Chapter 144: Snow Demon (Part 3) – Cultivation

Xu Qianyu was startled awake when a book hit her on the head. She opened her eyes wide, about to yell at someone, but then saw a pair of deep, black, resolute eyes, tight lips, and a familiar face—it was Wuzhen, a ghostly figure, floating in front of her.

“Master?” She was extremely surprised to see Wuzhen here. She reached behind her and touched the mustard seed golden pearl, realizing that Wuzhen’s soul had somehow been placed into the Dream Shadow Tube.

She hadn’t brought the Dream Shadow Tube with her. Wuzhen had secretly split his soul and followed her.

Xu Qianyu wasn’t happy. Last time, Hua Liangyu also secretly followed her out. Why hadn’t anyone informed her in advance? Was she some kind of ferry or vessel?

“Why are you here?” Xu Qianyu asked, annoyed. “I went through so much trouble to collect your soul, and now you split it again? Did you discuss this with Elder Hua?”

Even as her disciple, she knew that Wuzhen’s soul had fragmented into pieces. It had been a struggle to piece together enough of it to form a ghostly body. He was already more fragile than others, and it was even more dangerous for him to expose himself.

“Mind your own business,” Wuzhen replied, handing her another tube, completely dispelling her sleepiness. He glanced at her again. “You seem to sleep deeply at night. When others approach, you don’t even notice. That’s not good. Here’s your assignment. If you don’t have time during the day, you can do it at night.”

Xu Qianyu was both sleepy and cold, trying to wake herself up in the chilly wind. Their conversation had disturbed Yun Chu, who couldn’t help but feel sorry for Xu Qianyu. “Master Aunt, it’s exhausting to slay demons during the day, so it’s natural to rest at night. If you don’t, it might affect your combat ability.”

Wuzhen shot him a cold glance, and Yun Chu quickly fell silent.

Xu Qianyu, feeling irritated, began to meditate. Yun Chu’s whisk lightly brushed against her chest as he said, “There’s demonic energy on you.”

“Where?” Xu Qianyu became alert.

Yun Chu wasn’t sure either. “It seems to be gone now.”

Xu Qianyu didn’t want to talk to him anymore; her frustration was growing. The sound of pages turning became more and more irritated. Yun Chu placed the whisk on his lap, his expression carrying some regret as he slowly began to smooth out the bristles, one by one. After a while, he said, “If you’re tired, I can do it for you.”

Hearing this, Xu Qianyu felt something was off.

She had always hoped for others to be kinder to her, but now that Yun Chu’s attitude had changed so suddenly, she felt everything was awkward. It was even easier when he was sarcastic with her like before.

“You’ll do it for me?” she asked.

“Mm.”

“Then will you help me ascend?”

“…” Yun Chu was left speechless, unable to respond.

Xu Qianyu directly took the book and walked into the forest to recite.

As soon as she sat down, something brushed against her foot in the grass, and a small creature ran past her. Soon, she collided face-to-face with the young boy running through the forest, carrying a bundle of branches.

Not long ago, they had just sent these two elderly people and the child back onto the main road.

“How is it you again?”

The boy, startled, straightened up and stammered, “My sister’s rabbit ran away; I chased after it.”

Seeing that Xu Qianyu made no attempt to stop him, the boy tried to run past her.

“Stop,” Xu Qianyu commanded. “This rabbit of yours is misbehaving. Don’t chase it anymore. I’ll give you a new one to take back to your sister. Don’t run, or I’ll chop off your legs.”

As she spoke, she reached into the realm.

She intended to transform into a rabbit, but the transformation spell required a similar object as a base. Xu Qianyu remembered that she had a white rabbit doll in her realm, which she could use to transform it into a wild rabbit. This rabbit would be under her control and would never run off in the middle of the night.

Earlier, Xu Qianyu had been in a bad mood. When she saw the white rabbit that Shen Suwei had patched up, a desire to destroy it rose up within her. She tore it apart and threw it to the ground. Afterward, she regretted it.

She had vented her anger on an innocent thing.

Looking at the stuffed rabbit’s gutted body on the ground, she felt very sad and didn’t know how to face it. She then avoided it, never stepping into the realm again.

However, this time, after rummaging through her realm for a while, she couldn’t find the white rabbit. Just as she felt confused, she noticed a neatly folded letter on her pillow.

The handwriting on the letter was elegant and cold, unmistakably Shen Suwei’s.

Xu Qianyu froze. It turned out that the dream earlier wasn’t just a dream—Shen Suwei had really come. He had carried her back to Zhaoyue Palace, helped her comb her hair, taken the rabbit, and said he would sew it back. He had also left her a letter.

In that moment of hesitation, Xu Qianyu heard footsteps and couldn’t read the letter in time. She withdrew her spiritual sense and saw the boy had chased a few more steps and had picked up the rabbit.

Didn’t she say she would chop off his legs? And yet, he dared to run? Suddenly, an accident occurred. The boy slipped and fell into a trap.

But this wasn’t an ordinary trap. When Xu Qianyu stood up, the ground beneath her split in two, slowly widening until it became a cliff. Xu Qianyu heard the boy’s screams as he fell deeper, and the sounds came from below. Eventually, he stopped, likely caught in a tree net, wounded and sobbing.

When the tremors from the earth subsided, the cliff was so wide she couldn’t see the other side. Mist and clouds rose from the depths, blocking her view. It seemed to be thousands of fathoms deep.

The cold moonlight shone on the Wufu Cliff, and Xu Qianyu took a step back. The illusion of the scene was ripped apart, revealing the true appearance of the mountains, water, and trees, overlapping with the memory of a rainy day when she had run for her life.

The edge of the cliff was covered with dark blue floating grass, like glowing seaweed swaying in the deep ocean. The rustling of their leaves emitted eerie, ethereal sounds, like murmurs or a chorus of lamentations. The sound drowned out the boy’s sharp cries, as though some fate was being chanted, carrying an unstoppable force.

This was the Wufu Cliff. They were so close to it.

Xu Qianyu knew that the safest way would be to call Tu Zhuang to use the puppet thread to pull the boy out. But Tu Zhuang’s eyes were bleeding, and she didn’t have the heart to ask her for help; or she could ask Yun Chu, but she wasn’t keen on seeking Yun Chu’s help either.

Xu Qianyu scanned the Wufu Cliff.

There was no way she could go down. This life was not like the previous one; she had already reached the Yuan Ying stage and wouldn’t die at Wufu Cliff. If she continued to avoid it, she would never break free from this obstacle.

Xu Qianyu steadied herself and drew the divine whip from her sleeve.

“Don’t move, don’t make a sound. I’ll pull you up,” she said, tossing the whip down the cliff, its tip curling around the boy’s body halfway up the mountain, just like the way she had plucked a loquat back then.

She tightened the whip and pulled it upwards.

Xu Qianyu saw the boy’s tear-streaked face. He twisted into a crooked smile and said in a clear voice, “Miss, long time no see.”

Just as Xu Qianyu’s face changed drastically, he grabbed the whip, fell down the cliff like a boulder, and dragged her down with him!

Inside the snowcapped cave, Shen Suwei paused his hand that had been writing the sword manual.

The spiritual lock within Xu Qianyu’s soul suddenly felt a bone-chilling coldness. This sensation was unlike any other time, triggering the deepest fear and pain in his heart.

Wufu Cliff.

Shen Suwei’s pupils suddenly dilated, turning as dark and round as an animal’s.

He blamed himself for arriving too late. After parting at Wufu Cliff, they had been separated by the boundary of life and death. How could she have fallen again into Wufu Cliff?

The spiritual lock trembled violently, colliding and making the sound of clashing blades.

Moments later, the lock began to split. It went from four threads to eight, then sixteen, and soon thirty-two. The threads expanded at an ever-increasing speed, filling the entire snow cave like spider silk. But after a short time, all the spiritual locks snapped open with a loud bang, shaking the ground and the mountains!

The sky darkened as if ink were spreading through water. Disciples along the Penglai Road stopped in their tracks, and the old fishermen’s golden lotus fell from his hand as he looked up at the sky in shock.

In broad daylight, it suddenly darkened as if it were midnight. Then, thunderbolts like twisted branches struck down, illuminating the rooftops in silver.

In the depths of the earth, outside the formation core, the silver chopsticks and silver dates carefully arranged by Elder Yi were suddenly overturned.

“What’s going on?” Elder Yi froze, “Could it be that the Thunder Tribulation of the Elder came early? But the formation isn’t ready. Go check.”

Yun Lan ran out.

Before he could report back, Elder Yi had already heard the thunder. He picked up his silver abacus, and all the beads were unnaturally pushed to the top, constantly shifting, transmitting the will of the heavens.

This was the thunder of someone approaching half-step divine transformation. But whether it was the Elder or the Sect Leader, neither had ever caused such a large commotion. Who could it be? How did someone within the sect reach half-step Divine Transformation in such a short time?

“Master, it’s not the Elder,” Yun Lan said, “It’s from the Snow Cliff Cave.”

“I know.”

At that moment, the beads of the silver abacus seemed unable to withstand the celestial will and exploded with a loud bang, frightening Elder Yi to throw the abacus away. This was no ordinary ascension. Such abnormal phenomena usually signified a great disaster, a great demon, or a profound change in the world.

“Quickly go find out whether it’s a person or a demon that came out!”

“Master, Master!” Lin Jin quickly supported Xu Binglai. Xu Binglai’s face was as pale as paper, and he spat out a mouthful of blood. His eyes widened, his chest heaving, trying to speak, but as soon as he opened his mouth, another mouthful of blood spurted from him. Lin Jin had never seen such a situation and was so terrified that his whole body tensed like a drawn bowstring. After a long while, he finally understood what Xu Binglai had said: “Snow Cliff Cave.” Then Xu Binglai pushed him away.

The master told him to quickly check the Snow Cliff Cave and stop anyone from leaving, but not to worry about him.

Lin Jin immediately drew a teleportation array and rushed toward the Snow Cliff Cave.

But there was no Snow Cliff Cave anymore.

Lin Jin looked around; the three thousand miles of snow and wind had been flattened. The wind blew the snowflakes, and the ground was covered with the remains of the Soul Lock.

The Soul Lock was controlled by the master’s divine soul, so among the debris, black blood flowed steadily—blood that did not belong to anyone he knew.

The snowstorm was vast, and all that was left on the ground was a stack of sword manuals, about half a person’s height, arranged neatly in an eerie pattern.

Xu Baopu arrived from the teleportation array, staring at everything in front of him in shock. He knew that Shen Suwei had deliberately suppressed his cultivation, but he never expected his cultivation to have reached this level. Once he released his energy into the pool, he had advanced by half a step to the Divine Transformation stage!
The third junior disciple had always been one to follow the rules and value loyalty. Xu Binglai had sealed him with his own divine sense, hoping to use the master-disciple bond as a lock to tie him down.

But he had run away.

Xu Baopu wanted to understand the reason. He approached the stack of sword manuals and flipped them open one by one, each page marked with a line of blood-red characters:

“All I’ve learned is here. I repay the favor of Penglai.”

“What does this mean?” Lin Jin muttered as he flipped through the pages. “Drawing the line, betraying the sect?”

---

Yun Chu was the first to discover Xu Qianyu had fallen into the Wufu Cliff. He ran back, calling for help, but everyone stood frozen.

“What?” Tu Zhuang fumbled, grabbing Hua Zimei, “She was just sleeping beside me! Where is the Wufu Cliff? How could she end up there?” Hua Zimei turned pale, not from being grabbed but from fear. She pointed ahead with a horrified look.

The first light of dawn broke. The outskirts of the city were empty in the early morning, everything exactly as it had been when they arrived. But the extra snowcapped mountain was slowly melting downward.

By the time everyone noticed it, the mountain collapsed like jade falling apart. Snow waves rushed down from the heavens, cascading over their heads, burying all their screams in an instant.

The thick snow fell, not much lighter than a spell formation’s force, strong enough to knock a cultivator unconscious and cover one’s mouth and nose like a heavy quilt.

In any case, when Lu You woke up, she found that the puppet threads binding her had snapped.

She reached out, finding no trace of Xu Qianqian around her. But in the snow, she touched Xu Qianqian’s wooden hairpin and the broken mustard seed golden beads.

How could this happen?

Lu You remembered Tu Zhuang’s words. She was Xu Qianqian’s “substitute,” and if Xu Qianqian were to be in danger, she should have died in her place.

She opened her hand and found herself tightly clutching a firework stick.

So that’s it, so that’s it.

The illusion created by Xie Yuzhen had swapped her and Xu Qianqian.

Although they were connected by puppet threads, the Demon King had turned Xu Qianqian into her “puppet,” her “substitute.” So it was Xu Qianqian who died, and she who lived. Once the puppet died, the threads snapped.

At this realization, Lu You couldn’t help but laugh.

Xie Yuzhen had fulfilled her last wish. She was free now. She would no longer be threatened by the Elder Taishang or anyone else. She felt so liberated that she almost wanted to sing.

Lu You danced and stumbled across the snowfield, laughing for a long time before tears began to fall.

Before her, the silver-white snow stretched endlessly. The cold wind ruffled her hair. The world was harsh; everything was so strange and terrifying.

Her system was broken and could no longer teleport her back. In this world, she had no friends, no family, and no purpose. Where could she go?

Lu You felt a deep sense of confusion and despair.

At this moment, the only person she thought of was Xie Yuzhen, his passionate eyes under the fireworks.

In her previous life, she had spent a century, but compared to Penglai, she was more familiar with the Demon Palace. She had stayed longer in the Demon Palace, and beyond it was the persimmon tree she had planted, the kite she had made to capture the Demon King’s heart.

Those hypocritical memories seemed to be the only warmth she had left.

She wanted to return to the Demon Palace. Since Xie Yuzhen was willing to help her sever the puppet threads, it meant he still harbored some affection for her.

After all, it was a century of affection. If she spoke to him sincerely, he would allow her to live within the Demon Palace, right?

With tears, Lu You walked to the edge of Wufu Cliff and jumped off.