Don't Cause Trouble Chapter 55: Pegasus

The stink talisman didn’t actually produce a real smell. Instead, it twisted the thin spiritual energy in the air around it, creating the illusion of a stench within a hundred-meter radius. Strictly speaking, it was more like a spellcaster’s illusion technique except a spellcaster wouldn’t need to rely on talismans.

This talisman wasn’t effective for long. As the saying goes, "When you smell something long enough, you stop noticing it." No matter how strong the odor, after a while, humans or beasts alike would get used to it.

But the stink talisman was merely Ye Su’s way of covering up another type of talisman.

Sure enough, it didn’t take long for one of the stone bats to notice something unusual on its companion. It let out a sharp, angry screech and flew over to tear off the stink talisman using the claw on its forelimb.

Its claw was sharp, and it easily sliced through the surface of the stink talisman. Instantly, the smell began to fade.

This stone bat flapped its wings and let out another screech, signaling to the others. Soon, more stone bats began searching for companions who had talismans stuck on them and followed suit, tearing the stink talismans off one by one.

The stench in the abyss gradually faded. Seeing this from the hanging basket, Zhou Yun reminded Ye Su, "The stink talismans have lost their effect."

Ye Su chuckled. "That was just the beginning."

When she drew the talismans earlier, she had deliberately glued two sheets of yellow talisman paper together. The top layer was the stink talisman; the bottom layer contained a different kind of spell. As soon as the stone bats tore the talisman, the bottom spell would be activated.

As the stink talismans were torn apart, some of the stone bats began to realize something was wrong. Beneath the surface of some stink talismans, they found another layer, this one releasing a faint white light, forming a barrier.

This barrier wasn’t very strong. It was just enough to withstand the initial damage from their sharp claws. But by the time they tried to rip through the second layer, it was already too late.

Six of the hidden talismans turned out to be sonic burst talismans. They suddenly let out deafening sounds, attacking the stone bats’ sense of direction and scrambling their ability to think clearly.

The first few stone bats that discovered the hidden layer were hit hardest. The sound overwhelmed them, making them shriek in agony. Their heads exploded on the spot, blood spraying everywhere.

Inside the stone swarm, chaos broke out. The bats shrieked wildly and scattered in every direction.

And just then, four hidden lock talismans flared with a blinding light. Beams shot out and converged at a single point, forming a four-sided pyramid-shaped barrier that trapped all of the bats inside.

This move hit them first with an attack, then cut off all escape, a perfectly executed trap.

Inside the basket, everyone watched wide-eyed as the stone bats, once tightly packed in a swarm, now scrambled frantically to escape. But in front of them was the lock barrier; behind them, the sonic burst talismans. In the end, they either slammed themselves to death against the barrier or had their minds shattered by the noise, exploding into clouds of blood. Some went completely berserk and began biting nearby bats, killing their own kind.

Inside the four-sided pyramid barrier was a total mess. The hunters had suddenly become the hunted.

"The lock barrier isn’t that strong," Ye Su said seriously as she looked at the dying stone bats inside. "If they kept working together, they could have broken out."

Ma Congqiu turned his head and looked at her in shock. That’s what she’s concerned about? Whether the barrier is strong enough?! Any kind of beast or even a cultivator, would be completely shaken after going through all that.

The talismans themselves weren’t terrifying. What was terrifying was that Ye Su had calculated everything from the beginning.

First, the stink talismans affected the bats, making them react with disgust and rip them apart without thinking. That step alone led them directly into a trap.

Then the sonic burst talismans activated, targeting their ears, disabling their ability to think or regroup, and driving them to flee in a panic.

Right at that moment, the lock barrier was triggered, blocking their escape and sealing their fate.

They were charging full speed down the road to death.

It was an elaborate chain trap!

If she had used only sonic talismans from the start, they might have done some damage, but not this cleanly. As of now, over 90% of the stone bats trapped inside the lock barrier were either dead or severely injured.

……

"So talismans can be layered like that," Zhou Yun remarked in awe. "I’ve never seen any talisman cultivator use this method before."

Not just sword cultivators—even the two nearby disciples from prestigious talisman sects had never seen this kind of technique.

Talisman cultivators also had hidden talismans, but those were simply drawn on talisman paper that looked like ordinary paper, using colorless ink.

Suddenly, Lian Lian asked, "Did you also use a transfer talisman?"

Those hidden talismans inside hadn’t activated right away, so she figured that was the reason.

"I drew a transfer talisman on the back of the stink talisman," Ye Su said, raising her eyebrows slightly. As expected of a Wuxing Sect talisman cultivator—she figured it out that quickly.

The transfer talisman allowed the stink talisman on the surface to activate first. Once the stink talisman was destroyed, the transfer talisman lost its effect, triggering the soundburst and lock talismans underneath.

What looked like a single talisman was actually two sheets, with three different talismans drawn across them.

"Fellow Daoist Ye is quite knowledgeable about the talisman path," Cheng Huai’an finally said.

"I was just messing around, and luckily it worked," Ye Su replied modestly.

She knew her own strengths. She had never formally studied talisman arts, everything she knew came from self-study. Because of that, her thinking wasn’t bound by the typical constraints of talisman cultivators.

Today’s move had been completely improvised. After leaving the Dark Realm, she had kept thinking about how to use the hundreds of strange and seemingly useless talismans she saw on those two walls.

Ye Su’s philosophy was to never waste any resource. If something was a talisman, it must have a use.

Lian Lian looked at Ye Su’s hands. It was the first time she had ever seen a talisman cultivator who combined talismans with tactical calculation in combat.

Talisman cultivators usually relied on two main tools: talismans and talisman arrays. The former could work on their own; the latter were more complex and required multiple talismans to form a formation.

That was what defined a pure talisman cultivator’s strength.

"To walk the great Dao is the only way to transcend tribulation and become divine," Lian Lian said with a mocking tone. "Using these trickery-based methods will make it harder for you to reach the Dao."

Ye Su raised her brows slightly at that. "What do you mean by trickery?"

Lian Lian replied coldly, "Talisman masters draw from heaven and earth’s spiritual energy and follow the path of the great Dao, becoming one with their talismans. What you’re doing doesn’t count."

"By your logic, are sword cultivators’ sword techniques also trickery?" Ye Su asked, puzzled. "Before one can walk the Dao, one must survive first. If you die, are you planning to pursue the Dao as a ghost?"

Lian Lian: "...I’m not arguing philosophy with you."

Since they weren’t close, Ye Su didn’t waste her breath either. She turned her attention back to the few remaining stone bats inside the lock barrier, wondering if any of their body parts could be used as refining materials.

After a while, Lian Lian couldn’t help herself and asked, "Who taught you that technique earlier?"

Ye Su: "?"

Lian Lian’s tone carried a strange mix of bitterness and confusion—yet a moment later, she shattered the impression she gave off by asking that question.

Thud—

Everyone in the hanging basket was still focused on the stone bats ahead when something suddenly slammed against the umbrella above. The barrier of the flying mirror armor trembled violently.

Everyone fell silent and slowly looked upward.

Thud, thud-thud—

Once, twice… the impact sounds kept coming, and the basket began shaking harder and harder.

"What’s up there?" Ma Congqiu gripped his sword. "Could it be another swarm of stone bats?"

"No," Ye Su said, looking up. "The way this is hitting isn’t the same as the stone bats."

It felt more like a large beast was causing the disturbance.

"Ye Su, let me go out," Xu Chengyu said.

"Okay," Ye Su replied, then deactivated the flying mirror armor’s barrier to let him out.

Xu Chengyu flew out of the basket, sword in hand, quickly rising out of sight.

The moment he saw the beast approaching the mountain peak, his pupils shrank, it was a pegasus, equivalent in power to a Nascent Soul cultivator.

No wonder Cheng Huai’an’s talisman formation had failed.

The pegasus resembled a horse. It was reddish-brown all over, with wings growing from its shoulders. But its body was covered in short, thick spikes, and its nature was violently aggressive.

Right now, it was flapping its wings while stomping furiously on top of the umbrella.

Xu Chengyu gave a slight twist of his wrist holding the sword, gathered his energy, and took a few steps in mid-air, charging straight toward the pegasus.

"I’ll add another talisman," Cheng Huaian said as he listened to the intense fighting sounds above. He held on to the edge of the swaying basket with one hand, and with the other, drew a talisman upward in the air.

After he pushed the drawn talisman upward, the entire hanging basket immediately stabilized and stopped swaying.

"What’s up there?" Zhou Yun asked anxiously. She even seemed ready to rush out and help.

Ye Su stopped her. "We don’t know the situation yet. We can’t just charge out blindly."

"But… Senior Brother is up there alone…" Zhou Yun had heard the elders talk about the Endless Abyss, this place was far too dangerous. A young prodigy at the late Core Formation stage had reportedly died here.

"Hold on a moment," Ye Su said as she reached into her qiankun bag and rummaged around until she pulled out a large piece of mirror.

"What’s that?" Ma Congqiu asked instinctively as he looked at the irregular mirror piece.

"A mirror," Ye Su replied.

"I can see that," Ma Congqiu said, puzzled. "What kind of magic item is this? Does it reveal demons? Or reflect your true heart?"

Ye Su shook her head. "It shows your face."

Ma Congqiu: "…"

This big mirror was something Ye Su had made herself. Xiyu (her younger martial sister) cared a lot about her appearance and always wanted different kinds of mirrors, so the senior sister, trying to save money, made her a giant mirror pane.

Over the years, Xiyu had chipped off more than half of it and turned the pieces into various portable mirrors.

Ye Su didn’t own much to begin with, so she just stored everything in her qiankun bag. She had kept this large mirror pane for five or six years.

Ye Su broke off four chunks of the mirror and then took a knife and chopped the long table into wooden strips. Under the confused stares of everyone, she attached the mirror pieces to one end of each wooden strip and handed them to three others—Lu Jiu, Ma Congqiu, and Lian Lian.

"I’ll open the barrier in a moment. Be quick," Ye Su instructed while holding her own stick with a mirror fixed on one end. "Stick the long rod outside the basket and keep it in place."

After handing out the makeshift mirror rods, Ye Su gave each person a talisman. "This is an ice talisman. Once the stick is in place, apply the talisman to freeze it steady."

Lian Lian looked down at the rough stick in her hand and wanted to refuse, but for some reason, in the end, she joined Ye Su and helped carry out the task.

The moment the barrier opened, all four of them swiftly inserted the rods with the mirror pieces into the four sides of the hanging basket and immediately stuck on the ice talismans. The rods froze solid where they were connected to the basket.

"All done," Ye Su said, stepping back and resealing the barrier. She pointed at the mirrors and said to the others, "Now we can observe the situation above from all directions."

Everyone stared at the shabby, irregular pieces of mirror. "…"

Say what you will, when they looked into those four mirrors placed around the basket, they could actually see Xu Chengyu fighting a beast above, clearly from front, back, left, and right.

It was a full 360-degree view without blind spots.

So this is what an artifact refiner can do?

Everyone in the basket silently sighed in admiration.

"Is that a pegasus?" Zhou Yun frowned as she looked at the scene reflected in the mirrors. "That type of demon beast was supposed to have disappeared years ago. Why is it here?"