Word Count: 2,392 Words
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Xiao Yan swept his hand. The Yin-Yang Twin Fla surged forth, weaving itself into a protective barrier around Nalan Yanran, who remained deep in enlightennt. With her safety secured, he clutched the Bodhisattva Pill and strode toward the Bodhisattva Ancient Tree’s projection, passing through into the profound space within its core.
The tree spirit’s domain had warped dramatically since his departure. A miniature black hole had ford where Mao Wu’s black flas blazed, its pull so fierce it threatened to devour the entire Bodhisattva Ancient Tree.
The tree spirit’s branches rustled frantically at his arrival, as if crying: If you’d taken any longer, I would have been sucked in!
’So this is the power of the Nihility Devouring Fla at the Heaven Seed level!’ Awe flickered through Xiao Yan’s eyes as he gazed at the slowly burning black flas.
There was no ti to waste. He hurriedly sat cross-legged and, alongside the freshly refined Bodhisattva Pill, produced a Nine Revolutions Heaven-Changing Pill. His plan was straightforward: use both dicines in tandem to push his cultivation another full change higher.
Taking breakthrough pills and then using Heavenly Flas to temper his Dou Qi was an old routine that had served him well since his days as a Dou Grandmaster. He had assud those days were behind him, believing he had no further Heavenly Fla to refine. But with Mao Wu’s evolution to a Heaven Seed Fla, he could employ this thod once more!
The mont the two pills touched his throat, they dissolved into fierce currents of Dou Qi that surged through his limbs. Xiao Yan ford a hand seal and activated the Fla Mantra. As his lips parted, the Nihility Devouring Fla, now on the very cusp of the Heaven Seed level, transford into a stream of black fire and plunged down his throat.
BOOM!!
Searing agony exploded within him. When Mao Wu had been at Earth Seed level, he had simultaneously been refining the Ghostly Poison Fla, so he hadn’t felt the full brunt of the Earth Seed’s impact. Now, with its leap to Heaven Seed, not only did a trendous surge of energy flood back into him, but the evolved fla felt like an entirely new Heavenly Fla requiring refinent from scratch, its temperature absolutely terrifying.
Xiao Yan gritted his teeth against the pain and circulated the Fla Mantra. Since Mao Wu had already submitted to him, re-refining it posed no fundantal problem. Still, a Heavenly Fla remained a Heavenly Fla, especially one of this caliber. Even the most docile would burn upon entry.
A soft hum resonated as the Bodhisattva Ancient Tree released waves of life force to ease his suffering. The tree spirit bathed him in green light, and then a deep, soul-level exhaustion swept over him without warning. His eyelids grew impossibly heavy, his head drooped forward, and consciousness slipped away.
...
When his eyes opened again, an unfamiliar ceiling and unfamiliar bedding greeted him. Everything around him was utterly foreign.
A flood of soul information rushed into his mind.
’I am Dugu Qing, the only son of the Heaven Sword Gate’s master?’ Xiao Yan frowned. He still rembered his true identity perfectly well and understood that this was the Hundred Reincarnations.
Creak—
The door creaked open. A middle-aged man in ancient clothing stepped inside. Though Xiao Yan had never seen this person before, he instinctively knew it was Dugu Cai, the Heaven Sword Gate’s master and his father in this incarnation.
His body moved of its own accord, slowly sitting upright with a faint click.
Dugu Cai sighed. "You’re injured. Don’t try to get up. With your current cultivation, forcing yourself to practice the Heaven Sword Three Forms will only cause the sword qi to backlash and wound you further."
Another wave of spiritual information surfaced: he had been gravely injured while attempting to force his way through a particular Dou Technique.
Understanding the situation, Xiao Yan’s soul shook its head in resignation. A voice from the very depths of his being rang out: "Stop."
Click.
Dugu Qing froze mid-motion. Not just him. Dugu Cai halted as well, completely still. The entire world seed to have been put on pause.
A wisp of soul drifted from Dugu Qing’s body. It was Xiao Yan’s soul body!
He surveyed the frozen scene and sighed, a wry smile tugging at his lips. "So this is the Hundred Reincarnations..."
Understanding ca quickly. The Bodhisattva Ancient Tree had collected fragnts of remnant souls while hidden deep underground. Through analysis and projection, it had constructed these cycles of ’reincarnations.’
Simply put, he would enter another person’s life, experience their entire existence, and learn whatever that person had mastered throughout their years.
This was the Hundred Reincarnations: experiencing a hundred different lifetis.
For Xiao Yan, though, it felt rather hollow.
’This Hundred Reincarnations is too dull... What’s the point of living through a hundred other people’s lives? Others are others.’ He sighed with helplessness. These experiences were illusions. Even if he lived through a hundred lifetis in others’ bodies, he would still be Xiao Yan in the end, not soone else. He could never fully replicate another’s path.
Different people practicing the sa Dou Technique would inevitably produce variations. This was precisely why techniques gradually disappeared from history: different practitioners introduced subtle changes that compounded over generations until the corruption beca so severe that even achieving major mastery beca impossible. At that point, the Dou Technique was lost forever.
A thousand people yielded a thousand different interpretations. Even with identical technique scrolls, different practitioners would achieve different results.
’I’ll just treat this like watching movies. Might learn sothing and broaden my horizons.’
Xiao Yan shook his head in resignation. He had hoped the Hundred Reincarnations would let him truly live a hundred lives. Clearly, he had expected too much.
He re-entered Dugu Qing’s body. His soul body extended its right hand, fingers twisting slowly like gears turning. The world accelerated around him. Sunrise and sunset flashed by like lightning, days and seasons blurring as years rushed past in rapidly shifting images.
With his current Spiritual Strength enhanced by the Emperor Soul Technique, his perception and learning abilities had reached monstrous levels. His soul could absorb information at a glance, morizing everything instantly. Otherwise, how could any normal person retain countless pill recipes without missing a single detail?
Soon enough, Dugu Qing’s entire life ’played out’ before him.
The story was simple enough: in the ancient era, a sect fell to its enemies. The sole survivor was Dugu Qing, who cultivated tirelessly until he finally achieved vengeance. Knowing his injuries were beyond cure, he retreated to a secluded mountain forest and quietly passed away.
On one occasion, the Bodhisattva Ancient Tree happened to appear at the very spot where Dugu Qing had died. When the tree took root, it absorbed fragnts of the remnant soul lingering in the earth. After obtaining this soul information, it used its divine abilities to reconstruct Dugu Qing’s entire life, forming one cycle of reincarnation.
But...
After the first cycle ended, Xiao Yan’s soul returned to a blank white void. He shook his head. A flash of golden light swept through him as he actively purged the vast majority of the soul information he had received.
’No wonder one cannot undergo the Hundred Reincarnations without the Bodhisattva Heart. Such massive floods of soul information... without the Bodhisattva Heart to maintain ntal clarity, anyone would beco confused, unable to distinguish themselves from these borrowed lives.’
He acknowledged inwardly that the Hundred Reincarnations were not entirely useless. At minimum, they broadened his knowledge. He had learned about ancient dicinal ingredients, pills, culture, and history.
For his alchemy, gaining knowledge of rare dicinal ingredients held genuine value. Though modest, it was still sothing.
However, he actively discarded the Qi thods, Dou Techniques, and personal emotions that Dugu Qing had cultivated throughout his life, because they simply did not suit him.
If he tried practicing according to another person’s techniques, who knew what kind of ss would result?
’On to the next one.’
White light engulfed him as he entered the second reincarnation...
...
The pattern repeated continuously. Xiao Yan accelerated through each life, and after every cycle ended, he actively purged most of the soul information, retaining only a vague mory that such a person had existed.
This continued until the ninety-ninth reincarnation. By then, he had experienced what felt like countless millions of years. Among these lives, so people’s experiences paralleled his own, and several were even alchemists, allowing him to pocket nurous valuable pill recipes at no cost.
Those chosen by the Bodhisattva Ancient Tree had all reached at least peak Dou Venerate level, with so achieving Half-Saint or even true Dou Saint.
The Bodhisattva Ancient Tree probably never imagined that Xiao Yan’s inner resolve would prove so unshakeable. Without needing the Bodhisattva Heart, he maintained perfect ntal clarity and preserved his sense of self throughout. Even now, his eyes remained as clear as they had been at the very start, his heart never wavering in the slightest.
Though occasionally greedy and ticulous in pursuing every last advantage, when faced with the Hundred Reincarnations, Xiao Yan chose not to absorb everything indiscriminately.
A Dou Saint’s lifeti of accumulated wisdom. For any cultivator below that realm, such knowledge would be a supre treasure beyond price. But for Xiao Yan, it would beco dross that corrupted his own path.
He had to extract the essence and discard the dregs.
’Final life at last. I hope Brother Ancient Tree delivers sothing worthwhile, or this really will have been too boring.’ Xiao Yan shook his head. The Hundred Reincarnations had not been without gains, but they certainly fell short of his expectations.
Hum!
A vast white light engulfed him. Countless streams of spiritual information surged into his mind like ocean currents.
[Thirty years east, thirty years west. Don’t you dare look down on just because I’m poor now!]
[This contract isn’t for annulling our engagent. It’s my letter expelling you from the Xiao Clan!]
[You... you dare expel ?!]
[Father, in three years, I will go to the Misty Cloud Sect and personally wash away today’s sha!]
[Hehe, little one, it looks like you need so help.]
!!!!!?
[Do you want to beco an alchemist?]
Xiao Yan jolted awake as if from a nightmare. His back was drenched in cold sweat, his forehead beaded with perspiration, and he gasped for air in heavy, ragged breaths. Genuine surprise filled his eyes. The spiritual information that had just flooded his mind had felt extraordinarily real.
’The person in those mories... was ?’ He quickly regained his composure. Of course he rembered he was inside the Bodhisattva Ancient Tree’s Hundred Reincarnations. This was the hundredth life!
’Did the Bodhisattva Ancient Tree read my soul information and project this lifeti?’ Xiao Yan flexed his fingers. This ti he could control his body, but he could not accelerate the flow of ti. His Spiritual Strength seed to have vanished entirely, and there was almost no Dou Qi in his body.
’Nalan Yanran coming to break the engagent... that part matches.’ He began sifting through the mories, his brow creasing deeply. Though the engagent had also been annulled in his real past, the outcos could not have been more different. In this version, he had lost his Dou Qi and endured three years of relentless bullying from his own clan. Miserable to the extre.
Nalan Yanran’s arrival to break their engagent had then beco the spark that ignited all his accumulated humiliation.
Xiao Yan smiled faintly and shook his head. ’It would take three years to defeat Nalan Yanran? Brother Ancient Tree, you really do know how to joke.’
Just as he tried to stand, a piercing stab of pain shot through his body and forced a sharp hiss through his teeth. Only then did he properly examine his condition.
He was sitting cross-legged, soaking in dicinal liquid. His body was riddled with injuries, and his Dou Qi had been overdrawn so severely that healing depended entirely on this solution.
He slowly raised his head and took in his surroundings. A cave. The thunderous crash of a waterfall echoed from outside. Enormous rocks blocked the entrance, permitting only thin slivers of light to filter through the dim interior, though three moonstones provided enough illumination to see by.
Xiao Yan drew a deep breath of the moisture-laden air. Everything felt incredibly, unnervingly real.
Using a crystal’s reflection, he examined his current appearance. He looked to be around fifteen or sixteen years old.
’...A 6-star Dou Practitioner?’ After carefully sensing the cultivation within his body, he spent a long mont before finally determining his current level.
Honestly, he had forgotten such a realm even existed.
’This cultivation is pathetically low.’ He shook his head in resignation. The Bodhisattva Ancient Tree probably intended for him to cultivate from the very beginning all the way to Dou Saint, gaining the insight needed to earn his breakthrough.
But this suppression was far too ruthless. It was almost starting from zero!
Xiao Yan looked down at the dicinal liquid in the stone basin and scooped up a sample to sll. His eyes widened. From his vast experience, he could tell that although this solution was not high-grade and used relatively common ingredients, it had been flawlessly prepared and was perfectly suited for his current injuries.
’This dicinal liquid...’
Creating sothing like this demanded not just alchemy skill but, more importantly, a precise assessnt of the patient’s condition. From the subtle combinations alone, Xiao Yan could tell that the alchemist who had prepared it was extraordinary.
"Preparing this small pool of restorative liquid for you cost three or four days of work."
Xiao Yan snapped into a defensive posture, his gaze sharpening as it swept the cave. Not a shadow of another presence. He tried to extend his Spiritual Strength only to find it gone entirely. Circulating what pitiful Dou Qi remained, he called out in a low voice, "Who’s there!"
An aged voice drifted in from beyond the cave’s entrance, and with it ca an elderly man’s ethereal figure, floating inside like a specter.
"Hey, did you get muddle-headed from sleeping, kid?"
The transparent old man hovered in midair, grinning at the slack-jawed Xiao Yan. "What’s the matter? Don’t recognize your own Master anymore?"
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