Chapter 33
Chapter 33: A Happy Accident
Canyon Realm was exactly what its name promised.
Under the vast sky, canyons cut through the land like scars. The whole realm looked as if an immortal had taken a blade and an axe and hacked it apart. Flat ground was rare. Steep peaks were everywhere—clusters of snow-tipped spires stabbing into blue, so jagged and dense that from a distance they resembled the bristling back of a hedgehog.
From the teleportation formation toward Heaven’s Grace Continent, there was a steady stream of travelers. It saved Hu Qing the trouble of asking for directions.
It also made her stomach knot.
So many people.
If they forced their way through the Heavenly Dao’s protection and entered Little Li Realm, Little Li Realm’s highest cultivators—Mahayana Stage at best—would be nothing in the face of them.
Hu Qing kept her right hand hidden inside her sleeve, fingers clenched tight. Purple dragon scales flickered faintly along the back of her hand.
Juan Bu felt the killing intent boiling off her and jolted. “You can’t kill this many immortals.”
Hu Qing let out a slow breath. “Once, I wanted to forge a heaven-splitting axe.”
Juan Bu froze.
Hu Qing’s eyes narrowed. “I was wondering… if I had it, could I cut the Jiang Tian Bridge in half?”
“Don’t talk like that,” Juan Bu said carefully. “Great opportunities come with great risks. You’ve lived that yourself.
“If Little Li Realm never returned to the Immortal Realm, it would be safe—but it would also slowly decline. And don’t forget: it was Little Li Realm’s Heavenly Dao that made this happen. This was its choice.”
Hu Qing didn’t answer. She stared at the backs of the immortals ahead.
She didn’t need to look back to know the line behind was endless too.
She could accept the ones whose cultivation she couldn’t even read. But what made her blood boil was seeing Nascent Soul Stage cultivators, Golden Core Stage cultivators, even Foundation Establishment Stage cultivators swarming in as well.
They weren’t here to “share the soup.”
They were hyenas and vultures trailing lions—waiting to snatch scraps of flesh off the bones.
Trash.
Her killing intent flared so hard it felt like it split her chest open.
In her dantian, the thunder dragon roared. Bai Wen surged, restless. The Xue Sha pearl darted around in excitement. Emotionless Thread flared like wind-whipped silk. Even the Devil Emperor token shrank deeper into hiding, determined not to be dragged into anything.
Juan Bu’s voice went tight. “Calm down. Hu Qing, you have to calm down. You can’t break through here—if you do, they’ll swallow you alive.”
Hu Qing knew it.
In a place like this, a breakthrough was an announcement: here is fresh meat on a cutting board.
She forced her spiritual power to halt mid-flow. The backlash tore through her, sharp and ugly. She swallowed the blood rising in her throat and told herself, again and again: wait. Wait. Just hold on until Heaven’s Grace Continent—
To keep her from spiraling, Juan Bu did something insane.
He unlocked everything.
The Goldfire Secret Art. The Spring God Art. The Body-Refining Technique. The Artifact Refining Compendium. Formation Compendium. Talisman Compendium. Contract Compendium. A complete guide to ghost cultivators. A complete guide to devil cultivators. Beast-Taming Compendium. Ice-Element Secret Art.
He didn’t stop there. He dumped the Alchemy Compendium and secret arts for water, earth, wood, thunder, and wind into her as well.
Hu Qing’s eyes rolled back. She collapsed on her spirit skiff, barely keeping enough awareness to steer.
“You—want—me—dead,” she rasped.
“Oh, right,” Juan Bu added, as if he’d just remembered. “There’s also Poison Dao Compendium, the complete guide to raising gu, and witchcraft—”
“Shut up!” Hu Qing snarled. “Shut up right now!”
Was he trying to burn her mind to ash?
“You’ll learn it sooner or later,” Juan Bu muttered, suddenly meek.
The flood of information was too much. Hu Qing couldn’t even begin to read what he’d thrown at her.
But her body reacted anyway.
It latched onto the advanced versions of the Goldfire Secret Art, Body-Refining Technique, and Spring God Art—because she’d already been tempered by tribulation lightning before. Her meridians and acupoints were open, her body trained to accept punishment and rebuild.
Now the upgraded techniques took hold, and her spiritual power started running along new paths on pure instinct.
And because these were Immortal Realm techniques, they demanded far more than she could easily supply.
Hu Qing’s face went green. “No… I can’t hold it.”
She was going to break through.
Juan Bu panicked, feeling the spiritual power inside her surging out of control. “Not here. Hold on. Just a little longer—”
Hu Qing gritted her teeth, whipped her spirit skiff around, and shot away from the main group like an arrow.
A few people glanced after her, then dismissed it. They were here for treasure. Chasing a small cultivator was a waste of time.
Hu Qing kept going until she was sure no one followed. Only then did she exhale shakily.
Thank the heavens.
Thank the earth.
And thank Little Li Realm for shielding her from disaster without making a sound.
Her spirit skiff flew low through a sea of jagged stone. Her spiritual sense poured outward. Canyon after canyon opened beneath her—some so deep they seemed bottomless.
She needed somewhere deserted, somewhere no one would stumble into.
It wasn’t hard.
For whatever reason, realms tended to keep the area around teleportation formations strangely empty. Apart from the bustling formation site itself, there were rarely any large settlements within thousands of miles.
For once, that worked in her favor.
“Found one,” Hu Qing said, breath tight. “You steer. I’ll get everything ready.”
Juan Bu took over guiding the spirit skiff. Hu Qing tore through her space, pulling out what she needed—spirit stones, spirit crystals, formation plates, pills.
Now that she was in Canyon Realm, even if she had to crawl, she could still make it back to Little Li Realm. She just needed to survive this.
She hesitated, looking at her preparations. “Will I still have a lightning tribulation?”
“Yes,” Juan Bu said. “Tribulation lightning comes in different strengths. You won’t die from it.”
Hu Qing glanced upward, though the canyon walls swallowed the sky. This wasn’t Little Li Realm. This was Canyon Realm’s Heavenly Dao.
She swallowed and muttered, half prayer and half threat, “Father… please cover me.”
The spirit skiff dropped into darkness.
At the bottom of the canyon was a flat patch of ground no larger than a mu, damp and cold. Spiritual qi was thick here, which was good. Hu Qing immediately started laying formations.
A formation inside a formation.
The outer layer was a spirit-gathering grand formation, using formation plates to draw qi from the surroundings. Inside it, she set a smaller array paved with spirit stones and spirit crystals—so the qi would be refined and forced into her body.
Juan Bu still sounded mournful. “If we had an ascension pool, I could push you straight to mid Spirit Immortal.”
“Too late,” Hu Qing said.
She sat in the center, swallowed several bottles of healing and qi-restoring pills she’d bought herself, and released the restraints on her spiritual power.
Looted consumables were off-limits. Who knew what had been tampered with?
The formations activated.
Threads of spiritual qi gathered like mist pulled by a tide.
Barely a quarter-hour passed before her acupoints crackled like firecrackers. They expanded violently—three, five times wider. Spiritual power rushed in, filled them, then burst outward.
Her meridians tore from the inside, forced open, widened, widened again.
The pain was white-hot.
Hu Qing’s teeth clenched hard enough to ache. This is nothing, she told herself. This is nothing.
Bai Wen and the thunder dragon were forced out of her dantian by the surge. They unfurled and circled the formation—long bodies weaving through the dark. Bai Wen’s eyes glowed an eerie green. The thunder dragon’s eyes were deep purple, almost black, and if Hu Qing could’ve focused enough, she might’ve noticed the flicker of worry in them.
Juan Bu watched them with a strange, lingering thought.
They were bound life artifacts. As Hu Qing advanced, they would advance too. At this rate… one day, they might even awaken as true spirits in their own bodies.
True spirit awakening…
Juan Bu drifted into the thought for a heartbeat—then snapped back as a discordant trace of aura brushed the edge of his senses.
Something was wrong.
Hu Qing was a gold fire spirit root. Attribute-less qi flooded into her, passed through her dantian, and was converted into gold fire before surging through her body. Her meridians were still too narrow to contain it all.
Excess spiritual power spilled out, clinging to her skin like luminous mist.
Gold and fire shimmered through it, bright and fierce in the canyon’s darkness—so beautiful it looked like phoenix flame.
Gold fire was yang. She even had a thunder dragon here.
So why did a thread of extreme yin aura keep flickering in and out of existence?
Juan Bu sent a sharp command to Bai Wen.
Bai Wen widened its patrol, slipping farther into the dark.