When Snow Ends, Green Returns - Chapter 8

The crowd bustled.

Yu Xuejin finally dismissed those who came to exchange pleasantries and led me to the VIP seats, level with the great sect masters.

Water mirrors before the masters and elders displayed competitions in alchemy, talismans, spirit beasts, artifact forging, and more.

They praised and evaluated gifted disciples.

Natural Sword Bones, supreme spiritual roots,

Chaos Spirit Bodies,

Innate Sacred Bodies…

Subtle glances fell on me.

Seeing my Nascent Soul cultivation, they flashed with regret before turning away.

Tianheng Sect had concealed the truth well.

No one outside knew my soul had once scattered.

The sect publicly claimed that twenty years ago, in a secret realm, a remnant soul at Tribulation Transcendence had gravely injured me and nearly destroyed my cultivation.

A Soul Transformation cultivator at a hundred was already a monstrous genius, virtually unrivaled in talent.

A hundred-year-old Great Ascension cultivator had never existed in tens of millions of years.

But I had achieved it.

Now that singular piece of uncut jade was cracked.

Most people could only lament.

…

Yu Xuejin barely watched the mirrors.

Eyes lowered, he idly played with my fingers, gently rubbing the diamond ring I wore, then opened his own hand to admire the matching one.

Many of those gathered geniuses were strikingly beautiful, but none seemed worth his notice.

I watched for a while out of curiosity.

I had only competed in this tournament once, and never viewed it as a spectator.

Before long, however, I grew sleepy.

I was a genius myself.

A few contestants were refreshing, true, but they were still too immature.

So boring.

I wanted to dual-cultivate with Shizun…

Dual cultivation…

Dual cultivation…

Dual cultivation…

I looked up at Yu Xuejin’s long lashes, jade-smooth face, pale-red lips, and luminous earlobes…

Pink hearts practically bubbled from my eyes.

I wanted to kiss him…

So badly…

Everyone watched, eyes twitching, as we nearly removed the gap between our seats to press together.

Even the System was speechless. 【Could you two show some restraint?】

My head was full of filthy thoughts about doing this and that to Yu Xuejin.

I ignored it completely.

The sect master looked eager to curse us, then decided making a scene in public would be even more humiliating and turned a blind eye.

Several days passed.

Soon came the team competition—

The sects jointly opened a passage into a secret realm, where disciples formed teams and killed yao beasts for points and rank.

The lucky might also find spiritual artifacts, herbs, and other treasures along the way—

Danger and opportunity coexisted.

It was far more exciting than isolated matches and showed everyone’s overall ability.

In the mirrors,

I watched a cold youth with Natural Sword Bones kill a beast above his level;

A Chaos Spirit Body lay an array and use mortal peril to break through to mid-Nascent Soul;

And an unserious-looking youth, usually laughing and cursing without a care, save his captain from imminent elimination…

As I marveled at the cultivation world’s endless geniuses and secretly gloated that Shizun had accepted only me,

I asked, “Shizun, why did you never take a disciple in all those ten thousand years?”

“None appealed to me.

I did not want to teach them.”

I fell silent.

Yu Xuejin looked at me and squeezed my fingers, nostalgia in his eyes. “When I was young, my shizun once read my fate.

He said I would have only one disciple in this life, and that the disciple’s name would share a special bond with mine.”

He was right.

Yu Xuejin: snow’s end.

Ji Huiqing: green returning.

When twilight snow vanishes from a thousand mountains, green gradually returns to the earth.

His eyes held spring-soft tenderness and love. “Naturally,

I had to wait for my fated disciple.”

Even knowing his feelings then had not been what they were now, such sweet words warmed my cheeks.

…

We kept watching.

Then disaster struck—

A yao beast at the peak of Soul Transformation appeared inside the secret realm!

The strongest participating disciple was merely at mid-Nascent Soul.

Worse, the soul tablets they could crush to escape suddenly failed.

I fell silent.

The scene felt familiar.

An accident had also occurred the year I participated.

Deep in the realm, a Great Ascension demonic cultivator’s resentful ghost, stained with boundless slaughter, appeared and sought to bury every disciple with it.

The soul tablets had failed then, too…

Nascent Soul against Great Ascension?

Two entire major realms apart…

Me? You’re pointing at me?.jpg

Hahahahaha.

The passage relied on an ancient artifact, leaving even the sect masters helpless.

Had Yu Xuejin not endured the backlash, destroyed the artifact, and forcibly torn open the realm,

I truly would have died inside.