Chapter 447: The Ancient Soul and The Delusional Fool
Long Hao cursed the charity foundation that helped Lu Ran's family to no end in his heart.
If it weren't for that accursed organization, appearing out of nowhere like a phantom, Lu Ran and Lu Qiong would already be bowing at his feet, their hearts overflowing with a gratitude so profound it would bind them to him for life. He would have been their savior, their benefactor, the shining light in their desperate darkness.
'And that damn bank!' Long Hao's teeth ground together, the memory of his humiliation still burning fresh. 'They had to freeze my card at that exact, critical moment!'
The wave of depression that washed over him was suffocating. He had been so close, just a single, hair's-breadth step away from securing his investment. The scene replayed in his mind with agonizing clarity: the taxi driver's impatient stare, the beep of the declined card, the sneer he imagined on the man's face. If his payment had gone through, he wouldn't have wasted those precious minutes arguing.
He should have been more decisive. He should have just knocked the driver unconscious, seized control, and stormed the hospital like a conquering hero. He would have burst into the room, a wad of cash in hand, becoming the first and only person to offer Lu Ran a lifeline. But no, he hesitated, and in that moment of weakness, his golden opportunity had slipped through his fingers like sand.
The thought that the foundation's staff had walked through the same hospital doors just minutes after him, stealing his glory, made his intestines twist into a knot of pure, green-tinged regret. It was a cosmic injustice.
[Ding! Child of Destiny Long Hao is extremely depressed. Plundering +8866 Destiny Points!]
[Ding! Child of Destiny Long Hao is filled with regret. Plundering +9999 Destiny Points!]
As the torrent of self-pity and fury raged within him, Long Hao's eyes suddenly landed on Lu Ran. A spark of desperate hope ignited in the darkness of his mind, and his expression shifted instantly from despair to manic excitement.
"Lu Ran!" he called out, his voice a little too eager. "You're going to set up your stall, right? Let me come with you!"
Before Lu Ran could even react, Long Hao rushed forward. "I'll help you carry your bag."
Lu Ran stood there, a massive, worn backpack slung over his shoulder, clearly preparing to head out. Even with the generous aid from Shen Anyu's foundation, his ingrained poverty made it impossible for him to be wasteful. Every item in that bag was a proof of his sister's will—delicate handicrafts she had painstakingly created late into the night, her frail body wracked with coughs but her hands never ceasing their work. It was her wish, and his, to sell every last one. He was planning to make one final trip to the Magic City Antique Street.
Watching Long Hao approach with that cloying, sycophantic grin, Lu Ran felt a wave of revulsion. A flash of undisguised disgust and impatience crossed his face. Even for someone with his gentle and tolerant personality, Long Hao's relentless pestering was becoming unbearable. The man clung to him like a leech, and Lu Ran was genuinely beginning to wonder if he had some kind of strange, obsessive fetish.
His first instinct was to refuse, to tell the man to get lost in the bluntest terms possible. But then a thought stayed his tongue. If he left Long Hao here, unsupervised, who was to say he wouldn't start harassing his sister, Lu Qiong, or disturbing his grandfather's rest? The man was a nuisance, but a contained nuisance was better than a free-roaming one.
With a deep, resigned sigh, Lu Ran nodded curtly. "Alright, let's go together then."
Long Hao's face lit up with triumphant joy. He felt a surge of validation, a certainty that his unwavering sincerity had finally broken through Lu Ran's defenses. Eagerly, he hoisted the heavy bag onto his own back, the weight a welcome burden that symbolized his victory.
'I did it! I finally moved him!' he thought, his heart soaring. 'Good, good, good! Once this investment in Lu Ran pays off, the returns will be astronomical. I'll soar to the heavens!'
A vicious, gleeful smile touched his lips. 'And when I do, I'll make Shen Anyu and that bitch Su Hongmian regret everything. They will crawl back to me, begging.'
At the same time, inside the opulent Jiangjing Manor.
It was a timeless truth: deep affection is fleeting and unreliable, while calculated schemes are what truly capture a person's heart.
Under the masterful performance of Shen Anyu, whose acting skills were flawless and whose deep, captivating eyes could melt the resolve of a goddess, Huangfu Xian's guard began to crumble. The icy walls she had erected around her ancient soul were slowly thawing. Her favorability toward him crept upward, and the way she looked at him was now tinged with a nascent trust, a dawning intimacy that was exactly what he intended.
Seeing his efforts bear fruit, Shen Anyu decided to strike while the iron was hot. He leaned closer, his voice a low, intimate murmur that seemed to resonate directly with her soul.
"Xian'er," he asked, the name rolling off his tongue as if he had spoken it for a thousand lifetimes. "How much of this life's memory do you still possess? And why did your soul come to be dormant within that Mo Yu Qilin jade pendant?"
Huangfu Xian didn't flinch at the intimate address. She didn't correct him. Instead, her delicate brows furrowed in concentration. Her eyes, as brilliant and distant as nebulae, gradually lost their focus, becoming clouded as she drifted into the fragmented, misty shores of her memory.
"My origin… I do not know," she whispered, her voice like the chime of ancient bells. "I cannot recall it myself. The name Huangfu Xian feels… familiar. It should be mine."
Her ethereal gaze drifted downward. "And this Mo Yu Qilin jade pendant…"
With a mere flicker of her will, the black jade pendant floated from Shen Anyu's hand and hovered weightlessly in her own translucent palm. It pulsed with a faint, dark light, a stark contrast to her luminous form.
Huangfu Xian stared at it, a flicker of recognition in her star-like eyes. "This is a Soul Nurturing Jade," she said softly, her voice filled with a certainty that belied her amnesia. "Its purpose is to nourish the soul. As for why my soul resides within it… I… I cannot remember…"
As she reached the edge of that memory, a sharp, exquisite line of pain etched itself upon her flawless, jade-like face. Her entire spiritual form began to waver, flickering like a candle in a gale, its edges distorting and fading as if she might dissipate into nothingness at any moment.
Shen Anyu's eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second, a glint of cold analysis flashing within their depths. 'Is she really this weak? Or is this part of an act?'
The thought was dismissed as quickly as it came. He instantly replaced the analytical glint with a look of profound concern. His handsome face was a mask of gentle worry, his voice laced with a tenderness that could soothe a raging dragon.
"Xian'er, if you can't recall it for now, then don't force yourself," he said, reaching out as if to steady her, though his hand passed through her shimmering form. "We have all the time in the world to recover your memories."
He gestured back to the pendant. "For now, return to the Mo Yu Qilin. The Soul Nurturing Jade, as you called it. You must rest well."
Listening to his gentle, compelling voice, Huangfu Xian gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod. "If not for your power lending me strength, I likely could not leave the confines of the jade at all. Even so, the time I can remain outside is not long."
"If anything happens, you can call for me," she added, her duty as a protector already reasserting itself.
Shen Anyu's lips curved into a warm, disarming smile. "You and I were husband and wife in a past life, Xian'er. There is no need for such formalities between us."
[Ding! Detected Destined Heroine Huangfu Xian's favorability +10. Plundering +30000 Destiny Points!]
At the phrase "past life husband and wife," a faint, yet unmistakable blush bloomed across Huangfu Xian's jade-like cheeks, a splash of sunset pink on ethereal white, imbuing her with an alluring, worldly charm. She gazed at him deeply, her starry eyes filled with a complex mix of emotions. Then, her gaze flickered past him, sweeping across the empty air of the room for a brief moment before returning to his face. She shot him a look that was both annoyed and reproachful, before her soul-body dissolved into a wisp of ethereal smoke and flowed silently back into the Mo Yu Qilin jade pendant.
Shen Anyu's mouth twitched.
That final glance… she wasn't looking at him. She was looking at the air. Did she discover the nanometer monitoring robots? He had received them as a golden-tier reward from the system; for a Heavenly Human expert to be unable to detect them was already a proof of their stealth. But Huangfu Xian was clearly on another level.
It seemed the nanobots had their limits. Any being at or above the Land Immortal realm could likely sense their presence. They were useless for monitoring the true powerhouses of this world.
However…
'Huangfu Xian's situation is… strange…'
As his mask of affection and gentleness melted away, his expression cooled into one of deep, calculating thought. His brows furrowed slightly. He had extended his own powerful spiritual force, yet he hadn't detected any probe or thought from her once she was inside the pendant. She was completely sealed off.
He slipped the Mo Yu Qilin jade pendant into the inner pocket of his suit, the cold stone resting against his chest. Although Huangfu Xian's soul seemed incredibly weak, almost fragile, the sheer quality—the essence—of her spiritual power was terrifyingly high. It far surpassed that of any Land Immortal he had ever encountered or read about.
'Could she be a Martial God? Or even…'
Shen Anyu's eyes narrowed into dangerous slits.
'A Cultivator?'
The word hung in his mind, heavy with implications. Legends whispered of their existence. The Child of Destiny, Ye Yan—the one who came down from the mountains—was prophesied to eventually break through to the unprecedented Martial God realm, a feat unheard of in the modern Yanxia martial arts world. After that, the story's trajectory would have seen him ascend to the Xuanhuang World, a realm said to be inhabited by true Cultivators. What lay beyond that, the second part of the story, the original author had never written.
His knowledge wasn't just from the novel's plot. The background appraisal of Ye Linyuan, the mysterious master of the seven goddess sisters, had also revealed her eventual destination to be the Xuanhuang World.
As the young master of the Shen Family, an aristocratic clan with a millennium of history, Shen Anyu had access to secrets hidden from the rest of the world. In the family's deepest secret vaults, he had read ancient records about the Xuanhuang World. They spoke of a time, long, long ago, when this planet was teeming with Cultivators. But for reasons lost to time—perhaps a cataclysmic depletion of spiritual energy, ushering in an era of dwindling magic—the world became unsuitable for their practice. The Cultivators had departed en masse, migrating to a new world: the Xuanhuang World.
The arts practiced today—martial arts, spellcraft, witchcraft, ninjutsu—were but pale, simplified imitations derived from the true cultivation methods. Each focused on a single aspect, lowering the difficulty and the required resources, but their power was a mere shadow of the original.
If Cultivators were all-rounders, masters of body, soul, and energy, then the modern systems were all critically flawed. Martial Artists tempered their bodies to incredible heights but neglected their souls, leaving their spiritual power weak and vulnerable. Spellcasters and witch doctors had potent spiritual abilities but possessed bodies as fragile as glass. Each had a fatal weakness.
Their upper limits were also worlds apart. The legendary Cultivators could move mountains and drain seas, pluck stars from the heavens and chase the moon across the sky. Such feats were utterly impossible even for a Land Immortal.
Beep beep!
Just as he was lost in thought, his phone chimed with an incoming text message.
"Young Master, Lu Ran is in trouble on Magic City Antique Street."
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