My Journey to Immortality Begins with Hunting

The next evening.

Er Bao guided his ox cart toward the compound, humming under a clear, moon‑bright sky. Suddenly, his wrist felt the icy bite of a human-skin shackle. He jumped and swore, but before the next curse left his mouth the other wrist was cuffed the same way.

A web closed around his very soul, linking him to the man behind him, a perfect double of himself—Li Yuan.

Er Bao finally turned, bowed, and said respectfully, "It is an honor to serve, Master."

"Stay in that tree for a while," Li Yuan ordered. "Don't make a sound; I'll deliver your meals for you."

"Yes, Master."

Li Yuan left the bound man on an old tree no one had approached for half a month, then cracked the whip of the ox cart and rolled through the Blade Seekers compound. At the entrance, he lifted a limp hand and tilted his head just so; the guards, long used to the sight, waved him in without a word.

Li Yuan's performance was flawless—until he reached Zhao Chunxin's cell. There he paused a heartbeat, then shouldered the food box and stepped inside exactly as Er Bao would have done.

Inside the hidden cell, Zhao Chunxin had chained herself with specially forged shackles and locked her bulk inside an iron cage.

Hair wild, cheeks quivering in the half‑light, the scar at her eye ridge bulging with each glare. She looked every bit the demon.

"AAAH! It hurts, feed me! I need to eat!"

The moment Zhao Chunxin spottedEr Bao, she scrambled across the floor and flung herself at the bars like a starving ghost from hell.

Moonlight slanted through the skylight behind her, stretching the lattice of bars and her hulking shadow across the stones.

Li Yuan spread his senses and confirmed,No one else nearby.Only then did he step forward, boots clicking a steady counterpoint to her frenzied howls.

With every pace thesparkof breakthrough grew sharper—so sharp, in fact, that he could nowseea strange fragment, like an ancestral seal, lodged in Zhao Chunxin's heart.

He owned no such seal himself, so where had this thing come from? And thissightwas no ordinary eyesight; Li Yuan felt sure only he could perceive it.

Closer study showed the seal embedded like a curved blade in her heart, choking the flow of blood sand that should have circulated freely.

During daylight, the blade sank deep, the blockage vanished, and she behavednormally. At night it sprang loose, the blood sand jammed, and madness followed, only to be forced down again by dawn.

So that's it,Li Yuan concluded.But who planted the seal?

A second sensation bloomed, some invisible pull between himself and the seal. He advanced until memories of his senior sister flickered across his mind. Right or wrong, angel or devil, he would keep walking this road; his will would not waver.

Zhao Chunxin felt something too. Her snarling fell silent, beast eyes suddenly clear. Li Yuan raised a hand toward her heart—hovering just above the left breast, never touching.

The seal twitched, called by an unseen force, and began to wriggle free.

"AAAH—!" The scream tore from her throat.

Li Yuan couldn't know the ending, but instinct demanded he continue. He also braced for any consequence—only for family would he ever stop. Softly, he murmured, "Relax. It'll be over soon."

SHRRK! SHRRK!Agony beyond words. Slice the heart, peel a soul. Millimetre by millimetre, the crescent blade slid out, burst through Zhao Chunxin's chest, and leapt into Li Yuan's palm.

From there it slipped, almost knowingly, into the stream of his own blood sand. But instead of piercing his heart, it settled quietly beside it, floating along with the current.

Zhao Chunxin's knees buckled. She collapsed before him, panting like a beast finally broken. A quick glance at her combat power he could read above her head showed both floor and ceiling hovering around 400—stable. She would live.

Li Yuan withdrew, repeated the process with Xu Sheng and Yang Teng, and harvested two more ancestral seals.

On his way out he returned the ox cart to the trussed‑up Er Bao and asked, "Do you carry any secret poison of the lotus Cult?"

"Yes, Master. I stole some. It belongs to Lord Guang's faction."

"Lord Guang?"

"Deputy Cult Leader Peng Guang. He and Deputy Cult Leader Peng Mi never got on, though Peng Mi's dead now."

"Do you have any family left?"

"None."

"No maids, either?"

"If I want women, I just take them in town—hehe..."

"Do you have a hidden room?"

"One, yes."

"Good. When you get home, crawl into that room. Use your finger to write the characterGuangon the floor in blood, cover it with your palm, then swallow the poison. Understood?"

"Yes, Master. Perfectly!"

"Farewell, Er Bao."

"Farewell, Master."

Final arrangements made, Li Yuan slipped into a deserted corner of the night, crooked a finger, and vanished back to Cloudpeak Province.

Li Yuan could feel the three ancestral seals lodged near his heart—a great blade, curved blade, and a thin blade—begin to fuse into a single, complete rune.

Within that newborn rune, a strange, chaotic, and colossal intent was gestating, as though a brand new soul—a whole newpersona—were about to hatch.

Yet Li Yuan was still himself, watching the process like an impartial observer.

What was forming was not a human mind at all, but something utterly chaotic, frenzied, and radical...neither human nor anything else recognizable.

Li Yuan, however, remained calm, rational, and cautious. That contrast intrigued him. None of the fifth rank martial artists he had met, or read about, ever mentioned dual minds. They merely said they feltperfect. Only fourth rank martial artists, like Gu Xuejian, appeared to display a split personality. Clearly, his case was different.

Maybe it's because I created my own technique, or maybe it's because I transmigrated from another world...?Li Yuan guessed, studying thenascent spirit. For now, it was just a mass of discordant noise.

He glanced at his stat window; it had already updated.

「Name:Li Yuan

Realm:Rank 5 (Five Sources)

Techniques:

」

Li Yuan casually allocated 1,999 stat points.

The self-created technique was instantly maxed out at fifth rank, and the rune beside his heart began to spin, making the organ feel mightier by the moment. Each revolution sent threads of blazing Yang blood outward. The strands looked clumsy at first, but once they touched the rune they wove themselves into elegant, ordered arcs—five dragons coiling a pearl, five strands of source blood.

With that rotation, Li Yuan grasped a newinner force, a personal field that freed him from gravity; he could now rise at will and soar. Oddly, the rotation was occurring around the rune, not the heart itself.

His combat power shifted again, from 2,600~3,350 to 2,600~6,138. The upper limit had soared, held down only because he still lacked his own spirit weapon—but the lower limit, his baseline power, stayed at sixth rank.

What on earth?Li Yuan examined the anomaly. The five strands of source blood circled the rune, not the heart. Only a single awkward flow wrapped the heart directly. The rune still felt empty, able to absorb more fragments, and it could be pressed into the heart if he wished.

A normal fifth rank martial artist would have five strands of source blood twining the heart and the rune planted in the muscle itself, so every drop of blood carried its mark—and their personality would be altered accordingly. Maybe I should try seating the rune right on my heart.

Li Yuan acted on the thought.

The chaotic rune plunged into his heart. Instantly, a torrent of alien, indescribable static roared through his mind—yet he also felt unimaginably strong. He had reached the very top of his power range; all that held him back was the shadow blood beads he had yet to detonate.

A thought withdrew the rune. The noise evaporated; calm returned.

Snow swirled over Cloudpeak Province while Li Yuan stood with eyes closed, contemplating this unprecedented aberration.

The ancestral seal was like a wild beast, and he was the master holding its leash. He would always remain himself. Yet when he loosed the beast, he was no longer merely Li Yuan but a terrifying entity with boundless room to grow.