"Her skin is as white as jade, her muscles and bones are like fairy jade. She is almost done with the transformation.
With the ancient jade wall, she may be able to complete the ascension ceremony. We destroyed her cultivation, and her cultivation of ten thousand years was lost in one day.
No, maybe it wasn't us who destroyed it. Otherwise, even in this era when the Yuanling is extinct and the secret power of the world is not obvious, she would have produced some magic. She may have died halfway."
His voice was a little low, and his eyes flashed with a sigh.
"This was a supreme being. In her time, she might have been a peerless figure. However, she encountered the final stage of her Yuan Ling's decline, forcing her to settle for second best.
She trapped herself in a state of neither life nor death, entombed within the ancient jade wall. Ten thousand years later, we unearthed her."
"So, we are her human calamity?"
"We?"
Li Haomiao shook his head slightly. "The real human calamity was the enchanting woman who sat on the throne of the Great Zhou. Ninggu Pagoda was established when she ascended to power.
She knows secrets unknown to me and seems to be searching for ancient relics, seeking to explore the remains of immortals."
Xu Yunfan quietly gazed at the woman's body, a look of deep regret on his face. He then reached out and gently touched her.
The next moment, he saw the woman's once plump flesh rapidly shrivel, as if deflated. Her plump, jade-like skin became dry and wrinkled.
Before he could even react, the goddess before him was reduced to a mere shell.
Li Haomiao's face changed drastically.
"What did you do?"
Xu Yunfan was stunned, caught off guard.
"How should I know? Just touching it wouldn't do that. I just wanted to see if her skin was smooth."
Li Haomiao also came back to his senses. Looking at the wrinkled skin before him, he sighed,
"It seems she had already failed her immortal ascension and transformed into a corpse before we arrived. It's just that the Ancient Jade Wall has preserved the characteristics of her flesh."
Xu Yunfan paused as he picked up the skin.
[You've discovered the Nine Secrets of Taoism, Lin.]
Instantly, a flood of cultivation methods related to the Lin character flooded his mind, prompting him to memorize them quickly. This is a rare Taoist method that focuses the mind and strengthens the soul.
This is a memory initiation!
"What's wrong?"
Hearing Li Haomiao's question, Xu Yunfan suppressed his excitement and shook his head slightly, his expression calm.
"It's nothing, it's just that the texture of the skin is very good."
Seeing that Xu Yunfan was fine, Li Haomiao reached out his remaining left hand to touch it, commenting, "More delicate than a thirteen or fourteen-year-old girl, like a child."
Xu Yunfan scolded, "If you were in my place, you'd be sentenced to death."
Li Haomiao felt a little puzzled and snorted,
"In the Great Zhou Empire, a thirteen-year-old girl can marry.
Seventeen or eighteen-year-old people like you are still wasting their time. In the eyes of others, you are just a loser."
Xu Yunfan didn't bother to argue and simply found a place to sit down. He quietly watched the ancient jade wall, which had once radiated a deep luster, begin to lose its luster and gradually become indistinguishable from rock.
His mind was carefully pondering the 'Lin' Secret, one of the Nine Secrets of Taoism that he had just sensed through the system.
Li Haomiao also remained silent, staring at the ancient jade wall in a trance.
After a long time, Li Haomiao said, "The ancient jade wall has been used. Once it is broken, the magic will naturally dissipate."
Xu Yunfan was mostly focused on the Lin character formula in his mind. He asked casually, "Did this female fairy die early?"
"Maybe something happened in the past. She is neither alive nor dead, and cannot maintain the immortality of her body."
Xu Yunfan did not ask any more questions. He has already obtained the greatest opportunity in this body. If it were not for the attribute panel, he would probably not be able to activate the conditions for initiation.
"What is True Blood?"
Li Haomiao glanced at Xu Yunfan.
"Indeed, a rootless and scattered True Blood like you truly has no access to relevant information. Those who bear True Blood are the descendants of True Immortals."
Xu Yunfan was shocked. "I'm the descendant of a True Immortal?!"
In an instant, countless speculations about his own past flashed through his mind. Perhaps his parents were killed by an invasion of demons from outside the realm, or perhaps he was accidentally brought down to the mortal world, suffering untold hardships.
Or perhaps his father and his mistress fathered him as an illegitimate child, and the eldest son learned of the matter, prompting the vicious mistress to attack him and leave him to fend for himself...
"What nonsense are you imagining? Judging by your condition, it's probably just a lucky return to your ancestral roots. The last remaining strand of True Blood within you has been activated. There aren't many like you in the entire Great Zhou, but there aren't few either.
True Immortal descendants are indeed powerful, but after generations of spreading out, the number has long been diluted to a mere handful. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, you should be just like an ordinary person."
At this point, Li Haomiao fell into deep thought. Could those with True Blood follow Xu Yunfan's path to activate their bloodline?
This was a method worth studying.
After all, those with True Blood can rapidly advance through the initial stages of martial arts training, quickly advancing from one realm to full mastery and becoming a dominant force.
Xu Yunfan's inner passion was naturally dampened by this, and he pressed on, "Are True Immortals truly real?"
Li Haomiao raised his chin. "Isn't there someone right in front of you?"
Looking at the husk of flesh not far away, Xu Yunfan asked suspiciously, "Does that count?"
"When your strength reaches a level unimaginable to ordinary people, when you have fully exploited the potential of the human body, reaching the pinnacle of perfection, you can naturally be called a terrestrial immortal."
"So you can die too,"
Xu Yunfan said, speechless. He stood up, picked up his pickaxe, and prepared to practice the Bronze Body Technique, improving his mining proficiency along the way.
Then, from outside the main mine tunnel, the sound of gongs and drums echoed.
It was time to rest.
Xu Yunfan was a little dazed. He had never thought he could stay in this dark mine for ten whole days without feeling panic.
But he knew in his heart that without the attribute panel, these ten days would be nothing short of hell.
He turned to look at Li Haomiao. "It's time to leave the mine and rest for a few days. Do you want to go out?"
Li Haomiao looked up, a look of confusion on his face.
"Of course I'm going out."
"Then let's go."
Watching Xu Yunfan's retreating back, Li Haomiao lost his composure and shouted, "Take me with you!"
"..."
As the overseer, Yang Gan, led the miners out of the dark mine, Xu Yunfan squinted at the bright sky.
Ningguta lay in a depression, eight hundred miles across a desolate river.
Looking up, all around were rolling mountain ranges, their ridges winding up from the depression and spreading out in all directions, their peaks capped with snow.
As the cold wind blew, Xu Yunfan felt a chill creeping into his bones, causing goose bumps to form on his skin.
He turned to look at the people around him who had been demoted to mining slaves.
Without exception, they were all black, their clothes were tattered, and their faces were almost completely covered in black coal dust.
(End of this chapter)