Chapter 918: Blood Coagulation War Spear, Seeing Shen Jianjia Again

Divine Maiden Palace, Divine Maiden Peak. Where sea and sky meet, on the rear cliff wreathed in cloud like a boundless sea.

A boy of twelve or thirteen, handsome with a resolute gaze and an extraordinary bearing, was trading blows with nine metal puppets that gleamed with dark luster.

He wreathed himself in Yuan Magnetic Power, threads of Heavenly Light weaving around him like crackling arcs. Every move carried shocking force, blasting the nine metal puppets into flying shrapnel and ruin.

When the nine puppets were completely wrecked, the boy slumped to the ground, panting hard as the Heavenly Light magnetism faded from his body.

Shen Yuanming looked toward the distant Seaview Stone, where a young matron in full bloom lounged—gorgeous in a red gown, her figure sinuous and enthralling.

“Not bad. Barely a pass.”

Shen Baishuang reclined lazily on the Seaview Stone, one leg crossed over the other. The curves of her legs beneath the red hem were dangerously enticing.

She popped a grape-like fruit between her lips, then tapped a jade-white finger. A crystal-clear, fragrant fruit like a Ginseng Fruit lifted from the fruit tray and floated to the boy.

“Eat up and replenish your strength, then keep training.”

She was strict with this nephew in her day-to-day.

But he was, after all, her younger sister’s own son and the Shen family’s only bloodline. She doted on him all the same.

These spirit fruits looked like snacks in her hand.

In truth, they were prepared for Shen Yuanming’s cultivation.

Each one cost hundreds, even thousands, of spirit stones—priceless on the market.

They stabilized the foundation, boosted blood energy, and aided cultivation, especially suitable for low-level cultivators.

Used to his Second Aunt’s ways, Shen Yuanming took the crystal Ginseng Fruit and bit down.

Fragrance and juice melted through his five viscera and every inch of flesh, turning into boundless vitality that washed away fatigue.

No sooner had he finished the fruit and felt strength surge back than nine metal puppets appeared and charged. He yelled, “Shen Baishuang, I’m not ready yet!”

“You little brat—no sense of seniority, calling your Second Aunt by name? Looks like you’re tired of living!”

Shen Baishuang snapped, flicking a finger. The surrounding Yuan Magnetic Field erupted with arcs of profound light that shot at the boy.

More metal puppets materialized one after another.

“Second Aunt, you’re going hard on me just because my mother isn’t here. I’m telling Big Aunt later!”

He’d barely managed against nine metal puppets as it was.

With the Yuan Magnetic Field’s power kicked up a level, the pressure doubled at once and he started to buckle.

“Tch. Not enough pressure, then.”

Shen Baishuang kept her legs crossed, paying his protest no mind.

Watching him fall back step by step under eighteen metal puppets, bruised and battered, Shen Baishuang frowned. “Shen Yuanming, is that all you’ve got?”

“Besides Heavenly Light Magnetism, don’t you know any other means?”

Her voice carried a note of hating iron for not becoming steel.

The boy was stubborn, with a hard streak, but a bit wooden—slow to adapt.

Or rather, not that he didn’t know how to adapt.

It was that under his little aunt’s teaching he clung too tightly to rules and propriety.

If her assessment limited him to Heavenly Light Magnetism, he’d grit his teeth and use only that.

“Hm?” As he was blasted backward, he planted his left hand and raised his right, which suddenly flared.

Endless crimson currents flowed as a blood-colored war spear burst from Shen Yuanming’s palm, formed from his own congealed blood.

Though the spear was only a meter long, it radiated terrifying might.

With a sharp hiss, he thrust the blood spear, sending a razor-edged crimson beam forward that punched clean through the metal puppets before him.

“If I use this, it’s too easy. No challenge.”

The boy glanced at his Second Aunt atop the Seaview Stone, chin tilted with pride.

His current cultivation and Heavenly Light Magnetism couldn’t handle eighteen puppets.

But he, Shen Yuanming, was heaven’s favored, a child sent by the heavens!

He’d been born clutching congealed blood.

The congealed blood in his right hand could shape into a war spear that pierced anything in its path.

Even though he had exceptional talent along the Yuan Magnet path and had trained for years in his Big Aunt’s Heavenly Light Magnetic Method,

his Heavenly Light Magnetism couldn’t compare to his Blood Coagulation War Spear.

“Heh. Putting on airs already, are we, you little brat.”

Shen Baishuang chuckled, lifted a jade hand, and the restrictions of the Yuan Magnetic Field surged.

In an instant, sheets of Yuan Magnetic light erupted, coalescing into grayish humanoid silhouettes that charged Shen Yuanming.

Brimming with unshakable confidence, Shen Yuanming met them head-on with his blood spear.

Watching him gripping the spear, awe-inspiring and sure of himself, Shen Baishuang clicked her tongue, amused.

When Shen Yuanming was born, she and Shen Jianjia never once discussed his father.

They simply announced that Shen Yuanming had come to be after Shen Yiren dreamed of a falling star during cultivation and conceived by inspiration.

They told the boy the same.

So he believed without doubt that he was heaven’s own son.

He saw the congealed blood in his hand as proof that he was a heaven-sent prodigy.

Whenever he summoned the Blood Coagulation War Spear, he became suffused with towering confidence.

Just then Shen Baishuang turned her hand over and a Transmission Jade Slip appeared.

“Second Palace Master, Yuan Wei True Monarch has come to visit.”

Reading the message, Shen Baishuang frowned. A vague, suffocating irritation welled up inside her.

Though she despised her husband Lin Yuanti for his taste in men,

after losing her body to Xuamu Daoist in White Dew Palace seventeen years ago, she hadn’t known how to face Lin Yuanti and had grown afraid to see him.

In the early years she still went to Blade Forging Mountain now and then to keep up appearances between husband and wife and the two houses.

Now she had no desire to see Lin Yuanti at all and had stayed away on the pretext of seclusion.

Even so, Lin Yuanti was still her husband in name.

If he came in person, she couldn’t refuse to meet him.

“Your Second Aunt has matters to attend to. Keep training on your own.”

Shen Baishuang lost interest in sparring and, with a gleam of divine light, vanished into the clouds beyond the rear cliff.

Arriving at her White Dew Palace, Shen Baishuang saw her husband—gold crown on his head, a sweeping golden cloak on his shoulders.

She suppressed her irritation and asked, “What are you here for?”

“You haven’t returned to Blade Forging Mountain in a long while, so I came to see you.”

Lin Yuanti looked at his wife and sighed.

As the current lord of Blade Forging Mountain, his status was no less than Shen Baishuang’s.

But he always felt guilty toward her and kept his voice and posture low.

“I’m fine. I’ve simply been in seclusion these past days.”

Perhaps because of his preference for men, Shen Baishuang had taken a dislike to Lin Yuanti’s temperament—indecisive, lacking masculine decisiveness, worse than a woman in her eyes.

The more time they spent together, the more he rubbed her the wrong way.

Still, with the matter of Xuamu Daoist weighing on her conscience, she sighed softly. “In a few days I’ll come to Blade Forging Mountain.”

No matter how little she liked Lin Yuanti, they were husband and wife, Dao partners.

They couldn’t avoid each other forever.

Their relationship also touched on ties between Divine Maiden Palace and Blade Forging Mountain.

“Good. I also came to tell you something.”

Lin Yuanti said gently, “Lanxi broke through to Nascent Soul a few days ago, so I thought it best if you handled the grand ceremony.”

“Lin Lanxi reached Nascent Soul?”

She and her little sister-in-law had once been close, even intimate friends, the other always calling her Sister Baishuang.

After she married Lin Yuanti, it became Sister-in-law day after day.

But as her relationship with Lin Yuanti soured and turned hollow, Lin Lanxi grew distant.

In recent years Lin Lanxi had been in seclusion preparing for Nascent Soul, so the sisters-in-law hadn’t met for a long time.

Even so, Shen Baishuang was happy for her breakthrough.

Yet thinking of Lin Lanxi’s temperament and that she had advanced now, Shen Baishuang couldn’t help but frown.

“Alright. I’ll make preparations, speak with my elder sister, and come over,” Shen Baishuang said.

Whatever happened, as the villa lord’s wife she had to preside over her sister-in-law’s Nascent Soul ceremony.

Back then, after learning about his son’s proclivities, Lin Yuanti’s father apologized to her and handed much of the villa’s authority to his daughter-in-law.

If she stayed in Divine Maiden Palace all day and ignored the villa, the old guard there would come to resent her.

“Baishuang, has Yiren still not prepared for her Nascent Soul?” Lin Yuanti asked with concern.

He wasn’t, as rumor had it, harboring thoughts about his sister-in-law Shen Yiren.

He was simply worried. Shen Yiren’s Nascent Soul had been delayed far too long.

His own younger sister Lin Lanxi had already broken through, yet there was still no word from Shen Yiren.

Hearing her younger sister’s Nascent Soul brought up, Shen Baishuang’s irritation spiked.

If not for the White Dew Palace incident with Xuamu Daoist, Shen Yiren might have advanced long ago.

But now…

“Damn that Xuamu Daoist!” Shen Baishuang cursed in her heart, feeling that the blame for that day wasn’t hers alone.

She’d meant to match him with her sister, but he hid his strength and forced himself on her.

If things had gone as planned—Xuamu Daoist and her sister becoming Dao partners and both stepping into Nascent Soul—there wouldn’t be all this trouble.

The thought stoked her anger until it shook her slender frame.

With her husband still beside her, she pressed it down and said, “Yiren needs more time to prepare for Nascent Soul.”

Sensing her mood was off and thinking it had to do with him, Lin Yuanti didn’t press further.

He nodded. “Alright. If you’re short on resources or need help, tell me anytime.”

Blade Forging Mountain wasn’t on the level of Starrymoon Hall or the Pill Alliance, but as a famed forging power in the Starry Sea, it had deep reserves.

His father, once the Starry Sea’s foremost weaponsmith, had wide connections and many favors owed.

So whether top-grade Nascent Soul condensation items or top-grade heart tribulation spirit items, as long as he wanted, he could trade for them.

“Alright.” Shen Baishuang nodded, feeling an inexplicable annoyance toward Lin Yuanti’s attitude.

Not because he was treating her badly.

Because he was being too good.

After a brief talk, Shen Baishuang informed her elder sister Shen Jianjia about Lin Lanxi’s breakthrough, then left with Lin Yuanti for Blade Forging Mountain.

Though Shen Jianjia had forbidden her to go out, it was mainly to keep her from causing trouble and to make her reflect at home.

Going to Blade Forging Mountain to manage the Nascent Soul ceremony was proper business. Naturally, she didn’t stop her.

Meanwhile, deep beneath the waves.

“Master.”

Lu Lingjing called to Lu Changsheng, saying she had arrived within the waters of Penglai Island he’d indicated.

“Good.” Lu Changsheng sent out his divine sense, then he, Gui Da, and Qin Yuning stepped out from the Abyssal Sea Dragon Whale’s stomach.

Top forces like Penglai Island had island-guarding arrays capable of sensing and probing demon beasts.

If an Abyssal Sea Dragon Whale drew too close, it could be seen as an attack and provocation.

Lu Changsheng didn’t fear it.

But this visit to Divine Maiden Palace was courtesy, not a show of force.

“So this is how fast Nascent Soul True Lords and fourth-rank demon kings travel…”

Checking the sea chart and seeing they had already reached Penglai’s waters, Qin Yuning was stunned.

It had taken her more than half a year to carry a letter from Penglai Island to the Immortal City of Damengze back then.

This time, the return trip had taken less than half a month.

“Lingjing, thank you for your hard work.”

Lu Changsheng had Lu Lingjing take human form. With Gui Da and Qin Yuning he broke the surface and sped toward Penglai Island and Divine Maiden Palace.

Qin Yuning took the chance to message her master.

In less than half a day, two humans and two demons arrived at the mountain gate of Divine Maiden Palace.

Looking at the palace ahead, Lu Changsheng felt a wave of emotion.

Years ago, to seek a Nascent Soul chance and track clues about his son Lu Quanzhen, he’d come to Divine Maiden Palace as a guest elder.

He hadn’t expected the string of events that followed.

He ended up entangled with the Second and Third Palace Masters, and fathered a son with Shen Yiren.

By the count, it had been seventeen years.

Shen Yiren had carried the child for five years before giving birth, and now their son Shen Yuanming was twelve.

Before he could sink too deep into memories, the palace’s fourth-rank grand array rippled like water.

A figure of dazzling allure and unrivaled grace appeared.

Even after so many years, seeing the lord of Divine Maiden Palace again, Lu Changsheng couldn’t hide the flash of awe in his eyes.

She wore a luxurious palace gown like flowing starlight. Her figure was willowy and peerless, every curve enchanting.

Her hair fell like a waterfall, coiled into an immortal bun with a phoenix hairpin. Gold pendants swayed at her temples, and a strand of jade jewelry hung down—elegant, noble, magnificent.

Her breathtaking face held a soft glow, and Lu Changsheng could clearly see features flawless enough to defy nitpick.

“I am Lu Changsheng. Greetings, Palace Lord Shen.”

Lu Changsheng cupped his hands without hiding who he was.

At this point, there was no point in pretending.

“Master?” Qin Yuning blurted, surprised.

She hadn’t expected her master to come out to greet them personally. Few ever received such treatment.

Ordinary Nascent Soul cultivators had no right to be welcomed by Shen Jianjia at the gate.

“True Lord Lu, you and I are both Nascent Soul cultivators. No need for courtesy.”

Shen Jianjia’s eyes shone like stars, a plum-blossom mark between her brows glimmering as she calmly studied Lu Changsheng.

When she’d received Qin Yuning’s message, she had already watched from afar and sensed their approach.

She could see through Lu Lingjing at a glance as a fourth-rank shapeshifting demon king.

But Lu Changsheng and the old servant-like Turtle Immortal Patriarch were not so easily read.

Meeting them in person changed nothing.

It confirmed her judgment—this man was a reincarnated great cultivator, no simple figure.

“This is my spirit pet, Lingjing, and my steward, A’Gui.”

Catching Shen Jianjia’s glance at his side, Lu Changsheng took the initiative to introduce them.

“Please, my friend.” Shen Jianjia didn’t scrutinize them further or trade niceties. With a lift of her jade hand, she led them into Divine Maiden Palace.

Though she couldn’t see through Lu Changsheng and the Turtle Immortal Patriarch, she felt no fear.

This was Divine Maiden Palace—her domain.

With the fourth-rank grand array here, she could still hold her own even if a late-stage Nascent Soul powerhouse came knocking.