Only Ye Jin remained in the pavilion.
At thirty-five, reaching Third Inner Qi and standing just half a step from perfection was exceedingly rare.
In all of Suining Prefecture, the people who had reached that point at his age could be counted on two hands.
And Ye Jin was one of them. His prospects were boundless.
Yet those words, "half a step," had held him back for four whole years.
Four years ago, he had touched the ceiling of the third level. His cultivation art had reached its limit, his pills had reached their limit, his bitter training had reached its limit. At last, he had been about to attain perfection in Third Inner Qi.
Then he could cross that threshold and enter the True Astral Realm.
The True Astral Realm.
What did that mean?
In all of Suining Prefecture, there were no more than twenty True Astral Realm martial artists.
Pick any one of them, and they were either a deputy chief patrol director of the four offices, an elder of the Three Great Sects, or one of the heaven-supporting pillars at the chief patrol director's side.
Once he broke through, Ye Jin would no longer be "the young master of the Mountain-Walking Martial Hall." He would belong to that tiny handful at the tip of Suining Prefecture's pyramid.
By then, never mind the Han Family-the entire prefectural city would have to dance to his tune.
After meticulous planning and selection, he had finally met Han Yan in an apparently chance encounter.
Was Han Yan beautiful? Fairly.
Did she have a good temper? Outrageously bad.
Was she suitable as a wife? Not at all.
But none of that mattered.
What mattered was that Han Yan had been born with an exceptionally rare constitution: the yin-origin body.
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