Chapter 14: Spatial Marrow Cleansing and Ice Spirit Root

As for the other officer leading this team, it was Liu Yong’s biological younger brother, Liu Gang.

Moreover, the Duke of England had also agreed to arrange for the family to move together to Lingnan, so Liu Yong had nothing to worry about.

Now, with Concubine Bai causing trouble, Liu Yong was indeed annoyed.

The whipping was meant to serve as a warning to the others — not to stir up trouble on the road, or else they’d be greeted with the lash.

Everyone in the carriage was eating the fruit handed out by Yun Ruoxi, and no longer felt tired from the journey.

Looking at the cumbersome and intricate dress she wore, Yun Ruoxi found it incredibly inconvenient. She turned to Mu Ruxue and said, “Xiao Xue, I want to go inside and change clothes. This big dress is really too troublesome.”

In the Daye Dynasty, women could also learn martial arts, so there were practical trousers designed for that.

Back when her big brother was stockpiling goods, he had saved up a lot of clothes and jewelry for her.

But they were all brand new, and Yun Ruoxi couldn’t bear to wear them on the road to exile. Instead, she pulled out a set of the original host’s old trousers.

Of course, the original host loved beauty, so these pants had been worn very few times — many outfits had never even been worn before they were considered out of fashion.

But to Yun Ruoxi now, the old clothes tucked away at the bottom of the chest were her favorites.

“Okay, go ahead. I’ll change here too. This big dress really is inconvenient.”

Yun Ruoxi hadn’t entered the space for several days.

So once inside the space, she took advantage of the 1:10 time ratio between the space and the outside world to prepare to take the Marrow-Cleansing Pill.

She had been wanting to try the pills in the space for a while, but with people constantly around her, she hadn’t had a chance.

Especially the Marrow-Cleansing Pill — legendary for its ability to purge impurities, strengthen the body, and improve complexion.

Combined with the spiritual spring water from the space, Yun Ruoxi was more eager than ever to undergo the cleansing process.

Once she made up her mind, she immediately went to the alchemy room in the third courtyard of her space and found the Marrow-Cleansing Pill.

Then she found a huge wooden tub — large enough to soak her entire body with just her shoulders and head above water.

Yun Ruoxi filled the tub with spiritual spring water, removed her clothes, and set them aside before slowly stepping into the tub.

The water hadn’t been heated, so it was a little chilly at first.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to heat it — she just wasn’t sure whether heating would affect the water’s effectiveness, so she chose not to risk it.

Though it was cold at first, she quickly got used to it. Then Yun Ruoxi popped the Marrow-Cleansing Pill into her mouth.

The pill melted the instant it touched her tongue — she didn’t even get a chance to taste it.

Before she could even comment on that, she felt a surge of powerful energy erupt inside her body.

It relentlessly flushed through her meridians. The force was so overwhelming that her meridians couldn’t withstand it — cracks began to form in many places.

Even her body began expelling toxins — black grime seeped out through cracked skin and mixed with blood.

In the end, a human-shaped scab formed on her skin — a grotesque mixture of black and red, and reeking with a foul stench.

But Yun Ruoxi, deep in the process of cleansing, didn’t notice any of this.

An hour later, Yun Ruoxi slowly opened her eyes — and saw only darkness.

“Oh no… did the cleansing make me go blind?”

Panicked, she rubbed her eyes hard with the back of her hand — only to realize her vision was fine again.

Looking down, she saw her entire body was encased in a black, crusty shell. When she moved, chunks of it crumbled and fell off.

“What the heck — was I really this dirty?”

She scrambled out of the tub and went straight to the nearby shower to wash up.

Not only had the spiritual spring water in the tub turned black, but even after the outer crust flaked off, her skin was still coated in thick, black goo.

She guessed that the outer layer had dried, but the inside was still wet — the same substance in different states.

While complaining to herself about how filthy she was, Yun Ruoxi couldn’t help but admire the Marrow-Cleansing Pill’s effects.

It took her a full half hour just to bathe. She used up two entire 1000ml bottles of body wash and one full bottle of shampoo — which showed just how dirty she had been.

Once she was finally clean, she stood in front of the mirror, feeling refreshed — and was surprised at how beautiful this body really was.

Back in the Marquis of Wu’an’s household, she never had time to look in a mirror and had no idea what her appearance was like.

Now, seeing clearly, she found that the reflection in the mirror had brows like distant mountains, the tails slightly upturned; eyes that sparkled with intelligence and seemed to glow with vitality. A single, unintentional glance was enough to steal one’s soul.

Her delicate, straight nose was perfectly set in the center of her palm-sized face, adding a refined three-dimensionality to her features.

Her lips were like ripe cherries—rosy without the need for color. The corners of her mouth lifted slightly in a natural smile. Her skin was fairer than snow, so soft it seemed it might bruise at a touch.

Her long black hair was as smooth as ink, casually pinned up, with a few strands falling against her pale neck—adding a touch of lazy elegance.

She had a graceful figure, shoulders like carved jade, a slender waist that could be encircled by a single hand. She looked like a fairy descending to the mortal world, with everything around her paling in comparison.

Yun Ruoxi was completely stunned by her own beauty. Even in the modern world, her looks wouldn’t have lost to those of female celebrities.

But such outstanding beauty, in an era of chaos and war, was practically a sin.

Moreover, without the power to protect herself, she had no intention of exposing her true appearance.

So Yun Ruoxi found a Disguise Pill in the alchemy room and changed her looks back to how they were before her marrow cleansing—still beautiful, but no longer eye-catching.

A single dose of the Disguise Pill lasted for three years, and during that time, she could change her appearance at will through sheer willpower.

After finishing the cleansing, she checked the space outside. Mu Ruxue was still changing clothes.

It looked like there was still plenty of time, so she started searching through the study in the third courtyard.

As expected, she found many books on cultivation. With a single thought, all the books in the study were transferred into her sea of consciousness.

There were many manuals in the study, but they only covered cultivation up to the Foundation Establishment stage—nothing beyond that.

She figured this had something to do with the recent upgrade of the space. Likely, only after the next upgrade would the higher-level techniques become available.

Yun Ruoxi didn’t mind. Whether she could cultivate or not, it was already a huge stroke of luck to stumble upon these opportunities.

She was truly content.

However, to know which techniques she could cultivate, she needed to find out what spiritual root she possessed.

In the Celestial Treasure Pavilion, she found a Spirit Testing Stone. She placed her hand on it, and a dazzling blue light appeared, displaying the character for “Ice” along with the number 80.

According to the Basic Encyclopedia of Cultivation Knowledge from the study, she had an Ice Spiritual Root, with a purity of 80%.

She had just looked over the manuals and found only one cultivation technique in the space suited for Ice Roots, so she took it directly for her own use.

Putting on the practical trousers she had prepared earlier, Yun Ruoxi took lunch out from the space.

It was all roujiamo (meat-filled buns) and millet porridge—food she had stockpiled in the modern era and stored in her unlimited freshness vault. No matter when she took them out, they were always hot.

She found a large wooden tub, filled it with the porridge, and placed the roujiamo in a basket—thirty in total.

The exile convoy continued traveling for another half-hour. Liu Yong noticed that the people walking had slowed to a crawl and, seeing that they had already covered half the day’s journey, decided to stop and rest for lunch.

At his command, the convoy came to a halt. The members of the Xiao family’s second branch came jogging behind the carriage, not daring to slow down—fearing a whipping if they lagged.

That was how they managed to cover twenty li (10 km) in just one morning. Everyone collapsed to the ground in exhaustion.

Even the normally image-conscious noble ladies of the inner residence were now sitting directly on the ground, gasping for breath.

Seeing the convoy had stopped, Yun Ruoxi quickly exited the space and got off the carriage with Mu Ruxue to stretch their legs.