They Would Not Be Separated

Lü Shenliang walked out of the stone hut and saw Wang Li standing in the night.

"What are you looking at?" She patted her own face and asked.

She looked somewhat weary, as though her cultivation had also drained much of her energy.

"Senior Sister."

Wang Li turned around and looked at her with feeling. "From now on, when it is just the two of us, do not call me Wang Li. Call me Wang Ju, or Wang Juju if you like."

Lü Shenliang blanked for a moment, then her expression changed drastically.

"Was your divine sense damaged?" she asked nervously. "The code phrase!"

"I refuse to accept it!" Wang Li answered the code phrase helplessly. "Senior Sister, there is nothing wrong with my brain. I just think names are truly important."

"Oh." Lü Shenliang relaxed.

"What does 'oh' mean?" Wang Li asked gloomily.

"If you want to be called Wang Ju, then be Wang Ju. Wang Juju is fine too." Lü Shenliang suddenly could not help laughing. "Tell me, is there really something wrong with your brain? I call you Junior Brother anyway. Even if you called yourself Wang Ba or Little Bastard Wang, what does that have to do with me?"

"Senior Sister, you... You are supposed to be a proper lady, all right?" Wang Li was speechless. "I am speaking to you seriously about this."

"Fine, sure." Lü Shenliang patted her forehead. A faint smile still hung on her face, and she looked perfectly normal. Yet within a single breath, the smile vanished, and her face instantly turned cold and stern. "They would not be separated."

Wang Li's expression softened slightly. An inexplicable warmth flowed through his heart, accompanied even by a trace of sweetness.

Yet Lü Shenliang's next sentence nearly sent him straight off the cliff.

Lü Shenliang said, "If we die, we die together. Senior Sister and Junior Brother, one family, all neat and tidy. What separation could there be?"

Wang Li was so angry that he laughed. "Senior Sister, those words make far too much sense."

Lü Shenliang glanced at him. "Besides, you are not afraid of death."

Wang Li felt his head begin to ache again. "Senior Sister, can you stop cursing the two of us to die together... I am still young."

"You were acting strangely today." Lü Shenliang glanced at the Thirty-One Peaks of the Profound Heaven Sect, the corners of her lips lifting slightly. "Did someone come?"

"Uncle-Master Hengyuan came with that several-dozen-zhang-long sword of his, and he brought Senior Brother Chen Bailu to plead for them." Wang Li took a deep breath and calmed down, though worry appeared in his eyes. "He said the Sect Master obtained the Azure Wood Exotic Source and would soon refine the Azure Profound Sword Qi."

"So you are worried he will harm me then?" Lü Shenliang immediately looked disdainful. "I thought it was something serious. So it is only this. Even if he cultivates that Azure Profound Sword Qi, he will not be my match. What is there to worry about?"

"Really?"

Wang Li looked at Lü Shenliang suspiciously. Of course, he would not underestimate his Senior Sister, but before this, he had sometimes wondered whether her confidence was excessively inflated because something was wrong with her mind. Yet there had been too many strange occurrences during today's cultivation, and his view of this Senior Sister had changed somewhat.

Lü Shenliang, however, looked as though it were only natural. "There is nothing to worry about."

Wang Li looked at her. "There are far too many things for me to worry about. You know yourself that the power of your Golden Core is growing greater and greater. I am afraid that one day, if my reaction is even a little too slow, I truly will not be able to suppress your self-detonating Golden Core."

"Then do not react slowly." Lü Shenliang said calmly, "Besides, have you not already reached the Sixth Level of Qi Refining?"

"I am only at the Sixth Level of Qi Refining. You make it sound as though I am already at the sixth level of Golden Core like the Sect Master." Wang Li secretly glanced at her. "Are you hiding something from me? Did you already know that once I reached the Sixth Level of Qi Refining, such a strange Dao palace would appear in my qi sea?"

"A strange Dao palace appeared in your qi sea?" Lü Shenliang was somewhat surprised, her brows furrowing. "What Dao palace?"

"You do not know?" Wang Li was highly suspicious. "I keep feeling that when you helped me arrange to obtain this Purity Returning Spirit Pill in advance, you were concealing some unspeakable secret."

"You are overthinking it." Lü Shenliang delivered those four words with exceptional decisiveness.

This time, Wang Li refused to let it go so easily. He pestered her relentlessly. "Then tell me why you prepared this Purity Returning Spirit Pill in advance."

Lü Shenliang looked at Wang Li as though he were an idiot. "When a low-level cultivator faces a high-level cultivator, especially one more than a single realm above them, if they can fight back, they may still have a chance to escape. But if the other side directly crushes you to death with spiritual pressure, what use are all your tricks? The Profound Heaven Dao Arts you cultivate had already undergone a mutation. Both the strength of your True Essence and the strength of your divine sense far surpass those of ordinary Qi Refining stage cultivators. That is why you were able to handle the two Golden Core cultivators from Huayang Sect with ease. But in a real fight, it is naturally still not enough."

"So that is why you set your sights on this Purity Returning Spirit Pill?" Wang Li looked at her, still unconvinced. "Senior Sister, this pill's greatest use is repairing the soul, while strengthening divine sense comes second. Why do I feel that you already knew my divine sense would suffer severe damage during this breakthrough, which was why you prepared such a pill for me in advance? It fits the symptoms too perfectly."

"I guessed." Lü Shenliang answered even more concisely.

Wang Li was speechless. "Then why could I not guess it?"

"Because you are stupid." Lü Shenliang looked at him contemptuously.

Wang Li was even more speechless. "Then, Senior Sister, tell me exactly where I am stupid. What did you base your guess on?"

"It is very simple. Ever since the Profound Heaven Dao Arts you cultivate encountered that strange tribulation at the Second Level of Qi Refining, every one of its tribulations has forced you onto a path of constantly fighting and growing stronger. It absolutely does not want you to steadily pile up the strength of your True Essence step by step. It does not want you to take the path of cultivating in trembling caution for a lifetime, gaining countless years of longevity, only to cower like a turtle within your sect. Cultivators walk against heaven. They say what they defy is heaven, but do they not still have to contend with other cultivators? Do they not still have to seize other people's fortune? It wants you to fight all kinds of cultivators, so that your cultivation will not become a mere accumulation of realms, but a true increase in strength." Lü Shenliang spoke with utmost seriousness. "From the first few rounds of tribulations, I saw that its pressure on you was even greater in terms of divine sense. Methods of combat may transform in a thousand ways and countless arts exist, but the body's upper limit is very low. Moreover, cultivators who fight often have increasingly blurred boundaries between them. Divine sense is different. Its upper limit is higher. So I guessed that your future tribulations would squeeze your divine sense even harder. Since Blackwater Market happened to have such a spiritual medicine, I naturally had to find a way to seize it."

To be fair, Wang Li felt that what she said made a great deal of sense, and her expression did not seem false. Yet when he thought of that gray-robed cultivator's resoluteness, he still could not help muttering, "Why do I feel that this time, it was mainly because I told that gray-robed cultivator to sit down and talk?"

Lü Shenliang's brow lifted slightly. "What do you mean by that?"

Wang Li could not help smiling bitterly. "Did I not tell you that I always suspected these gray-robed cultivators were no different from True Persons? This time, I seized the chance to speak to that gray-robed cultivator. I said I did not even know him, so why did we have to fight to the death? Why not sit down and talk? But he instead seemed to fly into a rage from shame. He immediately used his most desperate method and wanted to perish together with me."

Lü Shenliang shook her head. She lowered her head and thought seriously for a moment, then raised it again and looked at Wang Li. "If the Heavenly Dao laws truly control cultivators into slaughtering one another during tribulations, then perhaps your words about sitting down and talking, after passing through the control of the Heavenly Dao laws into his ears, became something like my words about making your whole family neat and tidy?"

"That is not impossible." Wang Li froze for a moment, then looked at Lü Shenliang with some admiration. Senior Sister truly had a broad way of thinking. "It is just that... he seemed to have spoken too, so why could I not hear what he said clearly?"

"Then there are even more possibilities." Lü Shenliang said, "Perhaps the Heavenly Dao laws felt that his curse in reply was too unpleasant to hear. Perhaps the Heavenly Dao laws could not understand what he was cursing about either. Perhaps..."

"I think we should first figure out what is going on with this extra Dao palace inside me." Wang Li could not help interrupting her deduction.

He quickly explained how the Dao palace had formed and how it felt within his qi sea, then emphasized, "This Dao palace seems to have a framework formed from the mixed and impure Vital Energy accumulated inside me during my usual cultivation. But the will within it... I feel it is immensely vast, carrying a sensation that no one could possibly resist."

"Then try refining some more spirit sand. If that does not work, refine some low-grade pills and see how this Dao palace changes." Lü Shenliang asked, "What is inside this Dao palace?"

Wang Li shook his head. "I have not dared to go in and look yet. What if, the moment I enter, those gray-robed cultivators I defeated before are all lined up neatly inside waiting for me? Would I not be finished?"

Lü Shenliang glanced at him. "If you do not go in and look, how will you know whether those gray-robed cultivators are inside? Are cultivators of our generation really this cowardly?"

Wang Li rolled his eyes. "Are you really my own Senior Sister? I have not even recovered yet, and you are urging me to take a risk. Can I not wait a little?"

Lü Shenliang nodded. "That works too. I only thought you were impatient."

"I..." Wang Li choked on his words. After a moment, he asked again with a solemn expression, "Do you really not know why we cultivate the same Profound Heaven Dao Arts, yet mine has undergone such changes? Do you truly not know the reason at all?"

"How would I know?"

Lü Shenliang said, "For such an extraordinary transformation, perhaps you obtained some Primordial artifact on Solitary Peak, and that is why your Profound Heaven Dao Arts recovered their original appearance. Perhaps this is the complete Profound Heaven Dao Arts. Perhaps it was supposed to be this powerful from the start."

"A Primordial artifact, obtained by me? I believe you about as much as I believe in ghosts!" Wang Li turned to look at the bustling Thirty-One Peaks of the Profound Heaven Sect, which still appeared exceptionally lively in the darkness. "I would certainly hope I truly obtained a Primordial artifact. Then I would make these people stay in the Thirty-One Peaks for the rest of their lives. Not one of them would be allowed out. They know how to play turtle and hide in their shells anyway."