Remnant soul.
Devoured.
The mountains after the rain carried the bone-piercing chill of late autumn. Beams of light squeezed through the gaps in the wooden window and into the room. Crumpled on the floor from the pain, Qin Yi considered the information he had obtained.
Judging by what the voice in his skull meant,
Meng Peijiu had originally intended to give him a portable old grandpa today?
What had her purpose been?
Had she simply not known there was something like this in his head and wanted to give him a teacher to help him grow?
Or had she specifically wanted to activate the thing in his mind?
As he pondered these questions, Qin Yi braced both hands against the icy floor and tried to rise.
As a gust of cold wind swept past, that ethereal, majestic voice rang out once more:
[Yu did not recall granting you permission to stand.]
"..."
Qin Yi instantly sucked in a breath, his features twisting into a knot.
This time, the pain came directly from his knees. It felt as though some blunt weapon had smashed them to pieces. Yet his body remained uninjured, and under Inner Vision, the meridians within were intact as ever.
Upon realizing this, Qin Yi went with the flow and lay back down on the floor, his thoughts turning rapidly like interlocking gears.
Bad-tempered, arrogant by nature. From the way it spoke, the other party was probably some emperor—or perhaps the type of person known as a tyrant.
At that thought, Qin Yi suddenly felt somewhat fortunate that he had sent Ruan Su out to practice her saber first. Otherwise, he would have had to split his attention to soothe her right now.
Too much remained unclear. He would follow the other party's lead for now and judge the situation later.
[Restoring the original text of Nine Songs—was that something you deliberately did for Yu to see?]
"...Yes."
Qin Yi lay prostrate on the ground, his voice trembling and hoarse with fear.
As he answered, he poured his focus into Inner Vision.
Cultivation had its fundamental principles too. Transmitting information required a medium. He carefully sensed the faint ripples appearing in the meridians throughout his body whenever the other party spoke.
The sensation resembled the pulses generated when the other party inflicted pain upon him, but the frequency and wavelength seemed different, and the amplitude was smaller as well.
It was wondrous, and strange.
If he observed the "wriggling" pattern through which that scarlet mass parasitizing his skull produced pulses, he should be able to learn it.
Qin Yi had a strong premonition of this.
There was neither fear nor delight—only the urge to dissect an unknown power.
The voice seemed highly satisfied with Qin Yi's attitude, humble as dirt, its tone carrying a lofty and intrigued amusement:
[You did this... because you wished to prove your value to Yu?]
"Yes."
That was indeed the case.
Though he did not know the voice's origins, from Qin Yi's brief experience with the path of cultivation, the other party ought to be an existence of extremely high standing.
At the very least, lodging one's consciousness inside another person's brain was not something he could achieve anytime soon.
When the other party's attitude was entirely unknown, proving that he possessed value worth using was always the right choice.
Hearing this, the voice considered for a moment, then suddenly burst into unrestrained laughter, loud enough to irritate Qin Yi's ears:
[Hahahahaha! Interesting little brat. Rise. Yu permits it.]
Qin Yi immediately felt as though he had received a pardon. He rose slowly and carefully, as if afraid that any movement might provoke the thing in his skull again.
Once he had fully stood in the dim room, the voice came with the pressure of one who stood above all others.
It was a question.
[Little brat, what year is it now?]
"The eleventh year of Jinghong," Qin Yi answered truthfully.
[Jinghong... What sort of calendar is that? Heh... Yu remembers now. It seems you humans all enjoy using the titles of your nation's emperors to mark the years.]
"You're not human?"
Qin Yi caught the key point and probed cautiously. Yet in the next instant, it felt as though an invisible blade had severed both his legs. The agony surged like a tidal wave, directly robbing him of control over them.
The boy's thin body lost control, and with a thud, he dropped heavily to his knees.
[It seems that compared with standing, you prefer speaking while kneeling.]
The voice sighed softly, carrying the helplessness and pity one might feel for an ant:
[Since this is your first offense, Yu shall repeat it. Yu does not much enjoy being questioned, and likes being interrupted while speaking even less—especially by lowly things like you.]
[Do you understand?]
Silence followed. Only the autumn wind outside swept fallen leaves along with a rustle.
"...I understand."
Qin Yi answered shakily. His black eyes lowered as he watched sensation gradually return to his legs. He silently remained kneeling and did not rise.
There were still no wounds in sight.
Neither his physical body nor his Spirit Meridians had been harmed, yet he had temporarily lost all sensation. Did that mean that beyond the physical body, Spirit Resonance Vision, and the path of cultivation, there existed another dimension?
He recalled the voice mentioning a remnant soul...
So,
Was that dimension the soul?
Upon realizing this, Qin Yi suddenly felt that the voice which had appeared in his mind was actually rather good to him.
At least it was better than Meng Peijiu, who spoke in riddles.
It had appeared for less than a quarter-hour, yet had already taught him so many things related to cultivation through both words and example.
[How long has it been since the Black Sun tore through the sky?]
The voice changed the subject, with no intention whatsoever of allowing Qin Yi to stand again.
Silently committing "Black Sun" to memory, Qin Yi remained kneeling on the floor and answered readily in a trembling voice:
"I... don't know what Black Sun you are referring to."
[True enough. From the look of you, you do not seem to possess a systematic inheritance. Let Yu ask another way: how long has it been since Ji Minghao died? Hm... his era name seemed to have been Pingwu.]
"I'm sorry, but I don't know this person either."
Qin Yi was not lying. He truly did not know him.
[...]
A suffocating silence suddenly descended.
Then,
A faint rustling sensation came from his arm. Qin Yi turned to look, only to see that the flow of Spirit Resonance in the meridians of his right hand had reacted for the first time. The current was accelerating due to pulses from the scarlet mass within his skull.
Gradually, that rustling sensation transformed into heart-rending pain. His fingers were connected to his heart; it felt as though some terrifying monstrous force had gripped his entire arm, snapping it joint by joint and twisting it inch by inch. The pain spread swiftly through his body like venom!
Qin Yi's breathing began to tremble. Pain made his gaunt cheeks twitch, and his body tipped forward at just the right moment, collapsing onto the floor like a heap of mud, his cheek pressed against the cold packed earth.
The voice had shed its arrogance, but it now carried a trace of chilling killing intent:
[Who gave a lowly breed like you the right to deceive Yu?]
[You understand poetry and songs, know the tonal patterns of level and oblique, clear and muddied tones, yet do not know the era name of a great nation's ruler... Hahahaha, interesting, interesting...]
[...It seems the previous lesson was still not enough.]
"..."
Enduring the boundless agony coursing through every part of his body, Qin Yi did not make another sound, because he discovered that the flow of Spirit Resonance within him was gradually becoming disordered.
This pain had given him the most important clue he had found since first embarking on cultivation.
Just as the body could interfere with meridians on the physical level and construct brand-new Spirit Meridian circuits, when the "pulses" on the level of the "soul" reached a certain degree, they seemed able to affect the Spirit Meridians in turn.
Reasoning from this fact,
The body, Spirit Meridians, and soul should all be able to interfere with one another.
Before you continue