Lin Character Secret

"Skin like jade balm, immortal flesh and jade bones—she was nearly done transforming. The Source Ancient Jade Wall might truly have completed the ascension ritual. We destroyed her Dao cultivation; ten thousand years of cultivation, ruined in a single day.

"No, perhaps we were not the ones who destroyed it. Otherwise, even in this era where primordial spirits had gone extinct and secret powers no longer manifested in the world, there should have been some trace of the miraculous. She most likely died halfway through."

His voice was somewhat low, his eyes flickering with wistful sorrow.

"This was an Extreme Path Expert. In her era, she may well have been a peerless figure whose splendor eclipsed the ages. But she encountered the final days of primordial spirit decline and, left with no choice, settled for second best—plunging herself into a state neither living nor dead, burying herself within the Source Ancient Jade Wall. Ten thousand years later, we dug her out."

"So we were her Human Tribulation?"

"Us?" Li Haomiao shook his head slightly. "The true Human Tribulation is that Bewitching Woman sitting on the Great Zhou throne. Ningguta was only established after she ascended the throne. She knows secrets I do not. She seems to be searching for ancient remnants left by those before her, hoping to visit immortal ruins."

Xu Yunfan quietly watched the woman's naked body, his expression filled with melancholy. Then he reached out and lightly touched her.

The next instant, the woman's once-plump body began to shrivel rapidly, as though all the air had been let out of it. Her jade-like skin dried and wrinkled.

Before they could even react, the woman who had looked like a goddess was reduced to nothing but a skin.

Li Haomiao's expression changed drastically.

"What did you do?"

Xu Yunfan looked utterly bewildered, caught completely off guard.

"How would I know? Just touching her shouldn't have done this, right? I only wanted to see whether her skin was smooth."

Li Haomiao came back to his senses as well. Looking at the wrinkled skin before him, he sighed. "It seems she had already failed her ascension and shed her corpse before we arrived. The Source Ancient Jade Wall merely preserved the characteristics of her flesh."

When Xu Yunfan heard that, his hand paused slightly as he picked up the skin.

You discovered the ninth secret of the Dao Gate: Lin.

In an instant, a vast amount of cultivation knowledge concerning the Lin Character Secret flooded into his mind, allowing him to memorize it at once. It was a rare Dao Gate method focused on the mind and the strengthening of the soul.

This was memory empowerment!

"What is it?"

Hearing Li Haomiao's question, Xu Yunfan forcibly suppressed the turmoil in his heart. He shook his head slightly, his expression unchanged.

"Nothing. This skin just has a very nice texture."

Seeing that Xu Yunfan was fine, Li Haomiao reached out with his only remaining left hand and touched it as well. He commented, "More tender than the skin of a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girl. Like a child's."

Xu Yunfan cursed, "Where I'm from, that alone would get you sentenced to death."

Li Haomiao found that rather baffling. He gave a soft snort. "In my Great Zhou Empire, a girl of thirteen may already become a wife. Someone like you, still wasting your time at seventeen or eighteen, would be seen as nothing more than a failure by others."

Xu Yunfan could not be bothered to argue with him. He found a place to sit, quietly watching as the Source Ancient Jade Wall, which had once emitted a deep and secluded glow, began to lose its light and gradually became no different from ordinary mountain rock.

In his mind, he carefully pondered one of the Nine Secrets of the Dao Gate that he had sensed through the system—the Lin Character Secret.

Li Haomiao also fell silent, staring blankly at the Source Ancient Jade Disc.

After a long while, Li Haomiao said, "The Source Ancient Jade Wall has already been used. Once it is broken open, its miraculous properties naturally dissipate."

Most of Xu Yunfan's attention was on the Lin Character Secret in his mind. He casually asked, "Did this female immortal die beforehand?"

"Perhaps. Something may have happened long ago. Neither alive nor dead, she could not preserve her physical body's immortality."

Xu Yunfan did not ask further. He had already obtained the greatest opportunity from this skin. Without the Attribute Panel, he likely would not have been able to trigger the conditions for the empowerment.

"What is True Blood?"

Li Haomiao glanced at Xu Yunfan.

"That makes sense. A rootless, drifting True Blood Practitioner like you truly would have no way to obtain such information.

"A person with True Blood is a descendant left behind by a true immortal."

Xu Yunfan's expression shook. "I'm descended from a true immortal?!"

In an instant, countless speculations about his origins sprang into his mind—perhaps his parents had died when Outer Realm Heavenly Demons invaded; perhaps they had accidentally let him fall into the mortal world, condemning him to suffer endless hardships; or perhaps his father had fathered him, an illegitimate son, with a mistress, only for the legitimate eldest son to discover it and for his vicious mother to cast him aside to fend for himself...

"What nonsense are you thinking? Looking at you, you merely show signs of an accidental atavistic return. The last wisp of True Blood in your body was activated. People like you are not especially numerous throughout Great Zhou, but neither are they rare.

"True immortal descendants are indeed powerful, but after generations of branching out, their bloodlines have long been diluted until almost nothing remained. Unless something unexpected happens, you should be no different from an ordinary person."

At this point, Li Haomiao sank into thought. Could those with True Blood activate their bloodlines by following Xu Yunfan's path of growth?

This was a method worth researching.

After all, those with True Blood progressed extremely quickly in the early stages of martial training. In a short time, they could cultivate a realm to mastery and become a mainstay of combat strength.

Xu Yunfan's blazing excitement was naturally doused with a bucket of cold water. He pressed on, "Do true immortals really exist in this world?"

Li Haomiao raised his chin. "Isn't there one right in front of you?"

Xu Yunfan looked suspiciously at the skin lying not far away. "That counts?"

"When your strength reaches a realm beyond ordinary people's comprehension, when you excavate the human body's potential to the utmost limit and become an Extreme Path Expert at the very pinnacle, you may naturally be called a terrestrial immortal god."

"So they can die too."

Xu Yunfan was speechless. He stood up, picked up the Iron Pickaxe, and prepared to practice the Crimson Flame Copper Body Art while also increasing his mining proficiency.

Then the echoes of gongs and drums sounded from outside the main mine tunnel.

At that sound, they could rest.

Xu Yunfan felt slightly dazed. He had never imagined that he could spend ten whole days in this sunless mine without feeling terrified.

But he knew clearly that without the Attribute Panel, these ten days would have been no different from living in hell.

He turned back to Li Haomiao. "We can leave the mine and rest for a few days. Are you going out?"

Li Haomiao looked up, a trace of something indescribable in his expression.

"Of course... I am going out."

"Then let's go."

Watching Xu Yunfan's departing back, Li Haomiao could no longer hold himself back. He shouted, "Take me with you!"

"..."

When the overseer commander, Yang Gan, led their group of mine slaves out from the sunless mine, Xu Yunfan narrowed his eyes at the bright sky.

Ningguta lay in a hollow amid the Eight Hundred Li Barren River. As far as the eye could see, continuous mountain ranges surrounded it on all sides. Their ridges twisted and rose from the hollow, spreading outward in every direction, their peaks blanketed in snow.

As the cold wind blew, Xu Yunfan felt threads of bone-piercing chill drilling madly into his bones, raising goosebumps all over his skin.

He turned to look at the crowd around him who had been demoted to mine slaves. Without exception, they were blackened from head to toe, dressed in ragged clothes, their faces almost entirely coated in pitch-black mining dust.