The Legend of the Princess' Counterattack

Chapter 651: Jade Pendant Mingyou (Opening Explosion)

In the Black Crystal Cave in the Arctic Icefield, Yun Yao sat cross-legged on a lotus pedestal carved from ten thousand year old black ice, with three translucent spiritual herbs lingering around her. This was the "Ice Soul Fire Grass" she had found in the depths of the Ten Thousand Poisons Abyss. The spiritual energy of ice and fire flowed between its stems and leaves, and was being tempered by her Samadhi True Fire at this moment, turning into wisps of green mist that seeped into her brows. The ice ridges hanging from the top of the cave suddenly made a slight crackling sound, and twelve ice ridges pointed at the green jade pendant on her neck at the same time - the simple jade pendant she had worn since she traveled through time, was vibrating at a frequency that was difficult to detect with the naked eye.

"Click."

The system interface suddenly appeared in the depths of her sea of consciousness, and spider-web-like cracks appeared on the edge of the light blue screen. Yun Yao's mind tensed up, and the formula for refining the spiritual herbs almost went astray. The green mist of the Ice Soul Fire Grass suddenly became disordered, leaving three burn marks on her arm. What was even more strange was that the system voice, which should have been cold and mechanical, actually had an imperceptible tremor: "Host, host... the conditions for awakening the Hongmeng bloodline have been met."

Before she finished speaking, the jade pendant emitted a dazzling green light. Yun Yao's eyes blurred, and thousands of light points poured into her sea of consciousness like an inverted galaxy, each of which contained fragmented images. She saw a woman in a moon-white dress on a rainy night, covered in blood, holding a baby in her arms, and behind her was a thousand-foot-high ancient bronze door. Star tracks flowed on the door panels, and each track was exactly the same as the pattern on the back of the jade pendant. The woman's fingertips were dripping with blood, and she pressed the jade pendant on the baby's forehead. A corner of dark golden swaddling clothes appeared at the edge of the swaddling clothes, and it was embroidered with the twelve star wheel totems of the Hongmeng tribe.

"cough!"

Yun Yao suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood, and the blood beads condensed into golden red on the black ice, like burning sparks. The half-tempered spiritual grass exploded with a "bang", and the ice and fire spirits raged in the cave. The ice ridges broke one after another, but they automatically turned when approaching her body, as if blocked by some force. The vibration of the jade pendant became more and more intense, and the green mist turned into a substantial galaxy flowing around her body. Even the ends of her hair were stained with tiny spots of light, and her whole body seemed to be surrounded by the Milky Way.

"Yao'er!"

The cave door was pushed open with a bang, and Chu Mochen's figure rushed in with the wind and snow, holding a half-broken communication jade slip in his hand - that was the emergency contact jade talisman that he forcibly crushed after sensing the abnormal fluctuations in her spiritual consciousness. When he saw the scene inside the cave clearly, his pupils suddenly contracted: Yun Yao was surrounded by a cyan-gold light band, and golden-red blood was dripping from her fingertips. Every drop of blood that fell to the ground would outline the same runes as the jade pendant on the ice surface. Those runes were connected to each other, forming a miniature star map, and the central position was the Arctic ice field where the Xuanjing Cave was located.

"Chu Mochen..." Yun Yao raised her head, her voice unusually hoarse, "My sea of consciousness... seems to have something pouring in." Before she finished speaking, another piece of memory came to her - this time she saw the face of the woman in white clearly, a face that was 70% similar to hers, with a cinnabar mole at the end of her eye, exactly like the one in the only portrait her mother left her. Behind the woman, the ancient door slowly opened, and what poured out of the door was not light, but a suffocating chaotic atmosphere, as if connecting a crack in time and space.

Chu Mochen immediately grasped her wrist, but the spiritual energy that entered his body was like a drop in the ocean. On the inside of her wrist, pale golden star tracks were emerging on her originally fair skin, spreading from her wrist to her forearm, and each track was completely consistent with the marks on the back of the jade pendant. Even more amazingly, he sensed that her spiritual veins were undergoing earth-shaking changes - the originally slightly complex spiritual veins were now being reorganized at a speed visible to the naked eye, and fine star points were emerging on the meridian walls, like a miniature galaxy flowing in her body.

"It's the blood mark of the ancient Hongmeng clan." Chu Mochen's voice was tense. As a genius disciple of the Chu Mo family, he had seen relevant records in the family's ancient books. "Legend has it that the Hongmeng clan is born with the power of time and space, and their spirit veins will take on the form of star tracks as their blood awakens. Yao'er, do you still remember the reflection of the star tracks you saw in Mirror Lake before? At that time, your spirit veins were not like this..." He paused, with shock in his eyes, "This is so close to the breath of the origin of the Heavenly Dao."

Yun Yao felt a splitting headache, and memory fragments came flooding back like a tide. Another scene flashed by: in a modern laboratory, she was debugging a huge instrument as Su Yao, and the screen showed "cross-time and space gene matching degree 87%", and on the laboratory table was the jade pendant. Suddenly, the alarm sounded, the laboratory ceiling cracked, and some kind of black substance dripped. She subconsciously protected the jade pendant in front of her chest, and when she opened her eyes again, she was traveling to the world of cultivation.

"System... What's wrong with the system?" Yun Yao asked breathlessly, her eyes sweeping across the system interface in her sea of consciousness, which was still full of cracks. The original task panel was completely blurred, with only the words "Hongmeng Bloodline Awakening" flashing. The system that had been assisting her since she crossed over seemed to be on the verge of collapse. The mechanical sound was intermittent: "Warning... The host's origin resonated with the system, and the memory fusion degree has reached 73%... Please, please protect your consciousness——"

Before she finished speaking, the jade pendant suddenly burst into a sun-like brilliance, and the whole picture of the ancient bronze door appeared in front of Yun Yao's eyes. On the door, twelve star wheels slowly rotated, and each star wheel corresponded to the twelve ancestors of the Hongmeng tribe. The moment the woman in white (her mother Yun Lan) pushed the baby (her young self) into the ancient door, the ancient door suddenly shook violently, and countless sword qi slashed out from the door, leaving deep scars on the woman's back that could be seen to the bone, and she kept pushing the baby until the ancient door closed.

"what!"

Yun Yao screamed, and golden red blood spurted out again. This time, the blood was suspended in the air and condensed into a miniature projection of the ancient gate. Chu Mochen hurriedly took out the Chu family's secret "Star Soul Heart Protection Mirror", and the mirror reflected the scene of Yun Yao's sea of consciousness: countless light spots were attacking her spiritual barrier, and each light spot was wrapped with memory fragments, including fighting in the world of cultivation, scenes in modern laboratories, and her dual life as Yun Yao and Su Yao flashed overlappingly.

"Concentrate, don't be swallowed by the fragments!" Chu Mochen shouted, pinching out the magic formula at the same time, his own spiritual energy turned into twelve starlights, hitting Yun Yao's eyebrows to help her stabilize her consciousness. He suddenly remembered the record about the Hongmeng Clan in the family classics: "When the Hongmeng bloodline awakens, it must go through the 'galaxy calamity', and the past memories will be broken and reorganized by the power of time and space. If they cannot be integrated, the soul will be destroyed."

Yun Yao bit her tongue, the pain sobered her up temporarily. She found that whenever the memory fragments impacted her consciousness, the jade pendant would resonate, and the golden red blood was the bridge connecting memory and reality. She tried to use the "Taixu Yinling Jue", but found that the technique changed by itself, turning into a method she had never seen before - the spiritual energy flowed along the star track pattern, and every time it passed a star point, it would absorb the information in the memory fragments.

"So that's how it is..." Yun Yao suddenly had a flash of inspiration. The awakening of the Hongmeng bloodline actually required the fusion of the memories of two lives. The scientific research memory as Su Yao and the cultivation experience as Yun Yao were gradually merging under the guidance of the star track veins. When another piece of memory fragments from the laboratory came, she did not resist. Instead, she wrapped the fragments with her spiritual consciousness and guided them to flow along the star track lines. The fragments turned into pure spiritual energy and flowed into Dantian like ice and snow melting.

Chu Mochen watched her aura constantly changing, rising from the middle stage of the Spiritualization, the star track pattern gradually covering the entire arm, even spreading to the neck, echoing the jade pendant. He noticed that the star map drawn by Yun Yao's dripping blood on the ice surface was expanding as her realm improved. The star map that originally only covered the Arctic ice field now extended to the entire northern region, and even at the edge of the star map, the outlines of other continents could be vaguely seen.

"Chu Mochen, look." Yun Yao suddenly looked up, with stars flowing in her eyes. "I can 'see' the flow of spiritual energy in the entire Northern Territory, just like... like opening a map that is updated in real time." She stretched out her hand and clenched it. A volcano hundreds of miles away suddenly erupted, and in her "sight", the energy flow of the volcanic eruption was clearly visible, and she could even predict the direction of the magma.

Before Chu Mochen could respond, the jade pendant suddenly emitted a clear phoenix cry, and the green mist turned into twelve star wheels, floating above Yun Yao's head. Each star wheel was engraved with different runes, which were the twelve origin laws of the Hongmeng clan. Yun Yao felt a sudden clarity in her sea of consciousness, and those once vague memory fragments were gradually completed like a puzzle - she finally understood why she could skillfully use modern technology and cultivation techniques, and why she had an instinctive closeness to the power of time and space. All of this was the talent of the Hongmeng bloodline.

"Host...memory fusion degree is 92%." The system voice finally returned to stability, but it was still a little trembling. "The first stage of the awakening of the Hongmeng bloodline is completed. You can now unlock the 'Star Track Insight' skill, which can sense the fluctuations of time and space within a radius of one thousand miles." As the system prompted, Yun Yao's skill panel appeared in front of her eyes. In the originally gray skill bar, skills such as "Star Track Insight" and "Space-Time Resonance" lit up one by one.

Chu Mochen suddenly noticed that the jade pendant on Yun Yao's neck was completely transparent at this moment, and a miniature galaxy could be seen flowing inside it. The trajectory of the galaxy was exactly the same as the star track spiritual vein in her body. He suddenly remembered the murals in the Chu family's ancestral hall. One of the murals depicted the scene of the Hongmeng clan saint holding a galaxy wheel and controlling time and space. The appearance of the galaxy wheel was exactly the same as Yun Yao's jade pendant.

"This jade pendant... might be the artifact of the Hongmeng Clan, the Galaxy Wheel." Chu Mochen said in a deep voice, "Legend has it that the Galaxy Wheel can communicate with the turbulence of time and space. Your mother should have used it to send you to the lower world. As the Saint of Hongmeng, you can only activate its power after your bloodline is awakened." He paused, worry flashing in his eyes, "But the appearance of the Galaxy Wheel will inevitably attract the covetousness of various forces, especially the Blood Evil Sect. They have been looking for the inheritor of the Hongmeng bloodline."

Yun Yao nodded, feeling an endless amount of strength in her body, but also a little disappointed. After the memory merged, she finally knew that she was not just a time traveler, but the reincarnation of the Saint of the Hongmeng Clan, shouldering the mission of restarting the clan. But at this moment, she was more concerned about the concern in Chu Mochen's eyes - in the memory fragments, she saw countless times that Chu Mochen secretly protected her, from the helping hand when they first met to the life and death companionship later. It turned out that he knew her specialness long before she awakened.

"Don't worry, I'm here." Chu Mochen seemed to see through her thoughts and reached out to hold her hand. The warmth from his palm made her feel at ease. His fingertips slid across the star track patterns on her wrist, and suddenly he found that those patterns were slowly changing. The originally scattered star points were gradually converging into a miniature star map, and the center was exactly where the two of them were at the moment, the Xuanjing Cave.

Suddenly, the jade pendant made a rapid buzzing sound, and the phantom of the star wheel vibrated violently. Yun Yao's face changed, and her spiritual sense swept across a thousand miles. She found that at the edge of the Arctic ice field, there were dozens of powerful auras approaching at a high speed. Some of them carried a strong bloody aura, which was the symbol of the Blood Demon Sect.

"They came so quickly." Yun Yao frowned. Her newly awakened star track insight skill allowed her to clearly "see" the movements of those monks. The leader was a man wearing a bronze mask with a blood-red twelve-star pattern embroidered on his cuffs - it was the high priest of the Blood Evil Sect who was hunting her mother in her memory.

Chu Mochen immediately stood up and summoned the Chu family's "Life Star Sword", with brilliant starlight appearing on the sword: "I will stop them, and you take this opportunity to consolidate your realm. Your spiritual veins are being reconstructed now, so you can't be distracted."

Yun Yao shook her head, and the star track pattern suddenly spread to her palm. She raised her hand and waved it, and the wind and snow outside the cave were distorted by the power of time and space, forming a natural barrier: "No, I can now clearly sense their positions and weaknesses. The Blood Evil Sect has sent three people in the Spiritualization Realm and seven in the Nascent Soul Realm this time, but..." She curled her lips into a sneer, "Under the insight of the star track, their movements are like slowed down pictures."

Before she finished speaking, a beam of starlight condensed from her fingertips and shot it out casually. A hundred miles away, the Blood Demon Sect monks who were flying at full speed suddenly felt their bodies stagnate. The bronze-masked man in the lead realized something was wrong and was about to dodge when the starlight penetrated his left shoulder. Golden blood splashed on the snow, making a "sizzling" corrosion sound - this was the "Star Track Arrow" unique to the Hongmeng bloodline, which could freeze the flow of time and space.

"The Saint has appeared!" The bronze masked man's voice was filled with fear. He obviously recognized the origin of the starlight and immediately ordered a retreat. "Notify the sect master that the Hongmeng Saint is in the Arctic Ice Field!"

Watching the enemy retreat in a panic, Yun Yao suddenly felt dizzy, the star track pattern began to fade, and most of the spiritual energy in her body was consumed. Chu Mochen hurriedly supported her and found that her forehead was covered with sweat, and the star wheel phantom became transparent: "The sequelae of blood awakening are here, sit down quickly and practice the skills. Just now you forcefully used the power of time and space, which put too much burden on the spiritual vein."

Yun Yao sat cross-legged as instructed, and found that there was a miniature star wheel phantom in her dantian, which was slowly rotating and absorbing the spiritual energy between heaven and earth. With each rotation, the star track pattern became brighter, and the fatigue in her body was also relieved. Chu Mochen arranged three layers of star realm barriers at the entrance of the cave to prevent the enemy from returning.

"Chu Mochen, tell me..." Yun Yao closed her eyes and spoke softly, "When my mother was being hunted, was she also like this? She had a mission but only wanted to protect the people she cared about?"

Chu Mochen was startled, and recalled the scene he saw in the memory jade slip: Yun Lan pushed the baby into the ancient gate in the blood rain, but he was besieged by the monks of the Blood Evil Sect. At the last moment, he was still smiling, as if his sacrifice was worth it as long as the child was safe. He suddenly understood why Yun Yao had a trace of confusion in her eyes after the memory fusion - she wanted to complete the mission of the saint, but was afraid of losing the people around her.

"Whether you are Yun Yao or the Saintess of Hongmeng," Chu Mochen walked to her side, his fingertips gently stroking the star point between her eyebrows, "I will stand by you. The origin of the Chu Mo family and the Hongmeng clan was destined thousands of years ago, and the fate between you and me has transcended time and space."

Yun Yao opened her eyes and saw her own reflection in his eyes, as well as the phantom of the star wheel floating behind him. Suddenly, she reached out and took off the jade pendant, placing it in the palms of both of them: "I always felt that this jade pendant was a burden before, but now I know that it is a gift from my mother and the key to connect the past and the present. Chu Mochen, what we are going to face next may be the enemy of the entire cultivation world, but as long as you are here, I am not afraid."

Before he finished speaking, the jade pendant suddenly emitted a strong light, shrouding the two figures in starlight. Yun Yao felt that the cracks in the system interface were healing deep in her sea of consciousness, and it was replaced by a brand new panel with the words "Hongmeng Bloodline Progress: 35%" and a flashing urgent task reminder: "Go to Jingyuan Sea within three days to find the 'Hongmeng Fragments'."

Jingyuan Sea… Yun Yao silently recited the place name. A sea with colorful mists surging across it flashed through her memory fragments. Each ripple reflected different afterimages of time and space, including scenes of modern laboratories and images of powerful people in the cultivation world kneeling at an ancient gate. She knew that this would be their next stop in their quest to find the secrets of the Hongmeng Clan, and also the beginning of a greater challenge.

Chu Mochen looked at the renewed determination in her eyes and suddenly smiled: "Mirror Abyss Sea? I heard that it is the intersection of time and space turbulence, and mortals who enter will have their memories wiped. But now that you are here, our star track spirit veins can resonate, and perhaps we can find different clues."

Yun Yao nodded, and when she was practicing the technique, she found that the star track spiritual veins in her body could absorb the spiritual energy of heaven and earth on their own, several times faster than before. Even more amazingly, she could "see" Chu Mochen's spiritual veins - they were star track patterns similar to her own, but the color was slightly lighter, but when the two touched, they produced a subtle resonance.