Liuli Valley, Martial Arts Arena.
The sharp ring of clashing metal echoed above the arena for the fifth time.
A cute girl, barely 1.5 meters tall, looked down at the split skin on her palm.
She then looked up at the green-robed Book Boy on the spectator stand, who was squinting comfortably while being fed grapes by a maidservant. Suddenly, she began rolling around on the ground.
“Waaa! I don’t want to fight anymore! Waaa…”
“Young Master, you’re a big meanie! All you do is bully me every day! Waaa…”
“This is too much! Why am I getting beaten up here while you’re lying there comfortably enjoying the service of a beautiful woman?! Ahhhh! I hate you!!!”
Eighteen types of weapons—wolf-tooth clubs, meteor hammers, greatswords, spears, daggers, cleavers, giant axes, and more—lay scattered across the stage.
A female cultivator stood awkwardly nearby, unsure whether to strike or wait while her opponent wailed like a ghost.
“Beautiful lady, don’t worry about my pride. Beat her as hard as you can.”
Yun Heng seemed to find the noise irritating. He picked at his ear before casually taking another handful of spirit stones from his storage bag and tossing them onto the table.
He looked exactly like a rebellious son from a wealthy family. “Don’t let these heavy spirit stones go to waste!”
On the stage, the Inner Disciple of Liuli Valley stood with her sword, her expression complicated.
She had indeed accepted Yun Heng’s spirit stones and promised to be a “serious sparring partner.”
However, looking at the little Book Boy before her—who was only at Level 7 Qi Refining yet had somehow endured five of her moves—she couldn’t help but feel a flicker of pity.
After a brief hesitation, the female cultivator sighed helplessly and raised her long sword. Her thin lips parted slightly as she spoke.
“Waaa, when will these days ever end—”
“…Be careful.”
Jiang Keke sobbed, hurriedly waving the wolf-tooth club she had just picked up. However, the opponent’s sword light was like a swimming dragon, reaching her in an instant.
The bone-chilling cold of the blade was so fast that she could only close her eyes and block blindly.
*Clang—!*
The sharp ring of metal on metal made her palm go numb, and the wolf-tooth club flew out of her hand again.
Jiang Keke stumbled back, tripped over the other scattered weapons, and fell face-first into the dirt.
Dust rose everywhere.
On the stands, Yun Heng took a sip of the spirit tea offered by the maid. He took out a small notebook and wrote the final stroke of the tenth tally mark.
‘Fifty matches in one month. It should be about time to move to the next stage.’
Yun Heng muttered to himself, put away the notebook, lay back down, and closed his eyes. He began to think about what he should have for dinner.
One month ago, the two of them had left Cuiwei Village and headed west without stopping.
With the help of a Flying Artifact they had spent a fortune on, it took them only three nights to reach a sect at the very edge of the Lower Three Continents.
At the time, Jiang Keke had complained that Yun Heng’s three steps had only resulted in two.
Yun Heng had simply thrown out one challenge letter after another, replying, “The meaning of Treasure Gathering is that as long as you are here, we will have a never-ending supply of treasures.”
It wasn’t technically a lie, but Yun Heng had omitted half of the truth.
The true name of the Triple Combination Formation was the Causality Looting Formation.
It was a grand formation of creation containing the Law of Causality that Yun Heng had developed when he was 7,000 years old, and it could only be used once every 1,000 years.
It wasn’t simply “Summoning, Wealth Gathering, and Treasure Gathering,” but rather “Looting, Transferring, and Reshaping Causality.”
The first layer’s effect was to open a Deathmatch Barrier, drawing in the most powerful spirits within 1,000 miles to fight.
The victor would obtain the pure spiritual qi of all the other spirits—in short, it was like “cricket fighting.”
The second layer’s effect was to capture any nearby hidden realms and provide a general location for future entry. As for the third layer…
It was to designate a living being who had not entered the Deathmatch Barrier and perform a causality transfer with the winner of the deathmatch. It could turn cause into effect, or effect into cause.
To put it more simply, Yun Heng could now install some of the power of providence from his own body onto Jiang Keke without any risk.
The prerequisite was that Jiang Keke had to be able to endure it.
If she couldn’t, she would end up like Yun Heng’s previous mysterious “ballooning” state—invaded by countless wisps of spiritual qi. She would either have to refine it all or suffer from ruptured meridians.
This was a realization Yun Heng had only come to after ending their trip to Cuiwei Village.
After all, the person he had chosen the last time he used this formation was the demon immortal known to later generations as the “Strongest Immortal King in History”—Ling Yao.
In any case, Jiang Keke had begun a continuous, “super high school-level” gauntlet of battles, fighting her way from the Lower Three Continents back toward the Middle Three Continents.
Back on the arena stage.
The female cultivator looked at Jiang Keke through the dust. A hint of reluctance flashed in her eyes, but she shifted her sword stance and called out softly, “I win.”
In the next second, the tip of her sword moved like a rainbow, pointing directly at Jiang Keke’s opening!
Right then, a sudden change occurred!
The eighteen weapons scattered across the ground began to emit a low hum simultaneously. It was as if their own spirituality was being pulled by an invisible “gravity,” causing them to vibrate in unison.
The female disciple’s pupils shrank, and her sword strike instinctively faltered.
‘Spirituality? Mundane iron?’
‘Are those not made of mundane iron? …This is the personal Book Boy of the eldest young master of the Changsheng Yun family. How could her weapons possibly be mundane iron?’
In that lightning-fast moment, Jiang Keke turned into an afterimage and rushed out of the dust. She held her fingers together like a blade and made a light, phantom slash toward the female cultivator’s throat.
*Sshhh— Thump—!*
First came the sharp sound of cloth being torn, followed by the dull thud of flesh colliding with a long sword.
The female cultivator was horrified and retreated three steps.
Although she had been restricting her cultivation to Level 7 Qi Refining to match Jiang Keke, this sudden assault forced her to use at least Level 3 Foundation Establishment strength to withstand it.
If she hadn’t already reached the Golden Core stage, giving her far superior cultivation and experience, she would have lost a layer of skin at the very least.
‘Fighting across five sub-levels… As expected of those people from the Upper Three Continents. Even a Book Boy cannot be underestimated.’
What the female cultivator found most incomprehensible was that when she looked at Jiang Keke again, the girl had a look of utter confusion on her face, as if asking, ‘Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing?’
Jiang Keke did not take another step.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to, but rather that she didn’t know what to do next.
Jiang Keke looked down at her slightly glowing fingers.
In that moment, she clearly felt as if some “floodgate” that had been dormant inside her had been forced open by a surging current.
Countless chaotic yet majestic pieces of “information” and “instinct” flooded into her limbs and bones.
It didn’t feel like a sudden surge in cultivation, but more like… an understanding of “power” and a perception of “luck.”
Jiang Keke glanced at the suspicious female cultivator in front of her, then subconsciously looked back at Yun Heng, who was yawning with his eyes closed. She tilted her head.
‘Did the Young Master do this?’
Jiang Keke didn’t know.
She only knew that her cultivation progress over this past month could be described as god-like.
Going from Level 3 Qi Refining to Level 7 Qi Refining would normally have taken her at least eight or nine years of meditation, by her conservative estimate. After all, she had Mixed Spiritual Roots and very poor talent.
In the years she had spent by Yun Heng’s side, although he often taught her how to read, write, and navigate social situations, he had never said anything about how to cultivate.
At first, Jiang Keke thought Yun Heng simply didn’t know much about it, since he was also only in the Qi refining stage.
But looking at it now…
‘I really still know too little about the Young Master.’
Jiang Keke used her dirty hands to messily wipe her face, clearing away the tear tracks from her earlier crying.
She then retreated to the wolf-tooth club that had fallen for the nth time. Pouting, she used her toe to kick the weapon back up into her hand.
“Again! That last one didn’t count!”