“Ah… thank you for your understanding, Fellow Daoist.”
Looking at the Love Thread Sword offered by Gu Qingying, she solemnly extended both hands to receive the long sword.
Her fingertips touched the familiar, cold scabbard.
The familiar patterns, the familiar weight… followed by an indescribable tremor that instantly spread from her fingertips throughout her entire body.
She suppressed the surge of emotion in her heart, her fingers moving with extreme gentleness and slowness as they caressed the intricate silver thread-like patterns on the scabbard, as if touching a solidified fragment of time, a long-lost old friend.
Feng Lingshuang’s movements were filled with cherishment and nostalgia.
Though her expression couldn’t be seen through the veiled hat, her serene and focused aura made Gu Qingying beside her feel a faint sense of oddity.
This person… the way she looks at the sword… is strange, isn’t it?
It’s not like admiring a powerful magic weapon, but more like… looking at something alive?
Or perhaps, it’s like she’s looking at something else through the sword?
Are all Heavenly Sword Sect sword cultivators this strange?
Just as Gu Qingying’s suspicion began to rise, Feng Lingshuang had already gently grasped the sword hilt.
She didn’t draw the sword, just held it like that, feeling the shape and temperature of the hilt fitting into her palm.
Feeling the spiritual fluctuations within the sword that faintly resonated with her, yet were already different.
The feeling of being heart-connected to this sword in her former life seemed separated by a thick layer of frosted glass.
Though blurred and distant, it could still stir the deepest resonance in her heart.
Old friend… long time no see.
Feng Lingshuang silently greeted it in her heart.
Then came a deeper sense of release and a faint trace of melancholy.
Now, you have a new master.
She… is very good.
I hope you accompany her, protect her well.
Gu Qingying stared intently at Feng Lingshuang’s hand holding the sword and her long, silent, gazing posture.
The feeling of discomfort in her heart grew stronger and stronger.
That sword was given to her by her Master!
It was hers!
What right did this person of unknown origin have to look at it with that kind of… that kind of affectionate gaze?
And keep touching it!
The moment this thought crossed Gu Qingying’s mind, she suddenly felt her head turning a bit green.
An unpleasant and urgent sense of crisis, like a child seeing their most treasured toy being played with by someone else, even possibly coveted, suddenly gripped Gu Qingying.
“Hey! Haven’t you looked enough!”
Gu Qingying could no longer hold back.
She stepped forward, snatched the Love Thread Sword back from Feng Lingshuang’s hand with a swift motion so fast it stirred a breeze.
She tightly hugged the sword to her chest, her purple eyes glaring warily at Feng Lingshuang like a little beast guarding its food.
The slight bit of warmth from being praised earlier had long since vanished, replaced by full-blown defensiveness.
“You’ve seen the sword! Thanks for the compliment! If there’s nothing else, please leave! My Master is in secluded cultivation and doesn’t like to be disturbed!”
Gu Qingying’s tone was stiff, directly issuing an order to leave.
Feng Lingshuang’s hand was now empty.
Looking at her empty palm, then at Gu Qingying’s defensive and stubborn little appearance, a helpless, bitter smile, mixed with a hint of indulgence, couldn’t help but appear on her face beneath the veiled hat.
“Sigh… still so impatient, so possessive, Junior Sister Gu Qingying…”
Gu Qingying tightly hugged the Love Thread Sword, which carried special meaning, to her chest, her purple eyes vigilantly glaring at the uninvited guest veiled in white gauze.
The night wind blew, lifting the edge of Feng Lingshuang’s white veil, faintly revealing the slightly upturned corner of her mouth beneath.
Feng Lingshuang looked at Gu Qingying’s appearance, like a little beast guarding its food, and chuckled softly.
Her voice, coming through the white gauze, carried a note of approval.
“I can see Fellow Daoist Gu truly cherishes her sword.”
“Of course!”
Gu Qingying responded almost reflexively, hiding the sword behind her back again as if afraid the other person would snatch it away with a few more glances.
She lifted her small face, her tone full of natural pride.
“This was given to me by my Master!”
Gu Qingying said this particularly loudly, as if declaring some indisputable ownership.
Beneath the veiled hat, Feng Lingshuang’s gaze dimmed slightly.
That dimness vanished in an instant, so fast she almost missed it herself.
But she maintained a proper, shallow smile on her face, her voice gentle.
“I see. Your relationship with your Master is truly excellent.”
“My Master and I are the best in the world!”
Gu Qingying interjected without hesitation, her tone resolute, her purple eyes flashing with unquestionable light.
She said this so naturally, as if it were the most obvious truth between heaven and earth.
Hearing this, the smile at the corner of Feng Lingshuang’s lips deepened a bit, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes.
Her gaze, as if tangible, passed over Gu Qingying’s slender shoulder, firmly locking onto the corner of the Love Thread Sword’s scabbard peeking out from behind her.
That gaze was complex and hard to discern—there was nostalgia, understanding, release, and also a faint, extremely faint trace of sourness she herself was unwilling to acknowledge.
Gu Qingying felt uncomfortable all over under this gaze, her back faintly prickling.
Though she held the sword, she felt that gaze was almost tangible, about to pierce through her arm and burn onto the sword itself.
She wondered to herself.
What exactly is wrong with this person?
Why does she keep staring at other people’s swords?
Suddenly, a thought flashed through her mind like lightning—she had heard people mention that those sword cultivators from the Heavenly Sword Sect were all obsessed with swords to the point of madness.
They couldn’t move when they saw a suitable treasured sword, and there were even rumors of them resorting to any means to snatch famous swords.
This Feng Lingshuang, as a high disciple of the Heavenly Sword Sect, couldn’t possibly… have taken a fancy to her Love Thread Sword and was waiting for a chance to snatch it?
The more Gu Qingying thought about it, the more likely it seemed.
The alarm bells in her heart instantly rang at the highest level.
She subtly hugged the sword in her arms even tighter, adjusted her stance slightly to a posture conducive to reacting or fleeing at any moment.
The wariness in her purple eyes grew heavier, almost solidifying.
“Fellow Daoist Jian Mingzi,” Gu Qingying deliberately emphasized the words “Fellow Daoist,” her tone stiff.
“You’ve seen the sword. If there’s nothing else important, please leave on your own! My Master and I have always preferred quiet cultivation and don’t like to be disturbed.”
Gu Qingying issued the order to leave again, this time with an even firmer tone, even carrying a trace of barely perceptible hostility.
Feng Lingshuang, being extremely perceptive, naturally noticed the subtle change in Gu Qingying’s attitude and the almost overflowing wariness.
She sighed helplessly in her heart.
Junior Sister is still so sharp, and so… prone to overthinking.
I just looked at an old object a few more times, and she acts like she’s facing a great enemy.
Just as Feng Lingshuang was about to speak, to explain a few more words and dispel this inexplicable tension—
Boom!
At that moment, a powerful and pure spiritual energy fluctuation erupted abruptly and without warning from the direction of Lu Li’s closed-door cultivation guest room!
It was like a spring thunderclap, bursting forth vigorously!
A spiritual energy aura far more condensed, vast, and carrying a faint pressure than that of a Foundation Establishment stage cultivator, like a giant rock thrown into a calm lake, suddenly spread outwards with the quiet room as the center!
The invisible spiritual energy in the air was stirred.
Spirit energy flows, invisible to the naked eye but clearly perceptible to cultivators, began to slowly converge towards Lu Li’s guest room.
The wind around seemed to stagnate for a moment.
The plants and trees in the courtyard moved without wind, their leaves rustling as if responding to this newly born powerful aura.
Golden Core Mid-Stage!
Both Gu Qingying and Feng Lingshuang’s expressions changed simultaneously as they abruptly turned to look in the direction of Lu Li’s guest room.
Gu Qingying’s purple eyes instantly shone brilliantly.
All her previous thoughts and wariness vanished in an instant.
Her entire mind was occupied by the figure in the quiet room undergoing a transformation.
The spiritual energy fluctuation belonging to the Golden Core Mid-Stage, even more profound and harmonious, was like a stone thrown into the lake of her heart, stirring not only waves of ecstatic joy but also instantly clearing away the last layer of haze over her spiritual platform!
Her Master’s breakthrough was like a dazzling spiritual light cutting through the night sky, instantly illuminating the cultivation bottleneck she had been pondering and accumulating for a long time.
Many usually obscure and difficult-to-understand key points of her cultivation method, the subtle nodes of spiritual energy circulation, became unprecedentedly clear at this moment!
It was as if a door that had always been slightly ajar was gently pushed open by this higher-level aura of the same origin.
The spiritual energy within her body, which had long reached the peak of the early Foundation Establishment stage, just a step away from breaking through, boiled up instantly as if injected with a stimulant!
Her spiritual platform was clear, her thoughts unobstructed.
The thin barrier of the Foundation Establishment Middle Stage now seemed so fragile and within reach!
“This…”
The aura around Gu Qingying also changed.
Her originally restrained spiritual energy began to overflow and surge uncontrollably.
Her clothes moved without wind, her hair fluttered gently.
An intense premonition of breakthrough, like a tidal wave, surged over her, almost making her unsteady on her feet.
She snapped back to her senses, her purple eyes flashing with excitement and urgency.
She first cast an extremely longing, deep glance in the direction of Lu Li’s closed-door guest room, as if to firmly imprint the joy and power of her Master’s breakthrough in her heart.
Then, her gaze quickly swept over Feng Lingshuang beside her, who was still shrouded in shock, her eyes filled with warning and unquestionable command.
Immediately after, she quickly performed an internal inspection of the boiling spiritual energy within her meridians and dantian.
The opportunity is imminent, can no longer be suppressed or delayed!
Time is tight!
Must immediately find a safe place for closed-door cultivation to break through before the spiritual energy completely goes out of control!
Gu Qingying made a prompt decision.
She took a deep breath, forcefully enduring the swelling pain from the spiritual energy collisions in her meridians.
She abruptly turned to Feng Lingshuang, her words rapid, almost commanding as she threw out a sentence.
“I, I’m going to break through! You! Stay right here! Don’t wander around! And definitely don’t… approach my Master’s room to do anything strange!”
As she spoke, she fumbled to pull out several protective and warning formation flags, shoving them into Feng Lingshuang’s hand without looking, pointing to a relatively empty corner of the courtyard.
“Take these! If there’s anything abnormal, or… if my Master comes out of seclusion, remember to use these to notify me! Must be the first time!”
After handing this over, she could no longer care about anything else.
She even just haphazardly hung the Love Thread Sword from her embrace at her waist.
Her entire person shot towards her temporary guest room like a purple whirlwind at top speed, even almost tripping over the threshold because she ran too fast.
Bang!
The guest room door was slammed shut.
Immediately after, a layer of hastily set up, slightly crude isolation formation light lit up, temporarily separating the inside and outside and their auras.
In the courtyard, a gentle breeze blew, causing the formation flags in Feng Lingshuang’s hand to sway slightly.
She lowered her head to look at the several ordinary-quality formation flags in her hand, clearly taken by their owner to make up the numbers.
Then she looked up at the obviously unstable formation light from the direction of Gu Qingying’s guest room.
She felt the Golden Core Mid-Stage fluctuation in the air that hadn’t completely settled yet, and the two other Foundation Establishment stage breakthrough auras that suddenly surged up from another place—belonging to Gu Qingying and Gong Shangyu…
Beneath the veiled hat, the expression on Feng Lingshuang’s exquisitely beautiful face completely froze.
She blinked, then blinked again.
Even with her combined experience and steady temperament from hundreds of years in her former and current lives, she couldn’t help but fall into deep confusion and self-doubt at this moment.
Huh?
This…
Breakthrough… is it really… this casual?
Sensing the Master’s breakthrough, having an epiphany oneself, and then just… running back to break through like that?
Doesn’t even need a protector?
And the formation is set up so… basically…
When I was at Duanqing Peak in my former life… did everyone break through realms so… freely and casually?
Since when did breaking through become so simple?
Feng Lingshuang stood in place, momentarily at a loss.
Should she now obey Gu Qingying’s “order,” honestly stand here and be a “messaging tool”?
Or should she do something?
But it seemed… whatever she did now wasn’t quite right…
***
Meanwhile, inside the guest room.
Lu Li, who had just successfully broken through to the Golden Core Mid-Stage and was immersed in the joy of the breakthrough, hadn’t had time to carefully experience the more condensed and brilliant golden core within his body and the spiritual energy surging like a great river, when the familiar, cold system prompt sound in his ears again.
[Ding! Side Quest: Guide your disciple Gu Qingkong in cultivation, enabling her cultivation to reach the Foundation Establishment Middle Stage. (Completed.)]
[Reward in progress: Cultivation base increased by one minor realm.]
Lu Li: “Huh? What’s going on?”
What?
Qingkong that kid is at Foundation Establishment Middle Stage?
When did that happen?
Just now?
Did Bai Yu and Qingkong plan this together?
Either they don’t break through and slack off together, or when they do break through, they both pile up and break through together?
However, before he could sort out this sudden prompt, an energy far more vast, pure, and seemingly originating from the very source of heaven and earth than during his previous breakthrough descended abruptly out of nowhere.
It was roughly yet gently poured into his limbs, bones, meridians, dantian, and purple mansion!
“Ugh!”
Lu Li grunted, feeling his newly stabilized Golden Core Mid-Stage cultivation base, pushed by this irresistible, mighty force, rapidly “melt,” “expand,” and “sublimate” like ice thrown into flames!
The golden core in his dantian spun madly, its volume visibly growing by a circle.
Its color shifted from pale gold to a deeper, purer gold.
Faint dao patterns flowed on its surface, and the pressure and spiritual charm it emitted rose another level!
The Golden Core Mid-Stage realm he had just broken through, under this system reward of “cultivation base empowerment,” actually began to charge towards the Golden Core Late Stage as naturally as water flowing downhill, and with unstoppable momentum!
Lu Li was completely dumbfounded.
He could only passively, with all his might, guide this sudden, massive force to impact the barrier of the Golden Core Late Stage.
Only one thought remained in his mind, flashing frantically.
“System! What the hell are you doing?! I just broke through! Again?! Can’t this reward… come with a heads-up?! My body and mind weren’t prepared for this, hey!”