Volume 1, Chapter 181 – If I Had Never Met My Master

Meanwhile, Ye Ling’er’s surroundings gradually came into focus.

She found herself lying in bed.

Glancing around, she realized she was back at the Ye family estate in Falling Star City, in the Eastern Region, inside her own room.

She tried to sit up, only to be hit by an intense wave of weakness and dizziness. Every bone in her body ached.

She looked down at her outstretched hand.

It was slender and pale, with blue veins clearly visible beneath the skin. Her fingertips were icy, without a trace of the lustrous glow a cultivator should possess.

The hollow sensation of having no spiritual power circulating through her body filled her with panic.

She stumbled out of bed and rushed to a tarnished bronze mirror in the corner of the room.

A beautiful but bloodless face stared back at her.

She looked fifteen or sixteen, an age when she should have been brimming with vitality, yet an inescapable gloom hung over her features, and her lips were tinged an unhealthy pale purple.

She was a girl with the Nine Yin Severed Meridians, doomed to die before the age of thirty.

Ye Ling’er recoiled, colliding with the cold wall behind her. It felt as if an invisible hand had seized her heart and was squeezing it mercilessly!

No… This wasn’t right…

She should have spiritual power coursing ceaselessly through her body. She should have the twin Nether Moon blades, cultivation at the peak of Foundation Establishment, and… and her Master!

“Ling’er? You’re awake?”

The door opened, and a gentle-looking woman entered carrying a bowl of dark medicinal brew. It was her mother, Madam Wang.

“Here, drink your medicine.”

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Madam Wang held the bowl out to her, her eyes filled with exhaustion and undisguised worry.

“How are you feeling today? Are you uncomfortable anywhere?”

Ye Ling’er stared blankly at the bowl of bitter-smelling medicine and made no move to take it.

“Mother…”

Her voice was dry and hoarse.

“Can I… can I really not cultivate?”

Madam Wang’s hand trembled, nearly spilling the medicine.

At the sight of the faint but stubborn glimmer in her daughter’s eyes, her own eyes instantly reddened. She turned away, her voice choked with emotion.

“Silly child, what nonsense are you talking about…?”

“As long as you’re safe and well, that’s all I ask…”

Safe and well?

Ye Ling’er tried to smile, but the expression looked more painful than tears.

She had once been destined to live no longer than thirty years.

Every day, she suffered through debilitating weakness.

Every day, she could feel her life slipping irretrievably away, grain by grain, like sand through an hourglass.

Every day, she watched the younger members of her family practice all kinds of spells, her eyes filled with endless envy.

Was this… the life she would have lived if she had never met Master?

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A terrible panic swept over her like an icy tide, engulfing her in an instant!

She shoved aside the bowl her mother held out and stumbled toward the window, throwing it open with all her strength.

Beyond it lay the dull gray sky of Falling Star City.

Faint fluctuations of spiritual energy drifted from the distance. Members of the family were cultivating.

That world was right before her eyes, yet forever beyond her reach.

“It shouldn’t be like this… It shouldn’t be like this…”

She muttered to herself, her nails digging deep into the splintered wood of the old window frame.

Without Master…

She would struggle against illness for another decade or so before dying unnoticed on some cold winter night.

Like a speck of dust settling into the earth, she would vanish without leaving the slightest trace.

No one would remember that the Ye family had once had a girl named Ye Ling’er.

No one would ever know that she, too, had felt resentment and yearning, or that she had once longed to cultivate.

Like countless mortals without Spiritual Roots, she would simply grow old, fall ill, and die…

If she had never met Master…

The very thought was like a poisoned dagger plunging straight through her heart.

It was Master who had dragged her out of that gray abyss of despair!

It was Master who had given her an entirely new future filled with limitless possibilities!

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The scene shifted again.

She returned to that night, when she had seen that silver-haired figure descend like a celestial maiden from the Nine Heavens.

It was Master who had told her she could cultivate.

She was not worthless. She possessed an incomparably powerful physique.

Master had helped awaken her physique, bestowed the Lunar Canon upon her, and told her:

“This cultivation technique is a perfect match for your physique.”

Master had personally taken her to Tianfeng City and, with unmatched authority, settled her karmic ties with her family, telling her:

“From this day forward, you are simply Ye Ling’er, my disciple.”

Empress Qingxuan, Empress Lingshuang, jealousy, rivalry, all her anxious fears of gaining and losing…

At this moment, confronted with the ultimate terror of losing Master, all of it seemed utterly insignificant!

So childish and absurd!

What she truly ought to care about had never been whether someone might steal Master away, or whom Master held in her heart.

It was this:

Was she, Ye Ling’er, worthy of continuing to stand at Master’s side?

Was she capable of repaying the grace that had remade her life?

Was she strong enough to make Master proud of her, rather than worried or disappointed?

Everything she had now had been given to her by Master!

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Without Master, she was nothing.

What she needed to do now was become strong enough.

Strong enough to aid Master. Strong enough to earn a place in Master’s heart through her own power.

“I want to go back…”

“My Dao lies in Yaochi Immortal Palace.”

“Boom!”

The world before her shattered completely!

A vast torrent of Lunar spiritual power erupted, dispersing and freezing the golden mist!

Ye Ling’er stood where she was, her ice-blue hair billowing without wind. Her entire aura seemed to have undergone a complete transformation.

The barrier holding her back from the Golden Core stage also developed clear cracks beneath this overwhelming surge of emotion and profound awakening of her Dao heart!

All she needed was the right opportunity, and she could break through in a single stroke!

She opened her eyes. Her ice-blue irises looked as though they had been cleansed by the purest profound ice, crystal clear to their very depths, without the slightest trace of gloom.

She turned toward Elder Die Wu on the raised platform. At the elder’s faint nod, Ye Ling’er bowed deeply and solemnly.

For Ye Ling’er, this illusion had not been a test, but a baptism that had compelled her to confront her true heart and reaffirm the path of her Dao.