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“Again.”
“We can start again.”
“There isn’t much time left.”
“Stop spacing out. I’m awake already. Continue.”
…
There was no other sound, no conversation at all. Inside this cramped cave dwelling carved deep into the mountain, the only thing that ever broke the silence was Xu Yuan’s calm reminder each time he clawed his way back from the brink of death. And every time his voice rang out, it was a little weaker than before.
With Ran Qingmo waking him ahead of time instead of letting him remain unconscious, the time it took him to come back from a near-death state had been cut from roughly four hours to less than an hour. Healing through energy transmission allowed a person to use someone else’s qi to repair their body.
But qi borrowed from another was, in the end, still not your own. Each round of healing left a trace of the other person’s qi behind in the meridians. If there was plenty of time, that was actually a good thing.
By circulating one’s own cultivation art, those remnants could gradually be refined and absorbed, becoming one’s own and raising one’s cultivation in the process. But if this kind of healing was done too many times in too short a span, the residual qi left inside the body would undergo a qualitative change and turn into a nearly incurable hidden affliction.
Ran Qingmo had explained the pros and cons to Xu Yuan, but he did not care. If it could shorten the time needed to enter a near-death state from four hours to an hour, then for him, that was already more than enough.
That was good news. It meant he would have more chances to acclimate himself to the feeling of hovering on death’s edge, and more time to prepare for finally cultivating the Blood Origin Heartfall Art.
Time slipped away in silence, passing between one brush with death and the next. Five, ten, twenty, thirty times… His consciousness cycled again and again before the endless darkness of death. By now, Xu Yuan had long since lost count of how many times he had entered a near-death state with her help.
Slowly, he opened his eyes. By the faint glow of the luminous pearl set into the stone wall, the first things he saw were the woman’s flawless, delicate face and the thin layer of ice covering the surface of his body, radiating a grim chill.
“Miss Ran.” His voice was weak and trembling, but that also meant that by now, even in such a near-death condition, Xu Yuan could keep his mind steady enough to speak.
Ran Qingmo lifted her eyes and looked at him in silence. Her clear, secluded gaze was complicated. “Go ahead.”
Wrapped head to toe in frost, Xu Yuan struggled to keep his voice level. “How much longer until the formation outside... disappears?”
Ran Qingmo closed her eyes and sensed it for a moment. After a while, she answered softly, “About two days.”
“Two days left...” Xu Yuan let out a faint sigh.
The timing was still too tight. Even disregarding the hidden damage to his body, even gambling with his life, it had still taken him roughly three days just to complete the third step. Although time was running out, panic would solve nothing. The preparations still had to be made, even if he only had a single chance.
And Xu Yuan believed that once the Chancellor's eldest son noticed he was cultivating, he would not risk barging through the barrier and causing his younger brother to suffer qi deviation. At this point, all he could do was gamble.
After a long silence, Xu Yuan finally said in a trembling voice, “For the next day, I’ll begin circulating the cultivation art. If I lose control and go into qi deviation… then I’ll be relying on you.”
Ran Qingmo silently nodded.
Seeing the grave look in her eyes, Xu Yuan smiled faintly. “Miss Ran, one day from now, I’ll start cultivating for real. Remember to remind me.”
“Mhm. All right.”
Trying to circulate his cultivation art for the first time while in a near-death state turned out to be far harder than Xu Yuan had expected. Not because he could not focus his mind, but because there was simply too much of Ran Qingmo’s source qi left inside him from before.
After countless rounds of energy transfer and healing over the past few days, the meridians inside Xu Yuan’s body had practically been reshaped into Ran Qingmo’s image.
His body’s talent had already been poor to begin with. Every one of his meridians had been as cramped and obstructed as a winding goat path, and now those already narrow tracks were further clogged with Ran Qingmo’s icy blue source qi.
That lingering blue qi coated the inner walls of every meridian in his body. Under those conditions, trying to guide his own remaining source qi along the route of the cultivation art was like trudging through mud with every step.
Once Xu Yuan realized this, however, he did not feel much emotion over it. He still believed in the same line he had always lived by. If there is a problem, then solve it. If the meridians inside his body had become narrower, then he would just guide the qi more carefully. If one full circulation of the art took longer, then he would simply force himself to remain conscious a little longer while in that near-death state.
ᯓ➤
A day passed in a blur.
When he woke from unconsciousness once more, the first thing Xu Yuan saw was still her, silently keeping watch at his side. The difference this time was that he was lying on the only jade bed in the cave dwelling.
He sat up in silence and cast a sidelong glance at the jade bed. On the spotless white surface, two cultivation manuals lay stacked quietly together. Beside them were the two bottles of precious pills needed for cultivation. He stared at them in silence, feeling a flicker of emotion. After more than a month of struggle, he had finally reached the last step.
“I... didn’t read your cultivation art.”
Maybe because Xu Yuan had been staring for so long, the iceberg of a woman beside him suddenly blurted that out, completely out of nowhere.
Xu Yuan turned to look at her and smiled. “I know.”
There was nothing special about those two manuals. Other than the techniques recorded inside, they were just ordinary paper books. With Ran Qingmo’s cultivation, if she had wanted to read them, she could have scanned every word with her soul sense from dozens of meters away.
Xu Yuan silently adjusted his posture and sat cross-legged on the jade bed. The moment he opened the two jade bottles, a strange scent spread through the cramped cave, half bloody tang, half rich medicinal fragrance. He poured the two pills into his palm. Their surfaces were etched with ancient, intricate patterns.
Before taking them, Xu Yuan cast one last sidelong glance at Ran Qingmo beside him and joked, half seriously, “Miss Ran, you should really hope I succeed. Otherwise, this cave is going to become the burial ground for both of us.”
Ran Qingmo stared at him without saying a word. She was still just as sparing with words as the day they first met.
Seeing that, Xu Yuan found it a little dull and shook his head. He said nothing more, then tipped back his head and swallowed both pills in one go. The pills melted the instant they entered his mouth, turning into two gentle streams of warmth that flowed into his body.
It did not hurt. On the contrary, the two warm currents spreading through him even felt...a little comfortable.
And the instant that thought crossed Xu Yuan’s mind, everything changed. One of the warm currents suddenly turned violent, transforming into a surging torrent of source qi that tore through Xu Yuan’s meridians in a wild rush.
The sudden agony made his whole body curl uncontrollably like a shrimp. His blocked, narrow meridians simply could not withstand the impact of such an overwhelming force of source qi. For every inch that qi forced its way through, an inch of his meridians split apart. The pain of his meridians shattering inch by inch stabbed straight into the heart, so intense Xu Yuan nearly lost control of his mind on the spot.
Pain. Too much pain. It was the kind of agony that burrowed into the marrow itself, so deep he could barely breathe, while wave after wave of darkness washed over his vision. Fortunately, after so many brushes with death, Xu Yuan could still force his mind to hold steady. He was not so easily driven unconscious by pain alone now.
A quarter of an hour passed.
The berserk medicinal force of the Soul Scattering Calamity Pill completed one full circuit through all 127 meridians inside Xu Yuan’s body. Along with that bone-deep agony, Xu Yuan could clearly feel that all of his meridians had been reduced to a state of total rupture, shattered inch by inch.
Even his body on the outside no longer had the strength to maintain a seated posture. He went limp and collapsed onto the jade bed. The true despair of death began to spread through his heart, little by little. But then, at that moment, the second stream of warmth, the one belonging to the Blood Spirit Body-Melding Pill, began to seep through those broken meridians.
This current was warm and viscous. Every inch it passed brought with it a tingling heat, numb and comforting. The moment Xu Yuan sensed this, he knew the time had come. He immediately began guiding the medicinal force of the Blood Spirit Body-Melding Pill along the route of the Blood Origin Heartfall Art.
As that medicinal force spread through him, the shattered meridians inside Xu Yuan’s body began to mend themselves little by little.
But this was only the beginning.
The two streams of medicinal force, one from the Soul Scattering Calamity Pill and one from the Blood Spirit Body-Melding Pill, began circling continuously through the meridians in Xu Yuan’s body, one after the other.
The Soul Scattering Calamity Pill led the way like a demolition crew, smashing everything in its path, while the Blood Spirit Body-Melding Pill followed behind, repairing as it went.
Pain and comfort tangled together without end, driving the mind nearly mad.
His meridians shattered, then healed. Healed, then shattered again. Again and again, cycle after cycle. In cultivation, time had no meaning.
As time passed, Xu Yuan realized that his consciousness was not growing hazy from the constant brush with death and the relentless agony. If anything, it was becoming clearer, denser, more solid than before.
At some point, after who knew how long, Xu Yuan even found that he could spare part of his focus to sense the qi drifting through the world around him. Before, he had only been able to detect two or three faint little clusters of qi inside this cave. But now, as the Blood Origin Heartfall Art continued to circulate, more and more of them began to appear.
The pallor in his face gradually faded into color. His threadlike breathing slowly steadied. Everything was settling down.
And aside from that, strange images began to flow into Xu Yuan’s mind like a narrow stream. It felt like watching some kind of stream-of-consciousness film. Fragmented, messy, broken into pieces, yet somehow still connected.
The moment he examined them more closely, Xu Yuan quickly realized something was off. These scenes… Are they Xu Changtian’s memories?
As soul and body fused more completely, the memories lingering inside this body began surfacing in Xu Yuan’s mind little by little.
There were trivial everyday moments, washing up, bathing, the scraps of ordinary life. There were memories of bullying men and harassing women in the streets while throwing his family weight around. There were hunting trips on horseback. And there was even the absurd memory of Third Young Master Xu drugging himself up and forcing a one-man performance with five women at Drunken Immortal Tower.
The images went from blurry to clear, and there were a great many of them. But what surprised Xu Yuan was that among all of Xu Changtian’s memories, there was actually very little involving his father.
Most of the time, all that appeared was a back view. A back view that inspired fear.
Fear? Xu Yuan suddenly realized that when that figure had flashed through his mind just now, he himself had also felt a faint trace of fear. He was being affected by these memories.
The instant that thought hit him, Xu Yuan hurriedly gathered his mind and stopped himself from dwelling on the Chancellor.
But in the very next moment, the memories still surged up on their own, beyond his control. Compared to that lofty, untouchable father, the figure who left the deepest mark in Xu Changtian’s memories was actually his eldest brother.
And as those memories poured in, Xu Yuan realized that this body’s fear of Xu Changge ran even deeper than its fear of its father. It was fear carved into the bone.
At the mere thought of that man, Xu Yuan realized his body was already trembling faintly. Just how terrified did someone have to be to react like this?
Very soon, Xu Yuan got his answer from the scenes buried in those memories. One memory fragment after another rose before his eyes.
“Useless trash! You can’t even handle something this simple?!”
“If I catch you embarrassing yourself outside again, I’ll beat you to death in Father’s place.”
“You little bastard, just look at the wonderful mess you’ve made in the imperial capital!”
“You’re no good at cultivation, no good at the civil exams either. Xu Changtian, can’t you learn something from your second brother and fourth sister?!”
“Hahahaha... Xu Changtian! Three days apart and I should look at you with fresh eyes, huh? I was only away in the northern wastelands on a diplomatic mission for three months, and the moment I come home, you pull something like this? Impressive, really. So now you’ve even got the guts to lay a hand on Marquis Wucheng’s own granddaughter? Ying’er, go get me the whip. The thickest one.”
As scene after scene surfaced in his mind, Xu Yuan could only sit there in silence.
Xu Changge was ten years older than Xu Changtian. Their father had been swamped with court affairs, so from childhood onward, it had mostly been the eldest brother, Xu Changge, who had raised him.
It was just that this elder brother’s way of teaching was rather simple and direct. When he said he would beat him, he really did beat him. And not lightly either. He beat him like he was trying to send him to an early grave.
The memories that belonged to Xu Changtian continued to rise unceasingly in Xu Yuan’s mind, and Xu Yuan could clearly feel his emotions being affected by them.
He did not want that. But at this moment, other than quietly accepting it, he had no other option.
The memories stretched on and on.
And just as the Blood Origin Heartfall Art was about to reach completion, Xu Yuan’s mind suddenly went blank. All those flowing memories vanished in an instant, as though they had been wiped clean.
Just as Xu Yuan was wondering what was happening, a sword appeared within his consciousness. A sword that seemed to pierce straight through the entirety of Heaven’s Gate Peak.
But it appeared quickly, and vanished just as quickly, dispersing inside his consciousness in the blink of an eye.
The cultivation art was complete.
Xu Yuan slowly opened his eyes. The memories were still there, but the emotions attached to them had already faded away.
Still, what was that sword that appeared at the very end…? His gaze flickered, and suddenly Xu Yuan remembered the sword intent he had sensed while looking toward the heavenly gate from the Suspended Heaven Cliff.
At the time, things had been too urgent for him to think deeply about it, but now that he considered it carefully, there were too many things that did not add up.
That sword appearing in his mind should have been connected to that glance. But why?
The heavenly gate atop Heaven’s Gate Peak had existed for at least ten thousand years. The number of people who had seen it had to be in the tens of thousands, if not more. So why was he the one who had stumbled into some kind of opportunity?
After turning it over in his mind again and again, Xu Yuan found only one meaningful difference. He did not belong to this world. Could it be that only the soul of a transmigrator could sense the sword intent that had lingered there for ten thousand years?
That explanation felt a little too bizarre.
Xu Yuan could not make sense of it, so he set it aside for the time being.
And just then, Ran Qingmo’s soft voice came from beside him. “The formation outside has already vanished. They’re coming.”
Xu Yuan glanced at her, reached out, and picked up the Blood Origin Heartfall Art from the jade bed.
“I know,” he said flatly. As he spoke, the cultivation art turned. Threads of crimson source qi curled out from between his fingers and coiled around them.
In the next instant, wisps of flame sprang to life, and the lone copy of the Blood Origin Heartfall Art along with that secret technique vanished from the world.
Just like the Ice Cloud Step in Ran Qingmo’s cultivation art, the Blood Origin Heartfall Art also came with many practical applications. The flame before his eyes was one of them.
After dealing with the incriminating evidence that might expose his identity, Xu Yuan changed into the blood-red Blood Jade Glaze Robe. Then he began methodically stripping the cave of everything useful.
He slipped the Sumeru Ring from beside the bed onto his index finger, then stored away the jade bed and the pool of spirit spring water inside it.
After a pause, he glanced at the luminous pearl embedded in the stone wall and casually took that too. In an instant, the cave was swallowed by complete darkness.
Since there was nothing else to do in the dark, Xu Yuan sat down cross-legged and began trying to cultivate. He was a little curious about the cultivation speed of an Innate Dao Body.
And the moment his soul sense spread outward, he immediately understood the difference.
Unlike before, when he had only sensed two or three little clusters of qi, Xu Yuan now felt as though his entire body had sunk into a boundless sea of qi.
What Xu Yuan did not know was that beside him, Ran Qingmo had been silently watching him in the darkness the whole time with those clear, secluded eyes of hers, looking as though she wanted to say something but could not quite get it out.
Time passed quietly.
“Um...”
Hearing her voice, Xu Yuan slowly opened his eyes and looked toward Ran Qingmo.
“My name is Ran Qingmo.”
Xu Yuan found it a little strange that she would say that. Even though he had always called her Miss Ran, he clearly remembered that back in the Buddhist hall, he had already said her name aloud once.
“I know.” He gave a slight nod. After saying that, he closed his eyes again.
More than ten seconds passed.
Xu Yuan opened them once more and poured source qi into his eyes. Sure enough, he found that the woman beside him was still staring at him without blinking.
He froze slightly, then quickly realized what she meant. After spending so long together day and night, she still did not know his name. Instinctively, he almost gave his own. But the words stopped at his lips. His gaze flickered for a moment.
Then Xu Yuan slowly lowered his eyes, let out a breath, and a faint smile touched the corner of his mouth, carrying a meaning hard to read.
“My name is… Xu Changtian.”
