Chapter 174: Qin Ming’s Swift Defeat
This novel is translated and hosted on Bcatranslation
This was Qin Ming’s most perilous moment yet—a life-or-death trial unlike any he had faced before. Even his near-immortal weapon, crafted from the rare Exquisite Gold, failed to pierce the old woman’s skull.
Yet his own blood had already sprayed through the air, leaving him gravely injured.
During his sixth awakening, his body birthed a miraculous light—a force he could unleash regardless of his physical state, even in his weakest moments. It was akin to a strike delivered at his absolute peak, tied to the essence of Celestial Light. However, once used, it required significant time to regenerate.
Upon his seventh awakening, a golden radiance emerged within him, resembling fragments of a shattered sun mingling with misty light—an aura akin to the Pure Yang Consciousness.
These two powers erupted in succession from within Qin Ming, creating a chain of strikes. Moments ago, his inner gold radiance had reassembled into a blazing golden sun, shattering the blackened clouds above. Employing the technique Pure Yang Blazing Sun, he directed the white, sword-shaped pendant deep toward the old woman’s forehead. Despite pouring every ounce of strength into the strike, the blade only penetrated slightly, unable to fully pierce her skull.
Similarly, the seventh awakening’s radiant “sun” flickered out almost instantly after this single use, requiring extended recovery time.
Qin Ming sighed, withdrawing the Exquisite Gold sword. Using the final remnants of his Pure Yang glow, he slashed at the old woman’s exterior.
But his body was utterly devastated—crisscrossed with horrifying gashes from head to toe, emitting light from within. He was, quite literally, torn apart.
It could only be described as Qin Ming being annihilated in seconds.
Even wielding the Exquisite Gold sword, his attacks failed to faze her. And that was with the advantage of surprise.
Qin Ming hadn’t yet activated his Celestial Light Force. Without warning, he unleashed a specialized ability that left no time for his opponent to react.
Most awakening-related abilities tended to be unimpressive. However, the two powers Qin Ming manifested were exceptional, each equaling his strongest possible strike.
The old woman had been mere inches away. While Qin Ming didn’t preemptively release his Celestial Light, his initial move caught her off guard. Still, her body’s reflexes quickly reversed the battle.
Despite Exquisite Gold being renowned for piercing through Celestial Light and Divine Wisdom, it proved ineffective against her. Her instinctive defenses neutralized the threat instantaneously.
Nevertheless, Qin Ming’s abilities, coupled with the Exquisite Gold sword, achieved some effect—they had, after all, briefly penetrated her forehead.
The old woman shrieked in agony, her vision momentarily blacking out. Though her reflexes had “instantly killed” her opponent and shielded her from further injury, her mind was still reeling.
Her head, unlike the rest of her body, was vulnerable. In that brief moment of disorientation, she tumbled from the clouds.
Qin Ming let out a bitter laugh, convinced he was on the brink of death. Was this the oppressive might of the Third Realm? He had given everything, yet it was as futile as an ant trying to shake a tree.
This old woman, barely within the initial stages of the Spiritual Field Realm, had stagnated in her cultivation, yet she remained immovable against all his assaults. Qin Ming’s blood painted the misty clouds red as he plummeted rapidly.
His body was riddled with countless cracks, as if he were a delicate porcelain vessel shattered and hastily pieced back together.
Indeed, he had been torn apart. In his final moments, Qin Ming activated Adhesive Force, forcibly binding his body to maintain human form and prevent complete disintegration.
Otherwise, his remains would already be scattered in countless fragments, falling alongside him.
Qin Ming realized that the Silk Script Method—a synthesis of various Celestial Light Forces, consciousness aura, and the Divine Wisdom he painstakingly refined—was not useless after all. It harbored an ineffable “divinity.”
For instance, during his previous encounter, his combined Celestial Light Force and mental consciousness had merged and collectively entered the great centipede’s Divine Kingdom.
Now, though his body had essentially been dismantled, fragmented, and torn apart, any other type of Celestial Light Force would have faltered, resulting in his explosive demise. Yet, Qin Ming’s fusion of Celestial Light, Divine Wisdom, and consciousness aura had become as integral to him as flesh and spirit, allowing him to hold his shattered form together.
Even so, his condition was beyond critical.
At this moment, he stood on the brink of absolute despair, teetering over the precipice of death.
“Beast!” the old woman shrieked into the night sky. Her face was smeared with blood dripping from her wounded forehead, twisted and terrifying.
Her fury burned bright. As a master of the Spiritual Field Realm, to be injured by an awakening novice was a humiliation. It was as if a lion had been tripped by a mere flea, only to fall face-first, bleeding.
“Wretched hag!” Qin Ming gritted his teeth, his heart seething with anger. The Cui Family was like a haunting specter, persistently threatening his life at every turn.
He also felt a deep sense of helpless shame.
He had been utterly overwhelmed by the old woman’s spiritual field and Celestial Light reflexes, flung far away.
Yet, this distance was a small mercy. Had she regained her senses immediately, she would have pursued him with merciless vengeance.
Qin Ming’s head remained his only intact part, spared thanks to a tattered cloth he had held before him at the crucial moment. Furthermore, his taller stature meant her spiritual field’s devastation hadn’t reached his skull. “This counts as dying once.”
The agony coursing through Qin Ming was unbearable. His forcibly reassembled body felt like it could collapse at any moment, held together only by the fusion of consciousness aura, Divine Wisdom, and Celestial Light Force.
“Qin Ming, you’ve done well. You’re worthy of the Cui Family’s cultivation. Injuring me at the awakening stage? Impressive. Let’s continue this conversation on the ground,” the old woman sneered, her voice cold and cruel as her sharp eyes locked onto the distant boy.
Her hunched figure radiated menace, her twisted gaze fixed unwaveringly on him.
“All the pain your Cui Family has caused me—I’ll remember it all!” Qin Ming muttered weakly, refusing to respond to her provocations. Words wouldn’t change the unshakable power of the Cui Family.
“Life or death, you bear our Cui Family’s mark. We raised you. Once, you were a young master. Later, you’ll be no more than a servant. Do you think you can escape that fate?”
The old woman spat out the word “servant” with venom, igniting Qin Ming’s rage. It wasn’t just a slight against him—it was an insult to his family.
“Never-ending vengeance!” he declared, blood trickling anew from his lips.
The old woman smirked darkly. “I’ll see you on the ground.”
She reached for her parachute, casting one last contemptuous glance his way. But in the next instant, her expression changed to shock and horror.
“No!” she cried out, terror overtaking her.
She pulled open the parachute pack, but what emerged was a tattered netting. Could this even be called a parachute? It was more like a fishing net, utterly useless.
“Ah!” she screamed, her voice shrill with despair, her face etched with hopelessness. What could she possibly do now?
“You!” Her realization struck like a thunderbolt. She turned her gaze to the figure opposite her. Her aged eyes, blazing with silvery lightning, caught sight of the man who, despite his pain, smiled coldly at her.
“Seeing you like this, I can die in peace,” Qin Ming said. His parachute pack had already opened, his voice carried from above.
Qin Ming had experienced a birdfall with Li Qingyun once before, leaving a psychological scar that haunted him to this day. It was this trauma that had led him to carry multiple parachute packs, and ironically, it was this foresight that had now saved his life.
The packs strapped to his body had all shattered, save for the one over his head. Wracked with pain, he struggled to secure it in place.
But this ordeal only deepened his fear of falling through the sky, multiplying it several times over.
The old woman, though a Spiritual Field Realm expert, was gripped by fear and despair. Such a fall, with nothing to break her descent, would end in a gruesome death. She understood clearly now—when her body had resisted the small Celestial Light sword Qin Ming had unleashed, he had instead turned his focus to shredding her escape parachute.
“Who will save me?!” Even a Spiritual Field Realm expert, lofty among mortals, could be reduced to terror in the face of death, indistinguishable in her final moments from any ordinary person.
In the shrouding night mist, the old woman vanished, taking with her a five-colored bottle. That bottle—inside it held the Celestial Light Liquid!
Qin Ming averted his gaze. Whether he could survive was uncertain. Never before had he been so gravely injured.
He examined himself internally. Every bone in his limbs and torso was fractured—there wasn’t a single unbroken piece. Worse still, his internal organs had been torn apart, fragmented into numerous pieces. Though they had been roughly pieced together, his body’s vitality, once vigorous and thriving, had plummeted to its lowest ebb.
The Spiritual Field and Celestial Light expansions from his opponent had torn him apart like colossal hands, or as if he had been slashed by countless blades. His body bore over a hundred deep, crisscrossing wounds, leaving his entire form riddled with gaping injuries. A typical newly awakened individual wouldn’t have survived such devastation.
“I still have so much left to do. Dying like this… it feels unbearably regretful,” he murmured softly.
But the harsh reality loomed before him. His heart was shattered into more than ten pieces. Even though it had been crudely reassembled, it barely twitched. How could he possibly survive like this?
Bitter and despairing, Qin Ming’s mind drifted back through his life. Memories flashed before his eyes, like a movie reel playing in fast forward. Faces, places, and events, vivid and fleeting, overwhelmed his consciousness.
It is said that when a person is on the brink of death, their entire life flashes before their eyes. He felt he might have reached that point.
“Grandfather, even now, I don’t know where you went. Are you still alive?”
“Father, Mother… I have no memory of you. I don’t even know if you’re still out there. I might be joining you first.”
“Cui Family, get out of my thoughts! Don’t you dare invade these precious last moments.”
“Twin Tree Village… sigh, I can never return.”
“Uncle Meng, Lord Li, I’ve let you down. I was just a small-time newly awakened. On this path, I never caused so much as a ripple.”
“Qingyue, beware of other immortal seeds and those shameless elders. I hope you ascend to the peak of the immortal path. But… I fear I won’t see that day.”
“Ning Siqi, you must become a god. Li Qingxu, I regret not having the chance to smash your dog head. Cui Chonghe, dream on about becoming an immortal. It’s a pity I can’t storm the Cui Family’s gates and challenge you.”
As Qin Ming descended, his consciousness remained intact, though his body was failing. With the last threads of Celestial Light Force, he held himself together, but barely.
His internal organs—heart, spleen, liver, lungs, kidneys—shattered into countless fragments. Even reassembled, they showed no signs of recovery. They had entirely ceased to function. Death was no longer a question of “if,” but “when.”
He tried various methods. The Fate-Altering Sutra could extend life, but not immediately. Internal refinement techniques like the Thunderfire method would only backfire, potentially causing his body to explode from within. As for the Silk Script Method, it, too, seemed powerless now.
Through the night mist, Qin Ming glimpsed a faint, enchanting blue glow. His heart sank—it was his precious Mineral Essence.
He had kept it for this long, discovered in a corpse while trapped in the fissures of Black and White Mountain, nearly dying from Celestial Light radiation. For newly awakened individuals, consuming this essence before reaching the ninth awakening greatly enhanced their physical constitution, with a 50% chance of a complete awakening, depending entirely on luck.
Qin Ming had hoarded it to maximize its effectiveness, unwilling to squander it before. Now, though, his body had long surpassed its usual limits. Even after his seventh awakening, he still hadn’t fully recovered.
The thumb-sized crystal bottle had shattered, spilling the brilliant blue liquid, which he constrained to his body with Adhesion Force. “I didn’t even get to taste it!” Qin Ming felt a deep unwillingness. Should he drink it now?
The Mineral Essence required an optimal physical state for consumption. Otherwise, it could harm more than heal. His prior illness had deterred him from risking it. Now, with his heart no longer beating and his lungs failing entirely, even breathing had ceased. Was this… death?
His face stiffened, his expression wooden. Sensation was slipping away entirely. The result was devastating and utterly despairing.
“Why not just let me die quickly?”
Qin Ming realized that his prolonged survival was likely tied to the traces of purple mist, golden glow, and silver radiance he had absorbed on that mountain. Within him, faint strands of glowing fog lingered, swirling softly.
“What… is that?” He noticed, hanging in the distant sky, a “silver disk.” It resembled the moon described in ancient texts.
He froze, bewildered. Where was this place?
Not long after, Qin Ming landed. Though cushioned by his parachute, the impact still caused him to bleed profusely, nearly tearing him apart once more. Lying on the ground, without a heartbeat or breath, he gazed at his surroundings, everything seeming dreamlike. In the distance, a glowing moon hung in the misty sky.
This place, bathed in ethereal moonlight, was utterly unlike the pitch-black night world he had known.
“Where… am I?” he whispered, his face full of confusion as death’s shadow loomed over him.