The light in Shui Die Lan’s eyes was hard to read, somewhere between worry and anger. “Are you messing with me? I may have lived a long time, but I’d still like to live just as long again. Don’t you dare let me down. Even if you have to die, wait until this hundred years is over first!”
Li Xun’s muscles were twitching with pain, yet when he heard that, he still forced a smile.
Maybe their life-and-death struggle had ended without a clear winner, but in the end it was Shui Die Lan who had brought this on herself, throwing her fate into the unknown.
He felt no joy in that. If anyone was going to die first, it would be him, so what was there to be happy about? What he felt instead was absurdity, so absurd it made him want to laugh out loud.
Maybe it was that change of mood, or maybe it was the self-adjusting effects of the Bone-Meridian Heartlink technique, but the pain that had nearly burst his body and scorched him alive gradually ebbed. He clenched his fist, only to find his fingers still swollen, as if some knot of energy was pressing against his palm and refusing to let his hand close.
At that moment, Shui Die Lan pressed her palm against his back, releasing her own qi to probe inside him.
“All your meridians are clear, but your qi is overloaded. There’s a foreign force spilling out of your chest center, pressing down on your true breath. From its nature, it’s related to the Shadow-Devouring Soul Sect, but far more refined and fierce. That burst of power just now could have erased you completely, not even ashes left. Somehow you managed to buffer it, probably with some unorthodox but very advanced technique. Even so, the situation is still far from good…”
Shui Die Lan truly lived up to her name as one of the world’s rare grandmasters, a great demon in her own right. With just a few words she had pinpointed the exact problem inside Li Xun’s body. But soon her tone sharpened with suspicion. “That foreign essence is clearly the condensed qi and blood of a fully accomplished cultivator, turned a supreme restorative pill. Where did you get it?”
The matter of the Yinfire Pearl; Li Xun wasn’t sure if he should tell her. So he dodged the question instead. “How long was I unconscious?”
From the side, Gu Pin'er answered hoarsely, “This is already the tenth day!”
Li Xun’s eyes went wide. Ten days? How could it have been ten days? Hadn’t it just been some strange dream?
“Don’t try to change the subject!”
Shui Die Lan’s anger, usually buried deep, suddenly flared. She reached out and seized Li Xun’s face.
“You still don’t seem to grasp how serious this is. Do you realize it’s been ten days? Do you know what kind of state your body has fallen into over the course of more than two hundred hours?”
Li Xun forced a crooked smile and instinctively pushed her arm aside. But the instant his hand touched Shui Die Lan’s forearm, she let out a sharp cry and pulled back in a flash. As her sleeve whipped away, the fabric his hand had brushed against turned to ash and scattered into the air.
Li Xun froze on the spot.
“See it now? Yinfire Immortal?”
Shui Die Lan rubbed at the skin that had been burned, using a strange and mocking title for him.
“I don’t know exactly what that source in your chest center is, but ever since ten days ago it hasn’t stopped pouring outward. Put it this way. Right now, even what leaks out of your pores is Yin Fire. Don’t you feel swollen, like your energy is surging too strong?
“Hmph. Just wait. If you can’t figure out a way to channel and release it, in a few days your body will go boom. Not even scraps left behind!”
Li Xun stared at her, unblinking. Shui Die Lan glared back just as fiercely. “You need to tell me what’s going on. I have no intention of dying with you!”
“Within a hundred years, when the Ghost Spirit returns to life, enter my sect’s Yin-Transforming Pool for three months of secluded meditation.…”
“What?”
Shui Die Lan was baffled. She couldn’t have known that what Li Xun was repeating was a message he’d once heard from Master Ghost, passed on to him when he inherited the Netherworld Record.
If not for the Yinfire Pearl’s sudden change, Li Xun might have completely forgotten about it.
It was only now that Li Xun finally understood the true meaning behind Master Ghost’s message: the Yinfire Pearl’s form was never stable. With enough external provocation, it could very well explode.
Without sufficient strength, how could anyone withstand the impact of Master Ghost’s lifetime of cultivation?
That was why Master Ghost had instructed him to enter the Yin-Transforming Pool, using secret methods to disperse the Yin Fire’s destructive force.
Li Xun understood now, but all he could do was smile bitterly.
As a disciple of the Shadow-Devouring Soul Sect, he was of course well aware of what “the Ghost Spirit returns to life” truly meant.
It referred to the sect’s annual ancestor-sacrifice ritual.
On that day, the ghostly qi of the Nine Netherworlds Realm surged to its peak, piercing through the void, linking the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths, reaching every corner of existence.
And on that same day, the sect’s forbidden land, the Yin-Transforming Pool, would rise from the depths of the earth, where it had sunk for a thousand li, lifted by Earth Qi. At that time, under the leadership of the sect master, every elder and every disciple of the great clans would offer tribute.
At times, certain elder figures who had lived far too long without hope of further advancement, or disciples who had rendered great service to the sect but suffered irreparable injuries, would use a special technique to enter the pool. There they would change their physical bodies and undergo the “Ghost-Spirit Reincarnation” method, preserving their consciousness from extinction and beginning anew in a fresh incarnation.
Back in the North Pole, Qin Wanru had suspected that Li Xun was a disciple reborn through Ghost-Spirit Reincarnation. And this was why.
These thoughts flashed through Li Xun’s mind, and his smile grew even more bitter.
The requirements themselves weren’t that difficult. Ghost-Spirit Reincarnation happened once a year, and with his rising importance in the sect, applying for a chance to enter seclusion during that time wouldn’t be impossible.
But he hadn’t forgotten: just two months ago, he had already taken part in that very ritual.
Which meant that if he wanted to return there for seclusion, he would have to wait at least another ten months. And by Shui Die Lan’s reckoning, could he even last that long?
Out of nowhere, Zhong Yin’s eyes surfaced in his mind.
His heart gave a violent jolt. From lying flat, his body suddenly shot upright.
There was a sharp screech in the air as the Yin Fire crammed inside him swelled and contracted, instantly blasting the surrounding air clear. If not for the intricate restrictions set around the pavilion, which quickly drew in the energy and vented the crushing pressure, hardly anything in the room would have survived intact.
Li Xun had made up his mind, but he didn’t act right away. Instead, he turned to Shui Die Lan. Seeing the doubt in her eyes, he gave a small smile. “A fine Heart Knot! Fairy Shui, that was a brilliant move on your part.”
It sounded half like a tease, but not quite. Shui Die Lan’s delicate brows knit together. “Have you lost your mind?”
“No. I just mean that since we’ll have to support each other and keep one another safe for the next hundred years, today I’ll share a secret with you; if only to win you a smile.”
He opened his palm. The air itself split apart, and from the rift a slender jade-white hand reached through, placing a jade artifact into his palm before retreating back into the void.
Shui Die Lan’s gaze swept over it, and she gasped in shock. “Jade Bixie?”
Li Xun’s expression didn’t change. He calmly fastened it to his chest, then finally spoke. “Fairy Shui, please stand guard for me.”
Without waiting for her reply, Li Xun closed his eyes halfway. Using the technique of Bone-Meridian Heartlink, he activated the Soul Shift Rebirth technique. From the Bottomless Nether Ring within his chest center, the process of converting his Qi began.
Zhong Yin’s supreme cultivation was nothing short of awe-inspiring.
Although he didn’t understand the techniques of the Shadow-Devouring Soul Sect, the Bone-Meridian Heartlink technique perfectly fused the two utterly different techniques of two sects. It even resolved a major flaw in the Soul Shift Rebirth technique. While that technique could convert Qi, it failed to adapt the body to its new meridians. Thanks to this, Li Xun was able to temporarily escape the danger of qi deviation.
And at this very moment, once again it was the Bone-Meridian Heartlink that opened a new path for Li Xun, who had been on the brink of despair.
The NetherYin Qi was dark and unfathomable, its core principle was “transformation.”
The True Breath cultivated through the Lingxi Art, on the other hand, sought the subtle purity of “spirit resonating with heaven’s intent.”
But now the Yinfire Pearl had shifted, releasing layer after layer of yin flames that spread outward and completely blocked his meridians. There was no room left for “transformation.” At that critical juncture, the Soul Shift Rebirth, guided by the Bone-Meridian Heartlink, moved from mere qualitative conversion into a qualitative conversion.
When the first wisp of True Breath finally converted, Li Xun let out a long sigh of relief. He knew he had found a way to survive, at least for the time being.
At first, the conversion of qi was slow and strained. But as the True Breath gradually grew stronger, even the Bottomless Nether Ring began to shift in nature, becoming more refined and condensed, until it finally solidified into a Golden Core.
The flow of qi turned: yin rising, yang descending. Life and death reversed, and from the core of the Golden Elixir a single spark of spirit was born. In that instant, essence, qi, and spirit fused as one, and the pill cracked open to reveal the infant within.
As the original infant took form, the converted Daoist True Breath surged like a hundred rivers rushing to the sea. The breakthrough came effortlessly, opening up precious space to contain the Yin Fire that had nearly torn his body apart.
The Bone-Meridian Heartlink technique began to circulate on its own, needing no effort from Li Xun. What Yin Fire could not be refined at once was drawn into his marrow and flesh, stored away and hidden without a trace.
His eyes half closed, his mind clear as glass. The original infant, now settled in the Yellow Court, opened its spirit eyes. Divine light poured through his organs and meridians, every bone, muscle, and vessel revealed before him in perfect clarity.
With a thought, threads of qi spread from the original infant in countless strands, reaching every corner of his body. True Breath returned, then flowed out again, in an endless cycle, forming a flawless great circulation.
At a mysterious moment, the spirit eyes of the original infant closed, then opened once more. Li Xun’s physical body answered in kind. His own eyes snapped open, divine light flashing like lightning, qi surging as a long, piercing cry carried far into the distance.
That cry lasted for nearly half a stick of incense before it finally faded. Li Xun leapt to his feet, his heart soaring with joy.
Fifty years ago, he had already stepped into the Transformation of Infant stage. But from that very day onward, he had made no real breakthroughs in cultivating the True Breath. His power had deepened with time, but he had never managed to reach the realm where “the heavenly gate suddenly breaks open at the crown, and a true person reveals divine powers.”
Yet today, misfortune had turned into unexpected fortune.
The torrent of converted True Breath, though it didn’t raise his cultivation stage by much, surged with such force that it shoved Li Xun forward by half a step. And that half step was crucial.
When the original infant and the body’s Qi mechanism merged as one, it marked the beginning of the True Person realm.
From here on, so long as he devoted himself to diligent cultivation, breaking through the Transformation of Infant stage and reaching the True Person stage was just a matter of time.
He exhaled a breath of turbid air he had been holding in for far too long. Sweat poured from his body all at once, soaking him through in an instant.
Testing his qi flow with a gentle tug, he was startled at the result. The True Breath shot through his body like gleaming blades, hissing faintly as it moved. Its strength had increased by at least thirty percent compared to before.
Only then did he have the time to turn and see Shui Die Lan’s reaction.
In her ice-blue eyes, shock still lingered. Their gazes met, and she blurted out, “Mingxin Sword Spirit Bamboo?”
Li Xun blinked, letting his good mood show completely in the tone of his reply.
“Exactly!”
Watching Shui Die Lan so startled that she lost her composure was simply delightful. Li Xun couldn’t help grinning broadly.
She glared at him for a long moment, then suddenly motioned for him to extend his hand.
Li Xun obeyed, only for her to seize his wrist and send a thread of qi probing into his body. After circling once inside him, it withdrew.
“This technique of converting qi.. only you could have come up with something like that. And of course, only you could actually make it work.”
Shui Die Lan’s expression gradually settled. Releasing his hand, she let out a long sigh. “So the whole world’s been fooled by you. Spirit Bamboo, Hundred Ghosts; two sworn enemies, yet actually the same person! Don’t tell me that everyone, from Daoist Qingming down to the Underworld Flame Yama, has been blind this whole time?”
She paused, then suddenly broke into a mischievous laugh. “You’re bound to get what’s coming to you!”
Li Xun laughed too. “Maybe so. But if I do, won’t you be dragged down with me?”
Their eyes met, and both burst into laughter again.
In that moment, they finally confirmed the nature of their relationship. For now at least. Maybe it would last only a hundred years.
But those hundred years would undoubtedly be the most interesting hundred years of their lives.
On this, both of them held the highest hopes.