It all happened in the time it takes a spark to fly off of a piece of flint. Furthermore, the long-haired woman had clearly never considered that her powerful divine ability actually wouldn’t affect Bai Xiaochun.

However, she was an extraordinary being, and despite the fact that it seemed to Bai Xiaochun that she couldn’t possibly avoid his strike, she actually chuckled, and then vanished into thin air.

A moment later, she reappeared back at her vanity, combing her hair. It was almost as if everything that had happened moments ago had been an illusion. As for Bai Xiaochun, he stood there, his face ashen and his heart pounding in his chest.

Actually, her divine ability hadn’t been completely ineffective. Bai Xiaochun had indeed begun to slip into a strange state of thought. However, it had only lasted for a moment before the scrap of Willpower he had inside of him, which he had feared lost when he formed his Heaven-Dao Nascent Soul, suddenly reared up for a brief moment.

That brief moment was all the time he needed to recover his mental faculties. That was also when he quickly came up with the plan to make an opportunity for himself, and unleash a counter attack.

However, not even such preparations were effective against this woman. The fact that she had simply vanished and then reappeared back at the vanity left Bai Xiaochun feeling quite shaken.

“She didn’t vanish because of her speed. No... she... looked like she actually went back in time to the moment from before!” The mere thought that this woman had such an incomprehensible magical technique filled him with even more alarm than before. Scowling on the verge of tears, he decided that he should try to work things out with her.

Just as he opened his mouth, though, the woman chuckled.

“Interesting. No wonder the gravekeeper of this world picked you.... Your Will... is a bit different from the other people I’ve seen here.... Including you, there are two people on this ship that I’m particularly interested in....”

Bai Xiaochun stood there, confused by what exactly the woman was talking about. Suddenly, she turned her head again, not to look at him, but to look at a spot on the ground between the two of them!

Although the wood of the deck seemed ordinary in nature, as soon as she looked at it, it began to blur....

“Finally here....” she said, and her featureless face suddenly distorted, almost like a piece of paper being crumpled up. Gasping, Bai Xiaochun looked down at the ground.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

It was almost as if someone was attacking the ground from beneath. Massive force struck it, causing intense rumbling sounds to echo out as the floor of the bedchamber rocked violently. Then, another boom could be heard, and it shattered!

To Bai Xiaochun’s shock, the woman began to laugh a bizarre, ghostly laugh. And at the same time, several beams of light shot up through the floor!

Although they looked like huge beams of light, they were actually thin threads, within which were cultivators! At first, they were very small, almost like miniature people, but moments later, they grew to normal size.

There were seven or eight of them, and all of them wore expressions of profound excitement.

“I’m first!!”

“Hahaha! I’m going to get a Millennial Longevity Pill!”

However, even as their voices and laughter continued to echo about, they looked around and saw where they were standing. They saw the vanity and the woman, and then the broken mirror. The woman turned, opened her gaping maw, and lunged at the entire group.

She was on them in the blink of an eye, and before they could even shout in alarm, they were swallowed up.

Then, crunching sounds rang out, sounds that caused Bai Xiaochun’s spine to tingle, and his face to drain of blood.

Things weren’t over yet, though. A moment later, a few dozen more people flew out, a second wave of cultivators.

“This place is dangerous!!” Bai Xiaochun shouted, looking over this second group. Then, it was to his profound anxiety that he realized he recognized one of the faces. “Xiaomei! Get out of here!!”

He was about to rush over to Hou Xiaomei when he realized that there was something very strange about her aura. And when he looked into her eyes, it was to his profound shock that he realized she had two pupils!

A bone-chilling laughter rang out that he found very familiar.

“I’m finally back!” Hou Xiaomei said. When he heard her voice, his eyes went wide with incredulity, and he stopped in place, beads of sweat popping out all over his head.

“That voice. That laughter.... You’re... you’re not Hou Xiaomei! You’re Gongsun Wan’er!! What did you do to Hou Xiaomei!?!?”

The girl who appeared to be Hou Xiaomei was none other than Gongsun Wan’er, whose eyes shone with sinister light as she smiled and said, “You still remember me, sweetie? Don’t worry, how could I possibly hurt your Xiaomei? I’m just standing in for her to play with you a bit.”

At this point, Gongsun Wan’er slowly turned to look at the woman sitting at the vanity, who was still combing her hair. Brow furrowed slightly, she said, “I really hate it when people use my vanity.”

“This vanity is mine,” the woman replied in a raspy voice. “And you... are also mine. Did you think that if you hid your soul in that body, and then masked your aura, I wouldn’t know you had come?” Suddenly, that gaping maw appeared again, to lunge toward Gongsun Wan’er this time.

However, the instant the mouth appeared, Gongsun Wan’er chuckled, and sent out a stream of black smoke that became a gaping maw of its own.

Then, the two of them began to fight back and forth, right there in the bedchamber!

Booms rang out, and the room began to rock back and forth. The shockwaves of the fighting caused the newly arrived cultivators to cough up blood and stagger backward, their expressions filled with shock and confusion.

None of them understood why, after finding the exit to the trial by fire, they were suddenly in a lady’s bedchamber, a bedchamber that was profoundly dangerous.

Bai Xiaochun’s mind was in chaos; events were unfolding too rapidly to process. Despite his confusion, though, he could sense that there were two souls within Hou Xiaomei’s body. One belonged to that bizarre girl, and the other, was Hou Xiaomei’s true soul, although it was currently sealed and suppressed!

“Xiaomei....” Despite how anxious he felt, he knew that there was nothing he could do right now. The force being unleashed by the fighting flung him backward, where he slammed into the wall. Then, cracking sounds filled the air as the wall shattered!

Revealed beyond the wall was... a severely damaged staircase that led to the deck above!

It was in this same moment that a third wave of cultivators shot up through the hole in the bedchamber. Included in that group were Du Lingfei and the young man.

In the moment that they burst onto the scene, an energy erupted out that seemed to shake the entire battleship, and it came from that young man.

In that moment, the young man’s skin began to split and fall apart, as if he had been wearing it as an outer layer. A face appeared that seemed threatening without being angry, with eyes that contained heavenly bodies, and an aura that surpassed the most paragon entities in all heaven and earth. He was none other than...

“The Celestial!!” Bai Xiaochun shrieked in his heart. Although he had guessed that this would happen, to see his suspicions confirmed right in front of him caused him to suddenly think about what he had done so recently.

“I... I actually smacked the Celestial on the side of the head?!”