Chapter 87

Chapter 87: The Body Collapses

After Yun Xi bit the soul orb that was trying to seize her body, she realized the other party did not fight back and did not move at all. It just hung there in the center of her sea of consciousness.

She had no time to think about why. She pounced on it and tore into it.

Then she wolfed it down, swallowing it piece by piece. She understood the logic clearly – while you’re sick, I’ll kill you. If she waited for him to react, the one who would be swallowed would be her.

“Don’t – please let me leave. I won’t try to seize your body again…”

Yun Xi ignored him completely and kept biting down hard. Each bite was bigger than the last. Her own soul orb grew larger and larger, while his slowly shrank.

“I’ll trade you the secrets of the Bao Hua Mountain Range. Let me go…”

He still refused to give up, shouting.

Yun Xi acted as if she hadn’t heard a thing. She kept biting, one mouthful after another. She would have to be an idiot to believe him. She was certain that if she let him leave her sea of consciousness, her secret would be exposed to the world.

At last, amid the light orb’s wailing, Yun Xi swallowed the final bite. She belched, and only then did she truly relax.

Yun Xi swept through her sea of consciousness and saw the wooden plaque space floating in the center, as well as the hidden flower ornament immortal artifact. She guessed the power that had allowed her to fight back at the last moment had come from that flower ornament immortal artifact.

After confirming there was nothing in her sea of consciousness that shouldn’t be there, Yun Xi began to browse the memory fragments of the soul orb that had tried to seize her.

From those fragments, she confirmed that the one who tried to seize her was the very senior who had given her the method. He had been a lightning single spirit root cultivator. When he fell, he had already been an Integration-stage great expert.

For the sake of an unborn secret realm, he had come with friends to the Bao Hua Mountain Range of the Vast Cosmos Realm. Together, they sealed the secret realm, intending to wait until the time was right and then bring the realm directly back to the spirit realm.

But after sealing it, conflict broke out between them over who would own the secret realm. He was attacked jointly by the others. In the end, he relied on a trump card to slaughter the other three and monopolize the secret realm, but he himself was also gravely injured and could not return to the spirit realm on schedule.

He had come to the Vast Cosmos Realm while suppressing his cultivation, and through special means he had stayed for a period of time. Now he had exceeded the limit, and with heavy injuries he could not leave. In the end, he could only hide inside the array that sealed the secret realm, slowly healing.

As his cultivation fell, the world’s suppression weakened bit by bit, but his injuries still would not heal. In the end, he could only abandon his badly damaged body, preserve his soul, and wait for a chance to seize a new body.

He waited for more than a thousand years. Just as his soul was about to dissipate, Wei Yun Xi finally arrived.

But Wei Yun Xi had three spirit roots, and he looked down on her. He planned to use the little girl to enter the sect first, then search for a suitable body inside the sect to seize.

To lower Yun Xi’s caution, he gave her the [Peerless Sword Thunder Art] and did not place any traps on the jade slip or the storage ring. He pretended to dissipate, but in truth he had attached his soul to the cushion.

Because this cushion had been refined from Seventh Rank Soul-Condensing Grass, it could carry his soul. That way, he could seize a body without anyone noticing.

But Yun Xi was eager for a lightning method and wanted to take it into her possession as quickly as possible, so she exposed her lightning spirit root. That made him realize he was about to miss the most suitable body. That was why, while Yun Xi was taking the method, he charged into her sea of consciousness and tried to seize her.

What surprised him was that Yun Xi had an immortal artifact protecting her. In the end, his efforts failed, and he became nourishment for Yun Xi’s soul.

“Huff. That was close. Just a little more and I would’ve been done for.”

After muttering, Yun Xi shook her soul, which had grown twice as large, and felt that she had gained something from the disaster.

Those memories made her guess a few things about the current situation. The novel had not mentioned this cultivator who had sneaked into the Vast Cosmos Realm, but she felt it was very likely that he had succeeded in seizing a body in the original story. As for whose body he seized, she locked onto Sheng Yu Hong, since it was their group that had entered the underground cave.

If she had not barged in, then the ones led into that space should have been Hao Ran Sect disciples. And among them, Sheng Yu Hong had the best talent and the highest cultivation. With how picky that stowaway was, he would most likely choose Sheng Yu Hong.

If that was the case, it could also explain why Sheng Yu Hong had ended up circling around Wei Yun Qing. After all, she was the favored daughter of fortune in the novel. With an Upper Realm cultivator’s eyes, he would definitely cling tightly to that thigh. Then it also made sense why he was ruthless toward the female supporting character. The female supporting character was the grinding stone for the favored daughter of fortune.

And as for the phenomenon in the Bao Hua Mountain Range now, it should have been because the immortal spirit grass had absorbed that spirit vein sealing the secret realm. That gave the realm a chance to emerge. It was a real-life butterfly effect.

Yun Xi felt as if she had touched on something. This time had been risky, but she had gained something too. She just didn’t know when this secret realm would emerge, or whether she would get a chance to share a slice.

Just then, an anxious voice called out inside her sea of consciousness. “Master! Master! Wake up! Wake up!”

The voice was young and unfamiliar.

Yun Xi instinctively drew her soul back into her body and suddenly opened her eyes. In the next instant, wave after wave of tearing pain made her cry out.

“Hiss! It hurts so much! What’s going on?”

“Master, if you don’t wake up now, your body is going to collapse!”

Along with the anxious voice, a palm-sized Trail-Seeking Rat was rubbing hard against her ear.

Yun Xi didn’t need to sit up to know she was soaking in a pool of bloody water. When she tried to shift even a little, blood seeped out through her skin.

“You formed a contract with me?”

Yun Xi couldn’t move, but because she had swallowed that soul orb, her divine sense now pressed right up against the Divine Transformation stage. With a single thought, she could crush this First Rank Trail-Seeking Rat. So she asked directly.

The Trail-Seeking Rat had watched as its master’s aura climbed little by little. It didn’t know why her body was collapsing, but it still chose to gamble. It used Yun Xi’s blood to form a blood contract, tying itself to her.

Now, it spoke honestly. “Master, you saved me from that bad cultivator, so I already made up my mind to follow you. But just now it was urgent. No matter how I called, I couldn’t wake you. This little rat could only form a contract with you and use divine sense to wake you up.”

Yun Xi slowly drew in a breath. “I can’t move right now. Feed me what I took out before.”

After saying that, she moved her divine sense and took out a basket of milk fruit from the space.

The Trail-Seeking Rat twitched its pink nose, then climbed onto the basket with all four paws. It used its tail to curl up one milk fruit and bring it to Lian Yi’s mouth. It cut a slit in the fruit so the milky-white juice dripped into Yun Xi’s mouth.

Yun Xi swallowed the milk fruit slowly. Her situation was that her soul had become too strong, and her body could not bear it.

If she hadn’t kept taking milk fruit without interruption, her body would probably have collapsed the moment she swallowed that soul. The fact that she had held on until now was also because her body was strong. She felt very grateful to Tribal Warrior.

After eating ten milk fruits in a row, Yun Xi finally felt the pain lessen to something she could endure, but it was only treating the symptoms, not the root.