After his rebirth, Yin Jiuxiao was very clear about his physical condition and had already devised a plan to cope with it.

The Yin family’s swordsmanship is unique, bound to the Nine Heavens Exquisite Cloud Sword. The term “Jiuxiao” in the family’s spiritual marrow actually refers to the more important sword technique.

Although the Yin family Spirit Masters also follow the grading system of Heaven, Earth, Mysterious, and Yellow, the nine levels of swordsmanship are the true measure for them.

The reason the Yin family stood unrivaled during its peak was precisely due to the unique combination of spiritual marrow and swordsmanship.

Unlike other spiritual marrows, the Nine Heavens Exquisite Cloud Sword is a rare one with growth potential. It initially seems ordinary, but each time the sword technique breaks through a level, the sword transforms a bit, gradually surpassing others of the same level. Once cultivated to the highest level, no other combat-type spiritual marrow in the world could match it.

Yin Jiuxiao practiced this sword technique from a young age. After the loosening of his magic bone, his aura became impure, rendering this technique unsuitable for him. At that time, he still didn’t realize that he was walking down a dead-end path.

Only when he started over and understood his body’s condition did he gradually explore and improve upon the original sword technique, creating a cultivation method that integrated sword and demon.

This new method of cultivation was a tremendous help for balancing the two energies within him. After his rebirth, he quickly began to change course along a solid path, gradually helping himself restore his strength.

He spent the entire year focusing on this.

Once he was on the right track, Yin Jiuxiao noticed that his affected eyesight also improved as his internal energies gradually calmed down.

He could see clearly half a year ago; he was just pretending to be blind.

In the context of his rebirth, all the problems he faced in his youth were no longer problems.

However, Yin Jiuxiao had not yet informed anyone about his changes.

After merging spirit and demon energies, his power was one of a kind, and during cultivation, he had no fluctuations of spiritual energy. The Soul Testing Stone used to assess his power could not distinguish his strength, so as long as he didn’t act, no one could discover his true abilities.

At his current age, he still needed time to reach the strength he had as the Demon Emperor and Sword Master in his previous life, so he wasn’t in a hurry to show off. It was better to keep a low profile and gather strength.

Moreover, over this past year, besides restoring his strength, he found it interesting to view the behavior of many people from a different perspective. Whether it was the many members of the Yin family or outsiders, their behaviors were unchanged, like jumping clowns.

It was as if he were watching a script he already knew, with everything happening exactly as before.

Yin Jiuxiao only needed to time his movements to avoid anything unfavorable to him, no longer suffering any grievances. However, seeing the same faces again wasn’t particularly meaningful.

But after his eighteenth birthday, he planned to do something different to change his disastrous fate.

Lin Qingshuang was a little younger than him, and when she turned eighteen, it would be the day agreed upon in their engagement contract.

At that time, the Lin family would come to forcefully annul the engagement, plunging Yin Jiuxiao into a near-death situation.

This time, he wouldn’t wait for the Lin family to come knocking; he chose to throw himself into the fray.

When he asked the Family Head to send protectors all the way from the North State to the Central State’s Tong Tian Mansion, he was quite justified, giving a very straightforward reason: he was afraid the Lin family would back out of the engagement.

In his past life, the Lin family deliberately came to the small city where the Yin family lived, trying to conceal their intentions so that news of the annulment wouldn’t spread.

This engagement was made during the peak of the Yin family’s power, when the Lin family sought them out. The engagement was well known, and top families in the Spirit World still cared about their reputation.

The Yin family had fallen for the peace of the Spirit World, sacrificing themselves, which led to their decline. If the annulment of the engagement caused a huge uproar, the Lin family would be publicly called ungrateful by Spirit Masters across the world, which wouldn’t be a good reputation to have.

This time, Lin Qingshuang’s eighteenth birthday banquet was unprecedentedly grand. The Lin family invited all major forces to attend. In front of so many witnesses, Lin Zhongtian would not dare to destroy the engagement casually like last time.

More importantly, the engagement itself was no simple matter.

Yin Jiuxiao’s intention for this visit was not genuinely to marry Lin Qingshuang. His real goal was to obtain the essence of the contract stored within the Lin family.

Over the past year of his rebirth, he had relied on his cultivation technique and had adjusted his energies to a significant extent. However, given the years of turmoil, he didn’t need to go through the same torturous process as last time. He still needed powerful external forces to help him resolve the remaining issues in his body and fully control the fusion of spiritual and demonic powers.

In other words, Yin Jiuxiao was currently at a bottleneck; just like in his previous life, he still needed the two sources of power.

His mother’s demonic essence was contained in the pendant by his side, which was manageable. However, finding the spiritual essence belonging to the Nine Heavens Exquisite Cloud Sword was not so easy.

In his last life, the ancestral hall of the Yin family was destroyed, and at that time, his grandfather’s memorial plaque shattered, which provided him with a usable trace. But after his rebirth, Yin Jiuxiao would never resort to breaking a plaque for selfish desires.

After thinking it over, the only essence available at this time would be the one contained within the engagement contract with the Lin family.

The engagement contract between the Yin and Lin families was of the highest specifications; both family heads had drawn from their spiritual essences to form a heavenly oath, which must not be violated. Forcing a breach would invoke the wrath of the heavens.

Lin Zhongtian had to expend three top-tier heavenly spiritual treasures to barely prevent the chaotic contract energy from attacking the Lin family, while the ancestral hall of the Yin family, with no protection, was destroyed by this power, injuring many of the family members.

If the engagement contract were forcibly annulled, that essence would shatter, making it unusable.

Normally, the only way to access the essence in the engagement contract was to fulfill the agreement; the essence belonging to the elders would actively be given to the couple when the time was right.

This same clan essence was a great boon for Spirit Masters, and once successfully absorbed, it would aid in cultivation. It was essentially a valuable gift from the elders to the newlyweds.

Aside from this, there was no other way to safely extract the essence from the engagement contract without violating it.

Though the Yin family was currently in disarray, the elders, from his grandfather to his uncles, had treated him well in his youth. Yin Jiuxiao could neither break the plaque himself nor allow the Lin family to cause further destruction over the annulment. He absolutely needed to acquire his grandfather’s essence.

For whatever reason, he had to go to the Lin family at Tong Tian Mansion.

He arrived a little earlier; Lin Qingshuang and Lin Zhongtian had yet to return. The Yin family, like other families that had come here, submitted their formal greetings to the Lin family. Normally, they should have received guest accommodations, but the Lin family was quite rude, tossing aside the greetings and kicking them out.

With about ten days until the banquet, many of the invited forces had not yet arrived, and the hosts were still absent. Yin Jiuxiao had no intention of causing any disturbances at this time. The Yin family’s delegation, including himself, consisted of dozens of people, and for now, they could only stay in this small inn.

A small inn didn’t matter much, and Yin Jiuxiao didn’t mind. He spent these days thinking about whether there were any other ways to retrieve the essence.

Regardless of this life or his previous one, he had no feelings for Lin Qingshuang and did not wish to marry her; he felt somewhat troubled by this.

Then, on that very afternoon after he checked into the inn, Yin Jiuxiao witnessed the first unexpected anomaly since his rebirth, something quite interesting.

—A small vendor under a window whose identity he didn’t know, selling a bottle of four-star Homeostasis Powder he had never seen before.

However, by the time the inn’s servant delivered the medicine and he examined it closely, Lin Qinghen had already vanished without a trace.

He had already taken some time while packing up his stall and had changed back into his disguise on the way, running to catch up with the Lin family’s garbage truck team, panting and out of breath.

After successfully concocting with the Alchemist System, not all of the potions needed to be extracted. To avoid suspicion, Lin Qinghen had only brought three bottles to his stall. After selling two, the remaining bottle was also easy to hide, making him look very simple, just as he did when he first arrived.

When the team in the carriage saw him, Shi Qi greeted him, looking somewhat excited. “Young Master Qinghen, the city is so lively! I heard that even more people are coming in a few days! When Young Master Qinghen comes out to play then, it will definitely be even more interesting!”

Shi Qi didn’t think too much about it; he just felt that Lin Qinghen was carrying nothing and was light on his feet, clearly like others who had been cooped up at home for too long and were finally out to have some fun.

Lin Qinghen smiled and responded, but his mind started to think about the events of the day.

He didn’t know what consequences this step he took today would bring, or what would happen to the two bottles of elixirs he sold.

He could only leave it to fate.