My Journey to Immortality Begins with Hunting-Chapter 598 - Plucking the Flower - Part 2

December.

Li Yuan now sat in the courtyard of the Star Manor.

The carriage carrying the secret art steles had finally come to a halt.

The Wolfmother sat on a rock, lost in thought. There was something honest and almost pitiful about her expression. It said, If I thought I could get away, I’d have bolted long ago.

Meng Xingxian was hunched over a bowl of noodles. Without Yin energy, she was just an ordinary person. At this moment, she looked every bit like someone who had given up and was just going with the flow.

Ying Zhuoyao, on the other hand, sat quietly to the side. Her powers were drawn from Li Yuan’s lifespan, and so she had barely been affected. She sat calmly at a table, brush in hand, copying down text.

It was the Human Emperor’s Martial Canon.

Zhen'er had passed the manual to her father and openly shared her thoughts.

Now that a new era had dawned, she believed that high ranking martial artists were actually the root of most chaos in this world.

What this land needed wasn’t more warriors; it needed ordinary people.

So she hadn’t released the Martial Canon to the world. In fact, not even her husband knew of its existence.

Back then, the Human Emperor himself had told her that if the world hadn’t yet healed, she should pass this book on. If the people couldn’t eat grain, then let them become martial artists and feast on the flesh of demonic beasts.

But now the fields were fertile, crops growing far and wide, who still needed that book?

Ying Zhuoyao copied each line carefully, committing it to memory. As Li Yuan’s servant, this was her duty.

But as she reached the final page, she suddenly let out a soft gasp and furrowed her brows.

Her eyes were a strange, pale jade, blind by appearance, but imbued with spiritual sight. Through arcane power, she could see as well as anyone.

Yet now, as her gaze swept across the last lines of the Martial Canon, some of the words blurred, incomprehensible.

She had reached the very end.

Li Yuan appeared silently behind her and asked, “Are you running into the same issue as with the secret art steles?”

Ying Zhuoyao shook her head. “Young Master, it’s not like the script on the secret art steles. It’s the content on the last page, it’s strange. The earlier parts all cover cultivation techniques for the Human Soul. I’ve never practiced those techniques myself, but I understand them well enough. But this last page...it doesn’t talk about the Human Soul, or even the Heaven or Earth Souls. It’s something completely different,something I can’t even make sense of.”

Li Yuan took the Martial Canon of the Human Emperor from her hands and carefully examined the final page, silently reading.

“Devour the qi of mountains and rivers to strengthen the body. The force of mountains is firm. The force of seas is supple.”

Below that was a basic outline, just a few passages, on how to use this Devouring the Qi of Mountains and Rivers technique.

Even Li Yuan found it incomprehensible.

It was a body cultivation technique, yes, but not like any he’d ever seen.

What kind of technique used the qi of mountains and rivers to refine the body?

This qi wasn’t the usual Yin or Yang essence of Heaven and Earth. It was something that, as far as he knew, didn’t even exist in this world. It felt...foreign, like it belonged to a different plane of reality.

Ying Zhuoyao asked, “Do you see anything in it, Young Master?”

Li Yuan shook his head, then waved over to someone nearby.

Meng Xingxian, still holding her half-finished noodle bowl, trotted over with reluctance.

“You take a look,” Li Yuan said.

Maybe someone from the ancient Xia Dynasty might see something they couldn’t.

Meng Xingxian leaned in and studied the page for a while, her brows gradually scrunching. She eventually gave up and shook her head. “Never seen this before. I don’t get it.”

In her understanding, the world was formed from Yin and Yang. Where the hell was this mountain and river qi supposed to come from?

The technique described on the page vaguely resembled the early conditioning exercises of unranked martial artists. Except...there was something odd about the breathing technique it emphasized.

It was this breathing method that allowed the practitioner to absorb mountain and river qi and use it to enhance the body.

According to the text, once strengthened, the cultivator’s body would become incredibly powerful, and their internal force would far surpass the norm.

But from Meng Xingxian’s perspective, the results were underwhelming.

“One Earth Soul could wipe the floor with all those muscleheads,” she muttered.

Li Yuan tapped the Martial Canon. “This is only the first page. And it only records a single minor realm.”

“He only wrote one page? That means he was hiding something,” Meng Xingxian said immediately. “I knew there was something fishy about that guy’s power. He definitely had some long-term plan, probably wanted to leave this behind so someone could cultivate it and help him come back to life or something.”

“Enough,” Li Yuan said, cutting her off.

“Okaaaay,” she replied, shuffling off to finish her noodles. She had already figured out the dynamic here. Her father-in-law didn’t bother with her as long as she kept her head down and did her job.

So, Meng Xingxian had officially entered laissez-faire mode.

Li Yuan turned back to the book, his eyes locked onto the page.

The more he stared, the more he noticed something strange.

Each stroke on this final page was carved deeply into the paper, more forceful than elegant. And in some of the supposedly straight, clean brush lines, there was an odd twist to the stroke, a subtle, jittery vibration.

It was similar to the hand of someone just learning to write.

That could only mean one thing.

When the Human Emperor wrote the final page of the Martial Canon, it was incredibly difficult for him. As if he were defying something profound. Each stroke he made seemed to carry the weight of mountains, as though a thousand-ton boulder had been lashed to his arm.

But that was the Human Emperor, the supreme figure of his time. A man whose strength had reached a terrifying peak. What could possibly make him struggle to lift a brush?

And yet, the thing that burdened the Human Emperor so heavily was something Ying Zhuoyao had copied with ease. It took her only moments to finish transcribing the page.

Even so, Li Yuan still couldn’t grasp what this qi of mountains and rivers truly was, or what this peculiar breathing method actually meant.

He tried it himself. Attempted the breathing technique described.

Nothing happened, not even the slightest reaction.

He set that thought aside and silently committed the page to memory, then turned his attention back to the first half of the Martial Canon.

In those pages, the Human Emperor had drawn upon all the schools of thought on Human Soul cultivation. He refined their essence, discarded their weaknesses, and unified them into a method nearly anyone could train in.

This, too, was a form of creation.

Li Yuan studied the Human Emperor’s self-made technique, reflecting on his own path of innovation. Gradually, it was as if all the world’s Human Soul techniques merged in his mind, interweaving, breaking apart, then fusing anew into something that was truly his.

He closed his eyes and recalled the scene at the Swan Pavilion just days ago, the brutal battle where he’d unleashed dozens, even hundreds, of Heaven-Binding Ribbons simultaneously.

Suddenly, he raised a hand, and shimmering crimson ribbons appeared out of thin air.

Meng Xingxian yelped in fright and bolted.

The red ribbons slithered through the courtyard like flaming serpents, writhing through the air, growing in number.

Meng Xingxian twisted her waist and darted into the house to avoid catching a stray blast.

She was just a normal person now. And a normal person had to know how to protect herself.

Li Yuan, meanwhile, was deep in thought.

If the third rank is about transcending the self and seeking the greater whole... If it’s about stepping outside one’s own body to perceive Heaven and Earth...converting domain power into the power of enlightenment... Then what is my Heaven and Earth?

It should be the fusion of strength and insight. And when pushed to the peak, that’s when transformation occurs. The battle at Swan Pavilion gave me something new. Could I ride that insight all the way to the summit?

More and more red ribbons filled the courtyard, beginning to entangle and knot around each other.

As they touched and wove together, they became increasingly difficult to control.

But this level of complexity, it was a new experience. Li Yuan pressed on, eager to explore it fully.

Meanwhile, all the follow-up matters were handled by Zhen'er.

The He faction’s leader had been executed. The Grand Empress Dowager was now keeping vigil at the imperial tombs. The He army had been broken apart and reabsorbed into the state military.

Of course, there were still pockets of resistance. But with Sheng’er at Zhen'er’s side, assassination attempts didn’t pose much of a threat.

And the war was over. Whatever resistance remained was just a ripple against the tide.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

A few days later.

Li Yuan made a quiet visit to the Bladeseekers.

When he emerged, the entire place was in an uproar.

The Southern camp of the Myriad Lineages Academy had already spread the news that the true legacy of the Bladeseekers wasn’t hidden somewhere in the Eastern Sea.

It was here. And the one who had founded that legacy...was none other than the Princess of the Central Capital’s father.

Li Yuan selected a group of elders from the Bladeseekers, with Zhao Chunxin as their leader, and began passing on secret techniques to them. At the same time, he was still contemplating the path to entering the third rank, hoping to finish refining and transmitting the method before he left.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Time slipped by, and before long, it was March.

Zhen'er had not chosen to take the throne for herself. Instead, she had her son, Ying An, adopt the current 13-year-old boy-emperor, Ji Zheng, as his foster son and serve as his regent.

By now, Li Yuan had reached a deep state of cultivation, his foundation thoroughly consolidated.

One spring morning, he disguised himself as a refined young nobleman, fan in hand, and went out alone for a walk in the countryside.

It was the season when the peach blossoms had just begun to bloom, brilliant and dazzling. The breeze didn’t scatter them; it merely stirred them gently on their branches, as if the sea itself had been dyed red.

The young noble twirled his fan and smiled. Suddenly, a strange and subtle thought took root in his mind. He followed it without resistance, wandering for three days and nights until he came to the end of the road. Standing there, he smiled with sudden, clear understanding.

He raised his hand and pinched his fingers together in the air.

At that moment, the vast withered flame, the terrifying domain force he wielded, responded to his movement. All of it converged into a single point.

A point made from hundreds of Heaven-Binding Ribbons, bound together into something far more stable, far gentler.

It became a flower petal, a single petal of a red lotus bloomed at his fingertips.

It gleamed like crimson clouds at sunset, radiant as the full moon, containing unfathomable power, yet appearing utterly calm, utterly serene.

A voice sounded behind him.

“Wow...that petal is beautiful.”

He turned his head. In the distance stood a young noblewoman, likely out enjoying the spring scenery herself.

Li Yuan smiled brightly. With a flick of his fingers, he released the petal.

It drifted down into the tall grass and quietly vanished, like snow melting under the morning sun. A force that could have leveled the entire landscape disappeared without sound or trace.

He walked away with long, relaxed strides. And as he did, something changed.

His status window that had not shifted in decades finally began to stir. The fourth rank by his name flickered once and turned into third rank.

But his third rank was different from others.

Ordinary cultivators gained a realm, an inner world, and each object within that realm could channel part of their power.

Li Yuan’s realm didn’t work that way. His strength wasn’t distributed across his realm. It stacked, and stacked, and stacked again.

The more it layered, the more absurd it became. The more terrifying.

If, in the past, as a fourth rank, he was a youthful boy riding wind and fire wheels...

Now, he was the kind of Dao Sovereign who could pluck a lotus from the heavens and let it fall to the mortal world.

A moment later, in a secluded place, Li Yuan glanced at his status window. He had a total of 198,945 stat points. Below that, his mastery of third rank read (1/64,000).

He smiled faintly and tapped the small + button beside it.

In an instant, he allocated 63,999 stat points.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

News of Li Yuan’s reappearance finally reached the Immortal Domain of the Eastern Sea and caused a massive upheaval among the highest echelons of the sects there.

Many of them began connecting the dots, threading together all the clues hidden within the fog, and realized just how terrifying this man named Li Yuan truly was.

Ping’an stood before the Sect Master of the Arcane Supreme Sect.

The Sect Master looked at him and said, “Your father...is still alive.”

Ping’an appeared to freeze in shock. Then slowly, emotion began to rise in his chest, confusion, awe, disbelief...and joy. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

The Sect Master said calmly, “Go. Invite him to come here.”