Chapter 699 - Four Realms, Great Leap, Peerless Among Mortals - Part 1

Li Yuan knew that someone like Lady Yu, who suffered from bouts of hysteria, wasn’t likely to accept the situation easily. But getting her to accept it outwardly was already a major step forward.

Where there is one step, more can follow. With time, he could soothe her further.

After returning to Tang Sect, Li Yuan brought Xie Yu to meet Lady Yu, and the three of them began cultivating together in the central tower.

Xie Yu, having lived through an entire lifetime, had grown far more composed. In every possible way, she accommodated Lady Yu, her younger

sister

.

Lady Yu, despite her dislike for this woman, couldn’t help but sense her kindness. In the stillness of the night, she thought back on it carefully and realized she was the one who came later. And with that, her anger had nowhere to go.

Besides, Li Yuan had made it abundantly clear that if either of them were hurt, it would feel like a blade to his heart.

That clarity, that sincerity, suppressed the darker thoughts that had begun to take root in Lady Yu’s heart. She started to try, ever so slightly, to accept Xie Yu.

For Li Yuan, this meant the home front was finally, if temporarily, secure.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Two months had passed since Li Yuan’s return from the bestowal ceremony.

Summer was drawing to a close. The sweltering heat was behind them.

On a lonely cliffside tower, four chains swung in the cold wind, creaking and groaning with sharp, metallic screeches.

A falcon circled the tower, crying out in piercing, high-pitched shrieks.

A woman in dark robes, streaks of gray already threading through her hair, sat on a sun-scorched railing, watching the falcon.

Fine, subtle strands of golden thread stretched between her and the bird.

Li Yuan approached and sat beside her, speaking casually. “Nian Nian, this power of yours, it’s made controlling puppets a lot easier, hasn’t it?”

The woman in dark robes was none other than Tang Nian. Her eyes were fixed on the falcon. The innocence, the obsession she once wore so openly were long gone, erased without a trace, like dust scattered to the wind.

She gave a small nod, then paused to think, before describing it with a metaphor, “It feels like wearing the skin of a god...and gaining its divine strength.”

As she spoke, another thread of golden light flicked from her fingertip.

It attached itself to the falcon, no ordinary bird, but a puppet, intricately constructed and fitted with countless Tang Sect hidden weapons.

“This power only enhances the supernatural aspect. It won’t give you more than what you can handle. Take me, for instance. If I were to fight hand-to-hand, even a squad of crossbowmen could kill me. But if I keep my distance, give me enough time, and I can control my puppets to kill thousands of armored soldiers.”

She glanced down at her hands, then turned her attention to a neat formation of tiny mechanical sparrows beside her.

These sparrows were crafted from copper and iron, their hollow bellies concealing the Tang Sect’s signature hidden weapon tubes, each capable of firing 81 poisoned needles. Each sparrow weighed over a pound, far too heavy to possibly float in the air.

Yet with a flick of Tang Nian’s hand, they rose like living birds, dancing through the sky.

Li Yuan glanced at the 240~700 floating beside Tang Nian and suddenly had an idea.

“Nian Nian,” he asked, “are you carrying puppets on you?”

“...” Tang Nian nodded.

“Take them off,” he said.

She paused, caught off guard, but didn’t question it. With a sharp shake of her body, she obeyed.

A low buzzing erupted from within her, and a moment later, clouds of thick black mist poured from her sleeves, her pant legs, even her collar. The haze clung to her like a swarm, making her look both terrifying and disturbingly grotesque.

Looking closer, Li Yuan realized it wasn’t mist at all. It was a cloud of tiny, black, mosquito-like metal drones.

They streamed out of her body and scattered like a plague, settling into the crevices between the tower’s roof tiles above.

Without them, Tang Nian’s entire figure seemed to shrink. She looked noticeably thinner, more fragile, even almost malnourished. The robe that once gave her presence and authority now hung off her loosely, oversized and deflated.

“Sever the link,” Li Yuan added.

She did.

Once the process was complete, Li Yuan looked at her and saw her power floor had dropped from 240 to just 10.

That 10 was her actual base power. The previous 240 had included the enhancement from the mosquito drones. The 700 was likely the maximum output she could reach by unleashing her full puppet arsenal.

That led to the obvious question. What about his own numbers?

Li Yuan raised a hand, concentrating, carefully tuning into his own Qi.

This time, he could finally sense something deeper.

The Qi cloaking his body was somehow tied to the sun.

The character he controlled, Dusk, could not exist without the sun. Without its light, there could be no dusk, no evening, no twilight. All the colors and shapes of dusk depended on the sun’s departure.

To test this connection, he shut himself inside a pitch-dark chamber with no light at all. When he looked at his own combat power again, they remained unchanged, 1,000~3,000.

That got him thinking.

The sun is everywhere. Even locked in a sealed room, its presence isn’t truly gone. So long as the concept of it exists, its influence persists.

Seems this character I’ve bonded with is quite something. The only reason I can maintain a base level of 1,000 is because of this character.*

So from here on out, my focus should be on increasing the amount of Qi I can draw in around me.

To test that theory further, that night Li Yuan once again enlisted Lady Yu for a little experiment.

He discovered that if Lady Yu was undressed, her power’s lower limit dropped from 320 to 100.

Yu meant feathers, yes. But beyond that, the character also implied flow and movement.

Her long sleeves stirred the air with every motion. But stripped of those flowing garments, her ability to channel power dropped dramatically.

Next, under her confused and vaguely suspicious gaze, he took her to a sealed prison chamber, an area specifically designed to eliminate airflow or ambient movement.

As expected, her stats dropped again, from 100 to just 20.

It all made sense now. The so-called true insight wasn’t truly one’s own power. Like the heavenly seal of the ancient gods, it was power bestowed upon a person by Heaven.

And the key to that power...lay in the connection to a specific element of the natural world.

In Lady Yu’s case, that connection was the Feather.

Tang Nian had her Puppets..

Li Yuan’s was Dusk..

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Several days later.

“Body Art, Conduction.”

𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

Under the blazing sun, Li Yuan stood at the top of the tower, feeling the current of Qi coursing through the world. With every breath, every motion, he drew more of that power toward himself.

Golden light gathered around him, swelling and flowing across his skin like liquid sunlight. The quantity was greater than ever before.

It was a sign that he was advancing.

This power is newborn in this world. No one’s even attempted to rank its stages yet. Almost no one has even passed the entry point.

But whatever the system, power always begins its evolution with quantity before quality. So the path I’ve chosen...it’s not wrong.

Li Yuan continued guiding the light, sensing how it clung to him, pooling, thickening, growing denser by the second.

Still, this

body art

of his was something he’d pieced together on his own. It had plenty of issues.

He was, as the saying goes, crossing the river by feeling the stones, learning through trial and error as he absorbed power and adjusted his technique on the fly.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

In the blink of an eye, another two months passed.

Inside the central tower, in her private chamber, Lady Yu sat at the dressing table, casually combing through her long hair. She glanced toward the window. Out on the balcony, bathed in sunlight, stood a man glowing like a golden idol, like some divine statue enshrined and worshipped.

“Sister.”

The voice came from the doorway.

Lady Yu sighed softly. “Come in.”

Xie Yu stepped inside, sword slung across her back.

“You don’t need to treat me like this,” Lady Yu said. “These past few months, you’ve let me have him every night...and even treat me like the older sister...”

Xie Yu replied, “I’m doing it because in this life I did enter the sect after you. It’s only right. As for letting you have him every night, you’re overthinking it.”

She wrinkled her nose, waved her hand as if fending off a bad smell, and muttered with clear disdain, “Who wants to sleep with that smelly man? You’re the only one who actually likes him.”

Lady Yu fell silent.

“Come on,” Xie Yu said with a smile. “Let’s go train together. There are still things I need to learn from you.”

Lady Yu hesitated, torn. But after a moment’s struggle, she got up and quietly agreed.

“Alright.”

From inside the room, Li Yuan sensed the entire exchange without saying a word. He couldn’t help but sigh internally.

Yu’er has truly grown up.

But he didn’t dwell on it. His thoughts snapped back to the present.

During cultivation, he’d begun to notice a serious flaw in his so-called body art.

Yes, he could draw in Qi and gather it around him, but the effect didn’t last. The boost was short-lived. After a brief surge, the energy would disperse, and his combat strength remained stagnant.

He adjusted quickly, probing deeper, trying to pinpoint the problem. It wasn’t that the idea that channeling Qi was wrong. The flaw was in the execution. The technique needed to be refined through the lens of

true insight

.

The Heavens offer intention. But man has to carry that intention within themselves, or else they’ll never truly connect to the Heavens.

Li Yuan sat with this thought for a while, then took a deep breath. He began drawing the Qi again, letting it flow slowly through him.

And then, he threw another punch.

This punch, infused with Qi, followed the momentum of the world itself.

And by flowing with that momentum, he could draw even more of it in.

But something about Li Yuan’s mental state this time was different.

In his mind, he envisioned an old man at the twilight of his life. So while the punch itself started off powerful, it faltered near the end, its final motion weak and unsteady, like an old man running out of strength.

A violent strike, followed by a feeble retreat.

Utterly illogical. And yet, it triggered an explosion of Qi.

As he pulled his fist back, the golden energy that had surged forward didn’t dissipate. It looped back, curling around his fist. A strange phenomenon began. It looked as though a second layer of Qi was forming atop the first, layering itself onto his body.

That had never happened before.

Qi was like a suit of armor. Who had ever heard of wearing armor

over

armor?

Li Yuan could feel it. He was onto something. So, he kept experimenting.

Most people had to venture out and search the world for opportunities. But Li Yuan

was

the opportunity.