Want a wife or not?

Shen Yue remained on high alert.

The old woman's cultivation was so profound that when he probed with his divine sense, it was like a clay ox entering the sea; he could not discern her depth at all.

"Granny Withered Grass, this is a guest of my Black Soil Fortress." Long Ying bowed slightly, her tone respectful.

The old woman's murky eyes rolled, and seemingly recognizing Long Ying, she said nothing more and slowly walked away.

"It should be Fire Flowing Sand... such spiritual items are rare in the Azure Ancient Forest." Granny Withered Grass muttered to herself, her withered-branch-like fingers calculating in her sleeves. "I wonder what kind of background this brat has..."

Suddenly, her expression shifted violently!

"An unfixed fate... a First-Grade Dao Foundation!" Granny Withered Grass trembled all over. "Something major is happening in Fallen Leaf Valley; I cannot stay here long!"

She flashed away, wind rising beneath her feet, and bolted straight for the valley entrance.

"Withered Grass, the valley entrance is sealed. Wait a few days; you cannot leave the valley now."

A voice resonated directly within the old woman's mind.

Granny Withered Grass's footsteps came to a sudden halt.

"A Dao Foundation expert!"

The speaker had to be at least a Dao Foundation expert; otherwise, they could not have pierced through her perfected Qi-Refining mental defenses.

It seemed something truly major was happening in the valley.

If she didn't leave now, it would be even harder to escape later!

Granny Withered Grass gritted her teeth, her shriveled lips moving, and the garment woven from dried grass on her body suddenly exploded.

The sky-filling grass shards grew in the wind, transforming in the blink of an eye into countless thick, withered yellow vines that extended frantically toward the valley entrance.

"Withered Vine Entwining Heaven, lend me a path!" the old woman shouted, her body merging into the vines as she attempted to force her way through.

However, the moment the vines were about to touch the barrier at the valley entrance, an intangible attack pierced the void and struck directly into Granny Withered Grass's soul.

The old woman let out a pained cry, and the sky-filling vines shattered into powder with a clatter.

"Alas."

After the incident with the old woman, Shen Yue temporarily lost the desire to sell his spiritual artifacts, so he returned to the inn, intending to wait two days to see how the situation developed.

He had barely sat down in his room when Chehou Yan came looking for him with a grin.

"Brother Shen, do you want a wife?"

"...What?" Shen Yue was stunned.

"Hehe, don't play coy, Brother Shen." Chehou Yan wore a wicked smile. "Lady Long Ying is peerless and breathtaking; if I weren't already married, I certainly wouldn't let this opportunity pass."

As he spoke, his smile was eager, while he secretly pinched a spell seal.

"Heaven is clear, Earth is dark, lend me a pair of Fate-Peering Eyes to see through this man's three lives and five elements of fate..."

The Wife-Swapping Life-Borrowing technique of fate-peering was quietly activated.

This technique required first glimpsing the outline of the target's fate before it could be transferred.

But when the secret technique touched Shen Yue, it felt as if it had crashed into an invisible wall.

It was blurry, like looking at flowers through a mist; he could only see a few strands of messy, flickering fate-qi.

As expected, there was an expert shielding him!

Chehou Yan was not alarmed, but delighted.

The more mysterious the fate, the deeper the karma behind the person, and the better the effect would be for his life-transfer.

His thoughts shifted, and he found a countermeasure... since he couldn't peer into his fate, he would simply graft his fortune onto him.

"A fair lady is a gentleman's desire." Shen Yue sensed something probing him, but because he was a soul from two worlds, the probe could not find the truth, so he smiled. "However, I only wish to cultivate immortality; I have no interest in romance."

Chehou Yan felt a surge of contempt in his heart.

What is the point of cultivating immortality?

Longevity?

That was too far away, ethereal and illusory.

Women and power—these were the things one should truly pursue on the path of immortality.

Stop pretending.

But he didn't show a hint of it on his face, instead asking, "I wonder how Brother Shen is progressing with the Heavenly Cauldron True Fire Hundred Refinement Scripture? Have you begun refining artifacts?"

"The Heavenly Cauldron True Fire Hundred Refinement Scripture is incredibly profound; it is obscure and difficult to comprehend." Shen Yue sighed.

Profound was exactly right!

Chehou Yan lifted his chin slightly, feeling proud in his heart.

This scripture was the crystallization of his Chehou Family's ancestors, who had followed one after another in their efforts; naturally, it was extraordinarily profound.

As someone who carries the bloodline of the Chehou Family, it had taken him two and a half years just to reach the point of attempting to forge artifacts; naturally, he felt that a mere outsider would find it obscure and difficult to grasp.

"Brother Shen is exceptionally intelligent, possessing both courage and strategy. I imagine it won't be long before you find your entry point."

Chehou Yan feigned comfort, patted his storage bag, and produced several materials along with a booklet. "A few meager materials, I hope they can be of help to Brother Shen."

This was a full furnace's worth of forging materials, plus his personal insights on the craft.

Back when he first started forging, these were the materials he had painstakingly collected over five furnace attempts.

But in order to execute the "Wife-Swapping Life-Borrowing" fortune-shifting technique, he had no choice but to use these materials as a vessel, quietly hiding his own life-qi within them.

As long as the materials remained in Shen Yue's possession for two days, his life-qi would begin to siphon away Shen Yue's own.

Once Shen Yue developed feelings for Long Ying, he would then cast the Grafting Flowers onto Trees Technique and the "Wife-Swapping Life-Borrowing" to swap their fates.

He would let Shen Yue marry that buck-toothed Black Longyu, while he would be the one to carry the beauty home!

Ha!

"Brother Chehou, care to wipe your drool?"

Chehou Yan snapped back to reality, wiped the corner of his mouth with his sleeve, and couldn't help but laugh. "I wish Brother Shen an early success in your forging, and may you ascend the Great Dao."

With that, he departed, feeling thoroughly satisfied.

Shen Yue looked at the forging materials and couldn't help but shake his head...

These were just materials for a low-grade spirit artifact.

How stingy; he wasn't even as generous as Zhou Chongwen, who had provided him with three full furnace loads.

The forging insights, however, were somewhat interesting.

Shen Yue picked up the booklet, sank his consciousness into it, and began to slowly contemplate its contents.

Two days passed in a flash.

Shen Yue had read through most of the insights and gained quite a bit.

For instance, regarding the "entering the fire and tempering" step, the Heavenly Cauldron True Fire Hundred Refinement Scripture described a technique that emphasized slow, steady heating.

However, Chehou Yan had optimized this in his notes, opting for a method of "rapid quenching and tempered warming." The success rate remained the same, but the spirit artifacts produced possessed superior spiritual resonance.

As for the inscription portion, the Heavenly Cauldron Scripture only provided the methods for inscription without specific array diagrams, which was why Shen Yue had specifically gone to the Mystic Array Pavilion to study arrays.

Yet, the notes Chehou Yan provided recorded two complete arrays.

One was the "Stacked Pattern Array," which could layer multiple spirit patterns to enhance an artifact's power.

The other was the "Spirit-Returning Array," which accelerated the rate at which a spirit artifact recovered its spiritual energy.

While these two arrays weren't particularly profound, they complemented the arrays he had previously learned at the Mystic Array Pavilion quite well.

Shen Yue noted them down one by one before putting the insights away.

"That old woman hasn't appeared for two days... time to head out."

The marketplace remained bustling, with cultivators moving to and fro like a weaving loom.

Familiar with the routine, Shen Yue found several stall owners who purchased spirit artifacts and sold his three pieces for thirty, thirty-five, and thirty-eight spirit stones respectively.

With the spirit stones in his pouch, he calculated the cost of buying a Barrier-Breaking Pill next...

"Young man."

A hoarse voice suddenly rang out by his ear.

"This valley holds great danger. You must leave quickly; if you don't go now, it will be too late!"

Shen Yue's heart stirred, and he swept his peripheral vision toward the shadows on his left.

He saw a hunched figure huddled in the shade beneath the eaves, her gray, grass-like hair disheveled.

When Granny Withered Grass saw Shen Yue look over, her dull, lifeless eyes suddenly erupted with an strange, intense gleam.

Her lips moved, and her withered fingers rapidly formed seals within her sleeves.

"Heavenly fate is inconstant, the earth's veins are constant. Lend me a thread of the universe, to stir the seven souls and six spirits, turning yin and yang. Three souls exchange, seven spirits shift, your life and my life, let them swap..."

What she was casting at this moment was the ancient Universe Fate-Swapping Technique.

This technique was not to be used unless absolutely necessary; once initiated, there was no turning back, as the fates of the caster and the target would be exchanged.

Granny Withered Grass knew well that she could never escape the palm of a Foundation Establishment powerhouse, but this young man before her had an unfixed fate. As long as their fates were swapped, she could borrow his fortune to escape this place of trouble.

A formless, invisible thread of fate flew from the top of her head, thin as a strand of silk, rushing straight toward Shen Yue.

But at the very moment of impact, Granny Withered Grass was suddenly stunned.

This person's fate... why did it feel like something was wrong?

It was illusory and flickering, as if it had an extra layer of protection?

She had no time to think; the two fates had already intertwined and tangled together like two maddened pythons, breaking free from her control and charging into the dark, mysterious River of Fate, traversing the void and heading straight in another direction...

Inside the inn room.

Chehou Yan lay on the bed, his cheekbones protruding, eye sockets deeply sunken, and lips pale, his face a mask of utter despair.

Black Longyu grinned, her prominent buckteeth bared as she blissfully drained his essence, though a flicker of disdain crossed her brow.

To dare cast a technique of the River of Fate right in front of her—did he take her for blind?

Since he was so fond of playing with fate, then this lady would play along.

"Fate has roots, luck has sources; I borrow your life to mend my own. One gulp, one growth, your life and mine are one and the same..."

A streak of dark gray fate-energy flew from her, opening a maw of buckteeth, drool cascading like a waterfall as it lunged toward Chehou Yan.

The next instant.

Two streams of fate surged out from the River of Fate, colliding head-on with the fate-energy Black Longyu had unleashed.