Xu Yuan's feelings were complicated.
No matter what had happened before, from now on, he would probably have to use the name Xu Changtian.
"Oh."
Her slightly disappointed voice sounded softly in the dark cave dwelling. It seemed she was disappointed that he hadn't told her his real name.
After a few seconds of silence, she asked softly:
"Will you keep using the name Xu Yuan from now on?"
"..."
Xu Yuan?
A strange look flashed through his eyes.
After a moment's thought, Xu Yuan remembered that Cangyuan seemed to have courtesy names, too. It was just that the Third Young Master always died as soon as he appeared, so his name had never been mentioned.
Learning that his original body was also called Xu Yuan surprised him.
Was it a coincidence?
Or was there something else behind it?
His thoughts wandered, then quickly settled. Xu Yuan had never wasted time on things he couldn't figure out.
After thinking it over, Xu Yuan spoke gently to the woman beside him:
"Mr. Ran, wait a moment."
"Ran Qingmo."
Big Ice Block suddenly interrupted him. Her clear, quiet eyes held his, unblinking and serious.
"My name is Ran Qingmo."
"..."
The air fell silent for a moment as they gazed at each other in the dark.
A little taken aback, Xu Yuan nodded with a smile and spoke again:
"Ran Qingmo, once they've come and gone, don't say anything. I'll handle it."
This time, Big Ice Block seemed satisfied. She nodded.
"Mm. All right."
After that, neither of them spoke again.
Xu Yuan slowly closed his eyes and returned to his cultivation.
The entire Spirit Spring had already been stored in the Sumeru Ring, so the Source Qi in the cave had gradually begun to thin. But with the Spirit Locking Array still active, the Source Qi he could sense in the surrounding area was still astonishing.
His technique began to circulate through his meridians, drawing in the Source Qi he sensed around him.
The meridians in Xu Yuan's body, once as narrow as winding country lanes, had now become broad highways. The icy-blue Source Qi that had covered their inner walls had been washed away by the immense medicinal power earlier.
Source Qi drifting through the world entered his meridians and transformed at an almost unimpeded pace.
In just a quarter of an hour,
Xu Yuan realized that the Source Qi he'd converted in that short time already equaled what he'd gained from a week of hard cultivation.
He felt both moved and helpless.
What ordinary people couldn't accomplish even by giving their all was nothing compared to the effortless feats of the talented.
Completely immersed in cultivation, he understood that only someone who had once given everything as an ordinary person just to barely sense the faint traces of Source Qi could grasp the terrifying advantage this Innate Dao Body gave him.
But soon, for some reason, Xu Yuan noticed that the Source Qi drifting around him was vanishing at a visible rate.
Source Qi behaved much like air. It flowed from "high-pressure areas" to "low-pressure areas," filling empty spaces as it went.
Even so, the Source Qi in the cave was rapidly draining away.
It went from dense to thin, until at last only a few faint "clusters of Qi" remained within two feet of him.
Xu Yuan frowned slightly with his eyes closed and sent out his Will Soul to investigate.
When ordinary people first began cultivating, their Will Souls could sense only the faint Source Qi within a foot of them. They couldn't sense its movement or replenishment at all.
The terrifying advantage of an Innate Soul Body showed itself once more. Xu Yuan could sense farther than before, and he could clearly detect the direction in which the Source Qi was flowing.
As his Will Soul investigated, Xu Yuan sensed that all the Source Qi vanishing from the cave was flowing toward a spot about a yard beside him.
"..." Xu Yuan.
He stopped circulating his technique and opened his eyes.
Ran Qingmo was sitting cross-legged beside him, eyes closed.
She was taking all the Source Qi in the cave for herself.
And he couldn't compete with Big Ice Block at all.
His eyes flickered faintly. Xu Yuan shook his head and stopped cultivating, leaning against the stone wall to rest with his eyes closed.
He could understand why Ran Qingmo had become a Grandmaster at such a young age.
She cultivated every waking moment.
Whether in the Buddhist hall where they'd first met, after waking up from the cold in the cave, or during breaks as she trekked through the Wanxing Mountain Range—
Whenever she sat cross-legged with her eyes closed, she was cultivating.
A hardworking genius was a true genius.
At that thought, Xu Yuan's mind suddenly halted. He recalled his elder brother.
That guy didn't seem to cultivate much, did he?
In his childhood memories, he'd constantly dragged along his ten-years-older brother to play with him.
Though Xu Changge had always looked unwilling, he still humored him, often spending the entire day with him.
In those memories, Xu Changge had never stopped to sit and cultivate.
As Xu Yuan's thoughts wandered,
Ran Qingmo, sitting beside him, quietly opened her eyes. Her voice was cool and clear.
"They're here."
Xu Yuan immediately came back to himself, his gaze sharpening.
The next moment,
"BOOM!!!!"
Rubble flew everywhere as an outside force blasted a hole more than thirty feet deep through the cave's solid stone wall. Sunlight poured through the breach, instantly driving out every trace of darkness.
Several figures could be faintly seen in the sunlight.
Perhaps wary of Ran Qingmo's strength, they didn't dare enter the cramped cave recklessly.
After a brief silence,
A woman's cold, hoarse voice came from outside.
"Mr. Ran, please come out."
Her voice rang through the entire cave.
After a second of silence,
Ran Qingmo silently picked up her sword, rose, and headed for the exit.
Xu Yuan immediately grabbed her by the wrist.
She glanced back at him. Xu Yuan gently shook his head.
At this point, with the strength of his conveniently available elder brother, he could kill Big Ice Block in a single strike.
Ran Qingmo was silent for two seconds, but she obediently stayed where she was.
Xu Yuan slowly stood up and brushed off his blood-red robe.
"Mr. Ran hasn't hurt me. Don't attack her. Let her leave."
"..."
The figures outside didn't speak at Xu Yuan's voice.
Seeing that, Xu Yuan walked toward the exit.
The blasted passage was more than thirty feet long, and rubble littered the ground. His boots crunched over it with every step.
He stopped at the entrance and narrowed his eyes, channeling Source Qi into them to adjust to the sunlight.
Xu Yuan raised a hand and gently touched his neck. Outside, he saw four figures hovering in the air.
A scruffy, bearded man; a woman in fitted clothes with her hair tied in a high ponytail; a bald monk; and the masked woman in tight black clothes, her pale arms exposed.
Xu Yuan fixed his gaze on the last masked woman.
He remembered her.
She was Ying'er, the one who'd stood by and handed Xu Changge a weapon when he beat Xu Yuan.
Ying'er's cold gaze passed over Xu Yuan. She spoke in a low voice.
"Zhou Chen, take the Third Young Master away."
"..."
Zhou Chen glanced at the Third Young Master standing in the cave entrance and shook his head helplessly.
That blood-red robe was pretty cool, but who would listen to a spoiled young master like him?
Killing Ran Qingmo was the Eldest Young Master's order.
With that thought,
Zhou Chen flashed toward Xu Yuan, moving so fast that Xu Yuan couldn't even see him clearly.
But halfway there, Zhou Chen's figure abruptly stopped. He hovered in midair, frowning.
In plain sight,
Strands of strange, blood-red Source Qi had appeared on the hand with which this useless Third Young Master was touching his neck, coiling around his own pale throat.
In the instant Zhou Chen had flashed forward, thin trails of blood had already seeped from Xu Yuan's neck.
Xu Yuan gently touched his throat and once again looked around at the four of them. He repeated each word, one by one:
"I said,
"Let Mr. Ran leave."
Feeling the warmth of the blood trickling down his neck, Xu Yuan thought that if he could be completely rational, he should use this chance to eliminate Big Ice Block.
That way, his identity would be completely confirmed, without a single flaw.
But Xu Yuan couldn't do it.
Perhaps one day, he and she would clash over something and become enemies, but it couldn't be now.
Call him a bleeding-heart or a lovesick fool, if you wanted.
Even if a person couldn't repay a kindness, the least he could do was not repay it with treachery.
She'd helped him so much along the way and had silently helped him so much in the cave. Without her, he would have died right then and there from Alienation Syndrome alone.
Ran Qingmo stood in the cave with her sword in hand, watching the blood-red figure at the entrance. Her red lips pressed together gently.
"..."
Clouds and mist swirled around them, with the ten-thousand-foot abyss of Hanging Heaven Cliff beneath their feet. The entrance to the cave fell utterly silent.
When Ying'er saw the blood-red Source Qi, a flicker of surprise crossed her cold eyes, but she quickly returned to normal.
"Third Young Master, we're trying to save you. What do you mean by this?"
Xu Yuan shifted his gaze to her and spoke softly.
"Saving me has nothing to do with letting Mr. Ran go."
After their brief exchange, silence fell over the entrance again.
To the four figures hovering outside, it was certainly unexpected that the Third Young Master had Source Qi in his body. But to cultivators of their level, it wasn't much of a concern.
It would be easy to knock the Third Young Master unconscious and take him away. It would only take a single flash.
The problem was that no one knew what technique the Third Young Master had cultivated, or whether the blood-red Source Qi coiling around his neck would run wild if he were knocked unconscious.
Certainly, given the gap in strength, they could forcibly suppress it with their own Source Qi before it ran wild.
But,
What if?
What if things didn't go as expected, and something happened to the Third Young Master? Who would take responsibility?
If the Third Young Master died at their hands, their entire families would be buried with him.
No one dared take that responsibility.
No one knew how long the standoff continued.
A sigh suddenly drifted down from the top of Hanging Heaven Cliff.
It was soft, yet every person present heard it clearly.
As the sigh faded,
A warm, gentle voice rang out:
"Ying'er, if Mr. Ran wants to leave, let her go. Just bring Changtian up here."
Before you continue