In truth, she loved Lan Qinghuan just as deeply. After all, Lan Qinghuan had grown up suckling on her milk, and she cherished her just like her own child.
She had regretted planting the Gu insect the moment she did it. Over the next five years, she had constantly searched for a way to break it, but the "infant ghost Gu" had no cure. Five years later, Lan Qinghuan's meridians were utterly destroyed, and she herself had suffered a backlash to her vital essence, falling bedridden with an incurable illness.
He loved Ru Xue. Even knowing that she had deliberately married him purely out of spite to take revenge on his eldest brother, he loved her as dearly as his own life.
Who has never made a mistake? Wasn't it also out of revenge against her that he had married so many beautiful concubines, wasting the lives of so many wonderful women?
How could life ever be so perfect? All he could do now was try to make amends, and then make amends all over again...
The moment everyone left, Lan Qinghuan let go of the hem of Xi Yun'er's tunic and sat down casually in a chair.
She pulled a mischievous face at Xi Yun'er, a standard expression straight from her memories, and then went to weigh the spirit stones given by her uncle.
The tiny coin pouch looked as though it could hold at most a hundred spirit stones, but to her surprise, it contained over thirty middle-grade spirit stones and even one upper-grade spirit stone. The money in here would probably be enough to cover the entire family's daily expenses for a whole year.
Heh heh, with silver in hand, she could just wait for dark and visit the night market.
Come to think of it, ever since she arrived in the celestial realm and became the invincible Martial God, how long had it been since she last visited such a crowded place?
In the past, being a prominent figure, her greatest fear of going out was being surrounded and gawked at by tiresome admirers, so she practically always used teleportation arrays to reach her destination directly.
Reliving her life once more, she actually found herself looking forward to going out shopping. What had gotten into her?
Right, it should still be morning now, shouldn't it? Should she drink a single drop of the jade marrow essence given by her master?
Fumbling around inside her wide sleeve for a long time, she finally found that jade bottle that felt cool to the touch.
Now everything had to start from scratch, and Lan Qinghuan naturally cherished this hard-won opportunity immensely.
Without even opening it, she knew how rare and precious the jade marrow essence inside the precious bottle was.
As the Celestial Emperor's most doted-on younger sister and supreme Martial God Highness, how extensively knowledgeable she was.
The poison that even she had been utterly helpless against—in order to refine these ten drops of jade marrow essence to help her resume her cultivation, Ying had suffered severe injuries for her. No matter what, she must not let down his expectations of her.
Knowing that the upcoming process of restructuring her meridians and reshaping her bones would undoubtedly be an agonizing ordeal for this frail body.
To prevent Xi Yun'er from making a fuss and kicking up a racket, Lan Qinghuan simply feigned fatigue and a desire to rest, sending her away.
She spun around the room once, stuffed a large pillow under the quilt, and after a moment of thought, worried that the adorably naive little Yun'er might not understand and stir up trouble.
She had no choice but to write a large note on the table, bearing four flying cursive characters: "Do not disturb if something comes up."
Casually, she grabbed a few pastries and two apples from the snack plate on the table to pack and take along.
Time was pressing, and Lan Qinghuan broke into a mad dash right through the courtyard toward the small detached residence, darting and weaving through numerous small woods, rockeries, and pavilions along the way, playing a few rounds of hide-and-seek to completely shake off the boring so-called experts who were tailing her.
Inside the dilapidated little bamboo cottage, Lan Qinghuan took a drop of the jade marrow essence, closed her eyes, and sat cross-legged on the bamboo bed, a faint layer of jade-colored luminescence gently enveloping her body.
When she once again observed her inner self, her soul was drawn into a strange space.
She saw herself, wrapped in a thin layer of outer luminescence, suspended in a pitch-black void.
In her mind flashed the spatial cultivation manual Ying had given her, the scroll opening automatically and lingering on the page for Fetal Breathing Refining Spirit.
This didn't look like a technique for cultivating spiritual power at all. Was practicing this even useful?
Besides, hadn't they said she couldn't cultivate until five days later?
Lan Qinghuan desperately wanted to find Ying and have a proper debate with him, but thinking of how he had fallen into a deep sleep due to injuries sustained while trying to help her resume her cultivation, she reined in her impatience and silently recited the incantations on the page.
This incantation bore some resemblance to the mental attack technique Ying had given her last time, though this one seemed more comprehensive and much gentler.
Lan Qinghuan concentrated on pondering and groping her way through the incantation of Fetal Breathing Refining Spirit. These chants were deeper and more obscure than the mental cultivation methods she used to practice back when she studied martial arts, but with her clever innate talent, she could figure them out as long as she interpreted them earnestly.
Right at the peak of her enthusiasm, the pain arrived right on cue.
She watched as the luminescence wrapping around Lan Qinghuan's frail body slowly began to seep inward.
This body had now fused completely with Lan Qinghuan's soul, so every bit of physical pain was transmitted directly to her soul.
The luminescence felt like countless tiny needles shuttling back and forth inside her body, traversing the twelve primary meridians, slowly repairing them inch by inch and reinforcing them fraction by fraction.
The subtle, sour, numb, and stinging pain of needles weaving through flesh and blood was something Lan Qinghuan could endure. She knew that the wider and sturdier her primary meridians were, the smoother the flow of true qi and spiritual power would be, and the faster her future cultivation speed would become.
She was in no rush to disperse the luminescence. She endured, striving not to picture that scene, and once again silently recited the incantation of Fetal Breathing Refining Spirit, chanting it over and over again.
As the pain intensified, the speed of her chanting increased. Gradually, those profound, obscure, and difficult-to-understand incantations became fluent on her lips, and she even began to puzzle out the meaning of every single word and phrase.
The conjecture in her heart transformed into a silvery-white spiritual light that wandered through her body.
Using her mind as the source and her tiny meridians as the network, they wove into a massive web that firmly enveloped her body, and slowly, the pain began to subside.
Although she could still profoundly feel the sour numbness, the sharp stinging had lessened considerably. This must be the merit of the Fetal Breathing Refining Spirit, right?
The twelve primary meridians had been half-repaired, and only a few wisps of luminescence remained.
It seemed a single drop of jade marrow essence could only repair this much, but looking at the smooth and even meridian walls, Lan Qinghuan was still immensely gratified.
This bit of pain was well worth it. With meridians like these, coupled with the talent of upper and lower double dantians, her past-life experience as a Martial God, and a master who was a God Descender, surely her path in cultivation would be utterly unmatched by anyone...
The luminescence grew faint and vanished speck by speck, and Lan Qinghuan withdrew from her inner vision.
To her surprise, the sky had already turned pitch black. She hurriedly leaped down from the bamboo bed, wanting to change her clothes and rush out.
When she took off her clothes, they actually stuck to her skin. Lighting a candle, she saw clearly that her body had expelled a layer of pitch-black, oily grime that emitted a slight, foul odor.
No, she had to take a bath first. She remembered from Lan Qinghuan's memories that there was a small natural hot spring pool in the small detached residence.
Stuffing a few pastries into her mouth at random, Lan Qinghuan grabbed a set of moon-white men's clothing and the human-skin mask, humming a little tune as she swaggered toward the hot spring pool.
She felt completely secure. In Lan Qinghuan's memories, the small bamboo cottage Concubine Fang had given her to live in, though dilapidated, was usually very quiet, and nobody ever came over because this was a forbidden area of the Lan Clan.
She didn't know why this place had become a forbidden area; clearly, there was nothing special about it, but it was a standing ban passed down within the family, so no one dared to enter.