Chapter 113 – Complications Arise

Just as her heart gave its final beat, the life force within the Ninth-Grade Rejuvenation Pill connected.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Her heartbeat revived. Meridians and flesh reformed at a speed visible to the naked eye, and blood began to flow once more.

Zhan Changfeng’s skeletal fingers twitched as sinew and muscle crept over them.

Within the beam of light, fine blue-green blood vessels were visible beneath her translucent skin.

She slowly opened her eyes, shifted her body, propped herself up, and sat cross-legged to examine herself internally.

The destroyed half of her body had been fully restored. However, some residual medicinal energy still infused with life force lingered throughout various parts of her body. If left unattended, it would quickly dissipate and vanish.

Zhan Changfeng naturally would not let it go to waste. She circulated her sword cultivation technique, and the true qi that had long been restrained within her dantian began refining the medicinal energy along the paths of the Small and Great Heavenly Cycles, taking the opportunity to open up her newly reformed meridians.

By now, nine days had already passed in the outside world.

On this tenth day, a cloud drifted above the Bureau of Patrol, then descended and spread into a blanket of mist.

Shi’er jolted awake from meditation and stared gravely at the two figures emerging from the mist. His heart lurched. He clasped his hands and bowed. “Greetings to Ruhe True Sovereign. True Sovereign, you—”

The man wore a taiji Daoist robe and held a horsehair whisk—it was none other than Ruhe True Sovereign, who had appeared in Ghost City that day. Beside him floated a soul clad in blue, none other than Mu Yunxi.

“I’m not here for you,” Ruhe True Sovereign said. Seeing the unusually lush vegetation growing around the meditation chamber, he let out a deep sigh. “I spent two years negotiating with Tiannanxing, offering several spirit veins in exchange for a Rejuvenation Pill, yet never succeeded—only for him to secretly give one away to someone else.”

Tiannanxing was the title of the Shennong Sect’s sect master.

Shi’er had long heard rumors that Ruhe True Sovereign had been petitioning their master for a Ninth-Grade Rejuvenation Pill, but he never expected the man to track them down here.

The Shennong Codex was of paramount importance. The sect should have already sealed all information about it. How on earth had he found this place?

Shi’er broke into a cold sweat. “Please forgive us, True Sovereign. The Ninth-Grade Rejuvenation Pill has already been refined. If you wish to reconstruct a physical body for your disciple, you could seek the Primordial Unity True Water at the Mistsea Platform.”

Ruhe True Sovereign said nothing. A physical body? What he intended to forge for Mu Yunxi was a dharma body—true dragon bone, white tiger sinew, phoenix blood, with Primordial Unity True Water as the medium. All he lacked now was a wisp of life force from the Ninth-Grade Rejuvenation Pill—that sliver of energy that could seize the creative power of heaven and earth.

Having come this far, he absolutely could not let all his efforts go to waste.

Ruhe True Sovereign reached his hand toward the meditation chamber. The barriers Shi’er had set shattered inch by inch under his touch, fragile as thin cloth.

Shi’er stepped forward to block him. “Does Ruhe True Sovereign intend to make an enemy of the Shennong Sect?!”

The Shennong Codex was inside. That codex was tied to tens of thousands of years of the Shennong Sect’s orthodox heritage. If he dared let anything happen to it, even taking his own life would not be enough to atone for his transgression.

“Junior sister, what are you waiting for?!”

Seeing his desperation, Baizhi’s expression turned grave. She realized that whatever Zhan Changfeng carried was far more than just some lost sect relic. Not daring to take any chances, she hurriedly deployed several grand arrays to enclose the meditation chamber.

These arrays had all been bestowed by the sect before their departure—even a True Sovereign might not be able to break through them.

A flicker of surprise crossed Ruhe True Sovereign’s face, as though he hadn’t expected Shi’er to invoke the Shennong Sect as a threat. But what did it matter? That wisp of life force—even if he had to strip it by force, he would tear it from the person inside.

“I will seek your master’s forgiveness afterward.” Ruhe calmly waved his horsehair whisk. One became ten, ten became a hundred, a hundred became a thousand—in an instant, thousands of devastating astral winds slammed into the grand arrays.

The earth trembled and the building shook. The Bureau of Patrol’s own defensive array was triggered, immediately sealing off the entire area.

Shi’er and Baizhi hadn’t expected him to press forward so relentlessly. They could only struggle to maintain the arrays, buying time.

“Junior sister, send word to the sect for reinforcements!”

“But—” The Ninth-Grade Rejuvenation Pill itself had been transmitted through a spatial corridor after the sect received their message. Sending objects was easy, but sending people was far harder—it would take at least ten-odd days.

“Senior brother, I’ll send a message to the sect first. You ask the Bureau of Patrol for help. This is happening on their territory—they can’t just ignore it.”

Ruhe True Sovereign had already been here for a good while. If the Bureau of Patrol truly intended to intervene, they would have appeared long ago.

Shi’er hesitated for a moment, then agreed. “Alright.”

He formed a hand seal and conjured a magpie from qi. The magpie flew away from the epicenter of the disturbance and, under the watchful eyes of the Bureau’s experts, wound past corridors and waterside pavilions before landing on someone’s hand.

With a slight flick of her sleeve, the conjured magpie dissolved into raw qi.

Beside her, Ji Guang couldn’t help but scratch the stubble on his chin. “This is a tough one. We don’t even know the full picture. Judging by how those two from the Shennong Sect are acting, whatever she’s carrying must be critical to their sect. And knowing Ruhe True Sovereign’s stubbornness, he’s absolutely determined to get that Rejuvenation Pill. I’ve heard his disciple has nothing left but a Primordial Spirit—the pill must have been meant for him.”

Ji Guang mused further. “This Mu Yunxi must be their sect’s Dao Child disciple—to make a True Sovereign resort to outright seizure on his behalf.”

“By your reasoning, this is a clash between two sects over their orthodox lineages. We really shouldn’t get involved.” The Bureau Prefect replied casually, scattering some fish feed. Golden-threaded koi swarmed over, sending ripples dancing across the water’s surface.

Ji Guang then felt uneasy about that approach. “But if we do nothing, won’t it make the Bureau of Patrol look powerless? Like we’re afraid of them?”

“Right now it’s a dispute between two parties. There’s no need for us to act,” the Bureau Prefect said with a smile. “The aggrieved party that the Bureau should be protecting—isn’t she doing just fine?”

“…” Ji Guang was speechless. He’d almost forgotten about her.

Zhan Changfeng was well aware of the fighting outside, but the level of combat between those parties was clearly beyond anything she could influence at present. Rather than worrying, she might as well focus on herself.

With admirable composure, Zhan Changfeng continued refining the medicinal energy.

The bulk of the Ninth-Grade Rejuvenation Pill’s power had gone toward restoring her physical body. The remainder was being refined, but even this residual energy was staggeringly vast—so much that it nearly burst her meridians and internal organs.

Zhan Changfeng guided it through her eight extraordinary meridians again and again, opening the body’s eighteen qi acupoints one by one. Finally, when the last acupoint was cleared, a mighty torrent of true qi surged toward her lower dantian.

She had previously observed that the Wolf King possessed both primordial essence and a Primordial Spirit, which inspired her to open her own Qi Sea and condense primordial essence. This was precisely why she had traded for the spirit medicine.

Compared to something like the Shennong Codex, her own path to Foundation Establishment was clearly more important.

Using her own true qi as a hammer and her dantian as the anvil, through relentless tempering day and night, her egg-sized dantian compressed into a thin, wisp-like sheet of qi—and yet it seemed infinitely vast, as though it were an entirely separate dimension.

Seeing this, Zhan Changfeng banished all stray thoughts, circulated her sword technique, and focused even more intently. This phenomenon was the critical threshold before the Qi Sea could be opened, known as the Proof of Strength.

Using the combined power of Essence, Qi, and Spirit, one must prove the key to one’s own Qi Sea.

True qi alone was not enough. The five-element qi of the five organs—come!

Still not enough!

Zhan Changfeng extended her spiritual awareness, sensed the heaven-and-earth elemental qi surrounding her, and drew it in!

The vegetation around the meditation chamber swayed ceaselessly, pebbles trembled, and Shi’er, Ruhe True Sovereign, and the others all looked up to see the elemental qi of heaven and earth spiraling into the chamber like a vortex.

“Wasn’t she just refining medicinal energy? How did it turn into a breakthrough?!” Shi’er’s jaw ached. He glanced at Ruhe True Sovereign, who was watching like a hawk, and it ached even more.

Good grief—they were fighting tooth and nail out here, and she had gone and started breaking through.

Ruhe True Sovereign’s brow furrowed slightly. If that wisp of life force was fully refined, everything would be lost.

“Infinite Shattering.”

As his incantation fell, the Shennong Sect’s grand array was torn apart as if by a giant hand—it collapsed!

Shi’er and Baizhi suffered the backlash one after the other. They couldn’t possibly stop him, and could only watch helplessly as he ripped the roof clean off the meditation chamber!

But at that very moment, the torrent of true qi inside Zhan Changfeng’s body swelled larger and larger. Finally, in the course of tempering her dantian, it forged itself one step ahead into a colossal sword. In that instant, her Essence, Qi, and Spirit converged to their peak. She seized the giant sword and brought it crashing down upon her dantian.

BOOM—

A sound like the splitting of heaven and earth thundered through her mind. Her dantian cracked open, and countless streams of true qi surged in, forcing open a vast new expanse of space.

Outside, Ruhe True Sovereign and the others heard the piercing ring of a sword. Then, without warning, a beam of divine light descended from the heavens. Within the light stood a fearsome divine general with three heads and six arms, wielding a heaven-supporting great sword. His round eyes blazed with fury as he swatted away Ruhe True Sovereign’s invisible hand and bellowed a single word: “WITHDRAW!”

Ruhe True Sovereign’s spirit reeled. His pupils contracted sharply, as though he had witnessed something utterly inconceivable.

Across the way, Ji Guang—who had been about to activate the meditation chamber’s defenses—was so startled that he dropped his brush. “A… a Dao-Guarding Divine General?!”

“That is…” The Bureau Prefect’s eyes widened. “The Dao-Guarding Divine General of the Return-to-One Sword Dao. She is the Return-to-One Sword Sect’s Dao Child?”

Even if she wasn’t the Dao Child, she had to be someone of great importance. Otherwise, the Return-to-One Sword Sect would never have dispatched a Dao-Guarding Divine General.

A Dao-Guarding Divine General protects a sect’s orthodox lineage. Only those who have received the blessings of their sect’s elders will, when their breakthrough is obstructed or their true spirit faces destruction, send word to the heavens and summon a Dao-Guarding Divine General’s protection.

Guarding the Dao meant ensuring the continuation of a lineage. So under normal circumstances—injured was injured, dead was dead—as long as the true spirit remained intact, the sect could still guide them into reincarnation. But if a breakthrough was obstructed or a true spirit was destroyed, that was an attack on the lineage’s transmission of orthodox heritage. In such cases, a Dao-Guarding Divine General would inevitably descend.

Ruhe True Sovereign drew a deep breath, lowered his gaze, and swept up Mu Yunxi—who had been watching from the sidelines—before departing. The matter of the life force would have to be resolved another way.