Chapter Seventy-Five: Primordial Unity

Day and night, he had trained with a madness that bordered on obsession. At last, standing on the precipice between life and death, Qi Xiu comprehended his own path.

There was no time for elation. Above his head, a slender, delicate jade hand—soft in appearance, yet brimming with terrifying power—descended.

With clear, lucid eyes, Qi Xiu raised his hand to meet the blow, a mark shaped like a purple-gold gourd flaring on his palm.

A resounding crack split the air, like thunder exploding on flat ground. The deafening blast unleashed a shockwave visible to the naked eye, sweeping and ravaging the courtyard. Everything within was shattered; even the walls were left riddled with cracks. The surrounding residents fled in panic, convinced some terrible explosion had occurred.

Qi Xiu staggered back three steps, shaking out his arm, a look of puzzlement in his eyes.

A Daoist adept?

Standing motionless, Jia Yufei regarded him with surprise. He had taken her palm head-on and retreated only three steps. Truly, he was no ordinary man.

A playful glimmer flashed in her eyes. Jia Yufei shifted her feet, darting forward with a dance-like grace, phantom images trailing behind her as she lunged once more at Qi Xiu.

“Again?” Qi Xiu’s gaze grew icy. Having just glimpsed a new path and eager to refine it, he watched as this unfamiliar woman attacked wordlessly, her intent murderous. So be it, then…

Purple energy surged upward, clear currents flowed below. Two streams of power met at his heart. Qi Xiu’s eyes hardened. His right hand closed in a phantom grip; a faint shimmer of color appeared in his palm.

He was poised to strike down this madwoman in a single blow—when, from the corner of his eye, he saw Song Tingye standing at the door, watching.

Him?

In that instant, Qi Xiu’s thoughts raced. Unwilling to reveal his newfound insight before Song Tingye, he let the colored light fade from his palm, shifting in a blur, vanishing from the courtyard in a shadowy flash.

“Magistrate Song, what is the meaning of this? Even if I refused to become your son-in-law, there’s no need to send someone to kill me, is there?” Appearing beside Song Tingye like an apparition, Qi Xiu spoke in a cool tone.

“A misunderstanding, truly a misunderstanding.” Song Tingye shot Qi Xiu a surprised glance, then stepped forward, his voice low and heavy. “Sister, that’s enough. After all, this is my territory.”

Having failed twice, Jia Yufei understood that her prospective suitor was far from simple.

“Very well, since our magistrate has spoken, how could I not obey?” With light steps, Jia Yufei slowly turned. Her clear, bright eyes, tinged faintly red, regarded Qi Xiu without the slightest restraint.

“Please don’t take offense, Master Ye. This is my elder sister, Jia Yufei—her temper’s always been this way, and when we were young, I often bore the brunt of her wrath. Now that you’ve met, perhaps it’s true what they say: no acquaintance is made without a little conflict. Why don’t we retire to my residence and have a proper conversation?”

Seeing the atmosphere ease, Song Tingye quickly tried to smooth things over.

Neither of these two was known for their temperance. If their tempers truly flared and they came to blows, they might just destroy his entire county.

Elder sister? So this was the wealthy woman seeking to make me her husband…

Qi Xiu’s expression froze. He lifted his gaze to Jia Yufei. Setting aside her murderous aura upon their first meeting, she was, as Song Tingye had said, flawless in both appearance and figure. Especially those fair, rounded, voluptuous legs—perfect in every regard.

“I see. I hadn’t expected your sister to be a Daoist adept as well. Magistrate Song, your family is certainly illustrious. But given my current state, I’m not fit for company. Allow me to wash and change before I pay you a proper visit.”

“Very well, very well. Sister, let’s go for now.” Song Tingye, eager to separate the two, tugged Jia Yufei away at once—every second sooner, a little less danger.

As Song Tingye pulled her along, midway down the lane Jia Yufei suddenly turned and waved to Qi Xiu. “Come soon!”

Watching the siblings disappear around the corner, Qi Xiu shook his head slowly.

Are all these scions of noble families so unstable?

Seeing the siblings off, Qi Xiu returned to the ruined courtyard and closed the door behind him. He gazed up at the clear, bright sky overhead, a sense of relief and delight welling up within.

He paid no heed to the wreckage. Instead, he went inside, took up brush and paper, and began to transcribe the path he had just realized.

This was the method he had used throughout his period of arduous cultivation—writing down his thoughts and insights, scrutinizing and correcting them, distilling the essence and preserving the most valuable truths.

Biting the end of his brush, he pondered for a moment, then wrote a title upon the page:

“The Secret Meaning of the Primordial Dragon-Tiger Scripture.”

This was the path he had distilled from all he had learned—a way that used the power of the heart’s Dharma as the dragon, and internal energy as the tiger. Dragon and tiger entwined, cultivating qi and law together. By harnessing the interplay of yin and yang, he could use every cultivation condition to its utmost, drawing forth a new power from their union and paving a road unlike any other.

Yet this path was fraught with danger, as if dancing on the edge of a blade—dragon and tiger at war, yin and yang clashing.

A single misstep would lead to an abyss with no return. At best, he would be ruined, his power lost, left a cripple worse than dead; at worst, he would be annihilated, his soul scattered.

This was a new path, a perilous one—but to him, it meant no longer being trapped at the threshold of Daoist cultivation, no longer bound by the monopoly of the great sects and noble clans. It meant taking back the most precious thing of all: freedom.

He summoned his proficiency panel and looked up:

[The Secret Meaning of the Primordial Dragon-Tiger Scripture (Incomplete)]: Awaiting integration.

Still not enough. The scripture, for now, was only a broad theoretical framework—its content too incomplete for the proficiency system to recognize it as a true skill, much like the Frost Water True Skill, which, being incomplete, could not be formally cultivated.

The reason for this was clear: the Purple Pole True Skill and the Azure Pool Serpentine Heart Scripture alone were not enough to support the entire Primordial Dragon-Tiger Scripture.

He needed more true skills and heart scriptures—more nourishment to fill out the Primordial Dragon-Tiger Scripture, grain by grain building a tower, stream by stream forming a sea. This would only take time.

He slowly opened his right hand. Within his body, purple and azure energies collided, and threads of multicolored light gathered in his palm. This power, born of the friction between yin and yang, Qi Xiu named: Primordial Unity.

This force, born from the grinding fusion of yin and yang, far surpassed both internal energy and Dharma power; it possessed a quality of returning to origin, of absorbing all into one.

Since cultivating this power, Qi Xiu had sensed a premonition: that protective force of Daoist adepts, said to be unbreakable by anyone short of the Daoist path—this Primordial Unity could shatter it in a single blow.

“But pure destructive force is only the most basic use of Primordial Unity. Its true essence will help me cross the threshold into the Daoist realm. But to use this method, I must first complete the Primordial Dragon-Tiger Scripture.

Who would have thought that the so-called ‘Ancient Gathering of Celestial Strength’ was simply an abbreviation of a complete phrase? These monopolists feared that outsiders of great talent might decipher the Daoist path, so they resorted to such petty word games.”

Having grasped the meaning of the Ancient Gathering of Celestial Strength through the general outline of the Primordial Dragon-Tiger Scripture, Qi Xiu shook his head slowly.

……