Chapter 475 - The Emperors Death, Wandering the Jianghu, Twisted Imperial Capital, Heaven Soul Second Stage – Part 3

Chapter 475 - The Emperor's Death, Wandering the Jianghu, Twisted Imperial Capital, Heaven Soul Second Stage – Part 3

Father and daughter continued to stay in touch through the little sparrow and crow.

Sheng'er had managed to split her third rank locust tree avatar into four separate bodies—and on top of that, she’d buried another five crows as well.

Li Yuan had assumed she was making rapid progress. But when he asked, he found out she was stuck too.

She quoted that old man’s words to him, word for word.

“Ahem ahem... Injecting Yin into Yang, if you want to manifest an Immortal Form, you need enough Yang energy to do it. A third rank meat field may appear cloudy and formless, but the truth is, there’s no actual flesh left. What it produces now, once every ten years, is a batch of Heavenly Fire Spirit Stones. Usually averaging three to four hundred per cycle. Absorbing the Yang energy from those stones is the only way to push your cultivation forward. One stone per month should do the trick.”

“So

that’s

why third rank meat fields don’t have any meat,” Sheng'er laughed. “Still, I’ll have to wait for the next batch of stones. Ten years isn’t that long.”

Then she added teasingly, “But Papa...you’re really worrying about having

too much

Yang energy? That’s a first.”

One third rank meat field produced between a hundred to a thousand Heavenly Fire Spirit Stones per decade, just enough to support several martial artists at that level.

Unsurprisingly, the meat field under Yan Yu’s control had already been completely occupied by Sheng'er.

After understanding the principles behind it, Li Yuan could only chuckle.

Everyone else struggled with too little Yang. He alone had the opposite problem, not enough Yin energy.

The two continued to banter away.

𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

In the blink of an eye, a year passed by.

Li Yuan and Xie Yu had continued travelling through the wild mountains and great rivers. By late summer, they had reached Wildsouth Province.

They built a wooden cottage high on the lush, windswept plains—on a slope covered in tall grasses and purple-pink fireweed. From the doorway, they could see nothing but vast, unbroken horizons.

Morning or evening, whether it was Li Yuan or Xie Yu stepping out, all they saw was an ocean of grass.

They built a fence. Tilled a small field.

This was near the edge of the Northern Wastelands, a boundless wilderness. The northern edge of Wildsouth Province was so remote, the population density could be best described as basically zero.

If a person’s dream was to escape the world, this was the place.

Of course, it had no meat fields for cultivation, no towns or villages offering daily necessities...but it

did

have demonics. Lots of them. Fifth rank, sixth rank, sometimes even more terrifying ones.

If one stood atop a mountain and looked out over the valleys, they might catch sight of a massive demonic beast wave rolling through the canyons, shaking the land with a thunderous roar.

It was not quite as horrifying as the Southern Rainforests, but it was still...utterly majestic.

In truth, this wasn’t a place meant for people to live.

But Li Yuan and Xie Yu often sat together, watching those endless waves of demonic beasts crashing across the land.

And sometimes, Li Yuan would grab her hand, leap onto the back of one of the larger demonic beasts, and go joyriding through the herd just for fun.

Winter came quickly.

The grasslands turned white and frigid beneath the heavy snows.

But inside their little wooden cottage, it was warm and cozy.

Li Yuan gave himself a break from cultivation. He stayed with Xie Yu, strolling through the snow-covered wilderness far from all human noise. Just the two of them, and the demonic beasts. Not that the local fuana could pose any real threat to him.

Xie Yu held his hand, warmth in her chest and peace in her eyes.

This kind of life, she hadn’t had nearly enough of it.

And if she could...she would’ve wanted it to last forever.

At the year’s end, Li Yuan slaughtered a few demonic beasts and prepared to make a proper feast.

He’d actually been thinking about coming clean with Xie Yu, about everything, and then maybe going with her to visit Yan Yu.

But that was easier said than done.

Like Xie Wei, Yan Yu was no longer someone they could approach openly.

Sheng'er had mentioned it before. The Holy Tree Temple had been transferred to Hidden River Province.

The Revival Tree God had manifested directly, not as an emissary or vision, but as a true power stepping into the world. He retrieved the Wither Growth Sword, declared Qing Hancheng dead, and immediately named Gu Xuejian as his successor.

That sword had once been taken away by Li Yuan. Later, while wandering, he had hidden it inside Yan Yu’s Ghost Prison.

But once he learned the plan of the Eastern Sea’s Immortal Domain, he’d quietly retrieved the sword and returned it to the Holy Tree Temple, strengthening the Revival Tree God’s hand in the coming storm.

That was how the sword had found its way into the Revival Tree God’s grasp.

Now, beyond just the Holy Tree Temple, the entirety of Hidden River Province was filled with unfamiliar faces, all of them unquestioningly loyal to the Revival Tree God.

Given all that, there was no way Li Yuan could just stroll back into the area around the Ghost Prison.

He wasn’t like Sheng'er, unable to slip in without a trace. He was a flame, the withered flame... A concentration of Yang energy.

And Yin and Yang could not coexist peacefully. That was the simplest truth.

Li Yuan knelt down, added firewood, and lit the flames. The pot heated, the meat boiled. Beside him, Xie Yu helped prepare the meal.

They ate well, curled up warm beneath thick bedding, and slept soundly through the cold.

When spring came, they left their little cottage and headed north into Swallowcloud Province.

There, in a bustling town, Xie Yu caught wind of news that stopped her cold.

She rushed back, breathless, and told Li Yuan everything she had just heard.

It happened last winter while they were still in Wildsouth Province. A sudden, devastating fire had consumed the entire Xie residence in Bright Moon Prefecture.

No one survived. Not a single soul who stayed behind in the ancestral home made it out alive. If Xie Yu had still been there, she would’ve been among the dead.

And that was with several fifth rank cultivators stationed at the residence. For them all to perish without a single escape...it couldn’t possibly be the work of someone

merely

at fourth rank. Xie Yu was only sixth rank. She wouldn’t have stood a chance.

Soon after, rumors began to spread in the Jade Capital. The Demon Empress was said to have flown into a rage. She shattered no fewer than eighteen pieces of priceless porcelain on the spot. Then she sent wave after wave of investigators to the Xie residence, but none of them returned alive.

And it didn’t stop there.

Xie Clan disciples who had been traveling outside the Jade Capital began dying one by one, each under strange, inexplicable circumstances.

It was as if someone were deliberately provoking the Demon Empress. It was clear to everyone that a new storm was brewing.

Xie Yu, shaken to her core, trembled as she told it all. She could see it now. What would have happened if she hadn’t left.

If her husband hadn’t emerged from seclusion. If he hadn’t asked her to go travel the world with him. If he hadn’t taken her far away, hidden her identity, and kept her away from home. Would she now be nothing but a pile of ashes?

She collapsed into Li Yuan’s arms and sobbed uncontrollably.

Li Yuan held her quietly, gently running his fingers through her hair.

To be honest, he’d already had a hunch about this. Just a feeling. An intuition. Now that the facts had caught up with his instincts, he had his answer.

He might’ve been far from the capital, but he already understood what was happening inside it. To any outside observer, the massacre of the Xie Clan would seem like the work of the other eight provincial governors.

However, Li Yuan knew better. He had long since confirmed that an envoy from the Eastern Sea’s Immortal Domain stood behind the Mountain Hall, and this bloody event had been orchestrated by that envoy.

It all traced back to that same envoy—who, on one hand, stirred up earthquakes and spread rumors about the Demon Empress, while on the other, sent the Mountain Hall to

support

Xie Wei.

The Dragon Vein strictly forbade the Grand Union of Yin and Yang. The Eastern Sea’s Immortal Domain, meanwhile, wanted exactly that. Because when Yin and Yang united, those in power gained something very real—

resources.

And resources meant

power

, more strong cultivators, more leverage.

The pressure on Xie Wei was mounting from all sides. Eventually, she'd start to crack.

As more enemies circled, she'd be forced to seek stronger allies.

And once the power of the Dragon Vein was no longer enough; once her personal meat fields could no longer produce what she needed to fend off the other governor; there would be only one choice left.

The Grand Union of Yin and Yang.

The envoy in the Jade Capital was playing a careful game of balance, pushing Xie Wei to the edge while dangling a lifeline just out of reach. With the Eastern Sea’s Immortal Domain at his back, he could afford to do both.

And the extermination of the Xie Clan? That was the final straw meant to break her. Xie Wei was close to collapse.

That night, after calming down the grief-stricken and shaken Xie Yu and helping her to sleep, Li Yuan quietly slipped out and bought himself a few jars of wine. Then he made his way to a place he hadn’t visited in a long time—the Bladeseekers.

He resumed his former identity and found Zhong Kui, then began working through a new batch of mad sixth rank disciples.

Thanks to the steady output of the third rank meat fields, this new batch had reached an astonishing number, 4,200 in total.

Every night, Li Yuan came silently and harvested their ancestral seal seeds, one after another.

It took him a full month to finish.

By the end, the 4,200 seeds were added to the 3,880 from before. The grand total of 8,080 seeds finally condensed into a massive reservoir of Yin energy within him.

Then, one day, Li Yuan brought Xie Yu to a lonely cliffside in the wilderness and began cultivating the second sub-realm of the Heaven Soul cultivation technique.

The Yin energy stirred, but the withered flame didn’t budge. He kept going. The Yin energy flowed harder. Finally, the withered flame cracked open, just a sliver, but enough.

Before, that sliver would’ve closed immediately. But now, with the continuous rotation of over 8,080 petals within him, the crack stayed open.

Li Yuan widened it, bit by bit, until his soul could slip through.

And once his soul entered the flow of Yin and Yang, he had stepped fully into the second stage of the Heaven Soul Realm. He had condensed his Immortal form.

One day passed, then two, and three...

By the seventh day, Li Yuan exhaled slowly and stretched his arms over his head.

Behind him, a glowing silhouette almost a hundred feet tall mimicked the motion.

This was his Immortal form.

Yin on the inside, Yang on the outside. It didn’t have three heads or six arms. No halos or divine flames. It wasn’t flashy. Just big. Imposingly big.

Xie Yu stared, wide-eyed and speechless, unable to even process what she was seeing.

It wasn’t until breakfast, with porridge steaming on the table, that she finally asked, “What

was

that power?”

Li Yuan opened his mouth to answer, only to pause. He realized his Immortal form was still growing.

The golden hue around the silhouette was pure Yang energy. And he had far too much of it. So the form kept expanding, swelling outward, like it wasn’t finished with him yet.

Well...he wasn’t about to complain.

A free bonus was a free bonus.