Chapter 156: Obtaining the Gold of Life Once Again
A rare, infectious current of joy swept outward from the sprawling training grounds, washing over the towering stone pillars of the Body Sect's mountain gate.
Leading a returning expedition party, Li Meng marched with a hurried, almost frantic stride. His hair was a disheveled mess of windblown knots, and jagged bramble thorns clung stubbornly to the frayed cuffs of his uniform. Yet, despite his ragged appearance, his face glowed with a radiant, irrepressible energy. His arms were locked in a death grip around a heavy, lead-lined metal box pressed flush against his chest.
A throng of junior disciples swarmed him, forming an impenetrable wall of eager faces.
"Senior Brother Li, don't keep us in suspense! You've been out in the wilderness for over half a year—what kind of treasure did you actually drag back?" a younger disciple demanded, elbowing his way to the absolute front, his eyes wide with anticipation.
Li Meng let out a breathless chuckle. He patted the cold metal surface of the box, leaning in to lower his voice. Even then, the raw thrill in his tone bled through. "Senior Brother Liu Yuan gave us a very specific mandate. He ordered us to scour the most remote, treacherous mountain ranges across the continent for a bizarre metal. Something pulsing with an extreme aura of vitality. He called it the 'Gold of Life'."
He paused, a massive grin splitting his dirt-smudged face. "And guess what? The brothers and I actually dug a piece out of an ancient, collapsed ruin right on the border of the Heavenly Soul Empire!"
"You actually found it?" The surrounding disciples gasped, a chorus of low, awestruck murmurs rippling through the crowd.
"Do I look like I'm joking?" Li Meng shot back, wiping a streak of grime and sweat from his forehead. His eyes gleamed with fierce pride. "It might only be the size of a fingernail, but the sheer vitality bleeding off this thing is insane. Even sealed inside this specialized lead box, just standing near it clears your mind. It matches the exact energy signature Senior Brother Liu Yuan let us sense before we left."
He tightened his grip on the box. "When Senior Brother gave us this mission, he wasn't his usual relaxed self. His expression was dead serious. I even overheard a few Elders whispering that this item is absolutely critical for his future cultivation path. Senior Brother has always looked out for us, guiding our training and shielding us from trouble. Handing him this... he's going to be thrilled, right?"
"Without a doubt!" Another disciple from the expedition team shoved his way forward, his exhausted face split by a brilliant smile. "Senior Brother Liu Yuan has been locked in deep seclusion lately. He has to be at a critical juncture. This Gold of Life might be the exact key he needs to shatter his bottleneck. Honestly? Just picturing the look on his face makes eating dirt in the wilderness for six months entirely worth it!"
"Move, move, stop showing off and get to the back mountain!" an older disciple urged, waving them forward. "Once Senior Brother sees this, the rewards he hands out will be astronomical!"
Swept up in a tide of triumphant cheers, the disciples formed a protective escort around Li Meng. They charged toward Liu Yuan's secluded residence, their steps light and hurried. To them, the heavy box didn't just hold a priceless, legendary metal—it was a physical manifestation of their loyalty and reverence for the young leader who had reshaped their generation.
High above the bustling courtyards, secluded within the serene isolation of the back mountain, Liu Yuan remained entirely oblivious to the commotion.
Inside his dimly lit meditation chamber, a stick of premium spirit-calming incense burned down to ash. Thin ribbons of azure smoke spiraled lazily into the air, carrying a crisp, pine-like scent that settled the mind. Liu Yuan sat perfectly motionless atop a smooth jade platform. A faint, rhythmic hum vibrated through the stone beneath him, matching the slow pulse of the purple-gold halo radiating from his skin.
He had issued strict, uncompromising orders before entering seclusion: unless the sect was under direct assault, no one was to approach this courtyard. Thus, the silence was absolute, allowing him to sink into a deep state of meditative emptiness. Yet, this tranquility was not rest. For months, Liu Yuan had not allowed himself a single moment of true slack.
He had dispatched dozens of teams to scour the continent for the Gold of Life and any trace of the legendary Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well. But as a transmigrator, he understood the cruel reality of this world better than anyone. Heavenly treasures of that caliber were not simply 'found'—they required immense karmic luck and heaven-defying opportunity. Their discovery was an external variable, entirely out of his hands.
The only things he could control were the relentless, agonizing refinement of his soul power and the continuous, maddening deduction required to evolve his Triple Pupils.
A long moment passed. Liu Yuan's chest fell as he exhaled a heavy stream of turbid air. The brilliant purple-gold halo surrounding him instantly fractured, receding beneath his skin like a retreating tide.
His eyelids fluttered open. In the dim light of the chamber, his deep Triple Pupils flared—three distinct, overlapping irises arranged in a perfect, captivating triangle. A strange, terrifying light danced within their depths, capable of rending space itself. But a second later, the deadly glow faded, replaced by the dull, heavy ache of deep exhaustion.
Severing his connection to his cultivation state, he pushed himself off the jade platform. His joints popped in protest as he walked slowly toward the carved wooden window, pushing the shutters open to gaze down at the sprawling, mist-shrouded peaks of the Body Sect.
"Still not working," Liu Yuan murmured, his voice tight with frustration.
Over the past few months of relentless experimentation, he had confirmed one absolute truth: the Triple Pupils were far from the final evolutionary stage of his Double Pupils Body Martial Soul. There was a vast, terrifying ceiling of power still waiting to be shattered.
His goal had been to forcibly fuse the three triangular pupils together outside of a life-or-death crisis. He wanted to freely reproduce the devastating "single pupil" form—the exact state that had allowed him to instantly obliterate Elder Li within the Forbidden Domain.
Yet, failure met him at every turn. Whenever he gathered his Origin energy and attempted to force the fusion, a hollow void echoed in his spiritual sea. He lacked a fundamental anchor—a core vessel capable of bearing the apocalyptic strain of the merged pupils. It was like attempting to construct a towering skyscraper on a foundation of loose sand. No matter how violently he pushed his limits, the Triple Pupils stubbornly remained in their divided state, refusing to fuse under normal conditions.
The stagnation of his ocular evolution was infuriating enough, but the sluggish crawl of his soul power progression was beginning to breed genuine anxiety. After half a year of brutal, uninterrupted cultivation, his soul power had only advanced by a single rank.
He was currently sitting at Rank 56.
For any ordinary Soul Master, breaking through a rank in the mid-fifties within six months would be a feat worthy of a grand banquet. But for Liu Yuan—a monstrous anomaly who used to shatter bottlenecks as easily as breathing—this was a jarring, grinding halt. He had officially hit a plateau.
"Rank 56..." He leaned against the window frame, letting the biting chill of the mountain breeze wash over his face, cooling his heated skin. "This rate of improvement is practically crawling."
He rubbed his temples, a bitter sigh escaping his lips. "As my rank increases, the sheer volume of energy required is dragging my cultivation speed down to a mortal's pace. If only I had a piece of the Gold of Life to nourish my spiritual Origin... or an Immortal Herb to violently purge and expand my meridians. Either one would shatter this bottleneck instantly."
A shadow of disappointment flickered across his eyes. He had mobilized the vast intelligence network and sheer manpower of the Body Sect, assuming their resources would quickly yield a lead. Yet, months had bled by in silence. Not a single raven, not a single messenger had returned with news.
"If only someone could deliver a miracle right about now," he muttered, his fingers subconsciously tracing the grooves of the wooden sill. Trapped in his isolated bubble of information, completely unaware of the triumphant procession marching up his mountain at this very second, the usually calculating and ruthless youth allowed a rare moment of mortal weariness to show.
His mind churned with pragmatic calculations. He was seriously debating whether to forcibly end his seclusion, pack his spatial ring, and personally hunt down the coordinates he remembered from the original timeline.
But just as he turned away from the window, fully intending to force himself back onto the jade platform for another grueling cycle of soul power manipulation, a chaotic staccato of rapid footsteps shattered the dead silence of the back mountain.
"Senior Brother Liu Yuan! Senior Brother Liu Yuan, are you there?!"
It was Li Meng. His voice was ragged, pitched high with a frantic tremor born from sprinting up thousands of stone steps and sheer, unadulterated adrenaline.
Liu Yuan froze, his eyebrows shooting upward. Li Meng was one of the most grounded, stoic disciples in the inner sect. For him to abandon all decorum and scream like a madman outside a secluded training ground... it could only mean one thing.
Liu Yuan's figure blurred. Space rippled, and in the span of a single breath, he materialized directly behind the heavy wooden gates of his courtyard. Even before unlatching the lock, his spiritual sense swept outward, instantly detecting dozens of familiar, wildly erratic auras vibrating with joy.
Creak—
The heavy doors swung inward. Liu Yuan stepped over the threshold, his gaze landing on a panting, red-faced Li Meng, backed by a grinning mob of junior disciples.
"Li Meng?" Liu Yuan asked, his voice calm but laced with a sharp, underlying tension. "Why have you returned so suddenly? Don't tell me... did you actually find what I asked for?"
Li Meng didn't even bother with a formal sect greeting. His arms trembled violently as he hoisted the heavy, lead-lined box high above his head, presenting it like a holy relic.
"Senior Brother! Incredible news!" Li Meng roared, his voice cracking with pure euphoria. "We didn't fail you! After scouring the borders for over half a year, we finally cracked open a hidden ruin and found it! The Gold of Life!"
Liu Yuan's breath hitched. A physical jolt ran down his spine. His Triple Pupils, usually pools of cold, calculating indifference, violently contracted into pinpricks.
Moving purely on instinct, he reached out and took the metal box, his mind struggling to process the sheer improbability of the moment.
The instant his fingertips brushed the cold lead, it happened.
An overwhelmingly pure, impossibly dense wave of vibrant life energy bypassed the physical metal entirely. It surged up his arm, crashing directly into his Sea of Consciousness like a tidal wave of liquid jade.
Deep within the darkest recesses of his spiritual sea, the dormant, fragmented divine sense of the slumbering Necromancer, Electrolux, emitted a faint, vibrating hum of awakening.
The suffocating haze of frustration and the bitter disappointment that had plagued him for months were instantly annihilated. They were violently washed away by a surging, intoxicating rush of triumph.
"It really is the Gold of Life..." Liu Yuan whispered, his voice barely audible over the pounding of his own heart.
The corners of his mouth twitched, finally breaking his stoic facade as a brilliant, razor-sharp smile spread across his face. He looked up, his glowing eyes sweeping over the exhausted, expectant faces of his loyal disciples. For the first time in half a year, the blood in his veins burned with the absolute thrill of impending power.
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