Chapter 41 (Part 1)

Song Yuanxi had lived in Xuantian Sect ever since he was born and had never gone to the Song family’s main household. Now that he was going there for the first time, he actually felt the nervous timidity of “a wanderer returning home,” while at the same time, his heart was terribly excited.

He was even thinking about which clan brothers and sisters he might meet once he reached the main household, and whether they would get along. If their relationships were good, they could visit one another often in the future…

Reality, however, was that Song Qing passed straight over the clan grounds and directly brought him to the entrance of the secret land.

Song Yuanxi could not help but stare in shock. “Dad, we’re just… going in? We’re already at the main household. Shouldn’t we go meet the family head first?”

“The family head is busy with many affairs. There is no need to disturb her over such a small matter. Besides, she already made arrangements for your entry into the secret land.”

As he spoke, Song Qing took out a jade bottle and handed it over. “Inside is a Vitality Blood-Reviving Pill, a sixth-level high-grade sacred healing pill. Keep it well. Use it when necessary.”

Song Yuanxi happily accepted it, stuffing it into his storage bangle while grinning and asking, “Dad, did you advance? A sixth-level high-grade pill? Dad, you’re awesome!”

Song Qing shook his head. He had not intended to say more, but the look in his younger son’s eyes when he left suddenly flashed through his mind. That child felt guilty toward his elder brother and did not even dare to look at him. Truly stubborn!

“This was prepared for you by Yuanruo,” Song Qing could not help explaining.

Song Yuanxi went “Ah,” and immediately switched into muttering mode. “Then where is Yuanruo? I didn’t even see him at the Jincheng Song family. Where did he go? Isn’t he injured too? Why is he giving me pills? Does he still have any left? Should we…”

“It is getting late. Enter the secret land at once.”

Before Song Yuanxi could finish asking all the questions filling his chest, a flash of white light suddenly appeared before his eyes. When he looked around again, the surroundings had completely changed. His father was nowhere to be seen. Only he remained, all alone.

Song Yuanxi understood at once. He had already entered the secret land.

“Dad, honestly. What’s the rush? I hadn’t finished talking yet…”

Only after sending him into the secret land did Song Qing let out a breath. The tense look he had been wearing also eased slightly. He had never known how to communicate between father and son to begin with, and he truly feared his elder son’s chatterbox tendencies and enthusiasm.

“Yuanxi, rest and recover well. Reach Foundation Establishment soon.” Song Qing took a deep look at the secret land, then turned and left.

Inside the secret land, Song Yuanxi had long since begun running wild. He was exactly like a child who had been cooped up at home for several months and had finally been allowed out to play. He sprinted all the way forward, running back and forth for several hundred li before finally stopping.

Then he flopped straight backward and lay on the soft grass, gazing at the cloudless blue sky, smelling the refreshing fragrance of flowers, and listening to the murmuring stream, the chirping cicadas, and the birdsong. How could one word “comfortable” possibly be enough?

Song family’s secret land was completely different from what he had originally imagined. There was no Gobi desert here, no frozen world of ice and snow, and certainly no raging wind and rain. It was indeed vast enough to seem boundless, but everything within sight was shaded by green trees. There were valleys, flowing water, flowers, grassland…

Song Yuanxi took a deep breath. Rich, abundant spiritual qi instantly rushed eagerly into his body, entering his meridians through his pores and making him sigh in comfort.

“This is absolutely a natural sanatorium.”

After lying on the grass for an entire day, Song Yuanxi woke from hunger early the next morning.

He absolutely did not want to eat fasting pills. He had also already wanted to explore the environment of the secret land, so he used the chance to look for food and began wandering everywhere.

At first, Song Yuanxi was still cautious, afraid that some large demonic beast might suddenly spring out of the dense woods and carry him off before he noticed. But after wandering for several days in a row, he discovered that aside from some small and medium-sized spirit beasts living in the secret land, there actually were no dangerous creatures at all?

“Dad seems to have said that the secret land is a supreme treasure of the Song family, born from heavenly materials and earthly treasures. Doesn’t that mean it’s on the same level as the Ji family’s Trial Tower?”

Song Yuanxi thought back to when he had entered the trial tower. He had only challenged three levels, yet had experienced every kind of hardship and tears inside. The ups and downs of life were hardly more than that.

They were both family treasures, but the Ji family’s trial tower was truly depressing. As expected, his Song family was still better. Just look at this secret land. There was no danger whatsoever, the spiritual qi was abundant to the point of almost liquefying, and he could fool around however he pleased!

[He sang several lines from a lively pop song.]

Song Yuanxi completely let himself go. Relying on the fact that he was the only person in the entire secret land, he sang, danced, swung around a broadsword… In short, he did whatever felt good!

After more than a month of messing around like this, the novelty finally wore off, and he began to feel bored.

If there were no people, there was no socializing. Without socializing, a human being, as a communal creature, could very easily become depressed. If one’s mentality was not strong enough, one could even go mad.

Song Yuanxi was still only in the Qi Refining stage. His longest seclusion had only lasted half a year, and he could not compare at all to those major figures who went into seclusion for decades or even centuries at the drop of a hat.

“So boring. Sixty years. How am I supposed to get through it alone?”

To avoid going mad from staying here too long, Song Yuanxi could only focus on cultivation, using cultivation to distract himself from paying too much attention to the passage of time.

“My longest seclusion before was half a year. Now that the secret land has such abundant spiritual qi, I might as well try a long seclusion.”

Song Yuanxi circulated the Yin-Yang Art and slowly, methodically absorbed spiritual qi. He was not in a hurry to begin cultivating. Instead, he first let himself enter an absolute meditative state. His thoughts emptied, his divine sense spread out, and he imagined himself entering his sea of consciousness like a flat boat sailing into the ocean…

Time passed. It felt very fast, and also very slow. The instant he entered meditation, Song Yuanxi directly put himself into death seclusion. Without external interference, if he did not achieve a major breakthrough, it would be impossible for him to wake on his own.

Time flew by like a white steed passing a crack. Who knew how long had passed when a crack suddenly sounded in his sea of consciousness.

His cultivation, which had been confined for a long time, finally loosened. With Song Yuanxi himself as the center, a small vortex formed, and the spiritual qi around him frantically squeezed into his body.

The moment that spiritual qi entered his body, it seemed to gain awareness of its own. After flowing through his limbs and bones, it rushed straight toward his dantian. Compression, scouring, then more compression, more scouring…

After who knew how many repeated cycles, the spiritual qi inside his dantian finally surged. The Yin-Yang Art circulated wildly through his body, and his cultivation, which had stagnated for years, began to climb: fifth level of Qi Refining… sixth level of Qi Refining… seventh level of Qi Refining…

Finally, when he reached the eighth level of Qi Refining, the force of the impact weakened, and his cultivation stopped rising.

Song Yuanxi woke from seclusion. The instant he opened his eyes, he suddenly felt that something about him was different.

Very quickly, he discovered what was unusual about himself. His cultivation had risen. It was just like he had taken drugs, climbing step by step from the fourth level of Qi Refining all the way to the eighth level of Qi Refining!

What surprised him even more was that the first layer of Qi Refining in his Yin-Yang Art had actually reached grand completion and smoothly transitioned to the second layer.

The so-called barrier did not seem to have appeared. This left Song Yuanxi somewhat puzzled.

The new Yin-Yang Art was a heaven-rank cultivation method, and Song Yuanxi was still full of curiosity about it. Now that he had smoothly broken through the first layer’s cultivation content, he was eager to know how the second layer should be cultivated.

So he took out the jade slip engraved with the cultivation method, pressed it to his forehead, and began browsing.

The greatest surprise followed. The cultivation content that had originally been profound, obscure, and difficult to understand had now become ordinary when he looked at it again.

Previously, it had been very difficult for him to understand the words and sentences, and he had even needed Jiang Lanyi to rack her brains explaining them. He had thought this situation would always persist, and had even prepared himself for the future, planning to carry the cultivation method to Senior Sister for explanation each time he cultivated a new stage.

Now? Happiness came too fast, like a tornado!

Song Yuanxi carefully read the second layer of the cultivation method and finally understood exactly where his Yin-Yang Art differed from his master’s Yin-Yang Art.

Previously, his master had said that the cultivation method had fifteen layers in total, and every three layers, once cultivated to minor completion, would return to simplicity, while cultivating to grand completion would break through obstacles. He had always kept this firmly in mind and considered it the foundation for cultivating the Yin-Yang Art.

But the truth was, he had been wrong.

His Yin-Yang Art did not have fifteen layers at all, nor would it revert to factory settings after being cultivated to a certain point. It was simply a conventional cultivation method that advanced gradually, layer by layer.

“Let me see. After grand completion in Qi Refining, what should the second layer cultivate? Body refinement from the inside out. After refining qi, the next should be refining the skin, right? Refining the skin… Huh?”

“Wait! Why isn’t the second layer refining the skin? Refining the bones? How did it jump straight to bone refinement?”

Song Yuanxi was shocked again. He wanted to flip further back and check what the third layer’s cultivation content was, but discovered that he had returned to the initial state where he could not understand the words and sentences.

In the instant he was dazed, inspiration suddenly struck, and he abruptly understood. It was not that his comprehension ability was insufficient. Rather, this was a cultivation mechanism that existed within his Yin-Yang Art itself.

It was like nesting dolls, one inside another. If he wanted to get the innermost doll, he had to open them one by one from the outside in.

His cultivation method was the same. When the first layer’s content was cultivated to grand completion, the next layer’s cultivation content naturally unlocked. If he wanted to skip the middle and look at the later cultivation content, the cultivation method itself activated a protection mechanism.

“So this is the profound subtlety of a heaven-rank cultivation method? It can actually set its own cultivation thresholds? How user-friendly.”

After Song Yuanxi studied it thoroughly, he did not know whether to laugh or cry. “Why does this feel like it’s guarding against me? This is my own cultivation method. Could I really slack off and start cultivating from the back?”

…

From Qi Refining to bone refinement, skipping skin refinement and flesh refinement, meant Song Yuanxi needed to rebuild his knowledge system. Breaking fixed ideas was not easy, so he was not in a hurry to cultivate. Instead, he stopped first to stabilize his cultivation and state of mind.

He had set up a time hourglass before entering seclusion. Now, when he took it out to look, fifty years had already passed.

As Song Yuanxi looked, he could not help smiling until his eyes curved. “Not bad, not bad. I actually managed to stay in serious seclusion for fifty years. This perseverance is amazing!”

Thinking back to those days, when he had just entered Liuren Hall for morning lessons, he could not even persist for two hours, and he would often let his mind wander and get scolded by Martial Uncle Li. Now, more than seventy years had passed, and even a single seclusion started at several decades.

“When I return to the sect, if I meet Martial Uncle Li again, I definitely have to have a good talk with him.”

Just as his imagination was roaming everywhere, his spirit beast pouch suddenly moved. Song Yuanxi thought of the injured and sleeping little yellow chicken and immediately went to check the pouch.

His emotions could not help growing excited. “Little Yellow has slept for so long. Is it about to wake up?”

The truth was just as Song Yuanxi thought. After sleeping for fifty years in the secret land thick with spiritual qi, the little yellow chicken’s half-torn wing had completely healed. Moreover, its entire body had been continuously nourished by spiritual qi, and over these decades, a quiet transformation had taken place.

Carrying an excited heart, Song Yuanxi opened the spirit beast pouch with trembling hands. In the end, his adorable little chick was gone. What greeted him was a fluffy little dog with an entirely white body.

The adjective “little” was relative to the body sizes of demonic beasts in the cultivation world. If placed in the modern world, this white little dog would be the size of an adult Samoyed.

The little yellow chicken woke from sleep and opened its eyes. The first thing it saw was its own host, and its mood instantly became wonderful.

“Daddy!”

It jumped up excitedly, wanting to leap onto the other person’s head like before and dance on that head.

However, the anticipated soft fluffiness was not there. The little yellow chicken pounced forward and directly knocked the person in front of it to the ground. Its entire body pressed down on the other person’s head, and muffled “mmph mmph” sounds came from beneath it.

Song Yuanxi struggled hard and finally burrowed out from under that heavy mass of fluffy belly. He gasped for breath in great gulps, then flipped the weight on his body aside.

“What is this thing!”

“Daddy, I’m Little Yellow!” The little yellow chicken looked terribly wronged, its clear, dark eyes blinking at him.

Song Yuanxi was completely dumbfounded. “Little Yellow? Little yellow chicken?”

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