Translator: AnubisTL
The night was deep and still, the stars and moon casting a silvery frost over the tranquil mountain forest.
Li Qing, having escaped the World of Eternal Night, now moved swiftly through the dense woods as an agile ape. The dense network of tree branches served as his best leverage points, allowing him to swing effortlessly across vast distances with each leap.
Beside him, a massive, imposing tiger kept pace, its powerful presence radiating through the forest.
Together, man and beast traversed the dense undergrowth until a barren, rocky hill suddenly loomed ahead, the moonlight seeming to shine even brighter here.
"I hope you're still alive, buddy," Li Qing muttered. "Otherwise, everything in your storage pouch is mine now."
With that, Li Qing landed atop the hill and retrieved a crescent-shaped jade pendant from his robes.
He channeled a small amount of spiritual energy into the pendant, and it immediately reacted, emitting a strange, resonant pulse.
In an instant, the bright moon in the night sky began drawing down vast quantities of moonlight.
The moonlight converged upon the jade pendant, and astonishingly, a door materialized in mid-air—a door formed entirely of condensed moonlight!
Witnessing this miraculous scene, Li Qing was filled with awe.
Though he had heard Ye Feng personally describe the wonders of this place, seeing it with his own eyes still felt almost unbelievable.
This seemingly ordinary location served as the entrance to a secret realm, and the method of entry was extraordinarily demanding, requiring the simultaneous fulfillment of two stringent conditions.
"I wonder what material this Jade Pendant is made of, and how it was forged to channel moonlight like this," Li Qing mused.
Soon, as the moonlight grew increasingly dense, the Moon Gate in the void finally stabilized, fully formed!
Li Qing stepped onto a massive hammer, then soared skyward on his spiritual artifact, drifting toward the Moon Gate.
Buzz!
The moment he passed through the Moon Gate, Li Qing felt as if a splash of icy water had washed over him, leaving him utterly chilled.
Moonlight, the essence of the Taiyin!
For those who cultivated Taiyin-based cultivation manuals, this condensed moonlight would be an invaluable source of power.
Yet, as Li Qing's figure vanished through the Moon Gate, the dense moonlight dissipated completely, as if nothing had ever occurred.
Thud!
In the secret realm, Li Qing plummeted from mid-air, landing with a solid crash on the ground.
"So this is the Hidden Realm!"
Li Qing rubbed his head, not from being dazed by the fall, but from the disorienting sensation of spatial traversal that had momentarily destabilized his control over his flying artifact.
The surroundings were eerily silent, devoid of any sound—not even the chirping of birds or the buzzing of insects. It was a complete and utter stillness.
The sky was a dense tapestry of brilliant stars, their light drawn down by an ancient Restriction and scattered across the towering mountain peaks.
Li Qing followed the starlight's trajectory until his gaze landed on the Medicinal Field Mountains at the center, where rows of Heavenly Star Grass grew in neat medicinal fields. He froze in place, utterly stunned.
"Heavens..."
He couldn't help but gasp. The sight before him was simply too astonishing.
On those Medicinal Field Mountains, countless Heavenly Star Grass plants stood like miniature trees, their size defying belief.
"Are these also Heavenly Star Grass? They must be thousands of years old!"
Li Qing felt a wave of dizziness, stunned by the scene before him. He was so overwhelmed that he couldn't even find the words to speak.
A spirit herb thousands of years old—this was the most extraordinary thing he had ever seen since entering the world of cultivation.
"Unfortunately, these mountains are covered in Restrictions. It seems cultivators in the Qi Refining Realm have no chance of reaching them."
Gazing at the spiritual light emanating from the Restrictions on the Medicinal Field Mountains, Li Qing felt a pang of longing, like someone sighing before a mountain of treasure they couldn't reach.
He was certain that attempting to force his way through would cost him his life.
These Restrictions had been laid by Foundation Establishment cultivators, their power absolutely terrifying. Without reaching that realm, there was no way to ascend to the medicinal fields at the mountain peaks.
"Because this is a secret realm, not even a breeze stirs here. The Restrictions remain as pristine as the day they were set."
"It seems the Heavenly Star Grass Gu Ming sells is just scraps harvested from the foothills."
Li Qing reluctantly tore his gaze away from the Medicinal Field Mountains within the secret realm and began surveying the surrounding environment.
"There are signs of a struggle here. It seems they started fighting right at the entrance to the secret realm."
Following the traces of the battle, Li Qing began searching for Ye Feng's location.
"The spiritual energy here is quite thin, barely reaching the level of a First-Tier Spiritual Vein. It seems the Restriction on the mountain peak has gathered all the spiritual energy."
As Li Qing spoke, he strode forward. Though he stood in an open area, the signs of the fight led along a mountain path inward. The surrounding weeds grew thick and lush, requiring careful navigation.
Finally, after pushing through a field of tall grass, a mountain peak resembling the main peak came into view.
"There's a structure up there! It looks like a Daoist temple?!" Li Qing exclaimed in surprise, then glanced down to the foot of the mountain, where the signs of the battle ended. Dried bloodstains splattered the area.
A figure lay motionless on the ground, eyes bulging and face deathly pale, indistinguishable from a corpse.
The body was Ye Feng's. Li Qing reached out to check his pulse, but found no sign of life.
"He's clearly dead, so why is the soul lamp still lit?!"
As he spoke, Li Qing pulled out the soul lamp Ye Feng had given him earlier. The tiny spark within continued to emit a faint, flickering glow.
This proved that Ye Feng still clung to life by a thread, not yet completely dead.
Li Qing's brow furrowed deeply, utterly perplexed by the situation.
He had initially assumed Gu Ming had forgotten to deliver the final blow, allowing Ye Feng to cling to life by a sliver of breath.
But now, seeing the multiple fatal wounds on Ye Feng's body, it seemed impossible for him to have survived.
After a moment's hesitation, Li Qing instinctively began searching Ye Feng's body.
A small, jade-green bottle rolled out from Ye Feng's robes, a faint, almost imperceptible green glow lingering on its surface.
This glow resembled the color of the soul lamp and emanated faint traces of divine consciousness.
"Brother Li... is that you?"
Sensing the divine consciousness, Li Qing felt a jolt of surprise before replying, "It's me. What's happened to you? How did you end up trapped in this bottle?"
After a long pause, the jade-green bottle emitted another faint pulse of consciousness.
"It's a long story... Only a sliver of my divine soul remains, trapped within this bottle. I can only survive by seizing another body."
Body snatching?!
Upon hearing this, Li Qing nearly dropped the luminous green bottle in his panic, fearing he might be possessed.
He was no longer a novice in the cultivation world; he knew exactly what body snatching meant: to seize another's body, inheriting everything—their identity, memories, and all else.
In the cultivation world, rumors abounded of Core Formation experts who failed to break through to the Nascent Soul Realm, their divine souls surviving only to possess the bodies of mediocre cultivators, thus embarking on entirely new lives of ease and pleasure.
And truth be told, such tales were surprisingly common.
Li Qing believed that with so many rumors, there must be at least a few genuine cases among them!
Sensing Li Qing's apprehension, Ye Feng chuckled bitterly. "Brother Li, you have nothing to fear. With my divine soul so weakened, how could I possibly possess you?"
This was a fundamental truth. The cultivation world adhered to several ironclad rules regarding body snatching:
A cultivator of lower cultivation cannot possess one of higher cultivation.One can only possess a body once in their lifetime.Mortals without Spiritual Roots cannot be possessed.And most importantly, a weakened divine soul attempting to possess a stronger one is doomed to failure.
"So, what exactly are you proposing?" Li Qing asked, frowning.
"I need you to find someone on the verge of death, or someone who has died within the past two hours. I want to use their body to be reborn."
Ye Feng's divine soul flickered weakly. Without the luminous green bottle, he would have likely vanished completely long ago.
Li Qing remained silent for a moment, carefully weighing the pros and cons in his mind.
Finally, he agreed.
"Alright, but I must warn you: I will never kill anyone to help you possess their body. Such actions defy the natural order."
"If we encounter someone on the verge of death or a corpse that has been dead for less than two hours, I will assist you in transferring your soul and being reborn."
Ye Feng was greatly satisfied with this arrangement.
"Of course. But time is running out. If we don't find a suitable body within six months, this remnant of my divine soul will dissipate completely, scattering into nothingness."
Li Qing sighed, never imagining things would come to this.
He wasn't worried about Ye Feng resorting to desperate measures and trying to possess him. Now that he had obtained a substantial amount of Heavenly Star Grass, he could nurture his own divine soul in the future.
With this growing disparity in strength, Ye Feng would never pose a threat to him, eliminating any concern about being possessed.
(End of the Chapter)
📖Read [IR] ahead on Pa.treon@AnubisTL upto c314. [+2/+4k].
🎁All [2] Novels can be accessed for just $6/mo.
🔥Translated [900+] Chapters and [1.79M+] Words.