Su Bai stared at the monstrous Iron-Feathered Crane perched on his roof.

His mind raced.

’Wait a minute,’ he thought. His corporate-honed instincts kicked in. ’How did this thing even get here?’

Clear Cloud Peak wasn’t a public park. His eccentric Master had layered the entire mountain in high-tier defensive arrays. The only reason Liu Meng, Chen Yu, and Wang Lin could visit was because Su Bai had given them specific access tokens.

A runaway, brainless Qi Refining bird couldn’t just wander through a grand formation.

There were only two possibilities.

Either the array was broken, or someone deliberately let the beast in. Someone with the authority and power to bypass his Master’s defenses.

Su Bai sighed with the heavy exhaustion of a man who just wanted to be left alone.

’Office politics. It doesn’t matter what world you’re in, middle management will always find a way to mess with you.’

He was caught in some elaborate sect scheme. He prepared for the worst.

Squawk!

With a deafening screech, the crane launched itself off the roof. Its steel-like talons were aimed directly at Su Bai’s head.

Su Bai’s expression hardened. If he was going down, he was going down fighting. He reached into his system inventory, grabbed one of the Heavenly Demon Blood-Burning Pills, and without a second of hesitation, swallowed it.

He braced himself.

He expected the agonizing fire. He expected his blood to boil, his heart to hammer like a war drum, and an explosive, unstoppable surge of demonic power to flood his veins so he could punch this stupid bird into the next life.

Instead... he tasted mint.

A refreshing, freezing wave of Yin energy gently washed over his tongue. His racing heart immediately slowed down to a sluggish, zen-like crawl.

’Huh?’ Su Bai thought.

Then, the "strength boost" kicked in.

In an instant, every single muscle in his body lost all tension. His legs turned into absolute jelly. It was as if he had taken the world’s strongest combat stimulant and it instantly threw him into a massive food coma.

Gravity claimed him.

Thud.

Su Bai face-planted directly into the dirt. His legs buckled awkwardly, leaving his backside sticking up in the air in the most undignified posture imaginable. He was completely paralyzed.

Despair swallowed him whole. ’I forgot about my Ultimate Trash Physique!’ he cried internally. ’Even a guaranteed suicide pill gets rejected by my body?!’

He could feel the wind of the crane’s diving attack brushing against the back of his neck.

Su Bai closed his eyes, accepting his fate.

’In my next life... no, forget it. Let me just rest in peace. I don’t want a next life.’

Just as the steel talons were about to pierce his skull, the roaring wind abruptly stopped.

A chilling, absolute silence descended on the courtyard.

Su Bai, whose muscles were still completely melted, used every ounce of willpower he possessed to weakly tilt his head up from the dirt.

Standing between him and the massive crane was a figure in a flowing, ice-blue dress. It was a woman of peerless, otherworldly beauty. Her expression was entirely devoid of emotion.

She held the massive Iron-Feathered Crane by the neck with a single, slender, pale hand.

The crane gave a pathetic, muffled gawk. Its eyes rolled into the back of its head before it went completely limp, knocked unconscious by the sheer freezing pressure radiating from her palm.

Then, she casually tossed the massive bird aside like a bag of trash.

Su Bai recognized her immediately.

Ji Ruyue. She was also a Core Disciple from a different Peak and a practitioner of the legendary Heartless Sutra.

Su Bai didn’t bother asking how she had bypassed the arrays or why she was here. He was just profoundly, overwhelmingly grateful that it was her.

He was a Core Disciple. He had an image to maintain as a Senior Brother. If someone like Chen Yu had seen him face-planted in the dirt with his butt in the air, Su Bai would have lost all his dignity.

But Ji Ruyue? She felt literally nothing. She wouldn’t gossip even if the Sect Master himself was caught dancing in a tavern.

"Ah, Senior Sister Ji," Su Bai greeted. His voice was muffled by the dirt. He tried to sound as dignified as a paralyzed man could. "Apologies for the poor welcome. I am... feeling a bit lethargic today. Would you be so kind as to help me sit up?"

Ji Ruyue looked down at him. Her eyes, like frozen lakes, betrayed no amusement, no pity, and no judgment. She simply nodded. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

Reaching down, she effortlessly hauled Su Bai up by the shoulders and propped him against the large flat stone he usually sat on.

"Thank you," Su Bai breathed out.

Ji Ruyue didn’t reply. She simply stood there, watching him with an unsettling, blank intensity. She seemed to notice something strange about his aura, so she stayed, silently observing.

And soon, Su Bai felt it.

The "Agonizing Pain and Shattering" phase of the pill had begun.

But instead of his meridians tearing apart and his spiritual root catching fire... it felt like he had just stepped into a luxury hot spring after a ten-mile hike.

"Oof."

The violent, shattering force of the demonic pill was acting as a flawless deep-tissue massage, gently expanding and reinforcing his crippled, narrow meridians. The intense "combustion" meant to burn his spiritual root was instead acting like premium, high-grade fertilizer.

Deep within his Dantian, his blighted, charred ’Dead Wood’ spirit root eagerly soaked up the energy.

’Wait... it’s sprouting leaves?’ Su Bai thought, utterly bewildered as a wave of absolute comfort washed through him.

That was when he was hit by a sudden realization.

’It didn’t reject the pill. It REVERSED it!’

He sat perfectly still with eyes closed. He basked in the incredible sensation while Ji Ruyue watched him in silence.

Time ticked by. Nine minutes. Nine minutes and fifty seconds.

Ten minutes.

The final phase. The "Exploding into Blood Mist" effect triggered.

Deep inside Su Bai, the massive accumulation of energy suddenly snapped. But instead of violently expanding outward and blowing him to bloody pieces, the soothing energy violently condensed inward.

It compressed perfectly, flawlessly locking into his Dantian.

BOOM!

A visible shockwave of pure, refined spiritual energy erupted from Su Bai’s body, sweeping the dust from the courtyard and rustling Ji Ruyue’s ice-blue robes.

Su Bai’s eyes snapped wide open.

He had broken through. He was back in the Qi Refining Realm.

For the first time since practicing Heartless Sutra, the emotionless practitioner Ji Ruyue, slowly raised a single, delicate eyebrow.