Volume 1, Chapter 245 – Past and Present Lives

[Congratulations, Host, for obtaining a four-star item: Scarlet Dragon Armor]

The system’s notification pulled Shi Lan back to herself. No matter how she thought about it, she still could not remember what she had forgotten, so she simply stopped thinking about it.

For an intermediate lottery, a four-star item was not too bad. It was decent enough.

Shi Lan opened the system storage and took out the Scarlet Dragon Armor.

The moment it touched her hand, the Scarlet Dragon Armor gave off a searing heat, as if it had just come out of the forge. If Shi Lan had not already condensed the Glazed Jade Body, she would not even have been able to hold it.

It was a crimson inner armor, forged from an unknown kind of soft metal. Its method of forging was completely different from anything in the Lingyang Realm, and its surface was engraved with countless array patterns.

Shi Lan infused true qi into it and examined it for a moment, discovering that it contained at least thirty-six layers of formations. Their functions varied, but most served to reinforce and buffer. The traces of these formations were extremely fresh, clearly engraved only recently.

The heat on the Scarlet Dragon Armor gradually faded, and its bright crimson color darkened into a deeper red, revealing layer upon layer of patterns like dragon scales.

Shi Lan lightly stroked the dragon-scale patterns twice, removed her outer skirt, and put on the Scarlet Dragon Armor. As her true qi circulated, the armor slowly changed shape and clung tightly to her body, as though tailored for her alone, bringing a comfortable warmth that made her feel utterly at ease.

A four-star inner armor was only one rank below Golden Rainbow, just a hair away from becoming a spirit treasure. Even a late Heavenly Astral Realm martial artist would not find it easy to injure Shi Lan now.

After testing it for a moment, Shi Lan dressed again and, without the slightest pause, spun the lottery wheel once more.

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[Congratulations, Host, for obtaining a four-star item: Violet Thunder Liquid]

[Congratulations, Host, for obtaining a five-star item: Three-Life Stone (Fragment)]

Shi Lan used up both remaining chances at once. After the wheel stopped, she directly opened the system storage.

A jade box about seven cun square, along with a stone the size of a thumb, appeared in her hands. The instant she obtained these two items, the system also gave her their uses.

[Violet Thunder Liquid: Formed from the condensed power of lightning within the Violet Thunder Pool, a spirit land of Tianxiao Palace. It takes a hundred years to become liquid and has remarkable effects for tempering a martial artist’s true qi and honing the fleshly body.]

[Three-Life Stone (Fragment): A complete Three-Life Stone can connect the yin and yang realms, let one behold the past and the future, and mirror former and future lives. The use of this fragment is unknown…]

Tianxiao Palace…

Looking at the Violet Thunder Liquid, curiosity flashed through Shi Lan’s eyes. This was the first time the system’s item description had mentioned a name that was obviously the name of some force.

As for that fragment of the Three-Life Stone, it looked no different from an ordinary rock. Its only special feature was that it could not be stored inside the Qiankun Bracelet.

Looking at the line about mirroring past and present lives, ripples rose unbidden in Shi Lan’s heart.

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In her previous life, she had drifted through the workplace, exhausting both mind and body, bowing beneath the grind of daily life. Before her lay fame, profit, and ambition; behind her, firewood, rice, oil, and salt. She had busied herself from dawn till dusk, always dreaming that one day she might live a life that was not quite so tiring. By now, those memories had already begun to fade from her mind.

Her soul crossing between two worlds had utterly overturned her life, and the past had all vanished like smoke.

Looking at the Three-Life Stone, Shi Lan suddenly asked herself from the bottom of her heart: if she were allowed to go back to the past, as though everything in the Lingyang Realm had never happened, would she truly be willing?

The moment she asked herself that question, she already had the answer in her heart.

Shi Lan gathered her thoughts again. After studying it for quite a while longer and still gaining nothing, she stopped wasting time.

Whatever else it was, it was still a five-star item. She tucked the fragment of the Three-Life Stone into her robes and kept it close to her body, then directly opened the jade box containing the Violet Thunder Liquid.

A burst of somewhat dazzling lightning flashed out, illuminating the entire chamber. The pale violet liquid rippled gently within the jade box, and the overbearing aura of thunder rushed straight toward her. Before she even touched it, Shi Lan’s skin was already tingling slightly.

Feeling the sensation on her skin, Shi Lan’s eyes brightened. This Violet Thunder Liquid should work quite well on her.

Shi Lan lowered her head slightly, leaned closer to the jade box, and drew in a soft breath. A hazy violet mist overflowed from the box and poured into her nose and mouth without losing a trace.

The Violet Thunder Liquid had been formed by compressing an enormous amount of lightning power. With her current cultivation, she could not drink it directly and could only refine it gradually in this way.

The moment the violet mist entered her body, the Earth Fiend true qi inside Shi Lan, vast as an abyssal sea, surged more than ten times faster than before, like a giant dragon. The friction made her meridians ache faintly.

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Shi Lan did not mind in the slightest. A hint of a smile appeared at her lips. This speed of true qi circulation gave her an indescribable sense of exhilaration, and at the same time that her true qi accelerated, the strength of her physical body, which had not improved for some time, also began to rise again.

After her true qi completed several circulation cycles, it crashed directly into the first dragon gate along her spine. That dragon gate had already been on the verge of collapse and could offer no resistance at all. It was smashed through in an instant. Her vast true qi swelled abruptly to a new level and continued onward toward the second dragon gate.

As the circulation cycles continued, the Violet Thunder Liquid she had inhaled was completely used up. Feeling how much stronger her internal organs had become, Shi Lan opened her eyes, inhaled another mouthful of Violet Thunder Liquid, and sank back into cultivation.

…

…

Nearly ten hours passed in the blink of an eye.

For almost an entire day and night, Shi Lan repeated only this one action of absorbing Violet Thunder Liquid. A full third of the liquid in the jade box had already been consumed, the second dragon gate along her spine had long since been broken through, and the last dragon gate was already covered in cracks.

Once she shattered this final dragon gate, the fish would leap and become a dragon, and the Heavenly Astral Realm would be within reach!

This final dragon gate lay three cun below the nape of the neck. The cervical vertebrae were also known as the Heavenly Pillar Bone. Breaking through this dragon gate would let true qi climb the Heavenly Pillar like a dragon and, in an instant, sweep through all four limbs and every bone in the body. The body’s reaction speed would rise enormously.

All of Shi Lan’s focus had sunk into the circulation of her true qi. Tireless, she struck at the final pass before the Heavenly Astral Realm again and again.

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Boom!

A feeling of complete clarity came from the back of her neck, and Shi Lan felt as if her entire being had suddenly opened up. Her true qi rose segment by segment along her spine, like a divine dragon plunging into the sea, flowing through her limbs and bones in an instant. As the final dragon gate broke open, her cultivation fully entered the great perfection of the Earth Fiend Realm, with the Heavenly Astral Realm in her sights.

From the time she first began practicing martial arts until now, not even more than a little over two years had passed in total.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Before Shi Lan could calm the restless true qi within her body, someone began pounding urgently on the door of the secret chamber.

Suppressing her true qi, Shi Lan rose at once and opened the chamber door. Before going into seclusion, she had made it clear that unless it was something important, no one was to disturb her.

Outside the chamber, with Su Lanyue at the front, stood a group of people. Aside from Shi Tianlu, essentially everyone from the Shi Residence was present.

“The Lu family has come to call.”

Hearing Su Lanyue’s words, Shi Lan finally remembered what it was she had forgotten…