Chapter 23 – Absolute Trust

“Before, some of the Soul Fire inheritors I found were beaten to death by female god demons. If you teach me this method of yours I won’t have to worry they’ll get beaten to death after copulation.” The small flame shouted in great delight in his sea of consciousness.

“Hook up with chicks? Could Xin Huo mean that elder sister Tao and elder sister Yu came to find me?”

Zhong Yue was stunned as he walked toward the two girls.

The two girls were both a little panicked as they saw him come their way. Tao Dai’er said fast as the wind: “Zhong Mountain clan, we didn’t come here to find you, or come sing a song for you. This place isn’t your domain, anyone came come here! We came here first, so it’s you who came looking for us!”

Zhong Yue laughed: “Naturally. Two elder sisters please make yourselves at home.”

Yu Feiyan couldn’t hold it in anymore and said: “Junior brother Zhong, we indeed came here to find you. I wish to consult you about the line between life and death, will junior brother teach me?”

“You want to cultivate this way too?”

Zhong Yue pondered a moment, then shook his head: “This way of cultivating is extremely ruthless and dangerous for me, but it’s even more dangerous for you. If you jumped down the cliff like me, the probability of ending dead would be ninety nine times out of a hundred, moreover it’ll be ninety nine times out of a hundred every time!”

His words weren’t an exaggeration. To use the space between life and death to enter the extreme limit reaction wasn’t as simple as jumping down. Because when you reached the extreme limit reaction you needed to visualize and practice, using the opportunity to enhance cultivation. Once sunk into visualization you were cut off from the world outside and it wasn’t such an easy thing to wake up from it.

If you had no way of waking up during the fall, , then what waited for you at the end of the road was certainly being smashed into mincemeat!

The reason Zhong Yue had a high rate of success wasn’t because he could wake up in time every single time, but because he had Xin Huo in his sea of consciousness. It was Xin Huo who calculated the right time and woke up his soul, greatly reducing the probability of death!

Although each time jumping down was extremely dangerous, Zhong Yue could repeatedly succeed thanks to Xin Huo promptly waking him up.

But Yu Feiyan didn’t have this treatment. If she cultivated alone, it was written in stone that she would die because she couldn’t wake up in time. Even if Tao Dai’er floated in the air and woke her soul up in time, it still wouldn’t be too reliable, because the opportunity came and went in a split second. If it was even one instant too late, what awaited Yu Feiyan was death.

Getting someone else to wake your soul from visualization was already a very difficult thing. You needed to use the soul to call, and if Tao Dai’er were to make an error of half a moment, then the one dead would be Yu Feiyan!

“If you let elder Tao help you, you can actually lower the probability of death to eight or nine times out of ten, but it’s still extremely high. Elder sister Yu, I’ll give you the know-how about entering the space between life and death. It’ll be your own decision as to whether you want to use it.”

Zhong Yue told her in details the know-how about entering the place between life and death and repressing the great dread and great terrors, then said: “Elder sisters, I still need to cultivate, I’m leaving first.”

He carried a mountain boulder and jumped down the cliff.

Tao Dai’er hesitated and said: “Eldest sister, do you really want to do that?”

Yu Feiyan was also hesitating in her heart. Zhong Yue had told her the secrets of the space between life and death, and had pointed out the dangers, making her realize this way of cultivating was indeed incomparably dangerous.

“Even with Tao Tao helping me I’m dead nine times out of ten! And if Tao Tao makes a mistake…”

Yu Feiyan hesitated for a long time and suddenly sighed: “I’m not going to try. With this way of cultivating you’re staking your life, and you can only become a Qi Refining warrior if you stake it to death. It’s not difficult for me to become a Qi Refining warrior, why do I need to gamble my life away?

Tao Dai’er sighed in relief and smiled: “Elder sister is right.”

Yu Feiyan exposed a confident smile and said conceitedly: “Junior brother Zhong stakes his life away, but now he’s still hasn’t become a Qi Refining warrior, isn’t it? While by cultivating the orthodox way I’m still the eldest sister of the female yard.”

Zhong Yue waited a few moments under the cliff. He saw that Yu Feiyan didn’t jump down. If Yu Feiyan had jumped and failed in her visualization, he would have acted to save her.

After all Yu Feiyan’s heart wasn’t bad, and yesterday she had risked her life jumping down to rescue him.

“Zhong kid, not everyone can have your courage, and not everyone can be as lucky as you and meet me!” Little Xin Huo said self-pleased.

“This girl looks determined and tenacious, but her state of mind is inferior compared to you. Her relation with the other girl is pretty good, but it’s not yet to the point of entrusting each other with life and death. If she jumped down the cliff, she would worry whether the other girl could wake her in time, so she naturally would have no way to stabilize her mind’s visualization. She will only turn into a bird and flee for her life every time. She has no way to cross this mere bottleneck! While you trust me entirely, leaving your life and death in my hands. You jump when I tell you to jump, therefore you can easily enter visualization, thereby advancing your cultivation by leaps and bounds!”

Zhong Yue carefully thought. Indeed it was this reason, he indeed hadn’t thought too much and had immediately jumped down. He never even thought about what would happen if Xin Huo woke him a shred too late.

This was absolute trust, absolute reassurance!

It had only been a little over one month since he started interacting with Xin Huo. For ordinary people, they would become superficial friends at most after such a short amount of time, while he had long ago felt in his heart that he could entrust his life to Xin Huo!

He had unreserved trust in Xin Huo, therefore the first time he jumped down the cliff he could enter the line between life and death, visualize Sovereign Sui and enhance his own cultivation and strength!

The test between life and death wasn’t for one person, but two persons, the trust between two persons!

“The trust between elder sister Tao and elder sister Yu is inferior to the one between me and Xin Huo, so it was also natural that she chose to give up. Even if the trust between them were like between me and Xin Huo, the probability of death would still be extremely high. After all how could elder sister Tao’s discernment be as keen and experienced as Xin Huo’s discernment?”

Zhong Yue climbed to the clifftop. Yu Feiyan stood near the cliff, her black clothes floating, looking formidable and valiant. Suddenly she said crisply: “Junior brother Zhong, you cultivate so desperately. It makes me really want to fight with you and see which one is stronger and which one weaker, your life-risking cultivation or my orthodox cultivation! There’s still two months to the end of the year, at the end of the year there’s an no restriction contest between the disciples of various Qi Refining warriors in the upper yard. This contest will decide the qualification to enter the Spirit Space !Hall! I hope that in the final contest I’ll be able to meet junior brother Zhong!”

“Year end’s contest, Spirit Space Hall?” Zhong Yue was a little puzzled.

“You don’t know about the Spirit Space Hall?”

Tao Dai’er was a little surprised: “En, you only came to the upper yard for a little over a month, it’s also forgivable if you don’t know about the Spirit Space Hall. The Spirit Space Hall is the place where it’s easiest to sense spirits, it’s the best place to cultivate a spirit. For example, if you want to induce a sun spirit, your soul needs to fly near the sun to induce one. Can your soul fly near the sun? But inside the Spirit Space Hall, you can sense the spirits inside the sun and cultivate a sun spirit. The Spirit Space Hall is the supreme holy land of our Sword Sect. If you can cultivate inside the Spirit Space Hall, it means the Sword Sect already considers that your foundation is solid enough, and that you’re ready to become a Qi Refining warrior.”

“Junior brother Zhong, there’s only one opportunity to become a Qi Refining warrior every year, and whether you can enter the Spirit Space Hall depends on your display during the year end’ contest.”

Yu Feiyan turned around and walked away, saying: “However, you only cultivated the Secrets of the Surging Thunder Sword. Only relying on this kind of technique, there’s no way you can reach the end, it’s even uncertain whether you can end up in the first ten! Moreover, you need a superior soul weapon and a superior divine totem pole, because it’s a battle without any restriction! Tao Tao, let’s go!”

Zhong Yue wondered after the two girls left: “Xin Huo, is it really so much trouble to cultivate a spirit?”

“To cultivate a spirit is indeed very troublesome, however cultivating a spirit inside this Spirit Space Hall gives me a kind of unreliable feeling.”

Xin Huo said: “Back then during the era of Sovereign Sui, Sovereign Sui’s heir was of the same race as divine sovereign Yanzi[1]. I remember when they sensed spirits, they directly harnessed true dragons to the ship. The disciple of the sovereign race stood on the ship as they majestically sailed to the sun, and he induced a spirit near the sun. The sun spirit he obtained was the highest level Solar Golden Crow spirit! If you cultivate a spirit inside this Spirit Space Hall, in my opinion the sun spirit you could obtain would only be the most ordinary fire spirit. Other god races also took their disciples directly to the location of the spirits and made them cultivate their inducement at the nearest place.”

It as if Zhong Yue could see the scene of huge dragons dragging a golden ship across the starry sky and rushing toward the sun when he heard this. He couldn’t help but feel fascination in his heart.

“Nowadays, who can personally go near the sun and induce spirits?” He only shook his head.

“Well, me!”

Little Xin Huo wasn’t without some pride as he said laughingly: “Whether you want to cultivate a sun spirit or a moon spirit, I can make it happen! However what the little girl said earlier isn’t wrong, your accumulation is insufficient, its far insufficient! It’s not that the attack technique your cultivate is too low, it’s your foundation that isn’t firm enough. If you can reach a level that can make me satisfied, I’ll send you near the sun and over the moon, so that you can cultivate spirits of the sun and moon!”

Zhong Yue’s heart banged fiercely in his chest and he hurriedly said: “How are you going to send me there?”

“Back then I wandered with a previous Soul Fire inheritor all the way to this place. That old kid was already extremely old, so I let him leave some arrangements for the next generations of Soul Fire inheritors. He laid down two great arrays. If I use the array method I can transmit someone on the moon and near the sun.”

Xin Huo laughed: “As long as you reach a level that can satisfy me, I’ll let you bask in the glory and let you taste the treatment of a pure-blooded Soul Fire inheritor. I just don’t know if the arrangements we made so many years ago have been destroyed or not… Come, keep cultivating!”

For dozen days Zhong Yue cultivated nonstop, regardless of wind or rain. His rate of Feather Spirit Dan consumption was also scarily fast. Training madly those days, he’d already consumed more than half of the nine hundred Feather Spirit Dan pills, and only a bit over three hundred were left.

Zhong Yue’s sea of consciousness had unexpectedly enlarged to an area of two hundred acres, resembling a great lake. With a thought, furious waves reached the sky as his mind power exploded, making for an incomparably frightening scene!

Moreover, climbing the cliff carrying weights made him control the Jiao dragon totem and his physique like his hands and fingers, while the combination of the Surging Thunder Sword and the Jiao Dragon Totem was also more exquisite. Zhong Yue could borrow thunder and fly across the sky for several li at extreme speed, only the mind consumption was also extremely great, and wasn’t as efficient as winged-type methods.

Cultivating to this step, Zhong Yue could feel that his progress was becoming slower, and the probability of entering the line between life of death was also greatly decreased.

This way of cultivating didn’t pose much threat to the present him anymore, so the probability of entering the space between life and death was naturally lower.

“Tomorrow is another Qi Refining warrior lecturing day, the two soul weapons old sir Pu promised to refine for me should be ready as well. I don’t know how the two soul weapons he’s been refining those past days will really turn out in the end?”

Zhong Yue couldn’t help but be excited, after all this was the first time he could own such high level treasures as soul weapons!

[1] Yanzi is the god of the west in Chinese mythology. Mentioned in chapter 4 as one of the 9 sovereign divine races in this novel.