“What’s up, an old acquaintance?” Cang Hai asked nonchalantly.
Yuan Lian wasn’t surprised. Just like Yan Hang’s prying went unnoticed by her, if Cang Hai wanted to, he could easily perceive where her divine sense was, and his range would be even larger and more concealed than Yuan Lian’s.
“Yeah…” Yuan Lian didn’t explain the backstory, just asked in confusion, “Did you notice earlier… could he sense my divine sense?”
“With just that kid’s divine sense, normally it wouldn’t be possible,” Cang Hai said. “But there’s an ancient saying from the time of Father God about the mysteriousness of inspiration. Maybe his thoughts and feelings make his perception unusually sharp, occasionally surpassing common sense.”
“Thoughts and feelings…” Yuan Lian pondered over these words, feeling even more puzzled. “He still has feelings for ‘her’…?”
Weren’t they already separated, living in different worlds?
Cang Hai tapped her forehead, and Yuan Lian thought for a moment before opening her soul platform to let him in.
This was a long story, and Yuan Lian was too lazy to start from the beginning.
The soul platform is located in the upper dantian, the place where the spirit resides, capable of housing the primordial spirit and soul. What would take a long time to explain with words can be fully understood in an instant through divine sense.
However, the exchange of divine souls is extremely dangerous and private. For immortals, exposing the primordial spirit is more shameful than being naked, so even though it wasn’t a man’s primordial spirit, just a divine sense, Yuan Lian still shivered slightly when it touched her primordial spirit.
Cang Hai knew she wasn’t in the mood for dual cultivation today, so he withdrew immediately without lingering.
But even with just this brief touch of divine sense, Cang Hai understood most of the past between “Yun Lian” and Feng Yunqing.
“Uh…” Cang Hai’s expression was subtle. He was speechless for a moment, then couldn’t help but tug at Yuan Lian’s long hair draped over his lap. “This… Junior Sister, was all this drama your idea?”
It was like a play on a mortal stage, full of twists and turns, entangled emotions, and ending in a tragic breakup and death.
Yuan Lian denied without thinking, “It’s fate, how could it be my idea?”
Cang Hai shook his head, sighing with a smile.
Yuan Lian originally wanted to ask more, but seeing him like this, she somehow didn’t want to anymore.
Cang Hai stroked her black hair, feeling it was as cool as the mountain streams surrounding Buzhou Mountain all year round, smooth and silky as it wrapped around his fingers. He said warmly, “The love in this world can’t be easily severed. It’s always entangled, tearing at the heart, and sometimes even leading to a point of no return.”
Yuan Lian hesitated, “But I did sever it.”
“It wasn’t you who severed it,” Cang Hai laughed. “Honestly, Junior Sister, without these underlying reasons, would ‘you’ really have so easily cut off your emotions with a sword?”
Yuan Lian thought for a moment before answering, “I suppose… I could?”
The uncertainty in her tone was very apparent because although she remembered when the feelings among the three arose and how they collapsed, experiencing it again was impossible due to the passage of time.
Even Yuan Lian herself couldn’t answer this question on behalf of the woman who lived and died for love.
Cang Hai looked into her eyes, so cold yet so clear, and slowly shook his head. “Junior Sister, it’s not that simple. You may not understand now, but always remember, what might seem like a fleeting whim to you is a tribulation others can’t overcome in a lifetime… Physical tribulations are easy to pass, but emotional barriers are hard to dissolve. If it were that easy to comprehend, everyone would be a God King.”
Although Yuan Lian hadn’t broken through, the curiosity and questions arising from her heart now showed a significant change compared to her previous indifference to everything.
Before, she would never have asked this, but now, not only did she ask, her deep curiosity drove her to continue.
“What about you, Senior Brother?” She looked up at him. “Have you ever experienced the so-called ‘heart-wrenching, unrepentant’ love?”
Cang Hai didn’t expect the topic to turn to him and was momentarily stunned before laughing silently. “Not everyone’s love is earth-shattering and involves many. Fortunately, I’ve never fallen into such a situation.”
It seems that deep, earth-shattering love isn’t necessarily a good thing. Unfortunately, Yuan Lian couldn’t even understand this emotion, so the long-lasting, enduring kind was even less useful to her.
She had no choice but to experience and understand the ones she could more easily feel.
Yuan Lian’s origins were special. She was born a Jade Immortal, standing firmly above many cultivation seniors, and her cultivation path was smooth sailing.
Ordinary people go through step-by-step refining of essence into qi, qi into spirit, spirit into void, and void into the path, taking thousands or even nearly ten thousand years, overcoming countless hardships, to finally achieve something on the path against the heavens and reach the Earth Immortal realm.
However, after finally ascending, they find several mountains still pressing down on them. What they thought would be a splendid end is actually another long, winding path with no end in sight, and terrifyingly, they’re still at the starting point of this path.
One can imagine how frustrating and despairing that would be.
But Yuan Lian was born able to see the end of this path, and she was only a few steps away from it.
The first few steps she took were indeed smooth, so smooth that it made all cultivators extremely jealous. Those with narrow minds might even develop heart demons knowing her innate advantages, never progressing again.
But this last step was where Yuan Lian finally understood the difficulty of the word “hard.” She had just turned a thousand years old, but she had been stuck at the Immortal Venerable stage for over six hundred years.
If others heard this, they might be so angry they’d ascend on the spot—only six hundred years, while some with lesser aptitude spend ten times that just to go from Earth Immortal to Spirit Light, let alone aspire to the supreme position.
But Yuan Lian was different.
She was born with an immortal body, flawless from body to soul, naturally able to comprehend the heavenly dao. She had no spiritual root because her entire being was like a spiritual root, her flesh, skin, and bones able to absorb spiritual energy smoothly.
With such talent, she was naturally unstoppable in cultivation, but once she encountered a barrier, it wasn’t just any ordinary obstacle.
Yuan Lian wasn’t conceived from the essence of a father and the blood of a mother. As she grew, those who initially thought she was perfect gradually discovered the fatal flaw in this gifted child.
—She lacked emotional threads.
A person’s primordial spirit resides in the soul platform, and if one uses a strong enough divine sense to probe, they would see a chaotic, gray mass, with emotional threads being the golden strands intertwined within, shimmering with tiny lights.
Emotional threads, in layman’s terms, are a person’s emotions and feelings, not born with them but gradually distributed over the primordial spirit as one lives and gains insights from experiences.
Yuan Lian’s cultivation had been growing nonstop since birth, each breath a process of absorbing spiritual energy, but her emotional threads remained in their initial state.
To ordinary people, she might seem cold and indifferent, like a piece of cold jade that couldn’t be warmed.
She was unmoved by flattery and praise, indifferent to care and pity, and even negative emotions like provocation and hatred could be ignored.
She always viewed the world with the unique innocence and cruelty of a child. Even with high cultivation and abundant spiritual power, her understanding of the heavenly dao was naturally insufficient, and her previously smooth journey finally reached a point of repayment.
Yuan Lian wasn’t very happy. “I’ve already experienced it…”
The implication being that she tried but didn’t achieve the expected results.
“That’s quite unfair,” Cang Hai couldn’t help but laugh. “Your whimsical method was originally a risky move, but it actually had some benefits, which is great. How can you expect to reach the sky in one step?”
He touched his junior sister’s forehead, speaking warmly, “Xiao Lian… you know yourself, this is far from enough.”
While the senior brother and sister were discussing the effects of “emotional barriers” around Feng Yunqing, he himself wasn’t so leisurely.
The four siblings from Canghai Realm were brought to the Divine Realm by Yan Hang, yet it didn’t cause a ripple. This was partly because Yan Hang’s habits were well-known, and with more people, it naturally became less valuable, but there seemed to be other reasons as well.
Their time in the upper realm coincided with the busiest period for Wanyi Sect.
The selection of new disciples wasn’t even finished, and the Hundred Sect Assembly was already around the corner, with major sects like Ding Tian Mausoleum, Sword Mountain, and Forbidden Demon Cave all participating. This proved that the Divine Realm wasn’t free of disputes; on the contrary, these conflicts and disputes were even more profound.
Moreover, such competition encouraged disciples from various sects to strive for excellence rather than indulge in comfort.
Everyone in Wanyi Sect was extremely tense, fearing they’d lose face at the assembly and never be able to hold their heads high again.
That day at Buzhou Mountain, the four of them almost had their spiritual energy explode, left in a sorry state by the spiritual pressure, with no strength to ask anything else. Once they recovered in the sect, Yan Hang disappeared in the blink of an eye, leaving each of them with a lingering question.
Who was the woman they encountered at Buzhou Mountain that day?
Except for Feng Yunqing, who remained silent in his cave, the other three subtly inquired with the senior brothers responsible for settling them and other nearby fellow disciples, receiving similar, firm answers:
“Impossible! What do you think Buzhou Mountain is? Ghosts and monsters… the mountain is pure and clean, any evil spirits would vanish upon approaching.”
Shen Ying frowned, dissatisfied, “But…”
“But nothing,” said Lu Qi, the head of the Wanyi Sect’s outer sect, impatiently. “The Sect Leader only took you there because he found you interesting. We don’t even have the ability to go there. You should be grateful, not making such disrespectful assumptions.”
Shen Ying was momentarily choked, feeling a bit subtly defiant, “We didn’t even meet any big shots, why should we be grateful, and besides, it was clearly not clean…”
Before Lu Qi could respond, Lin Jin quickly scolded, “Junior Sister!”
But it was too late. Lu Qi’s face turned ugly, and he rudely pointed at Shen Ying’s nose, scolding, “Who do you think you are, daring to criticize Lian Zun!”
He even turned to glare at Lin Jin, “Is this how you disrespect your elders in the lower realm?!”
They had caught Lu Qi on the martial arts platform where outer sect disciples practiced. Now, with his loud questioning, he instantly attracted a large crowd of disciples’ attention.
Lin Jin immediately noticed the numerous dissatisfied and questioning gazes, and his heart sank.