Dual Cultivation System: My Cultivation Was Crippled, So I Rely on Intimacy to Level Up

Chapter 248: The Remains You Mentioned, They Aren’t Alive, Are They?

Zhou Kai stared at the fading gold-red afterimage of Shen Hanyi’s lethal strike. He thought of his own swarm of Split-Back Katydids—a massive, incredibly expensive mob of insects that only knew how to charge blindly forward until they died. His heart sank. So this is the real gap between a weapon and a system.

Before he could dwell on it further, the battle in the cavern concluded.

Shen Hanyi reversed her grip, sliding the blade back into its scabbard with a crisp, metallic shing. As the sword locked into place, the terrifying dark red vortex within her eyes dissolved, instantly returning to her familiar, pristine icy calm.

Thud.

The giant fiendish demon went completely rigid. A hairline fracture appeared directly between its eyes. In a fraction of a second, the microscopic fissure raced down the center of its body. The creature had been perfectly bifurcated.

Zhou Kai raised a hand, funneling his Qi to sweep the massive demon corpse into his Storage Bag.

“Move out,” Du Chuyao ordered. She didn’t waste time on congratulations, simply turning on her heel and marching deeper into the subterranean network.

The group fell in behind her, their footsteps echoing ominously through the suffocatingly deep passages.

The tunnel system was a labyrinth of dead ends and collapsed rockfalls. Whenever they hit a solid stone wall, Du Chuyao would simply raise a pale hand, earthy yellow Spirit Qi gathering like a halo around her fingertips.

The earth would respond. Solid bedrock groaned and split apart on its own, carving out entirely new passages. When they encountered bottomless subterranean chasms, stone bridges would effortlessly extrude from the cliffs, spanning the gaps perfectly.

The Spirit Ying Sacred Body paired with a primary Earth Spirit Root, Zhou Kai mused silently. Down here in the dark, she’s practically a minor god.

Time lost its meaning in the depths. After navigating a particularly long, claustrophobic corridor, the tunnel abruptly widened into a massive antechamber.

Their path was completely blocked by a towering, translucent curtain of light.

The energy barrier rippled gently like the surface of a disturbed pond, completely sealing off whatever lay beyond. Through the shimmering distortion, they could just make out the shape of a 30-foot-wide subterranean pool. The water within was a fathomless, pitch-black hue, and it flowed with the sluggish, heavy consistency of liquid mercury.

Directly behind the pool lay another tunnel—this one clearly excavated by intelligent hands—leading deeper into the unknown.

“An Isolation Grand Array,” Du Chuyao stated, a brief flash of golden light illuminating her Jade Soul Golden Pupils. “Whoever constructed this Formation intended to permanently lock this sector down. If we want to proceed, we have to break it.”

She turned her head, her gaze drifting to Li Youci, who was currently leaning against the cavern wall with her arms crossed. A faint, distinctly condescending smile touched Du Chuyao’s lips. “The Calamity Abyss Valley’s mastery over Formations is universally acknowledged as unparalleled. True Successor Li… surely you aren’t going to make the Jade Flower Palace handle a trivial little isolation array like this?”

Li Youci wasn’t stupid; she caught the patronizing edge immediately. She let out a sharp, cold snort, her eyes narrowing as she looked sideways at Du Chuyao. “Save your petty political maneuvering. When a Fated Chance is on the table, everyone relies on their own capabilities. Calamity Abyss Valley doesn’t need to hide behind others.”

“That’s enough, Youci,” Zhou Kai stepped between the two women, smoothly cutting off the escalating turf war. “We came down here as a unified team. We’ll solve this as a team.”

He shot Li Youci a highly specific, meaningful look. The icy, predatory sneer playing at the corner of her mouth vanished instantly.

A split second later, the air around Zhou Kai and Li Youci shimmered. In perfect synchronization, two identical, fully formed clones stepped smoothly out of their physical bodies, coming to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their originals.

Simultaneously, four deeply profound, completely invisible tendrils of Divine Sense extended from the four figures. Like ghost limbs, they slid effortlessly into the light curtain of the Grand Array, bypassing its defensive triggers without disturbing a single particle of ambient Spirit Qi.

Du Chuyao and Wu Hongxiao exchanged a baffled look.

The clones radiated genuine, solid auras. They weren’t simple optical illusions. But what happened next was even stranger—the four figures just stood there. Perfectly still. Eyes glazed over.

No Qi fluctuations. No Dharma Treasures deployed. They were just standing there staring at a wall. What kind of crackpot Formation-breaking technique is this?

Du Chuyao’s delicate brows pinched together. She flared her Jade Soul Golden Pupils to maximum output, but all she saw was absolute stillness. It was as if Zhou Kai and Li Youci had bypassed the physical plane entirely, interfacing with the Grand Array on a frequency she fundamentally couldn’t perceive.

In the synchronized mindscape shared by Zhou Kai and Li Youci, the physical world had ceased to exist.

The impenetrable light curtain blocking their path was no longer a solid wall of energy. It was a sprawling, hyper-complex, three-dimensional schematic woven from millions of glowing Spirit Qi threads.

Under the microscopic scrutiny of their combined Divine Sense, the flow of every single energy current and the location of every intersecting logic node was laid bare. It was like looking at the exposed circuitry of a supercomputer.

The architecture is exquisite. It’s a one-way valve. It permits exit, but absolutely forbids entry, Li Youci’s voice echoed directly inside Zhou Kai’s mind. This specific structural logic feels very similar to the trials designed by my Sect. You want to smash this open with brute force? Ha. Unless you’re at the absolute peak of Golden Core Grand Perfection, the backlash will turn your skeleton to powder.

Zhou Kai’s Divine Sense flashed back. I’ve located the primary anchor. It’s an obfuscated Array Flag outside the main barrier structure. Three zhang to the southeast, buried three feet under the bedrock. If I annihilate the anchor, the system will destabilize. We hit the three primary load-bearing nodes simultaneously during the crash, and the entire Array collapses.

Understood, Li Youci replied, a faint smirk touching her lips in the physical world.

Zhou Kai severed the neural link and snapped his attention to Shen Hanyi. “Hanyi! On my mark, maximum lethal output on the three coordinates I designate.”

Shen Hanyi gave a curt nod, her eyes turning into chips of ice. A chorus of ringing steel echoed through the cavern as twelve silver flying swords cleared their scabbards, fanning out behind her like a halo of lethal intent. The blades hummed, locking onto the light curtain, waiting for the trigger.

“Execute!” Zhou Kai roared.

Black light exploded from his palm. The massive, brutally heavy Chaotic Sky Hammer materialized, instantly crushing the air pressure around him.

His mind locked onto the target; his body moved in perfect synchronization. He flooded the hammer with a torrential surge of Qi and raw physical Vitality.

He brought the hammer down on the unassuming patch of bedrock with catastrophic, world-ending violence!

BOOM!

The cavern shook as if hit by an earthquake. A massive crater was blasted into the floor, sending a geyser of pulverized rock and dirt into the ceiling. Deep within the bedrock, the hidden black Array Flag—along with its entire surrounding network of protective runes—was instantly vaporized by the sheer kinetic trauma.

The moment the anchor was destroyed, the light curtain emitted a deafening, agonizing shriek. The tightly controlled Spirit Qi within the barrier violently destabilized, transforming into a chaotic, lethal shockwave that blasted outward toward the group!

Wu Hongxiao didn’t flinch. Her battle intent spiked. She planted her feet, twisting her hips to generate maximum torque as she swept her crimson spear in a wide arc. A fan-shaped wall of roaring fire erupted from the blade, acting as a massive thermal shield that absorbed the brunt of the kinetic backlash.

“Strike!”

Shen Hanyi pressed her index and middle fingers together, slashing them through the air.

Her twelve silver swords blurred into streams of light, striking the three destabilized structural nodes Zhou Kai had painted with flawless, millimeter precision.

The light curtain let out a final, pathetic whine. The glowing threads of Spirit Qi snapped like over-tightened violin strings, unraveling wildly in all directions.

CRACK!

The barrier shattered like a massive pane of glass. The complex spiritual architecture completely disintegrated, raining down as a harmless, dazzling shower of light particles before fading into nothingness.

The Isolation Grand Array was broken.

With the barrier gone, the subterranean pool was fully exposed.

It was a dead, stagnant body of water, thick and heavy as liquid mercury. Deep within its murky depths, a faint, nauseating pulse of dark red light throbbed.

A wave of bone-chilling, necrotic cold washed over the group. It was a vile cocktail of energy—the screaming resentment of tortured ghosts mixed with the primal, savage malice of demons.

The necrotic chill was so potent it actively began eating away at their Vitality. Even Wu Hongxiao, whose body was tempered to Bone Forging Grand Perfection, felt her muscles lock up. She grunted in pain, violently flaring her internal blood Qi to physically boil the frost out of her veins.

Noticing her struggle, Zhou Kai flicked his wrist. A cyan talisman darted through the air, detonating gently in front of her to form a localized, protective energy dome. The necrotic chill was instantly banished. Wu Hongxiao let out a long, ragged exhale, her rigid posture finally relaxing.

“The density of the resentment and demonic aura here is staggering,” Du Chuyao murmured, walking to the edge of the pool. She looked down at the viscous liquid, shaking her head in genuine regret. “What an absolute waste. Topographically speaking, this should have been a pristine, high-grade spirit spring. But it’s been hopelessly contaminated by demon blood. Its core spirituality is dead. It’s completely ruined.”

“Ruined?” Li Youci let out a sharp, genuine laugh. She threw a sidelong, highly condescending glance at the Jade Flower Palace Master. “I suppose that’s the tragedy of being raised in a gilded cage. Your vision is hopelessly narrow. What you see as highly toxic waste, I see as a five-star buffet.”

She didn’t waste another second. She produced a small, black clay jar densely inscribed with dark Yin runes. Running a finger over the rim, she chanted a rapid incantation.

The heavy, mercury-like water in the pool immediately responded. It defied gravity, spiraling upward into a dark red funnel that poured hungrily into the tiny jar.

“This much Yin Sha water, heavily saturated with demon blood… I’d say this is more than enough to give Hanyi’s sword embryo a massive evolutionary feast, wouldn’t you agree?” Li Youci smiled at the Sword Immortal as the jar rapidly drained the pool.

Shen Hanyi’s usually frigid expression softened into a faint, highly lethal smile. “More than enough.”

“We split the yield,” Li Youci stated. “The demonic Qi goes to you for the sword. The ghost Qi comes to me.” She glanced back at Du Chuyao. “What the righteous path avoids like the plague is the exact medicine we need to thrive.”

Du Chuyao completely ignored the gloating. She crouched at the edge of the now-draining pool, pressing her fingertips against the damp rock. A pulse of earthy yellow Spirit Qi flared from her hand.

Deep within her pupils, the ambient gold light condensed into a blinding, molten purity.

Her vision bypassed the physical rock entirely, plunging deep into the planetary crust. The massive, violently rerouted structure of the subterranean ley line was laid bare before her eyes.

When the golden light finally faded from her eyes, the aloof, aristocratic mask she always wore had vanished. It was replaced by a look of profound, creeping dread.

She stood up slowly, her gaze sweeping over the group before locking dead onto Zhou Kai. Every word she spoke was heavy as lead.

“The primary spirit vein running beneath this valley didn’t form naturally. It was forcefully grabbed by someone with apocalyptic levels of power and dragged here from over a hundred miles away.”

She swallowed hard. “You don’t perform planetary-scale terraforming just to feed a little spirit spring. This entire ley line was rerouted here to act as a massive, continuously firing suppression engine. It’s using the raw power of the earth to hold something down.”

Her eyes widened slightly.

“You told me we were tracking the remains of a dead demon.”

Her voice dropped to a terrified whisper.

“It’s still alive.”