"Once this Newborn breakthrough is fully complete, will I be able to recall everything?" Qin Ming already had a few guesses about his past.
Yet some things remained shrouded in mist, waiting to be cleared away.
He had once been Cui Chonghe, a true son of the main direct line. Why had he left the Cui clan, and why had he been dumped in Black-White Mountain to nurse his wounds after being grievously injured?
What silenced him most of all was that his own relatives had wanted to pin him down in that remote backwater for good, never allowing him to return to a world with daylight, never wanting him near his former circle.
Even though he was Qin Ming now and no longer Cui Chonghe, he still wanted to know the whole story.
Qin Ming sat in quiet meditation, his mind as placid as still water. After a brief wash, he lay down on the bed, no longer resisting his drowsiness and letting himself drift into sleep.
A silver sheen surfaced, coating his skin like a layer of silver mud. Then golden needles threaded through it, crisscrossing his body as he donned the Golden Thread Jade Clothes once more.
Dense golden needles darted through his hair in particular, continuously stitching back and forth until Qin Ming's entire skull radiated golden light.
In his deep sleep, Qin Ming's brow knitted slightly as if he sensed something. Soft sounds echoed from his skull, bringing waves of pain that soon turned scorching hot.
He woke for a brief moment, realized what was happening, and, seeing no danger, emptied his mind again and sank back into slumber.
Three spots on Qin Ming's skull glowed most intensely with golden light—the very places shattered years ago by the feather-robed youth. Golden needles appeared in dense clusters, piercing through the scalp and sinking into the bone, driving deeper and deeper.
The silver mud acted like medicine smeared across them, smoothing away every remaining trace of the old trauma. Stitched by golden needles and washed in silver light, the lingering afflictions were thoroughly cut away.
Though not fully awake, Qin Ming sensed in the depths of his subconscious the profound role of the Golden Thread Jade Clothes: it held the power of resurgence, even touching upon the true meaning of returning from death to life.
Perhaps this was a deeper truth of rebirth within the human body.
With no danger near, he slept as peacefully as before.
In the second half of the night, Qin Ming drifted into a half-dreaming, half-waking state. He saw the silk book again and saw his young self, waiting for that rough, massive hand to turn the page.
The fourth Newborn breakthrough concerned perception. Beyond sharpening the five senses, it honed instinct and intuition to an extraordinary degree, enough to save one's life in critical moments.
And because this breakthrough involved consciousness and the head, the three spots on Qin Ming's skull that had once been crushed glowed through the entire night. Golden needles stitched, silver mud smoothed over them, and vast amounts of spiritual substance drawn from the thunder-fire heavenly light poured into them in an unbroken stream.
The rough hand finally moved, turning the silk book to its fourth page. Beyond continuing from the previous text to thoroughly explain the tempering of the five senses and instinctive consciousness, it also detailed the method for the fifth Newborn breakthrough.
At dawn, Chixia City gradually brightened.
Within the city, day and night were clearly divided. Some of the more fastidious major cities even regulated the brightness of their Fire Springs step by step, letting them reach peak brilliance at noon.
In even grander metropolises, people would even create scenes of glowing sunset clouds stretching across the evening sky.
Of course, the wilderness remained forever cloaked in night. Even standing atop the city walls of a kingdom's royal capital or an expansive empire's imperial city and gazing into the distance, one would see only boundless darkness.
Qin Ming pushed open the window. The sky, brightening as fiery clouds steamed upward, was utterly different from the dim nightscapes he had seen in Black-White Mountain.
He did not feel the novelty that Wu Zheng did. He had experienced all of this before. As his fractured memories rapidly reassembled, images of the past grew clearer by the moment.
Qin Ming drew a deep breath, his heart far from calm. Gripping his mutton-fat jade iron saber, he went into the courtyard and slashed out blasts of wind and thunder!
Saber techniques, spear techniques, hammer techniques—he blended the combat methods from the three secret manuals into one, making every weapon an extension of his arms.
"Brother Qin's killing intent is running pretty hot," Wu Zheng murmured to himself in the inn.
With shattered scenes piecing themselves together in a rush and myriad images flooding in, Qin Ming's thoughts were in turmoil. It was hard to remain unaffected when confronted with fragment after fragment of his past.
Without a past, a person was incomplete. He had to accept all of his memories.
"Brother Qin, I brought you breakfast. Are you all right?" Wu Zheng appeared and saw Qin Ming swinging his blade in the courtyard.
The saber in his hands flashed like lightning one moment, quivered into dozens of phantom blades stabbing forward like a spear the next, and crashed down like a heavy hammer a moment later, setting off explosive booms.
"I'm fine. I'm in the middle of a Newborn breakthrough and got a sudden urge. I felt restless without loosening up my muscles and bones. If only a multi-mutated beast were standing in front of me right now."
Qin Ming felt that if he encountered the five-times mutated old golden rooster from Golden Rooster Ridge right now, he could run it through with a single spear strike or smash it to pieces with a hammer blow!
Not long after, Xu Sheng arrived at the inn to check on Qin Ming's condition after being baptized by the heavenly light.
"Why do I feel like the vitality in your body is even more vigorous than mine? What state are you in, anyway?" Xu Sheng was stunned and bewildered, certain this was no illusion.
"The bodily rebirth is mostly done, and my perception is still improving. I'm in a state of full resurgence right now without holding back, so my presence appears rather overwhelming."
Xu Sheng froze upon hearing this. Did that mean what he had seen on ordinary days wasn't Qin Ming's true strength at all?
Wu Zheng's eyes flickered with astonishment.
Xu Sheng said, "Don't hold back then. Come on, follow me to run a test and see just how strong your physique is after four Newborn breakthroughs. As for perception, that's far too esoteric. We aren't people beyond the mundane world, so we have no way to test that for now."
"I don't want too many people to know," Qin Ming said. His situation was delicate and his future uncertain. Before he was strong enough, if word spread to places like Qinghe City or Thousand Stars City, the consequences would be unpredictable.
He had no intention of hiding it from Xu Sheng, however. Xu Sheng already knew about him entering the Thunder-Fire Gold-Forging Palace, so hiding things from him was pointless.
"Don't worry, we'll go to my friend's training hall. She has all kinds of apparatus to test physical conditioning." Xu Sheng was intensely curious about what level Qin Ming had reached after his fourth Newborn breakthrough.
Qin Ming realized that this friend of Xu Sheng's was Zhou Lin, the woman he had gone into the mountains with to pick snow lotuses, only to have them snatched away. She was remarkably down-to-earth, having cursed colorfully the entire way back to the city.
The training hall Zhou Lin ran taught people how to embark on the path of a Newborn. Business was quite booming, with most students being teenagers.
In a city where every inch of land was worth its weight in gold, her facility took up a substantial amount of space.
A moment later, Xu Sheng turned completely to stone, unable to believe what he was seeing. Having undergone four Newborn breakthroughs, Qin Ming could hoist a weight of four thousand five hundred jin.
Wu Zheng was left slack-jawed, marveling at such divine strength as if looking upon a celestial being.
"Brother Qin, is this really your fourth Newborn breakthrough? Are you sure it's not your sixth... or seventh?" Wu Zheng was thoroughly spooked.
Xu Sheng muttered to himself, "There really are people like this. The records in ancient texts weren't deceiving future generations after all. They weren't exaggerating—I'm seeing it in the flesh."
"What did those records say?" Wu Zheng asked.
Xu Sheng replied, "A certain book mentioned that in the past, when an extraordinary youth underwent his first Newborn breakthrough, the strength in both his arms approached a thousand jin. His innate talent was terrifyingly high."
Wu Zheng grew excited. "Legends made real! Someone beside me can actually rival an extraordinary youth recorded in the books!"
Soon, he quickly corrected himself: "Wait, no. By my count, when Brother Qin had his first Newborn breakthrough, the strength in his arms must have exceeded one thousand one hundred jin."
Xu Sheng went completely numb, finding the whole thing inconceivable.
"Brother Qin, during your first Newborn breakthrough, did you really... have that much strength?" Wu Zheng's voice trembled slightly.
"I never tested it carefully back then, but it should have exceeded a thousand jin," Qin Ming replied.
Xu Sheng sighed. "Back then, Xiao Qin's arms definitely possessed more than one thousand one hundred jin of strength. For other Newborns, such innate talent is like looking upon a legend."
Then he asked, "Early spring is here. Those ancient orthodoxies, mysterious major organizations, and higher academies in brilliant lands... will all begin recruiting disciples. Xiao Qin, have you thought about where you want to go?"
"It's too early to talk about that. I don't know much about them, and there's still time anyway. I only need to make a choice before midsummer." Qin Ming's thoughts were currently in disarray because the fractured scenes were all surfacing; most had reassembled, and the rest were falling into place.
"What are you three doing, moving aside the lapis lazuli stele that anchors my hall? Did the three of you lift it together?" Zhou Lin appeared, looking suspicious.
Xu Sheng laughed heartily and gave no answer.
On the way back, Qin Ming visited a long-established bookstore and bought a stack of "night papers"—a bound collection spanning the past three years.
Official gazettes were government publications that ordinary people could not read. Night papers were run by commoners and aimed at a wider audience.
"The contents in these are very broad and avoid sensitive matters. Many major incidents are brushed over in a single sentence," Xu Sheng noted.
Qin Ming said, "That's fine. I just want a general overview of the major events from the past two or three years."
Returning to the inn, he did not step outside again, shutting himself in his room.
While waiting for his breakthrough to conclude entirely, he flipped through the night papers, mainly picking out major incidents and news related to the Cui clan.
"Dynasties come and go like flowing water, but prominent clans are cast in iron," Qin Ming sighed.
Some ancient prominent clans had existed for two to three thousand years.
Even the night papers noted that shaking a thousand-year clan was extraordinarily difficult. Through all manner of wars and unrest stirred by deviant beasts, they might suffer heavy blows, but they had never fallen.
"Two years ago..." Qin Ming swiftly searched for the information he needed, cross-referencing it with the increasingly clear memories in his mind.
The Cui clan had experienced turbulence two years ago, though the night papers did not dig deep into the root causes. They merely mentioned that two colossal entities had briefly collided before each backed down.
Qin Ming skimmed through the various major events from two years ago up to the present.
He set down the thick stack of night papers and looked at the hazy images before him. Great cities shrouded in evening clouds and spiritual mountains steaming with immortal mist all grew steadily clearer. Figures came and went; he remembered a multitude of familiar faces one by one—parents, uncles, brothers and sisters, and many kinfolk appeared.
Then the feather-robed youth, Li Qingyue, and old friends and acquaintances all walked toward him.
Qin Ming watched them placidly, as if observing someone else's unfolding tragedies and comedies.
Chapter 74