Abyssal Sanctuary.

Majestic peaks pierced the heavens, shrouded in steaming clouds and rosy mists.

In the Guest Hall of the Outer Sect.

A young man in his early twenties sat slumped on a wooden couch, his eyes closed in repose.

His complexion was pale, his breathing shallow. Despite radiating the cultivation of the late Qi Refining stage, he gave off a fragile impression, like a mortal recovering from a grave illness.

Someone is coming.

The young man’s eyes snapped open. His pitch-black pupils were boundless and deep, swirling with a dark, netherworld glint. They resembled an abyss with no bottom, though the terrifying light vanished in a split second, returning to a dull, listless gaze.

Creak.

The wooden doors were pushed open. A young disciple clad in the standard robes of the Abyssal Sanctuary strode in.

“Young Master Qi.”

The disciple offered the title, but his lips curled with unmistakable mockery and disdain. “The Young Sword Master has rushed back from the Exquisite Sanctuary. He will be here to see you personally in a moment.”

He crossed his arms, staring down at the guest. “I advise you not to harbor any unrealistic fantasies. Be honest, stick to the agreement, and do exactly as you were told. Otherwise…”

Before he could finish his threat, the young man on the couch waved a hand, interrupting him with a cold voice.

“I don’t need a lackey to teach me how to act. According to the personal promise of your Sect Master, as long as I renounce my identity as Qin Lingxue’s fiancé, I am allowed entry to the Sword Pool to choose a flying sword.”

The young man raised an eyebrow. “As a dignified sanctuary for sword cultivators, surely the Abyssal Sanctuary wouldn’t go back on its word?”

The disciple snorted, his tone dripping with scorn.

“Qi Yuan, you seem to have misunderstood something. While the Sword Pool holds countless blades, not just any random stray cat or dog can walk out with a treasure.”

He leaned forward, sneering. “When the time comes, you don’t choose the flying sword. The flying sword chooses you.”

“I’ve seen plenty of trash like you. Everyone thinks they’re the Chosen One, believing they can just stroll into the Sword Pool and have a peerless divine weapon throw itself at their feet.”

The disciple shook his head in exaggerated pity. “In the end? They can’t even get the lowest-grade spirit sword to budge. They walk out sheepishly with a scrap of iron void of spirituality. It’s truly laughable to the extreme.”

Faced with this barrage of ridicule, the young man called “Qi Yuan” showed no emotion. His expression remained as still as a frozen lake.

“You’re just bitter because your Young Sword Master was the one whose engagement got broken off,” Qi Yuan said calmly. “As for Qin Lingxue? I can marry her if I want, and I can divorce her if I want. What right do you have to bark at me here?”

“You have a death wish!”

The disciple flew into a rage, his face flushing red. Yet, he didn’t dare lay a finger on this “special guest” whom the Sect currently valued for political reasons.

He could only grit his teeth and hiss, “Qi Yuan, I’ll remember this. Once you’re outside these walls, you’d better pray you don’t fall into my hands. Otherwise… hehe.”

With a sinister glare, the disciple whipped around and stormed out, not bothering to look back.

Watching the door close, a flash of fierce, bloodthirsty killing intent flickered deep within Qi Yuan’s eyes.

A mere ant at the mid-Foundation Building stage dares to throw his weight around in front of This Venerable One? Attempting to humiliate me? He has already paved his own road to hell.

The sword cultivators of the Abyssal Sanctuary… are only fit to become nourishment for my recovery.

With that thought, he suppressed his aura. His abyss-like gaze shifted slightly, seeming to pierce through walls and traverse miles of obstacles, locking onto the direction of the Sword Pool.

Deep within that forbidden ground, an unremarkable, dull cyan longsword seemed to sense something. It suddenly emitted a faint, excited hum.

Not long after.

Qin Lingxue stood in the guest hall, gazing at the familiar yet strange figure before her with bewildered eyes. For a moment, she didn’t know how to react.

A man she believed dead was standing there, breathing and alive. Even with her mental fortitude as a cultivator, the scene felt surreal.

Moreover, this person was the fiancé she had been engaged to for ten years.

Qin Lingxue wasn’t naive; she had considered the possibility of an imposter. The world was full of techniques to alter one’s appearance.

But the man before her was identical to her memories. His features, his clothing, his aura—everything matched perfectly. Even the hidden birthmark on the back of his neck was clearly visible, showing no signs of forgery.

Coupled with the engagement letter he held—which she confirmed was undeniably genuine—her doubts began to waver.

“Are you really Qi Yuan?” she asked softly.

The young man nodded with composure. He brazenly looked the white-clothed woman up and down, his eyes appraising her like a merchant, before he began his story.

“I didn’t die back then. I merely fell into a state of suspended animation due to my severe injuries. When I finally woke up, I found myself buried in a graveyard.”

He shrugged nonchalantly. “After climbing out of the dirt, I spent all my time recuperating. That’s why I was delayed for so many months…”

Hearing this, suspicion clouded Qin Lingxue’s face.

She hadn’t heard the news of the Qi family’s extermination yet, but she remembered what Qi Yao had told her. When “Qi Yuan” was driven out of the family, his meridians had been shattered. It was a known fact that he had died a mortal, never stepping onto the path of cultivation.

Now, only a few months later, not only had this “Qi Yuan” recovered from fatal injuries, but he had also repaired his crippled meridians and cultivated to the eighth layer of Qi Refining.

It defied all common sense.

As if sensing her skepticism, the young man smiled faintly.

“Perhaps misfortune reached its limit, and good fortune followed. The place I found to heal happened to be the legacy cave dwelling of a Void Refinement stage rogue cultivator.”

He tapped his chin. “I found pills there to repair my meridians and inherited a decent cultivation technique. That’s how I reached the eighth layer of Qi Refining.”

A rogue cultivator’s legacy?

Qin Lingxue still found it hard to believe, but his story had no obvious holes. She had no choice but to drop the subject.

In the cultivation world, everyone had secrets. Unless one was an intimate master or elder, probing too deeply into another’s lucky encounters was a taboo—rude and likely to spark hostility.

A thought suddenly struck her. Keeping her expression neutral, she decided to test him.

“Qi Yuan, can you remind me… when was the first time the two of us met?”

“I forgot to tell you,” the young man said, shaking his head with a solemn expression. “Due to the severity of my head injuries, I’ve lost a significant portion of my memory. I only remember that I am the illegitimate son of the Qi family in Wangchu City.”

He paused, his voice dropping an octave.

“But when I returned to the Qi family, intending to jog my memory… I found the estate empty. The Qi family has been exterminated. Including the Foundation Building Ancestor, over a hundred people—no one was spared.”

“The Qi family… exterminated?”

Qin Lingxue’s heart skipped a beat. She blurted out, “What happened? Who did it?”

“I don’t know.” The corner of the young man’s mouth hooked into a barely perceptible sneer. “But I found this engagement letter among the debris. That’s when I remembered I had a fiancée named Qin Lingxue.”

He seemed to lose patience with the topic, his tone turning indifferent.

“Qin Lingxue, stop dwelling on these irrelevant matters. From now on, the engagement between us is completely annulled!”

Whoosh.

Expressionless, “Qi Yuan” conjured a wisp of spiritual fire. The engagement letter in his hand caught the flame and burned to ash in seconds.

Internally, however, a wave of malice surged through his heart.

Just you wait. Once This Venerable One recovers his full cultivation, I’ll capture this little beauty. With her exceptional talent, she’ll make a fine furnace. I’ll refine her properly and take her as a concubine.

But before that… I need to go to the Sword Pool and retrieve my old partner.

Outside the hall.

Many Abyssal Sanctuary cultivators had been loitering nearby, pretending to pass by while eavesdropping. Seeing the engagement letter turn to ash, they collectively breathed a sigh of relief.

Excited chatter erupted among the crowd.

“Great! The Young Sword Master finally isn’t shackled by that engagement anymore!”

“I told you! There isn’t a single man in the world worthy of the Jade Maiden Sword Immortal, let alone this trash!”

“Hmph! This kid knows his place. I came here specifically to supervise him. If he dared to fantasize about a toad eating swan meat, I would have taught him a harsh lesson, even if the Sect punished me for it!”

“In my opinion, if the engagement was going to be broken, it should have been Senior Sister Qin doing the rejecting. Who is he? What kind of thing is he to be the one dumping Senior Sister Qin?”

“Our Senior Sister Qin is just too kind-hearted. She’d rather suffer the grievance herself to save the man a shred of dignity…”

Inside the hall, it took a long moment for Qin Lingxue to recover from the shock of the Qi family massacre.

She took a deep, searching look at this “Qi Yuan” whose personality seemed to have undergone a drastic shift. Finally, she nodded calmly.

“Alright. Wait here. I will report to my Master, and then I will personally take you to the Sword Pool to choose a sword.”

As her words fell, she stepped onto a beam of light, transforming into a streak of brilliance that vanished into the sky.

Elsewhere in the crowd.

Ji Chan’er, her appearance heavily disguised, stood mixed among a group of Outer Sect disciples. She stared at the scene in the guest hall with a bizarre expression, a sense of absurdity rising in her chest.

What exactly is going on with this “Qi Yuan”?

Why does he look completely different from before?