Chapter 3

After the Changguang Guild members entered the town, their expressions were dazed.

Had they really all returned to the city?

After hastily stuffing the wounded—those who had teetered on the brink of death—into the emergency pods, each of them stiffened their necks and stared at Sheng Yu like zombies.

Countless hands reached out and grabbed Sheng Yu’s shoulders.

They shook him fiercely.

“Where did you get the potions?!”

Their voices brimmed with uncontrollable excitement and thrill.

The Changguang Guild was a low-ranking guild among the region’s top hundred, with members mostly at the Foundation Establishment stage.

The two kinds of potions for mortals provided by Li Yunxian were practically ineffective for cultivators of this level.

But the sheer quantity was overwhelming!

Over two hundred bottles of potions kept barely hanging on the life thread for half an hour—this was something they had never seen.

Sheng Yu couldn’t hide his own excitement and said eagerly, “No, I bought these at the trading market.”

He quickly recounted what he had seen at the trading market to the guild members.

Upon hearing that even those present at the time didn’t recognize the quality, the guild’s schemers immediately lit up with ideas.

“In this case, should we talk to the boss and secure a long-term exclusive supply of her potions?”

Although the potions’ effects were mediocre and didn’t contribute much in battle, their price made up for it.

They could be used as emergency backup supplies; even if unused, it wouldn’t hurt financially!

Hearing this, Sheng Yu jumped up excitedly. “Let’s go find the boss!”

While the Changguang Guild members tore the trading market apart looking for Sheng Yu’s stall, Li Yunxian slept soundly.

The next day, Li Yunxian woke up refreshed and went to school, casually teaching some enthusiastic classmates a few self-defense moves.

After a chorus of shouts and groans from the group of high school students, she leisurely ended the session.

Back home, after dinner, Li Yunxian chose not to log into the game but instead took out the blood bones she had exchanged.

Today was a perfect day for a medicinal bath.

Blood bones were spirit medicines, hard and difficult for ordinary people to process.

At this moment, the advantages of the modern world over the cultivation world were evident.

Li Yunxian took the blender from the kitchen and, with a whir, ground the blood bones and other ingredients into a paste.

Faced with the difficulty of long-time brewing and insufficient heat to release the medicine’s efficacy, she opened the pressure cooker.

An hour later, the bright red medicinal bath mixture was done and poured into a temperature-controlled bathtub.

This was what it meant for technology to change life!

Li Yunxian lay in the bathtub, eyes half-closed, feeling the subtle medicinal properties seep into her blood and bones.

There was a tingling numbness and soreness.

Soon, a fragile patch of flesh couldn’t withstand the energy and burst open, only to be repaired by more energy.

The pain spread from the skin’s surface gradually into the marrow.

Li Yunxian calmly endured it and ultimately judged the pain to be tolerable.

It wasn’t as excruciating as her first medicinal bath in the cultivation world, where she had almost rolled on the ground in agony.

Of course.

She had started as a sword cultivator.

As a fighter, injuries were commonplace, so enduring pain without letting wounds affect combat was routine.

Not to mention the ultimate sacrifice that had sent her back here.

That had been soul-shredding pain, the pinnacle of suffering.

Since she could endure this, Li Yunxian bit down on a straw and submerged her head into the medicinal bath.

Four hours later, as the last trace of medicinal power faded, the once blood-red bath water had turned clear and transparent.

—Her body didn’t seem to have reached its limit; she felt she could soak once more.

Li Yunxian carefully felt the changes in her body before sitting up in the tub.

As she moved, crusty deposits flaked off in pieces, revealing a jade-like pure white beneath.

Her thick hair had grown longer, jet black and glossy, like the finest ink stains.

Her long black hair draped over her back, contrasting starkly with the white skin beneath, creating a striking visual contrast.

Li Yunxian paid no mind to these changes and closed her eyes to sense the emptiness in her meridians and the faint spiritual energy floating around her.

She absorbed the energy into her body.

Within a five-meter radius, the spiritual energy vanished instantly.

Feeling the barely filled meridians at her fingertips, Li Yunxian winced and rubbed her head.

Good news: she had returned to the path of immortality.

Bad news: if the real-world spiritual energy concentration was always this low, she would be stuck at the Qi Refining stage for life.

These hair-thin meridians numbered in the billions.

Li Yunxian recalled the plentiful, spiritual energy-rich materials in the “All Things” exchange shop.

To continue cultivating and leveling up, she would probably have to keep working hard in the game.

But selling potions was out of the question.

If she hadn’t been lucky to find a wealthy buyer yesterday, most of those potions would have gone unsold.

She had blindly assumed that, since it was a game, red and blue potions would surely sell well.

In reality, showing the potions’ effects was somewhat difficult. She couldn’t very well cut herself occasionally just to demonstrate their efficacy.

Moreover, the Essence Spirit Water was impossible to showcase.

People would just think it was mint water or chili water.

She needed to sell something more tangible.

Li Yunxian sighed, feeling a bit nostalgic for her former companions in the cultivation world.

But most of those companions had mercilessly turned to dust with the passage of time as she advanced step by step.

Now, she could only rely on herself.

Learning from past failures, Li Yunxian adjusted her business plan.

Now that she was at Qi Refining, although the real-world spiritual energy was thin, the game seemed to have no shortage.

She decided to sell talismans instead, as they were the easiest to demonstrate effects directly.

While washing off the dirt from her body, she thought about this plan.

It was getting late; she would log on soon to post a materials demand for talismans and sell them the next day.

But tomorrow…

After school, she would first go to the institution to preliminarily test her body’s [Spiritual Power], [Talent], and [Bone Structure] stats.

These were standard for cultivator entrance exams.

Li Yunxian guessed that Spiritual Power meant cultivation level, but she was unsure about Talent and Bone Structure.

She needed to get a baseline first.

After finishing her washing, Li Yunxian logged into the game.

She didn’t go to the trading market but instead contacted the merchant who had sold her materials before, placed a materials order, and logged off.

Sheng Yu had been waiting in front of Li Yunxian’s stall at the trading market all day, his eyes vacant.

Why hadn’t she come yet?

Still not here...

Not here...

Sob.

Getting up, going to school.

Today, no one pestered Li Yunxian to learn some ultimate move.

It was just that many people at school moved and groaned like zombies.

“Young people’s enthusiasm comes fast and goes fast,” Li Yunxian remarked without any sympathy.

Her girlfriends burst into laughter at her indifferent response.

It wasn’t that they couldn’t endure the training’s hardships; it was just that Li Yunxian had suddenly become so beautiful that those suffering “zombies” dared not speak to her for a while.

After laughing, curiosity got the better of them, and they asked about Li Yunxian’s changed appearance.

“You passed one day, and you look so much better?”

“Your hair is so pretty!”

“How did you do it?!”

Li Yunxian didn’t dodge her girlfriends’ questions. The source of her spiritual medicine was hard to explain, so she gave them a more accessible formula.

Though it couldn’t wash the sinews or transform the marrow, it still had beautifying and health benefits.

The girls gasped when they saw the extremely expensive ingredients listed in the prescription.

They were only seventeen or eighteen, and few had money like Li Yunxian.

Nonetheless, they all eagerly copied down the formula.

Then someone passed Li Yunxian a message.

“Word from the special class—Yunxian, Liu Chen seemed to inquire about your family yesterday,” the girl said anxiously. “He seems to think you have a cultivator heritage at home.”

Li Yunxian’s every counterattack had precisely struck Liu Chen’s vital points, demonstrating his profound understanding of cultivator combat techniques. No wonder he suspected such things.

“Won’t he cause trouble for your family?” the friend worriedly asked.

Li Yunxian frowned.

She was used to being an orphan and had forgotten to consider this.

But her real parents’ main business wasn’t in Jin City, and Liu Chen was only a first-stage Qi Refining cultivator, so he probably didn’t have the power to cause trouble across regions.

She asked in return, “Does anyone know the highest cultivation level of Liu Chen’s family members?”

Her friend answered quickly, “They say it’s Foundation Establishment, and that’s Liu Chen’s uncle.”

Hating Liu Chen wasn’t limited to the ordinary class; many in the special class disliked him too.

Liu Chen needed time to investigate Li Yunxian, but information about Liu Chen was as easily available as if thrown into the sea.

Foundation Establishment? That was higher than Li Yunxian had expected; something felt off.

Jin City was just a small, eighteenth-tier county town, and cultivators who stayed here likely weren’t very strong.

After all, people tended to move upward.

Moreover, according to previous teacher information, Liu Chen’s uncle only held a position in the academy, with no particularly high status.

So, logically, Foundation Establishment cultivators probably weren’t rare in this world.

Given Jin City’s spiritual energy concentration, if the whole world were this sparse, there couldn’t be so many Foundation Establishment cultivators.

—This world must have regions rich in spiritual energy, like the spiritual veins in the cultivation world, supporting many cultivators.

Thinking briefly, Li Yunxian realized why the special class was so eager to attend those exclusive cultivator universities.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got it covered,” Li Yunxian reassured her girlfriends casually.

Yet, as she packed up after school, she silently slipped a small knife from her pencil case into her pocket.

She was a sword cultivator, but when conditions didn’t allow, a simple penknife would do.

Meanwhile, Liu Chen was frustrated.

He had indeed investigated Li Yunxian’s family, hoping his uncle would retaliate.

But when his uncle heard they were all ordinary people and Liu Chen hadn’t been injured, he refused to get involved. The cultivation entrance exams were starting soon, and as an examiner, he was busy.

If only Li Yunxian were a cultivator.

Liu Chen thought this and then saw Li Yunxian appear nearby, completely ignoring him.

She walked right past.

Liu Chen was stunned.

He wasn’t surprised by her indifference; he was shocked because he felt the spiritual energy around him instantly drained as she passed by.

The center of the absorption was Li Yunxian herself.

“Brother Liu, that girl has reached Qi Refining?” Liu Chen heard one of his underlings ask in disbelief.

Only then did Liu Chen realize he hadn’t imagined it.

“Brother Liu, now we can openly teach her a lesson,” the second underling said excitedly, cracking his knuckles.

Liu Chen’s mouth twitched.

A few days ago, Li Yunxian was still an ordinary person he couldn’t beat; now she was at Qi Refining, and he didn’t want to get beaten again.

But with two underlings around, he couldn’t lose face.

Watching Li Yunxian’s back, Liu Chen struggled for a moment, then waved his hand.

“Let’s follow her.”