Chapter 263 – Your Name

During the following days, Li Guanqi focused entirely on grasping this sword technique, while Ye Feng remained unconscious for two days.

Two days later, when Ye Feng finally stirred awake, he found Li Guanqi practicing in the cave. His injuries had healed considerably during his coma, though they were still severe.

As soon as Li Guanqi realized Ye Feng was awake, he rushed over and asked anxiously, "How are you feeling?"

Ye Feng blinked at him. He could see that Li Guanqi was unharmed, but he had no memory of what had happened. The last thing he remembered was being surrounded by over twenty Golden Core Realm cultivators. His heart hurt so much it felt like it was splitting apart.

“Boss,” he said weakly, “we made it out alive?”

Li Guanqi didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He gave Ye Feng a full account of everything that had happened.

Ye Feng’s eyes widened. “A battle between Divine Transformation Realm cultivators? And you got caught up in it?! Boss, you’re lucky you survived!”

He continued, “What happened to that woman? Did she let you go?”

Li Guanqi shrugged awkwardly and pointed at a corpse deeper in the cave.

“

Uh...

not exactly.”

The sight startled Ye Feng so much that he nearly jumped up. His eyes brimmed with shock. The woman clearly hadn’t spared Li Guanqi—he had killed her.

“You... killed her?” Ye Feng swallowed hard, his voice dropping.

“Yeah. I killed her.”

“But didn’t you say she planted ice poison in you? And she was a Divine Transformation Realm cultivator! Even if she died, what about her divine soul?” Ye Feng’s voice trembled with disbelief.

Without having witnessed it himself, it was hard to accept. A starving camel was still larger than a horse, and she had been a wary Divine Transformation Realm expert. Even if Li Guanqi had killed her outright, the moment her divine soul left her body, Li Guanqi would have had almost no chance of capturing it.

Li Guanqi answered vaguely, claiming that he happened to have a way to dispel the ice poison. As for her divine soul, he said he hadn’t seen it.

He’d never utter a word about Sword Spirit—she was his most guarded secret. He could disclose the sword box's abilities and maintain secrecy with heavenly vows, but he would never reveal Sword Spirit, partly because of his own selfishness.

Since Ye Feng was awake, Li Guanqi handed him the healing pills he had found in Cheng Yun’s storage ring.

Staring at the tier-four pills in his hand, Ye Feng gaped. “Boss, first you tell me she didn’t have a divine soul, and now you’re saying her storage ring wasn’t sealed either?!”

Suspicion filled his eyes, and his voice cracked several octaves higher.

Li Guanqi stuck with his story and said, “Nope. There wasn’t anything.”

When he’d opened the ring the previous day, he had been stunned. He had never imagined a Divine Transformation Realm cultivator would be so wealthy. Inside were ten million low-grade spirit stones, which equaled a thousand high-grade ones. After all, a single high-grade spirit stone was worth a thousand low-grade ones.

Even Ye Feng gulped at the sheer amount. His clan had once struggled to pay a debt of a single million spirit stones, even after using everything they owned as collateral. And that fortune had taken his family generations of business to accumulate. It was ten times more money than his clan had accumulated over generations.

Ye Feng pursed his lips and murmured, “I guess that’s why people say there’s more money in killing than in honest work. Even if we cultivated in a sect our whole lives, we’d never make this kind of fortune.”

And it wasn’t only the spirit stones. The ring also contained many precious pills, talismans, and Daoist robes. Li Guanqi’s eyes lit up when he spotted two white cloud robes. He tossed one to Ye Feng. “One each.”

Ye Feng’s face brightened as he reached for it, but the movement tore at his wounds. One of his half-healed scabs split open, and with his arm still outstretched, he collapsed to the ground.

Crash!

“Fuck! That hurts!”

Li Guanqi sighed. “Mind your injuries. No one’s going to steal it from you.”

Ye Feng nodded sheepishly, then swallowed the tier-four pills before sitting cross-legged to cultivate and heal.

The pills worked wonders. Before long, his wounds were closing at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Li Guanqi noticed Ye Feng seemed troubled since waking up. Unsure if he was imagining it, he shook his head and went back to his practice, figuring he was probably reading too much into it.

Not wanting to draw too much attention, he simply raised his hand as though gripping an invisible sword. He recalled that when Sword Spirit wielded the Red Lotus Sword, the lotuses on its hilt bloomed and unleashed tremendous power.

Sensing his thoughts, Sword Spirit’s voice surfaced in his mind.

“That’s the second stage of the sword spirit void. At your current level, there’s no need to dwell on it. It’s already remarkable you’ve reached this stage before ascending to immortality.”

Li Guanqi pursed his lips.

If she's saying that, the second stage must really be incredibly difficult.

𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

Then he asked,

“Sword Spirit, don’t you have a name?”

She paused, then countered,

“Why do you want to know my name?”

Li Guanqi leaned against the wall and gazed at the moonlight outside the cave.

“I just think that everyone should have their own name. Human or spirit, it doesn’t matter.”

Sword Spirit materialized, landing on the sword box. She brushed a lock of hair behind her ear.

After a long silence, she said wistfully,

“I do have a name, but you’re not ready to know it. Grow stronger, kid. Strong enough to make heaven and earth tremble. Only then will I tell you my name. Only then will you deserve to hear it.”

To her surprise, Li Guanqi didn’t argue. She knew him as a sarcastic person who would surely have some snarky remark ready. Instead, his voice turned serious. “If anyone else said that, I’d think they were boasting. But coming from you, I believe it.”

Sword Spirit gazed up at Li Guanqi, her lips unconsciously curving into a sincere smile.

She stretched, her enticing figure highlighted by the moonlight. Then she turned to glance back at him.

Her voice was as soft as the moonlight itself. “I look forward to that day.”