The current situation is that Huang Feiyu's physical body, Earth Flame, demon pill, and medicinal pellets are in a balanced state. With the help of the Earth Flame, Huang Feiyu's body is being transformed by the demon pill, while the medicinal pellets are repairing the damage to his body caused by the Earth Flame and demon pill - a dynamic equilibrium.
Huang Feiyu's body is undergoing transformation, but it is still unknown when the transformation will be complete.
Standing outside the Earth Flame Chamber, Tian Wenjin looks through the spell formation at Huang Feiyu lying in the Earth Flame and asks, "How long will it take?"
"He is a Golden Core cultivator with a strong physique. At the shortest, ten days to half a month. At the longest..." Qin Ran shakes his head. "If he actively resists, and his body's recovery capability exceeds the transformation capability of the demon pill, then that would be an unknown."
Tian Wenjin is silent for a long time.
"Master, why have you changed your clothes?" Li Shiyin asks Qin Ran at the side.
Qin Ran glares at her without answering.
Naturally, the reason is that his previous clothes were burnt by the lion heart flame.
What Huang Feiyu will become in the end now has little to do with Dan Peak.
To be honest, as far as Qin Ran is concerned, he has really done his utmost - he used his own money to save Huang Feiyu.
The reason is, 10% because Huang Feiyu is not a bad person and left him with a decent impression; 20% because Tian Wenjin's deep feelings moved him; the remaining 70% is because of his silly apprentice.
Leaving Huang Feiyu to slowly transform in the Earth Flame Chamber, Dan Peak still has its own matters to attend to.
Qin Ran continues to draw the foundations, study the blueprints, construct the spell formations, and build accommodations for Long Qiqi and Chasing the Wind as soon as possible.
Li Shiyin continues to cut stones. The stones unearthed this time exceeded Li Shiyin’s imagination. After cutting for two days, she still hasn’t finished, and there seems to be a lot more further down.
Chasing the Wind carries his wood frame around, transporting blocks of stones up and down.
Long Qiqi continues to separate the sand and soil.
Tian Wenjin keeps Huang Feiyu company in the Earth Flame Chamber for a while before coming out.
When she looks out at the big pit on this side of the river, she sees the giant snake beside it and gets a shock. She hurriedly looks left and right for her sword before remembering that she had sold it. She can only yell, "Snake... There's a snake... A demonic beast... Quick, come over, there's a demonic beast, it's dangerous!"
With a clatter, a wood frame comes over, emitting indistinct sounds: "No... se..."
"?" Tian Wenjin looks all over the wood frame before spotting a little white tiger with black patterns below it. She knows this is the spirit beast of Dan Peak called Chasing the Wind or something.
But... His cute big eyes are looking at her seriously, his mouth opening and closing as if he is talking?!
Tian Wenjin quickly slaps herself twice on the face. Could it be that she is too grief-stricken and having hallucinations? How can a spirit beast speak human language!
She suspects someone nearby is playing tricks and looks around carefully, especially at the dark red snake, while shouting at the little white tiger across the river, "Where are Master Qin and Li Shiyin? Where are they? Hurry over, there's a demonic beast, it's dangerous!"
Chasing the Wind tilts his head cutely, seemingly unable to understand what Tian Wenjin is saying. He turns around and calls out, "Dad..."
"He really is talking!" This bizarre scene frightens Tian Wenjin into covering her mouth. What’s going on in this world? Or has she been hit with some kind of mystic art? Is she mentally unstable?
Fortunately, Qin Ran comes over in time.
He pats the wood frame, signaling Chasing the Wind not to make trouble here and to hurry back to work. After Chasing the Wind clatters away, he says to Tian Wenjin, "That snake is a demon, the little girl you saw previously. Her name is Long Qiqi, a very cute child."
Hearing him praise her like this, Long Qiqi's massive snakelike body swirls around. She opens her huge, gaping mouth, revealing two rows of sharp fangs, flicking out a blood-red snake tongue, seemingly laughing...
Albeit far too horrifying.
"Chasing the Wind is also a demon beast. I'm trying to teach him to speak. But he's too stupid and learning slowly. Now he can only say some words and pronounce them unclearly."
Although Qin Ran has explained, Tian Wenjin still feels uneasy. She didn't feel that way previously, so why does Dan Peak seem so strange now?
"They only look very fierce but are actually harmless..." For some reason, Qin Ran feels like he has become Tang Seng, trying hard to convince others that his three disciples are harmless. "Feel free to take a look if you like. If not, you can simply head back. Once the first phase of transformation is complete, I'll have Shiyin inform you at Sword Peak."
"No... no need." Tian Wenjin shakes her head. "I can wait... Please, just focus on what you need to do. Don't worry about me."
Qin Ran gestures at the dirt on himself and smiles. "Indeed very busy, and time is tight." He takes two steps away before remembering something. Turning back, he says, "Shiyin is cutting stones below. Go take a look, there may be something for you."
After Qin Ran leaves and disappears behind that honey locust tree, Tian Wenjin crosses the bridge to this side of the river.
There are several clumps of medicinal herbs close to the riverbank on this side, but Tian Wenjin doesn’t recognize them. Only a few flowers that look like swans arching their necks stand out as exceptionally beautiful, catching her attention for several more glances.
She circles as far away from the giant snake as possible and comes to the big pit’s edge to peer down. At the bottom of the pit is a jumble of stone walls. On the stone walls, Li Shiyin wields a damaged sword, slashing forward. A faint purple glow flashes on and off along the sword’s edge as it cleaves open the stone wall. She does the same several times horizontally and vertically before cutting out neat rectangular stone blocks from the stone wall.
From her position above, Tian Wenjin estimates that those stone blocks are roughly the same size.
"What terrifying control!" She can't help but exclaim in admiration. "Her hands are steady as rock... Not only does she possess sword qi, but her mastery over it is also superb. Every sword strike lands with precision. I already can’t compare with her - she has surpassed me by a wide margin!"
After cutting down a pile of stone blocks, Li Shiyin turns back and waves at Tian Wenjin above the mud pit with a smile. She then helps Chasing the Wind transport the blocks onto his wood frame.
Right here, right now, it is just like back then.
Back then, Tian Wenjin stood at the top of the pit looking down at Li Shiyin, lofty as an immortal sword cultivator descending into the mortal world - an unparalleled talent. While covered in mud at the bottom of the pit, Li Shiyin was like a peasant girl.
They stand at the same positions now, with Tian Wenjin still dressed magnificently while Li Shiyin remains covered in dirt. But the relative standing of the two has switched. It is now that dirty peasant girl wielding staggering sword cultivator bearing.
Complex emotions well up inside Tian Wenjin as she recalls hers and Huang Feiyu’s wager. Yet the bet has not even started and she has already lost... Meanwhile the other party has also collapsed.
With a sigh, she turns to leave.
Sitting below the honey locust tree, Qin Ran scrutinizes the terrain in front and holds a pen, sketching and writing on paper.
Tian Wenjin approaches him. Qin Ran does not avoid her. She sees densely packed criss-crossing lines on the paper, rows of horizontal and vertical words.
"What are you drawing?" She asks.
His entire body covered in dirt like a construction worker, Qin Ran turns back and smiles. "Spell formations."
He points them out to her, "That’s the residence for Chasing the Wind. Moving forward, Chasing the Wind has to condense darkness... That’s Long Qiqi’s residence. She’s a snake demon who likes shade and is of the fire attribute... This will be the cultivation residence Li Shiyin will use to train her star-based sword art, requiring the aggregation of star power.
"Arranging these spell formations individually is easy, but intertwined together, it could easily go wrong..."
Qin Ran says a lot more but Tian Wenjin understands very little. By the end, only envy lingers in her heart.
After another busy day, dinner is barbecue outdoors with soft drinks from the fridge.
The previous batch was entirely guzzled up by Chasing the Wind. Over the past few days, Qin Ran has remade a new batch.
This allows Tian Wenjin and Long Qiqi to sample this otaku’s holy gift from another world. After drinking it, Long Qiqi exclaims coming to Dan Peak was fortunate.
As for Tian Wenjin, ever since embarking on the path of cultivation, this is the first time she is consuming food again. The ice-cold soft drink dancing in her mouth, the aromatic barbecue meat bursting with juices...
She wants to cry so badly.
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
d intelligence to keep the plot moving, and sometimes even the protagonists are forced into absurdly dumb decisions. Why does the A-list celebrity heroine in urban romance novels ditch the top-tier movie star and become a lovestruck fool for a pockmarked male lead? Why do the leads in historical tragedy novels keep dancing between love and death, only for the blind healer to end up suffering the most? And Gu Wei never expected that after finally landing a villain role to stir up trouble, she’d pick the wrong gender! No choice now—she’ll just have to crush the protagonists as a girl!
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
e vast world of cultivation, where he becomes the master of the Heavenly Ruins Sacred Hall, a dying old man with barely a tenth of his former cultivation remaining. He is immediately confronted with a deadly crisis: his subordinates have rebelled, and his protectors are forcing him to abdicate. At the critical moment, the system descends from the heavens: [Ding! The host has been detected facing a life-or-death crisis. The system is now officially activated!] [As a gift, you have received the Supreme Beginner’s Pack and awakened the ultimate cheat: ten thousand years of pure cultivation essence every second!] Yin Tianjue: “Wait… ten thousand years of cultivation every second? That’s six hundred thousand years a minute, and in one day… I can’t even calculate it. Either way, I’m already invincible!” You’re a peerless prodigy rarely seen in ten thousand years? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re an undying ancestor who has guarded a sacred land for countless ages? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re the strongest chosen one, blessed with heaven-defying destiny? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. From this day forth, I have only one thing to say: “I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. Now, how exactly are you supposed to deal with that?”
