Ye Qingyi gritted her teeth so hard they nearly cracked. She couldn’t understand why the boy who had taken over her body was so infuriating—always bullying her and occasionally even taking advantage of her.
Yet, for some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to truly hate him. There was something inexplicably magnetic about him, as if she’d feel restless if a day passed without him teasing her…
She knew how shameful this thought was, but the truth was undeniable.
How bizarre!
……
Two days later.
Both Su Mo and Ye Qingyi received notifications from the North Star Organization’s app, approving their leave requests for a closed-door cultivation retreat.
Since this was a proper seclusion, staying on campus was out of the question. They returned to the Jingshan Base instead.
Yang Jie arranged training rooms for them.
Seclusion wasn’t just about meditation—it also included physical conditioning. Only by cultivating both body and mind could they ensure steady growth in strength, rather than ending up with hollow progress and insufficient combat ability.
Though Su Mo was eager to visit the Scripture Pavilion, he knew his priorities.
In the schedule he set for himself, he spent his days trekking through the mountains with the “Tetanus Blade” strapped to his back, practicing his swordsmanship, while nights were dedicated to condensing his Qi Core in the training chamber.
Ye Qingyi had her own plan, which differed significantly from his.
The only common point was that they both set aside fixed time slots to study the “Pojun Blade Art” together.
Su Mo had eventually given in to Ye Qingyi’s insistence that he learn the Pojun Blade Art.
Admittedly, it was an exceptional technique. Every move and stance reflected Ye Qingyu’s extraordinary mastery of the blade.
Sometimes, Su Mo even wondered if she had plagiarized it from somewhere and passed it off as her own… After all, she was only in her twenties—how could she possibly be this strong?
The blade art consisted of six forms, each built upon extreme destructive power and supplemented with various techniques. Mastering all six could even lead to the comprehension of one’s own unique “Aura.”
“Aura” was essentially a kind of presence, shaped by one’s spirit, focus, and depth of obsession with a particular skill. It wasn’t directly tied to cultivation level.
Take Ye Qingyu, for example. In her early twenties, she had created the Pojun Blade Art and awakened her own Aura. With only C-rank cultivation, she had challenged a foreign B-rank powerhouse. Though she ultimately lost, the B-rank expert suffered permanent damage to their foundation, forever cutting off their path to further advancement.
That battle had cemented Ye Qingyu’s fame and status in the supernatural world.
Honestly, when Su Mo first heard this story, he had felt a flicker of admiration.
A mother who died young, a strained relationship with her father, immense strength, and a beautiful younger sister utterly dependent on her…
Wasn’t this the textbook template for a female protagonist?
Tsk, tsk, tsk…
The ten-minute break ended. Su Mo shook off his musings, picked up the Tetanus Blade, and resumed his training.
Daydreaming wouldn’t get him anywhere—only real effort would yield tangible results.
After weeks of relentless practice, he could now swing the blade continuously for over a minute. This wasn’t just due to hard training; his rising cultivation level had also played a part.
With the aid of spirit stones, his progress had accelerated. The vortex of Qi inside him had already begun forming the embryonic shape of a core.
In contrast, Ye Qingyi was much slower—her Qi vortex had only just started showing signs of stabilizing.
This was the difference in aptitude: A-rank versus F-rank.
Of course, strictly speaking, Ye Qingyi was no longer an F-rank. The red fruit’s transformation and the awakening of her supernatural ability had both enhanced her innate potential to some degree.
Half a month later.
Ye Qingyi successfully broke through to the mid-stage of Qi Condensation. According to plan, she was now set to train at the West Sea Ruins—she was just waiting for official approval.
In the following days, she went out of her way to prepare elaborate meals for Su Mo, sometimes even traveling dozens of kilometers to nearby towns just to buy ingredients.
Su Mo was deeply moved, which only fueled his determination to train harder.
Finally, the approval came.
She embarked on her journey to the West Sea Ruins, mission in hand.
Many from Chuzhou Province were going, but she was the only one who hadn’t yet condensed a Qi Core.
That day, Su Mo took a rare break from training. He accompanied Ye Qingyi all the way to the station—while reluctantly wearing the pretty dress she had bought for him.
“Girls should look like girls. It suits you!” Ye Qingyi gazed at the familiar-yet-unfamiliar version of herself, emotions swirling in her heart.
“Enough already. The only reason I’m wearing this is because you’re leaving.”
At the moment of parting, Su Mo wanted to say so much, but all that came out was a simple “Take care.”
“Make the most of your time in the capital. I used my Divination Art to predict your journey—it says fortune and danger are intertwined, so stay vigilant.”
“Divination Art” was the name Ye Qingyi had given to her precognitive ability. Its scope and accuracy depended entirely on her, with the cost scaling accordingly.
“I thought you couldn’t predict me?” Su Mo asked, puzzled.
“You big dummy! I can’t predict you, but I can predict the items on you!”
Su Mo’s eyes widened in realization.
“See you later. Next time we meet, I hope we’ll both have become strong.”
Both of them knew this separation could last anywhere from a few months to a year. But they each had their own reasons for leaving.
Su Mo and Ye Qingyi weren’t the type to settle for mediocrity. At first, they’d had no choice but to stay together, but now that they’d grown accustomed to their new identities, that excuse no longer held.
Watching her disappear into the distance, Su Mo couldn’t quite define what he was feeling.
A sense of loss?
Their relationship had always existed in a strange, ambiguous space. He wasn’t even sure what Ye Qingyi meant to him anymore.
Perhaps only when their souls returned to their rightful bodies would he find the answer.
After seeing her off, Su Mo didn’t linger. He plunged straight back into the mountains, blade in hand.
No use in empty words—action was all that mattered!
Day after day of training had darkened his once-fair skin, but it was healthier now. His youthful face had also matured over the past month.
One day, as Su Mo finished practicing the sixth form of the Pojun Blade Art and was about to review his movements, a sudden warmth bloomed in his abdomen, followed by an increasingly intense, swelling pain.
His eyes lit up—this was the sign of an imminent Qi Core formation! He immediately dropped into a meditative stance.
After confirming the area was safe (he’d encountered no real danger here in over a month), he fully committed to the core-condensing process.
Forming a Qi Core was nothing like stabilizing a Qi vortex—the difficulty was exponentially higher. The entire process had to be completed in one go; any interruption would not only lead to failure but could also cripple his future cultivation.
To ensure success, he ate one of the remaining red fruits for stamina and clutched his last mid-grade spirit stone.
Qi gathered densely in his dantian, swirling and compressing under the vortex’s rotation, gradually taking the shape of a core.
The process was seamless, without the slightest hiccup—so smooth that Su Mo almost found it suspicious.
Was this the privilege of an A-rank aptitude?
No challenge at all.
|(￣3￣)|
But before he could celebrate, something bizarre happened.
A wisp of dark cyan flame traveled along his meridians to his dantian, mimicking the Qi Core’s behavior—condensing into a tiny, spherical form of its own. Though minuscule, it was as tangible as the Qi Core itself.
What the hell was this?
A… Cyan Core?