"Where, where is this place?" Old Liu crashed hard. He blinked groggily, his eyes immediately blinded by the intense light beams. "Damn, it’s so bright."

The rapid descent seemed to have caused no harm to Hong Ling. The little sand spirit on her arm had transformed its tail into a large cushion just as she landed, catching her perfectly. She stood gracefully in place, her skirt fluttering gently with her voice as she spoke: "It seems we've been trapped inside a mass of glass."

"Mirrors!" Ye Xiu calmly scanned their surroundings. This was a world made entirely of mirrors. The light was dazzling, reflecting countless angles of himself in every direction. "Could this fourth malevolent energy actually be these mirrors?"

"Have you noticed the one directly ahead?" Old Liu observed keenly. The thin-faced blade hidden in his sleeve seemed to sense some killing intent, having forgotten the threat of Little Sand to emerge on its own. "My thin-faced blade is pointing there; that must be where the spiritual energy resides."

Hong Ling moved to the front. In this pristine, circular world of mirrors, her figure was omnipresent, appearing small and delicate. She stared coldly at the mirror Old Liu indicated, her expression grave. "This is a world full of mirrors, but why doesn't this one in front of us show our reflections?"

Ye Xiu focused his attention and also detected the strangeness. In reality, the surrounding mirrors were like walls fitted into this chamber, stretching and distorting the trio's figures as the walls extended. But the central mirror was perfectly flawless, yet utterly empty upon its surface.

Old Liu reached out and retrieved the thin-faced blade. He stepped toward the large mirror ahead of Hong Ling, intent on testing what this mirror truly was.

"It's integrating..." Old Liu stared intently at the point where his thin-faced blade met the mirror. He was astonished. This mirror appeared incredibly solid, yet when it contacted the blade, it yielded as gently as water. "What kind of strange thing is this? If the thin-faced blade can pass through, can we?"

"If I’m not mistaken, this is the Mirror Palace my father told me about!" Hong Ling watched Old Liu's situation and then spoke towards the mirror. "When my father brought me here before, he told me legends about mirrors."

"Tell us, tell us." Old Liu retrieved his thin-faced blade and backed away several paces, fearing he might merge into the glass if he wasn't careful.

Hong Ling sighed, recalling some of her father's words: "My father told me that there is another world that corresponds to our reality; that world might be a precursor to this one, or perhaps its successor."

"Is that the scientific concept of a parallel universe? Your father, a bone collector, believes in science!" Ye Xiu gnashed his teeth in mockery, though her words also brought Ye Xiu back to his initial encounters with the Shinigami. Shinigami were not bound by time; they could appear anywhere. His master, the High God, was always appearing and disappearing in abandoned construction sites. Thinking back now, why did he always choose such places to meet? Was the Shinigami side something that couldn't bear the light? Was he hiding from someone?

"Science is just another reasonable explanation for mysterious power. Are you suggesting everyone should believe I possess ancient esoteric arts?" Old Liu, too, was an elder figure who enjoyed the conveniences science brought, but he trusted his own Daoist arts more.

Hong Ling carried on without being sidetracked by the others: "Mirrors act as connectors between two worlds. Perhaps our reflections inside the mirrors have already found the path to the lower levels, or maybe you two in the mirrors haven't yet entered the Ninefold Venomous Formation. This is a natural maze."

"Wait, look!" As Ye Xiu listened to Hong Ling's explanation, his gaze remained fixed on the mirror. Suddenly, the mirror's surface rippled like water, then began to blur and flicker with something. He shouted, "It's writing! There's writing inside the mirror."

Upon hearing this, Old Liu hurried to the front, but he was disappointed. The characters were long and thin, completely outside the scope of his knowledge. He was vexed. "What kind of junk writing is this? Twisty and winding, nothing like the Chinese characters we normally use."

"Bad! Little Sand!" Hong Ling roared, activating the spiritual energy of Little Sand on her arm. In that very instant, shadows of countless flying arrows erupted from all the surrounding mirrors, aimed directly at the three people in the center. In that critical moment, Little Sand transformed, its massive head reappearing, coiling precisely around Ye Xiu and the other two, blocking the sudden attack.

"Damn, where did those arrows come from?" Old Liu gripped his thin-faced blade, assuming a ready stance, prepared to fight whatever emerged.

Ye Xiu quietly drew a breath and observed. The surrounding mirrors showed no further activity. However, Hong Ling's reaction made him highly suspicious. He pressed her: "Hong Ling, how did you know those attacks were coming? If Little Sand hadn't been there, I believe those arrows would have hit us."

"Are you two idiots? The mirror clearly wrote that flying arrows were coming! Didn't you see it?" Hong Ling pointed at the mirror, cursing the other two. "If it weren't for me and Little Sand, you two would have been riddled with holes by now."

"The mirror wrote..." Ye Xiu glanced back at the mirror. The blurry mist and those twisting shapes had vanished. "You mean those things that neither I nor Old Liu recognized were writing?"

Hong Ling stroked the arrow wounds on Little Sand’s body, looking down on the two men with disdain. "Calling yourselves masters. The serpentine script displayed on the mirror was the Serpent Script of the Fuxi Clan. How would low-born races like you recognize it?"

"Fuxi Serpent Script? I've never heard of such a thing." Old Liu paced back and forth alongside the mirrors for a while, very eager to see those characters reappear.

Hearing the name Fuxi again, Ye Xiu's mind grew wary. Never mind the Tree Face or the Fierce Bird, figures like Hong Ling, the bone collectors, and now this Serpent Script—they all shared inextricable links to Fuxi. Half the elements in this Ninefold Venomous Formation he had encountered were connected to the Fuxi Clan. Could there be a deeper secret here?

"The Serpent Script is common to both the Bone Sect and the Esoteric Sect. No wonder my father told me about the Mirror Palace; he must have been here back then." Hong Ling suddenly became confused as she considered this. "Wait a minute. If this mirror is related to the Bone Sect, my father could have brought me here. Why did he forbid me from coming down for so many years? Could the Mirror Palace be a product of the Esoteric Sect?"