Will Not Separate

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

"What are you looking at?" she asked, patting her face.

Her expression was somewhat weary, as if her cultivation had also drained a lot of her mental energy.

"Senior Sister."

Wang Li turned around, looking at her emotionally. "From now on, when it's just the two of us, don't call me Wang Li. Call me Wang Ju, or Wang Jujuju is fine too."

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

"Is your spiritual sense damaged?" she asked nervously. "The code phrase!"

"I'm not convinced!" Wang Li reluctantly recited the code phrase. "Senior Sister, my brain is fine. I just think names are really important."

"Oh." Lü Shenliang relaxed.

"What do you mean by 'oh'?" Wang Li asked, feeling a bit dejected.

"If you want to be called Wang Ju, then be Wang Ju. Wang Jujuju is fine too." Lü Shenliang suddenly couldn't help but laugh. "Are you sure there's nothing wrong with your brain? I call you junior brother anyway. Never mind if you call yourself Wang Jujuju, you could call yourself Wang Ba or Wang Bagaozi, it wouldn't matter to me."

"Senior Sister, you... you're a lady." Wang Li was speechless. "I'm being very serious about this with you."

"Alright, fine." Lü Shenliang patted her forehead. She was still wearing a faint smile, looking perfectly normal. But in the next breath, the smile vanished, and her expression turned stern. "There will be no separation."

Wang Li's expression softened slightly, a strange warmth flowing through him, even a hint of sweetness.

However, Lü Shenliang's next sentence almost made him fall off the cliff.

Lü Shenliang said, "If we're going to die, we'll die together. Senior Sister and Junior Brother are one family, all together. What separation would there be?"

Wang Li was so amused he started laughing. "Senior Sister, what you said makes so much sense."

Lü Shenliang glanced at him. "You're not afraid of death anyway."

Wang Li felt his head ache again. "Senior Sister, can you please stop cursing us to die together... I'm still young."

"You're acting strange today." Lü Shenliang glanced at the thirty-one peaks of the Profound Heaven Sect, the corner of her mouth twitching upward. "Is someone coming?"

"Uncle-Master Hengyuan is coming with his giant sword, dozens of feet long. He's also brought Senior Brother Chen Bailu to plead on my behalf." Wang Li took a deep breath, calming himself, but a hint of worry appeared in his eyes. "They say the Sect Master has obtained the Azure Wood Exotic Source and will soon forge the Azure Profound Sword Qi."

"So you're worried he'll be a threat to me then?" Lü Shenliang immediately showed disdain. "Is that all? Even with his Azure Profound Sword Qi, he's no match for me. What's there to worry about?"

"Really?"

Wang Li looked at Lü Shenliang suspiciously. He certainly wouldn't underestimate his senior sister, but sometimes he felt her confidence might be inflated due to her mental state. However, with so many unusual occurrences during his cultivation today, his opinion of his senior sister had shifted.

Lü Shenliang looked as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "There's nothing to worry about."

Wang Li looked at her. "There are too many things I need to worry about. You know yourself that the power of your Golden Core is growing stronger. I'm just afraid that one day, if I react too slowly, I won't be able to suppress it and will self-detonate my Golden Core."

"Then don't react slowly," Lü Shenliang said calmly. "Besides, aren't you already at the Sixth Level of Qi Refining?"

"I'm only at the Sixth Level of Qi Refining. You make it sound like I'm 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 when I reached the Sixth Level of Qi Refining, a strange Dao Palace would appear in my Sea of Qi?"

"A strange Dao Palace in your Sea of Qi?" Lü Shenliang was surprised, her brow furrowing. "What Dao Palace?"

"You don't know?" Wang Li was skeptical. "I always felt that when you helped me obtain this Purity Returning Spirit Pill ahead of time, you were hiding some unspeakable secret."

"You're overthinking it." Lü Shenliang said those four words with extreme directness.

This time, Wang Li refused to give up easily and pestered her. "Then tell me why you prepared this Purity Returning Spirit Pill in advance?"

Lü Shenliang looked at Wang Li as if he were an idiot. "For low-level cultivators facing high-level cultivators, especially those more than one realm higher, if they can fight back, they might still have a chance to escape. But if the opponent crushes you with mere spiritual pressure, what good are all your other methods? Your Profound Heaven Dao Arts have already undergone a mutation. The strength of your True Essence and spiritual sense far surpasses that of ordinary Qi Refining stage cultivators, which is why you could handle those two Golden Core cultivators from the Huayang Sect. But in a real fight, it's still not enough."

"So that's why you were after this Purity Returning Spirit Pill?" Wang Li looked at her, still not believing her. "Senior Sister, the main effect of this Purity Returning Spirit Pill is to repair the soul, and strengthening the spiritual sense is secondary. How can I not feel like you prepared this pill for me in advance because you knew my spiritual sense would be severely damaged during this advancement? It's too perfectly targeted."

"I guessed." Lü Shenliang was even more concise.

Wang Li was speechless. "Then why couldn't I guess it?"

"Because you're stupid." Lü Shenliang looked at him with disdain.

Wang Li was even more speechless. "Then, Senior Sister, tell me where I'm stupid and how you guessed it."

"It's simple. Since the strange tribulation appeared at the second level of Qi Refining in your Profound Heaven Dao Arts, each of its tribulations has been forcing you down a path of constant combat and strengthening. It absolutely forbids you from accumulating True Essence strength step by step, or from cautiously cultivating your entire life, gaining immense longevity, only to hide away in the sect. Cultivators defy the heavens, and when we say defy the heavens, we mean fighting other cultivators, snatching their Destiny. It wants you to fight all sorts of cultivators, so that your cultivation doesn't just become a pure accumulation of levels, but a true increase in strength." Lü Shenliang said earnestly, "Looking at the previous tribulations, they pressured you more on your spiritual sense. While the combat techniques are varied and numerous, the physical body has a low upper limit. And cultivators who fight often tend to blur the lines between each other. But spiritual sense is different. Spiritual sense has a higher upper limit, so I guessed that your future tribulations would put even more strain on your spiritual sense. Since there happened to be such a spirit medicine in the Blackwater Market, of course, I had to find a way to obtain it."

Frankly, Wang Li thought what she said made a lot of sense, and her expression didn't seem fake. But thinking of the determination of that gray-robed cultivator, he couldn't help but mutter, "Why do I feel like this time it was mainly because I asked that gray-robed cultivator to sit down and talk?"

Lü Shenliang's eyebrows twitched slightly. "What do you mean by that?"

Wang Li couldn't help but give a wry smile. "Didn't I tell you? I always suspected these gray-robed cultivators were no different from True Persons. This time, I seized the opportunity to have a conversation with one of them. I said I didn't know him, and why did we have to fight to the death? Why not sit down and talk? But instead, he became enraged and used the most desperate method, trying to take me down with him."

Lü Shenliang shook her head. She thoughtfully pondered for a moment, then looked up at Wang Li. "If it's truly the Heavenly Dao laws controlling cultivators to kill each other in tribulations, then perhaps your 'let's sit down and talk' was, under the control of the Heavenly Dao laws, interpreted by him as me saying I wanted your whole family to be together?"

"It's not impossible." Wang Li was stunned. He looked at Lü Shenliang with some admiration, thinking his senior sister's mind was truly vast. "It's just... he seemed to say something too, but why couldn't I understand his words?"

"Then there are even more possibilities," Lü Shenliang said. "Perhaps the Heavenly Dao laws thought his retort was too vulgar, or perhaps the Heavenly Dao laws didn't understand what he was cursing about, or perhaps..."

"I feel like we should first figure out the problem with this extra Dao Palace in my body." Wang Li couldn't help but interrupt her deductions.

He quickly explained how the Dao Palace was formed and how it felt in his Sea of Qi, emphasizing, "This Dao Palace seems to be the framework formed by the accumulation of miscellaneous True Essence in my body during my usual cultivation, but the will within... I feel it's extremely vast, giving me an irresistible feeling."

"Then try refining some more spirit sand. If that doesn't work, try refining some low-grade pills and see how the Dao Palace changes," Lü Shenliang suggested. "What's inside this Dao Palace?"

Wang Li shook his head. "I haven't dared to go in and look yet. What if, as soon as I enter, those few gray-robed cultivators I defeated earlier are lined up neatly inside waiting for me? Then I'd be finished."

Lü Shenliang glanced at him. "Then how will you know if those gray-robed cultivators are inside if you don't go in and look? Are we cultivators really this timid?"

Wang Li rolled his eyes. "Are you even my real senior sister? You're already trying to get me to take risks before I've even recovered. Can't I wait a little?"

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

"I..." Wang Li choked on his words. After a moment, he asked again with a serious expression, "Do you really not know why my Profound Heaven Dao Arts changed like this, even though we practice the same technique? You truly have no idea why?"

"How would I know?"

Lü Shenliang said, "Such a powerful change... perhaps you found a Primordial artifact on the lone peak, and that's how your Profound Heaven Dao Arts regained its original form. Perhaps this is the complete Profound Heaven Dao Arts, and it was always meant to be this powerful."

"A Primordial artifact? That I obtained? I don't believe you for a second!" Wang Li turned to look at the Profound Heaven Sect's thirty-one peaks, which still seemed bustling with activity even in the darkness. "I wish I really did find a Primordial artifact. Then I'd make these people stay on these thirty-one peaks for their entire lives, not allowed to leave. They'd probably just hide like turtles anyway."