The moment the first wisp of Blue-Blood Life Essence was born within the Saintly Manifestation, it was like a spark falling into a vat of oil
The eighty thousand Azure-Wing Life Essences within him ignited all at once.
In the blink of an eye, his mana was compressed tenfold,
condensing into eight thousand Blue-Blood Life Essences.
The Saintly Manifestation shifted from azure to deep blue,
Its form is transforming entirely.
Even more striking was the change in the Immortal Sword Embryo,
now newly honed and baptized in the Dao rhythm of Sumeru.
Its Life Measure had doubled, its essence reborn:
Spiritual Construct: Sumeru Immortal Sword Embryo
Category: The Root of Self-Seeking
Grade: Lower First Class
Lifespan Burden: Ten Days per Day
Having forged his sword to completion, Jing Qian's every future swing would now carry the dimensional blessing of Sumeru itself
lighter to wield, yet infinitely more devastating.
Even after his breakthrough, he did not stop.
He raised the sword once again and struck down toward the Saintly Manifestation.
For cultivators of the Seventh Grade: Longevity Realm, there are two great tasks
to refine the Life Pattern of Lifespan, and to subdue the natal Spiritual Construct.
Jing Qian had already accomplished both ahead of time.
All that remained was to temper his Blue-Blood Life Essence into Violet-Pupil Life Essence,
And he could directly ascend to the Subduing Spirit Realm, the realm of the middle Third Grades.
Under the relentless pounding of the Immortal Sword,
His Saintly Manifestation continued to compress, shrinking rapidly to within a single zhang (three meters).
During the process, Jing Qian's Three-Life Eye opened wide,
analyzing and adjusting to the changes in his cultivation with perfect clarity.
Every Life Pattern and Spiritual Construct under his control
had grown stronger and more refined.
Take the Three-Life Eye, for example
after reaching the Seventh Grade,
Its energy cost had dropped dramatically.
Now, keeping the divine eye open for an entire day
consumed six times less lifespan than before
merely two months.
Even a single blink of the eye,
which once cost him precious years,
now expended no more than a single minute of lifespan.
To Jing Qian, that cost was negligible.
He could keep it active as a constant extension of his senses.
This improvement greatly amplified both his cultivation and his combat strength.
Even more impressively, within the Yingfutu Realm,
He could now project his sight across the entire domain
wherever his gaze fell, his awareness could instantly descend.
It consumed a hundred times more energy
than spatial teleportation through a beacon,
but with his eight thousand Blue-Blood Life Essences,
He could easily afford the cost.
Jing Qian's sword did not stop.
The Immortal Sword Embryo in his hands
It was like a colossal hammer striking molten steel
a weapon of absolute authority,
pounding every loose, impure, or unstable trace of power in his cultivation
into flawless unity.
Under his continuous strikes,
The Saintly Manifestation was compressed further
until it was less than two meters tall,
and could shrink no more.
At this point, Jing Qian reached out with one hand
and summoned the Sword Lotus Root that floated nearby.
He brought it to his lips
and bit down twice, swallowing the whole thing.
Instantly, an extremely pure surge of Sword Dao Immortal Spirit Qi
burst forth from the lotus root and flooded into his body.
This was the secret inheritance of Pure Yang Heaven
the Pure Yang One-Fiend Sword Lotus Immortal Qi!
With this Immortal Qi's blessing,
Jing Qian's Life Essence surged again by ten thousand,
rising to eighteen thousand in total.
Meanwhile, the Qingping Sword Casket devoured
all the sword intent contained within the Immortal Qi,
and a ring of lotus-shaped patterns
appeared quietly on the back of the casket.
This was the true depth of a top-tier lineage.
All the struggle and effort he had poured into refining mana
couldn't match the sheer gain of eating a single lotus root from his sect.
For any ordinary disciple of Pure Yang Heaven,
a single Sword Lotus Root
would have filled their mana capacity to the brim.
Only someone like Jing Qian,
whose Saintly Manifestation was vast enough to contain the heavens,
could devour such power and still have room to spare.
The Saintly Manifestation, pushed to its absolute limit,
now swelled again as the doubled Life Essence poured in.
But Jing Qian would not allow it.
He gripped the Immortal Sword Embryo once more
and launched into another furious round of strikes,
forcibly suppressing the Saintly Manifestation's expansion
hammering its inner power ever finer, ever purer.
Each clash honed the mana within him until it gleamed with crystalline perfection.
Only now did Jing Qian finally stop.
He exhaled softly, a long, steady breath.
Then he stepped forward toward his Saintly Manifestation,
drawing all of his mana back into himself.
In an instant, an overwhelming sense of fullness flooded his spirit and consciousness
a feeling of absolute saturation.
Yet, as with all things, excess is perilous.
His cultivation had risen too quickly, too steeply;
He had reached the very limits of what his body and spirit could bear.
To attempt a second breakthrough immediately afterward
would be reckless beyond measure.
Seated cross-legged within the Void Realm,
Jing Qian adjusted his breath and calmed his spirit.
But in truth, his divine sense had already returned to the Stele of Fate.
There, before the glowing face of the Sumeru Dao Stele,
He examined his newly updated personal records
and fell silent in thought.
Host: Jing Qian
Lifespan: 23 years
Life Measure: 11 taels, 3 qian / 12 taels, 4 qian
Life Essence: 18,000 × 1.2 (Blue-Blood Grade)
Dharma Manifestation: Sumeru Saint Wielding the Sword to Open Six Paths Reincarnation
Spiritual Construct: Sumeru Sword Embryo, Pure Yang Sword Embryo, Six-Path Reincarnation Three-Life Eye, Yanfu Heaven, Qingping Sword Casket, Xi Li Divine Seal, Lock of Fate Needle
Life Patterns: 12 Complete Heavenly Mandates, 2 Incomplete Heavenly Mandates, 1 Golden-Root, 4 Violet-Pupil, 4 Blue-Blood
Upon advancing to the Seventh Grade, his innate Life Measure had been completed,
reaching a perfect 9 taels, 9 qian
and his total Life Measure now stood at 12 taels, 4 qian,
Though still with a missing portion of 1 taels, 1 qian.
Meanwhile, the tenfold mana amplification granted by the Hell Scroll
had fallen back to only 20% effectiveness due to his breakthrough.
To restore it, he would need to reforge his ghostly subordinates to higher tiers
or capture more powerful Great Ghosts
to rebuild his tenfold amplification.
Even so, the mana currently at his command
had already surpassed 20,000 Blue-Blood Life Essences,
equal in strength to 200 Golden-Root Life Essences,
or 20 supreme Fiendfires,
or even two full threads of Immortal Spirit Qi.
That was the minimum threshold of the Fourth Grade: Star-Seizer Realm.
Beyond the safe zones, that Fourth-Grade Qiongqi
The monstrous tiger demon
possessed only about two threads of Immortal Spirit Qi in total.
Once, it had utterly overpowered him;
Now, Jing Qian's power stood as its equal.
As for the so-called Son of Thunder, the Thunder Roc was a mere fourteen Fiendfires,
not even close to Jing Qian's present level.
Only one rival truly outclassed him.
Blood Cang, the Blood River Sect's grand cultivator, a being of immense foundation and heritage,
whose body housed seventeen threads of Blood River Purifying Immortal Qi.
Compared to that, Jing Qian still fell short.
Yet even so, when Jing Qian gripped his Immortal Sword Embryo
and stood before the three great experts,
His heart was calm.
Gone was the precarious excitement of dancing on a knife's edge.
He raised his black jade greatsword,
pointing its edge toward the three cultivators, and said lightly:
"I have now reached the Seventh Grade Perfection of Longevity.
I invite the three Dao friends to test my strength."
Blood Cang and the Qiongqi exchanged glances,
Then both flashed away, yielding the field.
The Thunder Roc, however, shrieked
its entire body bursting into radiant lightning
as it transformed into a streak of blinding thunder,
faster than light itself, darting through the battlefield.
Jing Qian lifted his hand, thirty-six dazzling sword-lights unfurled across the void.
A Lesser Heavenly Gang Sword Formation rose around the Roc,
swallowing it whole.
After his breakthrough, the Qingping Sword Casket's power had multiplied.
He could now divide a single swing into thirty-six separate sword rays.
The Lesser Heavenly Gang Sword Array,
formed through his Sword Array Life Pattern,
was precise and formidable, each sword-light carrying a world of killing intent.
Caught in the array's confinement,
The Thunder Roc's lightning speed plummeted.
It tried to shatter the sword formation
But it was already too late.
A heartbeat later,
a black jade sword pierced through the void,
It's a strike carrying the crushing dimensional might of Sumeru,
and slashed clean through the Roc's body.
The proud fifth-grade titled demon
was obliterated in a single blow
not a single feather remained.
"Next."
Jing Qian's calm voice cut through the air
As he turned toward the Qiongqi.
The beast was stronger than the Roc in cultivation,
but lacked its speed
and thus, it died even faster.
The Three-Life Eye locked onto the tiger demon's position,
and in the next instant,
Jing Qian appeared behind it
His sword flashed once.
The black jade greatsword cleaved the Qiongqi cleanly in two,
Its body was falling apart before it could even roar.
Two sword embryos merged into one. This weapon was nothing short of a supreme killing treasure.
To touch it was death;
to block it was to be shattered.
"Your turn."
At Jing Qian's call, Blood Cang finally stepped forward.
This Blood River elder was far stronger than the two slain beasts
His cultivation is ten times greater,
His heritage complete,
His Spiritual Construct of the highest quality,
His combat experience is vast.
Having witnessed the divine might of Jing Qian's sword,
Blood Cang did not hesitate.
He fused his body with his natal Spiritual Construct, the Blood Sigil,
transforming into seventeen surging Blood Rivers,
which intertwined to form the Blood River Purification Array,
a grand domain of blood and power.
Within those rivers, his essence cycled endlessly
as long as the rivers flowed; he could not die.
It was the perfect counter to Jing Qian's physically heavy-sword style.
Facing the blood-soaked battlefield,
Jing Qian felt a tremendous pressure bearing down upon him.
The sheer difference in cultivation
threatened to crush him like a mountain.
But compared to before his breakthrough,
He could now stand calmly under that weight.
At the moment the array reached its full power,
Jing Qian slipped sideways, vanishing into the dimensional void.
The Three-Life Eye flared open,
and the second-grade Spiritual Construct might unfold completely.
With a few effortless motions,
He dissected the Blood River Array's intricate structure, seeing its every flaw.
In the next breath,
He flashed through the void seven times,
each step aligned with the dimensional rifts.
The Immortal Sword Embryo pierced through the thin veil between dimensions,
reappearing in the mortal plane just long enough
to stab precisely at the seven mana nodes
of the Blood River Purification Array.
The vast blood array's circulation of mana was severed in an instant, completely broken.
A heartbeat later, the black jade sword reappeared, slashing down upon one of the Blood Rivers, easily cleaving through it and annihilating the Immortal Spirit Qi that sustained it.
Of the seventeen Blood Rivers, one vanished entirely.
For the moment, Blood Cang could no longer reform it.
He strained to regain control of his mana, trying to reweave the great formation, but he had no means of resisting the Immortal Sword Embryo.
Even if he managed to restore the array, the result would only be the same destruction upon destruction.
Jing Qian's Three-Life Eye flared once more, perfectly coordinating with the sword.
Another strike, the array shattered again, another thread of Immortal Spirit Qi snuffed out, another Blood River erased.
If his opponent could not withstand the divine eye and the celestial sword,
Then the only question left was how long it would take to kill him.
Barely a quarter of an hour later,
all seventeen Blood Rivers had been severed.
Blood Cang was forced to reveal his true form, and Jing Qian's black jade sword cut cleanly through his neck in a single stroke.
Jing Qian stood with his sword in hand,
quietly savoring the memory of the three consecutive battles.
After his recent breakthrough,
he had needed just such high-quality duels
to fully understand the extent of his own strength.
Compared to his power at the Dragon-Elephant Realm,
his improvement was beyond measure.
Now he could confidently defeat a lower-sealed Star-Seizer Realm expert like Blood Cang.
The synergy between his two extraordinary Spiritual Constructs, the Three-Life Eye and the Immortal Sword Embryo,
was far beyond conventional limits.
His Saintly Manifestation, his fate patterns, his divine arts
everything meshed with these Spiritual Constructs in perfect harmony,
Forging a new battle system of unmatched power.
Confidence filled his heart.
Only one flaw remained: the Three-Life Eye's consumption of lifespan was still too heavy.
In battle, when fully unleashed against a powerful foe,
its drain on his lifespan far exceeded what it cost in ordinary use or meditation.
After just three battles, Jing Qian's remaining years had dropped by more than three,
leaving him with less than twenty years of life.
In the mortal world, that was already skating on the edge of death.
He needed to "borrow" some lifespan from new acquaintances and soon.
But his next moves had already been planned,
rehearsed, and refined countless times.
He knew exactly when and what to do.
With a single shift of thought, his divine sense exited the Stele of Fate,
And his figure appeared before the Sumeru Furnace.
The little black cat Xi Li was already waiting there,
Having prepared a Gate of Fate Fire.
Jing Qian focused his mind upon Xi Li,
and his consciousness entered the Kitchen Realm once again.
The moment he stepped inside,
he was greeted by a thunderous, bustling scene.
The once-quiet Kitchen Realm was now packed to the brim
. The number of spirits and cultivators within
was easily ten times what it had been during his last visit.
Where there had once been a simple marketplace,
the Golden Toad Life Furnace had now transformed the entire domain
into a grand auction hall.
Hundreds of open seats filled the central floor,
and around the hall were twenty-four enclosed two-story private boxes.
Because Jing Qian was the owner of the item "Calamity Hook-Kiss",
he had been granted one of these private rooms.
He stepped inside just as the auction reached its fever pitch.
Xi Li materialized on his shoulder and began to explain:
"My lord, today is the final day of the festival —
The grand auction of the five supreme treasures."
"Our Calamity Hook-Kiss is ranked fourth among them.
The first three are all Upper Third-Grade artifacts,
and the final lot is even said to be a Spiritual Construct crafted by the Chongxuan Palace itself."
"I wonder what new marvel those hammer-swinging maniacs have forged this time."
The Chongxuan Palace was well known throughout the Yingfutu Realm
as the undisputed gathering place of the greatest artificers.
Nearly every ingenious invention and new artifact in the realm
had some connection to their forges.
But because the palace poured nearly all its resources
into research and creation,
its finances were perpetually strained.
Thus, they often auctioned off their own high-grade Spiritual Construct
to replenish their treasury.
In truth, nearly every Upper Third-Grade Spiritual Construct transaction
In the entire realm, the shadow of the Chongxuan Palace.
So, with an event of this magnitude,
their attendance was inevitable.
And drawn by the allure of a Third-Grade Spiritual Construct,
The great powers of the Yingfutu Realm had all arrived in full force.
Xi Li, perched on Jing Qian's shoulder,
pointed out the various factions one by one
the Ying Clan, the Kitchen King Emporium, the Mercy Vessel Hall,
even the major sea demons and mountain ghost lords
Every corner of the realm was represented.
Jing Qian asked casually,
"What about the Sea of Resentful Souls I told you to watch?
Any ghosts show up?"
Xi Li shook his furry head:
"I've been keeping a close eye, my lord,
but I haven't seen any major ghosts arrive yet.
Maybe one will show on this final day."
As they spoke,
the first of the five treasures was brought onto the stage.
Jing Qian glanced over at the row of Fourth-Grade talismans being presented
and immediately lost interest.
His cultivation might not yet have reached the upper realms,
but his taste certainly had.
Such common goods no longer held any appeal.
Just then, a Kitchen Spirit wreathed in ghostly flame
entered the hall,
escorting a female ghost
wearing a phoenix crown and crimson wedding robes.
They slipped quietly into one of the private rooms.
Jing Qian's eyes sharpened
. He had been waiting for this.
He gave Xi Li a small nod,
leaving the cat behind to watch over their room,
and rose to his feet.
His consciousness returned to his body,
and the Three-Life Eye at his brow suddenly opened.
Piercing through heaven and earth, its divine gaze reached across a million miles,
straight to the southern seas.
The next instant, Jing Qian's figure flickered and vanished,
consuming over four hundred Blue-Blood Life Essences
to traverse the void.
He reappeared in the endless ocean,
deep within the sea demons' core territory
, a place where no human cultivator dared tread.
There, a massive ray-like beast,
its body veined with dragon blood,
lay sprawled across an underwater volcano.
The volcano roared,
belching columns of magma toward the sea surface, but the enormous creature pinned it down,
containing the eruption beneath its vast body.
It looked, at first glance, as though the beast were quelling a natural disaster.
In truth, the eruption was its own doing, part of a ritual for refining its treasure.
Once it absorbed enough of the volcanic fire,
it would leave, and countless sea creatures would burn alive in its wake, a fate that never crossed its mind.
But this time, things would not go as expected.
A black jade sword, a mere sliver compared to its colossal form, suddenly appeared,
protruding from the base of its neck.
With a faint hum, the sword pierced downward,
and a surge of overwhelming power erupted from within.
The Dragon Ray saw a flash of darkness
and then nothing.
A vast rift in the void opened,
swallowing the corpse whole
until not even a scale remained.
And just as the underwater volcano was about to explode again,
a small bronze furnace appeared out of thin air,
drawing in every last wisp of heat.
The living volcano turned cold, and the living Dragon Ray
became just another corpse in the depths.
...
In the territory of Yingzhou, at the mountain gate of the Mirror Cloud Shrine, a figure suddenly appeared: a woman of breathtaking grace, though her body now carried the faint chill of death.
It was none other than Sage Hime, a Fifth-Grade ghost cultivator.
The gatekeeping disciples froze in shock.
Wasn't this the same elder who had perished during the Grand Academy Banquet?
Without offering any explanation, Sage Hime strode straight toward the gate and said curtly,
"Go inform the sect I have turned to the path of ghost cultivation.
I'm heading to the Great Tree Grotto-Heaven to meet the Ancestral Pen Master."
With that, she left the bewildered disciple behind and made her way up the mountain.
Every great academy lineage had at least one Upper Third-Grade being
to anchor and guard its spiritual fortune.
The Mirror Cloud Shrine was not a powerful sect,
and its single Upper Third-Grade protector was a Heaven-Mending Thousand-Armed Ghost Buddha
a mighty ghostly deity that resided permanently within the Great Tree Grotto-Heaven,
sealing the sect's boundary membrane.
Ordinary disciples were forbidden to even glimpse it.
Yet Sage Hime, after declaring her intent to visit the grotto,
quietly changed her route halfway,
returning instead to her own private cave dwelling within the sect.
As the Daughter of the Witch Ghost,
though her mortal body had perished, her soul had not dispersed.
Her transformation into a ghost cultivator was only a matter of time,
and the sect had not yet dared to confiscate her resources or property.
She entered her cave, sealed the doors tightly behind her
, and never came out again.
Meanwhile, deep within the Sea of Resentful Souls,
Jing Qian's figure emerged quietly,
then sank straight through the layers of dimension into the abyss below.
He was intimately familiar with this sea, every current, every shadow, every lurking spirit.
And with the Three-Life Eye,
the endless web of karmic threads that crisscrossed the waters
lay utterly exposed before him.
He followed those strands of karma upward
tracing one malicious ghost after another
back to their ultimate source.
With only a few flickers through the void,
He arrived at the gates of a grand undersea palace.
Across the barrier of dimensions, he could clearly see the plaque above the doors, etched in ghostly seal script:
The Palace of Princess Heian.
A dense net of ghostly wards shimmered around the structure, a heavily fortified mansion of the dead.
But to the Six-Path Reincarnation Three-Life Eye,
all ghostly formations were transparent as glass.
That eye, attuned to the true meaning of Reincarnation,
was the bane of all spirits.
Using its insight, Jing Qian slipped effortlessly through a gap in the formation,
entering the princess's domain.
Though unassuming from the outside,
The interior of the palace stretched vast and magnificent
a realm unto itself.
With a single sweep of his divine gaze,
Jing Qian saw it all clearly:
over a thousand ghosts of various ranks
served within these halls.
And deep in the central hall sat the one he sought
Princess Heian, the great ghost he had crossed paths with several times before.
She was meditating before a peculiar Life Furnace,
her consciousness immersed in the Kitchen Realm,
apparently attempting to reclaim her lost treasure
The Calamity Hook-Kiss.
Too occupied with her auction maneuvers to notice visitors,
She left her body unguarded.
Fortunately for her (or perhaps not),
Jing Qian was not the shy type.
Without hesitation, he flickered through the dimensions
and appeared directly inside the princess's private boudoir.
Every inch of that room was strung with karmic threads
so many that even brushing against one
would instantly summon a horde of ghostly enforcers.
Jing Qian opened the Three-Life Eye to its fullest,
threading his way delicately between the gaps of fate,
until he stood before her dressing table.
Upon it rested a small coffin, scarcely a foot long.
Inside the coffin lay a pale, jade-like egg,
Its surface is haloed by drifting black smoke.
Under the gaze of the divine eye,
Its true nature was instantly revealed:
Spiritual Construct: Yin Phoenix (In Rebirth)
Category: Outer Dao Moon
Grade: Third Class
Subjugation Requirement: Ghost-God Manifestation, Flower-Bird Manifestation
Lifespan Burden: One Month per Day
The egg was wrapped in more karmic threads
than Jing Qian had ever seen in one place.
There was no need to guess
This was the Phoenix Egg once captured by the Emperor of Wuchang,
fished from the Feathered Camel Root Realm,
The remnant of the ice phoenix he had slain.
It had since been refined into a Third-Grade ghostly Spiritual Construct,
awaiting rebirth so it could be bound by Princess Heian herself.
But before that moment could come,
A black jade sword suddenly emerged from thin air
and smashed down upon the tiny coffin,
splintering it apart with a resounding crack.
The sword spun once around the Yin Phoenix Egg,
Its blade cuts through every thread of karma in an instant.
Freed from its bindings,
The egg began to tremble violently,
as if on the verge of hatching.
It struggled for a few desperate moments,
But its injuries were too severe,
Its vitality is too low.
It soon fell silent again.
At that instant, Jing Qian's true form appeared.
He lifted his sword,
flicked the Phoenix Egg into the air,
and caught it neatly on the flat of his blade.
Then, with a single glance of the Three-Life Eye,
He locked onto a point far away
Yunzhou.
His figure vanished in a flash.
"Who dares!"
A shriek of fury echoed through the palace.
The Ghost Bride Princess, still wearing her crimson wedding robes,
burst into her chamber
, but, as always, she was one step too late.
"Not again! Are you ever going to do something about him?!"
Her clear, furious voice rang through the sea,
a mixture of outrage and shame.
To have one's bedchamber robbed twice
truly intolerable!
On the far side of the Sea of Resentful Souls,
the Emperor of Wuchang rubbed his temples wearily.
How had his little sister managed to attract
such a shameless, unshakable pest?
He'd already given the boy a lesson once
And yet here he was again.
This time, the Emperor's patience wore thin.
With a single flick of his finger,
a torrent of immense power tore through the void,
hurtling straight toward Yunzhou, toward the very seat of the Feathered Ascension Sect.
There, Jing Qian had just reappeared,
holding the Phoenix Egg balanced atop his sword.
He presented it to his master, Shang Xi, with an easy smile.
Then, turning toward the tear in the sky
where the Emperor's power was descending,
He spoke calmly:
"Master… shall I handle this one,
Or will you?"
He tilted his sword upward, and the black jade blade hummed, eager for battle.
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