The Grand Princess shrieked in fury, but her subordinates remained motionless.
After a long while, a frail female guard emerged and announced, "Your Highness, Young Master Bai has gone missing."
"What! How could he be missing!" The Grand Princess's face turned terrifyingly grim, and she backhanded the guard, sending her flying. "Useless!"
She wasn't foolish; she immediately realized Bai Shengyi had been stalling for time and coldly raised her head. "Were you doing that on purpose just now?"
Bai Shengyi flicked her rattan whip, calm and composed. "You know now, so what?"
"Good! Very good! Do you think you've won by doing this? Even if I don't have a hostage, even if you have Heavenly Fire, you will remain in the Grand Princess's mansion today!"
Her pupils turned scarlet, as if she had lost all reason. She suddenly slashed her palm with spiritual energy.
The curved blades flew towards the east and west of the entire mansion, landing somewhere with a "crack."
Bai Shengyi frowned slightly and raised her rattan whip, intending to interrupt the Grand Princess's actions. However, the Grand Princess endured the whip herself. Blood dripped from her hand onto the ground, and a sinister smile curved her lips as she stared fixedly at Bai Shengyi.
"It's too late, you're dead!"
"Boom!"
With a thunderous explosion, Bai Shengyi's vision was instantly turned upside down!
The surrounding ground shook and vibrated incessantly, her sight filled with a dark red light. Then, strands of black threads, like tiny tadpoles, emerged from the rockery underground, writhing and scattering. A pungent smell of blood and decay filled her nostrils, nauseating her.
"Where are the people? Is it a formation?"
Bai Shengyi covered her nose and mouth, looking around, only to find that the Grand Princess had disappeared. She frowned and tried to contact the Reincarnation Brush and the Dream-Entwining Vine.
"Little Reincarnation, little vine leaves, are you there?"
The Dream-Entwining Vine didn't respond. its connection with Bai Shengyi seemed to be severed. The Reincarnation Brush, however, responded quickly.
"You guessed right, you've entered a formation, but 'Bibi' doesn't know what kind of formation it is. Be careful yourself, this formation looks a bit insidious."
Everywhere was either a stinking, unbearable odor or the eerie sound of ghostly wails.
"The Grand Princess and the Duke are truly a pair, one creating illusions and the other setting up formations. They have so many tricks. But the scenery around here is a bit strange, very realistic."
Some formations were similar to illusions, trapping people in a virtual world. Of course, some built the entire formation by relying on real-world conditions. Bai Shengyi felt this was the latter.
She tried her best to avoid contact with the nameless black threads, heading deeper into the place where the smell of blood was strongest. She encountered no attacks during this process, which made her even more wary and vigilant.
"Something's wrong... ouch, ouch, ouch..." As Bai Shengyi spoke, her dantian suddenly felt a piercing pain, as if needles were piercing her bones, causing her to double over in pain.
She quickly examined her dantian internally. The black mist, which had always been rather passive, was spinning restlessly. She could actually discern the human emotion of extreme urgency from the formless mist.
The black mist occasionally bumped against the surroundings of her dantian, causing Bai Shengyi to gasp in pain.
"Wuwu..." The black mist let out a faint sound.
After such a long period of exploration, Bai Shengyi had already confirmed that the black mist had sentience. Although it appeared somewhat slow and sluggish, it was undoubtedly a living entity.
This sound was originally emitted by the black mist when it secretly consumed the spiritual energy in her dantian. However, now the black mist was extremely uneasy and anxious, instead spitting spiritual energy back into her dantian.
Bai Shengyi felt the pain was so intense that her mind was muddled, making her hallucinate. The stingy creature that usually required the Reincarnation Brush to poke it before yielding a single wisp was now actively expelling the spiritual energy it had consumed?
"There's definitely a problem! The spiritual energy in my body is decreasing, no, it's vanishing."
Due to the black mist's abnormality, Bai Shengyi was reminded to check her internal spiritual energy situation, and she immediately realized what was happening.
"There's something in the formation that can absorb spiritual energy!" the Reincarnation Brush exclaimed in shock.
Bai Shengyi felt the same. Her gaze swept across the wandering black threads, then settled on the easily overlooked dark red bloodstains on the ground. "It's this blood."
She had been focused on the black threads but had overlooked her feet. Without realizing it, she had walked into the formation's trap.
Bai Shengyi understood and immediately waved her hand. The Ten Directions Netherfire ignited on the ground. Wherever the azure flames passed, the land became barren and clean.
"Crack!"
A light sound echoed in Bai Shengyi's ears, and the scene before her changed.
The Grand Princess knelt not far away, her head bowed, her expression unclear. Behind her was a pit more than ten feet deep. At a glance, there were no less than thirty corpses inside.
"You actually got out!" The Grand Princess looked up in disbelief, staring intently at Bai Shengyi, her gaze sinister and unwilling. Her delicate fingernails dug into the soil, yet she seemed not to feel any pain.
"The Spirit Locking Formation is so ingenious. How could you get out without any spiritual energy! I don't believe you have such strong power, how old are you!" She practically roared the last sentence.
"But I did get out. You must be very disappointed, right? It's because I not only have strength but also luck." Bai Shengyi said with a smug smile that didn't care about the consequences.
If it weren't for the black mist's warning this time, she might have really fallen. But she was indeed lucky to have sensed something was wrong before her spiritual energy was completely drained.
"Pfft!"
The Grand Princess, not disappointing Bai Shengyi, successfully spat out blood.
Her chest heaved rapidly with anger, and a surge of intense unwillingness, hatred, and jealousy washed over her!
She had cultivated day and night since childhood, neglecting her daughter's growth for the sake of cultivation. She had even used the Spirit Locking Formation to absorb the spiritual energy of her guards in order to form her core early. Yet, even so, she was almost a hundred years old and had still failed to form her core.
Bai Shengyi, having only cultivated for a short time, was now unaffected even by the Spirit Locking Formation!
"Aaaargh..." The Grand Princess let out a series of screams.
It turned out Bai Shengyi had stepped forward, dislocated her limbs, crippled her dantian, and bound her entire body.
Bai Shengyi looked at the pile of corpses behind her, clapped her hands, and said coldly, "It seems I don't need to dirty my hands; you will pay for your crimes."
She strode out of the Grand Princess's mansion and saw Bai Yueyue guarding the entrance. She ordered him unceremoniously, "The Grand Princess cultivated using dark arts in secret. Report this to the authorities."
Bai Yueyue nodded and then said, "Young Madam, the Eldest Young Master was drugged with some unknown kind of aphrodisiac. I had Madam Qiu send him back to the mansion first. Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," Bai Shengyi replied. "Leave all subsequent matters in the Grand Princess's mansion to you. I want a satisfactory outcome."
With that, she strode away.
After dealing with the Grand Princess, she still had to deal with the pests at home. She hadn't forgotten what the Grand Princess had said: Bai Murong had told her that she had killed Sun Lixing.
Bai Shengyi, her face somber, had just returned to the Rongguo Duke's mansion when she saw the butler standing at the entrance, as if waiting specifically for her.
"Young Madam, the Duke wishes to see you."