Chapter 138: One Blade, One Butterfly

The gate to the Rising Tide Society's base on Mount Luo required a blade and a butterfly to open. The blade was the long blade Hong Zheng had used to end his life. Currently, this roughly-1.7-meter-long blade was inside Yu Xian's spatial ring. Yu Xian had naturally pulled it out while collecting the remains of Hong Zheng and his wife.

The butterfly was faintly visible before Yu Xian. This butterfly was not a Gu Insect. It was the ultimate defensive artifact forged by the founder of the School of Butterfly Transformation using her dead Gu Insect. Its name was Dream Butterfly.

The School of Butterfly Transformation, like Zhong Wuliang's Eight Treasures Sect in Tower City, was a lineage passed down to only one successor in each generation. Aside from out of gratitude, Cui Xianzhen had passed the inheritance on to Yu Xian because she also intended for the School of Butterfly Transformation to continue through him.

Yu Xian was now the head of the School of Butterfly Transformation, though the entire school consisted of only him. He was nothing more than a commander without troops. However, with the Thousand Butterfly Imprint, he was now the only person who could command Dream Butterfly.

He reached out, and Dream Butterfly slowly landed in his palm. Then it merged into his palm and disappeared without a trace. Yu Xian blinked, feeling somewhat curious. He immediately ordered Dream Butterfly, "Come out!"

Dream Butterfly flew out from his cheek. With a thought from him, it circled him once, then merged back into his body from behind.

Yu Xian could sense it inside his body, but its exact location was extremely vague. It seemed to be everywhere, yet also nowhere.

He kept ordering Dream Butterfly to move in and out of his body. Only after several minutes did he finally understand how to control where it entered and exited.

As the ultimate defensive artifact of the School of Butterfly Transformation, Dream Butterfly could cause an enemy's mind to wander for a moment. Any intent to attack would first play out in the assailant's mind as a daydream. Only after realizing they were trapped in a reverie would they snap back to reality.

For example, in case someone spotted Yu Xian and wanted to stab him to death with a knife, they would fall into a daydream the instant before they attacked. Their mind would generate the scene of them wildly stabbing Yu Xian with the knife. Only after snapping back to reality would they realize that they had been standing frozen in place the entire time and had never made a move at all.

Of course, the effectiveness of this artifact was completely dependent on the disparity between the two parties' mental energy. If the enemy's mental energy was much higher than Yu Xian's, Dream Butterfly would probably take effect for only 0.01 seconds, or the enemy could completely resist it. But if Yu Xian's mental energy was much higher than the enemy's, then it could control the opponent for over ten seconds. If the disparity was unimaginably vast, Dream Butterfly could trap the opponent in an endless loop of daydreams, ensuring they would never wake up.

The primary reason Cui Xianzhen had placed Dream Butterfly in the Phantom Butterfly Gu was the Rising Tide Society's active crackdown on various supernatural criminals. Several of these criminals harbored a deep resentment toward the Rising Tide Society. So, when the Phantom Butterfly Gu posed as Cui Xianzhen, it was highly susceptible to enemy attacks.

To protect it, Cui Xianzhen had outfitted the Phantom Butterfly Gu with Dream Butterfly before departing for the Red Planet, never imagining that she was embarking on a journey of no return.

Half an hour later, Yu Xian appeared in Blightstone City, not far from Mount Luo. Blightstone City was built entirely from blightstone. After learning that blightstone was actually the droppings of Blightstone Gu Insects, Yu Xian felt somewhat uncomfortable about it. Still, he had to admit that in ancient times, Blightstone City had indeed sheltered countless ordinary humans.

This was once the city where the Rising Tide Society had been most active. Many buildings still standing in the city were related to the organization, such as the Rising Tide Society Memorial Hall and the Rising Tide Society Grand Theater. However, the residents of Blightstone City would probably never have imagined that the Rising Tide Society's base was actually outside the city, on Mount Luo.

As Yu Xian sat inside a spatial bubble, it took him a blink of an eye to fly from Blightstone City to Mount Luo. He circled the perimeter of the mountain, eventually finding the entrance on a hidden cliff halfway up the mountain.

The entrance was extremely inconspicuous. Not only was it overgrown with vines and weeds, but a small formation also concealed it. Fortunately, the formation was already half-broken. At most, it could only confuse ordinary humans.

Yu Xian swept aside the vines covering the entrance and walked down the tunnel. Since no one had walked on this path for a long time, many small insects were living inside the tunnel. When Yu Xian saw them, an idea came to him. He used spatial bubbles to catch quite a few spiders and centipedes, preparing to use them later to create Gu Insects of his own.

This passage had a very Rising Tide Society style to it. It was quite similar to the tunnel on the Red Planet, sloping downward the entire way. However, this tunnel was nowhere near as long as the one on the Red Planet.

A few minutes later, the floor, walls, and ceiling around the tunnel turned into blightstone slabs. After Yu Xian walked a few more steps, a massive gate made entirely of blightstone appeared before his eyes. He stopped before the gate and took out Hong Zheng's blade.

Named the Grand Earthbound Megalith Mountain-Crushing Blade, the blade had a remarkably straightforward ability: its length, size, and weight would change according to the energy channeled by its wielder. It was not picky. Like the vast, heavy earth, it could absorb any kind of energy and use it to alter its dimensions.

Yu Xian inserted the Grand Earthbound Megalith Mountain-Crushing Blade into a slot in the gate. Then he summoned Dream Butterfly and controlled it to fly onto a butterfly imprint on the gate.

The gate let out a heavy creak and opened a narrow crack. Yu Xian stepped forward and easily pushed the doors open. Each of the two doors weighed roughly four tons. An ordinary human probably would not be able to open them even if they had the Grand Earthbound Megalith Mountain-Crushing Blade and Dream Butterfly. Forget ordinary humans, most supernatural beings below Insect rank would also be unable to push this gate open.

A stale, oppressive smell rushed toward Yu Xian. He immediately wrapped himself in a spatial bubble and slowly guided the bubble through the gate.

Inside the gate was a massive man-made cavern, far larger than he had imagined. Many houses had been built inside the cavern. Around them, he could even see slides and swings where children had once played. Farther away was a small river, as well as fields for farming.

Unfortunately, this place had long since fallen into ruin. The houses were dilapidated, the ropes of the swings had snapped, and the fields were overgrown with weeds.

Yu Xian looked at the traces of life left behind around him. He could imagine the members of Rising Tide Society living here in peace, men farming and women weaving, while children laughed and played.

He stepped out of the bubble and forced himself to take a deep breath despite his discomfort. In an instant, scenes of the cavern's past rapidly appeared in his mind. Then he slowly walked toward a slope in the upper-right corner of the cavern.

A withered peach tree stood there. Hong Zheng and Cui Xianzhen had planted it, and it had also been their favorite place.

Yu Xian buried the two of them beneath the tree, then the others around them. After everything was done, he lit three sticks of incense for each of them. He bowed once more, then straightened and stood there for a while. In the end, because he still had matters to handle, he turned and left.

He returned to the gate, closed it again, pulled out the Grand Earthbound Megalith Mountain-Crushing Blade, and recalled Dream Butterfly into his body. Finally, he took a deep breath and teleported straight back to his aunt's home in Zenith City.

However, the moment Yu Xian teleported over, more than a dozen blades surrounded him. "Don't move!"