"Hah—"
The soft exhalation was more than a breath; it was a release. Su Min stepped out from the skeletal remains of the grand hall, the hem of her pristine white robes fluttering gently in the wind, the fabric now faintly stained with the grey dust of collapse and the black ash of purified evil. She exhaled slowly, a long, measured release of a breath that had been held tight in her chest for fifty years, as if she were finally letting go of a heavy, cold chain that had been wrapped around her soul, waiting all this time to be severed.
Behind her, a profound silence reigned, thick and absolute.
No more curses hissed from the shadows. No more imperial schemes festered in gilded rooms. No more demons lurked in the name of a corrupt empire.
She looked up. The sky, once choked by demonic clouds and endless blood rain, was slowly clearing, revealing a sliver of clean, silver moonlight. The heavens always took their time to reflect the changes below, and she understood that now better than anyone, having learned the patience of mountains and the slow turning of stars.
"...It's over."
The words slipped from her lips, quiet and final. They were not for the corpses she left cooling on the marble, nor for the land she had helped cleanse, but for someone far smaller, far younger, a ghost living in the marrow of her bones.
A girl who had once knelt in rusted chains behind cold iron bars.
The voice she spoke with now was her own, steady and strong, but it echoed back through time to that girl, barely fourteen, her face filthy and streaked with tears, her body starved and shivering. A girl dragged from the smoldering remains of her clan's estate, sold like livestock into a perfumed brothel, only spared immediate defilement because her innate spiritual talent was considered too precious to waste on mere fleshly trade. A girl who had later fled into the treacherous mountains with nothing but grit and a bottomless well of fury in her bones.
"You don't have to keep running anymore," she whispered into the quiet air, the words meant for that child in the dark. "We're not prey anymore."
Her fingers curled slightly at her side, not around the familiar hilt of a blade, but around the empty air where the shape of vengeance had once lived, a constant, cold companion that was now gone.
Fifty years.
From a fugitive child with blood caked under her fingernails, to a nameless, wandering healer in the wild borderlands.
From hunted to hidden, patiently building power in the cracks and shadows of a decaying empire. Cloaking her true self beneath the benevolent, untouchable persona the world came to revere, Danxian.
They never saw the banked flames of absolute destruction smoldering behind her calm eyes.
From Body Refining to Qi Refining. From Qi Refining to Foundation Establishment. From Foundation Establishment to the Golden Core.
Each realm climbed with the bones of her enemies and the memory of her dead underfoot.
Each step forward soaked in silence, in patience, and in rage so cold it had become a form of cultivation itself.
And now, it was done.
The Emperor, slain not by her hand, but by the very women he had treated as disposable property.
The Demon Queen, devoured by the very abomination she created, a spell meant to steal from Su Min a life that was never hers to take.
It had not been Su Min's sword that struck the final blow in the throne room, but the grave was still hers to seal, the chapter hers to close.
Her gaze swept across the rubble and shattered jade, the place where the imperial court had once dictated the fate of millions with a flick of a wrist. Now, not even the ghosts dared linger in the oppressive silence she left in her wake.
"Your vengeance is fulfilled," she said softly, her words meant for the girl who once wept in the crushing darkness. "He's gone. She's gone. The hunting dogs they sent after you, the nobles who conspired to erase your name from history, none of them remain."
Her voice did not tremble. She had already shed all her tears long ago, alone in damp caves and dark prison cells, where no one could see her weakness.
"I didn't forget. Not one face. Not one name. Not one betrayal."
The wind shifted, carrying the faint, metallic scent of something old, perhaps the last vestiges of incense from a shattered altar, or blood long since dried into the stone. She imagined she could hear them again, the ghosts of her past, her aunt's soft lullabies sung in the darkness for comfort, her cousin's choking sobs as they were dragged away, her father's voice, steady and firm, as he mouthed his final word to her.
"Endure."
A familiar, bitter ache swelled behind her sternum, not of sorrow, but of a promise kept.
"You can rest now," she murmured, as if speaking directly to the dead who crowded her memory. "All of you. Our clan, our name, our bloodline. I carried it this far. No one will forget you now, not while I still walk this earth. Your names will not stay buried beneath the empire's official lies."
She stood for a long while, her gaze fixed on the emerging stars as if waiting for a sign, an acknowledgement, a voice from the other side.
But none came. The dead were not in the sky.
They were in her. They were her.
Still, she spoke the words aloud, because she had always spoken to them, her only constant companions on this long road.
"And the people of this land—"
She glanced upward again, at the moon's silver light finally cutting, clean and sharp, through the dissipating gloom.
"—they can breathe again."
For a long time, she said nothing more. The wind moved gently past her, brushing against her cheek with a touch like the phantom hand of someone she had once loved, or perhaps only imagined loving in a moment of desperate need.
She stepped forward, not as the last daughter of a ruined noble house, not as a nameless fugitive scratching for survival, not even as the legendary Danxian who had healed princes and slain demon beasts.
But as Su Min.
Just Su Min.
The girl who never forgot.
The woman who endured.
The one who, after fifty long, relentless years, finally stood alone on the pinnacle, unchallenged, unbowed, and utterly free.
"The living still have work to do," she said, the pragmatic thought returning her to the present. "And I still have bones to bury."
Then, almost absently, she turned her heel toward the inner chamber, the former lair and cultivation den of the Demon Queen.
"Let's see if that old hag left behind anything truly dangerous festering in there," she muttered. "Those damned scrolls of hers are better turned to ash. No one else needs to suffer the way we did."
For the first time in her life, the earth beneath her feet no longer felt like it might crumble away into an abyss.
It felt solid.
Earned.
Hers.
A moment later, a vast wave of spiritual sense, powerful and precise, surged outward from her body, sweeping through the entire imperial complex like a divine tide. Her brows furrowed slightly as she processed the information.
With a dismissive flick of her sleeve, she struck the polished obsidian stone beneath her feet. The entire courtyard square cracked open in a perfect ring of pure force, the shattered tiles falling away to reveal what had been hidden and forgotten beneath the opulence for decades.
Rows upon rows of skeletal remains lay in macabre formation. A silent sea of bones.
Some were small and fragile, clearly belonging to young maidservants and silent eunuchs. Others still bore faint traces of qi deep within their marrow, the remains of palace guards, inner disciples, and ambitious courtiers. But most chilling of all was the faint, unmistakable spiritual resonance in many of the skeletons' bloodlines. The same as the late Emperor's. His kin. His own clan.
All sacrificed, buried like foundation stones beneath the gilded corridors he walked.
Su Min stood in silence for a long time, her face an unreadable mask.
Then, she crouched and lifted a sheaf of scrolls from a pristine jade box nestled beside one particularly large pile of bones. Demonic script, writhing like trapped insects, glowed faintly across their surfaces.
"These are all the techniques I could salvage from her inner sanctum," she murmured to herself. "I collected what the remaining palace guards and maids carried on them as well. It's… better this way. Better to sever that rotted root entirely."
She straightened, holding the stack of scrolls lightly between two fingers. They ignited a heartbeat later, consumed by a flash of Nanming Lihuo, turning to harmless ash that was scattered by the breeze.
"Few of them were ever truly sane by the end," she added quietly, as if offering an epitaph. "Even the children born here were… wrong. Twisted by too many generations of spiritual greed and mortal fear."
She did not smile. There was no triumph in her expression, only a deep, weary stillness. A quiet, breathless gravity.
This was not a victory to be celebrated.
It was an ending to be acknowledged.
She sighed one last time, then pressed her foot lightly on the ground. Her figure blurred and vanished from the imperial city, reappearing instantly outside its main gates. Everyone knew she had gone in to settle a final, personal score. Naturally, no one had dared follow or disturb her.
"This is the Dog Emperor's head. You can use it to make an official proclamation and break the remaining resistance. As for the body, his own concubines tore it apart. There was nothing left to save."
She set the emperor's severed head down neatly in front of Cao Yuanmu. The head remained gruesomely intact only because Su Min had shielded it with a thread of spiritual force to preserve it as proof. She had no interest in saving the rest; his body had already been flayed and mutilated by dozens of furious, broken women. She had not bothered to piece the corpse back together.
"Hmph, so you're finally dead."
Cao Yuanmu sneered as he looked at the terror stricken face still frozen on the pale features. He didn't care in the slightest how the man had met his end; the result was all that mattered.
"Take your men inside and secure the palace. The Dog Emperor's consorts… they are victims as much as anyone. Give them a path to live, with dignity if possible. The rest, I'll leave to you."
"Understood."
Cao Yuanmu nodded firmly and gestured to his captains. Columns of soldiers began marching in orderly ranks into the palace grounds.
Su Min then turned to face the gathered officials and sect leaders who had been waiting anxiously.
"I will be resting for about a week to recover my energy. After that, I will reopen my pill furnace for commissions. I will publicly list the specific herbs required for each type of pill I am willing to refine. Prepare your materials accordingly if you wish to commission me."
"Yes, Fairy Su!"
A wave of relieved, eager cheers broke out among the crowd. At last, the moment they had long dreamed of had arrived. Before the final battle, each of them had been forced to face one or even two of the Emperor's fanatical cultivators, all empowered by desperate, sinister techniques. Those agents, though often mediocre in true cultivation, used vile and unpredictable methods where one careless move could still cost a life.
With that business concluded, Su Min summoned her flying sword. Stepping onto it, she became a streak of light vanishing into the skies above the capital. Her Heavenly Dao Insight had stirred once again, and this time the resonance was strong, a powerful linkage to a higher tier method she needed to comprehend. She required absolute solitude to digest the influx and to properly sort through the old hag's legacy without distraction.
She soon landed on a remote, windswept mountaintop far from the newly renamed Weijing capital.
Seated cross-legged on the bare rock, Su Min closed her eyes and sank into deep meditation.
"Another resonance... this time, it's the third layer of my main cultivation method?"
A torrent of complex information, formulas, and energy pathways surged into her mind, fully formed.
[Fire Wood Transformation Method – Layer Three]
"So, the third layer is designed for the Golden Core stage. Not bad at all. It seems the supporting techniques are keeping pace with my advancement. No wonder my head ached earlier. An entire realm's worth of cultivation knowledge just downloaded itself."
As she cycled her breath and began circulating the new method, her spiritual energy, already vast, quickly stabilized and refined itself. Truthfully, the previous battle had not been particularly difficult for her. The old witch's ultimate trump cards were simply too perfectly countered by her prepared arsenal.
If she had tried to brute force her way through that blood infant, it would have been a protracted and potentially disastrous fight. Fortunately, one specifically crafted magic treasure had suppressed its core mechanic completely, and her final Buddhist technique had torn the construct apart from the inside. In battles without an overwhelming power gap, intelligence and preparation were king.
"Come to think of it, I'm like that hero from the stories, the one who always plans. Never lost a duel I saw coming."
With the new cultivation technique integrated seamlessly into her core, Su Min turned her attention to the spoils of war. She pulled out the Demon Queen's storage ring and swept it with her divine sense. Her expression shifted slightly. Inside was a trove of forbidden scrolls and texts, detailing dark arts and sinister secrets that reeked of sacrificed souls. Releasing these into the world would cause untold disaster. She had no intention of using them, nor letting anyone else do so.
"As expected of a cultivator who was once powerful enough to reach Nascent Soul. Among the filth, she did hoard plenty of legitimate, high grade techniques. I will save those for when I found my own sect. But more importantly... this."
She retrieved a small, unassuming wooden boat from the ring. This, she knew, was the old witch's greatest treasure, the key to her future.
[Void Skipping Shuttle: Can traverse minor world barriers and spatial folds.]
The description was simple. Crude, even. But its value was unbelievably high.
In five hundred years, when the world fully opened, such an object might become more common. But now, in this still sealed off age, it was priceless. Consider the monk from the Great Thunder Temple who had passed her the Great Sun Tathāgata Sutra. To enter this lower realm, he had paid a dreadful price and was bound by countless heavenly restrictions. But this shuttle could cross those same barriers relatively unhindered.
Even the mighty Great Thunder Monastery likely lacked such a convenient treasure. Su Min could not even imagine what kind of dumb luck or dark bargain had allowed the witch to get her hands on it.
"The Three Blessed Realms… unique pocket realms once completely veiled by Heaven's laws. Now that the Great Dao has retreated, they will soon be exposed to the world. I must seize this chance to enter them first and claim them all. In the coming centuries, I will build my sect from nothing within their blessed grounds, then walk the true path to the peak of Golden Core."
She put away the precious shuttle and began mentally calculating the steps ahead. The Blessed Realms were ultimate treasures for any faction, and Su Min, with the heart of a greedy player, intended to collect every one within her reach. She even had the equivalent of game guides for it in her memory.
With her current mid Golden Core cultivation and no major hidden powers making a move yet, she could already dominate most of the competition for these realms. She could negotiate with the great sects from a position of strength, lead carefully chosen disciples into the lands she claimed, and raise them into a powerful force herself. Only then could she finally rest easy, with a secure foundation for her eternal path.
"One step at a time. Attempting to cultivate to the peak without a power base or backing… it is just too hard, too vulnerable."
She sighed. Wei Wu Province was a remote, spiritually barren land. Its spiritual foundation was weak, its environment mediocre, barely enough to sustain her early path. Though she possessed the gift of endless life, this world was filled with cataclysms and ruthless competitors. If she took her time, the next great calamity might rise and wipe everything out before she reached true power.
"The Azure Dragon legacy and the Eastern Azure Wood… both are rumored to appear on the Golden Core Avenue. There will be many ancient freaks and heaven chosen talents who covet them. And I may be gifted, but so are they. I have no overwhelming advantage."
She sighed again. Her most important innate talent, Heavenly Dao Insight, did not directly enhance combat. It was a supportive, long term gift. Among true geniuses on the main stage, that could be a fatal disadvantage.
Take Xie Yingying for example. With her Lunar Sovereign Physique, she had dealt with that Corpse Fiend alongside Su Min with apparent ease, yet she had never even been forced to reveal the full extent of her strength. The next few centuries would be a desperate race for all geniuses to deepen their foundations and awaken their bloodlines. Especially for those on the Path of Longevity like herself, there was immense, almost infinite room for growth.
She knew that in the wider world, other powerful beings would soon begin traveling across the continents, searching for stronger bloodlines and creating offspring to continue their legacies. Even the most powerful innate physique would weaken with age if it did not evolve, and their path would end.
So they founded great clans, raised children with their talents, then sometimes used forbidden arts to reincarnate their consciousness and seize their own descendants' bodies. That was the true, dark threshold of this cultivation world. After such a reincarnation, one's techniques and knowledge remained, but the physique changed. If the new body was not compatible with their supreme techniques, their entire legacy could be lost.
In this brutal world, the Path of Longevity was often considered weak in its early stages, middling in its middle stages, but truly terrifying for those who could reach its mythical endgame.
"Hah… finally fully recovered."
Su Min opened her eyes, sharp clarity returning to their depths. This short retreat had lasted a full week. Restoring her spiritual energy had been simple, but fully mastering and integrating the new cultivation method had taken focused time. By the time she returned to the capital, now renamed Weijing, the once chaotic city had been brought under firm control. But inside the main command hall, the atmosphere was grim. The faces of Cao Yuanmu and the other leaders were dark and stormy.
"What's with the faces? Who died now?"
She raised a single eyebrow at the stifling, heavy air inside the hall.
"That bastard paved the entire palace foundation with bones. The whole complex is haunted, and resentful ghosts roam the corridors at night. Even Monk Hui Ming and all his disciples agree it will take years of continuous rites to purify the land. We had planned to make this our new capital, but now… it's uninhabitable."
Cao Yuanmu's face twitched in pure frustration. Their carefully laid plan was completely scrapped.
"I would strongly suggest a new dynasty name as well," Su Min stated calmly. "That man's sins are too heavy, his karma too dark. If you inherit the 'Great Wei' title, you will inherit that spiritual burden along with it."
"Guh—!"
Cao Yuanmu shivered involuntarily. That was a burden their new dynasty could not afford to carry.
In truth, Su Min's claim was half bluff, born from her own deep seated loathing. She simply hated the name "Great Wei" and did not want to see it continue. But if a little spiritual superstition helped her cause, so be it.
"After your men finish cleaning up the worst of it, we will return home, to Yong Province. The lands the emperor directly ruled are infested with vengeful spirits and corrupted earth. Proper purification will take decades. This capital... it is cursed. Unlivable."
They had agonized over the decision for days, but Su Min's authoritative words sealed it. They would return to their roots, to Yong City, where their power base was oldest and strongest. As for the revival of a unified empire, that would be a much longer, slower process.
"Then the new emperor's coronation will be held next month... in Yong City."
"What about the former imperial concubines?"
"They have been relocated to a secured compound. They are commoners now, all of them. We will find them work, perhaps in government run textile mills. No more luxuries, but they will have food, shelter, and safety. If they recover mentally and wish to remarry in the future, we will not stop them."
"Good."
Su Min gave a single nod of approval. She had no further personal interest in their fates. Helping them had been a passing act of mercy, a balm on her own conscience. For the powerful Yong faction, humanely handling a few dozen harmless, traumatized women was no trouble at all.
"I will head back to Yong City ahead of you. The main threats are gone. The rest of the pacification is up to you and your armies."
"Understood."
Cao Yuanmu didn't argue. The Great Wei's last truly powerful forces, the Demon Queen and her elite Demon Slaying Division, had been utterly destroyed at the capital's gates. Now, their own army could march unopposed across the heartlands. Su Min's world shaking strength was simply not needed for mopping up isolated garrisons.
News of the emperor's death and the Great Wei's fall spread like a tidal wave across Wei Wu Province.
From the western deserts to the southern jungles, envoys and tribal chieftains raced to Yong City to pay respects and swear fealty to the new rising regime. A royal decree soon followed, The new emperor would be crowned in Yong City, which was to be renamed Yong Capital. The dynasty itself would be reborn as the "Great Yong."
Su Min's warning about karma had been heeded. The Great Wei, which had endured for centuries, was officially no more. And no one dared rebel during the transition. The Yong faction's foundation was unshaken, and the united martial sects alone possessed enough power to crush any dissent. With the age of cultivation advancing, a single Foundation Establishment expert could sway the fate of entire regions. An uneasy, but genuine, peace had settled over the land at last, though no one knew how long it would hold.
Back in her residence in Yong City, Su Min stared at the staggering stack of pill refinement requests piled high on her table, feeling momentarily overwhelmed. Old habits from a past life died hard, she had organized everything into meticulously detailed lists, and now she was faced with scrolls and ledgers meters long.
"Eighteen requests for Foundation Establishment Pills... Twenty three sets of materials provided. The rest are paying with rare manuals or other spiritual resources. At a rate of five pills per batch, that is only four batches..."
She planned to establish her own sect soon, so collecting a wide array of techniques and skills was a wise long term investment. But she knew the reserves of Wei Wu Province were pitifully shallow. She would need to visit other continents, using her status as a fourth grade alchemist to trade with the major sects there. Most of the truly powerful ancient factions were still sealed away, with only one or two Golden Core elders active in the world. The higher tier experts, those at Nascent Soul and above, would not emerge from their hibernation unless their sects faced annihilation, for the Heavenly Decay Curse made extended activity in the current world deadly.
Any cultivation level that too far exceeded the world's current spiritual capacity burned the cultivator's lifespan at an accelerated, often fatal rate. This was true even for legendary Nascent Soul or Divine Transformation experts.
As for the smaller, less prepared sects?
Most had vanished into the sands of time, just like Xie Yingying's Heavenly Yin Sect. Without enough high grade hibernation crystals or profound sealing arts, they had been forced to entrust their entire legacy to a single chosen heir, like Xie Yingying. Now, she, and others like her, would have to rebuild their sects from absolute scratch.
"Time to start refining. I will drain this land of every useful resource it can offer before I leave."
With that decisive thought, she closed her eyes, and the familiar, comforting flames of the Nanming Lihuo erupted around her in a controlled vortex. At her current level, third grade pills were virtually guaranteed, perfection achieved with effortless grace.
While Su Min worked, the Great Yong's rise continued unabated. In just half a year, the last remnants of organized resistance crumbled without a major battle. The late emperor's atrocities had long eroded any lingering loyalty, making the transition surprisingly smooth. Now, the grandest event on everyone's mind was the upcoming coronation of the new emperor.
As for Su Min's role in the ceremony?
"Foundation Establishment Pills, done. Qi Gathering Pills, done. Qi Inducing Pills, done. The Foundation Spirit Pills... well, you simply did not bring enough materials for a second batch."
She clapped her hands lightly, and a procession of maidens carried out lacquered trays laden with porcelain vials, the sheer quantity of pills enough to drive any cultivator mad with desire. The main hall buzzed with palpable anticipation and greed. The single Foundation Spirit Pill she had prepared from her leftover materials became the subject of fierce, undignified competition, with respected sect leaders nearly brawling like street thugs over it.
Since none of them could claim credit for personally slaying a Foundation Establishment enemy during the final battle, the Demon Queen having claimed all those souls herself, dividing the credit for the pill was impossible.
As for the other three pill types, she had refined so many batches she had lost count. But Foundation Spirit Pills required ingredients far too rare for this spiritually impoverished era. Even scouring the outer layer of Xie Yingying's Xuantian Mansion had only barely provided enough for one full batch.
"This should be enough to satisfy the most pressing demands. Hahaha..."
The recipients, seeing the mountains of pills before them, didn't dare complain about the missing high grade pill. The sheer volume of what she had produced had already exhausted their collective stockpiles. Even if Su Min continued refining day and night, they had simply run out of materials to give her. Spiritual herbs, after all, took decades, sometimes centuries, to regrow.
"Yawn... The coronation is in a week, correct?"
Su Min stretched lazily, cat like, watching with detached amusement as the pill distribution proceeded with only minor squabbling. No one, however desperate, dared cause real trouble under her watchful gaze.
"Yes, Fairy Su. Your observation seat in the grand pavilion is prepared."
"Mm."
She gave a single, acknowledging nod.
As for why she was not a participant in the ceremony itself, why she would not be kneeling before the new Dragon Throne?
The answer was simple, and understood by all.
No one could, and no one dared, to make her kneel.