel you… but you left from Nanzhou, why have you appeared in the land of the far west?”

“Or… are my senses mistaken?”

Xu Yangyi knew none of this. The present him was now standing up on the Normandy, and looking at the cargo bay suspiciously.

“What’s up?” Moonless scrunched his brows and said.

Xu Yangyi raised a hand, his strong brows tightly knitted together. He looked all around vigilantly. It wasn’t that he had sensed something, but just now the Dream Eater had slightly moved in his dantian. It was extremely excited, yet screeching towards some direction with a little apprehension. His spiritual sense far exceeded a normal person’s. Only by carefully spreading his senses did he catch onto a bloody aura and qi that passed away in the blink of an eye.

The cargo bay was full of tied-up goods. All of them were in giant wooden boxes. Their exteriors were tightly sealed with a waterproof material. No one knew what was inside. Xu Yangyi carefully sensed around for a moment, but didn’t catch anything again.

Yeee!

 Just as he thought himself to be mistaken, the Dream Eater shouted again in his dantian, and fluttered a few good times towards a direction!

“You’re so excited, why don’t you come out and take me there?” Xu Yangyi laughed and suddenly unleashed his spiritual sense. As expected, this time he caught onto a trace again!

But… it was strange. This qi didn’t seem to be… where he was?

He didn’t know how to describe it. This qi was ominous, but it wasn’t very ominous. However, he simply couldn’t grasp its essence. As if… a seed was ceaselessly creeping outside! And while he couldn’t sense this seed, the Dream Eater seemed to able to feel marks of its ‘growth’.

“Fellow Daoist?” Moonless asked again.

“A little interesting.” Xu Yangyi turned his head and laughed, “Fellow Daoist Moonless, this ship might not be so simple.”

“What’s interesting?” Moonless’s expression also became grave. In experiencing the Clearcloud Realm campaign, the two of them could be said to have gone through life and death. Together they advanced and together they retreated. Moonless also clearly understood that Xu Yangyi wasn’t one to nock an arrow for no reason.

Xu Yangyi surveyed the area vigilantly. “In this place, there’s a cultivator’s item mixed in with these mortal goods.”

“Oh?” Moonless’s gaze flashed. Afterwards, he fully unleashed his spiritual sense. In no less than ten minutes, he swept over the entire ship, but he shook his head. “I can’t see any mark of the cultivation world on this ship.”

“That means they don’t want anyone else to know,” Xu Yangyi laughed coldly. “But since you ran into me, that’s beyond their control.”

In his spiritual sense, he softly called out for the Dream Eater. His original idea was to let the Dream Eater lead the way, but it unexpectedly shook its wings and didn’t come out!

But not only did it not come out, on the contrary… it held a kind of cowering intent!

Xu Yangyi’s expression finally became serious. The Dream Eater was Butterflymother Southflower, the larva form of one of the Eight Great Demon Kings! It couldn’t even be said that its bloodline wasn’t noble. If an ordinary Foundation Establishment cultivator encountered it, perhaps they would suffer dearly. But now, this entity actually felt fear?

He held his breath. After a full half an hour, his gaze flashed, and the manifestation of a white tiger suddenly thundered behind him. Following the tiger’s great roar, five white scars swiftly fired out from between his fingers!

Swoosh!

 The white scars left behind marks of a tiger’s claw in the air. In the next second, an area filled with goods torn apart with a bang!

“Ham?” Xu Yangyi raised a brow. Outside of his expectations, there were actually dried hams inside. They were dried extremely well, without any color of blood at all.

“No, there really is something.” This time, even Moonless’s voice became serious. “Please look, Fellow Daoist.”

Needless of Moonless’s words, Xu Yangyi also saw that behind all the hams… the inside was actually blood-red!

Buzz… 

Meanwhile, a terribly ominous qi, qi that was extremely ancient, slowly seeped out from the bloody-red… like it wanted to drench the entire surroundings with blood!

The duo shared a glance. Moonless lightly snorted. All of a sudden, the container exploded apart. The inside was filled with dried hams, but in the hams… there was shockingly a brass coffin!

It was the appearance of a common European coffin from olden times. What was different, though, was that this coffin was being tightly sealed by several shackles. Each shackle was covered in golden marks, and a nude woman was surprisingly carved on the coffin’s surface!

“This…” Upon seeing this object, Moonless’s gaze immediately flickered. Without the slightest hesitation, he pulled Xu Yangyi a couple steps away, and said shakily, “A Holy Engraving!”

“A Holy Engraving?” Xu Yangyi asked in doubt.

Already, Moonless’s expression was incredibly solemn, and he gritted out, “A Holy Engraving… that’s to say this object was personally sealed by a foreign Saint in the old days! This thing might be a Saint’s seal in itself, or a magik treasure he created. But… no matter what, anything that can be sealed by a Saint is certainly not minor! Furthermore… it is extremely evil!”

“Fellow Daoist, you must not look down on foreign Saints. They are also outstanding talents! The ancient times was the era of rising heroes! China was like that, and so were other countries…” he gritted out, “We’ve really run into something big now.”

No waiting on Xu Yangyi to ask, he said with a pale face, “Because no one knows if the thing inside the Holy Carving is still alive! I’m also very curious… Which family has such a large background that they can actually smuggle a Holy Carving?!”

At this time in Xu Yangyi’s mind, the long-missing voice of Zhao Ziqi echoed, 

An iron maiden?!”

“Ziqi?” Xu Yangyi was stunned, but laughed afterwards, “Why do you show up so suddenly every time?”

Big bro, now’s not the time to talk about that. This iron maiden… Something big is up with it! Don’t touch it no matter what! I can see… that the thing inside is between death and undeath, and… it’s been sealed for a pretty long time! Once it comes out, it might bring us huge trouble!

1. Jesus, Judas, and John, are all famous, central figures in Christianity. I’m not sure if I got the name right with Johann Schleyer, but he was a German Catholic Priest who created a language known as “Volapük”. He lived from 1831-1912 CE.

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