After briefly assessing the strength of the flying fish, Luo Jiujiang took a deep breath, grasped the hilt of his sword, and charged forward. Under the scorching sun, above the azure sea, he slashed out a crescent-shaped blade of light.

In the end, he won. A group of equally disheveled and scarred teenagers returned to land exhausted, and each of them swore to never do such a suicidal thing again.

None of these young men, who were originally in great danger, lost their lives. Luo Jiujiang had not led this team, but he had brought them all back.

After the incident, Luo Jiujiang had a fever for three days because of the inflammation of the wound. After his fever subsided, the Luo clan leader personally pulled him out of bed and beat him up, extending his expected seven-day rest period to half a month.

When Han Qianling applied medicine to him, he once asked him what he was thinking. Luo Jiujiang rubbed his eyebrows and gave a helpless bitter smile.

"They were almost surrounded by the fish, and I felt I could still hold on. What else could I do but charge in? They were about to die, and there was no point in thinking."

There is really nothing good he wants, but if you can handle it, just go for it.

And this person always holds his own in front of outsiders. Han Qianling grabbed the other person's shoulders and felt Luo Jiujiang naturally put most of his weight on him.

In front of him, he didn't need to "block" or "hold up". Han Qianling thought calmly. It was rare for him to have such a peaceful mood. The peace was even a little warm and happy: Because I am not an outsider.

He needed to hold himself up in front of those people because they were outsiders, because they needed him to be strong, smart, and resilient. Han Qianling thought: But I don't need that, I just need him to be Luo Jiujiang.

He helped Luo Jiujiang to the bed, and before he could help him take off his boots, the other party had already fallen into a deep sleep due to extreme fatigue and familiar environment.

Han Qianling's gaze passed over Luo Jiujiang's dark eyelashes, and he subconsciously turned the string of Buddhist beads in his hand that exuded a faint woody fragrance, revealing a smile that reached his eyes.

——————————

The smile had vanished by the time Han Qianling entered his bedroom. He sat cross-legged on his bed, assessing his own state and deciding that this was the perfect time to do it.

The Buddhist beads that he almost never took off his wrist were gone. He had just put them far enough away that if he really couldn't control himself, he hoped that the beads would be kept.

In fact, if things had reached the worst point, it would have been completely meaningless whether that thing was kept or not, but he just inexplicably, persistently, and even he himself could not understand why he hoped that it would continue to exist.

Having made up his mind, he began to concentrate on his Yuan and the spiritual energy in his meridians flowed skillfully and spontaneously, circling around his body for two rounds before flowing into his Dantian.

At this moment, the nearly saturated spiritual energy in his dantian, carrying the newly injected part, surged throughout Han Qianling's body, filling the eight extraordinary meridians, and some invisible barrier silently broke -

The seventh level of Qi Refining is broken.

If spiritual energy made a sound when breaking through an obstacle, Han Qianling would have heard a long, audible explosion—because that sound was actually three consecutive sound waves stacked together. He didn't ascend from the seventh level of Qi Refining to the eighth, but went straight from the seventh level to the foundation-building stage.

A fourteen-year-old foundation-building cultivator is considered a genius no matter which world he is in.

Then there was no joy on Han Qianling's face. On the contrary, his face was pale and miserable. Beads of sweat the size of beans covered his forehead and rolled down his nose. He opened his eyes, and they were full of struggling madness.

As expected, he felt an endless, empty, almost maddening hunger and hatred.

Luo Jiujiang had once commented on the color of Han Qianling's eyes, which weren't pure black, but rather had a hint of blue deep within. However, at this moment, Han Qianling's eyes were bloodshot, and the depths of his eyes seemed to be filled with a gloomy bloodshot color.

He looked at the pots of plants placed in front of his bed. Wherever his gaze passed, the plants withered and died, as if all their spiritual energy had been drained away by some invisible existence. Even the spiritual soil in the pots turned into a handful of dry yellow sand.

This sudden change happened in just a flash, but there was no emotion in Han Qianling's eyes. His face was colder than ever before. There was no positive emotion on his face anymore, only hunger, an endless and long hunger.

If Han Qianling still had a little bit of rationality at this time, he would tell others that this was not hunger, but hatred.

The strongest hatred feels like hunger.

He wanted to devour everything, wipe out everything, whether it was a flower, a pot of soil, a lake, or a piece of clan land... and he could indeed devour everything.

He was already at the peak of the seventh level of Qi Refining, and was only a fraction away from a breakthrough. After his perception had significantly increased, he had an idea. While meditating, he used this perception within his body and quickly found the most crucial breakthrough point.

The moment his spiritual energy surged through the barrier, Luo Jiujiang finally understood what Luo Cang had meant by "two paths can be combined into one"—after long and intense training, his perception had reached a very sharp level. And the benefits of this training were now having a reverse effect on his cultivation.

Mutual benefit and friendship.

After advancing to the eighth level of Qi Refining, Luo Jiujiang repelled two more waves of fierce snakes. When the last flower dove snake was severed at its seven-inch mark, Luo Jiujiang did not put away his sword as usual, but instead suddenly turned his head.

The author has something to say: Name: You Su

Gender: Male

Specialty: Rich

Occupation: Summoner

————————

Thanks to Shen Beiqiu for the mine x1

Thanks to Qixun for the mine x1

Thanks to Yuxi for the mine x1

Thanks to Weixia for the little mine x1

Thanks to Kuanfen for the mine x1