My Journey to Immortality Begins with Hunting-Chapter 294 – Fourth Rank Aberration, Return to Gemhill County - Part 1
Blood flowed in torrents, not across the ground, but in great currents suspended in mid‑air.
Rivers of thick, crimson liquid converged from every direction and poured into a single, uncanny black‑and‑white longsword.
Like a bottomless sponge, the sword drank it all, its edge gleaming ever brighter.
The white‑robed woman who wielded it stood immaculate, her expression frigid. Not a single drop had marred the hem of her gently swaying robe.
The battle was already over.
Whether a faction possessed a fourth rank powerhouse or not made all the difference in the world.
The moment Peng Mi fell, the outcome was sealed.
The Black Lotus Cult’s incursion had failed.
Besides Peng Mi, a Red Lotus Cult’s fifth rank martial artist had also perished under Gu Xuejian’s sword.
The Lotus Cult was never numerous; today’s counter‑attack left them badly mauled.
Suspended high above the field, Gu Xuejian watched the last crimson threads whip through the air and vanish into the sword, as though it were slurping down the very last noodle.
Those threads carried the blood of friend and foe alike.
The sword had not only killed the enemy; it had killed her allies as well, for it devoured any blood it tasted.
During the fight Gu Xuejian had tried to swap it for another weapon, but the black‑and‑white sword was far too... exhilarated to be sheathed.
Swords possessed spirit.
This one held a demonic spirit—amoral, indiscriminate, craving nothing but blood. Not even its master could tug the reins.
Gu Xuejian still wondered how Li Yuan had forged something so dreadful.
“A demonic blade...” That was her sober verdict. She rose higher, pushing the feeding zone farther from the ground so it would claim no more allies.
Jing Ruyi flew up to her. Face solemn, he bowed and reported, “Deputy Gu, the battle’s done. We have nine sixth rank martial artists heavily wounded, three fallen. Please give your orders.”
Gu Xuejian meant to answer, but as she looked at the sword a strange awe—almost a fever—stirred in her heart. She lifted the sword.
Jing Ruyi’s breath hitched. The sword had burned itself into his memory; the mere motion of it made him flinch.
Gu Xuejian asked, “That blade of yours or this sword, which is stronger?”
Jing Ruyi hesitated, a bitter taste in his mouth. Anywhere else he would have showered her with praise, but he had witnessed the forging of the ghost blade at his waist. Master Gong’s spirit had marked him.
That blade embodied honor. He himself could bow, but the blade could not.
So he replied quietly, “I fall short of you, my lady, by far.”
Gu Xuejian looked him over and said, “A backbone in the Jing Clan? Not bad. You have a future. Very well. Take the men back, fortify our lines, and keep the Lotus Cult from pouring in.”
“Understood!” He gave a mid‑air salute
For the first time in his life, Jing Ruyi felt an urgent need to become stronger, strong enough to overtake the woman before him and defeat her with his ghost blade.
Hand tightening on the hilt, he wheeled and sped away. Before touching down, he glanced back.
Far above, the white‑robed swordswoman was already streaking south, faint blood‑light coiling around her like a halo of both sage and fiend.
Gu Xuejian felt power surging through her. Killing Peng Mi and the Red Lotus Cult fifth ranker had fed the demon sword, and the sword was now feeding her.
She meant to press the advantage, head south and probe further.
As she flew, she examined the fresh realm she’d broken into during the battle.
Something strange had happened to her heart—or rather, to her blood. Yes, her heart was still there, but it was no longer essential.
The term atavic heart missed the point.
Every drop of her blood now throbbed with formidable power, every drop a miniature heart radiating its own extreme Yang energy.
With a single drop, she could be reborn. She had never tasted that miracle herself, but she knew the theory well. Anyone touching the threshold of fourth rank did.
Even so, resurrection was best avoided.
A fourth rank martial artist gained only 500 extra years of life; the worse the fatal injury, the longer recovery took.
Peng Mi had not died outright. He would revive in perhaps nine or so months, but regaining his strength would take years, maybe decades, and he would have to seek a new spirit artifact. For a martial artist who’d freshly broken into fourth rank, that was a nightmare.
Gu Xuejian suddenly dropped from the sky. With a thought, she lifted the surrounding sand and stone in a 30-meter radius, as if some invisible hand held them. They floated, waiting for her whim.
This was the domain granted at fourth rank.
As one’s atavism deepened, the domain would expand. Qing Hancheng, who was at peak fourth rank with nine atavisms, could envelop 300 meters or more.
Another thought and crimson threads erupted from her, cracking the air, enshrouding the 30-meter circle in a haze of blood‑red light that pulsed with scorching Yang energy.
A breath of wintry chill swept in, swirling around Gu Xuejian and coiling into a small vortex at her feet.
With power like this, she could roam almost any ghost domain at will. She could even smother the weakest ones outright.
All she had to do was reach a ghost domain’s core, keep her shadow blood drifting outward as a crimson mist, and wrap the place in a constant clash of Yin and Yang.
Her body spawned boundless Yang energy, the ghost domain unceasing Yin energy. By letting the two forces cancel in stalemate, the ghost domain would be pinned in place.
Truthfully, no fourth rank martial artist would ever bother with this exercise in futility. It was like pouring a cup of water over a flaming cart. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮
Testing her limits, Gu Xuejian sped south. By dusk, she alighted on the crooked limb of an ancient tree—and a sudden buzzing split her skull.
Voices tumbled through her mind, half‑forgotten yet unnervingly familiar.
W‑where am I?
Where’s my pretty dress?
My zither, where did it go?
What is this place?
What am I doing?
Why am I holding a sword?
My head hurts...
“What in the world?” Gu Xuejian groaned.
When she first reached fifth rank, she thought she had found her true self, then honed that self to perfection and used it to break into fourth rank.
Yet here was a familiar voice from...the distant past. From a very, very long time ago, back when she was sixth rank. She believed the her-of-the-past had already become the her-of-the-present, but was that really the case? Joy at her new cultivation dimmed under a creeping shadow.
Can you hear me? she called inwardly. No reply. It was as though she could see the speaker, but the speaker could not see her. Every trick she tried, even writing on the ground, failed; the other her simply mistook Gu Xuejian’s actions as her own.
After a while she gave up. More pressing matters awaited.
She discovered she could mute the voice with a single thought, plunging it into brief slumber—and whatever happened while it slept would be forgotten.
She silenced it, flicked a droplet of blood into a deserted mountain valley as a marker, then tightened her focus and arrowed southward.
˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙
A few days later.
Back in Cloudpeak Province, having assigned scouts to head west and gather anything on the Ice Folk or the Deathless Tomb, Li Yuan decided to return to Gemhill County for a visit.
Nearly twelve years had passed since he opened the Martial Lodge and founded the Grand Demonic Abode.
With manuals, resources, and decent talent, a disciple could reach ninth rank in mere months, eighth rank in a year and a half, seventh rank in three and a half, and sixth rank in roughly seven.
And the moment a martial artist entered sixth rank, a seed of intent—a fragment of the complete ancestral seal—would bloom within.
Advancing to fifth rank meant collecting the other two seeds of intent from cultivators of related but different techniques and merging the three seeds into a complete intent.
Li Yuan was intrigued. He possessed no ancestral seal himself, so how were his disciples going to break into sixth rank?
For now, he sat calmly inside the bleak black market ghost domain, facing an antique bronze mirror. A pale-skinned woman in blue brushed rouge across his face; strokes of her brush reshaped his features.
Moments later, the mirror showed not the famed Li Yuan but an unremarkable drifter, a down‑on‑his‑luck wanderer no one would look at twice.
“Thanks, Yan Yu. Your hand is miles better than my own clumsy work,” Li Yuan said with a grin.
Yan Yu warned him, “Be careful in Gemhill. Things felt wrong even before I left.”
“Wrong how?”
“The little flower girl’s red dress turned blue, and snakes and pigs kept appearing on the winding path by the door of the general store.”[1]
“Flower shop, exotic beast garden, got it.”
“Please, Husband. Watch yourself.”
“I will.”
1. Quick refresher, along with the number of entities in a ghost domain, clothing color represents an indivual ghost's powers. It goes Gray < White < Yellow < Black < Red < Blue. ☜
