After the spiritual energy was restored: Goddess girlfriends came knocking.

As the door to the forbidden room of the city lord's mansion slowly closed.

Cang Yao had her back to Jiang Yan, and her ears were as red as boiled shrimp.

"Please sit down."

Jiang Yan sat down cross-legged and, seeing that Cang Yao looked a little nervous, tilted his head and asked.

"What's wrong?"

"N-nothing." Cang Yao turned around, took a deep breath, and said, "Close your eyes."

Jiang Yan closed her eyes.

Then I felt something imprinted on my lips, moist, warm, with a slight, almost imperceptible tremor.

His mind went blank for a moment.

Cang Yao's voice echoed in his mind, soft and sweet: "Don't open your eyes."

Her spiritual energy flowed into Jiang Yan's body through the kiss, like a cool fish swimming through his meridians.

Deep within his dantian, a golden dragon shadow slowly emerged.

True dragon essence and blood.

Her essence and blood were born from the same source as this drop of blood, and they resonated with each other under the pull of spiritual power.

The moment the two forces collided, Jiang Yan's consciousness exploded.

A surge of intense heat rose from his dantian and spread throughout his limbs and bones.

Cang Yao's spiritual power guided the power of that drop of essence blood to circulate within Jiang Yan's body, each cycle allowing the essence blood to merge more deeply with his bloodline.

Her original intention was simply to help Jiang Yan fully activate his essence and blood, and break through the bottleneck of the mid-stage of the Nascent Soul realm.

However, she underestimated the reaction after the true dragon's essence blood and the innate Dao foundation were combined, and she also underestimated the domineering power of the Haoran Nourishing Qi Technique.

The golden dragon shadow that had been dormant deep within his dantian slowly opened its vertical pupils.

His essence and soul collided under the influence of spiritual power, and in that instant, both of their consciousnesses were pulled into a state of chaos.

This feeling goes far beyond physical intimacy; every thought and every heartbeat of the other is exposed to the other without reservation.

Cang Yao could feel Jiang Yan's breathing suddenly become rapid, and her fingers subconsciously clenched his clothes, her fingertips trembling slightly.

At this moment, their hearts were completely in sync.

At the same time, the Haoran Nourishing Qi Technique begins to operate automatically.

The fortune that converged from all directions of the Xuan Tian Realm poured into his body like rivers flowing into the sea.

One day later.

A powerful aura suddenly emanated from the depths of the City Lord's Mansion, and a visible shockwave of spiritual energy spread out in a ring from the forbidden room to the entire city of Chang'an.

Everyone in Chang'an City above the Nascent Soul stage looked towards the City Lord's Mansion.

In the military camp, Pei Xiao was squatting by the training ground wiping his sword when he sensed this aura and jumped up.

"Holy crap, Void Refinement?!"

Tu Shan Jing turned around with his hand on his sword, a barely concealed shock flashing across his usually composed face.

Cangwu stood with his hands behind his back, gazing at the City Lord's Mansion, his pupils slightly contracting.

"A seventeen-year-old at the Void Refinement stage!"

"Is the city lord really not the reincarnation of some powerful being?"

soon.

This news ignited the morale of the entire military camp.

In restaurants, inns, and markets, everyone was talking about the same name.

A seventeen-year-old at the Refinement of Void Realm—this speed is unprecedented, not only in the Myriad Demon Realm but also in the entire Xuan Tian Realm.

The slightly somber atmosphere caused by the start of wartime alert was swept away by this aura, replaced by an irrepressible sense of exhilaration. With the city lord here, Chang'an would stand.

The door to the forbidden room in the city lord's mansion slowly opened.

Jiang Yan came out with a strange expression. He looked down at his hand and made a grasping motion.

The spiritual power within his body was like a vast ocean, more than ten times stronger than that of a mid-stage Nascent Soul cultivator.

This is the practice of refining emptiness.

Unexpectedly, the fusion of the True Dragon Essence Blood, the Innate Dao Foundation, and the Righteous Qi Nourishing Technique could produce such a chemical reaction, helping him break through to the Refinement of Emptiness realm in one fell swoop.

Cang Yao followed behind him, her face flushed, and she pursed her lips, not daring to look at him.

The moment of soul-to-soul connection was something she hadn't anticipated. She had only wanted to kiss him at first, but who knew it would develop like this?

But this is much more exciting than kissing.

Jian Li jogged over from the other end of the corridor. Her eyes lit up when she saw her master, then her gaze swept over her master's wife's still-rosy cheeks, and she looked at her suspiciously a few more times.

Her clothes were intact, without any suspicious wrinkles, and she secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

"Congratulations, Master, on breaking through to the Void Refinement Realm!" Jian Li looked up at Jiang Yan, her eyes filled with admiration.

Jiang Yan reached out and ruffled her hair, and Jian Li squinted.

In the following days, Jiang Yan's breakthrough continued to generate heated discussion.

News of the allied forces' imminent siege of Chang'an spread rapidly.

Moreover, it is said that this time it was not only the previous four dynasties, but also the domain lord's mansion of the Ten Thousand Demon Domain that sent people.

But this time, the hearts of all the humans in Chang'an were filled with utter fury.

Time and again, Chang'an City did not provoke anyone.

The humans in the Demon Realm had never dared to hope for anything, but Chang'an brought them hope; they just wanted to survive.

Soon, the news spread beyond Chang'an, and the entire Demon Realm was abuzz with discussion.

For many demons in the Myriad Demon Realms, the name "Suspended Mountain" is synonymous with heaven.

For such a figure to attack a human city clearly indicates an intention to stifle the recent rise of the human race in the Demon Realm.

Those demons who already looked down on humans were now gloating, all adopting a "let's watch the show" attitude.

The human cultivators in the Demon Realm who were initially observing began to get restless. This was too much of a bullying tactic, and it was never going to end.

As the news spread, more aid spontaneously poured in from all directions.

Rogue cultivators, retainers, hermits from aristocratic families, and even some Nascent Soul and Divine Transformation cultivators who originally did not concern themselves with worldly affairs all rushed towards Chang'an City.

A few days later, at dawn, the guards at the city gate saw a patch of blue light appear on the distant horizon.

A moment later, a line of sword cultivators stood in mid-air, riding their swords through the air, their robes fluttering in the wind.

The woman at the head of the group, dressed in a white robe with cloud patterns and holding a long sword, was none other than Zhou Caiwei.

I don't know how she did it, but she managed to bring an entire team of sword cultivators from the Lingxu Sword Sect in the Shangqing Domain.

In addition to the sword cultivators, the group also included dozens of rogue Daoist cultivators from the Shangqing Domain, all dressed in Daoist robes. Each of them possessed a deep and dignified aura, and the lowest level of cultivation among them was at least in the mid-Nascent Soul stage.

The soldiers guarding the city were dumbfounded.

Then another team appeared on the other side.

The leader was a middle-aged scholar dressed in a Confucian robe, followed by more than a hundred Confucian scholars, their heads adorned with a majestic aura like a canopy.

Yu Qian stood at the front of the line, gazing at the Jiang-character flag on the Chang'an city wall, his eyes surging with emotion.

Make arrangements for each person.

Zhou Caiwei stopped the sword light, exchanged a glance with Yu Qian, and nodded.

The two entered the city lord's mansion side by side.

Hearing footsteps, Jiang Yan got up and walked towards the palace gate.

Yu Qian stood outside the palace gate, looking at the face in front of him that was younger than he had been back then, yet whose features completely overlapped with those in his memory.

The two stood facing each other for a long while, one inside and one outside the threshold.

Yu Qian straightened his clothes, bowed, and paid his respects.

His movements were meticulous, exactly the same as back then.

"grown ups."

Jiang Yan stepped forward, took his arms with both hands, and lifted him up.

He looked the face in front of him up and down, a face that looked more weathered than it had been back then.

With a thousand words on his lips, Jiang Yan only said, "Well done."

Yu Qian raised his head, needing no further words.

……

Meanwhile, outside Chang'an City, at the foot of the Monument to the Fallen Heroes.

A disheveled man was leaning against the base of a stone tablet, drinking.

He gulped down the last mouthful of wine, stood up, dusted off his backside, and hummed a song as he walked toward the city lord's mansion.

"Time flies, but the mountains and rivers remain; the four seasons bring different scenery, and the three thousand rivers flow freely—everywhere is part of the human world..."