The atmosphere within Prince Yong's main hall was deathly cold, a deep, penetrating chill that clung to the air and seeped into the bones of everyone present. Su Min sparked the Nanming Lihuo in her palm, casting a faint, golden warmth that pushed back against the gloom as she muttered under her breath, directing her irritation at Xie Yingying.
That troublesome woman was perfectly capable of restraining her frigid aura completely, yet she insisted on letting a sliver of it leak out, as if cultivating the image of some lofty, untouchable immortal from a forgotten age. It was an unnecessary theatrical touch.
Fortunately, Cao Yuanmu had now stepped into the Foundation Establishment realm, so the cold did not bother him much. But the same could not be said for the ordinary mortal advisors and servants in the room, their lips were tinged with blue, their hands trembling slightly as they tried to maintain their composure.
Su Min had half expected that Xie Yingying would not care about the discomfort of others, but to her surprise, the moment her heavenly flame appeared, the other woman silently reined in her aura, pulling the cold back into herself until the room's temperature became merely cool, a noticeable and immediate relief.
"What is the current status of that creature?" Su Min asked, her tone steady and businesslike, getting straight to the point.
She had not been wholly focused when refining her last batch of pills, keeping a thin thread of her consciousness free to monitor the outside situation. Prince Yong had been updating her diligently, knowing full well that she was their only real hope against the emerging threat. To make matters worse, the creature's lair was situated perilously close to Yongzhou City, his own seat of power.
If it truly awakened, his domain would be the first to fall. He did not need Su Min to urge him to act, he was already deeply, personally invested, his face lined with a ruler's worry.
"So you are saying it has begun absorbing corpse qi at a much faster rate?" Su Min frowned, processing the report. "It is trying to break free within the month? What is the rush?"
A corpse demon, born crippled by its very nature, was rushing its own awakening? Was it truly that eager to die? It made no logical sense.
Then again, this one had somehow reached the Golden Core stage in its undeath. There was a real chance it retained a shard of its former consciousness, now twisted and paranoid but dangerously sharp. Prince Yong was visibly uneasy, his hands clasped tightly behind his back. A Golden Core corpse demon was a walking nightmare, cunning, brutal, and cursed with dark, corrosive power. Only the two women standing before him had any real hope of stopping it.
He had other Foundation Establishment cultivators nominally on his side. Master Mo had a longstanding bond with them and acted as their voice in the martial world, and Master Hui Ming would never sit idle in such a crisis. But none of them could be fully relied upon for this. He still remembered the sheer horror atop the Yongzhou walls twenty years prior. Against such a primordial evil, no one but these two had proven their mettle.
Even Master Mo was just a representative of his sect's interests. Only Su Min, of those outside the ancient royal bloodline, had earned the right to stand as an equal partner to the lineage of Prince Yong, an inheritance that stretched back centuries and claimed dominion over tens of millions of souls.
"Three days from now will be the full moon," Su Min said slowly, thinking it through aloud. "If that creature absorbs the peak lunar essence, it could temporarily stabilize its flawed foundation. Whatever power it loses by awakening early, it will more than reclaim under the moon's direct blessing."
"I see..." came Xie Yingying's voice from beside her, thoughtful and calm. "It seeks to use the moon's yin essence to compensate for its own inherent instability. A clever, if desperate, tactic."
Su Min fell silent for a moment, pondering her companion's words. This sort of esoteric detail had not been mentioned in the game world's basic lore. It might have been hidden in some obscure item description, the kind those soul crushing games loved to use. She had never had the patience for them, so of course she would not know. It was a small, nagging gap in her knowledge.
"I am ready to act whenever. What about you?" she asked Xie Yingying, turning to face her directly.
A few months' difference meant little to her. Cultivation was not a path for the impatient. She had just stabilized her own breakthrough and would not foolishly rush toward the later Foundation stages. Besides, against a corpse demon with a shaky Golden Core foundation, her current cultivation, paired with techniques designed specifically to counter such beings, was more than sufficient. She felt no fear, only a focused readiness.
Xie Yingying did not even blink, her gaze as steady as ice.
"I am ready. I will hold its attention. All corpse demons carry a chilling yin aura in their attacks. Their primary means of assault will be largely useless against me. You focus on the offense. Your Nanming Lihuo will burn through its defenses like paper."
"Then there is no need to wait. Let us leave now," Su Min said briskly. She was never one for pointless delays. The creature had only just begun its awakening. If they struck now, they might be able to sever its progress before it reached its peak, saving them a great deal of trouble.
"In that case, this Prince, on behalf of the Eight Prefectures and Three Counties, and its millions of residents, offers our deepest gratitude," Prince Yong said, his voice solemn and heavy with the responsibility he bore for every single one of those lives.
The others in the room, advisors and guards alike, followed his lead, rising to their feet in unison and offering Su Min and Xie Yingying a deep, formal bow, a gesture of profound respect and desperate hope. Even Xie Yingying was subtly taken aback by the genuine, collective weight of the gesture. In that moment, she began to understand a little better why Su Min's reputation among the common people carried such profound weight. This was the flip side of that reverence.
"That is enough. You do not need to be so formal," Su Min said, waving a hand slightly to cut the ceremony short. "What is more important is that you keep people far away from the site. Once the fight begins, neither of us can guarantee control over the battlefield. Anyone caught nearby will be swept up and likely killed."
"Understood," the prince replied, his voice firm. He took a deep breath as if to say more, to wish them luck or plead for their success, but he held his tongue. There was nothing more to say that would change what was to come. Words were empty now, only actions mattered.
Before he could form the words, the two women vanished from the hall in a blur of motion, already gone, leaving only a faint chill and a trace of heat in the air where they had stood.
Not long into their journey, as they sped across the rugged landscape, leaping from one rocky outcrop to the next, Xie Yingying broke the comfortable silence between them.
"After this… do you want to seal yourself with me?"
Su Min glanced sideways at her, not stopping her pace, her expression unreadable.
Xie Yingying's voice was steady, but softer than usual, lacking its usual cutting edge. "I know your Su Clan still holds that grudge against the old witch from the Hehuan Sect, but that can wait until you reach Golden Core. You know as well as I do, performing a seal at the Foundation Stage is far easier and safer than trying it after forming a core."
Su Min slowed ever so slightly, her feet landing gently on a wide, flat stone. The wind stirred her sleeves, but her expression remained unreadable, a mask of calm.
"…So you dug that far back," she murmured.
She did not sound angry. If anything, her tone was thoughtful, quiet as a finger tracing an old, faded scar. There was no bitterness in it, just a quiet astonishment. Not because the memory had faded for her, but because someone else had bothered to uncover it and carry its weight, too.
She did not look at Xie Yingying. Her gaze stayed fixed on the rocky path winding through the mountain pass ahead, as if the answer she sought could be found etched into the stone itself.
"There is no need," Su Min said, her voice final, like a door closing softly but firmly. "I have already made my preparations."
She reached up, adjusting her sleeve though nothing was out of place. "Three hundred years from now," she added, almost as if reciting a vow to the mountains, "we will meet again on the Golden Core Avenue."
Xie Yingying studied her profile for a long moment, perhaps weighing whether to press the issue further. But in the end, she only gave a single, slow nod, accepting the decision.
"Very well. Just do not forget your grudge," she said, her tone pragmatic, almost clinical. "If you leave it to rot inside you, it will fester and turn into a heart demon."
Su Min gave a faint, almost imperceptible smile, but there was no warmth in it. Not anger either, just a deep, unwavering calm that had taken years of solitude to cultivate.
Forget? She had endured precisely because she remembered. It was the fuel for her resolve, the core of her will to cultivate against all odds.
Of course she knew what Xie Yingying was truly offering, a fragment of her own profoundly precious Sealing Crystal. It was no small gesture. Something that valuable was not given lightly, not even to a close ally. It was an invitation, not only to safety from the ravages of time, but to walk the long road toward immortality side by side.
Their spiritual roots were perfect opposites. Their core inheritances would not interfere with one another. It was a perfect match on paper, a synergistic partnership.
But Su Min simply did not need it.
From the moment she had first sat before her screen, her fingers hovering over the choices that would define a lifetime, she had already chosen her path. Immortality. Heavenly Dao Insight. A road meant for solitude, for those willing to endure centuries of silence for a future no one else could see.
What use was sealing oneself away when she had already committed to outlasting the world itself?
"I appreciate the thought," she said after a long moment of shared silence, "but I will not need it."
There was nothing arrogant in her voice, only a bedrock certainty. She would cultivate quietly, endure quietly, and when the time was right, she would walk forward while the rest of the world turned to dust around her. That was her path.
Eventually, they arrived at their destination, a vast tract of barren land where not a single blade of grass grew, a place that felt dead even to the air.
"This is the so called Valley of Death," Su Min stated, her voice flat. "After that last emperor's blood sacrifice, this place was shrouded in corpse energy for centuries. Any living thing that approached met a gruesome end. But now, as the monster absorbs the energy back into itself, life is slowly returning."
Kneeling, she observed the cracked ground where tiny, resilient green sprouts had begun to push their way toward the sun, a stark contrast to the desolation around them.
The ambient corpse energy had dissipated, and the Valley of Death's blighted range was visibly shrinking, retreating like a tide.
"We wait atop that ridge," Su Min said, pointing to a rocky outcrop that overlooked the barren basin. "We are strong enough to ignore the lingering corpse qi, but there is no need to alert it too soon. Once it shows itself, we strike and end this quickly." She then glanced at the sky, where the moon was already a bright sliver in the afternoon light. "And the full moon's energy might give you a slight boost as well."
Xie Yingying nodded, her pale skin seeming to glow in the bleak light as if already drawing power from the coming night. "Understood."
===
"do you want to seal yourself with me?"
Certaintly, our Yingying began to open up her hearts and trust Su Min. I mean, even if she want allied with her in the upcoming event, 'Sleep at the same place' clearly very risky as both of them is not 'that close' right now. Considering this world is "Xianxia" background where your closest person can stab you on your back.