“Hey, Qian Yu, I left some food outside your tent for you,” Zhong Chun’s words reverberated through the tent but Qian Yu didn’t seem to hear it as he stayed crouched in the tent staring at Zhen Yue on the ground. Her face was pale full of beads of sweat and there was a towel on her forehead. Meanwhile there was a large bandage on her body where Qian Yu had already applied the antidote to the wound. 

‘Zhen Yue… I’m sorry,’ Qian Yu continued to look back on what happened. When he realized that Cao Tu was the one who injured Sun Hong so badly, he blanked out for a few seconds as a wave of emotions and memories swept over him. 

Originally, he had felt anger and resentment but after he had practically saved Zhen Yue with the antidote, Qian Yu felt conflicted and confused. In the end, if he didn’t blank out or ran away earlier, it would have been fine so he was to blame.

The hours passed as each second continued to torture Qian Yu and a day later, Zhen Yue’s eyes weakly opened.

“Argh,” she weakly moaned from the pain. 

“Zhen Yue! You’re awake,” Qian Yu yelled as he got up and went over to her side.

“Are you still in pain?” Qian Yu realized he let his emotions get over him again as he asked her more quietly. 

“Mmm, just a bit,” Zhen Yue quietly said as she nodded. 

“I-I’m sorry Zhen Yue. This is all my fault. I put you in this position,” Qian Yu apologized as he looked downwards, avoiding eye contact with her. 

Turning her head towards Qian Yu, tears filled Zhen Yue’s eye as she saw Qian Yu. While he was sitting down, he wasn’t sitting with legs crossed but rather on his knees with his head bowed. 

Even though their relationship wasn’t the traditional master and slave, there were some boundaries that had to be respected. 

“Master, it’s fine,” Zhen Yue reached over and grabbed Qian Yu’s hand.

As Qian Yu looked upwards and looked at Zhen Yue, she continued, “Master, look, your eyes are so red.”

“It’s been hard for both of us and neither of us wanted this. Nobody’s perfect and we all make mistakes alright?” she said as she started sitting upright causing the wound to start bleeding again. 

Nonetheless, she didn’t mind as she leaned forward and spread open her arms before hugging him. “So it’s fine. Everything’s alright now, so let me comfort you, ok?” Zhen Yu said as she leaned her head on his shoulder.

“Zhen Yue… thank you,” tears welled up in Qian Yu’s eyes.

“Master, I think I know the answer to the question I asked you before,” Zhen Yue muttered and smiled as she held him in her embrace.

Before long, Zhen Yue returned to lying down and silently, the hours passed as they comforted and talked with each other.

“Sun Hong is pretty interesting. Hehe, I didn’t know you were so close with the Two Handed Destroyer that I’ve heard about in the past. Even though slaves were confined, it was a necessity that we were given information about events in the world to stay up to date. I can’t wait to meet her!” Zhen Yue laughed cheerfully as some color had returned to her previously pale complexion. 

“Mmm, one day hopefully,” Qian Yu said, feeling a lot better now. The two talked about many things and it eventually led to Qian Yu talking about his love interests. Other than Sun Hong, Qian Yu had touched a bit upon Zhao Xieren who he admired since joining the sect and the caring Bai Jia who was like an older sister.

“So master… who do you like sleeping with better? Me or her?” Zhen Yue said as a mischievous smile appeared on her face.

“Ahem! You silly girl! I see you have the energy to joke around with me now?” Qian Yu grew embarrassed as he lightly tapped Zhen Yue’s forehead. 

“Ow!” Zhen Yue pouted.

“Alright, you should get some rest now,” Qian Yu said as he leaned in for a quick kiss. 

“Mmm,” Zhen Yue blushed as Qian Yu kissed her.

“Thank you Zhen Yue, I feel a lot better now,” Qian Yu smiled as he left the tent letting her recuperate. Additionally, Qian Yu decided to return to the battlefield to hone his abilities, fueled with the desire to grow stronger more so than ever.

---

Like that, a few days passed and by now it was approaching two weeks. Everyday was a consistent training program that Qian Yu took advantage of.

“It’s a brown rhino, Qian Yu, it’s all you!” Zhong Chun yelled out. 

“I know,” Qian Yu said as he ran forward following the yellow serpents. 

As expected, a wall was formed as the serpents flew towards the stone wall. Placing his hand on the wall, Qian Yu took a deep breath as he channeled Lightning Spasm and proceeded to punch forward. 

“Bam!” The base of the wall crumbled as Qian Yu’s fist made contact with the wall. 

‘Onto the next one,’ Seeing the wall crumble, Qian Yu ran off with complete confidence that the rest were able to deal with the brown rhino. Seeing an uncommon ranked spiritual beast in the distance, Qian Yu speedily ran towards it to take it down as quickly as possible with the others. 

Yet in the distance, far away, a pair of eyes were watching the whole thing. As he saw Qian Yu perform Lightning Spasm, he chuckled, “Hahaha, that isn’t an internal fist martial technique. How interesting.” 

Finally, after 8 hours, Qian Yu was on his way back. ‘Fortunately, no crazy strong spiritual beasts like the other day,’ Qian Yu yawned as he was returning to take his break.

As he opened his eyes however, he saw a person standing a few dozen feet in front of him. 

“Hello there,” Qian Yu instinctively greeted him as he had grown friendly with the other fighters in the front. 

Yet as he glanced at the person in front of him, he quickly realized who he was. 

“This one greets Martial Emperor Qiu Tai,” Qian Yu said as he got down and bowed. Not only was he the one overseeing everything, but he was also someone at the apex of the world in terms of strength. 

“Very good. Stand up, shall we talk?” Qiu Tai said as he turned around and started walking. His voice was calm without a hint of impatience.

“Yes, of course,” Qian Yu respectfully agreed as he stood up and followed Qiu Tai nervously wondering what a Martial Emperor was here for.

‘That wasn’t there before,’ Qian Yu thought as the two arrived in front of a small bamboo house.

Arriving at the door, Qiu Tai opened the door as Qian Yu saw the interior, a simple setup consisting of a small one person bed, a table, and some chairs. 

“Surprised to see me? Just because I’m a Martial Emperor doesn’t mean I sit in a room cultivating all day. It’s good to come out and meet some younglings every now and then. Anyways, come sit Qian Yu,” Qiu Tai had walked towards one of the chairs and sat down before he motioned Qian Yu to do the same.

‘He knows my name!’ Qian Yu couldn’t help but get excited inwardly.

“Thank you, General,” Qian Yu did a quick bow as he went to sit down in front of Qiu Tai.. 

Pouring some alcohol, Qiu Tai said, “Have a drink. It’ll be a long talk. First off, I want to first thank you for the intelligence on Peng An. It was a big help and saved us plenty of time and I have a reward for you.” 

‘They know it was me?’ Qian Yu thought as he accepted the small white jade cup with both his hands. After a few seconds, Qian Yu could guess what happened.

“Anyways, onto the important thing. I would like to invite you to our organization,” Qiu Tai bluntly said.

“Organization, what do you mean by that? Is it like an army or something?” Qian Yu asked. Qiu Tai was called a “general” but he didn’t understand what the title was used for. Normally, some families had large armies of cultivators and there would be a general guiding it. This wasn’t the case obviously.

“I wouldn’t say it’s an army. More like a special force,” Qiu Tai said. 

“Special force?” Qian Yu repeated.

“The organization is an important one that all the official powers know about. To explain what we do, I first need to explain some things. You are knowledgeable with the Hunted List right? What about the Month of Hell?” Qiu Tai asked. 

“Yes, I know a decent amount about those two,” Qian Yu nodded. 

“Good good. During the Month of Hell, numerous cultivators throughout the world went crazy and berserk. At the time, we didn’t know why, but later on, we discovered the cause of it with the help of a certain person. Essentially, their soul world was corrupted.” Qiu Tai said. 

“Corrupted soul world? How does one get corrupted? Perhaps karma or something?” Qian Yu asked. 

“No matter whether you were a good person or a bad person, it didn’t matter. Everyone was vulnerable to this corruption which we believe to be from the Demon of the Abyss, the name given by the hero who appeared in the Month of Hell and saved the world from being destroyed,” Qiu Tai explained as he saw Qian Yu nod. 

“Regarding this person, we have named him the ‘White Immortal’ as his strength was far stronger than our own powerhouses. Mankind has always sought the path to immortality but we have never found it. We believe him to be the key to what we have been searching for all this time. Despite being a Martial Emperor, one day, I’ll be nothing more than a skeleton in a coffin.” Qiu Tai sighed. 

“While most public records say that he was never seen again after he started fighting with the Demon of the Abyss, that isn’t true. A week after the two started fighting, the White Immortal appeared before the remnants of the powerhouses and gave something to us before disappearing, never to be seen since then. It was none other than a cultivation technique titled the Immortal Soul,” Qiu Tai said.

“Being a cultivation technique given by the strongest person mankind has seen, there was a lot of excitement at first. Yet sadly, it failed to meet expectations. The technique itself was unique with many weird things about it. As a cultivation technique, it had 9 layers similar to a heaven ranked cultivation technique. However, regarding the martial techniques, it basically offered nothing. There was only 1 martial technique in the whole cultivation technique!” Qiu Tai explained.

“However, that didn’t stop some people from trying the technique. And so a few people started learning it. But it wasn’t easy as it was a technique that revolved around the soul, one of the most mysterious concepts in existence. Still, there were geniuses that tried the technique and soon, there were some findings from the technique” Qiu Tai stopped to drink some alcohol. 

“Firstly, it was a technique that didn’t require qi to cultivate. You needed to “understand the soul” and cultivators and there isn’t really a simple and straightforward method of doing this. Personally, I had breakthroughs while fighting other cultivators, teaching talents in my family, or just travelling around,” Qiu Tai explained. 

“The second finding was that every time you enter the next stage of the technique, your soul world will get stronger. This was actually pretty important and useful because it would make your domain stronger when you use it to fight. However, the last finding was the most important one. Once you learn and start practicing this technique, your soul world will experience a permanent change. With regular techniques, you can always stop using the technique and forcefully change your soul world to discard the laws and remnants of the cultivation technique but it was different with the Immortal Soul,” Qiu Tai said.

“This brought up a serious issue because it limited your fighting power. Instead of a regular cultivation technique, the Immortal Soul didn’t do anything besides make your domain stronger. So, the question came down to whether it was better to have a stronger domain or a complete additional set of techniques to fight with. In reality, it was actually in favor of a stronger domain by a large margin,” he continued.

“However, there was still an issue with this when the most talented person at the time, an 18 year old Martial Lord, committed to learning the Immortal Soul and as he did, wasted his potential focusing too much on it. Spending a life in solitary, he never fully mastered the technique and mastered only up to the 7th layer which became the major factor making people not want to cultivate it. It was just better to focus on a technique that you could fully master as it would no doubt be stronger,” Qiu Tai sighed.