Rebirth
Dingzhou.
Dark clouds filled the sky, with flashes of lightning constantly appearing within them. Had the cultivators of Dingzhou City not known that no one was undergoing tribulation nearby, they might have assumed that some patriarch was undergoing tribulation there.
Under a gloomy sky, a chase was unfolding in a small grove of trees outside Dingzhou City. A group of mechanical puppets, controlled by humans, were relentlessly pursuing a cultivator wearing a tattered cloak.
Once the mechanical puppet gets close to the opponent, it will throw out lightning and fire bombs, attempting to use this opportunity to injure the opponent and slow down her escape speed. Unfortunately, the person running away seems to be determined. Even though shards of stone flew into her eyes and her clothes became even more tattered, she still ran desperately.
Ruan Qingyu ran forward step by step, but unfortunately, the place was deserted. If she were in Dingzhou City, she might have been able to use the crowd to avoid these mechanical puppets.
But now, in this desolate place, apart from using the meager spiritual energy to recover, the only option is to run wildly on two legs.
Gradually, blood flowed from each footprint. After a night of relentless travel, the [vehicle/object] finally succumbed to the torment and began to crumble and fall apart.
At this moment, several figures appeared behind the pursuing mechanical puppets. They were all dressed neatly in dark red robes, making them extremely conspicuous.
"This woman runs quite fast, but unfortunately her dantian is sealed, so she can't go far." A cultivator sneered, clearly disdainful of this stubborn resistance.
One of the cultivators in the middle occasionally manipulated another group of mechanical puppets to accelerate forward, attempting to encircle and intercept the enemy from both sides.
Only then did he have a chance to interject: "You have to admit, this Senior Sister Ruan is truly worthy of being a prodigy in the past. It's just a pity that the Ancestor squeezed all her talent out of her, and now she's just a chicken on the ground, hahaha!"
"What a pity! If it were the old Senior Sister Ruan, I would have been willing to kiss her just for her face, hahaha!"
The cultivators were clearly quite familiar with the people ahead who were only focused on running away, but now their relationship was that of prey and hunter.
At this moment, Ruan Qingyu had no time to care about how the people behind her were mocking her. She only had one goal: to escape!
After exhausting her own potential over many days, she had led the group of puppets behind her to the edge of a cliff.
The mechanical puppets behind her seemed to have received new instructions, no longer throwing magical artifacts and lightning-fire bombs at her. Clearly, they wanted to capture her alive. Looking behind her, she saw many 'fellow disciples' whose faces she couldn't make out, but looking down, she saw only a bottomless abyss.
"I'd rather die than submit." She murmured to herself. She had escaped all these days for this day, the wind of freedom whistling past her ears.
"Ruan Qingyu jumped off a cliff!" someone shouted.
Immediately, panic erupted in the crowd: "The ancestor said she must be alive! She's no different from an ordinary person now, save her quickly!"
"Make way!" A loud voice rang out, and a cultivator dressed in a dark red robe with black inscriptions inlaid on the edge of the sleeves flashed to the edge of the cliff.
A blue light flashed in his palm, and in the blink of an eye, dozens of blue rays rushed towards the bottom of the cliff. Soon, the blue rays seemed to have caught their target and all of them dropped downwards.
"Hmph!" After securing his target, he let out another cold snort. The cultivator who had made the move quickly withdrew the blue rays of light by forming a hand seal in front of him.
The Xuantian Sect disciples who were waiting on the edge of the cliff all gathered around, looking expectantly at the place where the blue light disappeared. It was Ruan Qingyu, who had just jumped off the cliff, and she was unconscious with her eyes closed.
"Why bother? We've wasted three days of the Ancestor's time. He'll surely come to a bad end." One cultivator clicked his tongue in amazement.
The fellow cultivator beside her glanced at her and said, "What? You're suddenly feeling sorry for her? She was sold to our ancestor. If you have to blame someone, blame yourself for not being valued by the family."
When Ruan Qingyu woke up again, she found herself carelessly thrown into an iron cage. Just as she was about to sit up, she realized that her limbs were bound by extremely cold black iron, chains used to control cultivators.
Even a Golden Core cultivator would be drained of their spiritual energy, turning them into a helpless mortal. Ruan Qingyu had seen these chains many times before, but this time they were being used on her.
"You're awake?" An old voice came from behind Ruan Qingyu. She turned around abruptly and saw that nightmarish face.
The other party seemed to find Ruan Qingyu's startled appearance quite amusing and couldn't help but laugh. Along with his laughter, spirit lamps lit up continuously around them.
Lighting up this dark, secret room revealed a furnace about half a person's height, which had been hidden from view before.
"Do you think I only want to use you as a furnace?" the man continued, clearly not to listen to Ruan Qingyu, and went straight to the point, "If I were just a furnace, why would I need to go to such lengths?"
First, they used the furnace-cauldron technique to drain Ruan Qingyu's potential. Then, they imprinted a contract mark on her body, all in order to completely take control.
All of this was for the purpose of achieving his supreme skill!
"Originally, I only thought that you possessed a meager amount of phoenix bloodline, which would be a good material for making a personal pill. But you have given me a great surprise. The phoenix bloodline is so rich that it can help me break through to the Nascent Soul stage and reach the Divine Transformation stage!"
Ruan Qingyu shrank to the other side of the iron cage, trying to gain a tiny bit of hope for survival by creating that small distance.
She couldn't understand why, although she wasn't highly regarded within her clan, she still had some hope of climbing the social ladder. She never expected that the clan elder she respected most would personally sell her to this elder of the Xuan Tian Sect.
If he were an ordinary sect elder, he could continue his cultivation even if he became a concubine. However, this man was not after beauty, but rather to use a woman's yin energy to cultivate demonic arts.
She was drugged by the clan elders and brought here, where the Xuan Tian Sect elder used his cultivation technique to drain all her spiritual power. Even so, he did not spare her, cutting off her flesh and drawing her blood day and night to nourish his demonic clone.
"Afraid? It doesn't matter, you'll soon be unable to be afraid, hahahaha!" The elder suddenly stretched out his hands, but they were not the fingers of a normal cultivator.
Instead, it was ten thin, black claws that stretched out with the surge of demonic energy, finally piercing into Ruan Qingyu's body.
"Ah!" Ruan Qingyu cried out in pain. The feeling of being pierced through the body was unbearable.
She tried to open her mouth to beg for mercy, but the claws and teeth somehow managed to dart out of her throat from inside her abdomen.
"Heh, heh!" Ruan Qingyu reached out and grabbed the iron cage, trying to escape, but it was clearly just her last struggle before death.
As her blood was continuously drawn from her body, she could see red mist constantly emanating from the elder's body out of the corner of her eye.
Accompanied by the sound of birdsong, Ruan Qingyu felt as if she had vaguely regained a little strength. However, this strength could only keep her conscious and allow her to relive those painful sensations once more.
After the pain reached its breaking point, Ruan Qingyu realized that her consciousness seemed to have separated from her body. On one hand, she watched her body being tortured, and on the other hand, she could still see the elder continuously sprinkling some kind of medicinal powder on her body.
Finally, the elder pulled out her spine, which was as red as a jewel.
"What a treasure! It really is phoenix blood!" The Xuan Tian Sect elder exclaimed with ecstasy, and then swallowed the spine without hesitation.
Surprisingly, watching this scene, Ruan Qingyu felt a sense of relief. If she were to suffer this inhuman treatment because of this so-called phoenix bloodline, she would be in a different situation.
Now she was finally free, but the warm feeling in her mind became more and more obvious, gradually becoming burning hot. She just wanted to fall asleep.
Just as her consciousness was about to completely dissipate, she 'heard' the voice of the Xuan Tian Sect elder again, but this time it was not one of triumph or joy.
Instead, it was a horrific scream, and the Xuan Tian Sect elder's body spontaneously combusted without any fire. He tried to use his spiritual power to suppress the flames, but to no avail.
So he started using various water-drawing talismans or rain-bringing talismans. But he still couldn't do anything about the flames on his body. He started throwing various water-based attacks at himself, but not only did they not work, they also beat him half to death.
"Phoenix blood, phoenix bones, phoenix fire!" the Xuan Tian Sect elder cried out, attempting to escape the secret chamber to seek help.
But even faster than him were the flames on his body, which continued to spread throughout the secret chamber. Gradually, they burned to the spot where Ruan Qingyu's 'corpse' was, plunging Ruan Qingyu into a calamity as well.
In the end, the Xuan Tian Sect elder was burned to ashes by the flames, and with him, his arrogant and ignorant nature vanished without a trace.
Ruan Qingyu's consciousness became clearer and clearer. She heard what the elder of Xuantian Sect said, but she was still somewhat confused.
Is the Phoenix Fire referring to her? But she clearly had never learned such a technique, yet it could burn even a Nascent Soul cultivator to ashes.
As the fire intensified, everything in the secret chamber was reduced to ashes. The flames gradually spread to the territory of the Xuantian Sect, where they were discovered by the sect's elders.
However, they discovered that none of the water-based techniques were effective. No one could have imagined that the Xuan Tian Sect would one day be engulfed by water, and that the fire could not even be extinguished.
Amidst the chaos, Ruan Qingyu noticed that her consciousness was sometimes clear and sometimes blurred. Until she heard the increasingly distinct bird calls, she didn't find it strange at first, but later she felt that the bird calls were exceptionally clear and melodious.
It seems to have come from my own mouth? Why is that?
Ruan Qingyu tried to move her divine sense to see what was happening around her, but it seemed as if she was trapped in a quagmire and could not move.
After a long struggle, she seemed to grow stronger with each setback. She leaped toward the sky she had longed for, surrounded by the scorching sea of fire, yet finally finding the freedom she hadn't experienced in so long.
At this moment, the people of Xuantian Sect saw a fire phoenix fly out from the sea of fire covering the mountains.
"It's a phoenix!"
"How could such a divine object appear here! Could the calamity of the Xuantian Sect be the rebirth of this divine object?"
Ruan Qingyu knew nothing more. Like a fish in water, she swam through the sky until her consciousness faded away.
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