In his previous life, he had obtained the final three chapters of the Inverse-Immortal Art back in the Central Province, and he still remembered every single word of them clearly. The flaws in the mental method could be repaired with some careful work, but the art itself was only low-grade Heaven rank. Its ceiling was the late Mahayana stage, and he would have to derive the rest of it himself if he wanted to go any further than that point.
Now that he had the system on his side, he knew he could go much farther than he ever had in his last life. He thought about the vanished Immortal Sects and what they might have left behind. Wu Qin felt no real obsession with ascending to immortality, yet without becoming an immortal his lifespan would stay finite. He could not stay with Xiao Qingyue forever in the way he truly wanted. And who knew what might happen one day. Someone from the Immortal Realm might descend and casually wipe him out of existence without even thinking twice about it. He had no choice in the matter at all.
Only by ascending could he break the shackles of this world and keep growing strong enough to control his own fate completely. In his previous life, after he stepped into the Fusion Stage, the Heavenly Dao of the Canglan Realm had kept targeting him without mercy. It kept spawning Children of Fortune, probably thinking the demonic path was too powerful and there were too many experts around. It was time for a harvest, as far as the Heavenly Dao was concerned. It orchestrated an unprecedented war between the righteous and demonic forces that swept through the Five Domains and sent great cultivators falling like rain in every direction.
A single whale falls, and ten thousand creatures thrive. The Heavenly Dao reduces the excess to replenish what is lacking. It maintains balance in the world in its own cold way. After all, great experts occupy too many resources, and if too many of them exist at once, the entire world slowly loses its vitality over time. Yet an elder of the demonic path had once told him that those who cultivate demonic arts cannot ascend to the Immortal Realm. They must find the Demon Abyss to reach the Demon Domain instead. The Immortal Realm simply would not accept them no matter what they did.
Then he would be separated from Xiao Qingyue for good, and that was something he could not accept at all. Unless he cultivated both immortal and demonic arts at the same time. Or found a way to take Xiao Qingyue with him to the Demon Domain. Whatever happened, they could not be parted from each other. The Canglan Continent has Five Domains in total. The Southern Border where he now stood had once, fifty thousand years ago, seen its spiritual veins plundered by an ancient sect from the Central Province.
As a result, today there is no publicly known Void Refinement cultivator anywhere in sight. Soul Formation is the absolute pinnacle of what anyone can reach here. With heaven-and-earth spiritual energy so thin and weak, orthodox cultivation is very difficult for everyone involved. Those who tread the demonic path naturally grow stronger in numbers because of it. The demonic path has no requirement for spirit roots at all, but it demands strong will, sharp comprehension, and real perseverance from anyone who walks it.
It cares nothing for morality or laws, and it needs no detachment from desire either. Yet spiritual energy is pure while demonic energy is turbid and violent, a negative force of heaven and earth that runs deep. It is interlaced with desire and negative emotion at every turn. If one's Dao heart is unsteady even for a moment, inner demons can seize control and turn the cultivator into a mindless killing machine without warning. Still, it differs from evil cultivators who harm others purely for selfish gain and nothing more.
The demonic path follows the heart, and it is not about senseless slaughter in every case. Many arts can be practiced without any indiscriminate killing at all. Pills can still be consumed just like before. Wu Qin sat and thought carefully about his situation. Most of the Children of Fortune had yet to mature and come into their full power. Right now he faced two main crises that demanded his full attention without delay.
The first was his former master, the Supreme Elder of the Ten Thousand Demon Sect, which was one of the four great demonic sects within the Great Qian Dynasty. That master was Old Devil Nine Abyss himself. The old devil had wanted to plunder his essence blood and origin for his own benefit, but Wu Qin had killed him first before it could happen. Masters treating disciples as cauldrons or vessels is common enough in demonic sects everywhere. Yet in this reborn life he knew Old Devil Nine Abyss was not truly dead at all. The old monster was secretly gathering strength somewhere, ready to deliver a fatal blow to his so-called parricidal disciple when the moment was right.
The second crisis was his foolish younger brother, Wu Ziyi. Possessing the Nine-Spirit Sword Body, Wu Ziyi had entered the Qingyun Sect, the greatest immortal sect in the Southern Border, and become a true disciple there. He was convinced his elder brother had gone completely mad and fallen deep into the demonic path without any hope of return. His brother dreamed of killing him one day soon. Not family, not the same door, as the saying went. For now Wu Qin could do nothing about either of them directly.
One enemy was hiding who knew where in the shadows. The Qingyun Sect, meanwhile, had two Void Refinement ancestors guarding it strongly. He had founded the Wuji Palace only a hundred years ago, so its foundation was far too thin to stand against serious threats yet. The four Dharma Protectors under his command were at the Nascent Soul level. The nine Hall Masters were at Core Formation. The rest were small fry with little real power to offer. Numbers were few, only about eight thousand people in total.
Though righteous cultivators, and even many demonic ones, wanted him dead more than anything, no one wished to trade life for life in a direct fight. The Wuji Palace mountain gate was hidden well enough that it stayed safe for the time being. Only in this way could he peacefully train fairies and cultivate at night without constant interruption. Wu Qin carried a simple food tray to Xiao Qingyue's cave-dwelling, which sat right next to his own as always.
Without a single word she rose from her stool and knelt on the ground right there in front of him. He spoke gently to her. Stand up and eat. We have not shared a meal in ages like this. This time Wu Qin let her sit at the table with him instead of staying on the floor. The two of them faced each other across the table in quiet calm. Wu Qin's gaze drifted to her again and again as they sat there. As always, she remained silent through it all.
To outsiders she seemed cold, proud, and completely aloof from the world. She was silent and untainted by any mortal dust that touched others. She kept to herself and preferred quiet over any kind of movement or noise. But Wu Qin knew her true nature was nothing like the image she showed to everyone else. She had once been the chief senior sister of the Lingyun Sect and the sect leader's personal disciple. Her talent was beyond compare in every way.
She was an absolute proud daughter of heaven, a once-in-ten-thousand-years genius that everyone admired. She began cultivating at the age of twenty and reached Foundation Establishment at fifty. She hit Core Formation at one hundred thirty and peak Core Formation at two hundred ten. She had hoped to form a Nascent Soul within three hundred years if everything went well. Then one day news arrived from a close friend she trusted. She rushed back to the capital of the Great Qian Dynasty without hesitation.
There she found the familiar family courtyard strewn with flesh, severed limbs, and corpses everywhere she looked. Her parents, her elder sister, and her younger sister were all dead in the terrible scene. Of the Xiao Family's thirty-one members, only her eldest sister's three-year-old daughter had survived because she had been at the Xia family that day visiting relatives. Madly she sought the truth behind it all. She hunted the murderer far and wide to avenge the blood debt that weighed on her heart.
All she learned in the end was that evil and demon cultivators had taken part in the attack. Her Dao heart cracked under the weight of it, and inner demons sprouted inside her mind. Every single night she woke up screaming from the nightmares that would not leave her alone. She adopted her sister's orphan child and defied her own sect to do it. She raised the child as her own daughter with all the love she could give. Not long after that, her master took in a fifth junior sister, which shattered what remained of her quiet life in the sect.
Everyone in the sect began to orbit around the little junior sister. Her background was tragic, her family had been wiped out, and her body was weak and sickly. She seemed so fragile that it looked like she might shatter at any moment. Xiao Qingyue paid it no mind and carried on as before. As the senior sister she felt she should look after the girl anyway. She even gifted Shen Rumeng a spirit artifact to help her along. Under the careful guidance of three senior brothers and a flood of resources from the sect, Shen Rumeng's cultivation soared higher and higher.
Meanwhile Xiao Qingyue stagnated and slowly sank, with her realm slipping backward over time. Later she was accused of harming her junior out of pure jealousy. She was confined to Siguo Cliff for twenty long years as punishment. Wu Qin heard the news and secretly rescued her from that place. He healed all her wounds with everything he had. The strongest cultivator in the Lingyun Sect was only at late Soul Formation, and he knew the entire place inside and out from past experience.
Two centuries earlier, when he was merely at Foundation Establishment, Old Devil Nine Abyss had ordered him to infiltrate the Lingyun Sect. The old devil had beaten him half to death and sent two Qi-Refinement demonic cultivators to chase him down. Xiao Qingyue happened by at just the right moment and saved him from certain death. Learning that his family had been slaughtered by demonic cultivators, she brought him back to the Lingyun Sect without a second thought. She spent lavish resources to keep him alive and nursed him back to health with her own careful hands.
Under the alias Qin Xiaowu he became a labor disciple of the Lingyun Sect and attended to her daily needs for a long time. He tended the spirit fields on Cloud-Piercing Peak and fed the spirit beasts every single day. As time passed, Wu Qin discovered she was nothing like the cold rumors that everyone spread about her. She shared funny stories with him when they were alone. She secretly read romance novels in her quiet moments and wept with red eyes at the tragic scenes inside them, little pearls of tears rolling down her cheeks.
She mocked the sect's weird disciples in private and flashed the most beautiful smiles when she did it. Sometimes she talked to herself softly when she thought no one was listening. She was a cold-faced little girl at heart, full of warmth that only a few ever saw. Born into a cultivation clan, her father had been a fourth-rank general of the Great Qian Dynasty. Her parents and her sister had adored her from the very beginning. She excelled at zither, chess, calligraphy, and painting without any effort.
She could compose poetry and do embroidery, mastering every feminine art that existed. Her life had been smooth from start to finish, with almost no real setbacks and very little harsh experience to toughen her. From childhood she had been bathed in praise and love at every turn. Yet she was never spoiled by any of it. On the contrary, she was extraordinarily kind to everyone around her. She was naïve and innocent, which was the only reason she would have rescued him in the first place.
She was easy to deceive and adorably foolish in the sweetest way. But to the mortals she helped along the way she was a fairy, a true Bodhisattva of salvation who brought light into their lives. Wu Qin would forever miss those days more than anything else. He was unable to forget her tranquil smile that lit up the simplest moments. He could still see her gentle wave against the sunset and her lovely figure standing beneath the moonlight as if it were yesterday. Those memories stayed with him through everything, warm and clear no matter how much time passed.