Saving the White Moonlight Chapter 51

According to Yan Zhuguang’s guess, this hidden realm might be a small world opened by some great expert alone, with that jade wall serving as the entrance and exit. Or perhaps this was the world inside the jade wall itself.
If so, then this collapsed palace was rather strange.
What kind of mood had the hidden realm’s owner been in to build a palace made of mud and grass stems? There were no natural disasters or human disasters in the hidden realm either, so why had this palace collapsed?
Carrying these questions, Yan Zhuguang kept her guard up and slowly approached the palace.
Yan Zhuguang watched the mini-map while sensing danger through her own instincts. Strangely, she crossed the grassland and walked all the way near the palace walls without encountering even a hint of danger.
This sparse grassland was unexpectedly peaceful, completely unlike the dangerous waters she had passed earlier.
The more it was like this, the more alert Yan Zhuguang became. After passing through the water area, she knew this hidden realm was not a dead land. Living things existed here.
Yet on this grassland, there was no sign of life at all. Perhaps an even more terrifying danger was hidden inside this palace.
Outside the palace was a short sealed wall. The wall was intact. Yan Zhuguang climbed over it in a few moves and did not encounter any barrier, formation, or obstruction.
Yan Zhuguang flipped her palm and pinched the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine’s sprout between her fingers, staying on guard at all times. Then she followed the path behind the short wall, twisting and turning deeper inside.
Before long, the little sprout in Yan Zhuguang’s palm began to stir restlessly.
If Yan Zhuguang had not sensed its movement and suppressed it through their contract, this little thing might have shot out directly.
Yan Zhuguang frowned and looked in the direction where the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine was stirring. There were more layers of short walls. She could see nothing. Having no spiritual sense was truly troublesome.
The mini-map showed nothing either. Yan Zhuguang thought for a moment and decided to go in the direction the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine pointed. It was rare for this little thing to be so excited. Who knew what was inside?
The palace’s interior was like layered mazes. The collapsed palace roof divided the space inside into irregular small areas.
Yan Zhuguang climbed over all kinds of obstacles formed from earth and stone. In the end, she simply stepped onto the walltops and walked forward from there.
This made her an easy target, but it gave her a wide view. Standing higher meant she could see farther.
However, the deeper she went, the more Yan Zhuguang noticed something wrong. As she had guessed, this ruined palace was not as simple as it looked from the outside.
Putting aside the collapsed parts, the positions of these walls faintly resembled a formation. At the roots of some walls, Yan Zhuguang also noticed scattered traces left by a formation.
She could not yet judge what exact formation it was, but it was probably some powerful trapping formation. Perhaps because it had not been maintained for years and had no spiritual energy supply, it had been abandoned.
There were no signs of life inside the palace. Only empty rooms. No tables, chairs, benches, or even windows.
If the sprout in her hand had not kept jumping, and jumping more and more happily, Yan Zhuguang might have wanted to retreat.
If there was nothing good here, why had she entered this palace? Was she here to sightsee? She might as well continue looking for Senior Sister.
While Yan Zhuguang was thinking, alarms suddenly rang in her heart. With a tap of her foot, she quickly leapt from the walltop and jumped aside.
The moment Yan Zhuguang left the walltop, the place where she had been standing shattered with a boom.
Yan Zhuguang did not stop moving. With each tap and leap, the attacks following her made this wall follow the previous wall’s fate.
She pointed her fingers and called out her flying sword. She had wanted to ride it upward, but after stepping onto it, she found that controlling the flying sword consumed several times more spiritual energy than it had over the water.
If she flew on the sword, she would use a large amount of spiritual energy. If she did not fly, she would have to fall below and be attacked by that unknown thing.
Yes, an unknown thing.
That thing attacked so fast that even Yan Zhuguang’s eyesight could not clearly see what had struck the wall.
In this moment of danger, Yan Zhuguang’s thoughts turned quickly. She decisively gave up sword flight, used the flying sword to jump to another wall, put the sword away, and stepped across the walls at her fastest speed, leaping forward.
Although she did not know what was attacking her, at this point, Yan Zhuguang did not want to leave the palace. The more dangerous a place was, the more she wanted to go deeper.
Because high risk also meant high reward.
The unknown thing attacked faster and faster. Yan Zhuguang even felt that something under the ground was moving toward her. It moved very quickly, matching the rhythm of the attacks against her.
Yan Zhuguang guessed that perhaps the thing underground was attacking her.
As the attacks grew more frequent, Yan Zhuguang also sped up. Wherever she passed, countless walls shattered. The already ruined palace became even more broken.
Walls made of mud and grass stems collapsed piece by piece, raising dust that filled the sky. Earlier, she had merely been unable to see the enemy clearly. Now, even the path ahead was unclear.
The instant Yan Zhuguang leapt up, she quickly formed hand seals. She flicked a finger forward, and clear green light flashed. All the dust ahead vanished, and her vision became clear again.
Behind her, the movement underground grew louder and louder. Rumbling sounds shook harder and harder. The flat ground suddenly bulged, and in the next moment, a crack split open.
A root stem the same color as the earth wall shot out and slapped straight at Yan Zhuguang.
Yan Zhuguang clenched both hands, and several talismans appeared. She threw them toward the root stem with her left hand and slapped one onto herself with her right.
Boom.
The talismans exploded the moment they touched the root stem, stopping it for an instant. Yan Zhuguang herself used the light-body effect brought by the talisman to rush forward even faster.
After crossing many walls, Yan Zhuguang finally neared the center of the palace.
The buildings here were still fairly intact. Although a little ruined, they had not collapsed like the buildings at the edge.
In front of the buildings was an open space. This square was made from material different from the rest of the palace. It was built from stone, not mud and grass stems.
Yan Zhuguang did not rashly rush into the intact buildings. Instead, she stopped on the open square.
Before long, the root stem attacking her caught up. It could not drill through the stone square, so it flew out of the earth entirely and slapped toward Yan Zhuguang again.
At this moment, Yan Zhuguang threw out the sprout that had been stuck to the back of her hand, suppressed by her all this time, yet eager to move. Once the green sprout was freed, it shot out with a whoosh and pounced straight at the root stem.
The root stem, which had been coming fiercely, suddenly panicked. It stopped sharply, then sank downward, trying to dodge the sprout’s attack.
But the sprout was extremely nimble. When the root stem turned, it also turned hard. In the next moment, it pounced onto the root stem, impatiently broke it open, and drilled inside.
The entire root stem stiffened, then began trembling wildly.
A plant that could make the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine this excited should not be ordinary. Yan Zhuguang carefully examined the root stem, trying to identify the plant’s type.
Unfortunately, with only one piece of root stem, and one that had likely been specially cultivated, even Yan Zhuguang could not identify the exact species.
She took several spirit stones from her inventory and restored the spiritual energy she had consumed earlier. At the same time, she said to the system, “This thing did not appear on the mini-map.”
If Yan Zhuguang had not been sharp, she might have been hit by this thing.
Even now, the mini-map did not show any red dot matching that root stem.
The system said weakly, “The system is not all-powerful. Investigation permissions unlock little by little as Host’s strength rises. Host’s current strength is still weak, so some things with special hiding methods cannot be detected even by the system.”
Yan Zhuguang did not speak.
Good thing she was used to relying on herself, not the system. Otherwise, she would have been in danger.
While she restored spiritual energy and spoke with the system, movement came from the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine’s side.
Yan Zhuguang was connected to the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine by contract, so she could vaguely sense its situation. She knew that the moment the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine invaded that root stem, it released a large amount of toxin.
However, the root stem seemed to have a certain resistance to poison. Before the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine’s toxin could spread, the root stem quickly blocked it, preventing it from spreading through the whole spiritual plant.
After cutting off the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine’s toxin, the root stem actually broke off part of itself and spat out the section where the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine had parasitized it.
The Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine’s sprout devoured that cut-off root stem as quickly as possible, then looked eagerly at the remaining root stem, ready to attack it again.
To Yan Zhuguang’s surprise, when the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine swallowed the root stem, she felt a force flow back into her body through their contract.
It was a full wood spiritual energy with traces of poison. It entered Yan Zhuguang’s body and was simply the best energy supplement for her.
Just this one force made Yan Zhuguang feel that her recently reached early Foundation Establishment realm had loosened.
A great tonic.
Yan Zhuguang looked at the root stem that had broken off a section. The light in her eyes was almost exactly the same as the sprout, whose color had become even brighter.
Catch it. Eat it.
That was Yan Zhuguang’s only thought now.
The root stem that had finally escaped the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine seemed to sense the greed from the person and sprout. It trembled all over, shot back into the ground with a whoosh, and even shook hard, burying the crack it had drilled out from.
Then there was no more movement. It did not dare come out.
The Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine had been delayed by fully absorbing that severed root stem. By the time it chased over, the root stem had already sunk underground. It still wanted to chase, but Yan Zhuguang called it back.
The Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine could be called a top-grade spiritual plant, but right now it had only just sprouted and was still very weak. It needed Yan Zhuguang’s power to stay active.
Who knew what the underground was like? Even though Yan Zhuguang was very interested in that root stem, she could not ignore everything and let the Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine rush in.
The Sacrificial Blood Spirit Vine could not go too far from her. If it suffered any damage, she, who had formed a life-bound contract with it, would also suffer backlash.
Yan Zhuguang rubbed the unwilling green sprout that had returned to her palm as comfort, then turned her gaze toward the palace that could still be considered intact.
If she had not guessed wrong…
Yan Zhuguang took out one of the flying demon beasts she had caught earlier in the water area. She knocked it half-unconscious, opened a bloody cut on its body, then circulated spiritual energy and threw it into the palace.