Li Xun ignored her little dig and frowned deeper. “What about the Yin-Transforming Pool…?”

“The Yin-Transforming Pool? It’s not as effective as people think.”

Yin Wanderer smiled slightly. “I’ve heard about its supposed effects. If I’m not mistaken, Master Ghost told you to channel its energy into your body, using it to temper the Yin Fire Pearl’s sharpness until it gradually becomes yours to command. But to draw in that energy, there must still be ‘yin’ to transform. And right now, the Yin Fire has already spread through your entire body. Your bones, your veins, every part of you. Tell me, then: are you transforming the yin… or are you transforming yourself?”

Li Xun thought it over carefully. What Yin Wanderer said did make sense.

Still, his mind had never been clearer than it was now. Though Yin Wanderer’s reasoning made sense, he wasn’t ready to accept it without question. Keeping his expression calm, he asked, “Then why do you say I should cultivate Blood God Child?”

A faint curve appeared on her lips.

“I don’t exactly like admitting it,” she said, “but Blood God Child is truly a masterpiece among the body-refining methods of the Tongxuan Realm. Most people only see its ‘Burning Blood Origin Breath’ as a brutal and domineering technique, but what they don’t realize is that its greatest brilliance lies in the cultivation of the flesh itself. You’ve already mastered the ‘Unmoving Evil Heart,’ haven’t you? You must have noticed something by now.”

Li Xun brushed a hand over his chest, thought for a moment, and nodded slightly.

It was true. When his heart had been struck, even damaged, his body of flesh and blood had somehow turned into mist, dispersing the impact entirely. If he hadn’t experienced it himself, he would never have believed such a thing was possible.

“Exactly,” Yin Wanderer went on. “The refinement method of Blood God Child is a kind of transformation of the body. An alteration, and a complete one at that. It starts from the heart’s core, then gradually spreads through the entire body. At its highest level, the body becomes as light as mist yet as unbreakable as diamond, achieving the Undying Demonic Physique.

“In other words, you stop being human, and you become a demon. And in that state, you can dissolve all foreign energies completely, more perfectly than by any other means.”

Li Xun thought for a moment before he shook his head. “Demonization? But Wei Bufan doesn’t look like…”

“Was he really cultivating Blood God Child?”

Yin Wanderer clearly knew what Li Xun was thinking, and continued calmly,

“He deserves some credit, actually. He took the Blood God Child and created his own Blood Demon Heart Transformation Art. It uses the Path of creating an external incarnation to summon ‘blood nightmares,’ pushing the power of the Burning Blood Origin Breath to its peak. But in doing so, it weakens the original body-refining aspect. Otherwise, do you think Qing Luan’s hasty strike that day could have wounded him so badly?”

Li Xun thought back to that moment and realized she was right.

But that led to another question. For someone as reckless as Wei Bufan to avoid cultivating the true Blood God Child... it probably had something to do with the final stage of demonic transformation.

no matter how steady his mind had become, just imagining that terrifying process of refining himself into a cloud of blood sent a chill through Li Xun,

He had already prepared himself for the worst, but he hadn’t expected “the worst” to look quite like this.

Yin Wanderer felt once again that he had tapped into the rhythm of Li Xun’s thoughts, and she was pleased. She leaned down, fixing her gaze on the subtle changes in Li Xun’s expression.

“If I were you,” she said in a low, heavy voice. “I’d go back to Mist-Hidden Pavilion right now. Spend a hundred years in seclusion, cast everything aside, and devote yourself to cultivation. When that time comes, you can return to this realm and walk the world as you please. Who would you have to fear then?”

Li Xun’s mind cleared. He looked back at her coldly.

She let out a dry laugh. “I see. You can’t bring yourself to let go of what’s right in front of you. Whether that’s right or wrong, I’ll remind you of one thing. Your body can’t take much more. Within half a year, if you can’t make up your mind, the changes in your body will reach a point you can’t ignore.

“When that happens, you’ll start to notice your limbs disobeying you, numbness setting in, your qi thrown into chaos, and eventually... paralysis.”

She paused for a moment, then smiled again. “Still, even if you do end up paralyzed, as long as you grit your teeth and endure, once you master the Blood God Child, you can recover.”

Li Xun’s eyes drifted shut for a moment, then opened once more.

He smiled too.

Seeing Yin Wanderer’s startled expression, he reached out and lightly tapped her soft, luminous cheek with the back of his hand.

“Think about who you are.” His tone was gentle.

Even someone as composed as Yin Wanderer felt her chest tighten for an instant.

Li Xun watched her reaction with a smile, then went on, “I know you’re not used to this. It’s just that acting on impulse again and again…”

Something inside him suddenly stirred, but his mouth didn’t stop. He kept talking. “...it isn’t good for either of us. Try to stay calm, alright?”

Yin Wanderer straightened up, her expression unreadable. A mocking smile touched her lips, but in the end, she said nothing.

Li Xun regarded her with a perfectly calm look, though a question kept rising in his mind: Impulsive, again and again? Her? Was that truly her reaction. Or what I believed her reaction to be? Or maybe, what she thought I believed her reaction to be?

Li Xun looked away, his mood shifting again. He looked down, stamped his foot a couple of times, feeling how the increasingly intense movements affected his body. Then, with a calm expression, he asked Yin Wanderer, “Like this, do you think anyone will notice something’s off?”

Yin Wanderer gave him a quick glance and shook his head. “Earlier, I used the method of balancing yin and yang through inner flow to steady your qi. Unless you’re seriously injured again, like today, and your inner energies fall out of balance, it’ll be hard for anyone to detect.”

She paused for a moment. “Of course, if someone gets very close to you, or channels their qi into your body, I can’t promise it’ll stay completely hidden.”

Li Xun hummed in acknowledgment and was about to speak when Yin Sanren suddenly shook her head. He understood at once. Both of them slipped quietly into the thick undergrowth.

A moment later, streaks of sword light flashed across the sky, then vanished northward without stopping.

Li Xun narrowed his eyes and clicked his tongue. “Just as I thought, they’re heading for Nightless City. I wonder what trick Mistress Tianzhi used to bring out that Ban Cheng the Lay Monk who hasn’t left Glazed Heaven in centuries. On the other side, there’s the Demon Phoenix, Qing Luan, the Kunpeng King, and the Net Throat Demon—five of the Seven Great Demons of the world are there already. Hah, maybe I should call Shui Die Lan too, just to make it even livelier.”

Yin Wanderer shot him a glance but didn’t bother responding. Li Xun didn’t take it personally and turned his attention back to the matter at hand.

There was no doubt he was someone who held grudges. Since the Falling Feather Sect hadn’t finished him off when they had the chance, they’d better be ready to face the consequences.

Of course, before anything else, he needed to disappear back into the shadows. If the Falling Feather Sect discovered that their carefully targeted assassination suddenly went cold without a trace, what kind of expressions would they have then?

....

A shift in one’s state of mind can lead to startling changes.

Now awakened from years of confusion, Li Xun’s mind was clearer and sharper than it had ever been before.

And a clear-headed person would never, and could never, be content to stay on the defensive, reacting to others’ moves.

So, Hundred Ghosts vanished.

Or rather, “vanished” wasn’t quite right. How could a man who was supposedly gravely injured disappear without leaving a trace? Of course, Hundred Ghosts wasn’t just anyone; he was a cultivator of considerable skill. Even while wounded, he knew how to conceal himself, and his methods were exceptional.

Unfortunately, he still couldn’t hide from the sharp eyes of those who came looking afterward.

Starting the very next day, at least two cultivators began tracing the tiniest hints of his trail, bit by bit.

The skill with which they tracked him was so impressive that even Li Xun, hidden in the shadows, couldn’t help but be impressed.

If he’d wanted to, he could have easily used a few clever tricks to lure those unsuspecting pursuers straight into a carefully laid trap and end it all in one move.

But from the start, he hadn’t intended to alert anyone. And right now, this delicate situation is probably something you rarely see.

First came the assassins from the Falling Feather Sect, then the spies of the Succubus Sect. It was a deadly dance of shadows, each side hiding, sneaking, and pulling off moves the other couldn’t see coming. Li Xun watched it all and couldn’t get enough.

Even so, he couldn’t help breaking a cold sweat.

Good thing he’d been cautious enough to retreat into hiding early on. Otherwise, he would never have guessed that, even after Thunder-Beaked Hawk’s apparently sincere invitation, the Succubus Sect had still sent out spies of their own.

He’d been taking it easy for way too long. Fortunately, he knew how to sharpen his claws before it was too late.

Li Xun wasn’t planning to strike back just yet. Still, while watching from the shadows, he did his best to study the unique tactics of both sects. With the help of Yin Sanren, he analyzed the underlying principles behind their moves, determined to get a clear, intuitive understanding of their methods. Especially those of the Falling Feather Sect.

Maybe that understanding was only surface-level and fragmented, but tracing order out of subtle and tangled signs had always been one of Li Xun’s strengths.

After several days of observation, he had already gained quite a lot.

And now, at last, the Flying Soul Decree from the southwest had arrived.

Just as he expected, Madam Yan’s group had been ambushed by the Falling Feather Sect. But their counterattack was well executed, leaving Lord Bishui in an awkward position instead.

With that, Li Xun no longer had any reason to stay nearby. A third of the time allotted by the sect elders had already passed. What once seemed like plenty of time was now running short.

Still, Li Xun felt it had all been worth it.

After faking the illusion that Hundred Ghosts had fled southwest, Li Xun shifted through several escape techniques in quick succession, slipping away for thousands of li without leaving a trace. Only then did he openly reappear, swaggering under the name of Spirit Bamboo, racing straight toward the polar region. Whether those two sects would fall for his ruse or not was no longer his concern.

The scenery at the pole stretched endlessly, bleak yet grand in its own way. But after a while, even that kind of beauty started to feel monotonous.

Dust and shards of ice whirled through the frigid northern wind, scattering wildly. Just like the chaos engulfing the polar region right now.

Li Xun frowned and quickened his pace, steering clear of the skirmish behind him.

This was already the seventh battle he had come across since entering the Polar Day Zone.

What struck him most was that every single fight had been between rogue cultivators. More precisely, internal clashes within the Rogue Cultivators’ Alliance.

Only now did Li Xun understand what Luo Nanchuan had meant that day when he said, “The situation in the North Pole has taken a serious turn.”

From everything he’d seen and heard over the past half day, the Alliance seemed gripped by a restless, violent tension, like a simmering volcano. One small pebble tossed in might be enough to trigger an unprecedented eruption.