Question the Heart!

At dawn the next day, Li Yuan set down the book he had read through the night and stretched his limbs.

The act had gone on long enough. It was time for him to bravely emerge from his grief and turn sorrow and indignation into strength.

From that day onward, he resumed his usual routine. Yet having lost his father so recently, he did not feel right laughing and fooling around with his classmates, and he seemed far more silent than usual.

To others, it simply appeared that he was putting on a brave face. Yu Ling'er and the others also tried their best not to bring up the matter in front of him, instead taking greater care of him in secret.

After class that day, Li Yuan walked back alone along a secluded bluestone path in the academy.

As he passed beneath a trellis of wisteria, a slender figure hurried toward him with her head lowered, nearly colliding with him.

"Sorry."

They both stepped aside at the same time, and both spoke at the same time.

Li Yuan looked up and saw a delicate, refined face. It was Ji Fanghua. The moment she saw him, surprise flashed through her eyes, followed by a guilty look as she hastily averted her gaze.

"Senior Brother Li... I'm sorry..."

She lowered her eyes and blurted it out, then turned and hurried away. As they brushed past one another, a light breeze drifted by, carrying the faint, elusive fragrance from the girl's body.

The scent was cool and carried a trace of medicinal bitterness, utterly unlike the powders and perfumes used by ordinary women.

Li Yuan abruptly stopped and whirled around, his sharp gaze fixed on the girl's slight retreating figure.

He would never mistake that smell.

It was the very scent of the black-clad intruder who had sneaked into his room while injured last winter.

No wonder she had seemed strangely familiar during the Spirit Awakening Ceremony. He had never expected that the girl being frantically hunted down back then would now possess an eighth-grade talent.

And judging by her expression, she had clearly recognized him. That was why she had fled in such a hurry.

Li Yuan shook his head with an amused smile. Who did not have a past and secrets too painful to revisit? He had no intention of poking his nose into her affairs.

He withdrew his gaze and continued onward calmly, never giving the matter another thought.

Several days later, he received another letter from Aji. It said that he had found another demon core and had entrusted someone to deliver it along with the letter. The rest spoke of recent events, all trivial, chicken-feather-and-garlic-skin matters that appeared utterly ordinary.

Li Yuan's gaze fell upon the end of the letter. Beside Aji's name was a blot of accumulated ink, as though a drop of ink had carelessly spilled there.

His heart suddenly sank.

It was the secret signal he had agreed upon with Aji. It meant the other party was in danger.

A chill spread from his fingertips throughout his body, while fury surged in his heart. He had already been cautious enough, yet he still could not prevent Aji from being dragged into danger.

Who was it?

The Wang Family? That so-called noble person? Or the fiends of the Dark Pavilion? Perhaps even some other force he did not yet know about?

Aji's innocent, dependent eyes surfaced before him, and a powerful sense of helplessness clenched his heart.

He hated this helplessness—being protected by others while being unable to protect those at his side.

He had Mr. Mo's protection and the academy's shelter, yet he could not protect the people he wanted to protect.

Nor could he hide forever beneath another's wings. He needed a life of his own, friends of his own.

At that moment, more urgently than ever, he wanted strength—strength great enough to let him act freely!

He could no longer proceed step by step.

He gritted his teeth and silently made up his mind.

He went to Mr. Mo's small courtyard, returned to his room, set up a simple soundproofing restriction, and took out the demon core.

It was a third-grade water-element demon core. The energy it contained was even more violent and vast. Its dark-black surface was streaked with blood-red threads, and though the ferocious Sha Qi upon it had been treated, it was still enough to make an ordinary cultivator's heart pound in terror.

"Come on!"

A resolute glint flashed through Li Yuan's eyes.

He sat cross-legged, clasping the demon core in his palm. Calming his mind, he poured all his effort into communicating with the Bronze Palace deep within his sea of consciousness.

Buzz!

Sensing his intense will, the Bronze Palace let out a resonant hum of longing. Its radiant glow flared brilliantly as its rotation abruptly accelerated.

The next instant, a vast surge of energy crashed brutally into Li Yuan's meridians. An icy chill struck him at once, and his meridians creaked as though they could no longer bear the strain.

Within his sea of consciousness, the phantom of a black flood dragon howled wildly. A powerful will to slaughter battered his mind, trying to drag him into frenzied chaos.

"Suppress!"

He had anticipated this long ago. He roared inwardly, guarding the final thread of clarity in his spiritual platform as he immersed all his consciousness into the Bronze Palace.

The palace's radiance was like the blazing flames of a furnace, swiftly enveloping the violent energy pouring in. It left behind only the purest essence before feeding it back to him.

Under the impact of that overwhelming, irresistible energy, the barrier to the middle stage of the Minute Perception Realm offered almost no resistance and instantly shattered into fragments.

True qi surged and rose steadily, quickly stabilizing at the late stage of the Minute Perception Realm. Yet its momentum did not falter, continuing its charge toward the realm of completion.

The energy within this third-grade demon core was simply too immense, even leaving Li Yuan somewhat astonished. Thinking of the secret signal Aji had left, a bold speculation rose in his heart.

It was very likely that someone had tampered with this demon core, and Aji had wanted to warn him in this manner.

However, for Li Yuan, who possessed the extraordinary treasure that was the Bronze Palace, whether it brought fortune or disaster remained unknown.

The raging energy was like rivers flowing backward into the sea, impossible to stop. The bottleneck of Minute Perception completion soon began to loosen, and his cultivation soared wildly until he swiftly reached the complete Minute Perception Realm.

Only a hair's breadth remained between him and the next realm, Questioning the Heart.

At that moment, in some hidden corner of Chang'an City, Shadow Thirteen stared in the direction of the academy, her eyes gleaming with bloodthirsty madness.

"Li Yuan, no matter how great a genius you are, you will still die by my hand! Hahaha..."

She threw back her head and laughed wildly, as though she could already see herself becoming a meritorious servant of the Sacred Race, revered by thousands.

Within the small courtyard, true qi roared and rushed through Li Yuan's body, violently battering against some invisible barrier.

"Ah!"

Blood veins faintly surfaced in Li Yuan's eyes. The meridians in his body swelled, as though the true qi would burst through the barrier the next moment and blow his body apart.

The extreme pain forced a roar from him, but it was blocked by the soundproofing restriction and could not travel outside.

The demon core, already half-digested, suddenly turned scorching hot. Mixed with some kind of violent dark power, it rampaged through his body.

Li Yuan felt as though half his body were icy cold while the other half was blazing hot. The agony of extreme cold and heat tormented his mind, making him feel as though he were in hell.

The disturbance quickly drew several pairs of eyes. Mr. Mo's expression shifted, and a trace of surprise appeared in his eyes.

He sat atop the roof tiles directly above Li Yuan's head. With a wave of his hand, he stopped Liu Hongyan from rushing over, then shook his head slightly.

"Some burdens, in the end, he must bear himself."

Liu Hongyan halted, then sat down helplessly, her gaze fixed worriedly upon the room.

As his Minute Perception Realm reached completion, the vast true qi surged toward his sea of consciousness, as though knocking upon some gate.

This was the most difficult threshold to control in the cultivation world: Questioning the Heart.

Boom—!

Li Yuan's consciousness seemed to be struck viciously by an invisible giant hammer. The scene before his eyes instantly blurred and shattered, and then he plunged into a blood-red land of chaos.

Cries of battle thundered deafeningly. Gunfire roared, enormous blasts of fire erupted, and the furious shouts of his comrades intertwined together. The air was thick with the pungent smell of gunpowder.

This was...?