Chapter 511 – Small-Town Daily Life, Fourth Rank Human Soul, A New Power - Part 3

That night.

Xie Yu was especially cheerful and made sure to reward Li Yuan thoroughly.

Later, wrapped around him like a lazy cat, she snuggled close under the covers. Her thoughts drifted once again to her sister in the capital.

She couldn’t help but wonder what that iron-blooded Empress Dowager was up to these days.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

“Urgent report for the Empress Dowager!”

A commander clad in black placed the sealed letter into the hands of a palace maid.

The maid slipped past layers of heavy, dark-gold screens and handed the message to the woman waiting behind them.

She took the letter and read it silently.

Every word on the page whispered the same thing, the barbarians were preparing to invade.

But where these

barbarians

had come from...few knew.

To the minds of most Central Plains nobles, Cloudpeak Province was no different from some backwater like Wildsouth province, undeveloped, uncultured, and unimportant. No rich farmlands, no famous martial artists.

Barbarians? What could a bunch of uncivilized tribes possibly do? Let them come. Let them see for themselves what it meant to face the armies and martial artists of the Central Plains.

And yet, the message also contained intelligence from Cloudpeak Province itself, now under the rule of the newly established Kingdom of Wei.

It was a plea from the Wei King to both the Kings of Han and Chu, asking for aid.

The letter contained just one ominous detail.

About 32 years ago, the barbarian tribes invaded. Their numbers were few, but every single one of them was at least sixth rank.

Back then, the invasion never made it past Sword Mountain. Even that prior incursion had only reached the western side, never near the eastern territories, where the provincial governor resided.

Now, the Wei King had no idea what the situation in the west had become, because Sword Mountain and everything beyond it seemed to have quietly fallen under the Tang Sect’s control.

The Empress Dowager folded the letter, giving no comment.

“You may go,” she said. Her instructions, like her face, remained unreadable.

Beneath the golden screen, the Empress Dowager sat still, fingers gently curled, her sharp dark-gold fingercaps gleaming faintly. Her gaze was deep, unreadable, lost in silent thought.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Time slipped by.

Before long, it was late spring, the cusp of May.

The blossoms had all faded. The trees now stood in full green bloom.

Inside a quiet house, Li Yuan was once again slicing tofu. Day in, day out, it had become a ritual. But this time, something changed. The blade touched the bottom of the block...and the cutting board didn’t shatter.

After more than half a year of nonstop practice, of trial and failure, it finally happened; he succeeded.

The violent power, once so hard to control, had now been fully compressed into the knife. With the barest flick of his wrist, the blade slid down cleanly, without a trace of overflow.

A paper-thin, gleaming slice of tofu caught the light.

And just then, a new entry appeared in Li Yuan’s skill list.

Basic Unnamed Skill - Rank 4 (1/500)

Even for someone already at the third rank Heaven Soul Realm, Li Yuan couldn’t help the surge of emotion.

Without hesitation, he allocated 15,499 stat points. His remaining points dropped from 92,793 to 77,284.

The new Human Soul skill, still unnamed, immediately advanced to Master level.

Master Unnamed Skill - Rank 4 (8,000/8,000)

And in that moment, wave after wave of

memory

surged into him.

He remembered the hours spent grinding through failure after failure. Remembered how each setback on the cutting board was followed by some life-or-death battle that forced him to test, adjust, and refine. It had been sweat, talent, willpower—and always, the slow and steady climb.

Then came his moment of seclusion and revelation.

Then the familiar, mysterious figure who once more appeared to guide him.

That figure’s face was always blurred, indistinct, but they always showed him the next step in the path—pointing the way forward with uncanny precision. With their help, Li Yuan had made another leap, achieving true mastery.

Within his Heaven Soul, the chaotic surges of energy were now tamed by his ancestral seal and his precise control. Everything was tightened, ordered, flowing in invisible streams around a single core.

The raw force of vibration had transformed into rotational force.

And this new force didn’t need to be bound to a weapon; it could exist anywhere in the space around him, within his domain.

It was much like the blade qi he’d once used to cleave the sky.

Only now...that old blade qi was child’s play by comparison.

After some time, Li Yuan opened his eyes.

He had fully absorbed the skill. Gripping a plain kitchen knife—just an ordinary blade, nothing special—he stood. But in his hands, even an ordinary knife was no less than a divine weapon.

He took a moment to sense his surroundings, then summoned the Nine Provinces Provisional Patrol Token and, with a thought, appeared deep in some forested mountains.

He slashed forward with the blade.

Only stillness and silence followed.

No echoes of the Tranquil Sea Blade.

No surge of Dragon’s Breath.

No trace of his once-powerful Formless Blades.

None of them responded.

The reason was simple. Those skills had all been built on

vibration

...the wild, chaotic resonance of his old power.

Now, his ancestral seal was ordered. Clear. Controlled. Chaos had given way to structure. And with it, those old powers had faded, for now. In their place, something entirely new had taken shape. A higher-tier force he hadn’t even imagined.

Li Yuan stood perfectly still. Then, all at once, crimson ribbons of flame began to rise around him, thin strands, dancing like silk in the air.

This was not raw flame. It was

refined

, the result of fully compressed and harnessed destructive energy. This was what his former

withered flame

had become.

As he moved forward, the ribbons followed him, whirling and spiraling, faster and faster in their dance.

With a wave of his hand, one of the red ribbons shot outward.

It flared bright red, almost blinding, burning with unimaginable power, but it felt alive.

It extended and retracted as he willed.

Unfurled, it became a vast, crimson wall of flame. Compressed, it transformed into a twisting red serpent, long and sinuous.

This was a miracle born from the union of two forces, the raw might of the Yang flame and the perfectly ordered structure of 18,000 ancestral seal seeds.

Li Yuan gazed at the crimson ribbons floating midair, bending to his will. Then, with a wave of his hand, deep red fireballs began to emerge around him.

The explosive force of Yang flame, once wild and uncontainable, was now refined by the orderly patterns of his ancestral seal.

Under the discipline of the restraining force, this was the result.

Look closely, and one could see the flame spinning in a circle.

In a blink, fireballs shot out, hurling toward the ribbons. But as they approached, the red ribbons flared open at a thought, transforming into a wide, flowing wall of crimson.

The fireballs hit the wall like pebbles tossed into a river, no splash, no sound. They simply vanished.

Li Yuan continued experimenting, testing.

After a long while, a sudden

whoosh

came from beneath his feet. A deep red orb had formed.

Flames rolled across its surface, looking almost solid, though in truth it was pure Yang energy compressed into form.

Because it was tethered to his body, it appeared to burn beneath his feet. But really, it was a projection of force, rotating at high speed and under precise control.

Li Yuan stepped onto the orb.

With a single thought, it launched.

Whoosh!

The fiery sphere shot forward, spinning with intense inner heat. In just an instant, it carried him several miles through the air. The speed was staggering.

He looped back, circling the forest a few times, marveling at how smooth and effortless it all felt.

He now hovered midair, wrapped in crimson ribbons, standing atop a burning orb.

And suddenly, the sight felt...familiar.

So he flew to a clear mountain spring, looked down at his reflection, and it clicked.

“That’s where I’ve seen this before. All right, I’ll call this skill...Heavenbinding Ribbons.”

As for why that name? Probably because the fiery orb—reminiscent of the legendary Wind-Fire Wheels—was far easier to manifest than the chaotic ribbons themselves.

[1]

And the Heavenbinding Ribbons...were essentially a more complex, controlled version of those wheels.

Li Yuan spent some time controlling the ribbons, adjusting the rhythm of the firewheel underfoot. Then, finally, he stopped and returned to practicing his blade.

Now that his ancestral seal had brought order to his inner energy, the chaotic

vibration

had transformed into smooth rotational force.

He could no longer produce the explosive blade qi he once wielded, but his draw speed had drastically improved. His thoughts were clear, his will flowed without friction.

Before, his focus had been entirely on mastering

restraint

and

control

. But now that it was stable, it was time to explore what rotational force could do for speed. Maybe it could evolve into something new, perhaps even a blade skill.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

That night.

In the courtyard of their old house, Li Yuan drew his blade.

The speed of each draw was stunning. Each slash left behind a burst of blinding moonlight, like golden flower petals blooming in the night.

At first, Xie Yu watched with awe. But after a while, the repetition dulled the wonder. She yawned, stretched, and went back inside.

When midnight rolled around and her husband still hadn’t come in, she crept to the window and softly called, like a sleepy cat: “Husband...”

A few moments later, the sound inside turned...far less innocent.

After the storm passed, Xie Yu rested against him, voice gentle and a little worried. “Husband...that secret medicine didn’t work. Do you think we’ll still be able to have a baby?”

Li Yuan thought it over carefully.

If the tonic was formulated for fourth rank cultivators, then...well, his current body did count as a proper fourth rank Human Soul cultivator. So it

should

have worked.

He said softly, “Tomorrow I’ll take double the dose and we’ll try again.”

Xie Yu hesitated, then said, “Or...maybe you could hold back for a few days, and then...”

Her voice trailed off into a whisper.

“Your wish is my command.” Li Yuan chuckled.

1. I believe this is a reference to Nezha and his powers. ☜