Chapter 67: I’ve Fooled Around Enough

Two days passed.

Maintaining the formation required a vast amount of spiritual power.

The cultivators also needed more Spirit Recovery Pills.

Yun Huaiyue refining pills alone was far from enough, so she dragged Lu Youxin and Ling Hegui to join her. Shuangxi ran back and forth, so busy his feet didn’t touch the ground.

“Shuangxi, these are pills for your master.” Yun Huaiyue stopped Shuangxi.

She handed him a white jade porcelain bottle. “Has His Majesty rested?”

Shuangxi bowed in thanks, wiping sweat from his forehead. “Replying to Miss Yun, His Majesty is busy running around in circles and has no time to rest.”

“He hasn’t rested…” Yun Huaiyue showed a pained expression. “Take this bottle of pills back and make him take three pills every day.”

She handed over another dark green medicine bottle.

“This slave will remember. It has been hard on Miss Yun these days.”

Shuangxi thanked her, mounted the Thunder and Lightning Lion, and left.

Yun Huaiyue looked back at Ning Shengsheng in the Frigid Spirit Pool. Her small face was pale, looking very miserable.

“Junior Sister Ning, you must pull through.”

Her gaze turned to the side.

Xue Chen had just woken up from cultivation. The first thing he did was check on Ning Shengsheng’s condition.

He took out a handkerchief and gently wiped the sweat for her.

The young man was exquisite and handsome, the young girl was charming and lovely. The scene was very pleasing to the eye.

If it weren’t for the wrong timing, she really wanted to go over and wish the lovers a happy ending.

Xue Chen was the person observing Ning Shengsheng’s condition most meticulously. Judging by the degree of her frown, refining the Earth Core Fire Essence had reached a critical moment.

Just as Xue Chen guessed.

The soul source and the Fire Essence were fighting equally in Ning Shengsheng’s sea of consciousness. She drove her soul power to split into millions of threads, silently approaching the flames spewing at the bottom.

The soul threads surrounded the Fire Essence.

Instantly burning with crackling sounds.

Severe pain spread along her divine soul; her head felt like it was going to explode.

“With soul as binding, Thousand Soul Threads, congeal!”

A command.

The scattered soul threads gathered together again. Millions of soul threads rushed up stubbornly, just as tenacious and tough as their master.

Watching as the soul threads were about to trap the Fire Essence.

Suddenly!

Ning Shengsheng’s consciousness was wrapped in a wisp of black mist.

The scene changed.

A face that was indistinguishable between male and female suddenly appeared before her eyes. That face was trapped inside the Mystic Turtle shell.

It was the demon under Taiji Mountain!

“Descendant of the Ning clan, how about we make a deal?”

The face inside the turtle shell spoke more clearly. A neck and shoulders had grown from the blood vessels below the head. Having sucked so many souls, it had become stronger again.

“What deal?” Ning Shengsheng asked calmly.

“You give the Earth Core Fire Essence to this Venerable One, and this Venerable One will help you ascend to immortality.”

That face spoke slowly.

“You—?”

She sized it up suspiciously.

“No one has ascended in the cultivation world for nearly a thousand years. If you’re going to make empty promises, at least don’t make it so ridiculous.”

The other party didn’t understand the slang ‘making empty promises,’ but it knew she didn’t trust it.

“Do you know who this Venerable One is?”

“Huh? Can I ascend just by knowing your name?”

“…” The face in the turtle shell twitched slightly.

“Descendant of the Ning clan, do you know that ascension requires passing two trials: one is the lightning tribulation, and the second is the heart tribulation. As long as the cultivation is strong enough, the lightning tribulation is not a problem, but the heart tribulation is very difficult.”

“This Venerable One is named the Evil-Devouring Demon Lord, born from the dark side of humanity. Do you know who created this Venerable One?”

Devil-like whispers drilled into Ning Shengsheng’s ears.

She had a bad premonition. “Who?”

The human face in the turtle shell laughed wildly.

“It was your Ning clan ancestors who ascended. This Venerable One is precisely that filthy and dirty side they left behind.”

“To escape the heart tribulation.”

“They used crooked ways to leave all their dark heart demons behind. Just like that—”

“Accumulating over thousands and ten thousands of years…”

“One Ning clan member after another ascended…”

“And I gradually gained my own consciousness, my strength growing stronger day by day.”

“As long as you give your heart demon to me.”

“This Venerable One can help you ascend!”

The Evil-Devouring Lord gave a passionate speech, only to find the little girl floating in mid-air had a complex and weird expression.

It continued to tempt her: “Don’t you want to ascend to immortality? After becoming an immortal, you will have eternal life, turning clouds with a flip of your hand—”

“It’s not that I don’t want to.”

Ning Shengsheng interrupted it. “I don’t have a heart demon.”

“Sorry about that…”

“What?” The Evil-Devouring Lord’s demonic face distorted for a moment. “Impossible! How can you not have a heart demon?”

“Everyone has seven emotions and six desires. How can you not have regrets, unfulfilled desires, or hatreds!”

“Do you not have a single dark thought in your heart?”

Ning Shengsheng saw it was anxious, and didn’t know what this guy was anxious about. She shrugged her shoulders and said: “Dark thoughts, I probably have some…”

“I knew there couldn’t be a completely pure and good person.” The Evil-Devouring Lord looked at her excitedly. “Quick, tell me, what are your dark thoughts?”

“Let me think, let me think, don’t rush…” She rubbed her chin with her finger. “Thought of one!”

The Evil-Devouring Lord was dying of anxiety.

Ning Shengsheng said seriously: “Older Brother controls me too much sometimes, it’s a little annoying. I want to sprinkle itching powder on his clothes to make him make a fool of himself in front of Miss Yun.”

“And Xue Chen…”

“He always laughs at the talismans I draw. He even said a little duck with a brush in its mouth draws better than me.”

“Really angry.”

“Do you think wanting to put strange-flavored pills in his food counts as dark?”

The Evil-Devouring Lord was speechless, opening its mouth wanting to say ‘get lost’.

The girl didn’t give it a chance to speak. Her red lips opened lightly, chattering endlessly: “Ning Jin, you know her right?”

“She is my sister, but she always targets me.”

“I want to dress up as a ghost to scare—”

Ning Shengsheng hadn’t finished speaking.

The scene changed again.

Her consciousness was thrown back into her sea of consciousness by the Evil-Devouring Lord.

Ning Shengsheng: ?

The Evil-Devouring Lord under Taiji Mountain let out a breath. Muttering to itself.

“Is the cultivation world so harmonious now?”

“Are there no evil thoughts born from secretly loving one’s master? Or the whole sect favoring the little junior sister, digging out the eldest senior sister’s spiritual roots to give to the little junior sister, causing the eldest senior sister to have obsessions of revenge? And fathers cutting out other people’s inner cores to give to their own sons to help them advance?”

“None of these?”

The Evil-Devouring Lord fell into deep self-doubt.

If everyone in the cultivation world was like Ning Shengsheng, it would starve to death even if it got out of Taiji Mountain.

How could it seduce those people into madness through obsession?

If they didn’t generate negative emotions, what would it eat?

The Evil-Devouring Lord was already depressed before it even got out.

…

Ning Shengsheng was sent back.

She didn’t think too much. She didn’t stop and continued to use the soul threads to refine the Fire Essence.

The refining this time went much smoother than before; the soul power fiercely wrapped around the pulsating flames.

Soul fire and earth fire collided violently.

Ning Shengsheng gritted her teeth and quickly chanted the Soul Quenching Art.

Until the last cluster of flames gradually became gentle.

The crimson flame turned into a streak of flowing light, flew into her sea of consciousness, and branded itself on the soul source.

She succeeded!

Before she could rejoice, there were signs that the blocked spiritual aperture in her mind was loosening.

Ning Shengsheng hurriedly circulated her technique to absorb spiritual energy.

Spiritual energy poured endlessly into the spiritual aperture.

She guessed that it must be that while refining the Earth Core Fire Essence, the high-temperature roasting loosened the blocked spiritual aperture.

Truly, fortune relies on misfortune, and misfortune hides within fortune!

In the blink of an eye.

Four days passed.

Everyone gathered in front of the formation; the formation could no longer hold.

Wisps of black mist drilled out from the corners of the Imperial City.

Meng Jingyang opened his hand, a Bodhi Pill lying quietly in his palm. “Ah Xuan, protect Great Ning well.”

“Cousin!”

At this moment, Ning Xuan felt deeply useless.

His sister’s life or death in the Frigid Spirit Pool was unknown, and his cousin was about to swallow the Bodhi Pill to perish together with the evil demon.

And with his cultivation, he didn’t even have the right to self-destruct.

Meng Jingyang stood against the wind, his robes flapping loudly. “I’ve fooled around enough!”

“Dying now isn’t a loss.”

“It’s just a pity about those fine wines buried in the backyard; didn’t have time to have a few drinks with you.”

“Afraid I won’t get to drink them.”

“Sigh…”

A faint sigh spilled from his thin lips.

Meng Jingyang looked up towards the northernmost part of the Imperial City. That was where he grew up, where there was a garden full of begonias.

When the flowers bloomed, they moved the capital.

Unfortunately, he wouldn’t see it.