All Chapters of Alchemist In The Cultivator World: Chapter 621
- Chapter 630
1130 chapters
Chapter 621
My expression must have given something away, because my master raised an eyebrow. “Are you okay, Yuan?”Granny Lang said slowly, “With a spirit aspect you can fight it, but the Divine Tree’s nature is not one of destruction, and that is the only thing we have strong enough to reach that level. To actually kill it… I don’t see what to do without another form of power entirely. Unless you tried to nullify it instead of destroy it, but that would take…” Her eyes widened and she trailed off.My master’s eyes narrowed. He was always quick.Perhaps it was my expression; perhaps it was something they already knew but had not accepted until they looked at me. “There is a way,” I confirmed flatly. “It can be sealed and subsumed, its will erased and the cycle freed.”“But not without an equal sacrifice,” my master whispered. “Ki must have told you this already, so why did you not tell us before now?”“She told me, yes. The Fifth Law. The price of true immortality, the cost of ending a cycle. T
Chapter 622
My spirits arrived quickly, but Flee quieted when she saw the tears streaming down Yin’s cheeks.“Why is Yin crying?” Flee approached her with small, careful steps. “Is everything okay, Yin?”Ash stood beside me with Ren on his shoulder. Ash’s eyes narrowed at my master’s expression, the way they did when he was trying to decide whether he should intervene in an unexpected situation.Yin shook her head at Flee, patting her head gently. “Nothing, Flee,” she said, voice even, though the dampness on her face betrayed the fragility of that steadiness.Flee didn’t seem convinced. Her ears twitched, and she looked from Yin to me and then to Granny Lang, who stood further back than usual. Before Flee could ask more, my friends walked in—Zhang first, Liuxiang behind him, and finally Yan Yun. All of them carried a kind of alertness in their posture, the expectation that this meeting was not routine. Qiao Ying came in behind and closed the door, checking the latch twice.I asked Ren to put up a
Chapter 623
Yan Yun felt like the world around her was crashing down. What did he mean he’d have to die?That can’t be true. Yuan can’t be dying. He’s the miraculous one—who defies the very heavens. He can’t die—not after we just got him back.She’d come to terms with losing him, then he came back, and now he tells her he would die again? She couldn’t accept that.Her breath turned shallow and fast. The room felt too bright and too cramped at once, the lamps throwing steady halos across the floorboards, the faint scent of the tea they hadn’t touched hanging in the air.Every small detail pushed at her nerves. Her fingers curled and uncurled at her sides because she needed to move but had nowhere to go.The thought repeated, hard and dull: he can’t die. It knocked against her ribs until her chest hurt.Yuan looked at her with an endlessly gentle expression. For a second she wanted to scream, to cry, to do something, anything, and then all the rage seeped out as she realized the rage was truly dire
Chapter 624
I held Yan Yun tightly as she cried into my chest. I rubbed gentle circles on her back until she grew too tired to cry and fell asleep in my arms.Her breaths evened by degrees. The first ones shuddered and caught; the next came slow and low. I kept my palm moving in small, steady motions between her shoulder blades. Her weight shifted until she rested against me fully. When her fingers finally loosened their grip on my robe, I slid an arm under her knees and adjusted her so her neck wouldn’t cramp. The floor was hard, but the mat dulled the edge. I adjusted the pillow with a thread of Chi and set it beneath her head. My thumb brushed a damp track at the corner of her eye. She didn’t stir.I looked at Liuxiang. She stood near the doorway with her hands folded inside her sleeves, posture straight, hair pinned with a simple bone stick. Her gaze slid from me to the sleeping form at my side, then to the window, then back. Her face didn’t move much, yet the tiny tightness at the corners of
Chapter 625
Flee stared at the sky, determined. She would do this. She had to. There was no other way.The sky above was thin and pale, stars faint even though dusk had already taken the color from the clouds. The dimness had been growing for weeks. Every night, the same sight: fewer lights, less response from the heavens, more of that faint film that turned breath razor-dry and settled in the throat.She kept her eyes on the highest point she could pick out. If she let herself glance at the Tree that spread over the distant castle, the small voice in the back of her mind would start again, and she didn’t want to listen to it right now. Tonight she had a task. She set her hands on her thighs and tried to slow her breathing until it matched the city’s vibration.“Flee, are you sure—” Zhang began, but one look from her made him pause.“We must help Master. Don’t you want to, Zhang?”Zhang fell silent. His mouth closed, then opened again, then closed. He had the look he wore in tactical rooms when s
Chapter 626
Flee pulsed her Qi, counting silently in her mind, and matched them to the beat she used when she had been practicing against Leiyu all that time ago. Her lungs burned. She shaped her Chi to follow her desired path. Her fingers spread. Sparks moved over her skin and then pulled back under it. The first pulse cleared a palm’s breadth around her face, a tiny bubble of protected space before it collapsed a moment later. The second let her see three stars that hadn’t been there a moment before. The third hit a pocket of residue that fought back and made her teeth buzz, and she pressed harder into it until it broke apart. Lightning crackled around her, then dispersed as each pulse faded, but each time the miasma was slower to reclaim the space, thinner when it returned. She could do this. She spotted another dark mass heading towards her, but as she readied herself to scream through it, push through, her surroundings changed. A single blink, she stood within the Lunar Court once a
Chapter 627
The drops spread warm over skin and cooled in the air. She didn’t lift her hands to check. Each bow made her vision white at the edges for a breath, then narrow, then clear. She didn’t slow. The movement itself held her together. The words kept coming because stopping them would be worse than pain.“Foolish spirit!” One of the moon spirits thundered. The sound filled the Court and made the lanternlight tremble. “What you are doing insults your master. You refuse to carry on his legacy, you would besmirch his teachings. Do you think he would appreciate what you are doing now?”The reprimand reached her shoulders and pressed down. Flee’s spine flinched. She squeezed her eyes shut once, then opened them and met the edge of the spirit’s robe. The pattern along the hem was stitched with stars that no longer matched the sky above.“Flee does not care!” she screamed back. The volume ripped the inside of her throat and she barely noticed. “All Flee cares about is helping her Master. Can you o
Chapter 628
Liuxiang stared at Elder Tian Feng. “There must be some way,” she asked, but her voice sounded blank even to herself. “You see the future. Is there any way to help him?”They stood in a side chamber off the main cavern which Yuan’s master used as his residence, back in the day, before the war had changed everything. The chamber’s walls curved inward and were lined with shallow shelves carved directly into the stone. A low brazier burned with pale pills that released a steady heat without smoke. The smell of medicinal herbs sat heavy in the air, mixed with the sharper scent of blood from bandages that should have been changed an hour ago.Elder Tian Feng had taken the corner under a lantern that never sputtered. The lantern’s glass was clear and showed the steady, condensed glow inside.He looked smaller than usual because he had set aside his outer robe and left only the lined inner layer. His hair, always secured with a dark pin, was fastened without a single stray. The lines around
Chapter 629
I looked at everyone in the room, one by one. My eyes lingered particularly at Flee, who looked down guiltily when I met her gaze, and then Liuxiang, who refused to meet my eyes at all.I didn’t know what I was expecting. Of course they’d try and do anything they could to help me, to prevent me from having to sacrifice myself, but…To risk harming themselves… Particularly Liuxiang. At least Flee had some fragment of a plan. Liuxiang, on the other hand…I understood why, of course. To Liuxiang, I was her first friend, and so it was fair that she felt so heartbroken. But I wanted them to live healthy, long lives, to take care of themselves, to take care of this village. Only that would make my sacrifice worth it, wouldn’t it?I didn’t want to leave them alone, I wanted to stay and live alongside them, but I had no choice. And I knew that wouldn’t make it feel any better for the friends I’d be leaving behind.I looked around at the room. The space felt oddly foreign, now. This was home,
Chapter 630
I became aware of my heartbeat in a steady, annoying way. I made myself breathe slower until it matched the hum I could feel through the wall. My gaze drifted to Zhang, who looked particularly downcast, with an expression I’d only seen him don when he’d been lying in that bed, having given up on life.He stood up, reflexively smoothing the front of his robe before he spoke. “We will have to get things ready. I assume we need all the soldiers ready and all the guns on standby?”I nodded. “Yes, that would be ideal.”“We’ll have to traverse the tunnels to the Divine Tree. I’ll take our most skilled soldiers for this. Once we start this war… There’ll be no turning back. When would you want to do this?”“The sooner, the better. Ideally, within a week. I would like to surround the demon god, and with Yin making as many bombs as she can…” Yin perked up at her name, and I nodded in her direction. “Of course, I’ll bring her as many divine leaves as I can meanwhile, but with the bombs, weapons,