"If you want to make it even more intimidating, you can do this too!"
The fire infant displayed its might once more. Li Haoran's body and head were enshrouded in a layer of flame. If he suddenly appeared at night, he could frighten a whole crowd to tears.
Lu Yang seriously considered the practical uses of Li Haoran's Nascent Soul.
"If you completely dismantle your body, you'll have six separate parts attacking at once. With proper control, an enemy would face attacks from six directions, making it exceptionally difficult to defend against."
"And if only your head flies off while the rest of your body forms a headless corpse to fight, the survivability would be first-rate."
"Senior Brother Lu, that's not the only way I can save my life!" Hearing Lu Yang's analysis, Li Haoran burst into hearty laughter.
"Rejoin!"
His head snapped back onto his neck without the slightest flaw or seam, leaving no trace that he had been a headless corpse just a moment before.
"Come, Senior Brother Lu, attack me!"
Lu Yang did not stand on ceremony. Pressing two fingers together, he loosed a burst of invisible sword qi straight at Li Haoran.
Li Haoran's torso swayed slightly as his right arm detached, letting the invisible sword qi pass right through the gap between his body and the severed limb.
"How was that?" Li Haoran reattached his right arm and spun around, completely unharmed.
"Interesting. What about this, then?"
Giving Li Haoran no time to react, Lu Yang unleashed more than ten consecutive blasts of sword qi—a rain of sword qi that Li Haoran could never hope to evade simply by dismembering himself!
Li Haoran's expression shifted. With his reaction speed, dodging that many incoming blasts was indeed out of the question.
Yet a smile soon tugged at the corner of his lips.
It wasn't as if he was out of options.
He plucked off his head, grabbed it by the hair, swung his arm in a wide circle, and hurled his head away with a whoosh.
*Thump, thump, thump, thump!*
Li Haoran's body took the full brunt of all the sword qi blasts while his head turned into a streak of light and fled into the distance. Had those sword qi blasts been lethal strikes, he could have used this method to escape with his life.
Lu Yang could not help but applaud. This Red Boy Nascent Soul was truly practical, and its applications were limited only by one's imagination.
Before long, Li Haoran's head flew back, docked onto his neck, and restored him to his original state.
"*Hiss...* Senior Brother Lu, you really didn't hold back."
The moment he rejoined his body, Li Haoran felt the lingering pain from the sword qi injuries.
Meng Jingzhou stared at Li Haoran's fire infant, lost in thought. His own Nascent Soul could grant him three heads and six arms. Could Li Haoran's Nascent Soul let those three heads and six arms fly all over the place?
Unlike Li Haoran, whose offensive methods relied on casting spells, Meng Jingzhou was a body cultivator. He required seamless physical continuity. Tearing his body apart to ram into an enemy was far less powerful than assuming a boxing stance and throwing a couple of solid punches...
*Wait, that actually might work...*
An idea suddenly struck Meng Jingzhou, and he sidled up to Li Haoran.
"Junior Brother Li, let's talk business. I've gained some insights regarding the Nascent Soul stage, and I need your cooperation."
"What insights?"
"My constitution is a bit unusual—I can borrow someone else's Nascent Soul. Take this cultivation method and learn it; it'll allow you to lend your Nascent Soul to me."
Li Haoran gave him a bizarre look. This was the first time he had ever heard of borrowing a Nascent Soul.
Could it be that the Meng Family didn't just lend money, but could even lend out Nascent Souls?
"I'll look at it."
Li Haoran quickly mastered the technique Meng Jingzhou handed him. It was just a single, thin sheet of paper, exceedingly simple, and he picked it up even faster than Man Gu.
The two sat cross-legged and established a resonance. The fire infant flew out of Li Haoran's body and entered Meng Jingzhou's dantian.
Meng Jingzhou felt the power of the fire infant. This was strength unique to the Three-Soul stage, truly extraordinary.
With a loud shout, he initiated the Nascent Soul fusion and once again transformed into a divine being with four heads and eight arms.
Next, Meng Jingzhou severed four of the arms and had the remaining four hold them, turning into a divine being with four heads, four arms, and four weapons!
"*Hah! Yah!*" Meng Jingzhou swung the detached arms around, whipping up gusts of wind as he wielded them with absolute ease. These were prime weapons, suited to him better than anything else!
"It worked!"
Li Haoran's eyelid twitched slightly as he watched. Senior Brother Meng didn't look like an orthodox cultivator at all—he looked far more like the head of a demonic sect.
Eldest Senior Sister, who had remained silent all this time, finally spoke. Her voice was not loud, yet it possessed a power that instantly silenced the entire area. "Junior Brother Li, we just returned from the Nine Nether Cult and heard them recount the cult's origins. Do you possess any memories regarding that?"
Hearing that they were moving on to serious business, Meng Jingzhou hurriedly returned the Nascent Soul to Li Haoran.
Li Haoran froze for a moment at the mention of the Nine Nether Cult's origins, then gave an earnest nod. "I actually do, though they aren't complete."
"Qin Haoran told Senior Yiren that he was the eighth reincarnation, and I am the ninth."
"The reason he was certain he was the eighth was precisely because he possessed the memories of the previous seven lives."
"However, I haven't fully inherited Qin Haoran's memories yet, so the memories of those earlier lifetimes remain intermittent and fragmented."
"Speak freely."
Li Haoran nodded and sifted through the vast sea of Qin Haoran's memories for relevant information.
Qin Haoran possessed nearly two thousand years' worth of memories—a staggering amount that Li Haoran could not bear all at once. To avoid losing himself within them, Li Haoran had asked their master to seal those memories away so that he could unseal portions only when needed.
"My memories of the first three lives are extremely blurry; I can't recall what happened."
"Eighty thousand years ago, during the fourth life, a chance encounter caused 'me' to awaken and regain a portion of my past-life memories. Through them, he acquired knowledge of cultivation and set foot upon the cultivation path."
"As his cultivation advanced, other fragments from the memories of the first three lives surfaced, such as 'Nine Nether' and 'reincarnation.' Mu Baiyi should have already told you about this."
"Relying on those fractured past-life memories, the fourth life founded the Nine Nether Cult to explore the true meaning of reincarnation."
"Naturally, he made no real headway, and his stronghold was even raided by two constables. He was a loyal man, so he let his subordinates flee first while he brought up the rear. In the end, he failed to make his escape, got captured, and was sentenced to life imprisonment."
"The fifth life was reincarnated in the Buddhist Kingdom, saw through the mortal world, and became a nun. Later, she fell in love with the abbot of the neighboring monastery, and both of them returned to secular life and married under the witness of the Buddha."
"The sixth life joined the Nine Nether Cult. Relying on past-life memories, he rose to the position of Cult Master. But because he embezzled the cult's wealth for himself and fell chronically behind on paying the monthly stipends, he was assassinated."
"The seventh life was a woman who became a palace maid, spending her days embroiled in the vicious infighting of the imperial harem." At this point, Li Haoran's expression darkened, clearly reminded of unpleasant memories.
"The eighth life is the one you all know—that damned bastard Qin Haoran. He also had the highest cultivation. In an attempt to dodge his creditors, he tried to undergo a lightning tribulation to ascend to the Tribulation Transcendence stage, only to be struck dead by lightning."
"And the ninth life is me."
A truly tumultuous succession of lives.
After listening, Eldest Senior Sister asked calmly, "The fourth life was born eighty thousand years ago, whereas the eighth life, Qin Haoran, reincarnated into you immediately after death. In other words, he did not immediately reincarnate into the fifth life after dying in the fourth; there was an interval between them, correct?"
Li Haoran nodded. "Yes. The further along it went, the shorter the interval between consecutive lives became. By my generation, the interval disappeared entirely."
"Judging by this chronological pattern, the you of the first three lives was not a person of Great Xia, but rather of Great Yu or even Great Qian, right?"
"You could say that."
Eldest Senior Sister added, "The shrinking intervals between reincarnations, leading to no interval at all now, might be a countdown mechanism, or perhaps a form of accumulation. Your current life might be the final one, or something monumental might occur in the tenth life after you die."
"Indeed."
After a moment of thought, Eldest Senior Sister turned to Jiang Lianyi. "I have no further questions on my end. Senior, do you have any?"
Jiang Lianyi nodded. "Could you explain the palace intrigue and infighting in more detail?"
"...No."
"Then I have no more questions either."
Chapter 646