Only the sound of their breathing remained in the burial chamber.
Sitting in the stone coffin, Chu Yunfei took a full ten breaths to straighten out his tangled thoughts.
He looked at the white-robed woman with her back to him and still could not help asking.
"Weren't you dead?"
The woman lowered her eyes and straightened her sleeves, her tone calm.
"My body was in a state of false death. My soul never perished."
"What the Nine Nether Soul-Suppressing Array suppressed wasn't me, either. It was the Lustfire Soul-Devouring Incense inside me."
Her fingertips brushed gently over her cuff, smoothing out the last crease.
"But too much time has passed. The array is already damaged. It can hold out for a few more years at most."
As she spoke, she turned around.
Her amber eyes were clear and bright, without the slightest trace of death left in them.
"If you hadn't barged in, once the array dissipated completely, the incense poison would have eaten away my entire soul as I slept."
Chu Yunfei understood.
Breaking through the damaged array had indeed caused the Lustfire Soul-Devouring Incense to erupt ahead of time, but through a strange twist of fate, he had also given her a chance to awaken.
Otherwise, a few years later, she would not even have been able to open her eyes.
The woman looked at him and said calmly, "So you saved me."
Chu Yunfei wore a strange expression.
He had indeed saved her.
But the process had been rather too unusual.
He glanced down at his disheveled clothes, then recalled those fragmented images from earlier, as though glimpsed through a fog. For a moment, he was at a loss for words.
"If that's how you put it, what just happened..."
"I borrowed your body."
She said it with complete frankness.
Chu Yunfei, on the other hand, was left not knowing how to respond.
A moment later, the woman added, "I have nothing to my name. I can't compensate you for now."
"Forget the compensation."
Chu Yunfei climbed out of the stone coffin and casually pulled his clothes together.
"You can at least tell me your name, right?"
The woman did not answer immediately.
Her gaze slowly traveled down from Chu Yunfei's face to his open collar.
The few traces left inside the stone coffin also came into her view.
As though recalling certain images, her breathing briefly caught.
A faint blush rose over her pale cheeks, only to be quickly suppressed.
"There's no need for you to know."
She looked away, her voice returning to its former calm.
"With your current cultivation, our paths won't cross again."
There was no mockery.
Nor any deliberate humiliation.
She was merely stating what she believed to be a fact.
Chu Yunfei raised his eyebrows.
After using me, she won't even leave her name?
Doesn't that count as tearing down the bridge after crossing the river?
He was about to speak when a surging fluctuation suddenly came from his dantian.
Chu Yunfei immediately focused his mind and looked inward at his dantian.
A single glance left him stunned.
The Qi vortex in his dantian had expanded more than tenfold since he entered the burial chamber.
Spiritual power coursed through his meridians like a torrent, condensed and dense. With every full circulation, his flesh, sinews, and bones trembled along with it.
The eighth level of Qi Condensation!
Before entering the burial chamber, he had only been at the first layer of Qi Condensation.
Earlier, when his consciousness sank into oblivion, the Dragon and Phoenix Dao Yellow Scripture had driven him through three realms in succession.
He had not expected the power mingling within their bodies to continue afterward, pushing him all the way to the eighth level of Qi Condensation.
Seven whole minor realms!
For a moment, Chu Yunfei did not know what to say.
In the Azure Mystic Sect, the eighth level of Qi Condensation was already enough to rank among the top tier of inner disciples.
Yet not long ago, he had only been at the first layer of Qi Condensation.
He had nearly drained his dantian to kill a single second-tier demonic beast.
More importantly, none of this spiritual power was hollow or unstable.
Every strand of power had been refined by the Boundless Creation Scripture and made entirely his own.
His dantian was broader.
His meridians were tougher.
Even the realm he had just broken through to was completely stable, without the slightest wavering.
One session of dual cultivation had taken him through seven realms in succession.
What compensation could he possibly need now?
Chu Yunfei looked at the woman before him again.
After awakening, she had changed completely.
Noble and ethereal.
Her every movement carried a presence wholly at odds with the mortal world.
Merely standing there in silence, she made the entire burial chamber seem cramped.
Yet a woman like this, whom one scarcely dared look at directly, had just been with him inside this stone coffin...
Chu Yunfei gave a light cough, interrupting the images in his mind.
"You won't even tell me your name. Isn't that a little unfair?"
The woman did not respond.
Chu Yunfei continued, "Regardless of who borrowed whose body, we did have an in-depth exchange..."
The woman narrowed her eyes slightly.
Boom!
An invisible pressure descended.
Chu Yunfei's body abruptly sank, and the bluestone beneath his feet cracked inch by inch.
The spiritual power he had just gained upon reaching the eighth level of Qi Condensation was pinned down at that very moment. He could not muster even a strand.
There was no killing intent.
No clash of spiritual power.
It was purely suppression arising from a difference in the level of their existence.
The pressure vanished as quickly as it had come.
By the time Chu Yunfei straightened again, his back was drenched in cold sweat.
He swallowed.
The gap was too great.
If this woman wanted to kill him, she probably would not even need to move a finger.
The woman's expression remained unchanged, as though she had merely glanced at him.
But Chu Yunfei did not fall silent over it.
He straightened his clothes, his expression growing somewhat more serious.
"No matter what, now that we have this relationship, I have to take responsibility for you."
The woman froze for a moment.
She seemed not to have expected a youth who was no different from a mortal in her eyes to say such a thing to her face.
"Take responsibility for me?"
She repeated it softly.
"That's right."
Chu Yunfei nodded.
He would never admit that, to some extent, he still lusted after her body.
The woman watched him quietly for a moment.
At last, a trace of something difficult to discern appeared in those amber eyes.
Then she looked past Chu Yunfei, beyond the burial chamber.
Her gaze seemed to pierce through the stone walls and settle somewhere unimaginably distant.
"If you can set foot in the Calamity Land within a hundred years..."
She paused.
"Only then will you be qualified to take responsibility for me."
Her tone was very soft.
Yet it fell between them like a boundary stretching across heaven and earth.
"The Calamity Land?"
Chu Yunfei frowned.
In his previous life, he had held sway over a region, visited countless lands, and read many ancient texts.
Yet neither in his previous life nor in this one had he ever heard of this place.
At the very least, there was certainly no Calamity Land on the True Martial Continent.
"Where is the Calamity Land?"
The woman did not answer.
Chu Yunfei continued asking, "If you won't tell me where it is, you should at least leave your name, right?"
"Otherwise, even if I climb to the summit of the Calamity Land a hundred years from now, I won't know whom I'm supposed to take responsibility for."
The woman looked at him for a moment.
At last, a faint ripple stirred in those amber eyes.
"Bai Zhi."
Chu Yunfei repeated the name.
"Bai Zhi."
"I'll remember it."
He pointed at himself.
"Chu Yunfei."
Bai Zhi's gaze lingered on his face for a moment.
It was not long, yet it seemed she had truly committed the name to memory.
Chu Yunfei wanted to ask more, but Bai Zhi had already turned and headed toward the edge of the burial chamber.
She did not walk quickly.
Yet with every step she took, a ring of fine ripples spread through the surrounding space.
Those were not tremors caused by spiritual power.
Rather, the space itself was making way for her.
The flippancy on Chu Yunfei's face gradually faded.
For the first time, he felt the gap between them with such clarity.
It was not the separation of a single realm, but the distance between the foot of a mountain and the ninth heaven.
Bai Zhi reached the stone wall and raised her right hand.
Her slender finger pointed forward.
Hum!
The entire burial chamber trembled.
The solid stone wall did not shatter.
But the space before it split down the middle, opening into a long, narrow fissure.
Dazzling white light poured out.
On the other side of the fissure, a vast sky and rolling mountain ranges were faintly visible.
Chu Yunfei's pupils contracted.
Tearing space apart!
This woman was even more terrifying than he had imagined.
With the experience of his previous life, he knew full well what this meant.
Bai Zhi had only just awakened from her long slumber, and her soul clearly had yet to recover completely, yet she could still tear open space with a casual gesture.
How powerful must she have been at her peak?
Bai Zhi did not look back.
She stepped into the fissure, and the light soon swallowed her white-robed figure.
"A hundred years."
A soft, cool voice came from the other side of the space.
"If you truly can reach Calamity Land..."
Before the rest of her words could fall, the spatial rift had already closed.
The burial chamber returned to its original state.
Only a faint trace of fragrance remained, proof that she had once been there.
Chu Yunfei stood where he was, his gaze lingering for a long time.
A hundred years.
Calamity Land.
He had firmly committed those two terms to memory.
A moment later, Chu Yunfei withdrew his gaze, dressed himself properly, and rolled his shoulders.
Spiritual power at the Eighth Level of Qi Condensation surged through his meridians.
Whether in strength, speed, or degree of refinement, it could no longer be compared to before.
Chu Yunfei pressed two fingers together and pointed forward.
Hiss!
A streak of spiritual power shot through the air, punching a deep hole into the stone wall several dozen feet away.
He lowered his head and looked at his fingers.
Even using the Divine Cauldron of Heavenly Mandate to refine beast cores day and night without rest, an improvement like this would have taken at least half a month.
Yet he had needed only a single session of dual cultivation.
Bai Zhi's cultivation was certainly terrifying.
Her constitution, too, was absolutely beyond all reason.
Perhaps that was precisely why she had been able to remain dormant until now without perishing, even after her body's vitality had been severed and her soul eroded by the incense's poison.
Chu Yunfei suppressed his thoughts and sank his consciousness into his sea of consciousness.
"Xiaoxiao Dragon?"
No one answered.
"Stop playing dead."
His sea of consciousness remained silent.
Chu Yunfei narrowed his eyes and called again.
"Xiaoxiao Dragon."
"What?"
Xiaoxiao Dragon finally spoke.
But compared to usual, her tone was noticeably colder.
Chu Yunfei did not beat around the bush.
"What happened just now?"
"Why didn't the Divine Cauldron of Heavenly Mandate react at all? And why didn't you answer when I called you?"
Xiaoxiao Dragon fell silent for a moment.
"This king fell asleep."
Chu Yunfei's expression darkened.
"What about the Divine Cauldron of Heavenly Mandate, then?"
"It might have fallen asleep too."
"..."
Chu Yunfei was silent for two breaths.
"Do you take me for a three-year-old?"
The Divine Cauldron of Heavenly Mandate was a supreme treasure born when heaven and earth first opened.
It could fall asleep?
Even a ghost would shake its head at such a claim.
Besides, Xiaoxiao Dragon had been unusually quiet ever since they entered the burial chamber.
Then, when the Lustfire Soul-Devouring Incense erupted, his connection to the Divine Cauldron of Heavenly Mandate had been forcibly severed.
To say these two things were completely unrelated would be far too much of a coincidence.
Chu Yunfei asked directly, "Do you know Bai Zhi?"
"And what exactly is Calamity Land?"
His sea of consciousness remained silent for a long time.
Only then did Xiaoxiao Dragon speak in displeasure.
"Brat, stop asking. This king knows nothing."
Chu Yunfei gave a cold laugh.
"Do you think I'd believe that?"
"Believe it or don't!"
Xiaoxiao Dragon's voice abruptly rose.
"In any case, with your current paltry strength, the more you know, the worse it is for you."
"The matter of her ends here. You're not allowed to bring it up again."
Chu Yunfei said nothing.
The more Xiaoxiao Dragon acted this way, the more it showed that she knew the inside story.
Xiaoxiao Dragon waited a moment, probably realizing that those few words alone would not shut him up.
In the end, she let out a quiet sigh.
"If you truly want to find her, set foot in the Upper Realm within a hundred years."
"Once a hundred years have passed, there'll be no need to look for her anymore."
The Upper Realm!
Chu Yunfei's heart jolted.
"Why will there be no need to look for her after a hundred years?"
"Will something happen to Bai Zhi, or will some unforeseen change occur in Calamity Land?"
Xiaoxiao Dragon immediately grew annoyed.
"Why do you have so many questions?"
"I told you to set foot in the Upper Realm within a hundred years. Just do as you're told!"
"Also, you're not allowed to ask about this again, or even dwell on it!"
With that, Xiaoxiao Dragon fell completely silent.
No matter how Chu Yunfei called, she no longer responded.
Chu Yunfei did not continue pressing her either.
Xiaoxiao Dragon clearly had her reservations.
Since she refused to speak, further questioning would yield no results.
Besides, she was right about one thing.
With Chu Yunfei's current cultivation, even if he knew Bai Zhi's true identity, there was nothing he could do.
That level was far too distant from him as he was now.
All he needed to do now was grow stronger.
Step by step, he would make his way beyond the True Martial Continent.
Then set foot in the Upper Realm.
Chu Yunfei took one last look at the place where Bai Zhi had departed, then turned toward the burial chamber's exit.
"Calamity Land, Bai Zhi..."
"Within a hundred years, I will definitely find you."