Chapter 118

Chapter 118: Gaining a Seed of Dao Heart

The message talisman flew straight into Yun Xi’s hand. When she sent her spiritual sense into it, a familiar voice came through.

“Yun Xi, are you in Twin Mountain City? I followed Senior Uncle Sheng as we returned to the sect, but halfway there we saw a distress signal sent by disciples. Senior Uncle Sheng and Master Feng left first, and the rest of us followed right behind and rushed this way. Only on the road did we hear that something happened in Twin Mountain City. I don’t know if you’re in Twin Mountain City. Reply when you get this.”

It really was not easy for Long Dao Yu to pack such a long speech into a single message talisman. Yun Xi guessed he had already arrived in Twin Mountain City. She took out a message talisman and sent him the courtyard address.

Mu Ning Zhu said directly, “I’ll bring the lists to Senior Brother Sheng.”

“Sorry to trouble you,” Yun Xi and Qin Tong Shuang said at the same time – one addressing her as Senior Sister, the other as Martial Uncle.

After that, Qin Tong Shuang was about to leave. She could tell Yun Xi had a visitor coming.

Yun Xi grabbed Qin Tong Shuang’s hand and said, “Don’t rush off. You know Long Dao Yu too.”

Qin Tong Shuang sat back down and asked, “He came to Twin Mountain City too?”

“Mm,” Yun Xi said. “Senior Brother Sheng is here. How could he not come?”

Yun Xi complained inwardly. Long Dao Yu was Sheng Yu Hong’s diehard fan. If his idol was here, how could he not follow?

Sure enough, a quarter of an hour later, Long Dao Yu triggered the courtyard’s formation.

After he sat down, he immediately asked the two of them with curiosity whether they knew about the evil formation in Twin Mountain City. When he learned they were direct witnesses, he asked in even more detail.

When he heard that Zhang Yan had fallen, Long Dao Yu sighed deeply. “Cultivators are like this. We fight Heaven for our lives. Until you reach the very top, you’ll never truly control your own fate.”

Yun Xi did not respond. She had recognized the cruelty of the Cultivation World long ago. Since the moment she personally killed Chen Xu, who had tried to harm her, she knew she was a qualified cultivator, not some office worker who had transmigrated.

But watching one life after another vanish right before her eyes was a different kind of impact. That was also why she had not been cultivating much lately. Besides worrying that she would break through Foundation Establishment with an unstable mindset, she also worried that what happened with the evil formation would breed a heart demon. When she returned to the sect, she planned to go into long seclusion and settle herself properly.

“I was really lucky this time,” Qin Tong Shuang said. “If I hadn’t been with Martial Uncle Wei, and if her spirit pet Dian Dian hadn’t advanced, we wouldn’t have had a chance at all. Otherwise we really could only have waited to die.”

Long Dao Yu sighed again, then suggested, “This training trip gave me a lot. I’m going back to go into seclusion and push for Foundation Establishment. Next time, when we’re all Foundation Establishment, we’ll form a team and go training again.”

“That’s a good idea,” Qin Tong Shuang said. “But in five years, the sect tournament will happen. Are you planning to participate?”

“Yes,” Long Dao Yu said. “Sparring with fellow disciples to build experience is better than being crushed by powerful enemies outside.”

Yun Xi was not going to miss the tournament either.

Even though she would automatically be promoted to the inner sect after this, competition in the inner sect was fierce. As long as she had not taken a master and had not become an elite disciple or core disciple, the sect would not focus on training her. If she wanted to go farther and stomp Wei Yun Qing under her feet, she had to raise her own value.

Qin Tong Shuang said she would participate too. Long Dao Yu immediately said he would as well. He even said that there would be team matches, and when the time came, the three of them could team up to compete in the Foundation Establishment bracket.

After getting firsthand information from Yun Xi and the others, Long Dao Yu returned to the inn and vividly told the other fellow disciples what had happened in Twin Mountain City.

Everyone stayed in Twin Mountain City another three days. After they watched Li Cang Yuan be executed and received their compensation, they prepared to leave Twin Mountain City.

This time, True Lord Yu Feng waved his sleeve and released the ship that had brought in the new disciples. He planned to bring all the Hao Ran Sect disciples stranded in Twin Mountain City back with him. He also worried that evil cultivators might seek revenge afterward, especially since the little disciple who had drawn attention was being brought back to the sect by him personally.

When Yun Xi stepped onto the ship, her mindset was completely different from before. As she watched the white clouds slip past the ship, her mood became lighter.

All this time, her mind had been tense, because she did not know what waited ahead. She had already realized that the world she lived in was real, not something a novel could fully capture in a few lines.

Everyone around her was alive, each with their own colors. Some pursued the Dao tirelessly. Some fell on the path of cultivation. That made her desperately want to raise her cultivation. Only then could she withstand the storms of the Cultivation World.

But after witnessing what Li Cang Yuan had done, she realized that even powerful cultivators could go astray because of obsession, causing their dao hearts to collapse.

Li Cang Yuan had been willing to work with evil cultivators and trade an entire city’s lives for his lover’s life. It was deep devotion to his lover, but to those who were forced to die for it, how innocent they were.

[She had wanted to say, “Why didn’t you just go die? If you love her that much, why not kill yourself and die with her? Or trade your own life for hers? Why make the rest of us pay for your devotion?”]

In the end, she held back. He had already lost his mind, so there was no point saying more. His death this time was not undeserved.

Yun Xi did not want to be any kind of savior. She only wanted to cultivate hard and ascend to the Upper Realm. Maybe one day, when she stood at the peak, she could return to her original world.

She did not think about much else. Her principle was simple: If others did not provoke her, she would not provoke them. If others provoked her, she would repay it. As long as she could face her own heart, that was enough.

In that instant, Yun Xi’s dao heart took root.

To everyone’s shock, the spiritual energy on the ship surged toward Yun Xi and wrapped her up like a cocoon of spiritual energy.

At that moment, Yun Xi’s thoughts were clear. She easily pierced the thin barrier of late-stage Foundation Establishment and began running her cultivation method. She guided the spiritual energy pouring into her body through her meridians, refined it into her own spiritual power, and finally led it into her dantian.

As the cocoon faded, Yun Xi’s dantian filled to four-fifths with spiritual liquid. The liquid was pure and clean, slowly circulating within her dantian.

True Lord Yu Feng watched Yun Xi advance and sighed that she was truly a good seedling. He waved his sleeve and drew down a restriction so that none of the disciples on the ship could disturb Yun Xi’s breakthrough.

Sheng Yu Hong’s feelings were complicated as well. If he remembered correctly, just one month ago this little junior sister had still been a late Qi Refining disciple and had even needed him to rescue her. But how long had it been? Now she was already a mid-stage Foundation Establishment disciple, and the gap between them was shrinking. It gave him a sense of crisis.

After absorbing all the spiritual energy, Yun Xi used the Hua Dian immortal artifact to adjust her cultivation to mid-stage Foundation Establishment, showing outwardly the state of having just broken through to mid-stage.

When True Lord Yu Feng saw Yun Xi open her eyes, he waved his sleeve and withdrew the restriction, then closed his eyes again to rest.

Mu Ning Zhu, Qin Tong Shuang, and Long Dao Yu immediately gathered around, smiling as they congratulated Yun Xi.

Mu Ning Zhu cupped her fists and said, “Now I have to call you Senior Sister Wei. I didn’t expect you to build up and then surge forward, surpassing us from behind. It really makes me feel ashamed!”

Yun Xi waved her hands in embarrassment and said, “Senior Sister Mu, don’t say that. I was just lucky. I had a small insight, so I broke through.”