397: A grand ode to the interplay of Yin and Yang!

"Tsk..."

Lu Ming set down his teacup and let out a light chuckle, his tone somewhat teasing.

"One hundred Mid-Grade Spirit Stones, just to see you give me the cold shoulder?"

Nian Yao was choked by these words, her elegant brows furrowing imperceptibly for a moment. The frustration and slight sense of humiliation she felt due to her current situation were stirred up by his remark.

She was never willing to engage in this kind of play-acting in the first place. Now, being mocked by a Foundation Establishment junior, she felt even more impatient.

"Forget it, there's no need for words with someone like this. I'll settle this quickly, take what I need, and be done with it!"

Thinking this, she said no more, not even bothering with perfunctory pleasantries. After all, he was just a lowly Foundation Establishment Cultivator.

She raised her fair hand, and a silver ring on her slender jade-like finger flickered with a faint light.

A seven-stringed zither, pitch-black throughout with a simple, ancient wood grain and strings faintly shimmering with a pale golden luster, appeared out of thin air, floating before her.

Without any greeting, any prelude, or even asking what the person before her wanted to hear.

Her fingertips fell, plucking the first string.

"Zheng—"

A clear, pleasant, yet strangely piercing sound of the zither suddenly rang out!

At first, the sound seemed like an ordinary zither note, but the moment it entered the ears, it seemed to act directly upon the Divine Soul!

An invisible and intangible sound wave, containing a powerful soul-confusing force, surged like mercury spreading across the ground or crashing waves against the shore, striking directly toward Lu Ming's Sea of Consciousness!

Within the sound wave, countless charming illusions and decadent sounds seemed interwoven, threatening to shake the mind and drag one's consciousness into a gentle, drunken stupor, falling forever into a dreamscape!

However, this sound wave attack, sufficient to make an ordinary Foundation Establishment Cultivator lose their senses instantly and even leave a Foundation Establishment Perfection Cultivator powerless to resist...

...fell into Lu Ming's terrifying Divine Sense, which far surpassed that of an ordinary person. It failed to splash even the smallest ripple, vanishing silently like a clay ox entering the sea.

"What's going on? Can't a guy just have some fun?"

Lu Ming curled his lip inwardly, quite speechless.

He had come out to find some amusement, so why did he keep running into these troublesome and messy affairs?

Nevertheless, since he was acting, he had to do it properly. He wanted to see what this woman, who had gone to such lengths to disguise her identity and suddenly used such a controlling sound-based attack on him, was actually up to.

Furthermore, up until now, the name "Nian Yao" had not appeared in the karma golden book, which meant she currently harbored no malice or killing intent toward him.

That made it even stranger. If there's no malice, what's the point of all this?

Thus, to uncover the truth, Lu Ming feigned a look of being caught in an illusion.

His eyes quickly became glazed, and a perfectly timed look of daze and intoxication appeared on his face, as if he were truly bewitched by the zither music and immersed in some wonderful dreamscape.

Seeing Lu Ming's eyes lose focus and his expression become dazed, Nian Yao immediately stopped playing. Her delicate chin tilted slightly as she let out a barely audible cold snort, though a trace of complexity flashed in her cold, beautiful eyes.

"Don't blame me; I have no choice either!"

To think that she, a dignified Early Golden Core Stage Immortal Master from a renowned musical Family in the Western Wilderness, was once a favored daughter of heaven, receiving thousands of loves and respects.

Now, she had fallen to this state, hiding in this den of iniquity in the Northern Border, living under an assumed name.

She even went as far as to defile her own status, forcing smiles all day in this Lanyue Pavilion, playing along and dealing with low-level Cultivators who were no different from ants in her eyes.

Every time she thought of this, the humiliation, resentment, and grief gnawed at her Dao Heart like ten thousand ants.

However, the moment she thought of the thing on her body that was like a maggot on a bone, constantly threatening her life, she had to suppress all her emotions and continue this helpless and stifling disguise.

"Damn the Six Desires Demonic Sect! One day, I will make you pay in blood, a thousand times over!"

Nian Yao's jade hand inside her sleeve clenched quietly, her nails almost digging into her palm, as a bone-deep hatred and killing intent flickered in the depths of her eyes.

Her real name was not actually Nian Yao, but Lin Qingge, the legitimate daughter of the "Heavenly Sound Valley Lin Family," a fairly famous musical clan in the Western Wilderness.

Because the Family Legacy had unique achievements in the Dao of rhythm, especially in inducing, harmonizing, and even controlling the seven emotions and six desires of living beings, it attracted the greed of the Six Desires Demonic Sect.

The Six Desires Demonic Sect specialized in the Dao of the seven emotions and six desires and was skilled in refining various bizarre demonic Gu.

And the Lin Family's Cultivation Technique's subtle control over emotions was precisely the perfect nourishment for them to refine a type of Gu called "Seven Emotions Gu."

After a carefully planned conspiracy, the thousand-plus members of the Heavenly Sound Valley Su Family, except for a few clan members who were traveling or on missions, were all secretly captured and controlled by the Six Desires Demonic Sect, ultimately becoming "living nourishment" for them to cultivate the Seven Emotions Gu!

The Family residence was turned into a shura field, filled with wails, and was eventually burned to the ground by a demonic fire, completely destroyed.

At that time, Lin Qingge happened to be far away in a dangerous land to collect a top-tier spiritual material called "Phoenix-Perched Parasol Wood" to craft her Lifebound Treasure, the "Nine Heavens Huanpei Zither," thus narrowly escaping the disaster.

But when she returned full of the joy of her harvest, all she saw was scorched earth and ruins; the once-great Heavenly Sound Valley had turned to dust.

Matters should have ended there, with the subsequent plot likely being Lin Qingge, the one who got away, harboring hatred and biding her time, secretly accumulating strength until the day she could avenge her Family.

However, things were not that simple. Although she was not captured on the spot, a sub-Gu of the Seven Emotions Gu had been deeply planted in the depths of her Divine Soul through their Bloodline connection!

This sub-Gu was invisible and intangible, difficult to detect normally, but it would continuously grow by absorbing the host's emotional fluctuations.

Even more terrifyingly, it acted as a tracking beacon, allowing the holder of the mother Gu thousands of miles away to vaguely perceive her location!

Thus, to evade the pursuit of the Six Desires Demonic Sect and avoid meeting the same tragic fate as her clansmen, Lin Qingge had to flee in panic, living under an assumed name and changing her appearance and aura, eventually escaping to the Northern Border, a place far from the Western Wilderness with even more complex powers.

As for why she chose to settle in the Lanyue Pavilion of Liuyun Immortal City, it was a move born of necessity.

She discovered that a place of worldly pleasure like the Lanyue Pavilion gathered a massive and chaotic amount of mortal desires.

These chaotic auras of desire acted like a natural "magnetic interference field," capable of masking the unique fluctuations emitted by the Seven Emotions sub-Gu in her body to some extent, giving her a temporary breathing space.

But this method treated the symptoms rather than the root cause. While the massive mortal desires could mask her aura and prevent precise tracking from afar...

...they also acted as a catalyst for the Seven Emotions sub-Gu within her!

Because these chaotic desires were one of the Seven Emotions Gu's favorite "nourishments," accelerating the sub-Gu's growth and activity.

To counter the side effects of "drinking poison to quench thirst," she had to constantly circulate her Family's Cultivation Technique, the "Great Ode of Intertwined Yin and Yang," using its profound musical dao rhyme to suppress and soothe the restless sub-Gu within her.