Chapter 2

When Yin Xianyu woke again, three days had already passed.

She sat up in a daze, her mind in complete turmoil. When she opened her eyes, she found herself in her master’s alchemy room.

The place was a mess. Her master was fastidious by nature; there was no way he would ever have let the room fall into such disorder.

There were formations set up in the alchemy room, so she couldn’t use spells freely. In the end, she had no choice but to clean everything by hand. The memories in her head were tangled together like knotted threads, chaotic and jumbled.

Her head throbbed so badly it felt as if someone had split it open with an axe. The memories inside had been stirred into fragments; from time to time, a familiar face flashed through her mind, but she couldn’t remember who it was.

Barely holding herself together, she finished cleaning up the room, then dragged herself out of the alchemy hall.

Someone had visited the spirit-link stone outside Qingxu Peak a day ago. Yin Xianyu’s face was deathly pale. She swallowed a few Replenishing Spirit Pills and forcibly used spiritual power to suppress the pain before opening the image stone above it.

Inside was a junior sister with a kind face. “Senior Sister Xianyu, tomorrow is the Immortal Sect Grand Competition. The elder at the trial platform asked me to bring you the entry token for Qingxu Sect. I came yesterday, but you weren’t here. Please send a reply as soon as you see this; gather at the teleportation array at the hour of Si.”

The junior sister’s figure vanished from the image stone, and a bamboo slip wrapped around the token slowly unfolded.

Yin Xianyu’s memory cleared at once.

Three days ago, she had taken the Chongyuan Pills specifically for this Immortal Sect Grand Competition, and had nearly missed the timing.

Although the fragments in her sea of consciousness were still a mess, Yin Xianyu quickly packed the things she needed. She flew out from Qingxu Peak on her sword and rushed all the way to the main peak of Lingzhan Mountain.

She wore a robe over her body, and among the many disciples, she was not especially conspicuous.

Yin Xianyu very consciously stood in a corner. Little by little, the events from before began to return.

The elder on the trial platform was checking everyone’s magical instruments for abnormalities and also inspecting the condition of the sect disciples. Who would have thought that she had taken the medicine badly a few days ago and her memory was in disarray; she didn’t even know whether she had any other physical issues.

At the moment, she absolutely could not let anyone discover her abnormal state. Fortunately, among the formal disciples, there were many who wore robes like hers, so standing among them did not make her stand out.

The Xuanxu Realm was a trial ground opened by mighty figures from the ten immortal sects who had torn through the void to create a place for their disciples to train. Though it was called a trial ground, it was no different from the real world. Treasures and opportunities appeared without end, but danger was everywhere as well; if you died there, you were truly dead.

Your corpse would remain in that stretch of heaven and earth forever. No one dared make light of such a thing, and even less would anyone rush in recklessly the way Yin Xianyu did.

So the elder on the trial platform did not inspect her very strictly. He only looked at her twice before letting her pass.

The teleportation array was a circular white jade platform, about twenty zhang in diameter. Its surface was covered in densely packed spiritual runes, and pale golden spiritual energy flowed through the lines; the formation had not yet fully activated.

Yin Xianyu let out a breath of relief, found a corner of the platform, sat down to regulate her breathing, and waited for the Xuanxu Realm to open.

Disciples from the sect were still arriving in waves. Although the minimum cultivation requirement for this trial was Core Formation, there were also quite a few Foundation Establishment cultivators following their senior brothers and senior sisters from within the sect. Being able to enter came with great risk, but the rewards were certainly abundant.

Of course, these Foundation Establishment cultivators could sometimes even go toe-to-toe with ordinary Core Formation cultivators.

If the gap was too wide, going in would mean certain death, and the elders of the sect would not agree to let them go.

The Xuanxu Realm, encountered only once in ten years, had these disciples excited beyond measure. They chattered nonstop.

Yin Xianyu was inevitably distracted by them. Her body was very weak, so she gave up on regulating her breathing, swallowed some pills to calm the wild spiritual energy inside her body, and listened while they talked.

“Have you heard? This time they’ve placed a secret treasure in the Xuanxu Realm. Word is, it’s a fragment of a divine artifact left behind from the ancient war between immortals and demons. That’s a treasure for tracking people from thousands of li away.”

“Tch. A divine artifact fragment is for Core Formation cultivators and above to fight over. We’ll just be picking up scraps if we go in.”

“That may not be so. In the Xuanxu Realm, opportunities don’t look at cultivation; they look at fate. Someone with good fortune could fall into a river and still fish out dragon scales.”

The lively discussion went on for a while, then someone suddenly lowered their voice as if about to share some earth-shaking secret.

“Who is Senior Sister Yin?”

“You don’t even know that? Yin Xianyu. A few days ago she injured two inner-sect disciples during the entry trial. I heard it was because of that.”

Yin Xianyu opened her eyes. The hazy memory in her mind told her that there did seem to be such an incident.

She had already forgotten the people she injured during the inner-sect disciples’ assessment. Her muddled memory made it hard to recall any of this.

When sleep comes, someone hands you a pillow; these people had just happened to be discussing what came before.

Silently, Yin Xianyu pulled the hood of her robe lower and, without drawing attention, used spiritual energy to listen in. Turning slightly, she focused on the conversation.

The words grew clearer in her ears.

“She’s an old hand. Why would she injure her fellow disciples over something like that? Don’t tell me you’re making this up.”

That person grew anxious, even raising her voice a little. “How could I be talking nonsense? I have a close fellow cultivator in the Jade Stone Sect; what she told me could it be false?”

The crowd instantly fell silent, then resumed talking.

“Then tell us, what exactly happened?”

A few people crowded together to listen as the white-robed female cultivator, face flushed red, said, “She said that Senior Sister Yin and Immortal Lord Qingrang used to have a very good relationship. The two were inseparable, ate together, lived together, and after each trial-platform match they’d come back and review everything together until midnight.”

“Really? Your fellow cultivator lived in their cave dwelling or something? How could she know even that kind of thing?”

The woman ignored the teasing and went on. “Of course. My fellow cultivator also said that at the time, Immortal Lord Qingrang still hadn’t cultivated the Heartless Dao. Her personality was cold, but she was different with Senior Sister Yin. If other people begged her to point out one move, she wouldn’t even look at them; but with Senior Sister Yin, she would speak up on her own without being asked.”

“……”

“Haha, I can’t take it anymore. I really believed your nonsense, listening to you make things up like this.”

“Junior Sister, that’s too outrageous. What happened after that?”

The female cultivator in the middle flushed even redder, but she still forced herself to continue. “Later, you all know what happened. Qingxu Sect dispersed, Immortal Lord Qingrang broke through and entered the Heartless Dao, and the two never spoke again. They say Immortal Lord Qingrang did it to avoid suspicion, so that seeing Senior Sister Yin wouldn’t stir up inner demons again. The Heartless Dao cuts emotions and thoughts; all past feelings are severed cleanly. But think about it—if they could be severed, that means they existed before!”

As soon as she finished, the people around her could no longer hold back and burst into laughter. The elder on the trial platform immediately noticed the commotion. A wave of pressure rolled over, and the few of them fell instantly silent.

“What are those few doing?”

“Maybe they’ve gone mad dreaming of entering the Xuanxu Realm and rising to fame in a single step, hehe.”

The others could only glare in anger without daring to speak, watching as those passing by tossed out cold, mocking remarks and then obediently shrank back.

Sitting farther behind, Yin Xianyu drew her loose robe closer around herself and listened to every word without missing a single one.

Her expression turned a little strange. She couldn’t quite tell what she was feeling.

Yet images surfaced in her mind. The memories were already somewhat blurred: she and Xie Qingrang had finished fighting on the trial platform, then lay side by side on the spirit platform, gasping for breath.

The night wind was very cold. Back then, the two of them seemed to have only just entered the Qi Refining stage, still little cultivators. Xie Qingrang pulled her up and said something; she sneered and shot back with something of her own, and the two of them agreed to come again tomorrow.

It seemed their relationship had always been like that, never changing.

But another voice sounded in her head as well, seemingly her own, speaking with cool indifference: Xie Qingrang abandoned the sect and never once looked back at you. The Heartless Dao cuts away the past; you no longer have anything to do with each other.

These two understandings existed at the same time, colliding with one another. The impact made her temples pound violently. Yin Xianyu couldn’t tell which one was right, or which had been altered.

It was like a manual with a few pages ripped out and then pasted back together at random. The plot still matched up, but the seams where it had been glued back together were bizarre.

She wanted to ask these people what on earth was going on, but at that very moment, the formation completed its operation. Golden light burst from the teleportation array, interrupting her thoughts.

The spiritual runes on the white jade platform suddenly blazed brilliantly. A huge pillar of light shot up into the sky, tearing a rift in the heavens. From some distant and ethereal place, the elder on the trial platform spoke in a solemn voice:

“The Xuanxu Realm has opened. The trial begins.”