One week before Fu Anwen's Awakening Ceremony, in the rgest bedroom of the Jade Court, three beautiful young women in their mid-twenties sat on the edge of an oversized bed.

  Fu Qingyu was holding her son's most recently finished painting. Tears were streaming down her face, though she was also wearing a bright smile.

  In the painting, a knight mounted on a unicorn faced off against a dragon. That was what her son had told her she was looking at, at least.

  While the painting was mechanically fwless and a technical masterpiece, it was clear to anyone who saw it that her son had never even seen an illustration of either a unicorn or a dragon, much less live ones.

  In truth, aside from a few birds, the only animals Fu Anwen had ever seen were those being served to him on a pte.

  "So adorable," she sniffed through her tears while looking at the beautifully painted, but very odd-looking, creatures.

  One of Fu Qingyu's servant girls sat on either side of her on the bed.

  "I'm sure the Little Prince will get better soon, Mistress," Mei reassured her while clinging onto one of Fu Qingyu's arms.

  Jing, one arm wrapped around Fu Qingyu's waist while the other gently rubbed her thigh, also chimed in. "Of course! A little cutie that smart and talented is destined to have a long life."

  The banished consort stood up and pulled away from the two servant girls. She walked over to the nearby closet and pced her son's painting on top of a pile containing paintings of many other adorable creatures pulled from Fu Anwen's imagination. Any of her son's regur drawings or paintings could be hung on the walls for dispy, but she always kept those featuring fanciful creatures hidden away in her personal collection.

  She turned around and walked back to the bed, grabbing the servant girls' hands in her own.

  "Thank you two so much for being with me these past few years. I don't know how much harder it would have been if not for your comfort each day. I owe both of you so much."

  The two servants quickly stood up, shaking their heads.

  "It's us who own you everything, Mistress!"

  Mei quickly nodded her head in agreement. "After we lost our husbands in the beast tide, we were left with nothing. If you hadn't taken us in as your servants when you were called to the pace...I don't even want to imagine how we would have ended up."

  "Regardless, just know that you two mean the world to me," Fu Qingyu said, squeezing their hands.

  The servant girls, their hearts filled with love, proceeded to spend the rest of the morning comforting the ex-consort, only stopping once their Mistress finally passed out from exhaustion.

  ~-o-O-o-~

  Three Nascent Soul realm cultivators were chasing after a fourth. The four of them were flying through the air at speeds so fast that any mortals standing below couldn't even see them.

  "Stop running, Insect King! If you surrender now, I give you my word that we won't kill you!"

  Gu Wangjun, known as the Insect King due to his many strange and terrifying insect-based cultivation techniques, sped up after hearing Fme King Huo Bingbing's words. It wasn't that he didn't believe her. In fact, he was absolutely certain that she meant those words completely.

  After all, he'd fed his insects with quite a few of her disciples over the years. There was no way she'd let him die that easily.

  He didn't know how the three sect leaders of the Tri-Sect Alliance had found him, but that didn't matter anymore. Individually, each of the three Nascent Soul Spirit Kings chasing after him were stronger than he was. With all three together, he was done for as soon as they caught up.

  While dodging flying swords, sound waves, and bursts of fme, Gu Wangjun rapidly considered and dismissed dozens of long-pnned escape methods. Cultivators like him, who made life-and-death enemies everywhere they went, either died young or quickly learned to always leave themselves a way out.

  Even a rabbit's burrow had three exits; a clever, long-lived demonic cultivator had far more of means of escaping danger.

  However, when facing three powerful and enraged sect leaders, Gu Wangjun's numerous well-crafted pns kept coming up short.

  Hatred fshed through the Insect King's eyes when he realized that his only remaining option was to activate his st resort.

  Gritting his teeth, the ruthless cultivator immediately did just that.

  Hundreds of small insects with bodies that looked like they were made of shiny blue crystals, which had previously been lying dormant inside of the Insect King's chest, suddenly became active. They rapidly started spreading out across his body, swimming through blood and burrowing through bone, all the while leaving behind fragments of their rapidly disintegrating bodies.

  Within a minute, each of the insects had transformed into tiny scraps of crystalline shards containing rge amounts of unstable energy.

  A crazed look appeared in the Insect King's eyes.

  "You want a fight, you rotten righteous bastards? Fine! Let's see if you can handle it!"

  With that, he turned around and started flying even faster than before, only now he was heading straight toward the three cultivators chasing him. By the time he reached them, his skin had turned a bright blue and smoke was pouring from his body.

  Boom!

  A massive explosion ripped through the air, bsting the three cultivators from the Tri-Sect Alliance away. Due to their protective energy shields, none of them had taken any serious damage.

  "What the hell was that?"

  The Zither King looked around in confusion. He couldn't believe that the Insect King had sent himself to his death like that.

  "Insect bomb," the Fme King replied. "He turned one of our elders into one a few decades ago. The explosion destroyed our sect's ancestral hall," she continued with hatred in her voice.

  "But why would he blow himself up?"

  "Maybe there was someone else behind him. He might have had no choice in the matter," guessed Sword King Jian Wuji.

  "You mean someone was controlling him the same way he controlled the insects?" asked the Fme King.

  The Sword King shrugged. "Just a guess."

  If that was true, it was likely that their sects were up against an enemy far greater than a single Insect King. The thought of facing off against an unknown opponent strong enough to treat Nascent Soul Spirit Kings as chess pieces made the three sect leaders feel profoundly uncomfortable.

  They proceeded to search the area, but all they managed to find were scraps of the Insect King's body and a storage bag that was so badly damaged that the items inside had been lost.

  Any paths of investigation had been severed with Gu Wangjun's death, but none of the three Spirit Kings believed that the threat they faced was truly gone.

  The three had no option but to return to their sects in frustration.

  ~-o-O-o-~

  Seventeen years ter, Gu Wangjun arrived in a small, remote kingdom countless miles from his old homend, the Blue Moon Dynasty. After blowing up his body years earlier, he'd luckily managed to escape, but he'd been reduced to nothing more than a damaged soul. A few brushes with danger in the years since had left his soul in tatters.

  For the first time since starting his cultivation journey, Gu Wangjun found himself teetering on the edge of death.

  During his travels in recent years, he'd flown over mountain ranges so wide that they'd seemed endless, oceans that he'd spent years crossing without seeing any hint of nd, and vast stretches of wilderness devoid of any human presence. He'd investigated a few decent-looking locations in that time, but either he'd deemed them unsafe, or they'd cked the resources necessary for his soul to recuperate.

  'Damn Tri-Sect Alliance, damn Fire King, damn Zither King, damn Sword King! Watch how you and your sects die in the bellies of my insects after I've recovered,' he silently raged at his enemies, just as he had nearly every day since they'd forced him to detonate his body.

  After secretly investigating for a few days to learn more about the tiny Fu Kingdom he was currently in, Gu Wangjun quickly flew to the kingdom's capitol. He needed high-level resources to recover, and the Fu Kingdom's Royal Pace was likely the only pce in this remote nd that could possibly have any.

  After arriving at the Royal Pace a few hours ter, he cautiously explored the pace grounds. While there was likely no one at the pace with the ability to detect his soul form, it was better to remain cautious in his extremely weak state.

  The results of Gu Wangjun's search disappointed him. There were only three cultivators in the entire Royal Pace, and the strongest of them was only in the te Qi Refining stage. While he also saw a rge number of body refiners practicing some path he wasn't familiar with, their strength seemed like it was only around the mid-Foundation Establishment level at best. Since most resources suitable for body refiners wouldn't be of any help repairing his soul, the pace was worthless.

  'All that's left is to check the spirit vein, but one that can only support a few low-level cultivators should be second grade at best.'

  Shaking his head, he began slowly sinking down into the earth beneath the Royal Pace.

  ~-o-O-o-~

  'Impossible!'

  Hours ter, Gu Wangjun found himself staring at what had to be at least a fifth grade spirit vein. He couldn't be sure exactly what level it was, as he'd never even seen one higher than third grade before.

  Third grade spirit veins were able to support the cultivation of roughly a dozen Golden Core cultivators and could even allow them to break through to the Nascent Soul realm.

  Typically, a spirit vein would naturally restore any energy cultivators depleted as long as the drain wasn't too severe. However, a third grade spirit vein would quickly be drained to the point of destruction if a Nascent Soul Spirit King regurly used it to cultivate. In addition to higher-level cultivators needing more energy to cultivate, high level cultivation techniques were simply too intense and destructive for lower grade spirit veins to handle.

  This spirit vein was huge and sprawling, with visible tendrils of thick spirit energy swirling around a complex network of densely clustered spirit crystals containing highly concentrated spiritual energy. Gu Wangjun guessed that even a hundred Nascent Soul Spirit Kings cultivating day and night above this spirit vein wouldn't even come close to draining it.

  Thoughts of returning to the surface and sughtering the Fu royal family fshed through his mind, and a ruthless look appeared in his eyes. Eventually, however, he shook his head.

  'Ignoring the fact that I'm too weak right now to even sughter a chicken, that would still only draw attention. Who knows how long this pce has already remained secret? It should be safe here for at least the next hundred years. When I'm recovered...'

  The ruthless look from earlier returned to his eyes. He was already imagining how he'd sughter the Fu Kingdom's inhabitants and take over this nd in the future.

  Gu Wangjun floated forward, and his body slowly began to merge with the spirit vein.

  ~-o-O-o-~

  Hundreds of years passed.

  Gu Wangjun had originally pnned to use the energy from the spirit vein to heal his injured soul, but he'd ended up going in a completely different direction after one of his attempts to heal himself had produced unexpected results.

  While trying to fuse his soul with the spirit vein to increase his energy absorption rate, his soul had actually grown a bit stronger. Future tests proved that fusing with the spirit vein did, in fact, greatly increase his strength.

  After so many years, he'd long since healed his body, but he no longer had any thoughts of leaving.

  Over time, he'd fused his soul more and more thoroughly with the spirit vein. He had a feeling that if he ever reached a point where he and the spirit vein truly became one and the same, his soul would immediately break through to a higher realm, and his strength would reach a level he couldn't even imagine.

  As it was, his strength had already surpassed his previous peak. If his current self fought against the three leaders of the Tri-Sect Alliance again, he was confident that he could defeat them even without the aid of insects.

  He wasn't certain, but he had a feeling that he'd somehow unknowingly embarked on an entirely new cultivation path—one that focused on the union of his human soul with spirit veins.

  If he was right, he'd be able to quietly travel the world and fuse more spirit veins with himself, steadily growing stronger with each one added to his soul. This path might even be able to achieve a goal that he'd never allowed himself to even dream of before...

  Ascension!

  He now had hope of reaching the Immortal Realm!

  With a smile on his face, Gu Wangjun closed his eyes and continued his efforts to fully fuse with the spirit vein.

  ~-o-O-o-~

  He'd succeeded. Now, he was the spirit vein, and the spirit vein was him.

  Over two thousand years had passed since the day the union of soul and spirit vein was completed.

  In some ways, Gu Wangjun's many conjectures had been correct. While he had no way of knowing for sure, he was confident that his strength had far surpassed the limits of the Nascent Soul realm. He had a feeling that he'd be strong even when compared to Spirit Lords in the Soul Transformation realm.

  However, at the same time, he also found himself trapped.

  At the exact moment he'd finished fully fusing together with the spirit vein, Gu Wangjun had been locked inside the borders of his new spirit vein body like a prisoner. None of his efforts to move his new body or escape its confines had borne fruit.

  Now, he could only spend his days exploring the options offered by this strange, previously unknown cultivation path he found himself on, hoping to find a way to escape his current plight.

  While lying in deep meditation, Gu Wangjun suddenly felt a weak draining sensation, as if a tiny scrap of energy was being pulled out of him.

  He'd started feeling these little energy drains shortly after fusing with the spirit vein. He guessed that the Fu family up on the surface was occasionally using the spirit vein's energy to power some sort of artifact or formation, but he had no way to verify his assumption in his current state.

  Without warning, Gu Wangjun suddenly felt as if some terrifying entity had firmly tched onto him, and the speed of the draining sensation rapidly increased. He could sense the energy from his spirit vein body along with his soul being extracted at an arming rate. The spirit vein was visibly reducing in size with each moment that passed.

  'Ahhhhhhhhh!'

  Gu Wangjun screamed silently. The pain of his soul being sucked away was unbearable.

  The drain only sted for a little over a dozen seconds, but that short amount of time was long enough to cause unimaginable damage to Gu Wangjun.

  The spirit vein had been reduced to less than five percent of its original size, and the energy it contained was now at such a low level that it might not even be able to support Qi Refining realm cultivators for long.

  As for Gu Wangjun's soul, which he'd lost over ninety-five percent of due to it being fused with the spirit vein, it had fallen into a very deep sleep.

  ~-o-O-o-~

  Up on the surface, Fu Anwen, his Awakening Ceremony now over, was being wheeled back home to the Jade Court.