"Skin like jade cream, flesh of an immortal, bones of jade... She was on the verge of completing her transformation. The Ancient Jade Wall... perhaps it really could have been used to complete the Immortal Ascension Ceremony. We destroyed her Daoist Cultivation—ten thousand years of work, gone in a single day.
No, perhaps it wasn't us who destroyed it. Otherwise, even in an age like this—one where the Primordial Spirit has vanished and Secret Power is no longer manifest in the world—there would have been some kind of divine phenomenon. It's very likely she had already died midway through the process."
His voice was low, his eyes glinting with a hint of lament.
"This was an Extreme Daoist. In her time, she might have been a peerless, legendary figure. But she was born at the end of the Primordial Spirit's decline. Left with no other choice, she had to settle for the next best thing: entering a state between life and death, entombed within the Ancient Jade Wall. Ten thousand years later, we dug her up."
"So, we're her Human Tribulation?"
"Us?" Li Haomiao shook his head slightly. "The real Human Tribulation is that demoness sitting on the throne of the Great Zhou Empire. Ninggu Tower was established when she took power. She knows secrets that I don't and seems to be searching for ancient sites, hoping to find the ruins left by Immortals."
Xu Yunfan gazed quietly at the woman's body, his expression full of sorrow. Then, he reached out and gently touched her.
The next moment, the woman's full figure began to shrivel rapidly, as if she were a deflating balloon. Her plump, jade-like skin dried out and wrinkled.
Before he could even react, the goddess-like woman before him had been reduced to nothing but a husk of skin.
The color drained from Li Haomiao's face.
"What did you do?"
Xu Yunfan looked completely stunned, caught completely off guard.
"How should I know? It can't be from just a touch, can it? I just wanted to see if her skin was smooth."
Li Haomiao also recovered his senses. Looking at the wrinkled husk of skin before them, he sighed. "It seems she had already failed her Immortal Ascension and underwent corpse-liberation before we arrived. The Ancient Jade Wall merely preserved the state of her physical body."
As Xu Yunfan heard this and picked up the husk of skin, his hand paused for a moment.
'You have discovered one of the Nine Daoist Sects Secrets: Lin.'
In an instant, a massive amount of information about the Linn Character Technique's cultivation method flooded his mind, and he rapidly committed it to memory. It was a rare Dharma Gate from a Daoist Sect, focused on concentrating the mind and strengthening the Divine Soul.
'This is an Empowerment of memory!'
"What's wrong?"
Hearing Li Haomiao's question, Xu Yunfan suppressed the excitement surging in his heart and shook his head, his expression remaining neutral.
"It's nothing. This skin just has a really nice texture."
Seeing that Xu Yunfan was fine, Li Haomiao reached out with his remaining left hand to touch it. "It's even more delicate than the skin of a thirteen or fourteen-year-old girl," he commented. "Like a newborn's."
Xu Yunfan cursed, "Where I'm from, you'd get the death penalty for saying something like that."
Li Haomiao found this baffling and snorted. "In the Great Zhou Empire, a girl of thirteen can already be a wife. Someone like you, still idling away at seventeen or eighteen, is just a failure in the eyes of others."
Xu Yunfan couldn't be bothered to argue with him. He just found a spot to sit down and quietly watched as the Ancient Jade Wall, which had been emitting a deep, mysterious glow, began to fade until it was indistinguishable from ordinary stone.
In his mind, he was carefully studying the Linn Character Technique, one of the Nine Daoist Sects Secrets he had just perceived through the system.
Li Haomiao was also silent, staring blankly at the Ancient Jade Wall.
After a long while, Li Haomiao said, "The Ancient Jade Wall has already been used. Once it was breached, its divine properties naturally dissipated."
Most of Xu Yunfan's attention was focused on the Linn Character Technique in his mind. He asked casually, "So this female Immortal... she died ahead of time?"
"Perhaps. Something must have happened in the past. She was left in a state between life and death, unable to keep her physical body from decaying."
Xu Yunfan didn't ask any more questions. He had already received the greatest possible boon from this husk of skin. If it weren't for his Attribute Panel, he probably wouldn't have been able to activate the conditions for the Empowerment.
"What is True Blood?"
Li Haomiao glanced at Xu Yunfan.
"Right. I suppose a scattered True Blood like you, with no roots, would have no way of finding out.
Those who possess True Blood are the descendants of True Immortals."
Xu Yunfan was shaken. "I'm the descendant of a True Immortal?!"
Instantly, his mind raced with countless theories about his origins. 'Maybe my parents were killed in an invasion of Outer Heaven Demons. Or maybe they accidentally dropped me into the mortal realm, leaving me to suffer endlessly. Or maybe my father had me with his mistress, and when the legitimate heir found out, his vicious wife cast me out to fend for myself...'
"What nonsense are you thinking? Looking at you, it's likely just a fluke of atavism. A single, dormant strand of True Blood in your body was activated. There aren't many people like you in all of Great Zhou, but there aren't that few either.
The descendants of True Immortals are indeed powerful, but after generations of branching out, the bloodline has been diluted to almost nothing. Barring any surprises, you should have been no different from an ordinary person."
At this, Li Haomiao fell into deep thought. 'To activate the bloodline of someone with True Blood, could one follow Xu Yunfan's developmental path? This was a method worth investigating. After all, those with True Blood progress extremely quickly in the early stages of martial arts. They can cultivate a realm to the stage of Great Success in a short amount of time, becoming a primary fighting force.'
Hearing this was like having a bucket of cold water dumped on his excitement. Xu Yunfan pressed on, "Are there really True Immortals in the world?"
Li Haomiao lifted his chin. "Isn't there one right in front of you?"
Glancing at the husk of skin nearby, Xu Yunfan asked doubtfully, "That counts?"
"When your power reaches a realm unimaginable to ordinary people, when you have tapped the full potential of the human body and become an ultimate Extreme Daoist, you can naturally be called one of the Land Immortals and Gods."
"So they can die too."
Xu Yunfan was left speechless. He stood up, picked up his Iron Pickaxe, and prepared to practice his Copper Body Skill while also increasing his mining Skill Level.
Just then, the sound of a striking gong echoed from outside the main mine tunnel.
That sound meant it was time for a break.
Xu Yunfan felt a bit dazed. He'd never imagined he could spend ten whole days in this sunless mine without panicking.
But he knew that without the Attribute Panel, these ten days would have been an absolute Hell.
He turned back to Li Haomiao. "We can leave the mine for a few days of rest. Are you coming out?"
Li Haomiao looked up, a strange expression on his face.
"Of course I'm going out."
"Then let's go."
Watching Xu Yunfan's retreating back, Li Haomiao couldn't hold it in any longer and shouted, "Take me with you!"
"..."
By the time the Supervisor Commander, Yang Gan, led their group of Mining Slaves out of the sunless mine, Xu Yunfan was squinting at the bright sky.
The eight hundred li of the Barren Riverlands. Ninggu Tower was situated in a basin. As far as the eye could see, it was surrounded by continuous mountain ranges. Their winding ridges rose from the basin and spread out in all directions, their peaks capped with white snow.
As the cold wind blew, Xu Yunfan felt a chilling cold seep deep into his bones, making goosebumps rise on his skin.
He turned to look at the crowd of people who, like him, had been condemned to be Mining Slaves. Without exception, they were all filthy, dressed in tattered rags, their faces almost completely obscured by black mine dust.