After returning from the Blood Banquet Valley, dawn had already broken.
Liu Meng went back to her increasingly lively cave dwelling, dismissed the maidservants who came to greet her, and sat alone upon the cold, high platform.
She did not cultivate. She simply waited—waited for the secret art she had chosen from the Scripture Repository to be delivered into her hands.
After all, since she had already chosen the Profound Female Canon, a technique that drained others for her own benefit, why should she trouble herself with painstaking cultivation? Was it not far more pleasant to simply lie there and let streams of spiritual power come to her unbidden?
And yet, the new art still had not arrived. Bored out of her mind, Liu Meng's gaze finally fell upon the Rite and Poetry Technique.
This particular method had been acquired from a foreign secret realm. Liu Ming had already spent a long time puzzling over it, but had never grasped even the first threshold of Qi Refining. In the end, he had been forced to set his research aside.
Liu Meng, with nothing better to do, idly picked it up and leafed through a few pages. In any case, whatever she read was equivalent to the main body reading.
But the longer she looked, the stranger her expression became.
What appeared to Liu Ming as obscure, unfathomable lines—like scripture from the heavens themselves—seemed unexpectedly easier for her to comprehend.
Cultural references and ceremonial allusions that had baffled Liu Ming revealed their meaning to her after only a little thought, allowing her to grasp faint threads of insight.
Slowly, she began to perceive that…the core of the Rite and Poetry Technique lay in the single word "Poetry." Yet it was more than that. If the essence of the Blood Banquet Canon was devouring, and that of the Profound Female Canon was harvesting, then the core of the Rite and Poetry Technique…was the Realm of Poetry.
The realm of poetry was a Dao in itself. Poems, verses, and stanzas were manifestations of the traces of Heaven and Earth, each word a pearl, each line a hidden mystery, containing within them the truths of the cosmos—the rise and fall of myriad phenomena.
If one could imprint the poetic realm upon their very soul, it could stir the literary essence within the sea of consciousness, allowing their words to carry celestial mandate. Whatever scene a poem described, whatever emotion a verse conveyed, could be drawn forth from the void and manifested in reality!
As her comprehension deepened, Liu Meng even felt a faint, indistinct aura of grandeur begin to gather in her dantian—on the verge of condensing into a strand of entirely new spiritual power.
Buzz!
The moment she sensed it, Liu Meng snapped the book shut.
She halted immediately.
Upon careful thought, she remembered—she was of the Demonic Path. She cultivated the Profound Female Canon. If it were ever discovered that her body contained a righteous path technique, she would certainly be denounced as a spy of some rival sect. At that time, not only Su Mei'er, but the entire Heavenly Demon Sect itself, would never spare her!
Yet, once she calmed down, she could not help but laugh at her own nervousness.
It had merely been a faint sensation, nothing more. In truth, she was still worlds away from actually condensing a single thread of spiritual power.
Besides, the efficiency of this righteous art in producing cultivation was laughably low. Compared with demonic methods such as the Profound Female Canon or the Blood Banquet Canon, it was like heaven and earth apart.
That much fit her understanding well enough. Demonic arts advanced by leaps and bounds—that was as it should be. If the righteous path could cultivate just as quickly, who would ever bother with demonic cultivation?
Only one question still puzzled her.
Why was there such a vast difference between her own comprehension of this art and that of the main body?
The body had strained and pondered to no avail, while she had glanced over a few pages and already grasped something.
Could it be…that even if the avatars shared a single consciousness with the body, their insights into a technique might differ?
Or was it perhaps that this incarnation—no, she herself—was truly a peerless genius of cultivation?
Liu Meng put the technique away, intending to wait until she summoned the next avatar, and then let him try the Rite and Poetry Technique as well. If the same result occurred, then she would know.
As for why she did not let Liu Six or Liu Eight attempt it—well, neither of them were present.
Liu Eight had already departed once more for that mysterious city of Luo Feng, to investigate further, and would not return anytime soon.
Liu Six, meanwhile, was secretly escorting Qin Yi, ensuring that he could participate in the new Blood Banquet Valley entrance trial.
From the moment Qin Yi had been summoned, he was meant to sever all ties with Liu Meng's faction.
Therefore, although Liu Six guarded him in secret, he could not openly interact with him.
But if Liu Meng were to "coincidentally" pass along Qin Yi's path and clear away the fierce beasts ahead of him, that would arouse no suspicion. After all, hunting beasts had become her recent "habit." To anyone watching, nothing would seem amiss.
And since Qin Yi and she had never met openly, unless someone was exceedingly meticulous, it would be impossible to uncover the hidden link between them.
The only problem at hand was that Qin Yi still did not know the exact location of the trial.
Back in the Blood Banquet Valley, it had not been convenient for Liu Meng to ask the sect emissary directly. Had she shown too much curiosity, it might have seemed like she was prying for information, drawing unnecessary suspicion.
But that hardly troubled her.
Since the conditions for this selection were stricter, the cultivators tasked with recruitment would surely, as before, spread news in the surrounding mortal towns.
All they needed to do was make inquiries in such towns, and sooner or later, word of the Blood Banquet Valley would reach them.
Greenstone City—far larger than Wangxian Town, a mortal royal city.
Qin Yi and Liu Six entered quietly, one ahead of the other, pretending not to know each other, and each sought their own inn.
Liu Six chose an inn named "Prosperity Lodge."
It was small in scale, yet filled with people. She found a seat by the window, ordered the cheapest coarse tea, and quietly settled in.
With her current cultivation at the third layer of Qi Refining, every word of conversation in the inn's hall reached her ears with crystal clarity, no matter how softly spoken.
Sure enough, she had only just sat down when she overheard several traveling merchants at the next table animatedly discussing recent events in town.
"Hey, have you heard? Another immortal master has come to the city to select disciples!"
"Who doesn't know that? The notices are plastered all over! But the conditions this time are so strange—there can't be many people in the whole city who fit them."
"Bah, who among us mortals can fathom the affairs of immortals? All that matters is, it's another great chance at destiny! Who knows which lucky soul will be chosen this time?"
Meanwhile, Qin Yi had not gone into an inn at all.
He had been drawn instead to a tea stall along the roadside, where an elderly storyteller, with white hair and a Daoist bearing, sat upon a raised platform.
Clutching a wooden clapper, the old man spoke with vigor, eyes shining, spittle flying as his tale unfolded.
And the story he told made Qin Yi's heart tremble in astonishment.
Its title was none other than—The Chronicle of a Mortal's Ascent to Immortality!