Chapter 3

In the courtyard outside the trial field, the sect master, Sheng Di, received Cao Qixing’s message. Learning the full story, he slammed the table and said, “Such a thing actually occurred within the trial field? Preposterous!”

“Sect Master, what exactly happened?” asked an elderly Foundation Establishment cultivator with a white beard on behalf of the others.

When Cao Qixing and Luo Renqing suddenly appeared moments earlier, they had already guessed that something had gone wrong inside the trial field, but they were too far away to know the details.

Sheng Di looked toward Yan Yueheng. “True Lord Yan, when you released the Southern Brightness Luminous Fire into the trial field, did you survey the surrounding area?”

With that question, everyone understood that the incident was related to the Southern Brightness Luminous Fire.

Yan Yueheng lifted his gaze. “Sect Master, refining the Southern Brightness Luminous Fire requires a place with ice. This time was no exception. During the process, nothing unusual was discovered.”

“It seems it was hidden far too well, and happened too suddenly,” Sheng Di sighed. “In one of the icy cavities, due to long years, an adverse chill formed. When Li Lu was refining the Southern Brightness Luminous Fire, it burst through the ice and entered her dantian. Not only did this cause her to fail in refining the fire, it also gave her an ice spiritual root.”

“What? Li Lu had a single fire spiritual root, with an exceptionally high root value. If she has now gained an ice spiritual root, wouldn’t such an excellent seedling be ruined?”

Yin Bifang exclaimed in shock, and the other true lords all shook their heads in pity.

Yan Yueheng’s brow tightened. An inexplicable resistance rose in his heart; he somehow felt that things should not be like this.

With his cold, stern expression, Bai Bingyun gave a snort. He possessed an ice spiritual root. If that adverse chill had been his, and paired with a pill to enhance cultivation, it could have lifted his power to a higher level. Yet it had been wasted on a mere child. What a squandering of treasure.

But opportunities arrive at random and vanish in an instant. Fail to seize them, and they are lost.

What stung most was that this chance had not fallen to Bai Bingyun. Worse still, when used on Li Lu, it had produced the opposite of a blessing, which was the root cause of Sheng Di’s profound frustration. Any other spiritual root would have been better than a single fire root.

But matters had come to this; nothing they said or did could undo it.

In truth, they did not know that in her previous life, the adverse chill had not fallen into Bai Bingyun’s hands either. The incident had happened so abruptly that by the time they discovered it, it was already too late. The chill had fled beyond the Spiritual Sky Sect, and no one knew where it had gone.

At that time, Li Lu had already refined the Southern Brightness Luminous Fire, and all her attention was on it. She left the ice cavern in high spirits, just in time to avoid the outbreak of the adverse chill. As for the matter of the true lords pursuing it, not only did she not know, even the other trial disciples failed to notice. Since no one mentioned it afterward, she naturally had no way of knowing.

In this life, because she remained in the ice cavern to dispel the lingering Southern Brightness Luminous Fire, she had arrived at the scene at exactly the right moment. One could only say that fate had arranged it so. She got what she had sought, and had no one to blame. In the end, she could only bear it herself.

Li Lu accepted this fate calmly. As in her previous life, she now focused single-mindedly on reaching the trial field’s finish line and fighting for a place among the rankings.

Her route had been well planned, and with her spiritual sense scouting ahead, she deftly avoided fellow disciples and beasts. The journey went smoothly.

Soon, vast stretches of darkness swelled across the sky, until the world was nearly swallowed whole. Li Lu quickly slipped into a small mountain cave.

Traveling by night was doubly dangerous and far from safe. Besides, after walking most of the day, she needed time to rest and recover. The Flying Smoke Step was fast, but it consumed a great deal of spiritual power.

She arranged simple illusion and concealment formations at the cave mouth with stones and branches, then cast a spell to clear the dust of the road from her body. Only then did she sit down cross-legged on the ground and swallow a fasting pill with some spirit spring water to stave off hunger.

Qi Refinement was only the beginning of cultivation, not yet a true entry into the immortal path. One could not yet escape the cycles of eating and drinking.

Ordinary food contained many impurities, so in daily life they tried to reduce their intake of mortal fare as much as possible and sought every opportunity to eat spiritual meals. Spiritual meals contained spiritual energy; not only were they delicious, they also aided cultivation.

Carrying meals during the trial was extremely inconvenient, so all the disciples exchanged their provisions for fasting pills. One pill could keep hunger at bay for an entire day.

But fasting pills were bland and tasteless. Aside from filling the stomach, they offered no real benefit to cultivation.

Everyone longed for their cultivation to rise, for them to enter the Foundation Establishment stage and lay down the foundation of their Dao. Only then could they leave the mortal world and step into the immortal path, free from the need to fast.

By now, less than half a day’s journey remained to the destination. If nothing unexpected happened, she would arrive before noon tomorrow, and there would surely be a place for her among the top ten.

After a brief silence, Li Lu dispersed the clutter in her mind. Her hands changed seals as she circulated her technique and began to cultivate, replenishing her spiritual power.

Through the night, beast cries echoed endlessly near and far, while within the cave there was only her figure, focused and still in cultivation.

Though a lone star still shone, dawn was already faintly visible on the horizon, gradually tinting it with a deep blue-green hue.

Li Lu slowly withdrew her power and exhaled a mouthful of impure breath. Only then did she truly recognize the limits of her present cultivation speed. With the same amount of time, the results differed greatly.

Her earlier estimate of sixty percent had been far too optimistic.

She had forgotten that the amount of spiritual energy the meridians could bear was limited. With more ice spiritual energy present, the fire spiritual energy naturally became less abundant, and after further dissipation, an entire night of cultivation could not even reach half of what it had been before.

Even so, she felt no regret at all for expelling the Southern Brightness Luminous Fire.

Li Lu removed the cave’s restrictions and illusion formation. First she used her spiritual sense to check the surroundings, then gripped her spirit sword and set out again.

Using the rocks to conceal her form, she slipped into the depths of the forest.

With Flying Smoke Step beneath her feet, she ran swiftly, and before long had crossed more than half the woodland.

A stinking gale howled toward her. Li Lu spun aside, then raised her spirit sword horizontally to meet a pair of red fangs. The force shoved her back more than ten meters.

It was a Blood Fang Beast.

Its shape resembled a wild boar, though it was twice as large, with red tusks over a foot long. Fierce in bearing, it possessed tremendous brute force.

If this had been the Li Lu of the early Qi Refinement stage in her previous life, dealing with a Blood Fang Beast would not have been easy. But now she was no longer the same person.

The body’s core was that of the late Foundation Establishment Li Lu, who had undergone countless bouts of combat. Though her current spiritual power and spiritual sense could not compare to what they had been before her death, the reflexes and experience of battle had long since been etched into her soul.

Such a mere Blood Fang Beast was nothing to her.

Her body suddenly twisted. With one agile turn, she leaped onto the beast’s back. Her toes tapped lightly as spiritual power poured into the sword tip, which she drove straight down with speed, ruthlessness, and precision, stabbing deep into the weakest part of the beast’s skull.

With a crack, the skull shattered, blood spraying everywhere as the Blood Fang Beast shrieked in agony.

Li Lu turned her wrist, then withdrew her spirit sword. With a leap she embraced a tree, swiftly shifting hands and feet as she climbed high.

The Blood Fang Beast roared as it turned and slammed violently into the tree where Li Lu stood.

The trunk shook violently, creaking under the impact. A few more blows and it would snap. Borrowing the force, Li Lu sprang away and landed on the neighboring tree.

The Blood Fang Beast bellowed and charged again, smashing its head into the tree she now occupied.

The agony of a pierced skull drove the beast into madness. It wanted nothing more than to knock Li Lu from the tree and tear her to pieces. One attack after another, over a dozen times, yet Li Lu still remained steady in the branches. In the end, the beast shattered its own brain with repeated impacts, collapsed to the ground, struggled several times, and could no longer rise.

Li Lu waited a moment. Only after confirming that the Blood Fang Beast was truly dead did she climb down from the tree and, with a few swift strokes of her sword, cut off its two tusks. These were materials for artifact refinement, and turning them in to the sect would likely be worth about seventy contribution points. She then hacked off the forelegs, hind legs, and other choice cuts to serve as future provisions, and placed them into her storage pouch.

The storage pouch could not hold the entire beast, so she could only carry away the important parts. Li Lu cast a fireball spell, flicking out several small fireballs in succession. In no time, the beast’s corpse was reduced to drifting ash.

After making sure no flames would spread through the forest, Li Lu rose and continued on her way.

She had not gone far when she suddenly halted. A sharp light flashed in her eyes as she called out, “Who’s there?”

The words had barely fallen when a youth emerged from behind a tree a hundred meters to her left. He held a long sapphire-blue sword in his arms. His features were sharp and distinct, his eyes bright and clear, and in the morning light he looked strikingly handsome.

Li Lu’s eyes narrowed. For a moment she was dazed, as though a man who had died many years ago had appeared before her again in the form of a youth, as if time itself had suddenly reversed.

“Chen Qiaoxuan?”

“Li Lu!”

Chen Qiaoxuan did not notice her daze. He strolled a few steps closer, then raised a brow and said, “A scholar traveling for three days ought to be looked at with new eyes. I never thought your skill would be so sharp now. Once the trial is over, how about a match between us?”

“Sure. I’ll be ready any time,” Li Lu said, her eyes glinting as the corners of her lips lifted.

This was Chen Qiaoxuan. Like her, he possessed a single fire spiritual root, with a root value of ninety. Ever since they entered the sect, the two of them had constantly been compared with one another: cultivation speed, the pace at which they learned techniques, comprehension, swordsmanship, and countless other things.

They were both young and proud, each secretly determined to outdo the other. Yet for three years they had advanced almost side by side, chasing each other’s heels, neither ever falling behind.

After the trial in her previous life, because she had refined the Southern Brightness Luminous Fire, she had entered under Yan Yueheng’s tutelage and cultivated the Vermilion Bird Heart Method. Chen Qiaoxuan, meanwhile, had been accepted by True Lord Chu Lin as a second disciple and practiced the Great Void Fire Art.

Naturally, the Great Void Fire Art could not compare to the power of the Vermilion Bird Heart Method, and to outsiders it seemed as though the outcome of their comparison had already been decided.

But neither of them thought so. They still competed fiercely with each other.

That lasted until Chen Qiaoxuan completed his Foundation Establishment and returned home to visit his family.

Exactly what happened afterward, she never managed to uncover in her previous life. She only knew that Chen Qiaoxuan perished along the road.

Li Lu still remembered that day. Before leaving for his home visit, Chen Qiaoxuan had specially come to find her and made a promise: when he returned, the two of them would spar on the arena.

She had never gotten the chance to wait for that day. She had not expected that, after being reborn, she would receive his invitation first.

Yet in this life, things would be different from the last. He would likely still be taken in by Chu Lin, while she would no longer be Yan Yueheng’s first disciple. She would step onto another path.

This time, in the eyes of others, the comparison between them would also come to a clear conclusion.

The years-long rivalry of her previous life might not continue in this one.

Still, when he later left home after establishing his foundation, she would have to find a way to do something and prevent his death from happening again.

Looking back on her previous life, it had not been made up entirely of denial and suppression. Compared with the heavier second half of her life, the first half still held many lights worth remembering.

Chen Qiaoxuan was one of those lights, never fading in her memory.

In this life, she wanted to see how far the living Chen Qiaoxuan could grow.

“What are you thinking about? Hurry up and go. Don’t you still want a good ranking?” Chen Qiaoxuan suddenly spoke, interrupting her thoughts.

“If I’m not moving, aren’t you the same?” Li Lu curved her lips, then set the Flying Smoke Step in motion. “See you outside the trial field!”

“See you outside the trial field!” Chen Qiaoxuan raised a brow again, then turned and took another road.