Deep within the cavern, withered yellow leaves drifted down from an unknown source, carpeting the ground in a thick layer.
Qi Yuan stepped over the fallen leaves as he made his way toward the blind girl's dwelling.
A man's purity was purity all the same!
One shouldn't make a mockery of a man's innocence.
Carrying this thought, he arrived at her place.
The sound of burbling water drifted out. Was the blind girl washing her face?
From the perspective of Qi Yuan's "male gaze"—well, he was blind, so he couldn't see a damn thing.
"Ran out of materials? So soon? Or did you come to mooch a meal?" The blind girl walked out, carrying a wooden basket in her hand.
She looked entirely composed, as though nothing at all had happened.
"Did you come looking for me last night?" Qi Yuan asked bluntly.
"No." The blind girl frowned. "What happened last night?"
"Last night... a woman ambushed me out of nowhere and... did that to me."
"You must have had a wet dream. Aside from me, there are no other women in this Divine Wood Deep Abyss," the blind girl said faintly, her tone placid.
"That woman last night... I suspect it was you."
"You had a wet dream, and the female lead was me?" The blind girl glared at Qi Yuan as though furious. "Disgusting!"
Sensing her reaction, Qi Yuan grew puzzled.
Her tone didn't sound fake.
"You really didn't go last night?"
"I was sleeping right here the entire night!" she snapped crossly.
Qi Yuan felt suspicious.
Her nose hadn't grown longer, which meant she was telling the truth.
"There really are no other women here?"
"Aside from me, there is nobody here." Her voice turned cold, as if she had taken a sudden dislike to him.
Blind Qi Yuan directed his "male gaze" toward her, questions swirling in his mind.
"Do you want to come take a look at my bed? There's still a scent lingering on it."
"You... shameless!" Even though she had lived here in isolation for who knew how long, a blush still crept across her pretty face.
"It's a floral fragrance, identical to the one on your body," Qi Yuan said earnestly.
The blind girl stood frozen on the spot, falling silent for a long time.
This was simply too preposterous.
Yet Qi Yuan didn't seem like the sort of person to invent things out of thin air.
"Fine, I'll go take a look."
She decided to inspect the scene.
If she caught the scent of anything else, she would certainly be furious.
"I warn you, don't harbor any improper thoughts!" she cautioned.
"Hey, I'm the victim here!" Qi Yuan couldn't help saying.
Even though one shouldn't make light of male victims, having to say this out loud was truly humiliating.
Soon enough, the two of them arrived at Qi Yuan's makeshift bedroom.
"This is the crime scene," Qi Yuan said.
The blind girl leaned down, her delicate nose twitching slightly. She seemed to catch a scent and fell silent for a few moments.
"Is it the exact same floral fragrance as yours?" Qi Yuan asked. "You don't happen to have a sleepwalking habit that you don't know about, do you?"
Aside from sleepwalking, she might also suffer from split personalities.
That would make things tricky.
Under the law, that didn't seem to count as a crime!
"No." The blind girl stood up.
"This floral fragrance..."
"This fragrance is like a dream, an illusion, nothing real. Who knows whether it is real or false?" Her voice carried a trace of bleakness.
"Don't speak in riddles."
He felt that she was hiding something from him.
"The Divine Wood Deep Abyss is very peculiar. Aside from the places I frequent, don't wander around aimlessly. It's easy to attract dirty things."
Leaving behind those words, the blind girl turned and walked away on her own.
She left Qi Yuan standing alone, bewildered in the wind.
"Dirty things?"
"Was I possessed by a ghost?"
Qi Yuan could only console himself with that thought.
"A pity I'm blind right now. Otherwise, one look last night and I would have known who the culprit was."
"Wait, will she come again tonight?"
"Should I take a bath tonight and try a honey trap?"
"Forget it. My cultivation is weak right now, so I'd better not tempt fate."
"If she finishes the deed and drops a 'who told you to wear so little,' I'd die of embarrassment."
"Sigh, good thing my willpower is forged like steel, or else I'd easily slip into depression."
Gathering his emotions, Qi Yuan resumed cultivating his implement-crafting techniques to forge dharma artifacts.
A mature man had to face life with resilience!
Even if he had been violated the night before, he still had to work hard today!
Yet when night fell, Qi Yuan remained cautious and slept lightly, hoping to catch the mastermind red-handed.
Unfortunately, the mastermind never showed up, leaving him rather disappointed.
The incident remained an unsolved mystery.
Several months later.
Sitting inside his makeshift crafting chamber, Qi Yuan wore a look of delight on his face.
"All Eight Arts of Implement Crafting have finally reached the master rank. I didn't expect... the fusion to be this simple."
"As expected, combat brings endless fortune!"
In the past, fusing the Eight Arts of Implement Crafting to forge his own path might have taken quite some time.
However, ever since he had fused Dying Radiance and Absolute Adaptation, the fusion of techniques seemed to have become much easier.
The Eight Arts of Implement Crafting had merged rapidly.
His implement-crafting skill had also reached the peak of the Divine rank.
"So as long as I forge another Shenlin, my portrayals of the Blind Implement Master and Divine Descent... will both come to an end?"
Qi Yuan felt exceptionally good.
...
The Yaoguang Universe.
In an unknown land, a sea of blood churned as stars plummeted incessantly, like eggs dropping into a vat of boiling oil.
"Honored Exalted Fengti, long time no see."
A terrifying figure manifested, his body towering so grandly that it spanned the size of several stars.
Amid the sea of blood, a man in flowing white robes opened his eyes. Countless cycles of reincarnation seemed to flash through his pupils before the divine radiance instantly restored itself.
"Old Man Sanmu, what do you want with me?" Honored Exalted Fengti asked, devoid of joy or anger.
The terrifying entity before him was a Realm Lord.
In terms of cultivation, he stood an entire tier above Fengti.
However, Fengti's master was an exceptionally powerful Realm Lord, and Fengti himself had comprehended the Heart of the Singularity Rule while still in the Great Venerable realm. Stepping into the third tier of the Yang God realm was merely a matter of time.
Thus, he interacted with Realm Lord Sanmu as an equal.
"Just seeing when you can step into the third tier of the Yang God realm to attain great ease and boundless liberation." Realm Lord Sanmu's form shifted, turning into the likeness of a mischievous child, though this child possessed white hair, white brows, and an ancient, world-weary air.
"Difficult," Fengti replied.
Even though he had comprehended a Rule Heart during the Great Venerable realm, transforming it into a genuine cosmic rule and engraving it upon the universe was exceptionally hard.
He had already been stranded in this realm for a hundred million years.
"You haven't been cultivating for long; this is nothing. Back then, this old man was trapped for a full 1.2 billion years," Realm Lord Sanmu said.
"Speak. What did you really come here for?" Fengti looked at him and asked seriously.
A Realm Lord possessed nearly boundless lifespan; even if a universe perished, their soul remained intact.
A speck of their true spirit would endure forever, awakening anew within the cosmic rules once the next era commenced.
Realm Lord Sanmu was an old monster who had lived through three eras. Though he tended to be eccentric, he certainly wouldn't pay a visit without a reason.
"Recently, I caught wind of some interesting news. Within the Radiant Society, the Fengti replica created using you as a blueprint... was actually defeated by a native of the Divine Wood Universe." Realm Lord Sanmu narrowed his eyes, wearing a smug expression.
Fengti was an old friend of his across generations. Realm Lord Sanmu often compared himself to Fengti, and he had always held a grudge over Fengti ranking third in combat power among those at the Five Steps of Sky Treading in the current era.
"Oh? Was it a Mythological?" Fengti pondered aloud, not particularly surprised.
Regardless of anything else, the Divine Wood Universe was an embryonic universe; it wasn't strange for a few genuine paragons to emerge from it.
However, whether those paragons could truly mature remained uncertain.
Back when Fengti belonged to the younger generation, there had been a paragon whose combat power surpassed his own.
In the end, that paragon fell before even stepping into the Yang God realm.
"No... It was a Great Venerable... or perhaps even a Venerable," Realm Lord Sanmu said, a radiant smile in his eyes.
A flicker of emotion finally showed in Fengti's eyes. "What, are you interested in him?"
Faced with such an individual, even Fengti felt a fleeting inclination to take him as a disciple, though it remained nothing more than a passing thought.
After all, that person was a native of the Divine Wood Universe. Even if he attained the Yang God realm within the Yaoguang Universe, reaching the third tier would prove exceedingly difficult.
The cosmic rules of the Yaoguang Universe would not recognize him.
However, those existences who had been stuck at the second tier of the Yang God realm for hundreds of millions, or even billions or tens of billions of years, might find him intriguing.
"The waters of the Divine Wood Universe run deep. The Dao Lord once decreed that Realm Lords must not enter Divine Wood," Realm Lord Sanmu said.
A Realm Lord had fused with cosmic rules. If they descended into another universe rashly, it could be perceived as a provocation by that universe, triggering bizarre anomalies.
Consequently, Realm Lords rarely departed from their home universe.
After all, their own universe was boundlessly vast; an ordinary Realm Lord couldn't fully explore it even across multiple eras.
"As for that disciple of mine, he is fiercely competitive. He has always wanted to become number one in combat power among those at the Five Steps of Sky Treading in this era..."
Realm Lord Sanmu possessed an incomparably peerless disciple who was merely at the Great Venerable realm.
Due to Sanmu's constant nagging, that disciple had always taken defeating the youthful Fengti as his life's goal.
"This time, his true body has journeyed to the Divine Wood Universe, preparing to cross swords with that native.
"Hehe, tell me—if my disciple wins, wouldn't that mean... you are inferior to me?" Realm Lord Sanmu chuckled.
This was the true purpose of his visit.
For entities at their level of cultivation, growing stronger was simply too arduous.
Finding a bit of amusement in life was one of the few things that brought genuine joy.
If his disciple could surpass the young Fengti, it would be a delightful tale worth recording in the annals of history.
"Hmph, aren't you afraid your disciple will die in the Divine Wood Universe?" Fengti scoffed coldly.
"If he dies, the worst that can happen is that this old man personally goes to beg... Realm Lord Suiyue, asking him to fish his true spirit out of the Cosmic Mother River," Realm Lord Sanmu said casually.
A universe with a Dao Lord was vastly different from one without.
Take the Zhou Universe, for instance: without a Dao Lord, once a being died and their true spirit was annihilated, they were truly dead.
However, once a Dao Lord was born within a universe, the Cosmic Mother River would appear, recording all true spirits within its flow.
Even if a being perished, immense supreme methods could be used to fish them out of the Cosmic Mother River and revive them.
Naturally, Realm Lord Sanmu didn't possess such methods himself, but Realm Lord Suiyue was a Realm Lord of the Myriad Things Realm, more than capable of retrieving a Great Venerable from the Cosmic Mother River.
"Pointless," Fengti scoffed. "Even if your disciple wins, ten of you at the Great Venerable realm would still be no match for me!"
He spoke with supreme pride.
"Hmph, had I not been born too early, I might have comprehended a Rule Heart at the Great Venerable realm as well!" Realm Lord Sanmu argued.
With every cosmic era, the cultivation civilization advanced steadily.
In the current era, there were even precedents of Great Venerables comprehending a Rule Heart.
In Realm Lord Sanmu's era, that had been utterly unimaginable.
"Old bastard, if you were born in my era, you wouldn't even qualify to be my disciple!" Fengti declared proudly.
"Bah, my disciple is already better than you!" Realm Lord Sanmu replied with matching arrogance. "Just wait for my good news."
With that, Realm Lord Sanmu vanished without a trace.
Fengti was left alone, his gaze turning complicated.
Right at that moment, a voice sounded by his ear.
"Have you made up your mind? Do you wish to leave Yaoguang... and follow me to search for..." The last few words seemed to be silenced into nothingness.
Fengti remained silent, offering no response.
"A universe with a Dao Lord... is nothing more than a stagnant pool of water, devoid of a future," the voice continued to tempt him.
A sharp gleam flashed through Fengti's eyes. "And a universe like... the Divine Wood Universe has a future?"
"Neither does it," the voice whispered. "Having caught the attention of Heitian, even if your Dao Lord acts, there is likely nothing that can be done. Aside from... all worlds, all universes... are nothing more than..."
"Your ambition is too grand. Time is vast, and the universe is boundless, teeming with all kinds of uncertainties—enough for me to spend my entire life exploring."
"True uncertainty? A world expressible in zeroes and ones... everything is predetermined." Having spoken, the voice sank back into dormancy.
...
"Fairness, justice, equality, order..."
Deep within the Divine Wood Deep Abyss, Qi Yuan murmured under his breath.
Before him, chilling white flames burned, releasing a terrifying aura that permeated the space.
"Shenlin!"
he called out softly.
As My Divine Descent!
At this moment, the aura belonging to Divine Descent came crashing down.
The aura radiating from Qi Yuan turned holy and majestic.
Presently, the New Shenlin was already a half-finished product, lacking only the final step.
That step was the "intent" of Shenlin—or rather, its rule.
Regarding the New Shenlin, Qi Yuan had harbored many thoughts.
He had wanted to forge it to perfection, truly realizing the aspiration: "Should injustice arise, call upon my Divine Descent."
Yet the more he pondered, the more he realized how difficult that was to achieve.
Perfection did not exist in this world.
Even an AI judge could never achieve true perfection.
The "intent" and rules of Shenlin originated from its creator.
Thus, in the end, Qi Yuan chose not to make any alterations, directly transferring the "intent" bestowed upon Shenlin by Sheng Nü into the New Shenlin.
A boundless sea of intent and rules surged across Qi Yuan's body, pouring into the form of the New Shenlin.
Thoughts shifted constantly in Qi Yuan's mind.
Finally, after seven times seven—forty-nine days—Qi Yuan slumped to the ground in exhaustion.
"It's finally done."
"And yet... it still feels incomplete."
The current New Shenlin possessed the full intent bestowed by Sheng Nü, and in terms of raw power, it was actually stronger than the original Shenlin.
Yet as he caressed the New Shenlin, Qi Yuan still felt that it lacked perfection, missing something vital.
Right then, a crisp voice sounded. "Did you succeed?"
The blind girl stood behind Qi Yuan, quiet and serene.
Ever since he had been pushed down that night, Qi Yuan had faintly sensed a subtle shift in her attitude toward him.
Perhaps it was also because they had spent so much time together and grown familiar, coupled with the fact that she had nothing else to do and often chatted with him about past events.
Mostly, she spoke while Qi Yuan listened.
The relationship between them had grown much closer.
"It's close, but still not complete," Qi Yuan answered honestly.
At that moment, the blind girl looked toward Shenlin, hesitation and uncertainty surfacing on her face.
"Would you like me to help you?"
"Huh?" Qi Yuan blinked.
Didn't she know nothing about implement crafting?
How could she help?
A smug expression appeared on the blind girl's face. "The Great Dao has fifty, and the Heavenly Derivation forty-nine; all that is imperfect stems from the escaped one.
"I shall gift it... a branch of spring."
Following her words, a peculiar transformation occurred within the New Shenlin in Qi Yuan's hands.
Qi Yuan couldn't fully comprehend the nature of this change.
Yet... he could sense that the New Shenlin was now drawing infinitely close to perfection.
Or rather, it was continuously approaching perfection.
"Perfection never existed in this world. Now... it possesses the chance to pursue perfection," the blind girl said, her eyes filled with nostalgia.
Perfection did not exist; only the pursuit of perfection lived on in the hearts of mortals.
Now that the New Shenlin had received the missing "one," it would carry that intent and move forward step by step.
This path might be arduous, fraught with setbacks, but it would always be moving toward something better.
Sheng Nü's intent—"Holding light in hand, the dark night is driven away; should injustice arise, call upon my Divine Descent"—might truly be realized one day.
The blind girl thought of someone.
"You're very much like him."
"Like who?"
"My future husband."
"Hey, don't jinx me like that!"
"Only somewhat like him. At the very least... he isn't blind. Heehee..."
"Don't discriminate against blind people. Don't forget that you're blind too."
"Hehe..."
"Regardless, thank you. If you hadn't saved me and given me the Eight Arts of Implement Crafting, perhaps... I wouldn't have been able to complete my task," Qi Yuan said happily. "The swing, and your eyes... I will forge them for you!"
"Tha—"
"Oh, right. Actually... I'm not blind. No, wait, I'm about to stop being blind."
"Ah?"
"Let me see what you actually look like!"
Curiosity gleamed in Qi Yuan's eyes.
At this moment, the portrayals of Shenlin and the Blind Implement Master reached completion, and his vision was finally restored.
He looked toward the spot where the blind girl stood.
"Blind girl?"
Chapter 542