The spiritual sense spread rapidly in every direction, carefully searching every blade of grass, every tree and every inch of soil. Xu Ziqing had never felt such frightening strength before.
For the first time, fear rose from the depths of his heart.
That fear made him circulate his cultivation method still more desperately. Faster! He had to go faster!
The wood-grain patterns on his body gradually spread across his eyelids, causing him to close his eyes involuntarily. He sealed off his six senses, leaving only his hearing active. With the other five shut down, his ears became extraordinarily sharp. He could almost hear grass and leaves falling within a radius of ten li.
Most importantly, even his awareness, which might have fluctuated and betrayed his presence, became hazy. He sank it into the deepest recesses of his sea of consciousness.
At the very last instant, just as that spiritual sense was about to sweep across the giant tree in which he was hiding, Xu Ziqing finally completed his transformation. His whole body seemed to become deadwood, no different from a piece of dried trunk or bark upon the enormous tree, utterly silent and lifeless.
Only the faintest thread of vitality remained concealed in the most secret part of his dantian.
Somewhere at the edge of perception, Xu Ziqing heard people arriving.
Through the almost imperceptible rustling sounds, his now exceptionally acute hearing constructed a blurred impression, like a picture viewed through a veil.
A man and a woman landed abruptly upon the ground, the man in front and the woman behind.
The male cultivator had a tremendously powerful aura, and enormous strength seemed to be hidden within his body. Anything in the world that touched that power might be reduced to dust in an instant.
The woman’s power seemed greater still, but her body felt as though it contained a hole through which her immense energy, once as boundless as the sea, was continuously leaking away.
These two people… were terrifyingly strong!
Xu Ziqing could sense that he was no match for either of them. Even his senior brother would probably be unable to defeat them. Who were they?
His hearing continued to sharpen, and the impression gradually became clearer.
They spoke very quietly, yet he could hear their voices.
The man wore wide sleeves and flowing robes, with an extraordinary bearing. He was probably as handsome as a banished immortal and seemed full of expansive, upright immortal-path qi. Yet within that righteous aura lingered another force, one vaguely opposed to it and impossible to ignore.
The woman seemed beautiful, with the distant, ethereal quality of flowing water and the chill purity of frost. She hardly appeared to belong to the mortal world. The two would surely look well matched together.
The woman spoke first, with unmistakable distance in her voice. “Why did you lure me out here?”
The man sighed. “I called you out because I wanted to talk to you. Yet you treat me so coldly. It truly breaks my heart.”
With only these two sentences, there was already a suggestion of intimate history between them.
The woman fell silent.
The man continued, “Do you still not trust me? I’ve already examined this entire area with my spiritual sense. There is no one here but the two of us. I only wished to find somewhere quiet to speak about the past. Must you really be so heartless as to ignore me?”
When the woman refused to answer, he continued speaking to himself, every word filled with longing. “My cultivation is far from what it once was. If I transmitted these things to you back there, those old nuns might intercept them, which would only cause you more trouble. Better to come somewhere secluded and speak openly about how I feel.”
“Are you still angry with me? I no longer ask that your true body come to meet me. Must even this avatar refuse to show me a kindly expression? Wuxin, have you truly forgotten everything we once shared…?”
At the name Wuxin, together with those now-familiar voices, Xu Ziqing’s heart seemed to be struck by a wave.
He suddenly recognized them.
The woman was Mu Wuxin, Estate Mistress of Ruyi Immortal Estate. The man was none other than the demonic-path cultivator his senior brother had identified, the overseas wanderer Lang Tianqi.
At last, Mu Wuxin spoke again. “Whose body have you possessed this time?”
Delight rose in Lang Tianqi’s voice. “You really are still worried about me. I’m so happy.” Then he spoke with a trace of arrogance. “It was merely a rogue cultivator from overseas. His aptitude looked good, so I took his body. That allowed me to come here and see you in one piece. When I reshaped this body, I restored the appearance you used to love. Look closely. Doesn’t it resemble my old face?”
Mu Wuxin’s voice softened slightly, and there seemed to be a sigh in it. “You really do look exactly as you once did…” She continued quietly, “I drained your cultivation, caused you to lose your physical body, and destroyed thousands of years of your progress in a single day. Do you truly not hate me?”
Lang Tianqi gave a bitter laugh. “When the heart loves someone, it cannot help itself. I love you far too much to hate you… Back then the immortal and demonic paths were incompatible. You took my cultivation, but spared my Nascent Soul. That alone proves you remembered our affection. So I acquired the body of an immortal-path cultivator. Surely now you have no reason to turn me away!”
Even an outsider hearing such wholehearted, unchanging devotion might have been moved.
How much more so someone bound to him by that history?
Mu Wuxin said sorrowfully, “If you don’t blame me, then why have you joined forces with Yu Nongqing? I finally managed to suppress her in the rear mountain, and none of the estate’s elders dared disobey my orders. Only you could have released her… I simply don’t know when you met her or why you would help her.”
“She has contested control of the estate with me for a very long time. I wanted to keep her confined for a while, allowing my disciples to marry into great sects, improve their cultivation and obtain outside support. That would have curbed her arrogance. But she emerged early and caused such a disturbance at my birthday banquet. If her Pure Maiden Envoys fail to form marriage alliances, I’m afraid she will devise all manner of schemes to trouble my Jade Maiden Envoys.”
A situation that had seemed so advantageous had been thrown into disarray.
Lang Tianqi grew agitated. “I wasn’t helping her! Everything I did was for you!”
Mu Wuxin sounded doubtful. “Is that so?”
Lang Tianqi sighed bitterly again. “After all this effort I finally recovered some cultivation. When I heard your birthday was approaching, I wanted to come congratulate you and renew our old relationship. I arrived early, but I was too anxious to appear before you directly. Then, one night, someone entered my dream. It was Yu Nongqing.”
He went on to explain everything without stopping.
Yu Nongqing had contacted Lang Tianqi through a dream technique. She already knew that he and Mu Wuxin had once known and loved one another. This knowledge left Lang Tianqi afraid of what she might do.
Romance between the immortal and demonic paths was unacceptable to society. Had Lang Tianqi belonged to the righteous demonic path, perhaps matters would have been different, but he had formerly followed the evil demonic path and had been hunted by orthodox cultivators. If their past became public, it would gravely damage Mu Wuxin’s present reputation.
Lang Tianqi understood that Yu Nongqing had come to him in a dream on Mu Wuxin’s birthday because she meant to harm her. He therefore appeared wary and spoke of Mu Wuxin with bitter resentment, acting as though he hated her through gritted teeth to win Yu Nongqing’s confidence.
His judgment proved correct. Yu Nongqing was pleased by his apparent hatred. She had approached him precisely to form an alliance against Mu Wuxin.
But she could never have imagined that, despite the injury Mu Wuxin had inflicted upon him, Lang Tianqi’s devotion had not changed in the slightest. His love remained sincere. Thus he appeared to conspire with Yu Nongqing, while in truth merely humoring her and drawing information from her.
Yu Nongqing then arranged for a trusted subordinate to guide Lang Tianqi into the forbidden grounds during the birthday celebrations.
The power suppressing Yu Nongqing originated with Mu Wuxin and had unusual properties. No one except Lang Tianqi, who had previously cultivated together with her, or Mu Wuxin’s only daughter Mu Ronghua could release the seal.
Mu Ronghua was deeply attached to her mother and would never assist an outsider. Lang Tianqi, however, had suffered at Mu Wuxin’s hands, making him the ideal person for Yu Nongqing to recruit and use.
After hearing the situation, Lang Tianqi pretended to follow Yu Nongqing’s confidant into the forbidden grounds. But he had no intention of lifting the seal on her behalf. He wanted to kill her secretly, removing a threat to Mu Wuxin once and for all.
Unfortunately, when he arrived at the forbidden grounds, he discovered several powerful experts standing guard outside Yu Nongqing’s confinement. Every one of them was above Nascent Soul in cultivation. With his current strength, Lang Tianqi might be able to deal with one or two, but if they surrounded him, he would be the one to suffer.
Lang Tianqi therefore had no choice but to release Yu Nongqing rather than ruin everything. At the same time, he continued pretending to cooperate with her, presenting an appearance of shared hatred so that he could uncover her schemes.
He had taken this opportunity to draw Mu Wuxin away precisely so that he could tell her what had happened.
Upon hearing the explanation, Mu Wuxin’s tone grew gentler. “Yu Nongqing is treacherous and cunning. She may not fully trust you, but she is confident she can make you hate me.”
Lang Tianqi was stunned. “What do you mean?”
Mu Wuxin snorted. “You’ve only just returned. There are many things you don’t know. If she told you I had a child with another man, and you saw that I do indeed have a daughter not yet two hundred years old, how could you fail to hate me?”
The women of Ruyi Immortal Estate, especially those who inherited the leadership, needed to continue their bloodlines and pass on their cultivation methods. Traditionally they sought companions from the immortal path. Yet Mu Wuxin had fallen in love with a practitioner of the evil demonic path.
Lang Tianqi’s voice filled with grief. “Y-you truly had a child with someone else?”
When he and Mu Wuxin parted, she had not yet become Estate Mistress. Thousands of years had passed since then, while her daughter was still so young…
At the thought, he was overwhelmed with despair.
Mu Wuxin sighed. “It was never easy for an immortal cultivator and a demonic cultivator to conceive a child together. When I took your cultivation that day, it was partly for the child I already carried. But our methods could not harmonize, and our powers opposed one another. Preserving the child was terribly difficult… I spent thousands of years finally reconciling the energies in her body. Thus when she was born, she already possessed extraordinary aptitude, and no one could detect the slightest trace of an evil demonic-path bloodline. Even Yu Nongqing doesn’t know her true origins.”
For the first time, Mu Wuxin laughed softly. “Five thousand years, Tianqi. I bore you our daughter Ronghua. Are you pleased?”
Xu Ziqing, already merged with the tree, felt his heart shake violently at what he had heard.
Mu Ronghua, the Perfected One who had wanted to cultivate with his senior brother, was actually the daughter of this immortal woman and demonic man!