Breaking Up with Ning Rongrong, Comprehending the Dao of Life and Death

"Ning Rongrong, let's break up."

The Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect's back mountain lay beneath moonlight like water.

Gu Linyuan wore a Black Mysterious Robe.

He stood there quietly, like a sword covered in dust.

"Ah... Brother Yuan, why would you suddenly say something like that?"

Ning Rongrong panicked, and an embarrassed sense of having her thoughts seen through surged within her.

She tried to make her voice sound calm, but a trace of relief clearly flashed through her lively eyes.

"We're not on the same path. Don't tell me you haven't thought the same."

The corner of his lips curled slightly, that smile colder than the moonlight.

Silence.

The night wind swept past, stirring the girl's skirt.

Ning Rongrong lowered her head. When she raised it again, her gaze had become clear and resolute.

She knew that some words had to be spoken eventually.

"Brother Linyuan, you're a good person."

"But your cultivation... ever since you awakened your Martial Soul, it hasn't improved for many years." Ning Rongrong bit her lip. "I'm already a two-ringed Soul Grandmaster now, and I'm not far from becoming a Soul Elder."

She raised her right hand, and the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda blossomed in her palm, its dazzling radiance illuminating her delicate face.

Beneath the pagoda, two yellow Soul Rings slowly pulsed like two tranquil moons.

"There is a saying on the continent: a dragon does not dwell with a snake."

She spoke slowly, each word seeming to have been weighed for a long time.

"I still have a long road ahead of me. The gap between us... will only grow wider."

After saying that, Ning Rongrong let out a long breath.

She had originally intended to give him the cold shoulder and let Gu Linyuan gradually give up on his own.

She had not expected him to bring it up himself. Since that was the case, they might as well end it today.

Childhood feelings could not be counted on in the end.

A dragon does not dwell with a snake.

Those four words landed in Gu Linyuan's ears like four needles.

"A dragon does not dwell with a snake?" he repeated softly, then suddenly smiled.

That smile made Ning Rongrong freeze slightly.

"You compare yourself to a true dragon, while I become a little snake?" Gu Linyuan's voice was soft, yet every word rang with force. "Isn't it too early to say that now? Who is the true dragon is still uncertain."

He paused, looking straight into Ning Rongrong's eyes.

"Even a little snake may have the chance to transform into a true dragon."

"Brother Linyuan, I didn't mean to humiliate you..."

"I was just too blunt. You know that—I meant no harm."

"It's just that this world is like this. As the future sect master of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect, there are many times when I have no right to choose." Ning Rongrong said through clenched teeth.

No harm.

Gu Linyuan turned those two words over in his heart.

He looked at her.

At the girl he had grown up with, the girl he had once believed he could spend his life with.

She truly meant no harm.

She simply... thought he was no longer worthy.

Still, he did not blame her.

Silence spread between them like the wildly growing weeds on the back mountain.

After a long while, Ning Rongrong removed the bracelet from her right wrist.

It was a storage Soul Tool. The Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect was richer than a nation, yet even it possessed only a few such items.

"Brother Linyuan, there are some cultivation resources inside..."

She held the bracelet out to him, her tone gentle as though she were coaxing a child.

Gu Linyuan did not take it.

"No need."

He turned around, his Black Mysterious Robe snapping in the night wind.

"If I want something, I'll fight for it myself."

"Since we've already broken up, it would be best to keep some distance."

With that, Gu Linyuan left.

Ning Rongrong stood where she was, watching his back gradually merge into the night. Suddenly, she felt as though something inside her had shattered.

She had imagined many ways their breakup might go. He might cry, make a scene, beg her not to leave...

But she had never imagined that he would be so calm.

Nor had she expected that the person who felt the worst would be herself.

"Father, Brother Yuan and I... are over."

Inside the main hall of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect.

Ning Rongrong walked up to Ning Fengzhi, looking dazed, as though she had lost her soul.

Ning Fengzhi set down his teacup, looked at his daughter, and let out a long sigh.

"It's better to end it sooner." His voice was gentle, gentle as a soft blade. "Otherwise, he'll only be hurt more deeply in the future."

He stood and walked to the window, gazing toward the back mountain.

As the sect master of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect, he understood the rules of this world better than anyone.

His daughter would become the pride of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect and its next sect master. Her future husband had to be an unrivaled genius.

Gu Rong and Jian Chen were already old. The sect's glory over the next two hundred years required a sufficiently powerful man to marry into the sect and support it.

He had once thought Gu Linyuan would be that man.

Innate Full Soul Power and Twin Martial Souls—such talent was exceedingly rare across the entire continent.

But six years had passed.

Six years, and his cultivation had not moved an inch.

A ruined peerless genius was more disappointing than an ordinary mediocrity.

"All the world bustles for profit; all the world clamors for gain." Ning Fengzhi murmured, his eyes deep as a pool. "I hope this time... I wasn't wrong."

Back mountain.

Gu Linyuan did not return to his residence.

He lay alone on the cold grass, gazing at the bright moon overhead.

Beads of sweat the size of beans rolled down his forehead. The clothes on his back had already been soaked through, making him look as though he had been pulled from the water.

Pain.

Pain that tore at his heart and lungs.

The destructive aura hidden in his body had begun to rage again, like a vicious beast trapped for six years, madly tearing through his meridians, bones, and internal organs.

Six years.

Since the day he awakened his Martial Souls at the age of six, this torment had never stopped.

Six years ago, he had awakened two Martial Souls—a scepter and a sapling.

That day, the entire Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect had been shaken.

Innate Full Soul Power, Twin Martial Souls—everyone had said he would become the next peerless genius.

But no one knew that it was the beginning of a nightmare.

The two Martial Souls brought two utterly opposing powers—Destruction and Life.

They violently clashed within his body, tearing at each other and preventing him from gathering even a trace of Soul Power.

For six years, his cultivation had remained at level ten, the level he had possessed on the day of awakening, without moving at all.

If a powerful life aura had not repaired his body after every bout of destruction, he would have died long ago.

Six years.

More than two thousand days and nights.

He had endured pain beyond ordinary imagination while guarding a secret he could not speak aloud.

That scepter was not an ordinary weapon.

It was the Scepter of Destruction!

That sapling was not an ordinary plant either.

It was the Ancient Tree of Life!

Life, Destruction, Goodness, Evil, and Slaughter—these were the five supreme powers in the world.

And he alone possessed the two most terrifying and extreme of those attributes.

He had never told anyone this secret.

Because he knew that once it was revealed, it would bring him endless trouble.

"Six years..."

Gu Linyuan lay on the ground, looking at the moon in the sky, his voice hoarse like sandpaper scraping glass.

"Is this truly the fate of Gu Linyuan...?"

No one answered him.

Only the wind rustling through the treetops.

He closed his eyes, and Ning Rongrong's face appeared in his mind, along with Ning Fengzhi's increasingly indifferent gaze over the years.

He did not hate them.

Nor did he particularly dislike them.

He was simply unwilling to accept it.

He refused to be treated as trash, refused to be looked at with pity, refused to watch everyone leave him behind at the best age of his life.

He did not believe in fate.

"Heaven gave me talents for a reason."

He suddenly opened his eyes. Something burned within those pitch-black pupils.

"Since Heaven gave me two supreme Martial Souls, there must be a way to break this curse!"

He gritted his teeth, enduring the surging agony within his body as he did everything he could to sense those two Martial Souls.

Not to fight them.

Not to suppress them.

But to accept them.

For six years, he had been trying to suppress the Power of Destruction within him, trying to use the Power of Life to neutralize it.

But in that instant just now, he suddenly understood.

Destruction and life were originally two sides of the same whole.

Without destruction, how could there be rebirth?

Boom!

Heaven and earth changed color.

Above the back mountain, an incomparably radiant beam of light shot into the sky.

Gu Linyuan's body rose into the air, and his two Martial Souls emerged on their own, beyond his control.

To his left floated a pitch-black scepter, emanating a destructive aura that made heaven and earth tremble. That aura was terrifying to the extreme, as though a casual wave could level the entire back mountain.

To his right stood a lush, five-meter-tall tree. Dense life energy poured out like a tide, its fragrance drifting through the air as every plant on the back mountain grew wildly, as though bowing before their king.

The Ancient Tree of Life!

The Scepter of Destruction!

For the first time, the two God King-level Martial Souls revealed their true forms at the same time.

Gu Linyuan floated between them, his long hair whipping about and his mysterious robe fluttering wildly.

He felt something within his body shatter.

The shackle that had trapped him for six years had broken.

His cultivation began to soar.

Level eleven.

Level twelve.

Level thirteen...

In the blink of an eye, he broke through the level-twenty threshold.

"This is..."

A figure appeared on the back mountain like a ghost.