Shen Huai'an's News

Su Yueli let out a long breath. "A hundred li south of Fengling City lies the sprawling Blackwind Ridge. At the foot of those mountains is an obscure little village."

"May I ask if you know whether, in the past five years, any immortal masters have gone there?"

Su Yueli fixed her eyes tightly on Xu Changfeng's. "Or perhaps, has any immortal sect taken someone away from that direction?"

"This..."

Xu Changfeng furrowed his brow slightly and pondered carefully for quite a while before finally shaking his head.

"Miss Su, I truly do not know about this."

He sounded somewhat helpless. "The cultivation world is vast and boundless. Countless cultivators fall every day. As for whether some remote little village survives or perishes, in the eyes of immortal sects, it does not even amount to a speck of dust. If some immortal master truly passed by and casually wiped it out, not the slightest whisper of it would spread."

Su Yueli lowered her lashes, a trace of regret flickering in her eyes.

That was true.

Cultivators saw mortals as ants. If they stepped on a few ants while passing by, who would go out of their way to boast about it everywhere?

It was only normal that she could not find anything.

"Thank you for telling me, Immortal Master Xu."

Su Yueli gathered her thoughts and was just about to cup her hands in thanks when Xu Changfeng suddenly stopped walking, as though something had occurred to him.

"Wait."

Xu Changfeng looked at Su Yueli and said thoughtfully, "I have not heard of any immortal masters passing through there in the last five years. However, I do recall an old rumor. The young sect master of the Azure Moon Sect was said to have come from a small village near Fengling City."

The Azure Moon Sect?!

Those three words stirred up memories in Su Yueli. At the bone-testing ceremony twenty-five years ago that had changed her fate, Shen Huai'an had joined the Azure Moon Sect!

"That young sect master... what is his name?" Su Yueli raised her eyes and stared at Xu Changfeng.

"Shen Huai'an."

Xu Changfeng did not conceal it, and a hint of wistfulness surfaced in his eyes. "He possesses a Supreme Heavenly Bone. Such talent is rare even once in a hundred years across the entire cultivation world. After entering the sect, his cultivation advanced at astonishing speed, and he was made young sect master at an early age."

"Unfortunately..."

At this point, Xu Changfeng shook his head. "I heard that he was entangled by mortal affairs, leaving a flaw in his state of mind. After entering the Second Realm, Foundation Establishment Early Stage, his cultivation stagnated. But some time ago, news came from the Azure Moon Sect that this young sect master seemed to have seen through the barrier in his heart. He has already begun closed-door cultivation unto death, preparing to charge toward a higher realm."

"That is all I know."

After Xu Changfeng finished speaking, he looked up at Su Yueli.

Only to find that the girl before him seemed to have had all strength drained from her. Her cheeks, flushed red from the heat moments ago, were now deathly pale, and her expression was dazed.

Xu Changfeng's heart skipped a beat, and a sense of foreboding instantly surged up within him.

For cultivators pursuing the Great Dao and seeking to see through the barriers of the heart, there was an extreme method—Severing Mortal Ties!

Kill one's family, kill one's friends, kill one's beloved. So long as a person or matter affected one's Dao heart, one had to kill every person to whom one had ever been bound in the mortal world, cutting off karma and allowing one's thoughts to flow unimpeded.

Xu Changfeng looked at Su Yueli. That face—let alone in the mortal world—even amid the cultivation world, where beauties vied in splendor, it was a peerless beauty worthy of the Nine Heavens Mysterious Lady descending to earth.

Could that young sect master's mortal tie... be this girl?!

The moment that thought surfaced, Xu Changfeng's scalp went numb.

The Azure Moon Sect was a major sect, and Shen Huai'an was its young sect master, renowned throughout the land.

He had run his mouth to a mortal woman here over a few barrels of wine. If he truly got swept into the karmic entanglement of some supreme genius's Severing Mortal Ties, the trouble would be enormous!

Xu Changfeng's expression shifted slightly. Even the night wind now seemed to carry a bone-piercing chill.

"Ahem, ahem... well..."

Xu Changfeng coughed awkwardly a few times before saying, "Miss Su, I have received the wine. My sect still has important matters to attend to, so I shall take my leave. I will come collect more next time!"

With that, before Su Yueli could come to her senses, Xu Changfeng hurriedly activated his art. Riding his sword, he turned into a streak of light and fled into the night sky, vanishing in panic as though staying one second longer would contaminate him with something fatal.

The night wind swept through the empty long street.

Su Yueli stood alone beside the cart. Only after a very, very long while did feeling gradually return to her rigid body.

She pushed the empty cart and turned numbingly to walk back.

Azure Province City's night market remained loud and bustling, voices boiling like a cauldron, yet as Su Yueli walked through the crowd, she felt cold all over, as though she had been cast into an abyss of ten thousand zhang of ice.

Shen Huai'an, young sect master of the Azure Moon Sect.

Twenty-five years had passed. The high-spirited youth from that bone-testing ceremony had now become the young master of an immortal sect, holding the lives and deaths of countless mortals in his hands.

But what truly left Su Yueli breathless were Xu Changfeng's later words.

Entangled by mortal affairs, a flawed state of mind, unable to break through... seeing through the barrier in his heart some time ago...

This timing was too perfect, so perfect that it made one's hair stand on end.

Five years ago, the little village beneath Blackwind Ridge had been slaughtered to the last.

Five years ago, cuts from flying swords had been left upon that enormous bluestone millstone.

Five years ago, her master Lu Chen had taken the blame for the village massacre and severed every trace with his suicide, hiding her away.

Severing Mortal Ties... Su Yueli's hands clenched tightly around the cart handles.

Was it because of the people in the village?

Or perhaps... because of me?

She did not know whether Shen Huai'an had ever harbored any feelings for her back then.

But if Shen Huai'an's mortal tie truly had been that village, truly had been her, then everything could be explained.

To break through his realm, Shen Huai'an—or perhaps the guardian behind him—had slaughtered the entire village and cut off his final ties.

Perhaps Master Lu Chen had discovered the truth. Knowing that a mortal Martial Dao practitioner could never contend against cultivators, much less protect her, he had chosen to trade his own life for a path of survival for her.

Was it because of me... that I doomed the whole village? Doomed Master? Su Yueli could not help asking herself inwardly.

An indescribable sense of suffocation and extreme fury slowly crept into her heart.

She did not dare to be certain that this was the truth.

But it was not impossible.

If the source of it all was merely because that immortal in the heavens wanted to "see through the barrier in his heart"...

Then those more than four hundred earthen mounds packed tightly across Blackwind Ridge's sunny slope, and that half-gourd of strong wine poured before a lonely grave—how tragic they were.

Su Yueli stopped and lifted her head, gazing at the cold, solitary moon in the night sky.

She had to investigate this matter until the water ran clear and the rocks showed.

If it truly had been because of Severing Mortal Ties, she had to personally ask that lofty young sect master.

But what would asking accomplish?

He was now the young sect master of the Azure Moon Sect, a lofty great cultivator. He was no longer the person he had once been.

Even if that was the truth, as a Third Realm Martial Dao practitioner, she did not even have the right in his eyes to stand before him and ask.

Su Yueli took a deep breath and pressed all her rage, suspicions, and self-reproach deep into her heart.

The Third Realm of the Martial Dao was far from enough.

She needed to break through the Fourth Realm, the Eighth Realm, the Tenth Realm!

She even needed to... shatter the Tenth Realm and step into an entirely new Martial Dao realm. Only then might she have the strength to fight!