My Journey to Immortality Begins with Hunting-Chapter 540 – Researching the Power of the Human Emperor, A New Ghost Prison is Born - Part 1
Early spring, the old house.
Outside, apricot blossoms bloomed.
After a night of spring rain, the morning was still laced with cold.
Li Yuan opened his eyes in the pale light of dawn. He glanced at the empty space beside his pillow, then rose silently, washed up, and made his way to the window. He pressed his hand against the wooden frame, paused, then pushed it open.
At once, rain-drenched wooden slats spilled beads of water down the windowsill with a soft, pattering drip drip like a curtain of drizzle...there for a moment, then gone.
He pulled out a wooden chair and sat down. His clear eyes quietly settled on the pile of torn-up notes and a single sheet spread out on the table.
That pile was the fragmented remains of the golden character he had scribbled down while watching the battle between the Human Emperor and Khagan. He had been studying it since last autumn, and only now had he finally managed to decipher a corner of it.
It was the character for wood, but not quite the wood (木) he was familiar with. It looked more like a child’s drawing, or rather like a primitive human’s sketch of a tree. A tree, simple and crude.
The surrounding strokes were still unclear to him, but he could faintly sense that all the outstretching, overlapping lines were branches.
Countless trees, drawn together by some logic, meant only one thing, a forest.
Was this golden character a depiction of a forest?
Or perhaps it was only a fragment of something greater, that the golden light contained vast mountains and rivers, and the forest was merely the part he happened to glimpse?
Could there be more beyond just this forest?
He hadn't yet finished deconstructing the golden character, because in its center was a vortex-like symbol that defied comprehension. It was layer upon layer of spirals, and just one glance was enough to make him feel dizzy.
Li Yuan had once run an experiment using a condemned prisoner. Through some connections, he had cleared everyone out from a prison wing and brought in the golden character to show the prisoner. The man looked at the center of the symbol and muttered, “Just looks like a kid's messy doodle.”
Li Yuan told him to keep looking.
The prisoner grinned and asked, “If I figure it out, would you reduce my sentence?”
Li Yuan agreed.
But the prisoner wouldn’t let it go and insisted he swear an oath.
Li Yuan immediately turned to leave, saying he’d find someone else.
Panicking, the prisoner blocked his way and quickly declared, “I believe you, sir!”
He then took the paper and, using the light from the skylight, began to examine it with surprising seriousness.
The prisoner began his observation in the morning.
Half an hour later, he started fidgeting and muttering to himself, “I need to get out of here... I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
An hour in, he erupted into a fit of rage, roaring, “She just had to give me the money, that’s all! She died. That’s on her! She could’ve lived if she just gave me the money! Why didn’t she? It’s all her fault! All her fault!”
Li Yuan, intrigued, stepped outside and asked a guard about the prisoner’s background. That’s when he learned the man had been imprisoned for killing his wife.
The reason was painfully simple.
The prisoner had a gambling problem. Like every hopeless gambler, he kept losing, and the more he lost, the more desperate he became, chasing the fantasy of winning it all back in one go. One big win would turn it all around. That’s what he told himself.
He went to his wife for money. But she, knowing the cost of every hard-earned coin, refused.
So he beat her. Badly.
Then he stole her money and went off to gamble again.
She died from the beating.
And as if fate wanted to mock him further, he lost every last coin. Again. As always.
Li Yuan sighed in silence, then turned back to continue observing the prisoner undergoing the experiment.
Two hours in, the man began to violently struggle against his chains, like a beast gone rabid.
By midday, he did something no one expected. He tore his own legs free from the shackles. Bone snapped, flesh split, and he dragged his mangled body toward the iron door, slamming his skull into it again and again, until finally, he collapsed and died at the bars, his head a bloody ruin.
Li Yuan calmly retrieved the sheet of paper, folded it with care, and ordered the guards to clear the scene. No one was to speak of this. Then, he left without another word.
The guard, returning to the cell and faced with the gory aftermath, didn’t even dare to breathe too loudly. He didn’t understand what he had just witnessed, but he knew better than to ask. The man conducting these experiments came from above, and that was all that mattered.
Naturally, this wasn’t the only experiment.
Besides the vortex at the center of the character, Li Yuan had also shown the wood symbol from the edge of the golden script to other death row inmates, hoping for a reaction.
One prisoner stared at it all day inside a steel cage. Nothing happened.
He tried again with another condemned man. Still, nothing.
These three experiments were all he’d managed so far.
There weren’t more simply because it hadn’t been long since the common people returned to Gemhill County. The number of new prisoners, let alone those on death row, was still relatively low.
His thoughts drifted back to the golden character. He picked up the fragments again, tried rearranging them, examined them from different angles, then returned them to the table.
He’d heard a few more death row inmates had been brought in today. He planned to run fresh experiments in the coming days.
In his eyes, if all power in this world followed a unified structure, then a higher number must represent a higher realm. The Human Emperor's terrifying combat power of 8.1 million was a level beyond third rank, a realm that almost no one could touch.
The golden character Li Yuan had managed to capture was merely the tip of the iceberg.
Though his own cultivation hadn’t even stabilized within the third rank yet, how could he resist studying a stronger force when it was right in front of him?
On the other sheet of paper lay the neatly written phrases, “Strive without ceasing...” and “Carry all things with great virtue.”
It was calligraphy practice he’d done in anticipation of meeting the Son of Heaven.
Ever since Xie Wei had told him what happened that day, Li Yuan had guessed the Emperor would come.
And he had been preparing for it ever since.
Ji Hu was no longer the child he once was. In fact, he was no longer a mere Emperor in the conventional sense. He was the Human Emperor.
He possessed a terrifying power, though that power did not truly belong to him. He bore the burden of a turning point in history, the helm of an entire era. But was the will driving this still his own?
Li Yuan couldn’t say.
It had taken him a long time to make the decision to see the Human Emperor in person.
At that time, Ji Hu could’ve easily killed him.
If he had died then, his only hope would’ve been to slowly reincarnate somewhere else using his fourth rank blood as an anchor.
Seeing the Human Emperor was a risk, a dangerous gamble.
But it was one he had to take.
Fortunately, once they met, Li Yuan discovered something crucial. At the very least, the will on the surface, the one speaking to him, was still Ji Hu’s.
Still that lonely, ugly child.
He silently offered his blessings to that child, but he knew he could do no more. No matter how warm the feelings might be, he couldn’t bring himself to draw close to a power that might one day kill him, a power so unstable that even the one who wielded it couldn’t fully control it.
And clearly, the wielder of that power felt the same.
So the two of them merely sat together, wearing faces that no longer truly belonged to them, shared three rounds of wine, and parted ways without ceremony and without lingering.
The Human Emperor had found his answer. He had learned that his parents were alive. He had grasped the belief he had so desperately sought. And knowing how sharp his mind was, it was likely he had already pieced together the truth long ago from the scattered traces of the past.
But in the end, he had made his choice.
The imperial family was a nest of bloodshed. An Emperor who could slaughter all his siblings would hardly spare a second thought for a son born of a political marriage.
There was no love in the Human Emperor’s heart for Ji You. The warmth he had chased all along, the father figure he longed for, was never meant to be Ji You, but another man entirely.
And yet, even that man was someone he could no longer get too close to.
Li Yuan stared at the characters he had been practicing and let out a soft sigh.
“A true orphan of the world...”
In Ji Hu’s youth, no one dared approach him because of his ugliness and his birth. Now, no one could draw near because of his power and his throne.
This was the Human Emperor, the man who had unified all the land beneath heaven.
Just as that thought passed through his mind, he heard a sound outside.
The gate to the old courtyard creaked open.
Raindrops slid from the tips of thick green leaves, dripping onto the wild, overgrown grass below. The grass thrived unnaturally well, nourished by the lingering blood in the soil, its chaotic growth a mirror of the untended courtyard.
Li Yuan opened the door and saw a woman in brocade robes stepping inside.
It was Xie Wei, elegant as always. Her eyes were intelligent, shaded with a quiet, grey depth, the kind of gaze only those in power possessed.
Whether as the shadow master, the Empress, the Empress Dowager, or Lady White Plum, she exuded a charm no man could truly resist and yet few dared to touch.
Only the master of this old house had ever seen another side of her, the side of a seductress. Only he had tasted it.
But that was long past.
Ever since the incident with Xie Yu, the two of them had quietly drawn a line. Neither spoke of it, but both understood. Even Xie Wei, out of propriety, no longer visited his home alone.
They exchanged a glance, nothing more was needed.
“She’s chosen a name for the child,” Xie Wei said. “It’s...Li Zhen.”
Li Yuan gave a bitter smile and shook his head.
It was a name that meant Truth, a hope that this child would never again have to meet a false partner...or live a false life.
“How is she doing?” he asked.
“She was never someone with grand ambitions. A year has passed, and the pain has faded, somewhat. But her personality’s changed,” Xie Wei replied. She paused, then added, “She doesn’t talk about you anymore. Instead, she talks about swords, as if obsessed with them. Or maybe...she’s simply trying to bury her feelings in them.”
Li Yuan let out another bitter smile. “So now she’s chasing the love she never had. Since her so-called blade-obsessed husband was a lie, she wants to become the sword-obsessed one herself.”
“I’ve never seen her so serious about anything before.” Xie Wei said.
Li Yuan suddenly asked, “Have you two made peace?”
A flicker of embarrassment crossed Xie Wei’s face. “We have. I.. I didn’t have much choice. So I blamed it all on you. Said you were the one who kept forcing yourself on me, always insisting on being with me, pushing me down on the bed, and even—”
Li Yuan cut her off. “I told you to say that.”
“Still...I’m sorry,” Xie Wei said quietly.
“Then convince her to move back here. This old house can be yours. If she’s serious about sword training, doing it out in that bloodless, barren wilderness won’t get her far,” Li Yuan replied. Then he added, “I’ll move out.”
Xie Wei hesitated, then nodded. “Then how do I find you?”
“Ask Lady Divine Crow,” Li Yuan answered.
With that, he quickly rolled up the papers on the table and tucked them into his robes before stepping out of the courtyard.
As they brushed past each other, Xie Wei whispered, “It’ll all be okay.”
Li Yuan paused. He gently brushed a loose strand of hair from her forehead, then looked into her eyes and said softly, “Alright.”
A flush rose on her cheeks. She couldn’t help but ask, “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know,” Li Yuan replied.
Xie Wei stared, caught off guard. But by then, he was already gone.
The blood energy from a third rank meat field meant nothing to him anymore. If he wanted, he could just release a bit of the withered flame within his own body, and he himself would become a third rank meat field.
