The secret chamber was silent and spacious. Aside from a few garments hanging on the black stone walls and a scattering of silver and gold beans on the tea table, the place was bare. This was a restricted zone within the imperial palace. Anyone trying to enter had to bypass layer upon layer of elite guards—it was practically impenetrable. But for cultivating, this place was perfect. Quiet, undisturbed, and completely isolated from the outside world. Following the pattern of his ancestral seal, Li Yuan began circulating his energy. The ancestral seal bloomed like a lotus, unfolding 3,888 petals. Each petal opened, then began to drift, weaving in and out like sugar blown in fire. It was like sculpting molten sugar into figurines, only this was done with fire and soul. Yet every time the sugar figurine began to take shape, growing larger and more refined, an immense pressure would crash down on him. The fatigue was indescribable, unbearable. His strength would give out, and he’d be forced to stop. The moment he let go, the sugar figurine deflated like a balloon with a hole, gone in an instant. The union of Yin and Yang was no easy feat. The very fact that he could blow sugar in fire was already a glimpse into the profound mystery of this Heaven Soul cultivation technique. Now, Li Yuan finally understood why a jade husk could cultivate this technique in the first place. In the first sub-realm, if no Yin energy was condensed, death was just death. Nothing would leave the body to merge with Yang energy. But in the second sub-realm, without an innately powerful Yin constitution, you couldn’t even begin to blow that sugar figure into existence. Li Yuan had only just begun this cultivation technique, and he wasn’t in the mood to chat with Sheng'er about it. When the exhaustion came rushing in like a tide, he simply lay back and let his thoughts drift elsewhere. The chamber was so quiet it bordered on unreal. Unless one listened closely, all sounds from the outside world felt as though they passed through deep ocean currents, muffled and indistinct. Li Yuan’s mind wandered. He was studying the changes in his body after breaking into third rank. Before long, he noticed something strange. He no longer seemed to need food in the conventional sense to maintain his body’s functions. Even after taking a fasting pill, it didn’t work the way it used to. But he didn’t think it was because third rank cultivators no longer needed to eat. Quite the opposite, this realm probably required even more sustenance. The logic was simple. The larger the organism, the more it needed to eat. The more advanced the machine, the higher its energy demands. Take Sheng'er, for example. That old locust tree in its third rank form had roots sprawling underground, sucking nutrients from all directions. It only survived because it was planted near a fertile meat field. And yet, even so, the little crow would still often complain, “I’m hungry.” This meant one thing. After changing bodies, hunger didn’t go away. It just evolved with you. This was not what Li Yuan had expected. In theory, with greater power should come less need for such basic things, right? Why would someone still get hungry? But reality didn’t care about theory. Everyone got hungry. And the stronger the martial artist, the more they consumed. The only difference was how that hunger was fed. Ordinary people ate rice and meat to fill their bellies. But those with new bodies, like his, had to absorb entirely different kinds of energy to sustain themselves. The energy, perhaps, was pure Yang. At least, that was how it worked for a Heaven Soul. Li Yuan’s true form now was a mountain, and moving a mountain required a lot of fuel. So then…why didn’t he need to eat anymore? His thoughts drifted back to the moment he was in the Yang womb, when he caught a fleeting glimpse of the cosmic hierarchy. That was the soul, Yin and Yang, and body. Most people had to extract energy from the outside world to sustain their body. But his Yin-Yang energy…was a little different. The withered flame coursing through him was directly feeding his body. And the source of that withered flame? The Sun. The blazing Sun, radiating boundless yang energy. Boundless, yes. But not infinite. For any living thing, any race, the total amount of resources was finite. That’s why the strong evolved and the weak perished. Nature’s law, in the end, was always the same. Get stronger, or get eaten. Strip away all the mysticism, and it still boiled down to that crude but perfectly reasonable principle, fight for your next meal. Thɪs chapter is updated by 𝙣𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙡⁂𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚⁂𝙣𝙚𝙩 Li Yuan let his thoughts drift aimlessly for a while until he felt his energy had recovered. Then he sat up, refocused, and resumed channeling his Yin energy, sending the lotus petals of his ancestral seal into the Yang flame once more. He moved slowly, cautiously. This wasn’t like circulating ordinary true qi. If you fumbled with true qi, the worst that could happen was a backlash or a blockage. But this, this was Yin and Yang colliding head-on. If he slipped up even slightly, the ancestral seal seed would crash into the Yang flame and detonate with a boom! The incompatibility of Yin and Yang wasn’t just a saying. It was real, and it was dangerous. So Li Yuan tried again. And again. And again. But the result never changed. This cultivation technique seemed to be toying with Li Yuan. He’d inflate, deflate, inflate, and deflate again…rising one moment, collapsing the next. Each cycle ended in failure. Every time he got close, it all collapsed back to zero. Until finally, Li Yuan understood. The technique was incomplete. It was missing something. Next to Yan Yu’s temple, the little sparrow pecked at the little crow’s head, chirped a flurry of bird talk, then picked up a broken branch still clinging to a green leaf and began scratching letters into the dirt. “The cultivation technique is flawed. It’s missing the next stage.” The branch had fallen from one of the nearby trees. Ever since the old locust tree had evolved into a third rank body, its immense power was constantly exerting pressure on its surroundings. Nearby trees were crushed under the weight, branches snapped, roots torn. Sheng'er had tried to rein it in, but it was no use. The locust tree’s air roots had become like deep-sea tentacles—endless, wild, and impossible to control. Even the slightest twitch would upheave nearby trees like an earth dragon rolling beneath the forest floor. And the bigger the locust tree grew, the more nutrients it demanded. In just a short time, even the trees that hadn't been killed outright began to wither from malnutrition. It was midsummer, yet yellowed leaves spread through the dense forest. It was a dry, brittle anomaly that stood in stark contrast to the season. But that, too, confirmed what Li Yuan had suspected all along. The little crow stared at the words scratched into the dirt, red eyes blinking. It tilted its head, chirped curiously, and asked, “Papa, what’s wrong with the technique?” Li Yuan explained it to him as plainly as he could. A long silence passed. The little crow tilted its head even more, looking thoroughly puzzled. “But Papa, I don’t have that problem at all,” it said. “I made a prototype of the Immortal Form really easily.” “...” Li Yuan was stunned, wondering if his daughter was a genius or if he was just really that dumb. After probing the issue a bit further, it suddenly clicked. That old man from the Deathless Tomb hadn’t set him up. The cultivation technique itself was fine. The problem…was him. For Sheng'er, all she had to do was stretch the Yang energy clinging to her. It was like blowing a bubble with gum. The key was finesse. But for him? He had to stretch withered flame, which was like trying to blow a bubble with a piece of aerospace-grade steel. The fact that he could even get it to expand at all was already impressive. Most people probably wouldn’t even get a flicker, let alone a spark. Li Yuan sat there, speechless for a moment, then scrawled in the dirt. “Don’t go looking for him again. If you do, that old fox will probably figure out I’m alive.” This one, he’d solve on his own. The issue was simple, not enough Yin energy. Fine. No big deal. He still had the Bladeseekers. If 3,888 seeds weren’t enough, then he’d just absorb more. Once again, Li Yuan found himself back in that familiar rhythm of cultivation, waiting for the next crop of chive to ripen. The chives, his euphemism for fresh sixth rank disciples, were eager for him to harvest their issues so they could return to normal. And he, in turn, was eager for them to grow so he could harvest them. Since his Heaven Soul cultivation was currently stuck, he decided to focus on something else. According to his own estimations— His shadow blood realm, the Human Soul path, should still be at fifth rank. His Earth Soul path was likely fourth rank. And his Heaven Soul? Third rank. Li Yuan didn’t have hard data to confirm all this, but he was not the kind of person to panic just because he didn’t have talent spreadsheets or diagnostic tools. He had instincts. Theories. And plenty of experiments to try. And the next thing on his list? Heavenly thunder. He remembered clearly. Whenever he held the White Serpent, the heavenly thunder within would stimulate his body, pushing him into the fourth rank of shadow blood cultivation. Normally, his mismatched body and Yin energy wouldn’t allow him to stably maintain a fourth rank form. But the moment he introduced heavenly thunder into the mix, he could break through. This meant there was some strange, hidden force within the thunder that made up the difference. Whatever that force was, it was worth investigating. So, while waiting for his chives to grow, Li Yuan decided to give it a shot. He stepped out of the secret chamber and looked up at the sky. It was a moonless, windy evening, cooling the summer heat with a welcome breeze. But there wasn’t a single sign of lightning or thunder. “No rush.” Li Yuan leapt lightly into the air and landed atop one of the palace rooftops, gazing out over the vast sprawl of the Jade Capital. There was no moonlight, but the lanterns still glowed. They swayed in the night wind, their flickering flames like stars scattered through the dark, illuminating the crouching outlines of the palace roofs—structures that resembled silent beasts, hunched and staring skyward. It was grand. It was beautiful. But there was also a quiet weight to it all. “Phew.” Li Yuan let out a long breath, enjoying the sight of myriad lanterns flickering across the capital. If a man could feel joy, why choose misery? After a while, a certain craving bubbled up in him. He found himself missing a jar of Springbrew. So he turned back, returned to the secret chamber, shifted his form into that of an ordinary, slightly chubby, completely forgettable young man. He plucked a plain martial artist’s outfit from the stone wall, stuffed a pouch of gold nuggets into his chest, then pulled out the Nine Provinces Provisional Patrol Token.