You've only been cultivating for a few years, and you're already talking about cultivating

What the eyes see is not necessarily true, and what the ears hear is not necessarily the truth.

The world may not be as it appears to us!

The moment this thought arose, he suddenly felt the world before him sway. It was as if a painting had been gently shaken, and all the lines had become slightly different.

Then, he saw it.

A thin layer of mist had appeared between heaven and earth at some unknown time.

The fog was very thin, with a slightly grayish color.

It was everywhere, floating in the air, spreading under the moonlight, even in the mud where he knelt, and in the bloodstains not far away.

He was stunned.

"What...what is this?" he couldn't help but ask.

Qi Fei retorted, "What is what?"

Zhu Yixin opened her hands to grab the gray mist. The moment her fingers closed, the mist slipped through her fingers.

He tried to grasp at it repeatedly, but each attempt failed. Yet the fog was there, visible and tangible, as real as could be.

"This gray, misty thing," he murmured, "you...you can't see it?"

Qi Fei shook his head, then nodded, and said, "I saw it, but it wasn't gray."

"This is 'Reiki.' You can only see 'Reiki' after you come to know the real world."

Zhu Yixin's hand froze in mid-air.

Spiritual energy?

Is this spiritual energy?

He had cultivated for so many years, meditated for so many days and nights, swallowed so many pills, and practiced so many techniques. He thought he had long since come to know spiritual energy!

He thought spiritual energy was the warm breath flowing in the meridians, and the power accumulated in the dantian.

He had never imagined that spiritual energy could be like this! Floating between heaven and earth, omnipresent, formless and intangible, yet visible and tangible.

"Then... what was I cultivating before?" He asked, his voice trembling, a mixture of laughter and tears.

He recalled the days when he burned incense, prayed, and kowtowed repeatedly.

It turns out that I was just as immersed in the illusory world as I was in the illusion.

However, the world in the illusion was created by someone else, while this world was what he himself imagined.

The real world is never what he imagined.

"So," Qi Fei continued, "do you want to cultivate immortality?"

Zhu Yixin fell silent.

Does he want to cultivate immortality?

Of course he wants to!

From the day he first joined the Shadow God Cult, from the day he first sensed that faint spiritual energy in his dantian, he wanted to become an immortal!

He wanted to escape the quagmire of this mortal world and see what immortals were like and what else was in the heavens.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to reincarnate, die, and rise again and again in the illusion.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have gone mad on the spot when he fell back into reality from the illusion of being a "Mahayana cultivator".

He wants to cultivate immortality. More than anyone else.

"You've already stepped into the path of cultivation," Qi Fei said, looking at him. "Do you still want to die?"

Zhu Yixin fell silent again.

The gray spiritual energy between heaven and earth was still there, faint and thin, like a veil covering everything.

He went from wasting half his life without seeing any spiritual energy to now being able to see it, and even has some basic understanding of the Shadow God Technique.

Suddenly, he didn't want to die anymore.

When the thought popped into his head, he was stunned for a moment.

Just now, he was holding Ying Wanning's head and saying, "Kill me too," feeling that since they couldn't live together, they should die together, and that dying together with the one he loved most was also a kind of ending.

But now, he doesn't want to die.

He wanted to see what real immortals looked like!

As for Ying Wanning.

He looked down at her; the moonlight shone on her pale face, and a trace of her former beauty still lingered in her features.

He suddenly remembered his feelings for her over the years, those days when a single glance from her could send him soaring to the clouds, and a single cold word from her could send him plummeting to the depths of despair.

Is that love?

He thought so.

But at this moment, he suddenly became uncertain.

Men are mostly selfish. Many people struggle to distinguish whether their feelings for others are genuine love or just self-pity.

He thought he loved her deeply, so deeply that he would die with her.

But how much of that love was real? And how much of it was just a story he made up to move himself?

He couldn't explain it clearly.

"Aren't you going to kill me?" Zhu Yixin asked.

Qi Fei shook his head: "We have no grudge against each other, I have no reason to kill you."

He was telling the truth. There was indeed no deep-seated hatred between him and Zhu Yixin.

Zhu Yixin raised her head and looked directly into Qi Fei's eyes.

"Aren't you afraid that after I cultivate my powers, I'll seek revenge on you?"

Upon hearing this, Qi Fei suddenly laughed.

The smile wasn't deep; it was just a slight upturn at the corners of his mouth. He raised his hand, and the light of "Shadow Observation" in his palm shone brightly, cool and clear, illuminating the surrounding night and making it seem as if it had receded slightly.

"You've only been cultivating for a few years," he returned Zhu Yixin's words verbatim, "and you want revenge too?"

Zhu Yixin once said this to him.

At that time, in Tianlan City, Zhu Yixin, relying on his many years of cultivation, looked down at Qi Fei and thought he was just an ignorant and arrogant young man.

Now the tables have turned, and it's his turn to stand below, listening to others repeat those words to him.

Zhu Yixin suddenly realized that although he had been cultivating for much longer than Qi Fei, he had only just stepped into the world of cultivation.

Before this, he had only wandered outside the door for half his life, never even getting close enough to enter.

"Since you don't want to die," Qi Fei turned around and stopped looking at him, "then cultivate diligently."

Zhu Yixin knelt in the mud, holding Ying Wanning's head, watching that figure walk further and further away, smaller and smaller, until it finally became a blurry black dot in the moonlight.

Suddenly, he murmured to himself, "The old banner is still in my hand, but my heart is no longer the same. When all calamities are over and fame has vanished, I will finally know who I truly am."

He shouted loudly at Qi Fei's retreating figure, "From today onwards, my name is Zhu Yidan!"

Qi Fei paused for a moment, but did not turn around.

"旦" means beginning, first appearance, or origin.

Today is indeed a new beginning for Zhu Yixin.

The old Zhu Yixin is dead. He died in the madness that followed the illusion, died under Ying Wanning's control, died from Qi Fei's kick, and died the moment he begged Qi Fei for his life.

The one who is alive is Zhu Yidan.

A beginner who has just seen spiritual energy and just touched the threshold of spiritual practice.

"Whatever you want," Qi Fei's voice drifted over from afar, carrying a hint of nonchalance. "Call me Yixin or Yidan, it's up to you."

Whatever his name is, it has nothing to do with Qi Fei anymore.

He has his path to follow, and Qi Fei has his own path to follow.

At this moment, "Sword" suddenly said, "Man, you are not decisive enough in killing."

"You are a sword, I am a person, of course we are different," Qi Fei said.

People and swords are different.

A sword only needs to consider killing, while a person has many more considerations.