"Whew, we are out."
As soon as she emerged from the dark cosmos into the familiar void, Su Min could not help but tilt her head back and take a deep, cleansing breath. That constant, oppressive, nauseating feeling of the dark energy was finally gone. Every time she had cultivated or healed her injuries there, she had to constantly filter out that disgusting stuff while recovering, it had been utterly revolting.
"Yeah, after spending so long in that place, it is finally nice to breathe some fresh air again."
Hearing Su Min's words, Yao Xian'er, standing beside her, nodded in heartfelt agreement.
"Wait, air?"
Su Min scratched her head in genuine confusion. They were in the vacuum of cosmic space, there was not just no air here, there was not even any ambient spiritual energy.
But before she could finish speaking, she felt a firm hand grab the back of her collar. The next moment, the world spun around her violently as Yao Xian'er took her on a brutal, high speed spatial jump.
At that moment, Su Min felt less like a cultivator and more like a ragged cloth fluttering wildly in the wind behind a supersonic airplane.
In less than three days, a thoroughly miserable looking, spiritually windswept Su Min was unceremoniously deposited on the outskirts of the Heavenly Continent. No matter how strong her combat power was, she was still only a Unity stage late phase cultivator.
There were some fundamental things, like sustained spatial travel, she simply could not compare to a genuine Mahayana stage cultivator, it was just how the realms were. So while it had taken her a long, self powered time to fly out to the dark frontier, being unceremoniously carried back by a Mahayana stage expert took only a few days.
"The gap is still huge, what a headache."
Su Min could not help but mutter to herself, straightening her disheveled robes.
"Don't be too discouraged. You are already doing incredibly well. Right now, in the entire Heavenly Continent or even the whole universe outside the dark cosmos, you are only beneath the two of us in true power. And this is your first life, with no accumulated foundation or past life reserves like we have."
"Yeah,"
Su Min just shrugged helplessly before turning to fly back towards her own sect. She had brought back something incredibly precious for Xie Yingying, she had used less than a third of that Lunar Sovereign corpse's essence blood, yet it had already allowed her to fully master and integrate the power of the Lunar Sovereign within her. The rest, the vast majority, could all be given to Xie Yingying.
As for the troubling, world ending matters, she would think about them after she had a moment to breathe and reunite properly.
Soon...
Soon...
"Guess who is back?"
A familiar voice, soft, mischievous, and laced with a warmth that felt like it did not quite belong in this moment, ghosted directly against Xie Yingying's ear.
Before she could even process the sound, a familiar, solid warmth enveloped her from behind. Arms, firm and sure, looped around her waist, pulling her back against a firm body. A radiant, perfected white heat pressed against her back, so potent and complete it seemed to steal the air from her lungs. It was no longer just spiritual energy, it was a presence, a fundamental force of nature that called directly to the core of her soul.
Something deep inside her, a cord of restraint she had kept taut for over a century, snapped.
The delicate porcelain teacup in her hand trembled violently, a sharp clink of porcelain the only protest in the sudden, charged stillness of the room.
"Su Min?" The name was a choked whisper, torn from her lips, a prayer and a curse all at once.
A low, deliberate hum vibrated against her spine, a sound that resonated in her very bones. In response, her own dormant Taiyin energy, usually a placid silver lake deep within her, surged into a violent, crashing tidal wave. This was different. This was complete. The Taiyang energy blooming around her from Su Min was not the wild, flickering sun she had once nearly lost herself to, it was a calm, devastating totality, a perfected sun that was a thousand times more seductive and overwhelming.
The Lunar Sovereign essence in her responded instantly, catastrophically.
Her heartbeat stumbled, skipping erratically. A flush of heat, entirely separate from the room's temperature, bloomed across her skin, prickling and intense. Her limbs softened, her knees threatening to buckle as a familiar, aching heat pooled low in her body with humiliating, instantaneous speed. Her self control, hard earned through more than a hundred years of disciplined training, cracked open like thin ice under a hammer.
Su Min's voice brushed against the nape of her neck, muffled by the fabric of her robe and her hair. "Mmm. I missed this scent."
A full body shudder wracked Xie Yingying's frame. A soft, entirely involuntary sound, half moan, half sigh, escaped her lips before she could clamp them shut. Embarrassing. She should shove her away, scold her for this brazenness after so long. But her body, traitorous and starved, acted on its own ancient programming. Her spine arched slightly, pressing her back more firmly into that brilliant, intoxicating warmth, a silent plea her rational mind would never voice.
The urge was immediate, visceral. She wanted to turn around and pin Su Min against the nearest surface. She wanted to drown in that light that had once reduced her to a trembling, blissful mess for days on end.
Taiyang. Pure and whole. The exact thing her soul was born to crave. The very thing she had ached for and painfully denied herself for over a century.
"You are not pulling away," Su Min whispered, the tease in her voice laced with a knowing, intimate satisfaction.
"You are not stopping," Xie Yingying shot back, her voice tight, breathless, and strained, almost pleading. She could feel a familiar, telling dampness already gathering between her thighs, her body responding with a humiliating, instinctual readiness that made a mockery of her century of discipline. The walls she had painstakingly built around her desire did not just crack, they crumbled to dust in a single, devastating heartbeat.
Then, abruptly, the warmth vanished.
The absence was a physical blow. The world greyed out, the air turning frigid against her suddenly cold skin. A sharp gasp was punched from her lungs as her body reeled, screaming in protest. Her fingers, acting on pure, desperate instinct, darted behind her and clumsily curled around the edge of Su Min's sleeve, a desperate, unconscious attempt to anchor the sun itself from leaving.
"Why," Her voice was raw, stripped bare of all pretense. "Why did you stop?"
Su Min slipped around to face her, her eyes gleaming with a crooked smile that was both infuriating and irresistible. "Because if I did not, you would have tackled me to the floor, and we really do not have time for that right now."
Xie Yingying stared, her chest heaving, trying to remember how to breathe. She tried to glare, to summon any shred of her usual icy composure, but it was useless. Su Min stood before her, whole and warm and radiant, her very aura a perfect symphony that made every cell in Xie Yingying's body thrum in desperate harmony. She was teasing her as if no time had passed at all.
Except everything had. And that was the problem. The Su Min before her now was complete, her pull a maddening, soul deep craving that made rational thought a distant memory.
"You," She tried to glare, but her gaze kept dropping helplessly to Su Min's lips. "What are you doing, hugging me like that out of nowhere?"
Obviously, only someone with Su Min's terrifying spiritual power and their unique soul resonance could sneak up on her like this. Anyone else would have been reduced to ashes on the spot, or rather, not just anyone, but even many other Unity stage cultivators would not have been able to get so close undetected.
Su Min simply leaned in again, resting her chin lightly on Xie Yingying's shoulder. Her warm, steady breath fanned across the sensitive skin of her neck, each exhale a fresh wave of torment, sending a pulse of heat straight through her core.
"I missed you."
Those three simple words, spoken so softly, landed with the force of a celestial body collapsing. They bypassed all her remaining defenses and struck directly at the lonely, waiting core of her being. Her eyes stung with sudden, unbidden tears. She looked down, her fingers trembling where they still clutched the now forgotten teacup.
Missed her?
The question was a dull, painful blade twisting in her heart. She had lived a hundred years in the silence Su Min had left behind. She had counted the phases of the moon, each one a stark reminder of the balance she lacked, the half of her soul that was missing.
How many quiet, lonely nights had she spent staring into the distance, wishing this exact moment back into existence? Eventually, she had stopped counting. It had become easier to bear the constant ache when she stopped trying to measure the vastness of the void.
Then, Su Min's teasing smile softened into something more profound, more tender. She reached up and brushed her fingers along Xie Yingying's jawline, a touch so gentle it was its own form of agony. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, her hand lingering, a steadying warmth against the storm of sensation raging inside Xie Yingying.
"It has been a long time for you, has not it?"
Xie Yingying did not answer. She could not. The lump in her throat was too large, her voice would surely betray the century of silence and longing she had endured. She merely gave a slight, jerky nod, her eyes still downcast.
The world had moved on without Su Min. But not her. She had waited through each quiet winter, each passing moon, each dull ache she could never name aloud. She had spent years training herself to walk past Su Min's empty spaces within the sect without trembling, spent countless quiet nights trying to forget the exact warmth of that Taiyang glow. Waiting had become a form of survival, a constant, dull ache woven into the very fabric of her existence.
And now Su Min was here, seemingly unchanged and yet fundamentally transformed. Her Taiyang energy was no longer a volatile, flaring power, but a constant, steady state of being. It called to the Taiyin within her not with a frantic, desperate demand, but with a deep, irresistible promise of completion.
Her aura was steadier, like a sun that had settled into its eternal orbit, no longer flickering. The light in her eyes still burned, but it burned quieter, and in its calm, perfected totality, Xie Yingying felt all her hard won control rushing back in, raw and overwhelming and utterly irresistible.
Xie Yingying finally lifted her gaze, her eyes meeting Su Min's.
"How long can you hold it now?" she finally whispered, dreading and craving the answer in equal measure.
Su Min's smile was soft and unwavering, filled with a new certainty. "As long as I want."
Xie Yingying swallowed hard, the sound audible in the quiet room. Her fingers curled into tight fists in her lap, nails digging into her own palms. The implications were terrifying. Before, their most intimate moments had been bounded by a timer, a frantic, passionate race against Su Min's physical limit. Now, now there were no such boundaries. The potential for utter, blissful surrender was infinite, and therefore infinitely more dangerous to her composure.
"Then don't come so close," she murmured, her voice thick with a need she could no longer fully conceal. "It is, it is too much."
"It makes me want things I can not afford to want right now. It makes me forget the world is ending."
"Mm. Is it?" The teasing note in Su Min's voice made her thighs clench involuntarily.
Su Min leaned back slightly, and with a magician's grace, produced a small, crystalline vial from her sleeve.
The world narrowed to that single, glowing object.
A single, perfect drop of Taiyin essence blood floated within, shimmering with a pale, captivating silvery light. Xie Yingying's breath caught in her throat. Her Lunar core screamed for it, a hunger so profound it momentarily overshadowed even the magnetic pull of Su Min's body. Her pupils dilated, her entire being focusing on the vial with primal, instinctual intensity.
"For me?" The question was redundant, her body already knew the answer, thrumming with anticipation.
This was pure Taiyin essence blood, something incredibly, vitally precious to her. Since Su Min's body was not a true Lunar Sovereign physique, further absorption of the essence blood after mastering the Taiyin energy would yield severely diminishing returns for her.
It was like her body had developed a resistance, or more accurately, a rejection reaction. But Xie Yingying, as a true Lunar Sovereign Body, did not have that problem at all. Seeing the essence blood, she could not help but swallow hard, her mouth suddenly dry.
"This is for you," Su Min confirmed, her voice gentle but firm. "You are already knocking on the door of the mid phase of the Unity stage. With this and the elixirs I will make for you, you might even break through to the late phase."
The rational part of Xie Yingying's mind instantly grasped the staggering opportunity. Once a cultivator reached the Unity stage, the concept of an unstable foundation became obsolete, the Dharma Form was eternally solidified, and the only path was upward. At this level, a boost like this was not just acceptable, it was a priceless treasure, an incredibly rare shortcut to immense power. It was a step closer to fighting at Su Min's side as an equal, to being a meaningful partner in the coming war.
But that was the rational part.
The instinctual part of her, the very core of her being that was Lunar Sovereign, saw it differently. It saw the essence blood not just as a power up, but as a conduit. A key that would refine her, tune her very soul to become an even more perfect, more harmonious match for the perfected sun standing before her. The thought made her mouth feel parched, her thirst both for raw power and for that ultimate completion becoming one and the same, inseparable desire.
"I..., thank you." Gratitude warred with a confusing, potent mix of desire and urgency.
Then, reality, cold and unyielding, reasserted itself with the force of a slap. Her brows furrowed, the dazed look in her eyes sharpening into focus.
"Why are you back?" she asked, her voice regaining a sliver of its usual steely control. "Senior Jiang Xi said you might be stuck there for thousands of years. I thought,"
"I thought I would have to be the one to find you. I thought I had more time to prepare myself for this."
Su Min's playful edge faded completely, replaced by a grim finality. "Because something terrible is coming. The Dark Rebellion is on the verge of erupting. We had no choice but to return." She paused, letting the weight of her next words sink in. "Yao Xian'er, the Great Thunder Temple, and I will soon be issuing a joint statement to all major powers."
The names were a bucket of ice water dumped over her head. Two genuine Mahayana stage cultivators and the continent's only eighth grade alchemist. A coalition of that magnitude only meant one thing, an existential threat. This was not a warning, it was a declaration of war.
Xie Yingying exhaled slowly, the last remnants of her personal turmoil shoved down, locked away in a mental vault labeled "for later." The woman before her was no longer just her soul's counterpart, she was a general, and the war drums were beginning to beat.
This was not just significant, if this were Earth, it would be like all five permanent UN Security Council members issuing a joint, urgent declaration. Nobody would dare say a word against it, and anyone who did would be politically crushed instantly.
But the more authoritative the announcement, the greater the danger it implied. In her past life, the only things that could make all five major powers unite were threats like global nuclear war or an alien invasion. The same logic applied here, though she did not yet know the full horror of what the Dark Rebellion was.
"This is not just a warning," she said, her voice tightening. "It is war, is not it?"
Su Min nodded slowly, her expression grave.
Xie Yingying exhaled sharply, tension flooding her limbs. "Tell me everything," she said, her voice now flat and controlled, all traces of her earlier vulnerability gone.
So Su Min did. And as the horrifying, large scale picture of the impending Dark Rebellion unfolded, Xie Yingying's expression turned to stone. Her lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line, her jaw clenched so tight it ached. When the story was over, she stood without another word. Her fingers closed around the vial of essence blood with the cold certainty of a soldier gripping a weapon.
She turned and walked decisively toward her secluded cultivation chamber, each step firm with resolve.
But at the threshold, she stopped. She looked back over her shoulder, her eyes meeting Su Min's one last time. In their depths was a swirling tempest of emotions, fear, determination, and a promise that transcended the coming war.
"Wait for me."
Su Min's smile was a small, steady flame in the gathering dark. "Always."
And with that, Xie Yingying vanished into seclusion, the heavy door closing not just on the outside world, but on the part of her heart that desperately, fiercely wanted to pull Su Min into the chamber with her. There would be a time for that reckoning. But first, she needed to become strong enough to ensure they both survived to see it.
Though this might not be enough to reach the legendary Mahayana stage, reaching the late phase of the Unity stage would at least give her combat power approaching Su Min's own. Against early stage Mahayana dark cultivators, she would stand a decent chance.
After all, the most troublesome thing about those creatures was not their raw strength, it was how to completely eradicate them and prevent their escape. Moreover, the normal universe was enemy territory for them. If Su Min and that puppet master controlling the Lunar Sovereign and Solar Sovereign corpses could fight here, they could deal with the dark cultivators much more easily.
"Someone! Deliver my invitations to all the major factions immediately."
Su Min issued the order calmly to a waiting disciple, and the person immediately nodded in acknowledgment before darting away.
Now that the three of them had returned, the entire Heavenly Continent was quietly in an uproar. What was even more alarming to the powers that be was that nearly every major faction had received three identical invitations simultaneously, from the Great Thunder Temple, the Immortal Gate, and the ancient Great Emperor.
The Great Thunder Temple was one thing, a universally acknowledged, if sometimes despised, Buddhist super sect, and the strongest branch of Buddhism, known to have a Mahayana stage cultivator in residence. The other two were even more formidable, especially Su Min, who made every sect leader's heart shudder with a mix of fear and need.
Though there were already a few seventh grade alchemists emerging on the continent, Su Min was still the only confirmed eighth grade one. Everyone needed her, and even though she was likely the weakest in direct combat among the three powerhouses, her influence and soft power far surpassed the other two combined.
Naturally, upon receiving Su Min's personal invitation, everyone was initially all smiles and eager compliance. If they could get closer to her, so much the better, ideally, they could even get her to owe them a favor, making future high grade alchemy requests much easier.
But soon, the leaders of the super factions that received the news stopped smiling. They finally understood why these three supreme powerhouses had issued invitations together. The message inside was brief, but those few words made everyone's hearts tremble with dread.
One month from now, gather at the Immortal Gate to discuss how to face the Dark Rebellion.
Dark Rebellion, those two words alone made every seasoned sect leader feel like they could not breathe. These were ancient factions with long, unbroken histories, they knew exactly what the Dark Rebellion was from their oldest records. And the more they knew, the more terrified they became.
It was a catastrophic calamity spreading from the dark cosmos, a war for survival. If a reigning Great Emperor were present, they would lead the world's strongest cultivators to wage a proactive war against the dark cosmos itself. But without a Great Emperor,
The outcome would be tragic. The entire universe would be slowly overrun by those terrifying, twisted dark cultivators. That would be a true end of days scenario, because dark cultivators, both in individual power and terrifying numbers, were nothing like the fallen ones they occasionally encountered.
And then there were the even more horrifying beings spoken of in whispers, the Residual Immortals.
They were entities capable of shattering universes and destroying imperial artifacts. Many Great Emperors in history had been mortally wounded fighting them, because these were once true immortals who had fallen from grace.
What chilled them to the bone now was the apparent speed with which this Dark Rebellion was erupting. The continent currently had very few Mahayana stage cultivators. Though they had a former Great Emperor in Yao Xian'er holding the line, the gap in overall strength was far too vast.
"While I am gone to this meeting, the sect is in your hands. Also, prepare an emergency escape route, have a few of our most promising Divine Transformation stage disciples take a seed group to the cosmic borderlands and hide. Remember, only Divine Transformation stage cultivators. Dao Comprehension stage ones would be too easily detected by their energy."
Countless sect ancestors and founders were roused from their deep seclusion, staring at the invitations in their hands with grim, ashen expressions.
When the nest was overturned, no egg would remain unbroken. Dao Comprehension stage cultivators were too conspicuous, their energy signatures too bright, they would inevitably be hunted down, dragging everyone around them to their doom. Only Divine Transformation stage cultivators could hope to be preserved, and even they would have to be sealed in life sustaining crystals, using ancient methods to isolate themselves from the Heavenly Dao and the passage of time to evade detection. They could not even bring any imperial artifacts, the energy would be a beacon.
The cost of such a plan was staggering, far greater than what they had paid during the last era of declining spirituality.
This was no longer something ordinary people or even most cultivators could handle. They had no choice but to stand and fight with everything they had. Otherwise, even if a branch of their lineage survived in hiding, they would lose the proud legacy and power they had built over countless generations.
It was not just the human factions, either. The various divine beast clans had also received the news, and their reactions were even more intense. After all, compared to humans, divine beasts were far more, appetizing to those dark creatures.
Moreover, their racial memories were often directly inherited, so they understood the sheer horror of this situation all too well. Just look at what Su Min had encountered when she first entered the dark cosmos, even peak Mahayana stage divine beasts had fallen in great numbers, their corpses corrupted and used.
In just a short time, even ordinary, low level cultivators could sense that something was terribly wrong. The atmosphere in the major sects had become suffocatingly tense, a palpable dread hanging in the air.
But compared to them, Su Min was actually in a better mental position. She had already accepted the core truth that her life and death were inextricably tied to this conflict, she was doomed no matter what she did. Even if she did what Yao Xian'er had done in her first life, severing her cultivation, abandoning her Five Elements Holy Body, her half step Chaos Body, and starting over completely from scratch,
She would still be hunted down and killed through the insidious laws of heaven and causality by the mastermind behind it all.
She knew more than anyone else. The entity feared one thing above all else, the Chaos Body. And she was the one in this era most likely to achieve it. The timing of this Dark Rebellion was no coincidence, they were launching their invasion now, at all costs, precisely to stop her.
It was infuriating. She was at the late phase of the Unity stage, just one step away from Mahayana. Once she reached Mahayana, she could begin actively unraveling the true secrets of the Chaos Body and complete it.
So it was clear, they must have received some kind of warning or prophecy. They might have even timed the Dark Rebellion specifically to strike before she could reach Mahayana. But so what?
The Heavenly Continent was not completely defenseless. The cost would be immense, catastrophic even, but if the super sects were willing to sacrifice themselves, to fully awaken and unleash their dormant imperial artifacts, they could fight back and potentially repel the initial invasion.
The price would be horrific, generations of accumulated power spent in a single war, but when the survival of their entire world was at stake, who would hold back?
Another reason Su Min was not panicking was her assessment that the full, large scale eruption of the Dark Rebellion would take at least several decades, if not a full century. This was the world of cultivation, those creatures could not just descend and prepare for a war of this scale overnight. In the meantime, she could make her own crucial preparations.
Like the pill furnace burning fiercely before her right now, within which a supremely high grade elixir was slowly, painstakingly taking shape.
Eighth grade, eight colored tribulation lightning had been her previous limit. But now,
Her greatest harvest from the dark cosmos had not just been the cultivation boost, but those purified soul fragments. They had not only massively boosted her cultivation base, they had also tremendously strengthened and refined her spiritual power. Combined with the qualitative improvements from her recent breakthroughs, she felt ready to push her limits once more, to attempt the pinnacle, to refine a ninth grade pill, the legendary Mahayana Pill.
This was the true pill capable of reshaping heaven and earth, defying the mortal coil, and it was her greatest guarantee for successfully breaking through to the Mahayana stage itself.
"Though time is desperately tight, I still have a chance to reach Mahayana before the war truly begins. Once I do, I might finally find the path to complete the Chaos Body. Achieving the most powerful physique in history while at the Mahayana stage would make my combat power unimaginably strong, perhaps even surpassing Yao Xian'er's. It might take a true immortal to stop me then."
Her eyes gleamed with fierce determination as she spoke to the empty room. The next moment, radiant, multicolored light enveloped her body as she poured her focus into the furnace. High above the secluded alchemy hall, a massive, ominous thundercloud began gathering, and soon, a dazzling, terrifying multicolored tribulation lightning bolt descended from the heavens, striking straight down at Su Min and her nascent elixir.
===
Okay, so in my first attempt, I already changed quite a bit in this chapter, especially Su Min and Xie Yingying's interaction. In the original version, it felt really dry to me, so I tried to enhance it back then by adding more of Xie Yingying's reactions and making it clearer that she was actually affected by Su Min's presence. But now, as I worked on this chapter again, I still felt it was a little dry. I mean, they did not do anything in this chapter, but I still felt like I could enrich Xie Yingying's feelings and the narration around her, and this is the result
If you want to see the original version and my first rewrite, I uploaded them to Google Drive and Terabox. You can access both links through my Carrd at https://rikhi.carrd.co/
My Webnovel version is being updated at the same time as the AO3 version, too.
Also, I mentioned this before in an earlier announcement chapter. Besides the six extra chapters about Su Min and Xie Yingying, I also wrote six chapters explaining the changes I made. They include bits of the original text and my reasons for editing certain parts. Those six explanation chapters will stay as they are based on my first rewrite.
I am not planning to update them to match the second rewrite because the core ideas are the same, I just expanded and added more detail in the narration. For example, one chapter that was originally around 2888 words grew to about 3798 in the second rewrite. Some even expanded by nearly two, three thousand, or more. There is no way I am redoing all of that for the explanation chapters.
But don't worry, the core of this one is the same as first version. This new version is just smoother, more detailed, and easier to read. I am letting you know now before I forget to mention it later.
Since I am already talking about updates, I might as well explain the changes I made here too. I added something that wasn't in version one, and I feel like it is important to tell you.