The wind by the lake wasn’t exactly gentle, and my back was drenched with sweat. Instinctively, I slipped my hand under my clothes—my lower belly felt cold, and the fat just above it was even more chilling, deep to the bone.
A faint blush crept across my face where Su Liumeng couldn’t see. It felt like… touching cold, wobbly jelly, there was a strange, forbidden thrill to it, like I was secretly doing something bad.
Su Liumeng seemed like she knew something—but also like she didn’t know anything at all.
I studied her quietly. Her straight-backed posture always gave a sense of calm and safety no matter the time or place.
After cuddling with Su Liumeng for a little while longer, the exhaustion hit me again. I had already gone to school for half the day, then came home and got into a huge fight with her—I was completely drained.
The fading light felt like a gentle hand, caressing my cheek and trailing down to my chin. My barely open eyes fluttered, lashes trembling, And just like that, I fell asleep in Su Liumeng’s arms.
“Let’s go back.”
Su Liumeng gently shook Sī Xinyan in her arms, but when she heard her breathing grow long and even, she let out a helpless laugh
This girl’s heart is really something… She can fall asleep anywhere. Doesn’t even worry about catching a cold.
Su Liumeng took off the bracelet on her wrist—the shadow of a golden dragon coiled up from her feet, circling around her body. When all the illusions faded, her figure somehow looked taller and stronger, and she carried the sleeping girl in her arms.
She scooped me up in her arms and soared into the sky.
Then, she took the jacket draped over my back and gently laid it across my stomach and thighs, using the hem of my not-too-long skirt to cover everything else, shielding any trace of exposed skin that might be too revealing.
Su Liumeng didn’t linger outside. Golden lightning crackled around her as she channeled her energy, and within seconds, she had returned to Villa No. 3.
She stood holding Sī Xinyan’s body in front of a door, hesitated for a moment, then chose not to go inside—instead, she carried the girl into her own room and laid her down on the bed.
A soft pink room, decorated like a fairytale princess’s bedroom, with a sweet, sugary fragrance lingering in the air.
Su Liumeng had always been overflowing with girlish charm, loving all things pink and everything related to it. Before she ever met the so-called God of Words, she had always been the little princess of the Su family.
And now—this girl who had once seemed like a dazzling princess in everyone’s eyes had turned around and pampered someone else into becoming a real little princess.
Su Liumeng sat alone on a chair, quietly watching the sleeping girl on the bed. She yawned softly, but didn’t lie down to rest with her.
*****
The next morning.
I woke up at 7 a.m. Staring at the ceramic-white ceiling above me, and realized—I wasn’t in my own room.
I was already quite familiar with Su Liumeng’s room, so I instantly understood where I was.
“Su Liumeng?”
I reached out to the side, but my fingers only grasped at air. I lifted my head—and froze.
I climbed down from the bed and gave the arm of the girl slumped over the desk a gentle shake.
“Su Liumeng, wake up! Why did you fall asleep at the desk?”
I noticed she was still wearing that bracelet.
Supporting her head with one hand, Su Liumeng slowly opened her eyes, half-lidded, her gaze still a bit dazed.
“You’re up already? I didn’t want to disturb your sleep last night, so I didn’t use the bed.”
“You… dummy.”
I pouted, a little unhappy.
“I went to bed early yesterday, so I’m done sleeping. You go lie down and rest.”
I grabbed her arm, trying to pull her up from the chair. But I only managed to lift one arm slightly—her whole body was like a rock, completely unmoving.
I let out an awkward laugh, mostly annoyed at my own lack of strength.
“No need to pull me. I can walk by myself,” Su Liumeng muttered, shaking her aching head.
“Be good.”
She really must’ve been exhausted. After giving me just that one instruction, she collapsed straight onto the pillow and fell asleep instantly.
“Don’t forget to wear your shoes when you go out.”
I lowered my eyes.
Hm.
Couldn’t see the tips of my toes.
…
I instinctively lifted my head, and after confirming that Su Liumeng hadn’t seen my slightly embarrassing behavior, I quietly let out a sigh of relief.
I found my flip-flops by the bed and tiptoed out of Su Liumeng’s room.
Was it Su Liumeng who brought my slippers over yesterday?
What an unbelievably thoughtful gesture.
I patted my slightly flushed cheeks. If I keep living with her like this, I’m afraid I’ll end up wanting to change my last name to match hers.
No way I’d completely fall for her just because of her tender, considerate care, right?…Right?
I tried to deny it, though my tone wasn’t exactly confident.
In the living room, I sat down on the sofa and softly called out for Si Zhiruo.
Still, no one responded.
A strange sense of melancholy crept in. I turned back to my room.
After confirming that I’d fully grasped the flow of my meridians, I began my first attempt at cultivation.
I really might’ve gained a little weight—just trying to get into the proper posture for cultivation took quite a while to adjust.
Especially my thighs and calves. They felt oddly plump, not like normal weight gain, but more like a slight puffiness or swelling.
I pushed the distracting thoughts aside and emptied my mind completely.
One must not harbor stray thoughts while cultivating—or risk falling into qigong deviation.
This was practically a nanny-level cultivation manual. It detailed every single thing one needed to watch out for—down to the tiniest aspects. Any potential difficulties were laid out with crystal clarity. Most of the parts that might cause confusion were highlighted in red ink by Si Zhiruo.
So meticulous.
*****
“Entry into Subtlety.”
That was the name of the first cultivation realm. As the name implied—it required subtlety and refinement.
In this stage, a cultivator needed to begin developing their first strand of divine sense during cultivation.
Only with a true divine sense could one fully mobilize and control energy with the ease of moving an arm or a finger.
This was the foundation of all future cultivation—the first essential step. It was often called the root of all paths, and with good reason.
The mark of completion for this realm was forming an initial divine sense core within one’s Sea of Consciousness. Before that, one had to nurture a seed in the Sea of Consciousness using energy over time.
That nurturing process—was the entirety of the Entry into Subtlety stage.
I began sensing the yin energy scattered throughout the world, guiding it little by little through my acupoints, drawing it gently into my meridians.
Three minor circulations. They combined to form a full major circulation.
I quickly completed one cycle of yin energy through my meridians, and then guided it into my dantian for storage.
Thin wisps of mist began to gather in my dantian. But since I hadn’t yet cultivated a true strand of divine sense, I couldn’t directly observe the state of my dantian—I could only rely on intuition, and I felt that there had been some progress.
Once I completed a major circulation,I opened my eyes in confusion.
Was my perception wrong?
Why did it feel like something solid was blocking my meridians throughout the process? There was none of the effortless flow I’d expected from possessing a Body of Pure Yin. On the contrary, the flow of energy was sluggish and resistant.
Since I couldn’t use divine sense to look inward yet, I had no choice but to suppress the doubts in my heart for now.
Cultivation in this world was a tier lower than the xianxia realms described in novels—but still more advanced than what was seen in typical wuxia worlds.
To summarize: It could extend your lifespan—but not by much, unless you were already some kind of immortal or undying being.
The Entry into Subtlety realm didn’t grant much combat power. Its sole purpose was to develop divine sense. Before that sense had fully formed, how could it be used for any tangible attack?
The second realm was called the Heavenly Seed Realm. It involved planting an energy core in the dantian. Only when that core fully formed did one reach the peak of the Heavenly Seed stage.
It wasn’t until the third realm, the Through-Spirit Realm, that a cultivator truly began to differ from an ordinary mortal—only then would they start to possess supernatural abilities.
The Through-Spirit Realm referred to the act of opening a direct channel from the dantian to the spiritual sea (shihai). It resembled the famed Ren and Du meridians in wuxia novels, a path that contained seven critical acupoints, all of which remained unopened. With each acupoint that was successfully unlocked, one’s combat strength would rise by a tier.
For cultivators, the focus was on nurturing the spirit—more precisely, the Primordial Spirit (yuanshen). This was a step beyond simply tempering divine sense.
To truly form a Primordial Spirit, it required an enormous amount of energy irrigation. And without a fully formed meridian network, how could such vast energy be guided into the shihai to raise a complete Primordial Spirit?
In the earliest stage of cultivation, the practitioner mainly relied on one acupoint within the shihai to directly absorb ambient energy from heaven and earth.
But I was greedy.
By right, in the first realm, one wasn’t supposed to store energy in the dantian yet. Without divine sense to guide its circulation, the energy could easily go awry.
But I couldn’t wait any longer. I didn’t have that kind of time.
I was already eighteen—lagging so far behind everyone else. If I kept following the steps by the book, wouldn’t I forever be stuck beneath them?
So, when I saw the ghost baby’s comforting little annotation, I chose the second option without hesitation.
[Actually, you can train the first and second realms together. It’s just a little tiring. But if Mommy’s not afraid of hard work, you can give it a try. With a Pure Yin Body, you naturally restrain yin energy—
So you don’t really need to worry about energy going chaotic.]
Fourth Realm.
Primordial Spirit Realm. At this stage, a cultivator could begin nurturing their true Primordial Spirit. When the Primordial Spirit fully took shape, it also marked the completion of this realm.
Now that I had a deeper understanding of the path of cultivation, my perspective had completely changed from when I first started. When I looked at Su Liumeng now, there was no longer confusion in my gaze.
I guessed she was likely in the fifth realm, perhaps even in the sixth. At her age, that already made her an incredibly formidable existence—truly worthy of the title Heaven’s Chosen of this generation.
As for the ghost baby’s cultivation level…my current vision wasn’t high enough to perceive a being of such depth and strength.
Su Liumeng had once spoken of making the illusion real. And I had briefly touched Si Zhiruo’s ghost body. That meant she had at least reached the Unity Realm.
Unity Realm—the eighth realm. As the name suggested, after countless years of refinement, the Primordial Spirit would have become fully nurtured and strengthened. It could then merge perfectly with the physical body in battle, erasing all weaknesses.
This technique was known as the True Martial Body.
Because the Primordial Spirit and body were united, one could perform unbelievable feats, comparable to the fantastical transformations seen in novels—Like enlarging one’s form to the size of the heavens.
A cultivator at the Unity Realm was essentially a walking humanoid tyrannosaurus. There wasn’t a single weak point on their entire body, and their survivability reached the peak of all cultivation realms.
Making the illusion real was another method exclusive to the Unity Realm—allowing one to temporarily externalize their Primordial Spirit into a tangible form, and instantly shift it back into an intangible, spiritual state.
This granted them a bizarre and unpredictable attack method—one that was almost impossible to defend against—just a realm. And yet, its power was already so overwhelming.
One could imagine just how terrifyingly strong such an existence would be. Once descended upon the human world, it would be like a peerless sovereign walking the earth. Who would dare claim they had even the slightest chance of victory against that?
I suddenly took a sharp breath, the more I thought about it, the more I realized just how unfathomable the ghost baby truly was.
After a brief pause, another thought struck me. My gaze grew even more shocked.
If even a Ghost King was that powerful…Then what about the Ghost Emperor, the one that the old Daoist deemed taboo—whose very name filled people with fear?
Just what kind of unimaginable terror was a Ghost Emperor supposed to be?
My little face froze in place. Then suddenly, realization dawned on me.
“Wait a minute… Something’s not right.”
Maybe…Maybe the old Daoist is even stronger than I thought.
He might be like the Crimson-robed Celestial Master, a being at the True Self Realm. Otherwise, why would he dare confront the ghost baby, fully aware she was already a Ghost King?
According to what the old Daoist had said, he already stood at the pinnacle of this world. There was supposedly no one stronger than him. So his chances of being in the eighth realm, Unity Realm, were quite low.
At that thought, my expression grew more complicated.
All I could say was: Even within the True Self Realm, there were still vast differences in strength.
Those who had reached the True Self Realm through artificial means, by relying on heavenly treasures and earthly resources, would still be crushed without resistance before a true Ghost King who had cultivated for ten thousand years.
Fragile—
As fragile as an ant beneath a boot.
That’s why I said: this world isn’t exactly a xianxia realm, but it’s definitely a step above a typical martial arts world.
According to the book Si Zhiruo gave me, even a king at the Unity Realm only had a lifespan of around two hundred years. And the Primordial Spirit Realm, the fourth stage, merely granted a life free from illness or calamity, allowing one to reach a hundred years, maybe just a little more.
It wasn’t until the sixth realm that one could live to a hundred and twenty.
I pursed my lips and stopped thinking about all that chaotic stuff.
Even a ghost baby—nearly invincible in this world—Was still diligently cultivating, still striving to break through to higher realms.
And me? I was just a little rookie, a total noob. Why was I bothering to think so far ahead?
No one could say for sure whether the ninth realm was the ultimate limit of cultivation. If that was still uncertain, then who’s to say two hundred years was the cap on lifespan?
People claimed two hundred was the max—But that was only because they could only reach the True Self Realm. That was their limit, not mine.
I had an exceptionally rare physique, one of a kind in the whole world. Shouldn’t I aim a bit higher?
Who knows—Maybe I’d have a chance to glimpse the Great Dao one day?
I suddenly stretched out my cool little hand, and gently patted my flushed cheeks—still pink from the excitement of my first cultivation.
‘No, no… don’t get ahead of yourself.’
‘I’ve only just begun my journey.’
‘It’s better to stay grounded and take one step at a time.’
Suppressing the glimmer of hope in her eyes, the young girl cleared her mind once more, and devoted herself fully to her second full-cycle circulation.