Lu Yan panicked, taking a few steps back. His foot slipped, and he nearly tumbled to the ground. Without even trying to steady himself, his hand darted into his storage ring, rummaging through it frantically.
“Qi Condensation Pill, Rejuvenation Pill, Spirit-Gathering Pill... Damn it! Where is the Focus-Stabilizing Pill?”
The more he panicked, the more his fingers trembled. With his spiritual sea shattered, he had no way of precisely retrieving items from his storage space. The elixir bottles rolled around inside the ring. He groped around for a long time, pulling out one bottle after another, only to stuff them right back in.
“Focus-Stabilizing Pill! Found it!”
He felt the elixir bottle and pulled it out, but his hand shook. The bottle slipped from his fingers, fell to the ground, and rolled away. He scrambled down, groping along the floor. The rain-slicked mud was greasy, and his fingers slipped several times before he finally pinched the pill and shoved it into his mouth.
A bitter medicinal taste spread from the back of his tongue. Elixirs that affected the soul, like the Focus-Stabilizing Pill, were in a league of their own when it came to bitterness. But at this moment, it was as if he had lost his sense of taste; he chewed it fiercely a few times and swallowed it dry.
A cool medicinal energy rose from his stomach and flooded into his spiritual sea. His shattered spiritual sea felt as though it were being bathed in a thick, transparent substance. Those fractured, drifting shards buried deep in the darkness were temporarily glued back together. The cultivation base sealed within those shards could now be mobilized once more.
Qi Condensation. Foundation Establishment. Golden Core.
Early-stage Golden Core. Mid-stage. Late-stage. Great Perfection.
His cultivation surged all the way up, finally stopping at half-step Nascent Soul. He couldn't restore it to his peak state—his spiritual sea was too heavily damaged. The Focus-Stabilizing Pill could glue it together, but it couldn't repair the core damage. Still, seventy percent of his power was enough. The grayish-white film over his eyes remained tightly bound to his pupils. While the Focus-Stabilizing Pill could temporarily mend his spiritual sea, his blindness was merely a symptom of the damage, not the root cause. He would have to find and reassemble every single fragment before he could truly see again.
But he had other ways.
“Soul Projection.”
He silently chanted the mnemonic. His soul separated, looking down from a third-person perspective above the back of his head. First, he saw himself—covered in mud and looking incredibly pathetic. His robes were caked in dirt, and his soaking wet hair clung to his face, making him look like a refugee. But he didn't care. After taking the Focus-Stabilizing Pill, he was no longer very worried about the “living thing” before him. With his half-step Nascent Soul cultivation, as long as the opponent wasn't a peak Soul Transformation expert, he was confident he could severely wound them and make a clean escape.
He raised his head and looked at the person.
Then, he froze.
A mane of white hair, completely soaked, clung to her cheeks. Rain dripped from the ends of her hair, pooling beneath her. Her face, originally covered in dust and dried blood, had been washed clean by the rain, revealing a face that—
He couldn't find the words.
All cultivators were good-looking. Nourished by spiritual energy, even the ugliest person would gradually be refined into someone “decent-looking” or “handsome.” But a beauty like this, which seemed to belong to a different dimension entirely, was something he had never seen before in his twenty-six years of life. Her skin was incredibly pale, unnaturally so, with a slight bluish tint. Her lips were devoid of color, and her eyes were deeply sunken. She was injured, sick, and on the verge of death. Yet, she was still breathtakingly beautiful.
He was transfixed by her face for two full seconds.
Then, his expression darkened visibly. Her clothes were tattered and ruined, soaked by the rain until their original color was unrecognizable, but that emblem—he would not forget it even in death.
The Central Continent Alliance.
Shattered memories flooded his mind. A dark room. Imprisonment. Ambush. The self-detonation of his Life Formation Plate. Dead mortals. The scene of three Northern Border fortresses being completely annihilated by the Ice Spirit tide like dry weeds before a fire. The old man's back as he turned to face the Ice Sovereign. The warmth of Lin Yuan as he died in his arms.
He had begged for reinforcements, only to be locked away. By the time he got out, it was already too late.
He didn't even realize when he had released his killing intent. The murderous aura spilled from his body, condensing into a faint pressure around him like an invisible giant hand, causing the very air to tremble.
He let out a cold laugh. He wasn't laughing at her—he was laughing at himself. Simply by the fact that she had bypassed his concealment formation and navigated through his triple illusion array, she would never leave this place alive. She deserved to die here. A formation plate materialized in his hand. His killing intent solidified into something tangible, like a bowstring drawn to its absolute limit.
“I need nothing else to kill you. Today's torrential rain is a fitting death chosen for you by the heavens.”
He raised his hand. The formation plate spun in his palm, and spiritual runes lit up one after another.
“Imperial Bow Cleaves the Void, Piercing the Grand Purity.”
The curtain of rain outside seemed to have been paused. Countless raindrops hung suspended in midair, then condensed, compressed, and took shape—a whistling arrow materialized in the air. Its arrowhead was as thick as a bowl, and its shaft was frosted over, gleaming with a deep blue light under the gloomy sky.
He realized that as his hatred for the target intensified, the power of these formation plates—which he had adapted from the Hunt Path—grew noticeably stronger.
“Repent in hell.”
He waved his hand. Accompanied by a piercing whistle, the ice arrow tore through the air, shooting toward the curled-up figure.
Jiang Ci seemed to sense something. Perhaps it was the chill of the ice arrow, or perhaps it was his killing intent. She curled her body even tighter, but she did not move. She could no longer move.
The ice arrow closed in, its tip aimed directly at her heart.
At the very instant before it pierced her—
Something in her embrace lit up.
The jade plaque. The jade plaque that had been hanging from her sword tassel, its emerald color faded to near-transparency, suddenly erupted with a brilliant green light. It rose from her embrace, hovering in midair, its radiance growing brighter and brighter like a kindled star.
Then, a transparent shockwave violently rippled outward with the jade plaque at its center.
The ice arrow was knocked off course, smashing into the ground and shattering into countless shards. A sharp piece of ice grazed Jiang Ci's cheek, leaving a shallow cut. A bead of crimson blood welled up and trickled down her face.
“...It hurts...”
A faint, slurred murmur escaped her lips. She hadn't woken up. Her body merely twitched instinctively, as if she could only feel half of the pain.
Lu Yan stood rooted to the spot, motionless.
He saw the jade plaque. The unique spiritual imprint of the Formation Sect, the patterns of the Spirit-Locking Formation—it was something he knew all too well. His face darkened instantly. His killing intent, far from fading, grew even stronger.
Ten years had passed since the destruction of the Formation Sect. In those ten years, countless people had come to the Northern Border to scavenge for treasures, taking the relics of the Formation Sect disciples as spoils of war. Storage bags, formation plates, elixirs, magical treasures—they sold what they could sell and used what they could use. Those fallen disciples couldn't even keep their final belongings.
This jade plaque must have belonged to some disciple of the Formation Sect. It had been scavenged, resold, and finally ended up in the hands of this woman from the Central Continent Alliance. She didn't know whose it was. She didn't care either. She had simply hung it on her sword tassel as an ornament.
His fingers tightened around his formation plate.
Then, he paused.
The jade plaque hovered in midair, its green light gradually dimming. He clearly saw the patterns on it. It wasn't just “similar” to the style of the Formation Sect—it was the Formation Sect's style. The layout of that Spirit-Locking Formation, the way the lines flowed, the curvature of the endings—every single detail was incredibly familiar. He had seen it countless times. In the old man's hands, in the elders' hands, in his fellow disciples' hands. In the ruins, in pools of blood, in the embraces of those who would never wake again.
But the formation recorded inside was his own unique creation. He was the only one in this world who knew it, which meant...
It had been shortly after he first arrived in the Northern Border, having just crawled out of the ruins, before his eyes had gone completely blind. Using the last remaining materials of the Formation Sect, he had carved a few jade plaques, hoping to save them to trade for spirit stones. This was just one of them.
Later—
His hand faltered.
Later, he had given this jade plaque away.
To whom had he given it?
He had thought the jade plaque was long lost. Resold, sold off, or thrown into some corner to gather dust.
He never expected it to still be around. In the hands of a woman from the Central Continent Alliance. Hanging from her sword tassel, having traveled such a long distance with her.
He stood there, gripping the formation plate. His killing intent was still present, but he no longer knew whom to direct it toward. The ice arrow had shattered, and the rain began to fall again, beating down on him with a cold chill. He looked down at the jade plaque; its green light had completely died out, and the cracks upon it were exceptionally striking in the dim light.
He reached out his hand and caught it.
“...It's mine,” he murmured softly, as if speaking to himself.
He raised his head and looked at the woman curled up in the corner. White hair, a pale face, tattered sect robes, and covered in wounds. She was dying. And he had almost killed her.
Clutching the nearly shattered jade plaque, he stood before her, motionless. His eyes were filled with an indescribable complexity as he looked at Jiang Ci—at this person who had shown him kindness nearly ten years ago...
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