Chapter 339: You Stink

Mingshen was the first to recognise the source of the ruckus. Compared to Anji, he had spent more time around his hot-headed brother to know the sound of his movements. For some reason, the spell barrier weakened after ten minutes, and they could hear his booming yells from inside Song Min’s room.

"We’re in here!" Mingshen yelled as loudly as he could without warning, causing Anji’s ears to ring.

Sure enough, Yihao heard them and approached the room. However, the strong barrier resisted his attempts to break the door down.

"What kind of door is this? It’s worse than metal!"

Shaking his head almost fondly at the blotched rescue attempt, Mingshen explained there was a spell guarding their entrance. The despair in Yihao’s groan could be heard distinctly, and Anji stepped up.

"I weakened it earlier. You should be able to force open a small hole in the barrier with your extreme yang energy and blast open the door. The hole is located near the bottom right of the third window’s hinge to your left."

Guided by his younger sister’s voice, Yihao gathered his newly stabilised golden core. The fire in a more balanced world was easier to control. He channelled it into his first and counted down before throwing a yang-energy condensed punch at the spot Anji mentioned.

Inside, Mingshen shielded Anji with his body even as they took cover behind the sturdy dining table. As expected, the brute broke through both the barrier and the wall. There was no need to open the door when Yihao could easily create one anywhere.

"It worked!" Yihao rejoiced with a loud laugh. "I’m the best!"

Thrilled, Mingshen and Anji wasted no time. They clambered past the rubble and followed Yihao, taking a good look at the grounds they had been held captive in for the first time.

While Anji did not recognise where she was, Mingshen did. He scouted this area without finding anything amiss previously, before he was captured from the room in an inn he had booked. That part had always bothered him. However, after learning that these demonic cultivators were not entirely human, he understood why.

To think they were held captive in Luoyang’s most infamous aristocrat’s private residence the whole time, he had been careless to assume the owner was a corrupted politician backing a petty merchant family. The Song traders were well known in the Central Plains, unlike the Red Palace and its private mercenary company. They dealt with many types of goods, from daily necessities to rare overseas products like exotic birds sold as pets to those with too much money.

More surprisingly, Mingshen noticed the lack of guards. He knew there were many servants around, but the courtyard seemed uninhabited, with no signs of life apart from them.

"Where are the rest of the servants?" he asked. Surely Yihao did not have enough time to clean up the bodies during his rescue attempt.

Yihao shrugged.

"There were none," he concluded. "This whole place is like a mirage. They attacked me and then evaporated on physical contact. Was that why neither of you was able to escape until now?"

Illusion? It made sense now. The ghosts were a terrible match against Yihao, who had an extreme yang body. They must have crossed over to the other side when their brother’s yang energy performed a forced exorcism.

Patting the bulky teen who seemed to have grown even taller in the time they were away on the shoulder, Mingshen praised Yihao. It was not an actual word of thanks, but Yihao beamed at the recognition from his older brother.

The three of them spent a few minutes running until Mingshen stopped them.

"We’re lost again," he noted with a frown. "There’s another spell active."

Anji, slightly out of breath from keeping up with her brothers, looked around. She did not sense any spells. However, they had been going in circles. The mansion was not as huge as the Mystical Qilin Sect’s Pagoda. Yet, they had spent nearly ten minutes getting nowhere. More disturbingly, the main residence did not seem that far from them even after running for ten minutes.

"Let’s split up," Anji suggested. "We will run in opposite directions and check if someone can escape this place."

Although unwilling, Yihao agreed to run interference and took off first. Once he was gone, Anji told Mingshen to go in the opposite direction while she remained on the exact spot for either of them to confirm an exit.

Mingshen was even more unwilling to part with Anji than Yihao. However, her insistence that they did not have choices or time made him follow her instructions.

Truthfully, Anji already knew. If there were no spells or traps, that only meant the entire place was not in the physical plane.

It was rare, but Anji had already experienced it back during the successor trials. Lady Mang Yuan had something similar. She simply did not think Song Min would do the same. If her fears were confirmed, it meant Yihao was now also a captive with them in a place more difficult to escape than before.

Five minutes later, Yihao and Mingshen came running towards Anji from opposite directions. Anji felt any remaining energy leave her as the colour of the sky became lighter. They had been up all night, and she had long exhausted any energy reserves to send out a message.

Although she had no idea how Song Min did it, the moment they left that room, they had already become fish caught in his net.

"What’s going on?" Yihao frowned. "How did we end up running back to the starting point when all I did was close my eyes and run in a straight line without stopping?"

Mingshen was even more surprised when he heard his younger brother had closed his eyes to avoid being fooled by the suspected illusion.

Before Anji could respond, they heard a low chuckle. Yihao immediately leapt into a defensive stance, but Anji and Mingshen were more familiar and simply glared at the source.

"What a touching family reunion. How nice of you to make the visit. I was just about to extend invitations."

Meeting Song Min for the first time, Yihao felt a strange sense of apprehension. Normally, he would have thrown the first punch. However, his sharply honed instincts told him something was off about the handsome man in black robes with red spider lilies embroidered on his sleeves.

"You stink," he noted, surprising Song Min for a good while.

Although the situation was dire, Mingshen could not help but burst into laughter. He quickly recovered by covering his mouth with a hand, equally surprised at his own reaction. Anji’s glare turned into a judgmental one.

If Song Min were still alive, his face would have turned red at the false accusation. Why was it that every kid from the Celestial Dragon Sect was worse than the last? Had his siblings ever been this difficult to deal with? Song Min could not recall clearly, but it took every ghostly drop of willpower and patience not to strangle the brutish brother with zero social filters.