My Journey to Immortality Begins with Hunting-Chapter 579 - Secrets Revealed - Part 2

“How many spirit stones would it take to let someone be reborn?” Li Yuan asked thoughtfully.

Meng Xingxian gave a bitter smile. “If you wanted to reincarnate someone at third rank...it would take at least three centuries’ worth of spirit stone reserves from the Arcane Supreme Sect, back when spiritual energy was abundant and spirit stones were everywhere.

“These days? It’s not even worth discussing. That’s why we had to resort to the Severing of Yin and Yang, cutting off the natural energy flow. The idea was to later release that dam, let the Yin and Yang surge back like floodwaters, and use the wave to baptize everyone here...to trigger mass reincarnation.”

Li Yuan had no idea if she was lying or not. In times like these, he really missed Yan Yu, his personal lie detector.

Sitting in the shadow of the carriage, he seemed to mull it over. Then he asked, “So why are you so set on entering the Deathless Tomb?”

Meng Xingxian’s voice turned sharp. “Because if the Northern Dipper, and those little bastards currently running in the Eastern Sea, are all scheming to carry out the Grand Union of Yin and Yang...speeding up the world’s collapse so they can cash out before it’s over and transcend this realm...then we don’t see the point in holding back anymore. I want to wake everyone up. Then tear out the plug in the Western Extremes, undo the Severance of Yin and Yang, and let the world flood.”

She paused, suddenly aware she was ranting in front of this man. She clenched her fists and quickly softened her tone, speaking with a hint of playful deference, as if trying to coax an elder.

“I...I don’t really know what the consequences will be, Father-in-law. But really, I can’t think of any other way. It’s not like things could get worse, right?”

“I see...” Li Yuan understood.

These old ghosts from the Xia Dynasty were trying to stir the pot, force the world into chaos and grab a seat at the table while everything burned. A last shot at survival.

“You do know the world outside has changed completely. Why risk everything now?” he asked.

Meng Xingxian looked pitiful. “I...I want to go to the Eastern Sea too. I may be stuck in the Western Extremes, but I’ve kept an eye on the outside. I’ve heard whispers that the ancient halls have surfaced over there.

“Since the Grand Union of Yin and Yang came and went, no one knows where the world’s heading anymore. But the Eastern Sea’s Immortal Domain...it still has the ancient halls. That’s my only chance to survive.

“I have to wake everyone in the Deathless Tomb. Then get to the Eastern Sea. While the ancient halls are still around... I have to make my move. This is my last hope.”

Li Yuan put himself in her shoes and realized she was right.

For the ancient survivors of the Xia Dynasty, there really was only one path left.

The sun would never shine again on the Western Extremes. Even if they undid the Severance of Yin and Yang, it was too late. All their hopes now hung on whatever secrets the ancient halls might hold.

“Xingxian,” Li Yuan said, deliberately playing the part of the wise elder.

Meng Xingxian immediately shifted into her best we’re-all-family-here mode and answered sweetly, “Yes, Father-in-law?”

“So this Severance of Yin and Yang...how exactly did you all pull it off?” Li Yuan asked.

The sudden, pointed question caught Meng Xingxian off guard.

But she had already committed to her new role as the obedient daughter-in-law. There was no backing out now.

“Father-in-law,” she began carefully, “we did it with the Grand Formation of Severance. It’s anchored by nine divine nails, each sealing a critical point. These nails seal the heavens themselves. They’re like acupuncture needles locking down a body’s meridians.”

“What are these divine nails exactly?” Li Yuan asked.

Meng Xingxian replied dutifully, “The nine nails were discovered alongside the Yin-Yang fish. They’re unique relics, even the higher-ups of the time couldn’t leave the slightest mark on them. It was precisely because of their indestructibility that we chose them to anchor the Severance of Yin and Yang. And sure enough, they’ve never been damaged, not once.

“With the flow of Yin and Yang cut off, the native energy of this land became sealed in the permafrost. Yang congealed into the flame. Yin condensed into aqua. When the Evernight spread across the land, both the flame and aqua swelled in response. Yet afterward, that energy always slowly withered again. Otherwise, with the size of the region we sealed off, the flame here should have been far fiercer than what we see today.”

Then she began to cry, pitiful and full of self-pity. “Father-in-law, everything is decaying. Everything’s dying. I didn’t have a choice. I just...I want to live. From now on, I’ll follow whatever you say, I swear...”

She had finally run out of cards to play.

She couldn’t defeat Li Yuan. Couldn’t breach the Deathless Tomb. So she chose to surrender completely. If she couldn’t win, she might as well join him.

As for what came next...she’d figure that out later.

Li Yuan, meanwhile, was lost in thought, wondering if he could pull out those nine divine nails and maybe turn them into weapons or something.

But after a moment, he dismissed the idea.

They weren’t coming out anytime soon.

The Severance of Yin and Yang was like acupuncture. Just as golden needles could regulate a body’s meridians, the severance was meant to stabilize the land.

The Western Extremes split Yin and Yang across the Central Plains, but that division was also a kind of protection. A treatment. A remedy.

It had only become a problem because it was exploited. What began as healing was turned into a way of burning through the last dregs of life, driving the world into a final frenzy.

But the irony was...the madness of this calamity had barely begun, only to be cut short by the Human Emperor’s sword.

Now, panic was spreading.

No one had seen an age like this. No one knew what would happen next.

Everything had been thrown into chaos.

And in that chaos, the only hope left was the ancient halls rising in the Eastern Sea.

Their fear wasn’t unfounded either.

Ying Zhuoyao had already caught a vague glimpse of fate. She had seen that the final deadline was 30 years.

In that time, Heaven, Earth, and Human Soul cultivators would all fade away, vanishing from existence.

Survival of the fittest. Every great climate shift had wiped out species by the thousands. The same would be true of this world, whose foundations were built on the Three Soul Cultivation System. If the environment changed too drastically, how could it escape extinction?

It wasn’t mighty empires or ancient monsters that ended worlds. It was Heaven and Earth itself.

That was what the ancients called a calamity.

A storm of thoughts passed through Li Yuan’s mind. For the moment, he decided not to leave.

Originally, he was just making a detour to check on Sheng’er while searching for the secret stele.

But now...he wanted to stay awhile.

Because he had just found his Guiding Sprite No. 2, Meng Xingxian.

And when it came to the world that would arrive 30 years from now, he had his own ideas.

This perspective had been with Li Yuan since before he crossed over.

Matter didn’t just vanish, it transformed. From one state to another. On a macro level, it shifted between solid, liquid, and gas. On a micro level, it rearranged among elements, atoms, neutrons.

Even when matter changed form, the elements remained. And even when the elements changed, the atoms themselves...stayed essentially the same. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

So, the new world, whatever it would become...would still be connected to this one. Bound, somehow, by the same underlying fabric.

Li Yuan had made up his mind. He needed to find that connection, or at the very least, dig until he unearthed something.

The ancient halls? He’d get to them eventually. But there was no rush.

The Eastern Sea was currently going all-in on one of the ancient halls. And even now, they were only skimming the outer edge.

Those blood fiends inside...the Eastern Sea cultivators couldn’t handle them at all.

It was only because the blood fiends lacked any real intelligence. If they’d had even a sliver of strategy, the so-called Immortals of the Eastern Sea would’ve been wiped out long ago.

Li Yuan snapped out of his thoughts and asked, “You said there were three caretakers for the Deathless Tomb. Where are the other two?”

“One is in Kabrol,” Meng Xingxian replied. “The other went to the Central Plains...but we lost contact.”

Li Yuan nodded. “So, the one within the Wolfmother at the time and invited me to join you all, who was that?”

“That was Han Feng,” she said. “She’s currently in Kabrol, nurturing beasts.”

Li Yuan raised an eyebrow. “Oh? How does one nurture a beast?”

“...” Meng Xingxian paused.

For a split second, she got the same eerie feeling Ying Zhuoyao had gotten when Li Yuan had questioned her months ago.

You don’t know? How could you not know?

“I’ve lost many memories.” Li Yuan added casually. Then he smiled faintly. “Though I still remember a few things.”

Meng Xingxian didn’t dare press him for his real name. She simply continued, “The Halls of Solar Yang, Lunar Yin, and Life are hidden deep within chaos. Though they’ve remained sealed for over 30,000 years, they existed long before that.

“Back then, the Western Extremes hadn’t yet been swallowed by ice and snow. It was a thriving region, larger than the entire Great Zhou Empire today.

“But beyond the Western Extremes was an extremely dangerous zone. A place teeming with flame gods and ghosts.

“For ordinary cultivators, stepping into that land meant certain death. Only those at third rank and above could even hope to explore it.”

Li Yuan interrupted, “Hold on, what do you mean by flame gods?”

He wasn’t exactly afraid. At this point, he was the butcher, and the world was the meat on his cutting board. What was there to fear?

Meng Xingxian hesitated again, but quickly masked her reaction. There had been a flicker of hidden shock in her eyes.

“Yang energy ascends to the heavens. It manifests as lightning. Yin energy sinks into the earth, it manifests as earth fog. But when lightning becomes too abundant, it can ignite flame. These flames, however, are nothing like the bonfires here in the Western Extremes. They’re erratic and elusive. Their forms are unstable. They seem alive...and yet not.

“They rampage, destroying everything in their path, even destroying themselves. They don’t need provocation. Even if left alone, they only last a few days before vanishing, only for a whole swarm of new ones to appear in their place.

“Because of their strange, indescribable forms, we call them flame gods, to distinguish them from the ghosts. As for the ghosts...they’re the same kinds that haunted the Great Zhou.

“Yang is light and diffuse. Yin is heavy and dense. Ghosts are eternal, never truly dying. But the flame gods? They burn out in the blink of an eye. Their natures couldn’t be more different. The ghosts lure you in, lead you astray. The flame gods simply destroy everything violently, indiscriminately, and completely. Both are extremely dangerous in their own way.”

“I see.” Li Yuan nodded and casually conjured a Yang flame in his palm

Meng Xingxian, watching up close, could now see clearly. It wasn’t an illusion. That really was a flame. And her eyes went wide with shock. Others might be able to control flame for a moment, perhaps summon a flicker with great effort. But not like this. Not like it was as easy as breathing.

To her, this man sitting before her wasn’t a cultivator at all. He was a walking, sentient, stable flame god.

And to think...she had once assumed he’d died to the withered flame.

In a soft, cautious voice, she ventured, “Back in the Xia Dynasty, there were no ghost domains. That entire region, overflowing with flame gods and ghosts, was simply called the Outer Domain. Were you...were you awakened from there?”

Nearby, Ying Zhuoyao’s eyes also went wide.

You’re not the Southern Dipper, are you? You’re a flame god, right? A stable one. An intelligent one. Right? A walking, living taboo of pure Yang energy...

As Li Yuan revealed more of his power, people began projecting their own fears and myths onto him. Each imagined him as something different, each more terrifying than the last.

Li Yuan didn’t answer her question. He simply said, “Go on.”

So, Meng Xingxian continued, “Within that Outer Domain, there were scattered relics, secret steles that were immensely precious.

“According to the records, these steles were vessels. Vessels the ancient gods used to steal power from the three ancient halls. They couldn’t let that power disperse, so they used special stone tablets to inscribe and contain it. If they wrote it on paper, the characters would vanish almost immediately.

“Typically, these steles were categorized into Heaven Soul, Earth Soul, Human Soul, and...Unknown. Each type held different knowledge.

“The Heaven Soul steles contained methods for cultivating third rank Heaven Souls, as well as powerful transformative arts.

“The Earth Soul steles recorded the methods to birth jade husks and certain beast species.

“The Human Soul steles explained how to cultivate intelligent lifeforms, beings with thought and self-awareness.

“Our Arcane Supreme Sect was fortunate enough to acquire quite a few of these. Some we sent to the Eastern Sea to serve as the foundation of our cultivation legacy. Others...we kept with us. Among them, one Earth Soul stele for beast creation...and two for creating jade husks. One kind is the Wolfmother. The other...is the jade servant.”

“Jade servant?” Li Yuan asked.

“It’s...the kind that your daughter killed in droves. They’re a type of jade husks, similar to ghost servants. Exceptionally skilled in assassination,” Meng Xingxian explained.

“We hid a lot of them inside the Deathless Tomb, just in case something went wrong. Outside, we had the Wolfmother. Inside, the jade servants Add to that the three caretakers, the extreme cold of the Western Extremes that seals shadow blood, and the Nine Flames Tribe...”

She let out a small sigh. “Who could’ve imagined there would be a freak like your daughter in the world?”