Unraveling the Mystery of Longevity

"Hmm?"

"This insect?"

Fang Xun was filled with astonishment.

For this icy aura bore a faint resemblance to Cold Mountain Grass.

"Could it be..."

Hope of survival suddenly rekindled in his heart.

Unfortunately, his injuries were far too severe.

And the blood essence contained in a single midge was truly limited—a cup of water against a blazing cartload of firewood.

Before long, Fang Xun felt his consciousness beginning to blur again.

However...

At that moment, another midge crawled into his mouth, jolting his mind awake once more.

Fang Xun vaguely sensed that something was wrong, and an overwhelming fury rose within him.

He cursed indistinctly through his mouth, "If you want to kill me, then kill me. Why toy with Fang like this?"

Unfortunately, to an outsider, it sounded only like a burst of hurried whimpering.

The midges remained unmoved, continuing to feed him with their bodies.

Whenever Fang Xun was on the verge of returning his soul to the underworld, one would crawl into his mouth.

Keeping him barely alive.

When more than twenty midges had dwindled until only one remained...

A figure finally emerged from the wind and snow filling the sky.

Fang Xun, sprawled in the snow like a lump of mud, found the approaching figure somewhat familiar.

Yet for a moment, he could not recall who it was.

The figure said nothing. He merely looked down at Fang Xun in silence.

At some point, the midge had vanished as well.

Only the sound of wind and snow reached his ears.

Fang Xun had a stomach full of doubts, yet ultimately could not voice them.

The flame of his life was about to burn out.

Then, the figure above him finally spoke.

"You..."

"Do you want to live?"

"Do you want revenge?"

Fang Xun was struck as if by lightning. At last, he remembered who the man before him was.

Li Shun. Li Tui Zhi.

A minor nobody he had never considered worthy of notice from beginning to end.

But...

How could that be possible?

His consciousness was about to wither away.

Li Shun's voice came again. "Do you want to live?"

"Yes..."

"Yes!"

A fierce desire to survive surged up within Fang Xun.

The puppet Li Shun said gravely, "Don't resist."

As he spoke, he reached out and gently pressed a hand against Fang Xun's head.

The wind and snow blanketing the surroundings seemed to vanish in an instant.

Boundless white mist enveloped Fang Xun.

As though he had suddenly sunk beneath the water, Fang Xun instinctively struggled.

Yet he could only watch helplessly as the white mist swallowed him.

Fang Xun's consciousness froze.

And within the Square Inch space, in that blank region.

A complete figure suddenly appeared!

In the real world, Fang Xun was left with only half a ruined body.

Yet after entering the Square Inch space and becoming a puppet, an unfathomable power restored all his injuries!

Li Shun's primary consciousness descended beside [Fang Xun], quietly observing this newly acquired puppet.

"Active acquisition and passive acquisition truly are somewhat different."

Memories from Fang Xun poured into Li Shun's mind like a rising tide, allowing him to glimpse the entirety of Cold Mountain's tangled mystery.

"So that was it."

"The Twelve Longevity Method."

"The seven realms of cultivation."

"Heaven's Lifespan Demand..."

"Breaking through the Celestial Phenomenon Realm and entering the Creation Realm. So that was how it worked."

As Fang Xun was taken into the Square Inch space, it was as though he had completely vanished from this world.

The seal within the mine beneath Cold Mountain disappeared, and the calamity of mountain collapse and earth splitting descended once more.

Amid tremendous roaring, the puppet [Fang Xun] quietly descended upon the human world again.

Not only had his injuries fully healed, even his torn official robes had been restored.

Fang Xun in name, but Li Shun in truth, he silently looked toward Cold Mountain.

Thoughts churned through his mind.

"The Twelve Longevity Method allows one to Borrow Longevity from Heaven."

"However... it was not limited to borrowing only once!"

"Just as I previously suspected, there are still quite a few throughout Great Qian who have survived from the founding of the dynasty until now."

"That is because they have borrowed longevity multiple times."

"The seven cultivation realms: Mortal Embryo, Primordial Simplicity, Spirit Resonance, Profound Insight, Celestial Phenomenon, Creation, and Cosmos."

"Beginning from the Mortal Embryo Realm, every breakthrough into the next realm grants another chance to borrow longevity!"

Recalling his own experience cultivating the Twelve Longevity Method, Li Shun came to a realization.

"The surplus lifespan not yet expended by Heaven may be temporarily loaned to the mortal world."

"In the eyes of Heaven and Earth, cultivators of different realms naturally carried different weight."

"Breaking into a new realm was like shedding one's mortal body and exchanging one's bones. One gained more bargaining chips for nothing, and thus another chance to Borrow Longevity from Heaven."

"However... there were rules to this as well."

"Seven realms, seven chances to borrow longevity. Of all the amounts borrowed, the first borrowing was the greatest."

"For example, if one first borrowed a hundred years in the Mortal Embryo Realm, then upon breaking through later realms and borrowing longevity from Heaven again, the lifespan borrowed would certainly be less than a hundred years."

"This was the iron law of borrowed longevity. No one could defy it—not even the one who created this heaven-defying method..."

"Emperor Gan!"

A sharp glint flashed through [Fang Xun]'s eyes.

"No one in the world knew how much longevity Emperor Gan borrowed the first time."

"But..."

"Great Qian has stood for five hundred and seventy-three years. Even if Emperor Gan's cultivation had reached the Cosmos Realm, after borrowing longevity seven times, he should not be far from exhausting his lifespan."

"That was what everyone in the world believed."

"Thus, with Emperor Gan remaining unseen, chaos had gradually arisen!"

"Everyone was waiting for Emperor Gan to die!"

At this point, Li Shun's thoughts paused slightly.

"The reason such speculation spread throughout the world was that, up to now, the highest record for a first borrowing was Zhou Shengzhe borrowing one hundred and fifty-two years of longevity three hundred years ago."

"And that was based on the accumulated experience of countless cultivators borrowing longevity."

"Though Emperor Gan's cultivation reached through Heaven and Earth, he had been the first person beneath Heaven to borrow longevity."

"The lifespan he borrowed the first time certainly could not have been too much..."

Li Shun suddenly thought of how he had borrowed two hundred years.

"Two hundred years was the limit."

"But where exactly did this limit come from..."

Li Shun's heart suddenly jolted, as though he had discovered some tremendously shocking secret.

"Could it be that this was the amount Emperor Gan borrowed on his first attempt?"

"If so..."

"Everyone in the world might have miscalculated Emperor Gan's lifespan!"

"If Emperor Gan truly borrowed two hundred years the first time, then after borrowing longevity seven times, he certainly remained far from the end of his life. Why, then, did he remain secluded, watching the world rot away day by day?"

Li Shun seemed to have touched upon the corner of some conspiracy, and his breath caught.

Only after a long while did his thoughts finally settle.

"Borrowed longevity has a fixed amount. That was the first rule."

"The second was that every borrowing must be repaid."

"Of the Twelve Longevity Realms, there was no need to worry about repayment before the sixth, Imperial Prosperity. However..."

"Once one entered the latter six realms, Heaven and Earth's demand would arrive in an instant."

"It was called Heaven's Lifespan Demand!"

"It manifested as all manner of descending calamities."

"What Zhou Xunzhen encountered was one of them."

"It was called: [Greed-for-Wealth Ruins-the-Seal]."

"Greed arose from within, seeking to seize everything in the world. Yet the greater one's greed, the faster one's lifespan ebbed away."

"One means of alleviating or even resisting it was to shift it onto others."

"That was why everyone in Cold Mountain County had their minds clouded."

In the distance, as chanting rang out and echoed again and again, Zhou Xunzhen successfully broke through and entered longevity once more.

Li Shun also seemed to gain some insight. "Perhaps the deaths of all those people in Cold Mountain County were not Zhou Xunzhen's original intention. It was merely that..."

"The Greed-for-Wealth Sealbreaking Tribulation of advancing from the Celestial Phenomenon Realm into the Creation Realm was far beyond what ordinary people could withstand. Being caught up in it and dying was highly likely."

After Zhou Xunzhen advanced into Creation, two figures dressed in official robes immediately stepped forward to offer congratulations.

Li Shun watched them closely.

"Yin Fengshuo!"

A towering resentment suddenly arose within [Fang Xun].

Yet Li Shun suppressed and calmed it in an instant.

"I was wondering why so many major events had occurred in Cold Mountain County over the past year, yet the imperial court acted as though it had lost contact, ignoring everything."

"So the prefectural governor had been fanning the flames in secret."

"Yin Fengshuo and Fang Xun had long borne a grudge against each other. Earlier this year, Fang Xun rendered meritorious service and was about to be promoted to Clerk of the Ministry of Revenue under the Left Chancellor's Office. A hidden dragon breaking free of its trap, his prospects thereafter would be boundless. Yin Fengshuo thus conceived the intent to frame him..."

"In truth, without Yin Fengshuo's secret assistance, Zhou Xunzhen's scheme might not have proceeded so smoothly."

As Li Shun pondered this, he suddenly discovered that a figure had quietly arrived at his side at some unknown time.

Standing above him, the man looked at him with keen interest.

It was Zhou Xunzhen.