Because Wei Tu had deliberately hidden the truth, both Holy Son Faguang and the old sect master Gu had long accepted the idea that Wei Tu was completely on his own. So when they saw Cao Mi suddenly rush in, they didn’t think she had anything to do with him.

That’s why, when she appeared on the battlefield, Faguang’s first thought was to try peaceful negotiation, not a direct fight.

Of course, that idea also came from the fact that he was already stretched thin.

Otherwise, even if he didn’t want to kill her on sight, he definitely wouldn’t be acting this politely.

So when Cao Mi got close to the battlefield and passed them straight by to rush toward Wei Tu, both Faguang and the old sect master were completely caught off guard, standing there stunned.

After all, normally, when a cultivator sees an unfamiliar battle, even if they’re greedy, they’ll usually stop first to observe before acting.

Who would just jump into the middle of it like Cao Mi did without even considering the danger?

Besides, Faguang had already seen her cultivation. In his mind, there was no way a newly advanced Nascent Soul stage cultivator would dare mess with the business of two veteran Nascent Souls.

But now, the situation had taken a turn.

"This woman knows Wei Tu!"

In an instant, both Faguang and the old sect master figured it out.

"Fellow Daoist Gu, stop her! Now!" Faguang’s face changed and he shouted urgently.

Controlling the Xuan Spider Robe, a powerful killing weapon, was no easy task even with his cultivation.

Let alone now, when he was facing Wei Tu, who had both body and spirit refinement. That kind of strength wasn’t something a normal early-stage Nascent Soul could handle.

If he even slightly loosened his control, with Wei Tu protected by a mid-grade fourth-tier artifact, it might only take a moment before Wei Tu broke through the formation.

In other words, once the formation of the Xuan Spider Robe was activated, it didn’t just trap Wei Tu—it trapped Faguang too.

So the task of stopping Cao Mi could only fall to the old sect master Gu alone.

"Don’t worry, Holy Son. With me here, stopping her won’t be a problem," the old sect master patted his chest confidently.

Seeing this, Faguang relaxed a little. He knew the old man wasn’t bragging.

He’d panicked earlier only because Cao Mi’s sudden charge had gone completely against his expectations. It had caught him off guard.

Even if the old sect master couldn’t stop her immediately, just the strength of the Xuan Spider Robe alone was more than enough. There was no way a newly advanced cultivator like her could break through it so easily.

If the Xuan Spider Robe was really that easy to break, it wouldn’t be worthy of being the sect’s guardian treasure.

But—

That thought had barely formed in Faguang’s mind when he saw the old sect master, who had just moved in to intercept Cao Mi, suddenly get blasted hundreds of feet back after a flick of her sleeve. As if he’d seen a venomous snake, he didn’t dare go any closer.

Then, she summoned a beautiful female corpse. That corpse opened its delicate mouth and blew out a puff of pink mist toward the Xuan Spider Robe, instantly creating a hole the size of a dragon’s eye in the supposedly unbreakable guardian treasure.

Before Faguang could even figure out what technique Cao Mi had used to create the breach, his spiritual sense detected two purple spheres, each about the size of a fist, rapidly flying straight toward him.

"Talismans?" Faguang’s brow furrowed. In that moment, he finally understood why the old sect master had backed off so quickly.

Fourth-tier low-grade talisman weapons. These kinds of deadly tools weren’t easy to handle.

If he got hit, even with his strength, he wouldn’t die, but there was no way he’d avoid serious injury. After all, he wasn’t a body cultivator. He didn’t have the "First Spirit Bone" to regenerate his flesh and ignore damage.

"Damn it!"

Watching the twin Golden Flame Pearl fly closer and closer, Faguang’s face twisted. If he backed off now, it would weaken his control over the Xuan Spider Robe.

Then, with Wei Tu’s escape abilities and mid-grade defensive artifact, he might seize the opportunity and break free.

But if he didn’t back off…

He’d have to take the full hit from the Golden Flame Pearl.

‘Letting Wei Tu escape isn’t the worst outcome. But losing the Xuan Spider Robe would be a disaster!’

Gritting his teeth, Faguang slapped down several defensive talismans and summoned a defensive artifact, choosing to take the incoming blow head-on.

At the same time, he didn’t forget to maintain control over the Xuan Spider Robe on the other side. He tried his best to patch up the formation and keep Wei Tu from slipping through the breach.

If Wei Tu got out, and Faguang lost the advantage of the formation, taking down both Wei Tu and Cao Mi wouldn’t be nearly as easy.

Boom!

A huge explosion rocked the air.

A hill nearly 100 feet around where Faguang had been standing was instantly leveled, turned into a sea of golden fire.

"Cough… cough…" From above the firestorm, Faguang’s figure slowly reappeared, his face pale. He looked at the blood-soaked handkerchief in his hand, then turned with a cold glare toward Cao Mi, who was still working on breaking the formation.

In all his years of cultivation, this was the worst loss he’d ever taken.

And worse still—his opponent was a woman!

"Unforgivable!" In that moment, Faguang’s mind filled with dozens of twisted ideas on how he would make her pay.

"Fellow Daoist Gu, that woman probably doesn’t have any more of those talisman weapons on her. Use this chance to force her away from the Xuan Spider Robe," Faguang ordered.

Right now, Faguang clearly saw that the key to Wei Tu and Cao Mi’s method of breaking the Xuan Spider Robe formation had to do with the corpse-refining puppet she summoned earlier.

That corpse had a special effect against formations!

So the priority for him and the old sect master now was to drive Cao Mi back and cut off any chance of her helping Wei Tu escape.

But after he gave the order, there was no reply for quite a while.

"...He ran?"

Faguang was stunned.

Even though the situation had shifted suddenly just now with Cao Mi's unexpected interference, they still clearly held the upper hand. Wei Tu and Cao Mi were at a disadvantage.

Why would the old sect master run?

'Could that old bastard be thinking of letting me and Wei Tu wear each other down, and then swooping in to clean up afterward?' Faguang’s expression darkened as he guessed.

At this point, that was the only explanation that made sense.

After all, the old sect master’s alliance with the Xuan Spider Sect was purely based on mutual benefit. Now, if he could profit alone as a bystander, that was clearly more appealing than continuing to fight at Faguang’s side.

But what happened next made Faguang instantly abandon that theory.

"Wei Tu?" Faguang’s expression shifted as he saw the blue-robed man now standing behind him, forming a pincer with Cao Mi.

It wasn’t hard to guess. The old sect master must have seen Wei Tu break out at the moment the Golden Flame Pearl exploded and fled then.

He hadn’t plotted against Faguang, he had simply chosen to abandon their alliance and run.

After all, Wei Tu breaking out and joining with Cao Mi completely reversed the situation. Their strength—both on the surface and behind the scenes—now clearly outweighed what Faguang and the old sect master could muster.

Earlier, if Wei Tu hadn’t been unaware of the intricacies of the Xuan Spider Robe, even Faguang might not have been able to trap him in the first place.

"The Xuan Spider Robe wasn’t destroyed. Wei Tu, how did you escape the formation?"

Faguang’s expression turned serious as he glanced up at the illusion of “Wei Tu” still trapped inside the formation and asked aloud.

Wei Tu, of course, didn’t answer. He wasn’t dumb enough to give Faguang even the slightest chance to recover.

Back when Cao Mi hadn’t arrived yet, Faguang had managed to trap him using the formation from the Xuan Spider Robe.

But it wasn’t that he couldn’t break free.

After all, he still had the Taimao Treasure Realm, a supreme artifact for breaking restrictions.

He had just waited deliberately, to lure the enemy in deeper and avoid scaring Faguang off prematurely. Plus, with the Fiery Cloud Shield protecting him, he didn’t rush to break the formation.

Later, Cao Mi had used her corpse-refining puppet to help him break the formation—that too was part of the plan.

The yin and yang corpse qi inside the Yin-Yang Demon Corpse, through its cyclical flow, also had the ability to break restrictions.

Still, that method of using the corpse qi to break the formation was just a smokescreen.

As for the Wei Tu still inside the formation...

That was just a decoy—a shed shell created using the Lifesaving Star Lamp.

All these setups and tricks allowed him and Cao Mi to finally close the net and seal off all of Faguang’s escape routes.

Of course, the old sect master fleeing hadn’t been part of Wei Tu’s plan.

But it turned out to be a good thing for him and Cao Mi.

A 2-on-1 fight was clearly much better odds than a fair 2-on-2.

If the old sect master had stayed, Wei Tu wouldn’t have had full confidence in killing Faguang.

...

"You want to kill me?"

"Wei Tu, you don’t have that skill yet."

Faguang didn’t panic seeing Wei Tu charging straight at him without a word. He sneered, then activated his escape light and shot toward Cao Mi.

He knew that without the support of the Xuan Spider Robe, he couldn’t take on Wei Tu directly.

But just because he couldn’t win didn’t mean he couldn’t run.

They were both in the Nascent Soul stage—Faguang refused to believe he was worse at escaping than Wei Tu.

"Get out of the way!" Seeing Cao Mi blocking the path, Faguang barked angrily, then lifted his sleeve to blast her aside with his magic.

Cao Mi arched a brow slightly, thinking to herself how arrogant Faguang was.

She didn’t rush to act. Instead, she waited until he was close before pulling out a treasured mirror and flashing it toward him.

In that instant—

Faguang’s body stiffened, and his speed dropped sharply. He almost fell from the sky.

"A restrictive artifact?"

Faguang’s face twisted in shock. He quickly circulated his qi to break the restriction’s effect.

Within half a breath, he managed to dispel the binding light and resumed his flight.

But it was already too late.

In just that half-breath of time, Wei Tu had already caught up behind Faguang, just as the latter had expected. Wei Tu played to his strengths and avoided his weaknesses, using the typical close-combat methods of a dual-cultivator in both body and magic to press the fight.

Within just a few exchanges—

Faguang was already pale, covered in wounds, and his aura was flickering unsteadily.

But instead of panicking, a faint smile curled at the corner of his lips.

Right after that, he formed a strange hand seal and spat out a cloud of blood. The blood condensed into countless thin spider threads, shooting straight toward Wei Tu.

Crack! Crack!

Under Wei Tu’s fourth-tier body refinement, those blood threads shattered instantly. In a flash, they crumbled and scattered into motes of spiritual light.

Then, Wei Tu blinked forward and smashed Faguang’s skull into pieces.

But oddly, no Nascent Soul emerged from the shattered head. He died just like a mortal—simple and direct.

"It’s those threads!" Cao Mi, standing nearby and ready to assist, immediately called out.

As her voice fell, the blood threads Wei Tu had just destroyed suddenly reassembled. They merged eerily with the blood Faguang had sprayed from his wounds and formed a blood-red spider the size of a human head.

At the same time, a massive spider web, spanning nearly 1,000 feet, appeared in the air.

The next moment, the blood spider leapt onto the web and raced across it at extreme speed, reappearing several hundred feet away at the far end.

Once there, the blood spider transformed back into Faguang, the same smile still on his face, looking completely unharmed. It was as if his previous injuries had all just been part of a setup.

All of this happened in a flash—less than a single breath.

Cao Mi’s face showed a flicker of shock. She finally understood how hard it was to kill an old-school Nascent Soul cultivator and how lucky she and Wei Tu had been to kill Hongjing decades ago.

"Wei Tu, next time, it’ll be your death!" Faguang turned, gave Wei Tu one last deep look, and began to flee.

Though the distance between them was just a few hundred feet, it was enough for him to escape Wei Tu’s range.

But right then, a streak of black light caught the corner of Faguang’s eye, rapidly closing in.

"What? What is that?!"

His soul trembled, his pupils dilated. He could feel it—there was no way to dodge.

It was as if this black light had already predicted where he would appear. By the time he noticed and reacted, it was already too late.

"Spirit Eye technique!" Faguang suddenly realized, his body jolting as his face turned ghostly pale.

Back in the middle of the fight, he had forgotten why he and the old sect master had hunted Wei Tu in the first place.

If Wei Tu truly possessed a Spirit Eye technique, then setting up a "Heavenly Spider Web" in front of him was nothing short of showing off carpentry to a master craftsman.

What Faguang didn’t realize—or didn’t have time to realize—was that even without the Spirit Eye, Wei Tu still had other means. He wasn’t limited to just one technique.

Faguang hadn’t forgotten about the Spirit Eye. It was just that once Wei Tu closed in, the only escape move left to him was this exact one.

The next second—

The black light pierced straight through the center of Faguang’s forehead, exited through the back, and pinned him hard into the ground with immense force.

It was only in that final moment that he clearly saw what the black light was—a pitch-black spirit arrow.

"The Immortal-Slaying Arrow Gourd? You killed Yan Gongcheng?"

As his breath faded and life drained from him, Faguang’s expression filled with regret. These were the last words he managed to speak.

If he had known this from the start, he would never have dared to ambush Wei Tu today.