Alchemist Shu was a core figure in the Shuyun Alliance and a crucial link in their collusion with the demonic sect, the Heavenly Maiden Sect. The intel he held was too sensitive and too critical.

Any one of those pieces of information would be enough for the Three Great Immortal Sects to sentence Shuyun Alliance cultivators to death.

—Alchemist Shu was a pseudo-Golden Core cultivator. Anyone capable of killing him would likely be a true Golden Core expert, someone who would naturally have access to soul-searching techniques.

So long as Alchemist Shu died, panic would ripple through the Shuyun Alliance. At that point, forget about destroying the Huang Clan—just avoiding collapse would be a testament to their organizational strength.

As long as the Shuyun Alliance was out of the picture—

Even if Liu Left Emissary still held a grudge against him, Wei Tu wouldn’t worry. After all, the Heavenly Maiden Sect didn’t have the strength to send forces deep into orthodox territory just to hunt him down.

Of course—

All of this depended on one thing.

Wei Tu had to kill Alchemist Shu. He couldn’t afford to repeat the Huang Clan’s mistake and let him escape again.

…

Soon.

An hour passed.

“There it is.” Wei Tu fixed his gaze on a patch of wild grass several li ahead. The Geomagnetic Yuan Light had pinpointed Alchemist Shu’s hiding place even before his divine sense caught on.

Under the watch of his divine sense, Wei Tu clearly saw Alchemist Shu cloaked in a faint golden glow, lying still beneath the grass.

If it weren’t for the Fragrant Silk Nose narrowing the search range and the Geomagnetic Yuan Light sweeping the area, his divine sense alone would never have uncovered this hiding spot.

Wei Tu remained silent, casually glancing toward another direction, deliberately bypassing the actual location where Alchemist Shu lay hidden.

No one noticed as his sleeve fluttered slightly, releasing several thumb-sized transparent moths.

“He’s leaving?” Hidden underground, Alchemist Shu let out a quiet sigh of relief.

Staring at Wei Tu’s appearance, he began wondering who exactly Wei Tu was within the Shuyun Alliance… First, he had betrayed them to the Huang Clan, and now he had disguised himself and come to finish the job.

At this point, Alchemist Shu hated Wei Tu to the bone.

While fleeing, he hadn’t noticed the Wind-Cleaving Eagle in the sky. His divine sense and vision weren’t sharp enough to detect flying spirit beasts from such a distance.

He had chosen this plain merely to heal, not specifically to avoid the eagle’s surveillance.

Otherwise—

At the first sight of that eagle—

Alchemist Shu would’ve immediately known Wei Tu was the one pursuing him.

Fifteen minutes later.

Wei Tu returned. He glanced playfully at the hidden spot and chuckled to himself, “Almost had me, Daoist friend. If I hadn’t sensed something off and doubled back, I really would’ve missed this great opportunity.”

Alchemist Shu didn’t respond. He stayed perfectly still, suppressing his breath.

As a veteran of the cultivation world, he’d seen this trick before—bandits faking departures to lure people out. He wasn’t falling for it.

But then—

When he saw two icy swords darting toward him, his expression changed. The golden glow around his body instantly withdrew as he pulled out a five-colored copper ring and threw it forward.

That ring, engraved with swirling runes, gleamed brightly and expanded into a giant hoop that blocked the incoming Ice Jiao Swords.

Then something strange happened.

Just as Wei Tu attempted to recall the swords, the five-colored ring emitted a suction force, locking them in place.

“So this is why the Huang Clan failed despite having the intel,” Wei Tu thought to himself, his wariness of Alchemist Shu deepening.

Still, he didn’t panic. Without hesitation, he slapped his storage pouch and summoned two more Ice Jiao Swords, launching them forward with a spell.

“This guy has that many flying swords?” Alchemist Shu gritted his teeth in frustration.

With a quick chant—“Swift!”—the five-colored copper ring flashed again, firmly anchoring the two new swords as well.

For a moment, sword-light and five-colored brilliance clashed, locked in a stalemate.

At this moment, Alchemist Shu calmly opened his mouth and spat out a pitch-black banner.

The banner, about seven feet long, had a purple ring embroidered on its surface.

As he waved the black banner, thick black mist poured out, quickly spreading around him.

In just a few breaths, the mist shrouded Alchemist Shu’s figure and began creeping toward Wei Tu as well.

Wei Tu couldn’t tell what exactly the banner did. Fearing that Alchemist Shu had laced the mist with poison, he immediately tossed out several talismans and leapt into the air.

The talismans exploded, holding the mist at bay.

But now that he had taken to the sky, his defensive artifacts could no longer fully shield him.

A vulnerability appeared.

“Go!” Alchemist Shu seized the opportunity, sneering as he flung a slender green needle from his sleeve straight at Wei Tu.

That needle, thinner than a strand of hair, was nearly invisible. If Wei Tu hadn’t been so alert from the start, he might not have noticed it at all.

Wei Tu immediately realized this was likely Alchemist Shu’s killing move. With no better option, he summoned the small turtle-shell shield he had obtained from Si Qing.

This little turtle-shell shield was a second-rank defensive artifact—the highest-level defensive item on Wei Tu’s person.

Chi—!

The green needle shot forward and pierced the defensive barrier formed by the turtle-shell shield, locking into a stalemate.

The two forces were evenly matched.

“You think a mere artifact can block my Emerald Cloud Needle?” Alchemist Shu sneered. He didn’t recognize that the artifact had once belonged to Si Qing.

He chanted a spell. The seemingly spent needle suddenly trembled and emitted a sharp hum. A surge of power burst forth, breaking a small hole in the barrier and spiraling viciously toward Wei Tu behind it.

But just then, beneath Alchemist Shu’s feet, an almost invisible hair-thin thread suddenly appeared.

That transparent thread, just as Alchemist Shu was gloating, flared into a streak of green light and stabbed toward his dantian.

“You actually laid a trap?” Alchemist Shu’s expression changed.

Earlier, he had mistakenly believed Wei Tu’s only methods were the four flying swords. Thinking he could end it all in one blow with the Emerald Cloud Needle, he had funneled most of his power into that one attack.

As for his own defenses, he had merely activated a basic protective barrier, saving his strength and refraining from summoning any additional defensive artifacts.

After all, he was still wounded from the earlier battle with the Huang Clan cultivators.

Now in this critical moment, Alchemist Shu had no choice but to abandon control over the Emerald Cloud Needle, withdraw his divine sense, and quickly activate another artifact to defend himself against Wei Tu’s ambush.

That green thread of light was no ordinary attack—it was Shadow Thread, a trap Wei Tu had crafted with help from Mei Lang. After confirming Alchemist Shu’s hiding spot, he had secretly planted it in the area using a Seven-Colored Phantom Moth, predicting where their fight would take place.

Originally, Wei Tu had planned to trigger it when Alchemist Shu dropped his guard, hoping to finish him in one blow.

However, the Emerald Cloud Needle proved so dangerous that Wei Tu had to activate the Shadow Thread early to turn the tide.

As Alchemist Shu pulled his divine sense back—

The Emerald Cloud Needle hovering before Wei Tu immediately faltered. Its sharpness dulled significantly.

Wei Tu didn’t hesitate. With divine sense and the Yuan Gravity Law Seal working in tandem, he quickly suppressed Alchemist Shu’s lingering consciousness within the needle, temporarily taking control of it.

“Go!”

Gritting his teeth, Wei Tu summoned the incomplete treasure—the Demonic Buddha Bell.

In an instant, sixty percent of his spiritual energy was drained.

Hovering in the air, the bell flared with bloody radiance and conjured three crimson Buddhas.

The Buddha phantoms glared with wrathful faces.

Wei Tu formed a seal and shook the bell forcefully.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

The Demonic Buddha Bell rang out with a solemn chime. A wave of tremendous sound pressure crashed down on Alchemist Shu.

At that moment, Alchemist Shu had just evaded the ambush of the Shadow Thread. He never expected Wei Tu to immediately unleash yet another killing move.

“How does he have so many tricks!?” Alchemist Shu’s face twisted in shock. He hastily summoned his defensive artifact to withstand the blow.

But it was too late.

The bell’s sonic wave struck. His protective barrier instantly shattered. The artifact shielding him dimmed and dropped to the ground.

Pu! Pu! Pu!

Alchemist Shu spat out several mouthfuls of blood. His body flew like a rag doll and slammed into the earth, embedding deeply into the dirt.

His flesh was mangled beyond recognition—barely human.

“Spare me! Daoist friend, please! I have Azure Flame Pills hidden away somewhere—”

“Don’t you want to form your core?”

His throat was already crushed. With no other choice, Alchemist Shu sent a desperate divine sense transmission, trying to plead for his life.

He had less than ten years left to live, but even ants cling to life—let alone a high-ranked second-grade alchemist like him.

But—

Before he could say more—

What answered him wasn’t a question.

It was a sword light.

The next instant, Alchemist Shu’s vision went black. His consciousness was gone.

“If not for this Demonic Buddha Bell, I really might not have won,” Wei Tu gasped as he retrieved the bell and stuffed it back into his storage pouch.

In terms of regular strength, he and the wounded Alchemist Shu were about evenly matched—maybe even slightly in Shu’s favor.

If it hadn’t been for the early setup of the Shadow Thread disrupting Shu’s focus, that Emerald Cloud Needle alone would’ve been a huge headache.

But when it came to unconventional strength—

Alchemist Shu… was simply outmatched.

Then again, maybe Shu had already exhausted many of his trump cards escaping from Cloud Crane Mountain. This moment might’ve been when he was at his weakest.

Shriek, shriek!

The Wind-Cleaving Eagle swooped down from above, trying to snatch the storage pouch from Alchemist Shu’s corpse as an offering to Wei Tu.

“Hold it!” Wei Tu shouted, halting the eagle in its tracks.

He wasn’t sure whether Alchemist Shu had poisoned the pouch or its contents in his dying breath.

If the Wind-Cleaving Eagle rushed in now, it might just drop dead on the spot.