Xu Changtian

"Keep going."

"We can start again."

"There isn't much time."

"Don't just sit there. I'm awake now. Keep going."

"."

There was no sound, no conversation.

In this cramped cave dwelling, buried deep within the mountain, the only voice was Xu Yuan's calm reminder each time he woke from the brink of death.

And every time Xu Yuan spoke, his voice grew weaker.

With Ran Qingmo waking Xu Yuan before he lost consciousness, the time it took him to awaken from the brink of death had shrunk from about two hours to less than half an hour.

Transferring cultivation to heal someone allowed another person to use their qi to heal the recipient's body.

But the qi transferred into someone else's body was, in the end, not their own.

Every time someone transferred cultivation to heal them, some of the other person's qi remained in their meridians.

When there was ample time, this was a good thing.

As they cultivated, they could gradually refine the qi left in their body and make it their own, increasing their cultivation.

But too many treatments in a short time would cause the qi left in their body to undergo a qualitative change, creating a hidden ailment that was almost impossible to cure.

Ran Qingmo had explained the pros and cons to Xu Yuan, but he didn't care.

If it could shorten the time he spent on the brink of death from two hours to half an hour, that was more than enough for him.

This was a good thing. It meant he would have more chances to get used to the state of being near death and make more preparations for cultivating the Blood Origin Heart-Meteor Art at last.

Time slipped by amid his repeated brushes with death.

Five times,

ten times,

twenty times,

thirty times.

His consciousness kept circling back from the endless darkness of death. Xu Yuan had lost count of how many times he had entered a near-death state with her help.

He slowly opened his eyes.

In the faint light of the luminous pearls embedded in the stone walls, he saw the woman's clear, flawless face—and the thin layer of ice covering his body, radiating an eerie chill.

"Mr. Ran."

His voice was weak and trembling, but it meant that Xu Yuan could now steady his mind in this near-death state, and even speak.

Ran Qingmo silently raised her eyes to him. Her clear gaze was complicated.

"Go ahead."

Xu Yuan, his whole body covered in ice crystals, tried to keep his voice steady.

"How... how much longer until the formation outside disappears?"

Ran Qingmo closed her eyes to sense it. After a while, she spoke softly.

"About two days."

"Two days left."

Xu Yuan sighed faintly.

There was still too little time. Even though he was disregarding the hidden damage to his body and risking his life, it had still taken him about three days to complete the third step.

Though time was running short, fretting wouldn't help. He had to make preparations, even if he only had one chance.

Besides, Xu Yuan believed that once the eldest son of the Prime Minister realized he was cultivating, he wouldn't risk his younger brother going mad from qi deviation by forcing his way through the wall.

At this point, all he could do was gamble.

After a long silence, Xu Yuan finally said, trembling, "For the next day, I... I'll start circulating the technique. If I go into qi deviation, then... then I'll be counting on you."

Ran Qingmo silently nodded.

Seeing her grave expression, Xu Yuan smiled faintly.

"Mr. Ran, I'll officially begin cultivating a day from now. Remember to remind me."

"Mm. All right."

Cultivating in a near-death state for the first time was far harder than Xu Yuan had expected.

It wasn't because he couldn't focus his consciousness. It was because too much of Ran Qingmo's Source Qi remained in his body.

After so many days of repeated healing through transferred cultivation, the meridians in Xu Yuan's body had almost all taken on Ran Qingmo's shape.

His body's innate talent had never been good.

Every meridian was as narrow and obstructed as a winding sheep trail, and now those cramped trails were clogged with Ran Qingmo's icy-blue Source Qi.

The icy-blue remnants carpeted the inner walls of every meridian in his body.

In these circumstances, trying to guide his own remaining Source Qi along the technique's routes was like trying to walk with leaden feet.

Once he sensed this, Xu Yuan didn't let it trouble him.

He still believed in the same thing:

When you ran into a problem, you solved it.

If his meridians had grown narrower, he would guide his Source Qi forward with even greater care.

If it took longer for the technique to complete one cycle, he would force himself to remain conscious in his near-death state for longer.

A day passed in a blur.

Once again, he woke from unconsciousness.

The first thing Xu Yuan saw was her, silently keeping watch by his side.

Unlike before, he was now lying on the only jade bed in the cave dwelling.

Silently sitting up, Xu Yuan glanced at the jade bed.

Two cultivation manuals lay quietly stacked on the immaculate white jade, with the two bottles of precious pills he needed for cultivation beside them.

He gazed at them in silence, his thoughts stirring. After more than a month, he had finally reached the last step.

"Um... I haven't looked at your cultivation manual."

Perhaps because Xu Yuan had been staring at them for so long, the Big Ice Block beside him suddenly said this without any context.

Xu Yuan glanced at her and smiled.

"I know."

The two manuals had nothing special about them. Apart from the contents written inside, they were just ordinary sheets of paper. With Ran Qingmo's cultivation, if she had wanted to read them, she could have used her Will Soul to inspect them clearly from dozens of meters away.

Xu Yuan silently adjusted his posture and sat cross-legged on the jade bed.

He opened the two jade bottles, and an aroma of blood mingled with the fragrance of pills instantly spread through the cramped cave dwelling.

He laid the two pills across his palm. Their pill patterns were ancient and intricate.

Xu Yuan gave Ran Qingmo one last sideways glance and joked, "Mr. Ran, you'd better hope I succeed. Otherwise, this cave dwelling will be the place where we're both buried."

"."

Ran Qingmo stared at him without a word.

She was still as taciturn as when they had first met.

Seeing this, Xu Yuan shook his head, a little disappointed. He said nothing more and tipped both pills into his mouth.

The pills dissolved as soon as they touched his tongue, turning into two gentle streams of warmth that flowed into his body.

It didn't hurt.

On the contrary, the two warm currents spreading through his body even felt rather pleasant.

But the instant that thought crossed Xu Yuan's mind, something suddenly went wrong!

One of the warm currents abruptly turned violent, transforming into a surging tide of Source Qi that rushed along Xu Yuan's meridians!

The sudden, intense pain made Xu Yuan's body curl helplessly into a shrimp.

His narrow, obstructed meridians couldn't withstand such an immense surge of Source Qi.

Every inch the Source Qi passed, another inch of Xu Yuan's meridians split open. The agony of his meridians shattering nearly made him lose control of his mind.

It hurt. It hurt so much!

The bone-deep pain made it impossible to breathe, and his vision went black in waves.

Fortunately, his countless brushes with death had taught Xu Yuan to steady his mind through sheer force, keeping the pain from knocking him unconscious.

A quarter of an hour later,

the violent medicinal power of the Calamity Meteor Pill had made one full cycle through the 127 meridians in Xu Yuan's body.

Amid the bone-deep pain, Xu Yuan could feel that every one of his 127 meridians had been shattered to pieces.

His body could no longer hold a cross-legged posture. He collapsed limply onto the jade bed.

The despair of true death began to creep into his heart, inch by inch.

But just then, the second stream of warmth—the power of the Blood Spirit Body-Fusion Pill—began to seep into his shattered meridians.

This current was warm and viscous. Every inch it passed brought a tingling warmth.

Sensing this, Xu Yuan knew the time had come. He immediately began guiding the Blood Spirit Body-Fusion Pill's medicinal power along the route of the Blood Origin Heart-Meteor Art.

As the pill's medicinal power flowed through his body, the shattered meridians began to repair themselves, bit by bit.

But this was only the beginning.

The two streams of medicinal power, one from the Calamity Meteor Pill and one from the Blood Spirit Body-Fusion Pill, followed one another through Xu Yuan's meridians in an endless cycle.

The Calamity Meteor Pill went first, tearing everything down along the way. The Blood Spirit Body-Fusion Pill followed behind, repairing it all.

Pain and pleasure wove together, driving his mind toward madness.

His meridians shattered, then mended; mended, then shattered.

Again and again, one cycle after another.

Cultivation knew no years.

As time passed,

Xu Yuan realized that his consciousness wasn't growing hazy from the repeated brushes with death and the intense pain. Instead, it was growing ever clearer and more solid.

After an unknown amount of time,

Xu Yuan could even spare some of his attention to sense the qi drifting through the world around him.

Before, he could sense only two or three faint clusters of qi in the cave dwelling. Now, as the Blood Origin Heart-Meteor Art continued to circulate, those clusters kept multiplying.

His pallid face gradually regained its color, and his shallow, threadlike breathing slowly steadied. Everything was settling into calm.

Besides that,

strange images flowed into Xu Yuan's mind like a trickling stream.

It was like watching an abstract film.

Fragmented and complicated, yet somehow all connected.

As he examined them closely,

Xu Yuan quickly sensed something was wrong.

Were these images Xu Changtian's memories?

As his Will Soul and body melded perfectly together, the memories lingering in his body began to emerge in his mind, bit by bit.

There were mundane scenes of washing up and bathing,

of throwing his weight around and bullying people in the streets thanks to his family's standing,

of hunting on horseback outside the city,

and even the outrageous scene of the Third Young Master taking an aphrodisiac and forcing himself on five women in the Drunken Immortal Pavilion.

The images emerged from blurry to clear, one after another.

But to Xu Yuan's surprise, there weren't many memories of Xu Changtian's father.

Most of the time, all he saw was a back—a back that filled him with fear.

Fear?

Xu Yuan realized that as soon as that figure had crossed his mind, he had felt a flicker of fear himself.

He was being affected by these memories.

Realizing this, Xu Yuan hurriedly gathered his thoughts and stopped thinking about the Prime Minister.

But in the next instant, those memories still surged into his mind, beyond his control.

Compared to that lofty father of his, the person who had left the deepest impression in Xu Changtian's memories was his eldest brother.

As the memories flooded in, Xu Yuan realized that this body feared Xu Changge even more than it feared their father.

The terror was almost bone-deep.

Just thinking about him made Xu Yuan's body tremble faintly.

How terrified did someone have to be to react like that?

Xu Yuan soon found the answer in those memories.

Scenes from his past flickered before his eyes.

"Useless! You can't even handle something this simple!"

"If I catch you embarrassing yourself out there again, I'll beat you to death on Father's behalf."

"You little bastard. Look at the mess you've made in the Imperial Capital!"

"You're no good at cultivation or the imperial examinations. Xu Changtian, can't you learn from your second brother and Fourth Sister?!"

"Hahahaha... Xu Changtian! It's been three days, and you're a whole new man! I was away on a mission to the Northern Barbarians for barely three months, and I come home to find you've pulled off something like this. Impressive! Now you've even dared lay a hand on the Martial Achievement Marquis's own granddaughter, huh?! Ying'er, bring me the whip. The thickest one!"

"." Xu Yuan.

As those scenes appeared in his mind, Xu Yuan fell silent.

Xu Changge was ten years older than Xu Changtian. Their father was busy with affairs of state, so Xu Changge had practically raised him from childhood.

It was just that his eldest brother's approach to discipline was simple and rough.

When he said he'd beat him, he really did—and beat him within an inch of his life.

Xu Changtian's memories continued to surface, and Xu Yuan could clearly feel his emotions being affected by them.

He didn't want this,

but at that moment, other than silently accepting it, he had no other choice.

Memories stretched on,

and just as the Blood Origin Heart-Meteor Art was about to be completed, Xu Yuan's mind suddenly went blank.

The endless memories from moments ago seemed to have been wiped clean in an instant.

Just as Xu Yuan was wondering what had happened,

a sword appeared in his consciousness.

A sword that seemed to pierce through all of Heaven Gate Mountain.

But the sword appeared quickly and vanished just as fast, disappearing from his consciousness in the blink of an eye.

The art was complete. Xu Yuan slowly opened his eyes.

The memories remained, but the emotions had vanished.

But what was that sword that had appeared in his mind at the very end?

Xu Yuan's gaze flickered as he suddenly recalled the sword intent he had sensed while gazing at Heaven Gate from beside Hanging Heaven Cliff.

He hadn't had time to think it through back then, with events pressing in, but now that he considered it, there were many things that didn't add up.

That sword appearing in his mind must have been because of his gaze at the time.

But why?

Heaven Gate, atop Heaven Gate Mountain, had existed for at least ten thousand years. Countless people had seen it, so why had an opportunity fallen to him?

After turning it over in his mind, Xu Yuan found only one difference: he didn't belong to this world.

Could it be that only the Will Soul of someone who had crossed into another world could sense that sword intent, which had lingered for ten thousand years?

That explanation was a little abstract.

Xu Yuan couldn't figure it out, so he set the matter aside for now.

Just then,

Ran Qingmo's voice came softly from beside him:

"The formation outside has disappeared. They're coming."

Xu Yuan glanced at her, reached out to pick up the Blood Origin Heart-Meteor Art from the jade bed, and replied in an even tone,

"I know."

As he spoke,

the art circulated, and threads of rosy Source Qi emerged from his fingers, coiling around them.

The next moment,

flames sprang up, and the sole copy of the Blood Origin Heart-Meteor Art, along with its secret technique, vanished from the world.

Like the Ice Cloud Steps in Ran Qingmo's art, the Blood Origin Heart-Fall Technique came with many ways to use it. The flames before him were one of them.

After disposing of the incriminating item that might expose his identity,

he changed into the blood-red Blood Jade Glazed Robe,

then began methodically stripping the cave abode of everything useful.

He slipped the Sumeru Ring from beside the bed onto his index finger, then put the jade bed and the whole Spirit Spring into the ring.

After a pause,

Xu Yuan glanced at the luminous pearl in the stone wall and, while he was at it, put that in the ring too.

In an instant,

the cave fell into complete darkness.

With nothing else to do in the dark, Xu Yuan sat cross-legged and began to try cultivating.

He was looking forward to seeing how quickly an Innate Dao Body could cultivate.

The moment he extended his Will Soul, he immediately sensed the difference.

Unlike the two or three "Qi clusters" he had sensed earlier, Xu Yuan now felt as if he were surrounded by a boundless sea of Qi.

What Xu Yuan didn't know was that,

beside him, Ran Qingmo's clear, serene eyes had been watching him silently in the darkness the entire time, her expression tinged with hesitation.

Time passed quietly,

and suddenly,

"Um..."

Hearing the voice, Xu Yuan slowly opened his eyes and looked toward Ran Qingmo.

"My name is Ran Qingmo," Ran Qingmo said.

"."

Xu Yuan was a little puzzled as to why she would say that.

Although he had always called her Master Ran, Xu Yuan remembered that she had told him her name back in the Buddhist shrine.

He gave a slight nod.

"I know."

After saying that, he closed his eyes again.

A dozen seconds later,

Xu Yuan opened his eyes once more. He poured Source Qi into them and, sure enough, found the woman beside him still staring at him without blinking.

He paused, then realized she was asking for his name.

They had spent so long together, yet she still didn't know his name.

He instinctively started to give it, but stopped just as the words reached his lips.

His eyes flickered for a moment,

then Xu Yuan lowered his gaze and let out a breath, the corner of his mouth curling into a faint, inscrutable smile.

"My name is...

"Xu Changtian."