The Yun family had practiced blade techniques for generations.
Logically speaking, since their ancestors had once achieved immortality through swordsmanship, the descendants should all learn the sword.
But at that time, the spiritual energy of heaven and earth was depleted. For thousands of years, no one had been able to ascend to immortality. Learning blade, sword, or anything else was all the same.
But Yun Xunlan didn’t love wielding blades or swords—he loved tinkering with medicinal herbs and healing arts.
For this, the elders scolded him frequently, and his cousins often came to persuade him to practice blade techniques properly. Yun Xunlan let it go in one ear and out the other—no one could persuade him anyway.
His cousin sister was soft-hearted. Seeing that persuasion was useless, she let him be and would even help cover for him in front of the elders.
His cousin brother’s attitude toward Yun Xunlan was one of disappointment, like iron that wouldn’t become steel. Whenever he saw him, he became furious and scolded with heartache: “There’s already a Medical Immortal in heaven. No matter how well you study medicine, you can’t become an immortal. If you study blade techniques properly, you can at least defend yourself. Otherwise, if someone bullies you in the future, you won’t even be able to protect yourself!”
Yun Xunlan listened without even lifting his eyelids, continuing to arrange his medicinal materials on the wooden rack, saying slowly: “I don’t study medicine to become an immortal.”
His cousin brother glared angrily: “Then what for!”
“Blades and swords have no eyes.” Yun Xunlan picked up a bottle of hemostatic herb paste and carefully applied it to his cousin brother’s right shoulder wound. “I’m afraid that whenever you get injured, you’ll come to my courtyard grimacing.”
Having received favors, his cousin brother had nothing to say. He came grimacing and left with his mouth shut.
A few days later, though he had no injuries, he came to Yun Xunlan’s small courtyard grimacing again. As soon as he entered, he threw something into Yun Xunlan’s arms: “For you.”
Yun Xunlan asked him: “What is this?”
“Don’t you like medicine? This is a discipleship invitation from the world’s number one medical sect, the Beiwenzong Sect.” His cousin brother looked extremely proud, grinning so widely he couldn’t contain his teeth. “Don’t say sister is good but brother isn’t good to you.”
Yun Xunlan also curved his eyes, laughing with him: “Then if I don’t learn blade techniques, what do I do if others bully me in the future?”
“Oh, you’re not learning, but we’re still learning! Do you think your brothers and sisters are all learning for nothing like you?” His cousin brother suddenly slapped Yun Xunlan’s shoulder, making him stagger. “Since none of us can become immortals anyway, we’ll live our hundred years and be done with it. Go do what you like.”
That night, Yun Xunlan went to bed with the discipleship invitation, full of joy. Even before sleep, he was still thinking about how much healing ointment he should prepare for his brothers and sisters at home before leaving for the Beiwenzong Sect. However, late at night, he was awakened by towering flames.
The elders fell at the front lines, and his cousins protected him as they fled, not letting him suffer any harm.
Only that brother who had said “live our hundred years and be done with it” also fell not long after, at the tender age of twenty.
Finally, his cousin sister pulled Yun Xunlan before a mass of writhing flesh and blood, saying in a daze: “Our Yun family obtained a strange treasure a hundred years ago. Because it could traverse between states with a physical body in the blink of an eye, the clan leader named it ‘Boundary-Breaking Shuttle.’ Thieves believed it could break through the heavenly dao’s boundaries, allowing cultivators to ascend to the immortal realm with mortal bodies… But how could the immortal realm be such an easy place to reach?”
The flesh and blood space was limited, able to contain only one person.
His cousin sister pushed Yun Xunlan into that mass of flesh and blood, instructing him: “Lanlan, secret treasures bewitch hearts and easily bring disaster. In the future, don’t let others know you possess a strange treasure.”
“Sister!” Yun Xunlan reached out to grab her wrist, causing the discipleship invitation in his arms to fall. He didn’t even glance at it, struggling to get out. “It’s because I can’t do anything that I’ve dragged you all down. You should live…”
“Precisely because you can’t do anything, you must live.”
His cousin sister stuffed the fallen Beiwenzong discipleship invitation back into Yun Xunlan’s hands: “Though we can only stop here in this life, we have already found our own ‘dao.’ But your ‘dao’ hasn’t begun yet. You must continue forward, go farther, and seek your ‘dao.'”
She wiped away the youth’s tears, smiling as she said: “Don’t be afraid. Through life and death, reincarnation continues. One day, we will see your great dao achieved, even if we no longer recognize each other then.”
With that, the flesh and blood completely closed, enveloping Yun Xunlan within.
He didn’t know where he would be sent, only hearing that mass of flesh speak in a strange, emotionless female voice, mechanically and numbly saying words he couldn’t understand: “Jump about to begin…”
“Warning: Mother ship severely damaged, carried spore eggs dead… Jump failed…”
“System energy insufficient, unable to locate…”
“Repeat: Jump failed…”
The Boundary-Breaking Shuttle could travel thousands of miles in the blink of an eye. When Yun Xunlan opened his eyes and saw the dawn’s breaking light, he had no idea where he was. That flesh-like secret treasure, having exhausted its energy, curled up in his consciousness sea. Yun Xunlan shakily stood up, searching for wild medicinal herbs in the dense forest to treat his wounds. This forest was incredibly vast—Yun Xunlan wandered in it for seven days without finding an exit.
On the eighth day, as he was putting the herbs he’d gathered into his storage bag as usual, he saw a man emerge from the forest.
The man had a sinister face, his cultivation level unknown. When Yun Xunlan met his gaze, before he could react, the man raised his hand and captured him in a small pot. Besides himself, there were many other men and women in the pot, all at the Qi Refinement stage like him, but with withered faces and injuries all over their bodies.
When they saw Yun Xunlan fall into the pot, their eyes all revealed indescribable sadness.
Yun Xunlan looked up again—that small pot opening above his head would be the only sky he could see for the next three hundred years.
However, Yun Xunlan had lived too long. The past three hundred years and the current three days seemed equally long or short to him. But for the system, it was different—as if it would die if Yun Xunlan didn’t do tasks for even one day.
“Do tasks do tasks do tasks do tasks do tasks…”
As soon as Yun Xunlan gained some consciousness, he was disturbed by its ear-piercing shouts and could no longer sleep.
The system’s clamoring almost drowned out all surrounding sounds. With gauze covering his eyes, Yun Xunlan lay quietly for a while after waking before realizing there was another person’s voice nearby.
“…Yu Chen?” Yun Xunlan used one hand to pull at the gauze while reaching toward the source of the voice with the other.
This time he didn’t reach into empty space. A pair of burning hot palms quickly grasped Yun Xunlan’s hand, gripping so tightly it almost hurt.
Fortunately, the person quickly restrained his loss of control, relaxing his grip to simply hold Yun Xunlan’s hand back, then helped him remove the gauze from his eyes.
Yun Xunlan’s memory still lingered on his last glimpse of the sky within the pot in his dream. So when his vision cleared and he saw the man’s deep sea-like blue eyes, as vast as a clear sky, he felt an unreal sense of being separated by lifetimes.
Yu Chen thought his vision hadn’t recovered yet, so he raised his other free hand and waved it in front of the youth’s golden eyes: “Lanlan, can you see things clearly now?”
“I can see most of it clearly.”
Outside the porthole was the dark background of space, and only soft warm light illuminated the hospital room. Yun Xunlan didn’t feel it was glaring. He stared at Yu Chen’s face without wanting to blink, and after looking carefully for a moment, said: “Baby, you’ve become haggard.”
The blue-eyed alpha looked back at him expressionlessly, his expression and gaze both indifferent, as if all intense emotions had been exhausted. But Yun Xunlan clearly saw a shallow layer of moisture filling his eye sockets, like a sky shrouded in mist after being drenched by rain, no longer so blue.
Yun Xunlan raised his hand to caress Yu Chen’s face, his fingertips sliding over the dark circles under the man’s eyes, asking softly: “Do 3S-level alphas also become this haggard?”
“What about you?”
Yu Chen’s eyes were full of bloodshot veins from staying awake, so asking this question wasn’t quite appropriate. At least Yun Xunlan, apart from his face being somewhat pale, looked much better overall than he did.
Yun Xunlan felt that Yu Chen basically knew everything he should know, so he said straightforwardly: “My SSS level was from over ten years ago.”
At the same time, he was somewhat curious: “Did the medical team say what level I am now?”
The young man’s words were blunt and cruel, making Yu Chen’s breath catch again, but he himself seemed unaware of this cruelty. Yu Chen couldn’t understand why someone who was so afraid of death on the virtual battlefield could face his own destined early demise so calmly in reality.
He had kept watch in Yun Xunlan’s hospital room for a day and night, watching the young man’s vital signs gradually rise and stabilize, then went to the bathroom in the room to call Pei Xingting.
Pei Xingting seemed to be waiting for his call too.
The phone rang for barely a second before Pei Xingting answered.
Yu Chen couldn’t control his fear. With helpless despair and pain he didn’t know how to soothe, he roared at Pei Xingting: “You told me what he had wasn’t a terminal illness!”
“You clearly told me…”
How much Yu Chen hoped Pei Xingting had been telling the truth.
But Pei Xingting hadn’t lied to him: “…Is that a terminal illness? Any regular hospital in the entire galaxy can provide a complete cure plan. The only problem is we don’t have the original insect venom to make the serum.”
“You know better than I do how many people have died on the front lines for this one serum.”
“We have no other options…”
As a doctor, watching patients die in front of him in such a painful way while being powerless to help—would Pei Xingting’s psychological burden be lighter than Yu Chen’s?
“His current physical strength level is E-class. If he’s lucky, he’ll drop to F-class within two years. If unlucky, he might not even have a year.” Yu Chen remained silent, but Pei Xingting couldn’t say nothing. “The Crown Princess was right. Secondary differentiation is his last chance. You and he…”
Yu Chen took a deep breath and asked: “Did he previously refuse this treatment?”
“Yes, the Third Prince hopes to dedicate his… limited life to the front lines.” Pei Xingting said. “He believes this is more meaningful than becoming an omega to survive and continue waiting for the serum.”
Pei Xingting asked Yu Chen back: “What do you think?”
**
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