The Heroine Made a Pact With Senior Sister (GL) Chapter 85

The Immortal Sects Assembly was packed with people. This was the cultivation world’s grand event, held once every five years. Any sect with even a little reputation had come to attend. Even Guiyuan Tower had sent several representatives.
Huge shade canopies had been raised over the viewing stands, blocking the sharp sunlight so the people in the stands could clearly see the situation in the arena. Around the arena were one hundred preparation rooms. Contestants entered the matching room according to their group and waited for the referee’s draw.
The one in charge of drawing lots was Mirror Flower Hall’s Vice Hall Master. But no one had to worry whether this would be unfair to the other sects. With so many eyes watching him, even if he wanted to play tricks, he could not.
Now, every contestant had entered a preparation room. Each room had spirit-forbidding talismans prepared to stop the contestants from fighting in private.
Mu Yinfeng sat beside Huixue. To others, she looked as if she had closed her eyes in quiet thought, but no one knew she had already observed the other ten people in the room from head to toe.
The two girls sitting in the first row were Ruolian, the daughter of Tianyun Sect’s sect master and a person praised as a cultivation prodigy, and Lanxin, Shuihua Gate’s little martial aunt. When Lanxin was seven, she had once stopped a river and cut off its flow by herself. Because of that, the cultivation world widely spread her name as Water-Severing Lanxin. Lanxin and Ruolian had a good private relationship. Although they were surprised to meet on the field, they talked very easily with each other.
Three people sat in the second row, and their strength could not be underestimated either. One was Xiyan from Guiyuan Tower. This was the first time Guiyuan Tower had sent someone to participate in the Immortal Sects Assembly, and the name Guiyuan Tower alone was enough to represent her strength. The one in the middle was a black-robed youth who did not smile much. His black robe had several patches on it, and he came from a small sect that was not very famous. But judging from the strength of the spiritual energy moving around him, he was not below Xiyan. The last looked like a little girl, only seven or eight years old. According to the name list, she seemed to be called Zhilin.
Of the other three, Mu Yinfeng had seen two before. One was Xirui of Mirror Flower Hall, and the other was Ming Ziyou of Mingxin Sect. Xirui had originally been sitting in her own seat, but as soon as she saw Ming Ziyou come in, she moved as far away from him as she could. The final girl wore red, with a red veil covering her face. From a distance, she looked like a cloud of red. She stood alone by the window, watching the empty fighting stage.
“Eldest Senior Sister, who do you think is most worth worrying about?” Mu Yinfeng asked softly.
“You,” Huixue answered without hiding anything.
Huixue focused on Mu Yinfeng and sighed softly. The girl beside her was the one who had brought disaster to the human world in her last life. If not for this girl, Huixue would not have died in White Snow Pagoda. Thinking of this, a chill rose in Huixue’s heart.
Pale-blue, nearly transparent ice spikes emerged from her palm. But her hand paused. The ice spikes slowly melted, and icy water soaked through the snow silk clothes against her skin. Huixue felt a little cold.
She was a daughter born from ice and snow, and she rarely felt cold. Why this time…
“Why?” she heard Mu Yinfeng ask.
“Because…”
“I cannot do it. I cannot do anything well.” The girl’s voice was low. “Eldest Senior Sister, will I be knocked out in the first round and be unable to continue?”
Although the team matches at the Immortal Sects Assembly were fought by several disciples chosen by each sect, if someone truly failed to pass even the first round, they would be filtered out by the unwritten rules. That was true even if she was in the death group. After all, the cultivation world had always agreed that luck was also part of strength.
Just now, Mu Yinfeng had thought about what she could display at the Immortal Sects Assembly. First, the blood vine was ruled out. Next, Severing Love could not be used lightly either. What Severing Love cut away was not her feelings for Huixue, but everything in her that could be called emotion. If she reached the end, she might not even have basic empathy left. Something like that should be saved for the evil being in Qinglan Mountain.
“You will not,” Huixue said softly. For some reason, a strange feeling toward this enemy who had killed her rose in her heart. Almost by instinct, she comforted Mu Yinfeng. “Yinfeng, you are already very good.”
Very good? Huixue could not say what was good about Mu Yinfeng. She only felt subjectively that Mu Yinfeng was indeed strong. Even now, before experiencing that long seclusion and before cultivating and controlling all kinds of forbidden arts, Mu Yinfeng’s cultivation was not low.
For some reason, although Huixue could not remember when she had fought side by side with Mu Yinfeng, every time she tried to recall such things, faint shadows appeared before her eyes. A black-clothed girl stood with a sword in hand, her force unstoppable and sweeping all before her. Or blood vines flew around her, gorgeous and beautiful, reflecting the girl’s charming face. Huixue’s heart trembled for no reason.
“Eldest Senior Sister?” Hearing this, Mu Yinfeng curled her slender hand into a fist. When she sealed Huixue’s memories, she had directly sealed Huixue’s memories after her rebirth as well. In the previous life, Huixue had never seen her fight. Her abilities had been top secret in Hanyou Valley. Even her existence had been known by very few.
If Huixue said this, could there be a problem with the memory seal?
“Although I have never seen you fight, you surely are not weak. Even here, you can handle it completely,” Huixue said warmly. Her gaze swept over the people in the room and finally landed on the red-clothed girl by the window. Her brows drew together slightly.
Mu Yinfeng rarely saw Huixue like this, so she could not help asking, “Eldest Senior Sister, what is wrong?”
“That person… I think I have seen her before.” Huixue lightly held her forehead, as if she was trying hard to remember. But no matter what, she could not recall where she had seen that red-clothed girl. She grew a little anxious and took the group list from her ring, scanning it quickly. Then she read out a name. “Xuelian?”
“The rogue cultivator?” Mu Yinfeng asked in surprise.
Sometimes rogue cultivators also participated in the Immortal Sects Assembly to prove their strength and fight for a chance to enter Guiyuan Tower. But it was much harder for rogue cultivators to break through than for people with sects. First, very few rogue cultivators had proper, complete art systems. Second, in team matches, a rogue cultivator fighting alone simply could not beat a sect-based group. But that did not mean no rogue cultivator had ever reached that goal at the Immortal Sects Assembly. The most famous one was Muyuanzi, her mother.
“Any rogue cultivator who appears at the Immortal Sects Assembly must be taken seriously. Sometimes, compared with the major sects probing one another and knowing each other’s strengths, rogue cultivators are harder to predict.”
After hearing Huixue, Mu Yinfeng nodded in deep agreement. Now, any disciple who joined a sect had to register with Guiyuan Tower, and Guiyuan Tower had a ranking list for these disciples. A person’s strength, what arts they were good at, and even their usual fighting style were all written clearly. But rogue cultivators moved without a fixed trace. Unless they were famous throughout the world, even Guiyuan Tower had no way to start.
“I understand.” Mu Yinfeng nodded seriously. Huixue was right. Although most rogue cultivators did not achieve much, the top rogue cultivators were in no way inferior to cultivators from orthodox sects. Some were even stronger.
Although Muyuanzi had already become a legend, her performance at the Immortal Sects Assembly was still widely passed around in the cultivation world. Back then, Muyuanzi’s control over her wood spiritual root had already reached the peak of subtlety. At that time, people who lost to other rogue cultivators might still complain a few words, but against Muyuanzi, whoever lost accepted it completely.
“This is a fire-root cultivator.” Mu Yinfeng released her mental power and scanned Xuelian’s spiritual energy again from head to toe.
She sent what she observed into Huixue’s sea of consciousness through mental power. “Fire root. On the surface, her yin-yang ratio is four to six. But…”
“But what?”
“She has a divine artifact on her.” Mu Yinfeng was shocked by this result, but she was too familiar with the aura of divine artifacts and could not mistake it. “The divine artifact is hiding her aura, so the four-to-six split I saw may not be her true constitution.”
This yin-yang ratio was judged from the protective spiritual flow around a cultivator in a calm state. Although spiritual tools worn by cultivators could interfere with detection, Mu Yinfeng could see the difference between innate and acquired at a glance. But wearing a divine artifact was different. Divine artifacts were called divine artifacts for a reason.
“Where is the divine artifact?”
“It seems to be the red lotus hairpin on her head.” Mu Yinfeng’s gaze landed on the red lotus hairpin. Her mental power only tried to peer into it for a moment before she immediately withdrew it. Cold sweat had already covered her forehead.
“What happened?”
“It is there, as expected. My mental power cannot detect it.” In that instant, Mu Yinfeng had felt as if her sea of consciousness was about to be shattered. When a divine artifact showed its might, it truly was terrifying. She could only be glad she had dodged quickly. “I feel like something is strange.”
“Red Lotus is a Bing Fire divine artifact, right?” Huixue pointed out the key at once. “Red lotus comes from the Eight Cold Hells. Using it to forge a Bing Fire divine artifact is indeed not very fitting.”
Mu Yinfeng nodded. Form and soul should match. What was the purpose of using an appearance that could represent the extreme of Ding Fire to forge a Bing Fire divine artifact?
But they had no time to think further. Three bell chimes rang, accompanied by applause and cheers like a tide. The Immortal Sects Assembly had begun.
Mirror Flower Hall’s Vice Hall Master landed in the center of the fighting stage. With a wave of his hand, a light sphere flew toward him. He showed the sphere to the contestants in the preparation rooms and the people in the stands before slowly injecting spiritual energy into it. Several large characters spread from the sphere, representing the group selected for this match.
Seventy-four.
“No way. Are we that unlucky?” Lanxin cried out in the preparation room. “We are going first?”
More than half the people in the room became especially solemn. The only ones who did not change were Huixue, Ming Ziyou, Ruolian, and the girl by the window.
“It seems so,” Ruolian said.
“What do you mean, seems? This is us!” Lanxin stood. “What is Mirror Flower Hall doing? This is just…”
“Mirror Flower Hall does not want this either,” Xirui weakly defended. She had thought that as the Hall Master’s daughter, she might gain some advantage in the grouping, so when the list came out, she had not gone to look. She had not expected that when she asked today, she would find herself in what could be called the death group. Now her heart felt like a seasoning jar had been knocked over. All five flavors were mixed together, and none of them tasted good.
At this moment, the fighters were announced.
Number Three and Number Nine.
When Mu Yinfeng saw those numbers, she froze. Huixue stood beside her, and then the mysterious black-robed youth stood as well. The two walked to the center of the arena. On the name list floating in the air, two names were written clearly.
Huixue: Hanyou Valley. Points: one hundred.
Wei Han: Guangming Peak. Points: one hundred.
The starting score was one hundred points. In the first round, losing one match deducted ten points, and the opponent gained ten points. When a person’s score ran out, they would automatically leave the field. That was still considered gentle. The harsher system was that losing once handed all one’s points to the opponent, and if one lost again afterward, one would be eliminated.
The Vice Hall Master gave a few instructions like, “Friendship first, competition second,” then quickly retreated and let them announce their names. He had seen Huixue at the previous Immortal Sects Assembly and naturally knew how frightening she was. To avoid being caught in the aftermath, he decisively rose into the air.
“Huixue of Hanyou Valley–”
Before Huixue could finish giving her name, Wei Han decisively chose to concede. The scoreboard above flashed, and Wei Han’s number became ninety.
A wave of boos came from afar, but Wei Han did not blush at all. He turned and returned to the preparation room. He happened to notice Mu Yinfeng’s shocked gaze and smiled with relief. “Cutting losses in time. I do not dare face your Eldest Senior Sister.”
At this time, Huixue also returned to the preparation room, still expressionless, as if the other person’s concession had been completely within her expectations.
Mirror Flower Hall’s Vice Hall Master had dodged for nothing and descended to the ground again. Like before, he summoned a light sphere. This time, after the sphere scattered into a group number, the cries from the field were deafening.
“No way! Why is it still us? What is Mirror Flower Hall trying to do?!” Xirui was so angry she stood up at once and was about to run out. At that moment, a youth holding a sword blocked the doorway and would not let her leave.
“Do not block me. I am going to ask my father clearly!” Xirui said angrily.
Ming Ziyou stared at her. “Leaving the preparation room without permission is the same as forfeiting.”
“You!”
Xirui sat back down in a huff and added, “I do not need you to teach me the rules!”
Ming Ziyou turned and sat back in his original seat, still silent.
This time, it was Number One and Number Eight.
Lanxin and the little-girl-like Zhilin stepped out, walked onto the stage, and bowed to each other. Their eyes both burned with fighting spirit.
Seeing that this match would probably not end with a direct forfeit before the fighting even began, the Vice Hall Master called for the start.
“Please show mercy, Sister Lanxin.” Zhilin laughed softly and put on a frightened look. “I am so small. Sister Lanxin would not hit me too hard, right?”
“Of course not.” Lanxin held a qin in her arms and blinked. “You are so small. How could I show mercy?”
As she spoke, she swept her wide sleeve and set down the jade qin Luanyu. With a turn of her wrist, her fingers flew up and down, and clear qin notes flowed out.
“Jade Maiden Zither Heart?” Ruolian’s voice carried surprise. She did not lower it, so everyone in the preparation room heard her clearly. “I did not expect you to have already trained it to this level. How many more surprises do you have?”
“Jade Maiden Zither Heart?” Mu Yinfeng glanced at Huixue.
Huixue’s brows were faintly drawn together, and a trace of worry seemed gathered there. Only when she heard Mu Yinfeng’s voice did she come back to herself.
“It is Shuihua Gate’s secret heart method. Those who cultivate this path must keep a jade maiden body for life, or their art will be completely ruined. Unless someone is wholeheartedly devoted to the Dao, very few people choose this kind of cultivation method,” Huixue explained. “But I was not looking at Lanxin. I was looking at that child named Zhilin.”
“Why look at her?”
“Do you not think she looks like someone?”
Mu Yinfeng thought for a moment. “Martial Aunt Ruoying?”
This girl clearly could not really be only seven or eight years old. This was obviously the effect of a face-preserving art. That childlike face did look extremely similar to Ruoying.
Huixue nodded. “Exactly, Martial Aunt Ruoying. Also, Yinfeng, pay attention to the color of her eyes.”
Mu Yinfeng looked at Zhilin and was slightly startled. “Colored? The Linglong Heart Method?”
“She is not simple.”
Mu Yinfeng fell silent. Just now, she had been thinking about whether to use the Linglong Heart Method to peer directly into Zhilin’s past and search for the connection between Zhilin and Ruoying. But since Zhilin also cultivated the Linglong Heart Method, that plan was immediately useless.
The situation on the field changed in an instant. Although Zhilin had begged for mercy with her mouth, her attacks showed no weakness at all. Sheets of talisman paper scattered from her palm, blasting toward Lanxin without holding back.
“She is a talisman cultivator,” Mu Yinfeng said. “If she uses talismans, Lanxin should happen to counter her, right?”
Musical cultivators generally shared one trait. Most spells cast through instruments could form barriers. Talisman paper could not break in and would instead bounce back, putting the talisman cultivator in danger.
Huixue shook her head. “Yinfeng, look carefully. She is not a talisman cultivator.”
“How is she not?”
“The time is too short,” Huixue said thoughtfully. “At the Immortal Sects Assembly, one cannot bring pre-drawn talismans onto the field, because no one can bring pre-drawn talismans into the preparation room. So these are all part of her art.”
“What does that mean?”
Huixue looked at Mu Yinfeng’s eager-to-learn expression and smiled slightly. Out of habit, she raised her hand to the height of Mu Yinfeng’s forehead. But in the next instant, confusion appeared in her eyes. What had she raised her hand to do?
She could only withdraw her hand and slowly lift her eyes to Mu Yinfeng, explaining stiffly, “A normal talisman cultivator must carry at least several dozen talismans when going out. If this kind of art were so easy, what talisman cultivator would still work so hard to carry talisman paper around?”
That was true…
“This art has been lost for many years. I did not expect to see it again,” Huixue said in a low voice. At that moment, flames burst across the field, followed by an explosion that shook the sky. When the flames faded, Lanxin had already been blasted off the stage. A large pit remained on the field, with ash and sand filling the air.
Lanxin slowly climbed up from the ground. She had already formed her barrier, but she had never expected that the barrier she was proudest of would be shattered by those seemingly unremarkable talismans.
How was that possible?!
“Did I win?” Zhilin looked at the referee, her smile pure and innocent.
But she did not need to ask. The scoreboard floating in the air had already told her everything.
The two returned to the preparation room. Ruolian went forward to comfort Lanxin, while Zhilin sat beside Mu Yinfeng and familiarly tried to start a conversation with her.
But before Zhilin could speak, Chuying leaped over from the side, baring its teeth and growling low.
“What a fierce cat!” Zhilin quickly pulled back her hand. “Sister, are you that female cultivator from Hanyou Valley with the Primordial Yin constitution?”
Mu Yinfeng did not know what she meant, so she nodded.
“Then Sister must be very strong, right?” Zhilin covered her mouth and cried out in surprise.
This person… why did she pretend to be weak and harmless with everyone?
Mu Yinfeng thought this, then shook her head and smiled. “This is my Eldest Senior Sister. My Eldest Senior Sister is the strong one. I am nothing much.”
When Huixue heard Mu Yinfeng mention her, a faint joy rose in her heart. But when she saw Zhilin chatting with Mu Yinfeng, that joy faded.
“Yinfeng, what are you saying?” Huixue asked unhappily.
Zhilin laughed again. “Sister Huixue, I am talking with Sister Yinfeng. Does Sister Huixue want to step aside? Otherwise, Sister Yinfeng might not dare speak.”
“Eldest Senior Sister, I did not…”
“She is from Hanyou Valley.” Huixue’s voice was icy. Although spiritual energy was forbidden here, the temperature in the whole preparation room still dropped by quite a bit. “What reason do you have to make her leave my side?”
“I was just saying it. Why is Sister Huixue angry?” Seeing the situation was not good, Zhilin smiled brightly. “Since Sister Huixue is like this, then I will go to the inn tonight to find Sister Yinfeng. Sister Yinfeng, can you tell me your room number?”
“She lives with me. Do you still want to go?” Huixue reached out and blocked Mu Yinfeng in front of her.
“Well…” Zhilin pressed her two index fingers together, sounding a little wronged. “Sister Yinfeng, Sister Huixue is so fierce. She scared me…”
“Eldest Senior Sister?” Mu Yinfeng looked at Huixue. The shock in her heart was no less than Zhilin’s.
She had already sealed Huixue’s memories. Why did Huixue still care about her so much? Should the current Huixue not be leaving her alone?
Could it be… Could it be…
Mu Yinfeng’s face reddened slightly, and she did not dare think further.
The Butterfly Goddess and the blood vine both fell silent, as if they had fallen asleep. Neither offered any useful suggestion.
At this time, the third match had already begun. Fortunately, this time it was no longer their group. One of the two cultivators on the field was metal attribute, while the other was wood attribute. The countering relationship was very clear, so the metal-attribute cultivator won with almost no effort.
Soon, it was the fourth match. As soon as the number appeared, all of Group Seventy-four fell into a strange silence.
Why was it them again?!
The runes for Number Four and Number Six lit at the same time, and Mu Yinfeng’s expression turned a little strange.
Number Four was the red-clothed rogue cultivator who had been standing by the window. She only saw her own token light up, then went straight to the fighting stage without even paying attention to who her opponent was.
What are you pretending for? Mu Yinfeng rolled her eyes at that rogue cultivator in her heart.
She stood, unwilling to show weakness, and planned to follow right after. But just as she got up, she felt someone tug her sleeve.
“Go, Yinfeng,” Huixue said softly. She did not forget to add, “Do what you can.”
For some reason, deep worry suddenly surged in Huixue’s heart.