That sword strike, though it left Blueblood Lantern gravely wounded, also forced him into the ultimate choice of life and death.
Without hesitation, he unleashed the final card that every Longevity cultivator turns to when cornered
burning his own lifespan in exchange for overwhelming power!
Blueblood Lantern hailed from the great sect Mirror Cloud Shrine, a true heir to the Star-Seizing lineage.
When he forged his flawless dharmic form and advanced, he refined a Violet-Eyed Longevity Pattern, gaining the ability to extend his life by one day and two quarter-hours every single day.
With the aid of countless life-extending elixirs and secret techniques, he had amassed nearly three hundred years of surplus lifespan.
As he burned it now, a torrent of vital essence erupted vast and surging, washing away Jing Qian's lethal strike like a tide.
A moment ago, he was at death's door; now his wounds rapidly closed beneath the flood of stolen years.
In the same instant, his body transformed into a streak of blood-colored light, fleeing northward at terrifying speed.
His lifespan ebbed like sand through an hourglass, and the black hair on his head began to wither, turning dry and yellow.
He had no thought of battle, only escape. His condition was still dire, and survival was all he craved.
Yet beneath the waves, another figure raced in pursuit, just as fast as Jing Qian.
He had not abandoned the hunt.
Though Blueblood Lantern had patched his wounds, his lost dharmic form and Spiritual Construct could not be replaced.
Jing Qian still had a chance.
With the Sumeru Pattern at his command, he could retreat at will, strike first, and strike true. His confidence never faltered.
So, the hunter chased prey across the endless sea
, a ninth-rank cultivator driving a seventh-rank Longevity master to flight.
The very heavens seemed inverted.
But time was not on Jing Qian's side.
With every heartbeat, Blueblood Lantern forced his power into order, slowly rebuilding his dharmic form.
Once even a fragment of it returned, all his fate arts and longevity techniques would return as well.
At that moment, it would be Jing Qian's turn to suffer.
Just then, a clear, melodious birdsong rang out across the sky.
The sound pierced straight into the ears of both pursuer and quarry.
Jing Qian's instincts screamed danger. He instantly abandoned pursuit and vanished into the void.
Blueblood Lantern had no such escape. He dropped toward the sea in panic.
But a beam of emerald light struck his shoulder, freezing him in midair, body locked in place.
The light resolved into a bird
, graceful, no more than two feet long, white-beaked and red-footed, radiant with deep spiritual light.
And beneath its talons, Blueblood Lantern stood stiff and helpless, unable to move an inch.
He roared in fury:
"Zhushou! Release me, what are you doing?
I am the master of Fate Island! Do you dare kill me?"
The divine bird gave no reply. Its beak opened
A torrent of deep violet Fate Fire gushed forth, crashing onto Blueblood Lantern's body.
The fire seared his flesh, burning him to the bone. He screamed in agony:
"Zhushou, you're seeking death!
My sect will never forgive you!"
But the bird showed no mercy.
Flame after flame poured forth, consuming him.
Blueblood Lantern's shrieks echoed across the sky. His flesh turned crystalline, his blood, soul, and power refined into a three-inch glassy blueblood lantern.
With a flick, the bird twisted its essence into a cord, strung the lantern upon it, and hung it around its own neck before spreading its wings and flying away.
Hidden in the dimensional void, Jing Qian watched in shock.
He saw clearly: Blueblood Lantern had perished.
Through World's Insight, new information appeared on the lantern's surface:
Spiritual Construct: Sea-Receding Lantern
Subjugation Requirement: Pattern of Gods & Ghosts, Pattern of Spirit Treasures
Lifespan Burden: 2¼ hours per day
And the bird's identity was obvious.
This was Zhushou, master of the Maritime Office of Hunzhou Prefecture, who cultivated the Spirit Form of Jingwei.
Flying across ten thousand li, he had ambushed Blueblood Lantern, slain him, and refined him into a Spiritual Construct for himself.
From this day forth, Zhushou gained a ladder to the Spirit-Subjugating Realm, no longer overshadowed by Ling Mingji.
...
Meanwhile, on Tsushima Isle, the Tsushima Shrine had already been rebuilt.
But its form was utterly changed.
The old image of the lithe raccoon spirit was gone, replaced by a towering twelve-foot golden toad.
The toad's form matched exactly the idol enshrined in the tiny coastal temple at Hunzhou's great seafair, though now far grander.
Before the idol stood two men.
One was Li Ji, steward of the Maritime Office's seafair bureau.
The other, his direct superior Li Yuan, master of the office, who cultivated the dharmic form of the Six-Fated Golden Toad.
Li Yuan spoke calmly:
"Li Ji, this Fate Island is yours now.
I have already filled its Life Furnace with the python fat of the Liyuan Dragon; it will last two hundred years.
Seize the chance. Settle your Longevity Pattern quickly and ascend."
"Zhushou may have erred, letting the Jiangzhu Island sink, but to our Maritime Office, it is no loss at all.
This Tsushima Isle was always meant to be ours.
Manage it well. You will have the full support of the office."
Li Ji bowed deeply.
"Yes, my lord."
The snipe and the clam fought; the fisherman reaped the profit.
The struggle between Tsushima Isle and Jiangzhu Isle ended as a double defeat.
Everything behind it is nothing but calculation!
Hidden within the dimensional void, Jing Qian witnessed with his own eyes how Zhushou refined Blueblood Lantern into a Spiritual Construct.
Shocked as he was, he also gained a far deeper understanding of the situation in Hunzhou.
On the surface, under the Prefecture Office's rule, everything seemed bound by laws and order.
But beneath the surface, the struggle was kill-or-be-killed, ruthless, perilous.
Even the mighty Longevity cultivators, masters of Spiritual Constructs, lords of Fate Islands, backed by powerful sects, still could not guarantee their safety.
Who would have thought
That a lofty Longevity master, in the eyes of a bureau chief, was nothing more than refining material?
And in Jing Qian's past life, the truth had been the same.
When a person's power or wealth crossed a certain threshold, ordinary rules and even the law no longer bound them.
Celebrities adored by the masses could be reduced to playthings.
Only here, in a world where power returned directly to the self, was everything revealed more starkly, more brutally.
If one's strength was lacking, all external trappings were but illusions.
Jing Qian's desire for strength burned all the fiercer.
...
Inside the Fate Stele Space, he gazed at the soul of Blueblood Lantern just beyond the safety zone, a flood of emotions surging in his heart.
This so-called immortal had been a blade hanging over his head since his rebirth, once his gravest threat.
And yet now, he had fallen in such a dramatic fashion, right before Jing Qian's eyes.
By sheer cultivation, Blueblood Lantern far outstripped the Crocodragon, making him the strongest "ration" Jing Qian had ever harvested.
And the knowledge stored in his mind is utterly priceless.
For a long time to come, Jing Qian would be "living together" with this adversary.
Nearby, the Crocodragon's aura was less than thirty percent of its peak.
Over the past three months, Jing Qian had fought night after night, whittling it down. Its destruction was only a matter of time.
He could say with confidence
that his experience in cross-realm slaughter was second to none in Hunzhou.
All those life-and-death battles would translate into his cultivation foundation.
...
Jing Qian leapt from the Void Realm, diving into the ocean, streaking away.
This trip out of Hunzhou Isle had brought him not only solid gains in cultivation but also a broadened vision that forced him to face the true reality of the world.
He needed rest, adjustment. Better to return.
By now, the Jing Clan Tower in the seafair city might already be fully constructed, just waiting for him to return and open for business.
With the Tidal Wave Fate unleashed, he surged northward.
Though months had passed, and Su Min'er might well be gone or dead, he had to see with his own eyes before he could be at ease.
Jiangzhu Isle lay still a hundred thousand li away.
Yet his swimming speed far outstripped void-walking, five times faster.
If he pushed hard, he could reach it within ten days.
Ten thousand li per day is an impossible feat for ordinary Dragon-Elephant cultivators.
As he entered a new sea region, Jing Qian suddenly found himself greeted by countless new aquatic "brothers."
One by one, he paid them visits, eating and taking as he pleased.
The joy of such harvests was not for outsiders to know!
He killed and burned his way through the waters; ninth-rank White-Tooth sea fiends fell like rain.
The results were spectacular:
Tidal Wave (Purple-Eyed 1.7/10)!
Though he lost some time, as his Tidal Wave Fate continued to be reforged, his swimming speed only grew faster.
Yet strangely, as he pressed on, the number of sea fiends plummeted.
At first, every few hundred li brought him a fresh "friend" to harvest.
But soon, their appearances dropped sharply, until at last, they vanished altogether.
At first, Jing Qian thought the word had spread behind him.
But then he saw the endless firmament above the sea begin to change color.
Only then did he realize the Yin Year had arrived!
His face grew solemn. He stopped wandering, swimming straight toward Jiangzhu Isle.
The so-called Yin Year was a unique celestial phenomenon of this world.
Its true cause, Jing Qian did not know.
But he remembered vividly, from the Jing clan records and from A'bao's Ten Nights' Tales, just how terrifying it was.
For most of the time, the vast ocean was peaceful.
The sun rose and set, clouds gathered and dispersed, with only gentle rains and mild winds.
Such normal years were called Yang Years.
In contrast to normal Yang Years, once every four or five years at the least or seven or eight at the longest came the Yin Year.
In that year, the sun and moon vanished. Day and night were indistinguishable.
Grass would not grow, and livestock could not breed.
The entire Vast Sea was shrouded under an unseen pall of shadow.
For a whole year, the skies remained dim and oppressive.
Under this shroud that veiled sun and moon, the tides transformed drastically.
The entire ocean heaved with endless giant waves, ceaseless for the whole year.
Waves a hundred meters high sometimes even several hundred rose like enraged behemoths, severing nearly all maritime travel.
Only the boldest, strongest sailors dared to take ships into the Yin Year seas.
But the greater terror lay in the Yin Ghosts that haunted the gloom.
Formless, bodiless, yet savagely powerful, they fed solely on the souls of the living.
Once they devoured a soul, they seized the body left behind, turning it into a Yin Corpse that roamed the darkened seas.
Even the weakest Yin Ghost wielded the power of a ninth-rank White-Tooth.
And when they possessed a living creature, the body leapt an entire rank in strength.
A mere beast could be transformed into a formidable corpse.
Even mighty seventh-rank Blue-Blood monsters, if possessed, could ascend to become overwhelming Violet-Eyed Great Ghosts, lords of a hundred-thousand-li of sea.
The higher one's cultivation, the harder it was to be possessed, but still, every Yin Year unleashed a tide of horrors that all living things called enemies.
Those with cultivation might hold them off. Without it, survival was left to luck.
For ordinary mortals, the only refuge was the radiance of Fate Fire.
Only the Fate-Islands, with their Life Furnaces burning, could serve as havens of human habitation.
Beyond their glow lay deadly lands of desolation.
...
Though daring and skilled, Jing Qian did not take such a calamity lightly.
This was the first Yin Year he had faced since his rebirth. He would tread with utmost care.
After three days' swift travel, Young Master Jing returned to Jiangzhu Isle.
By now, the Yin Year had descended in full.
The Vast Sea had utterly changed its face, turning savage.
Towering waves blotted out the sky, sweeping all that floated into the abyss.
Harnessing his Tidal Wave Pattern, Jing Qian could feel the monstrous forces surging through the sea.
Beneath those waves, Jiangzhu Isle had completely sunk.
He plunged beneath the waters, scouring with World's Insight, yet found nothing, no sign at all of Su Min'er.
So he hauled up the Dingyuan, which had been anchored on the seabed, and set her prow toward Hunzhou Isle.
Sailing in a Yin Year was a perilous madness.
The colossal waves were like furious beasts, erupting from the depths to sweep across thousands of li.
Even with a ranked treasure-ship, the odds of survival were grim.
Thus, throughout Hunzhou, the Yin Year was always a year of suspension and silence.
Everything stopped.
Yet on this sea, for the bold, this was paradise.
"To struggle against heaven is the greatest joy."
And now Jing Qian understood that saying deeply.
In such waves, ship-handling was harder even than swimming unaided.
The ten-zhang Dingyuan was no more than a leaf in the sea, battered from all sides.
Yet under the power of Tidal Wave, all that crushing pressure turned into pure propulsion.
The Dingyuan moved like a sleek spirit fish, dancing between the swells.
Each monstrous breaker became her launching ramp and landing platform.
When a wave crested, the Dingyuan rode it upward, then soared skyward on its momentum before plunging into the next trough, landing atop the next falling wave.
Between the swells, she darted and leapt like a living thing, joyous and free.
Her speed soared, faster than even fair-weather sailing.
Jing Qian stood firm on the deck, eyes blazing.
He and the ship breathed as one, facing the sea's trials together.
The gales cut his face like knives, but he barely felt it, his focus wholly fixed on the endless dance of waves.
The power of the Tidal Wave Pattern was not just in raw force.
It was the strange state of sharing breath and destiny with the ocean itself.
Even the Dingyuan seemed to gain life, no longer a mere vessel but a creature of the sea, dancing with the waves, traveling with the storm.
As he unleashed his Pattern further, the ship flew faster still, like lightning threading between the surges.
A journey of ten thousand li could be made in a single day, faster even than sailing in a Yang Year.
The sea was his true home.
Alone against the storm, Jing Qian's spirit grew ironclad, his Dao-heart shining ever clearer.
Until he saw his first Yin Ghost.
The trance of focus was broken.
These horrors unique to the Yin Year could not escape the gaze of World's Insight.
Ten waves away, he spotted a streak of pale-gray aura.
A Yin Ghost had possessed a massive blue shark, transforming it into a ninth-rank White-Tooth Yin Corpse.
It prowled the depths, diving and rising, hunting every sea-beast it could catch.
Unlike humans on land, who needed Fate Fire to ward them off, sea creatures relied only on the vastness of their numbers to endure.
For them, even if a whole year of slaughter and possession passed, the teeming seas remained inexhaustible.
When the Yin Ghosts faded with the year's end, their corpses became treasure, medicine for the sea-beasts, birthing true-ranked White-Tooth monsters.
Thus, the ocean and the ghosts had formed a grim cycle of coexistence.
But for humans, it was another matter.
Every soul was precious labor, a producer of value.
To lose them to ghosts and end with nothing but a useless corpse is an unforgivable loss.
If one wanted Yin Corpses, they could be harvested from the sea.
And so Jing Qian, seeing one before him, did not hesitate.
He spun the Dingyuan's prow, charging full force toward the Yin Corpse.
The ship shot forth like a cannonball, straight at its prey.
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