My Journey to Immortality Begins with Hunting

Time slipped by. Seconds bled into minutes, minutes into hours, until seven full whole days passed.0

For those seven days the onlookers camped in the little town stared at the mountains. For the first three days they could only see the ring of peaks turned into a huge smokestack, belching reddish green fire-poison that devoured everything nearby.0

No one knew what was happening inside, but seven days were enough to draw more and more heavy hitters.0

Gu Xuejian arrived. Bai Lingshui slipped in quietly. Yuan Zongzi of Sacred Fire Palace came with Tie Sha. The elders of the Moon Reflection Tower appeared as well.0

Yet with the Holy Tree Temple officiating, on top of no one daring to disturb a clash at that level, the tigers laid low and dragons hid their claws. Everyone was stunned that the back-country bumpkin called Bubba had been fighting Qing Hancheng this long.0

To Gu Xuejian, Qing Hancheng was unfathomable; to Bai Lingshui he was half a step from third rank and fighting to break through. What on earth was going on? Why no other sound, only the land itself reshaping?0

Li Yuan had stood within the garden during this time, gleaning new insight after insight until he finally solved his problem. The sticking point lay with his ancestral seal. He simply didn't have enoughseeds. Once they reached a critical mass, they could balance the flame; Yin and Yang would birth each other, a new power would emerge, and perhaps the breakthrough to fourth would come with it.0

Having grasped that, he grew curious about Qing Hancheng. The man's Yin and Yang were out of balance. His own ancestral seal could never support the vast, pristine shadow-blood in his body. Only the Wither Growth Sword, crammed with the wills of previous temple masters, propped him up like a cripple had been handed a crutch before he ever broke his leg.0

Li Yuan looked at Qing Hancheng beyond the layered domains. Over the seven days they had not only fought but talked, realizing the key lay here; any other kind of clash was pointless, so they spoke almost like old friends.0

"Your cultivation technique is flawed," Li Yuan finally said. "The ancestral seal your technique raises can't steer the power in your body, and the higher you climb the worse it gets. You feel it, don't you? You can wield this force only because of the Wither Growth Sword, and hoping to hold it, let alone push it higher, is a pipe dream. The fact you've held on this long shows how many clever work-arounds you've invented. In your shoes, I doubt I could've done it."0

"You mean you don't cultivate an ancestral seal technique yourself?" Qing Hancheng asked, face dark. He had tried countless paths, ruled them out one by one, and was closing in on a grim, hopeless truth. The cultivation technique he practiced could never produce a third rank. The deeper he went the farther he fell from it, unless he razed everything and started over.0

Li Yuan said, "I can see you're about spent. Now that you know the truth, there are only two paths left—one is to force your way through to the next realm, the other is to…"0

He let out a quiet sigh. "You're stuck on the tiger's back now. The power you've awakened has taken on its own momentum. If you can't cross this threshold, it'll tear you apart. And I honestly don't know if you can survive that. It feels…planned.0

"Without the Wither Growth Sword, you never would've reached this point. But the moment you had it, you couldn't help using it. The first taste of the next realm hooked you, and that taste is nothing but a mirage. Like a traveler in the desert chasing a shimmering lake, you might've been on the right road. Yet the instant you saw that vision you were doomed to wander until you died."0

"As for my power…I stumbled on an inheritance deep in the mountains. The man who left it said he'd built the technique himself, thanks to a diary he'd read back when he was still low rank. The author wondered how his ancestors forged the life chronicle, ran experiments, then proposed compressing the blood and tempering it…"0

Qing Hancheng froze, then blurted, "That expert failed in the end, didn't he? He'd followed someone else's footprints too far to turn back."0

Li Yuan also paused. For a moment the two men stood silent, gazing at each other. Then Qing Hancheng began reciting passages from that very diary.0

Li Yuan understood. The diary's author was Qing Hancheng himself. Fate had tied them together more tightly than he'd guessed. In a flash he saw the elder's past, a terrifying talent, monstrous gifts, and the youthful arrogance that treated heaven and earth as trifles. Years had lifted that genius to the summit as the Holy Tree Temple's temple master, and talent had driven him onward to this place…only to discover the cruelest truth of all.1

Qing Hancheng narrowed his eyes, that of an undefeated overlord who had ruled unchallenged for centuries. Suddenly he uttered a name, "Li Yuan."0

The bald giant frowned. "Who's that?"0

"The founder of a self-made path, the man whose vibrations can level cities, founder of the Martial Lodge that later became The Bladeseekers under the Lotus Cult. Everyone claims he inherited some overseas technique. But I realize now that you are Li Yuan. This technique is yours. Jing Shuixiang, Cui Huayin, Li Ping'an, Gu Yaojue…you took them all. How can there be so many coincidences, so many peerless prodigies, so many reclusive hermits emerging out of the mountains?"3

He gave a bleak laugh. "No need to deny it, no need to admit it. Just treat it as the ravings of a dying man."0

"I'm really not him," Li Yuan tried to awkwardly refute.0

Qing Hancheng simply ignored him. "So the Grand Union of Yin and Yang is a scam. No one profits except for the ghosts. The Black Lotus cult leader Peng Mingyi is a jade husk; the Emperor's imperial tutor Zhao Gutong is a jade husk; the Green Lotus cult leader Ying Zhuoyao, the same. Every jade husk serves a ghost. Hunt them down, kill them. They're the spark of every chaos. Not the only spark, maybe, but they're still deep enough that their hands are stained."0

Li Yuan asked, "What about the one who gave Holy Tree Temple the Wither Growth Sword?"0

"That was…who knows how many tens of thousands of years ago. Whoever did it can't still be alive. So perhaps it wasn't one man at all, but a—"0

"A transcendent faction," Li Yuan finished.0

Qing Hancheng sighed. "The old records say they show up once every five centuries. I've never met them. Another hundred years before the next cycle. Enough. My clock's almost out. If they want me dead, I'll make sure it stings.1

"Bubba, I'll tell you everything I know. A freak like you, if you keep breathing, you might give them a nasty surprise."0

Qing Hancheng bared his teeth in a savage grin. He could feel his state slipping; the instant he relaxed his control, he would shatter, and whether he revived was anybody's guess. Considering the sword was a built-in trap, the odds were slim.0

His will would sink into Wither Growth Sword and join the temple masters, fuel for ruining the next one.0

"Ahh, curses…! I curse those bastards!"0

Flames all but leapt from Qing Hancheng's eyes. Centuries of cultivation, endurance, scheming, doomed from the very start. How could he not be burning with resentment?2

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙0

Three days later.0

A person who appeared to be Qing Hancheng flew out, the Wither Growth Sword in his grip.7

No one was surprised by the outcome. As for Bubba, the winner wrote history, the loser would simply vanish from its annals. A mountain brute slain in battle needed no eulogy.2