After Fu Yan was schemed against, Liu Chuanhan and the others were already long gone from the vast, deep forest.
The bloodthirsty Ice Wolf behind her still refused to let up. Fu Yan was only at the Foundation Establishment stage; her speed was fast for a human, but nowhere near enough to shake it off. The distance between woman and beast was shrinking at an alarming rate.
“At this pace, I won’t last even fifteen minutes before I’m wolf food.”
Fu Yan cursed inwardly. She knew running like this was pointless. It wouldn’t change the ending at all.
As if to prove her fears right, she soon found there was no path ahead—just a sheer cliff face. The gray-brown rock wall sealed the way completely. The area around her was empty and exposed; there weren’t even two decent hiding spots to pick from.
“Awooo!”
Another furious roar came from the Bloodthirsty Ice Wolf behind her.
Staring at the cliff, Fu Yan felt her vision darken. Now she didn’t even have a way to run, and fighting that thing was obviously out of the question.
Just then, her gaze suddenly fell on a spot about three to four meters up the cliff. There seemed to be a very narrow crack there. She wasn’t sure if she could squeeze in, but she had no room left to hesitate.
Decision made, Fu Yan sprang into action. She grabbed at the uneven protrusions on the cliff, hauling herself upward with all her strength toward that crack.
Right at that moment, the furious Bloodthirsty Ice Wolf shot forward, arriving at the base of the cliff in a blur.
Her fingers finally brushed the crack. Fu Yan didn’t dare pause even for a heartbeat. She twisted her waist and threw herself sideways, plastering herself against the opening.
“Awooo—”
The Ice Wolf below seemed to realize her intent. It bent its four limbs, muscles coiling as it prepared to leap up and bite Fu Yan into pieces.
Fu Yan lowered her eyes and glanced down at the massive bloody maw beneath the cliff. Her throat bobbed involuntarily. She had no trouble imagining herself being swallowed in the next second.
With the situation critical, she didn’t hesitate. She turned her body sideways and desperately forced herself into the crack.
Luckily, this body was only sixteen years old, not fully developed yet. She was thin and small enough that she actually managed to get half of herself squeezed inside.
“Roooar!!”
The Bloodthirsty Ice Wolf below seemed even more enraged. It gathered power and leapt, jaws gaping straight toward Fu Yan on the cliff face.
At that hair’s-breadth instant, Fu Yan finally forced her entire body into the crack. A single breath later, the Bloodthirsty Ice Wolf’s bite slammed shut.
There was a deafening boom.
Its bite landed squarely on the rock, sending cracks spiderwebbing from the mouth of the fissure. Countless chunks of stone and dust cascaded down the cliff.
Its power was terrifying.
Wedged inside the crack, Fu Yan’s heart pounded wildly.
The Ice Wolf below didn’t seem ready to give up. It leapt up again and again, slamming its body viciously into the crack’s opening, clearly trying to smash the fissure open.
Fu Yan wasn’t having a good time either. The crack was deep, but she couldn’t squeeze any farther inside. She couldn’t go out either, so she was stuck right in the middle.
She couldn’t advance, and she couldn’t retreat.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. I just clawed my way back from the brink, and now I’m going to get stuck here and die?”
Fu Yan was on the verge of tears. This so-called fantasy cultivation world really was deadly. She’d been here for less than five days and already gone through two brushes with death.
Once again, she was reminded how vital strength was if she wanted to survive in this world.
Outside, the Bloodthirsty Ice Wolf kept ramming the opening again and again, making the entire cliff tremble.
No one knew how long it went on. At last, the outside fell quiet. The Ice Wolf seemed to have finally left. Sunlight and a gentle breeze lay beyond the crack.
Even so, Fu Yan didn’t dare go out.
Second-rank demonic beasts were already cunning. She only had one life; she wasn’t going to gamble it away on a guess. Better safe than sorry.
Time trickled by. Wedged in the crack, Fu Yan grew drowsy and hungry. She had food inside her qiankun pouch, but in her current contorted position, there was no way to get it out and eat.
Thinking of this, she finally forced herself to perk up.
“This won’t do. If this keeps up, I’ll be drained to death in here. Heaven never completely cuts off a person’s path—I refuse to believe I’ll just die like this.”
She started inching her way outward bit by bit. The moment one leg pushed out of the crack, she sensed something was wrong and jerked it back.
In the same instant, a gray-brown shadow slammed into the opening again.
“…”
Fu Yan felt a vein throb at her temple. This Bloodthirsty Ice Wolf had way too much patience. It was still waiting for her at the bottom of the cliff.
What a freak.
Forcing herself to calm down, she suddenly noticed her body felt much looser in the crack than when she first squeezed in. It seemed that because the Ice Wolf had been smashing at it nonstop, the fissure in the cliff had quietly widened.
With that realization, she turned her gaze deeper into the crack. It was pitch black inside, not even a hint of light—she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face.
“If I can’t get out, then I’ll go in. Even if I have to claw at the rock with my bare hands, I’ll dig myself a way through.”
Staring into the darkness, Fu Yan gave herself a firm, morale-boosting whisper.
Then she shoved aside all hesitation and began feeling her way inward, inch by inch.
The crack was unusually deep, and the farther she went, the narrower it became. But with all routes of retreat cut off, she had no choice but to grit her teeth and push on.
Fu Yan had no idea how long she crawled like that. Eventually, the passage suddenly widened. Slowly, she went from having to edge sideways along the wall to being able to walk forward facing straight ahead.
It was utterly dark inside, not a trace of light.
Now that she finally had room to move, Fu Yan hurriedly took a fire-starter from her qiankun pouch and lit it.
In an instant, warm red light filled the surroundings.
“What is this place, exactly?”
Fu Yan gnawed on some dry rations as she examined the area in the flickering glow.
At first, she’d thought the crack in the cliff was just an ordinary fissure, but now she wasn’t so sure.
She followed the passage for an unknown length of time until her vision suddenly opened up. She’d reached the end—and it turned out to be a cave.
She set the fire-starter down on a convenient spot, then took out two more and lit them. Only then did the cave grow somewhat bright.
Black stone walls surrounded her. The space wasn’t large, only about the size of a typical bedroom. The stone cave was completely empty, as if no one had ever set foot in here.
Fu Yan couldn’t help feeling disappointed. There was no obvious escape route as she’d hoped. With stone this thick, if she actually tried to dig through it with her bare hands, she’d probably be at it for the rest of her life.
She slumped weakly onto a nearby rock, chewing her dry food without enthusiasm and letting out a lonely sigh.
When she finished eating, she was just about to grab a fire-starter and retrace her steps, ready to fight that Bloodthirsty Ice Wolf to the death, when something on the illuminated stone wall caught her eye.
There seemed to be markings carved there.
“What’s this?”
Curious, Fu Yan picked up the fire-starter and moved closer, pressing herself right against the wall. In the soft light, she scrutinized the markings. They looked like… writing.
“According to the basic logic of xianxia novels… did I just stumble onto some heaven-defying cultivation method?”
Interest sparked, she stared more intently.
After staring for quite a while, she realized it wasn’t a cultivation manual at all. It wasn’t even writing—just gouges left by sword qi.
It looked like someone had practiced their sword here.
Realizing how naive she’d been, Fu Yan shook her head, speechless.
“So those protagonists in novels who casually trip over heaven-defying techniques all over the place are totally fake.”
“Well, it’s not like I’m the main character anyway.”
In the novel Cultivating Immortality, Seeking the Dao, the male lead was someone else entirely. She was just a background extra.
Just as she was spiraling into self-mockery, something else on the stone wall caught her attention: a sword was embedded there.
Who knew how many years it had been stuck there? The blade was corroded with rust, looking utterly pathetic.
“Forget it, having a sword is better than nothing. At least I won’t have to fight that Bloodthirsty Ice Wolf barehanded when I go out.”
She hurried over and reached out to pull the sword free.
She’d assumed a rusted sword like this would be hard to dislodge, so she grabbed the hilt and used every ounce of strength she had, yanking backward with all her might.
To her surprise, the sword came free effortlessly. Because she’d pulled so hard, she lost her balance and fell flat on her backside.
“Ugh—”
She hissed in pain. Once she steadied herself and took a proper look, she realized the reason it had come out so easily was because it was… it was…
It was actually a broken sword.
Seeing the truth, Fu Yan was so angry she almost wanted to use the blade to slice her own neck and be done with it.
Of course, that was just a moment of furious fantasy.
Broken or not, a sword was still a sword. She slowly stood, brushed the dust off the blade, and only then noticed two characters carved into the hilt: “Linglong.”
“Linglong Sword…” she murmured.
As the words left her lips, the broken sword in her hand trembled slightly. A tiny point of light emerged from within, shot out, and plunged straight into Fu Yan’s mind.
The next moment, before she could react, she felt something racing around inside her sea of consciousness.
Soon, a layer of glowing text unfurled before her eyes, lines of writing appearing one after another.
Fu Yan stared, then slowly read them out loud.
“Frost Tempering Body Art…”
When she’d finally absorbed all the information contained in that light, she realized the Frost Tempering Body Art was a body-tempering technique, its grade unknown.
In this world, for every cultivator, tempering the body was the foundation. A good body-tempering technique was the best groundwork one could ask for, letting your cultivation efforts yield twice the results with half the effort.
It was like building a house: without a solid foundation, no matter how beautiful the upper floors looked, they were all just for show. So the higher the grade of a body-tempering technique, the more valuable it was.
The original owner of this body had been just an ordinary person. No outstanding talent, no powerful clan backing her, and not a single body-tempering manual to her name. That was why she’d been so desperate to open up her qi sea and break into the Aperture Opening stage—only as an inner disciple of the Waterfeather Sect would she even have the chance to choose a basic body-tempering technique.
And now, Fu Yan had somehow obtained a body-tempering technique from a broken sword. No wonder she was so stunned.
“But I still don’t know what grade this thing is,” she muttered.
Body-tempering techniques were divided into five grades. First-grade was the most precious; fifth-grade, the most common. “Common” didn’t mean easy to get, though. They weren’t cabbages in a market.
Take the Waterfeather Sect, for example. They didn’t even have more than five fifth-grade body-tempering manuals in total, and only inner disciples were allowed to pick from them.
As for first and second grade, those hadn’t appeared in the entire Minbei Domain for hundreds of years. The sect had only a single third-grade technique, and that was reserved for generation after generation of sect masters. Fourth-grade techniques were limited to the elders and a few disciples with exceptional talent.
That was how precious body-tempering arts were.
Fu Yan remembered that the male lead cultivated a first-grade body-tempering technique—the highest tier. His cheat really wasn’t anything small.
Thinking of that, she carefully reviewed the Frost Tempering Body Art in her mind again, but she still couldn’t tell what grade it was.
“Whatever. At worst, it’s a fifth-grade technique. Even if I become an inner disciple and go pick one, it’ll only be fifth-grade anyway, so it’s not like I’m losing out.”
She quickly sorted out her thoughts. Right now, the most important thing was to raise her strength as fast as possible.
She sat down in the stone cave, legs crossed, and prepared to start cultivating this technique.
The Frost Tempering Body Art was divided into three stages. Once completed, it would grant the so-called Icebody Constitution.
Fu Yan didn’t know what exactly that constitution entailed, but it sounded impressive enough. Of course, mastering all three stages wouldn’t be easy. Still, she wasn’t worried—cultivation was something you did step by step. No one got fat from a single bite.
At some point, the fire-starters had burned low, their light dimming considerably. Eyes closed, fully focused on cultivation, Fu Yan didn’t notice. She poured all her attention into the Frost Tempering Body Art.
She had no idea how much time had passed. When she finally opened her eyes again, the cave was pitch black; every light had gone out.
But she didn’t have the attention to spare for that, because she could clearly feel the streams of energy in her body surging wildly.
Something inside seemed ready to erupt.
The spiritual qi of heaven and earth around her was rushing as well, restless and eager, like a cat in heat, swirling frantically around her.
Fu Yan suddenly broke into a grin.
“I’m finally about to break through!”
