Deep within the secret realm.
Su Yueli was still sitting cross-legged inside the sealed stone cave.
The palm-sized True Spirit Dharma-Image Jade Fragment rested on her lap. She had spent the last few days turning it over and over, trying everything, but the fragment remained ice-cold from beginning to end, showing no reaction whatsoever.
When she tried to flood it with her Delusion Breaker Rank blood qi, the blood qi passed right through it. When she tried to squeeze it with brute force, she found its material to be ridiculously hard.
No matter what she did, it was like a completely ordinary, useless rock.
“Fifty spirit stones... Could I have actually been swindled by those guys from the Wanbao Merchant House?”
Su Yueli's brow furrowed as she began to have doubts.
Could this thing be like a storage bag, requiring a cultivator's spiritual energy to activate?
But she was a pure Ji Dao martial artist, without even a single strand of spiritual energy in her body. For a moment, she felt completely at a loss.
Just as she was feeling a bit discouraged and contemplating whether to throw this useless rock back into her storage bag, she suddenly remembered something.
Whenever someone found a treasure, they usually had to bind it with a drop of blood.
“Nothing to lose. I'll give it a shot.”
Without any delay, Su Yueli swiped her right index finger across Xiaohei's fist blade, forcing out a drop of essence blood. It landed on the jade fragment with a soft splat.
Buzz!
The moment it touched the essence blood, the originally dull and lusterless jade fragment trembled violently.
A blinding, blood-red spiritual light instantly illuminated the entire dim cave, making it as bright as day.
After all the days Su Yueli had spent struggling to get a reaction, the solution turned out to be this simple.
Before she could think further, a terrifying suction force suddenly erupted from the fragment.
Su Yueli felt her mind rumble as the cave vanished in an instant, her consciousness forcibly dragged into a gray, bizarre space.
In the center of the space stood a majestic phantom whose face was obscured.
The phantom towered between heaven and earth, surrounded by countless golden laws of the immortal path.
He slowly raised his right hand and pressed it gently against the void ahead. In an instant, the laws of heaven and earth for ten thousand miles around shattered with a roar, and the void collapsed directly into a massive black hole.
Law of Heaven and Earth.
This was a great divine ability possessed only by cultivators beyond the Tenth Realm of the immortal path.
Every fluctuation of blood qi and every trace of Dao rhyme flowing as the phantom unleashed the divine ability was now playing out in the depths of Su Yueli's consciousness.
Su Yueli stared intently at the towering phantom, her heart filled with shock.
If cultivators could use their spiritual power and spiritual energy to condense a dharma-image, why couldn't she, an Eleventh Realm Delusion Breaker martial artist, use her ultimate physical blood qi to condense a phenomenon unique to the martial path behind her?
With this thought, she immersed herself completely.
While observing the Dao rhyme of the phantom, she circulated the Delusion Breaker Rank blood qi within her body, attempting to blaze a trail deep within her blood qi to forcibly condense a “Martial Soul.”
In cultivation, there is no concept of time; longevity has no end.
A single day in the mountains is a thousand years in the mortal world.
To an immortal with infinite lifespan, time was nothing more than sand slipping through one's fingers—the most worthless thing of all.
In the blink of an eye, thirty years quietly slipped away in this monotonous and lonely struggle.
The dark cave was now covered in a thick layer of dust.
On the dust-laden stone platform, the young woman sitting cross-legged slowly opened her eyes.
Thirty years of time had not left a single trace on her face. Instead, her already cold and beautiful features seemed even more tranquil.
Her ink-black hair draped over her shoulders, and her entire being exuded an ethereal aura, untouched by the dust of the mortal world.
Su Yueli exhaled a long breath of turbid air and rubbed her temples with a trace of helplessness.
“To think that over thirty years have passed in a flash...”
She muttered to herself.
Despite thirty years of intense, stubborn effort, she still had not been able to truly condense a Martial Soul.
However, she remained perfectly calm.
After all, no martial artist had ever walked this path before. She was the first person to blaze a trail in this unknown realm.
Without the guidance of predecessors, every step forward was incredibly difficult. It truly could not be rushed; she had to take it slow.
Though her Martial Soul was not yet formed, her mind had at least grasped some traces of it. All she lacked now was actual combat and an opportunity.
Examining herself, although her current realm remained at the Eleventh Realm Delusion Breaker, the Ji Dao blood qi in her body was several times more robust than it had been thirty years ago. Her control over the hidden force of the Mountain-Shaking Heaven-Shattering Force was also far more perfect.
The current her was far stronger than she had been thirty years ago.
“Over thirty years have passed. Even if those guys from the Cangyun Sect are completely insane, there's no way they would stay out there on guard for thirty years.”
Su Yueli stood up and patted the dust off her dress.
She planned to head out and take a look. After all, hiding in a cave and working in isolation was not a viable long-term solution.
Rumble.
With a single palm strike, Su Yueli shattered the massive boulder that had blocked the cave entrance for thirty years. Her figure flickered, vanishing from the cave in an instant like a wisp of green smoke.
Along the way, she carefully concealed her blood qi, first cautiously exploring the inner zone of the secret realm.
After avoiding several powerful high-grade demon beasts, she found no signs of any cultivator ambushes.
She then continued to sneak outward, passing through the forest until she reached the outermost perimeter of the secret realm.
Her surroundings were deathly quiet. There were no streaks of flying light from cultivators in the sky, nor was there any sign of the Cangyun Sect's black robes with blue cloud patterns on the plains.
It was only when she reached the massive entrance of the secret realm and saw only a scattering of mortal loose cultivators traveling together that the weight she had carried in her heart for thirty years finally lifted.
It seemed those guys had indeed withdrawn long ago.
At this moment, all of Su Yueli's Ji Dao blood qi was completely withdrawn into her bones, without emitting even a single shred of spiritual energy fluctuation. She looked as pure as a wealthy young lady from a mortal family who simply knew a bit of martial arts.
Just as she was about to step out of the secret realm's entrance, a few low-level loose cultivators approached her, discussing their plans to team up and hunt demon beasts inside.
When those men looked up, they saw Su Yueli walking out gracefully from the direction of the deepest part of the secret realm. When they tried to sense her with their spiritual senses, they found the woman before them to be unfathomable. They could not perceive even a hint of her cultivation level; she felt like an absolute void.
To stroll so leisurely out of the depths of a notoriously dangerous secret realm while keeping her cultivation completely hidden from them...
This was absolutely a powerful, reclusive expert of the cultivation world who had maintained her youthful appearance and spent years in closed-door cultivation inside!
The faces of the low-level loose cultivators paled instantly, and a cold sweat broke out all over them.
Not daring to show the slightest disrespect, they hurriedly stopped in fear and trepidation, dutifully stepping to both sides of the path. They bowed deeply and cupped their hands in salute:
“Junior... pays respects to Senior!”
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