Cliff Terrace.
A fierce wind howled, shaking the tree branches.
Su Yueli dug up the dirt bit by bit with her hands. The gravel mixed in the dirt tore at her fingertips, and blood mixed with soil packed beneath her fingernails.
Only a few days ago, she had used these same hands to dig a grave for Shen Qing'an on the sunlit slope outside Fengling City.
Now, she had to dig another.
It turned out that if one lived long enough, they would truly become a skilled gravedigger, constantly burying those around them one by one.
By the time dusk fell, the deep pit was finally finished.
Su Yueli carried Lu Chen's corpse up to Cliff Terrace and gently lowered it into the pit, just as her master had taught her over the past twenty years.
Handful after handful of yellow earth was thrown in, until his white hair and beard were completely buried.
Su Yueli knelt before the newly raised mound and picked up the half-filled gourd of strong liquor, now stained with blood.
Uncorking it, she tilted her head back and took a swig.
“Cough, cough...”
The burning liquid scorched her stomach, carrying a faint metallic taste of blood that made her eyes water. But this time, it didn't seem as hard to swallow as it had a few days ago.
She slowly poured the remaining half-gourd of liquor in front of the grave.
The clear liquid seeped into the yellow earth, quickly vanishing.
“Master, you said you suffered cultivation deviation, but I don't believe it.”
Su Yueli stared at the markerless mound, her eyes filled with stubborn determination. “You cared about a martial artist's pride more than anything in your life. There is no way you would slaughter mortals. You must have been hiding something in your letter.”
She reached into her robes and touched the parchment letter.
“You told me to go to Qingzhou to find your friend... I won't go for now.”
“This is your home. Wherever you are, that is where I will be. Since you refused to tell me, I will investigate it myself. Until I uncover the truth, I will stay right here.”
In the days that followed, Su Yueli became the gravekeeper of this dead mountain.
She spent an entire month burying the hundreds of corpses from the village below, one by one, on the sunny side of Black Wind Ridge.
Over four hundred dirt mounds were arranged in neat rows, resembling a silent, jagged scar.
During the day, she practiced her fist techniques on Cliff Terrace.
Having lost all her ties, she seemed to have transformed into a tireless training machine.
If ten thousand strikes were not enough, she would do twenty thousand. When her body gave out, she would grit her teeth and forcefully squeeze every last drop of blood qi from the depths of her marrow.
At night, she would sit before Lu Chen's grave, wiping her hands as she talked to the solitary mound, sharing her progress in her training and speaking of the changing seasons in the mountains.
Day after day, year after year.
Time, the most fatal poison to mortals, was nothing more than falling leaves piling up outside her cave.
In the blink of an eye, five years passed.
During these five years, Su Yueli searched every inch of the ruined, dead village at the foot of the mountain.
Finally, after a rainstorm in the fifth year, she discovered a jarring anomaly in the collapsed backyard of the village chief's house.
It was a massive bluestone millstone used for grinding grain.
The rain had washed away the dark red, dried blood on it, revealing a clean cut that split the bluestone in two. The severed surface still held a trace of cold energy that suppressed her blood qi.
Su Yueli stood in the rain, staring at the cut.
Her master's fist techniques relied on pure, brute force. A strike from him would have shattered or cracked the stone.
A cut this clean could only be made by one thing—a cultivator's flying sword.
The lingering sword qi had not dissipated, even after five years of wind and rain.
“It was a cultivator...”
Su Yueli clenched her fists. Everything made sense now.
Her master had not suffered cultivation deviation after all; he had been driven to a dead end by a cultivator.
Perhaps, to protect her, he had chosen to take the blame for the massacre and ended his own life to cut off any further investigation by the cultivator.
It was a cultivator.
But which faction was it, and why would they slaughter a mortal village?
Su Yueli did not know...
She carved this blood debt deep into her heart, branding it into her very bones alongside her hatred for the Cangyun Sect.
Returning to Cliff Terrace, Su Yueli went to the lakeside to wash the muddy water from her hands.
The shimmering water reflected her appearance.
Five years.
A full twenty-five years had passed since that bone-testing ceremony twenty years ago.
Su Yueli looked at her reflection in the water. Her cold, beautiful face remained as fair as jade, the tear mole at the corner of her eye still striking. There was not a single wrinkle, nor any sign of aging.
Time had come to a complete standstill for her.
“I really have gained longevity...”
Su Yueli curled her lips in a self-deprecating smile.
Just yesterday, relying on five years of monotonous training and her endless accumulation of time, she had broken through the barrier of the Second Realm and stepped into the Third Realm, Blood Exchange.
The old blood in her body was gradually purged, replaced by newly born blood qi that surged through her meridians like a rushing river, brimming with power.
For a mortal martial artist, reaching the Third Realm, Blood Exchange, was enough to establish a sect and fight a hundred men alone.
Yet, in the eyes of cultivators who could fly on swords and split mountains, she was still an ant that could be crushed at any moment.
“Whew—”
Su Yueli exhaled a breath of white mist and turned to look at Lu Chen's solitary grave.
After five years of exposure to the elements, her master's grave was covered in waist-high weeds that shivered in the autumn wind.
“Master, I found some clues. It was done by those people from above.”
Su Yueli walked to the grave and began pulling out the weeds one by one, her voice calm. “I have also stepped into the Third Realm, but I am still too weak.”
She paused, then stood up.
“I plan to go down the mountain now. I'm heading to Qingzhou City to find your close friend, Tie Tu.”
Soon, Su Yueli changed into clean clothes and walked out of Black Wind Ridge.
As she passed Fengling City, Su Yueli stopped outside the gates.
It was the Lantern Festival. The city was brightly lit, the long streets hung with lanterns. Fireworks blossomed in the night sky, illuminating the snow on the official road outside the city.
Men and women huddled close together, and children holding candied hawthorns threaded through the crowds. It was a scene full of mortal life, radiating the most vibrant warmth of the mortal world.
Su Yueli stood in the shadows, quietly watching.
For a brief moment, a flicker of envy flashed in her eyes.
If she had a spiritual root, and if she hadn't gone through all of this, perhaps she could have lived like a normal person, finding a peaceful haven in this vast mortal world.
But a moment later, that envy was completely extinguished, like a spark in the wind.
She could never start a family.
Aside from her monstrous appearance, forever frozen at seventeen or eighteen, there was also a psychological barrier she could never overcome.
A male soul in a female body.
She could not marry a woman, nor could she be wed to a man. Love, to her, was nothing but an absurd joke.
She was like a lonely ghost cast aside by the Heavenly Dao outside the long river of time, destined to walk alone forever—unable to marry, unable to be wed, and unable to love.
Solitude was the only companion for those with longevity.
Su Yueli withdrew her gaze and turned toward the sunlit slope outside the city.
Five years of time had also subtly altered the landscape of the sunlit slope.
Shen Qing'an's solitary grave, left untended, had mostly collapsed.
Not only was the mound covered in withered grass, but a crooked wild jujube tree had even sprouted beside it, its roots digging deep into the soil as if to completely merge the person beneath with the earth.
Su Yueli walked to the grave, parted the waist-deep weeds, and sat down beside the sunken mound.
“Shen Qing'an, I've come to see you.”
Su Yueli's voice was very soft, sounding exceptionally ethereal under the cold moonlight.
“I haven't been here in five years, and your roof has collapsed. It's overgrown with weeds too. You were so cold before you died, but now that you have these weeds to block the wind, it should be a bit better, right?”
She reached out and patted a stalk of weed sticking out of the dirt.
“The thing you spent all your fortune to buy, I didn't take it. I left it to be buried with you. The immortals are high and mighty, but we mortals don't care for their things.”
The night wind blew, rustling the dry branches of the wild jujube tree as if in response.
Su Yueli tilted her head back, looking at the cold, bright moon in the night sky.
“I am leaving. I'm going to Qingzhou City.”
“The cultivators of this world owe us too much. Whether it is the Cangyun Sect or the cultivator who killed my master, I will settle these scores one by one.”
“I have no Bone Talent, so I cannot cultivate.”
Su Yueli slowly stood up. The night wind whipped her long hair, and her cold eyes burned with a fire that seemed capable of piercing the heavens.
“Then I will use the martial path to reach the Tenth Realm, the Eleventh Realm, and walk to the very end of time!”
“Until one day, I drag them down from the heavens, one by one, and grind them into the dust!”
With that, Su Yueli did not look back at the thousands of city lights again. She turned and walked into the boundless night, heading in the direction of Qingzhou City.
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