Chapter 139 – The Most Unique Sixth Rank, Revealing the Blood Blade Patriarch’s Identity - Part 1

Cradled in Li Yuan’s arms, Sheng’er smelled sweet and fresh, not even a hint of the corpse-like stench that seemed to follow the crows everywhere. The comforting warmth of her soft body pressed against his cheek, and as he hugged her, he felt his heart melt.

In that moment, every shred of anxiety and pressure, every little care and trace of bloodshed seemed to vanish. Holding his daughter brought him a quiet peace unlike anything else.

Not far away, Yan Yu was chatting and laughing with Xue Ning.

In Xue Ning’s arms, little Ping’an clung stubbornly to his mother, refusing to walk on his own. When the two women spotted Li Yuan spinning around with Sheng'er in his arms, they both broke into smiles.

Xue Ning teased the boy, joking, “Look at your older sister. You can walk just fine now, can’t you?”

Ping’an, only a year old, didn’t really understand what she was saying, but promptly burst into tears, prompting Xue Ning to hastily soothe him.

A bitter wind hissed, and the cold of falling snow weighed upon the courtyard. Icicles clung to the eaves in jagged lengths like crystal shards. Occasionally, the wind snapped them off, sending them crashing to the ground in glittering splinters.

Leaning against a wall, Yan Yu watched her husband and daughter with a gentle gaze. But when her eyes fell upon the girl’s featureless, milky-white pupils, she let out a soft sigh.

Overhead, crows circled, their black silhouettes stark against the snowy rooftops, mirroring her daughter’s pale eyes. She couldn’t help wondering, yet again, why her Sheng'er was so strange. Could it be connected to that dream?

In that recurring dream, Yan Yu found herself paralyzed, unable to speak. A white-robed figure stood by the window with its back to her, never once turning around. The room lay empty and foreboding, plunged in gloom so deep it was like being trapped under heavy black cloth, while outside the window blazed a terrifying brightness, as though the sun were just inches away.

A few days ago, when Sheng'er took her first steps, the dream shifted. Within its unsettling silence, there was suddenly life. Her daughter was there, able to laugh and move, calling out, “Papa, Mama...”

In the dream, Sheng’er had her cane, thumping it on the floorboards of that eerie little room. Seeing her daughter so carefree in that place brought Yan Yu a shred of comfort, though she still had questions she couldn’t quite frame.

Meanwhile, Li Yuan set Sheng'er back on her feet. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement from all the spinning. Dizzy, she staggered like someone tipsy and let out a helpless little “Oh nooo~,” before tumbling to one side. As she fell, she dropped her cane and flung both arms around Li Yuan’s leg. Her tiny head just barely reached his knee.

Such a delightful, comical sight snapped Yan Yu out of her worries. She walked over, chuckling, and straightened her daughter’s clothes before glancing up at Li Yuan. “Is she bothering you?”

Li Yuan was in an excellent mood, fresh from his breakthrough. In truth, his daughter’s urgent little call moments earlier had brought him to the brink, just the push he needed to advance.

“Sheng'er is my good-luck charm,” he said with a grin.

“Hmm?” Yan Yu was puzzled.

“I finally broke through to sixth rank, thanks to her.”

That made Xue Ning do a double take as she came closer. She and Yan Yu knew exactly what Li Yuan had been doing lately. Wasn’t he already sixth rank? After all, he’d singlehandedly thwarted Wei Yang’s meticulously orchestrated assault and defeated that fearsome Fragrant General prowling outside Gemhill, and who knew what deeds he’d performed on his most recent excursion to Autumnlake and Bluepond? And yet, apparently, he had still been stuck just shy of sixth rank until now.

Li Yuan knelt and cupped Sheng'er’s face in his hands. Gazing into her pearly white eyes—so mysterious, so pure—he noticed crows alighting on her shoulder, almost looking him in the eye.

Xue Ning observed this father and daughter duo. Laughing, she said, “Yan Yu, he really does seem extra partial to his little girl, doesn’t he?”

Yan Yu smiled back. “They do say daughters are their fathers’ little bundles of joy, snug and warm. Seems apt to me.”

Li Yuan himself wasn’t quite sure why he doted on his daughter so much. Perhaps it was her blindness that tugged at his heart, or her uncanny gifts. Maybe it was the memory of that line of crows perching quietly on the rooftop beside the small sparrow, or how she’d tried to have a crow follow him when he was about to set off for Autumnlake.

Whatever the reason, there was no denying their special bond.

“Papa, Papa!” Sheng'er, now clear-headed, held up her arms again, clearly wanting more.

Li Yuan obliged with a grin, lifting and spinning her a few more times before tossing her gently up and catching her. Delighted giggles bubbled from his daughter’s lips, while Yan Yu fussed, scolding him not to spoil her too much, or drop her, or any of the usual motherly worries.

Eventually, he set Sheng'er down, watching as his wife carried her off. He stood there for a while, lost in thought.

This, he told himself, was what he fought to protect.

“Heaven rewards the diligent. You reap what you sow. Let’s see the fruits of my cultivation.” Li Yuan steadied himself and tapped the empty space next to the nameless technique, allocating the 999 stat points to his unnamed cultivation technique all at once.

In an instant, a flood of memories surged into his mind. At the same time, the loosely gathered shadow blood

sand

swirling around his heart suddenly fell into a precise pattern, rotating in a mysterious, indescribable way.

Why this particular rotation? Li Yuan didn’t know. It was like someone gazing up at the night sky for the first time, wondering why the stars revolved around the sun and why they followed those paths.

He glanced at his overall combat power. It had gone from 505~905 to 635~1,135.

This small bump didn’t reflect any clear, dramatic leap—like a breakthrough to a whole new realm—yet Li Yuan wasn’t surprised. For one thing, he hadn’t learned any sixth rank skills yet. For another, his advancement into the sixth rank was really in two stages, and only after completing both would he fully cross that threshold.

Even so, compared to the likes of General Mammoth or Zhao Xiantong, his sixth rank stats were already quite respectable.

Right then, Li Yuan felt all five senses sharpen. With a slight effort, he closed his eyes, and suddenly he could pick up every noise around Hundred Lotus Manor and the distant guard towers.

He heard maids bustling along the covered walkway, heard muffled chatter behind closed doors in the distillery, heard the crunch of boots on snow as the fearless soldiers patrolled the corner tower, heard the wind rustle each withered branch... He even caught the sound of Yan Yu and her companions’ heartbeats, and the tinkering noises his goddaughter made as she tinkered with her puppets in the courtyard next door.

When he opened his eyes again, his vision was crystal-clear. He hopped onto a nearby rooftop, and the crows there shuffled aside to make room for him. Gently stroking one on the head, he gazed into the distance with eyes that felt like high-powered binoculars. He could see snow hundreds of meters away in vivid detail—every flake, its shape, its thickness.

Taking a deep breath, Li Yuan sampled the scents adrift on the air, each one forming a continuous thread in his mind. Though he hadn’t actively used his eighth rank skill, Scent Seeking, he was already exhibiting similar abilities.

That said, it was still not quite the same. He was missing the part where he could block every other scent, leaving only one to follow. That specialized focus came only when he fully mastered Scent Seeking.

In other words, simply by reaching the sixth rank, he’d indirectly gained near-mastery of an eighth rank Master level skill.

“Looks like a whole bunch of tracking skills are about to become obsolete.” Muttering to himself, Li Yuan closed his eyes again to sense the changes more deeply. Besides heightened senses, his intuition and memories felt sharper as well. A distinct feeling of comprehensive growth rose within him.

“Let’s test it out.” He hopped down from the rooftop into the adjoining courtyard, calling out to a girl whose head popped up from beneath a massive puppet. “Nian Nian, can you give me a hand?”

Tang Nian scooted out from under the large automaton. With a quick flip, she righted herself, landing in the snow. Her face was smudged with dirt, and snow clung to her hair.

She was working on a different puppet than the one Li Yuan had seen back in Autumnlake; that earlier one was already complete. It stood quietly behind her—a tall, faceless figure, both hands resting on a broad iron sword-box. Clearly, there was more than one blade hidden inside.

In Li Yuan’s enhanced sight, a floating indicator of 259~260 appeared next to it. That was a formidable number, enough to defeat Tie Sha or match the ebony marquises on a good day. And the puppet’s performance looked steady, with almost no gap between its upper and lower limits.

Li Yuan recognized it as one of Tang Qiu’s half-finished works, one he’d left behind. Partly incomplete because it still lacked a few components, and partly because it was missing the core demonic beast heart.

Now it appeared that Tang Nian had finished it, and it was powered by the Daemonheart instead. Unlike a demonic beast heart, which became permanently embedded in a puppet once installed, the metal heart could be inserted and removed again and again.

That was what Tang Nian had been doing—building the strongest, most perfect puppet she could, so she could house her birth father’s heart in a masterpiece worthy of it.

“Godfather...” Tang Nian’s eyes were blank from her long focus on tinkering. She took a few seconds to register his request, then finally asked, “What do you need?”

Li Yuan nodded at the puppet behind her. “Why’d you grind off its face? Last time I saw that thing, it had features.”

“I...” Tang Nian hesitated, dropping her gaze. She was a genius at puppet-making, but when it came to explaining herself, words failed her. After a moment, she said haltingly, “I didn’t like its old face, so I removed the nose and sealed up the mouth, leaving only the eyes.”

Li Yuan instantly guessed the reason behind it. This girl likely wanted to carve Tang Qiu’s face onto the puppet but couldn’t bring herself to do it. Or maybe she could have, but didn’t want a constant reminder of him. So she erased its features entirely, leaving a strange blank space where a face should be.

If this were just an ordinary girl grieving her father, she might nurse her sorrow in her heart and eventually learn to live with it as time passed. But Tang Nian had witnessed her family’s annihilation, spent countless miles on the run with Tang Qiu depending only on each other. And perhaps most difficult of all, her father’s heart was literally in her hands. He was, in a way, always with her. Such wounds were not so easily healed.