In the woods, the shadow of the sword slowly drew to a close.
Ye Ling exhaled a breath of turbid air, drawing her inner breath back into her body.
A thin layer of sweat beaded on her forehead, and her clothes were slightly damp, but she did not look disheveled.
It was getting late.
She turned and walked back.
Just as she entered the courtyard gate, a servant walked over quickly, bowed his head, and said, “Miss, the Master and Madam are already waiting in the living room. They request your presence for dinner.”
Ye Ling wiped the sweat from her forehead and nodded. “I understand. I'll head over right now.”
She tidied her clothes and walked toward the front hall.
“Ling'er, Mother's precious daughter, why are you only returning now? Are you tired from cultivating today? Why did you do extra practice again?”
As soon as she entered, a middle-aged woman dressed in a green dress came forward, took Ye Ling's hand, and gently patted it.
That long-lost feeling of warmth made Ye Ling feel both unfamiliar and intimately familiar.
Her body trembled slightly.
This was her mother in this life.
She had subconsciously frowned at first, but quickly relaxed.
“This is my mother.”
Deep in her sea of consciousness, the last trace of estrangement quietly melted away at this moment.
The memories of her two lifetimes merged completely, no longer separated.
She felt like something extra had appeared in her sea of consciousness. However, now was not the time to examine it closely; she would wait until after dinner.
“Look at you. Mother went to your room just now to deliver food and didn't see you, so I knew you were doing extra practice again.”
Wu Wanmei pulled Ye Ling to sit down at the dining table. She massaged her shoulders while nagging, wanting to scold her but unable to bring herself to do so.
“You're just spoiling her.”
Beside them, Ye Ling's stern-faced father, Ye Qingxuan, sighed, but the pride in his eyes could not be hidden.
“Every time she finishes practicing at the martial arts arena, she comes back and does extra practice on her own. Whose child is like her?”
His daughter was highly talented and could endure hardships, and her cultivation was among the best of her peers.
Who in the clan wouldn't praise her upon seeing her?
“Father, Mother, stop talking. The food is getting cold.”
Ye Ling was not very good at talking in either of her lifetimes, nor did she like making friends—a classic socially anxious homebody.
She simply liked being alone to do what she enjoyed, which was also the reason she could always persist in extra practice.
Ye Ling's parents understood their daughter's temperament and wanted her to be more outgoing, so they tried to talk to her as much as possible during meals.
Seeing their daughter speak up about eating, they stopped talking.
Ye Qingxuan took a sip from his wine cup, watched his daughter eat with her head down, and suddenly asked.
“Ling'er, are you confident about the family competition in half a year?”
Ye Ling looked up at her father, thought for a moment, and said, “I'm decently confident.”
“What do you mean 'decently confident'?” Ye Qingxuan frowned. “Your current cultivation is at the Houtian Fifth Layer. Work a bit harder and see if you can break through to the Houtian Sixth Layer by then.”
“Father,” Ye Ling interrupted him, “when I say I'm decently confident, I mean it.”
Ye Qingxuan was choked up by her words. He opened his mouth, then closed it again.
Wu Wanmei giggled on the side and placed some food into his bowl with her chopsticks. “Alright, alright, our daughter knows what she's doing. Say less.”
Ye Qingxuan snorted and stopped talking.
Ye Ling lowered her head and continued eating.
“Houtian Sixth Layer? Soon.”
After dinner, Ye Ling made an excuse and returned to her room.
She finally had time to see what extra thing had appeared in her sea of consciousness.
But wasn't one supposed to break through to the Xiantian Realm before being able to perform inner inspection of the sea of consciousness?
On second thought, she had lived two lives; what was impossible?
She sat cross-legged, cleared her mind of distracting thoughts, and probed deep into her sea of consciousness with her mind.
The moment her divine sense sank in, a vast and quiet spiritual world slowly unfolded.
Then, she froze.
Her soul was translucent white, firmly rooted in the center of her sea of consciousness, its aura steady and profound.
After the souls of her two lifetimes merged completely, it was as if they had undergone a qualitative change, becoming condensed, pure, and solid, standing there like a jade pillar.
And above her soul, four characters floated in the void.
Heaven Rewards Diligence.
The four characters were vigorous and powerful, embedded in the void, glowing with a faint golden light, hanging motionlessly at the highest point of her sea of consciousness.
There was a faint, subtle ringing echoing, as if heaven and earth were acknowledging something.
Ye Ling watched quietly, her heart shaking with no small amount of shock.
“Is this... my cheat?”
When she read novels in her past life, she always saw protagonists with all kinds of cheats.
Some carried a hidden mentor around, some had a system, and others picked up divine weapons.
Her cheat was just these four characters?
She stared at “Heaven Rewards Diligence” for a long while, gradually figuring out its meaning.
The so-called Heaven Rewards Diligence was a gift bestowed by the heavens upon those who cultivated diligently.
From now on, she would no longer have any bottlenecks when practicing martial arts or cultivation techniques.
The bottlenecks that others spent years or even decades grinding through simply did not exist for her.
As long as she kept practicing, her spiritual energy would rise layer by layer, and breaking through would be a natural progression.
It wasn't just her cultivation realm. Whether it was martial techniques, movement techniques, or cultivation techniques, it was all the same; as long as she kept practicing, she would eventually master them to the realm of Great Perfection.
Moves that others had to practice thousands of times just to initiate, she could learn with a single glance and master with a single practice.
Those martial arts insights that required slow adaptation could be grasped by her at will, without the slightest obstacle.
Every bit of effort she put into hard practice would be received by the Heavenly Dao and returned to her twofold.
“Isn't this just a flat-out cheat?”
Ye Ling's heart instantly brightened.
“It looks like I'm about to take off.”
Her mind gently withdrew, and her divine sense exited her sea of consciousness.
She opened her eyes, a sharp glint flashing across them.
Her entire body felt light and comfortable, and all the minor discomforts she used to feel during cultivation were completely gone.
“But just looking at it won't do; I have to try it out.”
Suppressing the waves in her heart, Ye Ling continued to sit cross-legged, focusing her mind to circulate the Ye family's ancestral Qingyuan Art, a Yellow-grade mid-tier cultivation technique.
Previously, when practicing this technique, her meridians always felt a bit blocked, the cycles circulated slowly, and she had to repeatedly grind each acupoint for a long time before it would open.
Today was completely different.
The four characters in her sea of consciousness vibrated slightly, and an invisible Dao rhyme enveloped her entire body.
The surrounding spiritual energy of heaven and earth seemed to be drawn by something, surging desperately into her meridians and circulating rapidly along the path of the Qingyuan Art.
The path of the technique was crystal clear. The parts she had previously found obscure and difficult to understand were now perfectly imprinted in her mind.
No need to ponder, no need for trial and error.
The cycles circulated smoothly and harmoniously, all in one go.
“It really works.”
In just a few breaths, the barrier of the cultivation technique that had blocked her for a long time vanished.
Buzz.
A light tremor spread through her body. The Qingyuan Art directly broke through its previous shackles, stepping from Mastery into Great Perfection!
Pure spiritual energy surged rapidly through her meridians. Every profound mystery and circulation path of the technique was thoroughly mastered by her, returning to one in perfection.
Her aura suddenly surged by a large margin, and her foundation became more solid than before by more than just one level.
Immediately after, her cultivation bottleneck shattered as well.
Her qi ocean churned, and the spiritual energy transformed layer by layer, her cultivation steadily stepping into the Houtian Sixth Layer.
The technique had reached Great Perfection, and her realm had advanced.
A double blessing.
Ye Ling opened her eyes and looked down at her hands.
“The technique is at Great Perfection, and my cultivation is now at the Houtian Sixth Layer.”
One had to know that before this, she had broken through to the Mastery stage of the Qingyuan Art in less than three years, making her already the second person in the Ye family in a hundred years, second only to Ye Chen.
And while Mastery and Great Perfection seemed only a step apart, they were actually worlds apart.
How many Ye family disciples had practiced for over a decade, only to be trapped at Mastery for their entire lives, unable to even touch the edge of Great Perfection?
Even many elders in the clan had failed to practice their ancestral technique to Great Perfection in their youth.
But today, relying on “Heaven Rewards Diligence,” she had achieved it in one fell swoop.
Her current spiritual energy was robust, and her technique's foundation was flawless.
In terms of cultivation techniques alone, she had already left everyone in the younger generation of the Ye family far behind.
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