What Did She Mean, Cultivate Together in the Secluded Chamber?
Ye Xinlan thought how nice it would be if she could visit Wutan City in the Jia Ma Empire, on the Northwest Continent.
If she could become friends with Gu Xun'er, the Pill Tower removing the Ye Clan from the Five Great Clans would be nothing at all.
Even if she couldn't become friends with Gu Xun'er, it would still be good to get to know someone from the Xiao Clan.
But her attention soon shifted to the signature at the very end.
"Qingzhou?"
Ye Xinlan thought of Ye Qingzhou.
"What a coincidence."
In the Flame Realm, there was a place where flames burned the heavens.
Beneath a scarlet sky, magma surged across the land like rivers.
Terrifying natural energy gathered and formed hundreds upon thousands of fiery tornadoes that roamed about recklessly.
This was where Fire Attribute Dou Qi was most abundant on the present-day Dou Qi Continent.
It was the ancestral land of the Yan Clan, one of the Ancient Eight Clans.
Among the countless floating halls stood a palace built of crimson jade, with a molten sheen flowing around it.
Inside the palace was a pool filled with a strange, fiery-red liquid, and a peculiar green lotus rested upon it.
On the green lotus, a young woman of about twenty sat cross-legged, sitting on the stone steps, holding an ancient-looking book in both hands and reading it intently.
Her features were lively and delicate, and she resembled a spirit of fire. Her scarlet eyes glimmered with light.
Her name was Huo Zhi, the daughter of the Yan Clan's chief.
Her bloodline talent was ordinary, a mere fourth grade, but she had won the recognition of the Red Lotus Karmic Fire, eighth on the Heavenly Flame Ranking. The talent and strength she truly displayed placed her among the best of the younger generation.
"Gu? Gu Xun'er?"
"Could she be the daughter of that Gu Clan chief who hasn't shown himself for more than a decade?"
Huo Zhi looked at the words in the diary and murmured to herself, her scarlet eyes narrowing slightly.
"If what's written in this diary is true, and this little princess of the Gu Clan grew up in the Xiao Clan of Wutan City, then the Xiao Clan is probably no ordinary clan."
"Could it be the Xiao from the Xiao Clan?"
Huo Zhi recalled the events recorded in her clan's ancient texts.
A thousand years ago, there had been Eight Great Emperor Clans.
The Gu Clan, Hun Clan, Yan Clan, Lei Clan, Yao Clan, Stone Clan, Spirit Clan, and Xiao Clan.
The Xiao Clan's overall strength had consistently ranked fourth or fifth among them, until a peerless genius named Xiao Xuan became its chief.
Under Xiao Xuan's leadership, the Xiao Clan rose to the head of the Eight Clans. At its peak, it stood firmly above the Gu Clan and the Hun Clan.
But later, disaster struck the Xiao Clan. Its bloodline ran dry, its experts were all lost, and its surviving branches were scattered across the continent.
The Xiao Clan that had persuaded the Ancient Clan Chief to send Gu Xun'er to live with it for more than a decade was very likely descended from Xiao Xuan's direct line.
"Little Zhi, why did you suddenly mention the Xiao Clan while sitting there in a daze?"
A voice suddenly rang out, making Huo Zhi turn her head instinctively.
The newcomer was a beautiful woman who appeared to be around thirty, with a fiery, uninhibited bearing. She wore a long, fiery-red dress and looked like a gorgeous rose.
"Auntie," Huo Zhi called out cheerfully.
Fairy Huo Ling smiled when she saw her like this. "I'm asking you, what were you daydreaming about just now? I heard you saying something about the Xiao Clan."
"Huh?" Puzzled, Huo Zhi was about to ask Fairy Huo Ling whether she couldn't see the diary copy in her hands.
But before the words left her mouth, she felt a terrifying presence descend from the utmost depths above and lock firmly onto her.
It was as though an invisible giant hand had gripped her soul. With the slightest squeeze, it would shatter and be extinguished.
She understood instinctively that she couldn't reveal anything related to the diary, or a calamity would come crashing down on her.
Even Fairy Huo Ling, who had reached Late-Stage Seven-Star Dou Saint and was hailed as the foremost female cultivator on the Dou Qi Continent, couldn't save her.
"N-no, it's nothing."
The presence vanished as quickly as it had come.
Everything she had just experienced seemed like an illusion.
But Huo Zhi knew she really had come close to dying.
"Auntie, I was just reading about the Xiao Clan from a thousand years ago again recently."
"You lived through that era. Could you tell me about it?"
A person like Fairy Huo Ling naturally knew that Huo Zhi didn't mean what she said and was changing the subject.
But she didn't press the matter to the bottom. Instead, she sat down with a smile and reached out to tap Huo Zhi lightly between the brows. "Since you're curious, Auntie will tell you about it."
"The Xiao Clan... what a pity..."
Meanwhile, in the Medicine Realm.
Unlike the Flame Realm, where a fervent presence filled every corner.
The air in this realm was filled everywhere with a crisp, rich medicinal fragrance.
The fragrance differed from place to place, and even faintly took the form of unusual phenomena.
In an ancient medicine pavilion on a plain, countless jade slips and old books were piled into mountains.
A young woman with a delicate, jade-like face sat cross-legged before a medicinal cauldron. She wore a long blue dress and had long blue hair. Using her soul power, she harmonized countless medicinal properties, fusing them together into a cyan pill.
Her face was serene and focused, and her features bore a pure quality that spoke of a desire to live apart from worldly strife.
She was Yao Ling, the Yao Clan chief's own granddaughter.
"Out!"
A Sixth-Grade Pill emerged from the cauldron, and Yao Ling tapped it lightly with a fingertip.
Only after storing the pill in a jade bottle did she summon her diary copy and patiently examine it.
"The Gu Clan chief's daughter?"
"In a remote little city on the Northwest Continent?"
"Could this Xiao Clan be the one Grandpa talked about?"
"Who on earth wrote this diary, and why did they write down this information?"
"And why did I receive a copy that lets me see what's written in it?"
Yao Ling was extremely wary and decided to observe a while longer.
For a time, countless women's thoughts were stirred by Ye Qingzhou's latest update.
The night passed without incident.
Morning light filtered through the window lattice, casting patches of light inside the room.
"Phew..."
Ye Qingzhou slowly ended his cultivation. The red Dou Qi tinged with green in his body all returned to the Dou Crystal in his dantian.
He had completely mastered the circulation route of the Crimson Flame Bodhi Scripture and successfully grasped its basics.
All he needed to do next was keep improving his proficiency until it became as natural as breathing.
"From when I switched cultivation methods yesterday until now..."
"With this kind of perseverance, getting into a 985 university in my previous life would have been a piece of cake."
Ye Qingzhou stood up, stretched, and pushed open the door of the secluded chamber to walk out.
Once outside the room, he called out to a maid in the courtyard, "Go fetch some breakfast."
The maid acknowledged him and left. Ye Qingzhou walked over to the stone table in the courtyard and loosened up his muscles in the morning breeze.
"Hm?"
Halfway through his exercises, he heard a set of footsteps outside the courtyard, different from those of the maid who had left.
He turned and saw Ye Xinlan standing there with a maid carrying a lacquered wooden food box. She was just about to speak.
Their eyes met, and Ye Xinlan spoke softly. "Good morning, Cousin."
"Morning, Cousin. Come in." Ye Qingzhou gestured toward the stone table beside him.
Ye Xinlan immediately entered the courtyard and had the maid behind her set the food box on the stone table and open it. Inside were a serving of meat congee and a meat pie.
"I thought you probably hadn't had breakfast yet, Cousin, so I had someone bring you some."
"That was thoughtful of you, Cousin." Ye Qingzhou felt that Ye Xinlan was quite methodical in how she did things and paid attention to detail.
He didn't stand on ceremony and dug right in.
Only after he finished eating did Ye Xinlan speak again. "Cousin, if you're finished, shall we go to the secluded chamber and cultivate the Crimson Flame Bodhi Scripture together?"
"Cough." Ye Qingzhou nearly choked on his meat pie.
How had it come to them going to the secluded chamber to cultivate together!?
Are you trying to become a Secluded Chamber Douluo?