Aksai’s brows furrowed.
He even used his Qi Sense to see if he could sense Humeyin’s presence.
Still nothing.
He then used his druidic powers to sense whether there was any concentrated mass of Life Essence around him, but he was shocked to find that he couldn’t detect Humeyin at all.
His Aether Sense finally provided him with some indication of her presence. However, it was so faint that if he hadn’t known Humeyin was around him beforehand, he might have ignored it entirely.
And this was when Humeyin had only just gained control over her bloodline powers. She was still far from reaching her true potential. As she continued refining her bloodline, her abilities would grow along with it, making her even more fearsome.
Aksai’s expression finally changed to one of genuine astonishment.
Wait. She didn’t use this opportunity to leave the mountain and confuse me further, right?
Just as Aksai thought that Humeyin had left the mountain peak by using her invisibility, something touched his shoulder.
Aksai froze.
A moment later, he felt the gentle weight of someone’s head resting against his chest.
He could feel soft breathing against him.
Then came the faintest sound.
His own heartbeat.
Humeyin was listening to it.
Aksai stared into empty space.
Even with her standing so close to him, the Spirit Farmer couldn’t sense her.
“You…”
Aksai’s voice carried genuine disbelief.
He didn’t want to say it out loud, but Humeyin’s ability to turn invisible somewhat frightened him. If he wasn’t certain that she wouldn’t harm him, he would have left his own island without looking back by this point.
Humeyin’s quiet laughter came from somewhere directly beside him as she sensed Aksai’s erratic heartbeat.
“Why are you afraid when I’m your benefactor?”
Her voice sounded almost playful.
“As your future wife, I can become your hidden weapon and someone who will always watch over you.”
Aksai gulped as he processed Humeyin’s words.
For some reason, he suddenly felt as though his private life and personal space were in extreme danger.
As my future wife, huh?
The thought alone was enough to make him feel a strange sense of unease.
Humeyin seemed to notice his stiffened expression.
She chuckled softly before speaking further.
“Relax. I was teasing you. We are not that close yet.”
Her tone was honest, without any trace of ulterior motives.
As a late-stage Lord herself, Humeyin understood that every cultivator had their own secrets that needed to be protected. Some secrets were so important that they couldn’t be shared even with one’s Dao partner.
After all, the path of cultivation was a path filled with countless dangers.
Trust was important but so was maintaining a certain degree of privacy.
Humeyin didn’t intend to cross that boundary.
She then deactivated her Light Devouring Physique Form.
Her figure gradually reappeared. By the time her presence became completely visible, she was already standing a few steps away from Aksai.
Aksai blinked.
He looked at the distance between them and then at Humeyin. It seemed that she only dared to get that close to him while she was invisible.
Once she became visible again, the shyness that had been hidden beneath her invisible form returned to her face.
A faint blush lingered on her cheeks.
She lowered her gaze slightly, suddenly looking far less like the mysterious bloodline cultivator who had just vanished from Aksai’s senses and much more like the woman who had been standing beside him moments ago, listening to his heartbeats so intimately.
Aksai smiled to himself and shook his head. After keeping in touch with her through constant back and forth of messages, he knew that Humeyin was very easy to get along with. However, he couldn’t have imagined that she also had this much of a playful side to her.
Haah! One can’t truly know a person. Thankfully, she’s not one of those crazy women. Otherwise, I would have had to live on my isolated farm.
He studied Humeyin for a moment before asking something he was curious about for a while.
“Anyway…. What else can you do with your bloodline powers now?”
Humeyin wanted to say something but stopped. She pursed her lips before raising her right hand. A faint black glow gathered above her palm, which then quickly transformed into a flame.
Black.
Not merely dark, but so deep and profound that it seemed to swallow the golden radiance of the rising sun around it.
The moment the black flame appeared, the surrounding light began to distort.
Tiny strands of sunlight were drawn toward the flame as though they were being devoured by an invisible vortex. The black flames grew brighter and hotter as they consumed the ambient light.
Aksai instinctively took a step closer.
“This is…”
“Light Devouring Black Flame,” Humeyin said.
The flame danced silently above her palm.
Unlike ordinary Spirit Flames, it didn’t simply burn the air around it. It seemed to consume the very light that illuminated the world, turning that stolen energy into fuel for itself.
“The more light there is around it,” Humeyin explained, “the stronger it becomes.”
Aksai’s expression became serious.
He could already understand the implications.
Fire-element techniques required Spirit Essence to maintain their destructive properties. Even powerful Spirit Flames eventually needed their owner to provide energy.
But this flame was different.
Once created, it could feed itself.
Humeyin continued.
“And that’s not even the most troublesome part.”
She flicked her wrist.
The black flame drifted a few inches away from her palm. It continued burning without any additional input from her.
Humeyin stopped supplying it with Spirit Essence yet the flame didn’t weaken. Instead, it continued consuming the surrounding light.
“As long as there is an ambient light source, it can continue burning indefinitely.”
Aksai’s eyebrows rose.
“Indefinitely?”
Humeyin nodded.
“Unless the surrounding light is completely cut off or the target is destroyed, it won’t naturally extinguish.
“Plus, these flames are highly resistant to water-element Spirit Spells. Unless some special Spirit Spells are used, these flames would be difficult to counter within the same realm.”
Aksai stared at the flame.
That meant the technique possessed something ordinary fire-based attacks didn’t.
Persistence.
Once the flames reached their target, Humeyin didn’t need to continuously maintain them.
The flames would simply keep burning by consuming the surrounding light. Then use that energy to sustain themselves and continue damaging the target.
It was practically a natural damage-over-time effect built directly into the black flames.
Humeyin looked at the black flames thoughtfully before adding further.
“They can also devour certain concepts attached to things.”
Aksai’s expression changed.
“Concepts?”
“Yes.”
Humeyin’s gaze became serious.
“For example, if something possesses an inherent resistance to fire, these flames can potentially devour the concept that allows it to resist burning.”
Aksai’s eyes narrowed.
“You mean, these flames touch upon the Dao concepts while still being of 3rd Order base? Shouldn’t this ability belong to a Nascent Soul King even if it had to appear within the Blackblood bloodline clan? It… it feels impossible and logic-defying.”
“Well… it indeed is.”
Humeyin gave a small nod before sighing.
“Of course, I can’t do that yet.”
The flame above her palm flickered.
“My control is still far too crude. I can barely control the ordinary aspects of the Light Devouring Black Flame right now. Trying to manipulate its deeper conceptual properties would be dangerous.”
Aksai nodded.
That made sense.
Her bloodline had only just been freed from its shackles. She had gained access to powers that had likely been suppressed for most of her life. Expecting her to immediately control every aspect of them would be unrealistic.
Humeyin slowly closed her fingers. The black flame disappeared.
Aksai and Humeyin then continued conversing about various topics as they descended the mountain.
Even though they had kept in contact over the years, becoming the equivalent of pen pals from Aksai’s previous world, they both felt like they still had many things to talk about.
***
Far away from Orveth, somewhere within the vast expanse of the Eternal Sea, there was a deserted land that rarely saw the presence of cultivators.
The land itself was barren.
Not even ordinary mortals lived there. Only jagged rocks and endless stretches of gray earth remained beneath an overcast sky.
Yet, despite the desolation, the place was not truly empty.
An old man sat cross-legged at the center of the deserted land.
His back was straight, and his hands rested naturally over his knees.
A profound aura of Spirit cultivation surrounded him.
It wasn’t something he deliberately released. His mere existence seemed to cause the surrounding Spirit Essence to become unnaturally still.
However, his appearance remained shrouded in mystery.
His face was hidden beneath a dark hood, while the surrounding space was distorted by an invisible force, preventing anyone from clearly seeing his features.
In front of him stood three enormous array formations.
Each formation was more than a hundred meters in diameter.
Complex runes covered the ground, forming countless interlocking patterns that continuously flickered with faint light.
The three formations were connected to one another through thin strands of Spirit Essence.
For a long time, nothing happened.
The old man remained motionless.
Then—
Buzz!
The second formation suddenly trembled.
The countless runes embedded within it flickered violently.
The second formation had a lot of human bones inside it, including the skulls of powerful dead cultivators.
The old man’s head lifted slightly.
“What…?”
Before he could do anything, the light surrounding the second formation rapidly dimmed.
One rune after another went dark.
The enormous formation began collapsing from the edges toward the center. The skulls inside the formation also started to explode.
Bzzzt!
A final tremor passed through the formation.
Then—
Silence.
The second formation stopped functioning completely. The old man’s previously calm demeanor finally changed.
His eyes opened beneath the shadow of his hood. A profound light flashed within them.
For several breaths, he simply stared at the extinguished formation.
Then his brows furrowed in surprise and disbelief.
“Someone in the Blackblood clan managed to break free from their bloodline shackles?”
His voice was low and filled with disbelief.
“How? Wasn’t the main branch of that wretched clan completely destroyed?”
The old man slowly stood up.
His gaze remained fixed on the dead formation.
Something had clearly happened far away. Something that should not have been possible.
He reached toward the formation and released a strand of his Spirit Sense, attempting to determine what had caused the disruption.
But after several moments, his expression became even more solemn.
The old man remained silent for a long time.
Then he slowly turned his head toward the other two formations.
Both were still functioning.
Only the second one had gone completely silent.
A faint unease appeared in his eyes.
“Does it mean that the bloodline shackles were removed by someone not even in the Nascent Soul realm? This… this shouldn’t be possible…”