Are you saying... he's some old fiend who seized a body and cultivated anew

By the banks of the Tianshui River, the night breeze carried a faint chill.

The farce aboard the painted pleasure boat came to an abrupt end with Su Ji’s departure, but its aftermath was like a boulder cast into the heart of a lake, sending wave after wave rippling outward.

Shu Yufeng was carried away, his knees shattered. His pig-slaughter screams gradually faded into the distance, leaving everyone who heard them with a knot in their chest.

Tong Xiaoxiao stood at the bow, watching the figure vanish into the night. Her palms were slick with cold sweat.

She had won the gamble. At least for tonight, the Tong family had been spared.

Only then did her rigid back suddenly collapse, as though every bone in her body had been pulled away. She nearly crumpled onto the deck.

“Miss.”

A stream of warm, gentle spiritual energy settled against the middle of her back. The warmth instantly coursed through her limbs and body, dispelling the chill born of fear.

Tong Xiaoxiao did not turn around. She merely gave a bitter laugh. “Uncle Li, you came.”

At some point, a middle-aged man in a scholar’s robe had appeared behind her.

His features were lean and refined, and he held a weathered ancient book in one hand. He looked like nothing more than an unsuccessful scholar, with not the slightest trace of spiritual energy emanating from him.

Li Yunzhi, the chief guest elder of the Tong family’s Hall of Retainers, was the Tong family’s anchor—whom Tong Qiannian had spent more than half the family fortune to bring in.

Li Yunzhi withdrew his hand. His gaze swept over the pool of Shu Yufeng’s blood on the ground, and he frowned slightly.

Tong Xiaoxiao smoothed her disheveled hair at her temple, her eyes clearing once more. “Since you were here, Uncle Li, why didn’t you intervene?”

Li Yunzhi fell silent.

He lowered his eyes to the ink-jade bookmark hanging at his waist—his natal treasure.

At this moment, the bookmark, usually as smooth and lustrous as jade, was trembling faintly. A hairline crack had even appeared across its surface.

“It wasn’t that I didn’t want to act.” Li Yunzhi sighed, his tone carrying an exceedingly rare note of apprehension—perhaps even... lingering fear.

“I didn’t dare.”

Tong Xiaoxiao froze.

Though she did not know Li Yunzhi’s exact cultivation level, her father had once told her that, so long as a behemoth like the Shu family did not mobilize in full force, Uncle Li would be enough to ensure the Tong family’s safety.

And yet a man standing at the pinnacle of Tianshui City had said that he... did not dare?

“Miss, return to the estate first. The master is waiting,” Li Yunzhi said, offering no further explanation. With a sweep of his sleeve, he summoned a wisp of clear wind that supported Tong Xiaoxiao. “After tonight, I fear Tianshui City is about to change.”

After seeing Tong Xiaoxiao off, Li Yunzhi once again looked in the direction Su Ji had gone. His expression darkened until it seemed ready to drip with water.

He flicked the ink-jade bookmark at his waist.

“Old Ce, come out.”

A puff of green smoke rose, and a tiny phantom dressed as a bookish pageboy crawled out of the bookmark. Barely the size of a palm, it had the appearance of a young attendant.

The instant the little book spirit appeared, it reacted as if it had seen a ghost. Clutching its head, it tried to burrow into Li Yunzhi’s robes, babbling, “Don’t kill me, don’t kill me! I’m just a bookkeeper! My flesh is tough and sour—I don’t even taste good!”

Li Yunzhi was so irritated he nearly laughed. He grabbed the embarrassing creature and lifted it up. “Enough! He left ages ago!”

Only then did the book spirit called Old Ce dare open its eyes. It darted furtive glances around, and after confirming that demon truly was gone, it let out a long breath and flopped onto Li Yunzhi’s palm, wiping at sweat that did not exist on its forehead.

“Scared me half to death… scared me half to death…”

“And you have the nerve to say that?” Li Yunzhi glared at him. “Aren’t you always bragging that you’re invincible beneath the Immortal Realm, and that even against an immortal, you could trade one life for one?”

“Why did you forcibly sever your spiritual connection with me just now? If Miss Tong had been harmed because of it, how would you expect me to answer for it!?”

That was right.

Old Ce had not been absent just now. Instead, he had chosen to leave his Primordial Spirit behind.

He cultivated the aura of righteousness, so his Primordial Spirit was different from those of ordinary cultivators. It possessed a relatively strong sense of self.

“She had been harmed?”

Old Ce reacted as though he had just heard the greatest joke in the world. He leaped to his feet and began spraying spittle as he pointed at Li Yunzhi’s nose.

“You bookworm! Have you read yourself stupid? She had been harmed?”

“What about me? Aren’t you afraid I’d be the one harmed?”

Li Yunzhi frowned. “As long as the Immortal King of the Shu Family doesn’t show himself… who could kill you?”

“Judging from the remnants of the aura, that person doesn’t seem all that powerful, either, does he?”

“Naive! Ignorant!” Old Ce stomped his feet in fury, gesturing wildly with his tiny hands. “In the path of cultivation, if strength were judged solely by the amount of spiritual power one possessed, wouldn’t everyone just compare their reserves whenever they met?”

“You’ve cultivated to the Mahayana stage, yet you still haven’t figured out how the world works?”

Old Ce took a deep breath, and his tone became more solemn than it had ever been.

“The four stages of cultivation are: refining essence into qi, refining qi into spirit, refining spirit back into emptiness, and refining emptiness to merge with the Dao.”

“Core Formation and Nascent Soul are merely within the category of ‘refining qi.’ They involve accumulating power within the body, like storing water in a pond. As long as there are sufficient resources, even a pig could be fed until it reached the Nascent Soul stage.”

“But once you reach the Spirit Transformation and Void Refinement stages, you enter the realm of ‘nurturing the spirit.’ That is the comprehension of laws and the understanding of Heaven and Earth! It isn’t something you can gain simply by eating enough!”

Li Yunzhi was growing impatient. “Do you really need to lecture me on such basic knowledge?”

“You don’t know a damn thing!” Old Ce cursed. “That person just now… he…”

Old Ce’s voice trembled as he pointed toward the sky.

“The spirit he has nurtured is taller than the heavens above Tianshui City!”

“I was merely spying on him from the shadows, yet he detected me. And the instant he looked over, I felt as if I were an ant crawling beneath Heaven and Earth! That pressure, coming from the depths of my very soul… that was the absolute suppression of a higher existence over a lower one! Don’t even think about you and me. Even if we tied together every expert in Tianshui City, in his eyes, we would still be nothing more than a group of slightly stronger ants!”

“If you had dared to make a move just now…” Old Ce let out a cold laugh. “The two of us wouldn’t even have the chance to be reborn!”

Li Yunzhi’s entire body shuddered.

He knew that although Old Ce was usually unreliable, he rarely made mistakes when it came to anything important.

He was especially cautious when it came to sensing danger.

“You mean… he’s some ancient monster who seized another person’s body and started cultivating all over again?” Li Yunzhi guessed.

“Seized another body? Hah. What ordinary old monster could possibly possess an aura like that?” Old Ce shook his head, his gaze deep as he stared into the night sky. “That aura… I’ve searched through every ancient text in my memory, and I still can’t find a single existence that matches it.”