Discovered

Pan Yun: Since you can't help me, then from now on, don't even think about taking a speck of spiritual energy from me. I want to cultivate. On my own, I can still save people.

The Spirit Realm was utterly baffled. You were reborn with your memories. Why do you still regard them as your family? Don't you want to go back and find your family from your previous life? I can take you back.

Pan Yun: Eight years—even if you raised a dog, you'd have formed an attachment by then, let alone people. I was a sickly infant whose spiritual energy you kept stealing. How much effort did they put in for me to grow this old? Setting feelings aside, even just to repay the grace of raising and giving birth to me, I can't stand by and watch.

Besides, she had no family left in her previous life. The only thing she had to repay was her country.

The Spirit Realm: If you want to repay their kindness, repay mine first. When the laboratory exploded, I wrapped your soul and fled. If not for me, you would have scattered into smoke and vanished like they did.

Pan Yun sneered. If I hadn't taken that kindness into account, do you think I'd have let you stay in my Mud Pill Palace for eight years? Don't paint yourself as so noble, either. You wrapped up my soul and escaped only because you needed a vessel, and I was the closest one to you at the time. So you saved me, and I saved you. We've long since owed each other nothing. If we really count it, these past eight years are what you owe me.

The Spirit Realm fell silent, but it flickered rapidly. With a whoosh, it tried to charge out of her Mud Pill Palace, only to be caught in a net the moment it rushed forward. Then lines appeared out of thin air and, with two swift swishes, bound it tightly.

The Spirit Realm was horrified. First comes Refining Essence into Qi, then Refining Qi into Spirit. Why can you refine spirit first?

Pan Yun, inside the Mud Pill Palace, bared her teeth at it in a grin. You guess.

The tide had turned. Pan Yun now held the upper hand.

The Spirit Realm could bend and stretch as the situation demanded, and immediately changed its tune. "Since you were one of the researchers, you should know that I'm sealed. Many of my abilities can't be used. Wait until I undo the seal, and I'll be able to help you..."

That will take too long. In my previous life, the country poured so many resources into you, yet after ten years you had only undone a tiny portion of your seal. Even then, all you could do was input information. Who knows how long it'll take before you fully undo it? Pan Yun did not believe it had no solutions at all. First, return half the spiritual energy you've stolen from me over the years. Let me raise my cultivation so I can find someone to save my family.

I refined it all. There's none left.

Pan Yun sneered. "Do you take me for a three-year-old child? If you hadn't stored any spiritual energy, how would you maintain the operation of your inner space?"

The Spirit Realm: ...There's only enough to keep that little bit of space running. Everything in there belongs to you.

Pan Yun: Throw it away. Give me the spiritual energy.

The Spirit Realm: Why not wait a little longer? Once I undo a little more of my seal, I'm a Realm God—the Spirit Realm that was once deified. Once I undo my seal...

Pan Yun sneered again and again. Gods cannot cultivate on their own...

The Spirit Realm: Once I undo that part of the seal, I can...

Pan Yun continued, Gods still have to eat the spiritual energy I cultivate.

The Spirit Realm: Once I am deified again...

Pan Yun: You ate for eight whole years.

The Spirit Realm fumed. Once I am deified again...

Pan Yun: Eight years without uttering a word.

The Spirit Realm weakened. Once I am deified again, I'll compensate you...

Pan Yun: Eight years. My father and brother were falsely accused and fell into disaster, and because I had no cultivation, I couldn't help them in the slightest.

The Spirit Realm yielded. I can give you some spiritual energy, but half is impossible. I refined most of it, and I still need to keep some to operate the space.

It said, You should understand how useful the space is by now. If I hadn't opened the space for you to hide things just now, could your family have escaped that calamity?

Pan Yun fell silent. The space truly was immensely useful, and it truly had saved her family's lives just now.

From the moment she got up today, nothing had gone right. She choked while drinking water, fell when getting out of bed, and even the copper handle of a water ladle that had always been sturdy snapped.

Cultivators were not ordinarily plagued by such extraordinary misfortune. If such things happened, Heaven must be sending a warning. Thus, she used her limited knowledge to cast a divination for the Pan family.

Great misfortune!

Her father and two brothers had all been sentenced to exile in Datong. The Pan family she had asked about was limited to her grandmother, Uncle, and his household—how could they face great misfortune?

The Pan family's only weakness now was her.

As Pan Hong's daughter, she too should have been exiled to Datong. But her father had pitied her frail health, and since she had nearly died of illness early last spring, outsiders did not know she was still alive. Pan Hong had simply hidden her away.

Harboring a criminal was a grave crime.

So after divining great misfortune, her first thought had been to set fire to the place and run.

There was no helping it. The room was filled with traces of her life. A person could flee, but their belongings could not.

She had not even been sure whether a fire could erase every trace when a voice suddenly surfaced in her mind.

She had no time to question it closely. Once she learned that it possessed a space, she immediately stuffed every daily necessity in the room into it. Then she ran to the storage room, gathered many miscellaneous items, and threw them into the room to cover up the remaining traces of her life. Only then did she hurriedly meet her grandmother and Uncle before fleeing.

The moment she left, the Imperial Guards arrived. She had escaped by the skin of her teeth. It was right—today, it had saved both her and the Pan family.

Pan Yun finally took a step back, and one human and one spirit temporarily reached an understanding.

The Spirit Realm gave her some spiritual energy.

This spiritual energy had originally belonged to Pan Yun. Once it released it, she could use it directly, but she still sat cross-legged and guided it through a Lesser Celestial Circuit before finally pressing it down into her Dantian.

After she finished her cultivation, the Spirit Realm asked, Where are we going next?

Pan Yun lowered her eyes and thought for a moment before saying, "We can't return to the Pan family. The Imperial Guards will keep watching it. I want to go to Datong and find my father and brother. Come on, take me a thousand miles in a flash."

A moment later, Pan Yun stood outside the alley, silent. Silent. Endlessly silent.

This is your thousand miles in a flash? Pan Yun mocked. One wall? Half an alley?

The Spirit Realm said guiltily, The spiritual energy I cultivated was all used to undo my seal—mainly to unlock the space and cultivation techniques. And I just gave you so much spiritual energy...

Pan Yun emphasized, It was spiritual energy I cultivated! And you didn't give me much at all, just a tiny bit.

Forget it. It was a sealed Spirit Realm; she could not expect too much from it. Pan Yun sighed and was about to discuss how to get to Datong when she suddenly sensed an uncomfortable gaze. She frowned slightly and looked up.

Her eyes met Wang Yong's.

He sat on horseback, studying her with a gaze that made her deeply uncomfortable.

Why was he here?

Pan Yun swept her gaze around, roaring inwardly, Damn it, useless Spirit Realm! Your thousand miles in a flash only crossed one alley, straight onto the main street, where I happened to run into Wang Yong just as he came out of the Pan family.

Her face remained expressionless. Her gaze slid smoothly over his face as though she did not know him. Scanning the passersby on the street, she spotted a broad back, broke into a run after it, and called, "Father..."