When Zhu Xuelian left the formation hall, her steps caused ripples on the surface of the stairs — small wobbles and vibrations in not only matter but space itself. Less noticeably, the air currents slowed around her, parting in a manner that was only somewhat visible in how her hair moved.

  She was a Gold Core cultivator now, and she had not yet become accustomed to the intrinsic properties of what this meant, in a physical sense.

  The month she had spent in the Secret Sword Realm Nexus was not without its benefits, even though Zhu Xuelian’s result was far less than the best she could hope for — it was enough, but it could’ve been better. Still, Zhu Xuelian wasn’t greedy or disappointed, as she reflected on all that she gained.

  The way the floor rippled beneath her steps was an indicator of her successful Core cultivation. The prevalent method of Core cultivation was the Five Element Harmony Art; suitable for cultivators who had five spiritual roots of varying, but mostly equal purity. This described virtually all cultivators of the Sky Continent.

  Sects, generally, had their own derivative and optimization of this art, and this was the main service they provided.

  Now and again, a cultivator would be born with three or two spiritual roots which would be of higher purity — they’d come to be known as geniuses, blessed by the heavens — and they could still use the Five Element Harmony Art to construct their Gold Core. Even though this would be less effective, it would still end up being a more efficient and powerful Gold Core.

  Very rarely, as is the case for Mu Jingyu and Wu Yulan, someone would be born with a singular root — or on even rarer occasions, a heavenly root — and this would be an era-defining talent, and countless resources would be spent to find obscure and difficult methods to form the appropriate Gold Core.

  The defining elements that all these cores had in common were size and the gold color. It was in the name — gold core.

  Zhu Xuelian’s was nothing like that. It was tiny and colorless. It wasn’t the golden sun that filled her dantian with its radiating power — it was a black, fathomless sphere that crackled and roared with energy.

  This method that Zhu Xuelian learned from Yaoyue was so alien in concept to her that she couldn’t even make an educated guess about its properties or benefits. Even now, a part of her wondered if her core was inferior or defective, but she had faith in Yaoyue, and she deeply believed that if she retraced her steps as she was back then, she could help Yaoyue recover. Especially if she also gave all the lifespan-extending vitality back to Yaoyue — nine hundred years, in this case.

  No, this core did not follow the principle of harmonizing the five elements which were the intermediary process of phenomena itself. From the Yin and Yang, the four directions, five elements, and eight trigrams.

  Her gold core was the absence of all these things; held together by the supreme law of space encoded in the Dao Law of Fractured Sword, its overwhelming energy restrained by the fire element of Salvation Ashes — the minor adjustment to Yaoyue’s method that was necessary for Zhu Xuelian to accomplish it in the first place.

  Though she did not think that this core went against the law of heaven, she still felt like a devil for straying so far from orthodox tradition and common wisdom.

  More poignantly, gold — otherwise known as the metal element — was represented by Heaven itself. Without a doubt, the core Zhu Xuelian possessed — while black — was a gold core, meaning that if she could extract it somehow and use it in alchemy, it would have gold-element properties and tremendous tribulation consequences.

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  Thanks to Salvation Ashes, forming her gold core wasn’t a challenge at all. It just happened. Since Zhu Xuelian did not possess any bottlenecks in her cultivation, she could only hold back the formation of her gold core for so long, which is why she went to the Secret Sword Realm Nexus in the first place — to master Fractured Sword just enough to recreate the gold core of her past.

  In that place, with its extremely dense qi, even if she had bottlenecks, it would be trivial to form a perfect, top-grade core. It almost felt like a cheat. Billions of cultivators struggled against the limitations of their environment and knowledge to form gold cores — even regarded this feat as a fortunate blessing — and yet, in the Secret Sword Realm Nexus, all of this seemed like a joke.

  Yaoyue was a divine treasure — literally. Though the world had no concept of what a divine treasure could do, other than a vague statement of heaven-defying possibility, Zhu Xuelian had a glimpse, and it overturned everything she knew.

  The reason the Seven Killing Swords sect wanted her dead wasn’t simply because she offended them so gravely that there was no other reconciliation possible — at least until she killed their future patriarch — but what they truly wanted was Yaoyue. Killing Zhu Xuelian was merely a distraction from their true goal — having her possessions transferred to them as reparation for the grievous sins she supposedly committed.

  What sin?

  Zhu Xuelian stared at the sky. In the past, she would still get angry thinking about it; how she fell in love with a fabricated dream and devoted herself to a man who exploited her, humiliated her, degraded her, broke her cultivation, and left her to die.

  But now, she could not even bring herself to feel anything about it. It didn’t matter.

  He was dead now.

  “Sister Zhu?” a voice brought her back from her thoughts, and she turned to look at the source and saw Sun Yongzheng.

  He was a Nascent Soul cultivator now. The usually nervous energy and alertness stimulated by an unknown place were no longer present in him as if he had come to regard this as his new home and become accustomed to its strangeness.

  “Brother Sun,” Zhu Xuelian said, then smiled. “Congratulations on Nascent Soul Ascension.”

  “Thank you, Sister Zhu,” Sun Yongzheng said. “Likewise. It seems you have made tremendous progress.”

  “Please, brother Sun, you can call me by my name now. Aren’t you my senior?” Zhu Xuelian chuckled.

  “You still call me brother Sun, Sister Zhu,” Sun Yongzheng replied, full of mirth.

  Zhu Xuelian scratched her cheek. “You are right. We’ll have to work on it.”

  Sun Yongzheng nodded. After a moment, he inhaled. “Where have you been? We could find no trace of you.”

  Zhu Xuelian turned around and pointed to the Formation Hall. “There’s a formation there that was beneficial to my cultivation. It is on the second floor.” After a pause, Zhu Xuelian added. “Maybe soon you’ll be able to go there as well.”

  The momentary confusion at the mention of a second floor dissipated with Zhu Xuelian’s latter statement, and Sun Yongzheng nodded. After all, they did not have access to the second floor, nor did they know one existed.

  “I am sure the others are eager to see you; I was on my way to meet them at the Killing Field. Would you like to join, Sister Zhu?” Sun Yongzheng asked.

  Zhu Xuelian nodded. “Certainly. I also wish to speak to them about our plans.”

  “Good, good,” Sun Yongzheng hummed. “We were thinking the same thing.”

  Zhu Xuelian nodded again, but this sort of wording implied something that Zhu Xuelian had suspected.

  “Brother Sun, may I ask you a strange question?” Zhu Xuelian asked.

  “Please, Sister Zhu, don’t hold back,” Sun Yongzheng said.

  “How long has it been since you last saw me?” Zhu Xuelian asked.

  Sun Yongzheng thought for a moment. “Nine or ten months?”

  So that’s how it was.

  The passage of time within Yaoyue’s Inner World was much slower than outside it, however, this was not the Inner World. However, Yaoyue once told her that time within the Secret Sword Realm Nexus passed ten times faster than in the Inner World.

  To Zhu Xuelian, only a month had passed.

  Sun Yongzheng regarded Zhu Xuelian for a moment, his expression thoughtful.

  “What’s the matter, Brother Sun?” Zhu Xuelian asked.

  “I was just thinking that it might be better if I bring you up to speed before you meet the others,” Sun Yongzheng said. “A lot happened while you were absent, and there are some conflicting opinions.”

  Zhu Xuelian smiled, thought about it for a moment, and then spoke confidently. “No need, brother Sun. Maybe a fresh perspective will be more useful.”

  Sun Yongzheng nodded, satisfied with the answer, as if he had the same thing in mind, despite his offer.

  “Let us go, then,” he said and set off toward the Formation Hall.