After Qingxiao left,
Ye Qingxuan tidied up the stone pavilion a bit and then returned to the blessed land to begin a new round of secluded cultivation.
With the Green Demon Realm watching eagerly like a tiger eyeing its prey, even Ye Qingxuan himself hadn’t realized
that he had lost his usual calm composure. Unknowingly, a sense of urgency had risen in his heart, a desire to quickly improve his cultivation.
The invasion of the Green Demon Realm, the war between the two realms—it all seemed very far away from Ye Qingxuan, but its subtle influence on him was far from small.
Or rather, for the cultivators living in the Earth Xuan Realm, no one could truly ignore the full-scale invasion of the Earth Xuan Realm by the Green Demon Realm.
Especially when the Earth Xuan Realm had lost the initiative and was at a disadvantage.
In the days that followed, Ye Qingxuan unconsciously began to gradually increase the time he spent cultivating each day.
Besides that, Ye Qingxuan also replanted quite a few Pure Spirit Trees in the spots that had previously been left empty.
However, in the following years, Ye Qingxuan would only submit 100 tier-one Pure Spirit Trees each year to meet his obligations.
As for the remaining Pure Spirit Trees, Ye Qingxuan planned to wait until he had cultivated them to tier four before handing them over to Bai Zichun in exchange for spiritual vein sources.
With the current state of the Qingxuan Cave Heaven Blessed Land, cultivating a Pure Spirit Tree to tier four would only take about thirteen years or so.
Pure Spirit Trees, being a type of spiritual plant that can continuously advance, are a bit special and grow slightly slower than other tier-four spiritual plants.
If the Qingxuan Cave Heaven Blessed Land hadn’t advanced to the mid-second-order stage, and if the energy accumulated in the earth hadn’t surged dramatically after integrating those nine spiritual vein sources this time,
it would have taken far longer than just thirteen years for the Pure Spirit Trees to reach tier four.
Seasons changed, spring giving way to autumn, and in the blink of an eye, three years had passed since Ye Qingxiao had gone down to the lower realm to train.
One day, three years later, Ye Qingxuan was standing at the edge of the stone pavilion, gazing into the distance, when he suddenly saw an unexpected person appear.
Watching the visitor descend and land beside him, Ye Qingxuan asked in confusion:
“Patriarch, why are you here?”
The visitor was none other than the head of the Ye family, Ye Yuhong.
Logically speaking, since Ye Yuhong had only recently come to the Xuantian Sect, he shouldn’t have returned so soon.
Ye Yuhong looked at Ye Qingxuan, seeming to hesitate for a moment. Then, he took a letter from his robes and handed it to Ye Qingxuan, saying in a deep voice:
“Qingxuan, please accept my condolences.”
Hearing this, Ye Qingxuan’s body suddenly stiffened. A sense of foreboding welled up in his heart.
After a long while, Ye Qingxuan finally reached out silently and took the letter from Ye Yuhong’s hand.
On the front of the letter were written six large characters: “To my son Qingxuan, personally.”
Seeing Ye Qingxuan suddenly fall silent, Ye Yuhong spoke to comfort him:
“Qingxuan, your parents passed away with smiles on their faces. Don’t be too sad, and take good care of yourself.”
Ye Qingxuan’s parents had lived to the ripe old age of over one hundred and seventy years before their lifespans ran out.
Almost on the same evening, just as Ye Qingxuan’s mother’s lifespan was exhausted, his father followed closely behind.
In the end, they fell asleep holding each other, with smiles on their faces, slipping into an eternal slumber.
When the other members of the Ye family discovered them the next day, this letter was all that was left by the bedside.
As soon as Ye Yuhong received the news, he rushed over without delay to deliver the letter to Ye Qingxuan.
After comforting Ye Qingxuan for a short while, Ye Yuhong left the Qingxuan Blessed Land alone.
This was something that Ye Qingxuan would have to work through himself, to find his own way out. Words of comfort from others could only do so much.
This was also something that every cultivator must inevitably experience.
After Ye Yuhong left, Ye Qingxuan’s hands trembled slightly as he opened the letter his parents had left for him:
“Xuan’er, your father and mother are leaving. Please don’t be sad.
Even though you haven’t been by our side all these years, it’s because of you that the family has taken such good care of us.
We’ve been able to live so freely and enjoy the happiness of having grandchildren and great-grandchildren all because of you.
So, you see, you’ve always been with us in spirit, throughout our lives.
What we worry about most is you!
Although we can’t cultivate, we know that this path is bound to be full of hardships.
You’ve set off on this irreversible path all by yourself. Compared to your father, mother, and your younger siblings, you have to bear so much more.
At least your father and I have your siblings by our side, but you have always been walking alone in silence.
All these years, we’ve never blamed you, so after we’re gone, please don’t blame yourself or feel guilty.
Our abilities are limited. We can’t help you on your cultivation path, but we are so very grateful that we never became a burden to you in this life.
Even though we’re leaving, we hope you can carry our thoughts and wishes with you and keep walking. See for us the immortal path we once foolishly dreamed of—what kind of scenery does it hold?
Your father and I will be down here, always blessing you, always praying for you, watching as you make it to the very end.
You are the pride of your father and mother’s lives. Keep going, our son!”
After reading the letter his parents had left for him, a glimmer of light shone in Ye Qingxuan’s eyes, but no tears fell.
Ye Qingxuan just stood there in a daze at the edge of the stone pavilion, staring blankly into the distance. A thought crossed his mind:
“If I had been able to break through to the Golden Core stage faster and condense a clone, would I have been able to see my parents one last time?”
Once this thought arose, Ye Qingxuan began to gradually fall into a certain obsession.
Fragments of his time with his parents after arriving in the Earth Xuan Realm kept surfacing in his mind.
Perhaps the most relaxed and happiest moments of this long life were those twelve years spent with his parents.
Ye Qingxuan stood there, the light in his eyes slowly dimming, lost in his own thoughts.
He stood there for seven days and seven nights.
Immortals are said to be without emotion, but it’s not that immortals are born emotionless—it’s that they lose all their emotions along the long road to immortality.
Seven days later, the light returned to Ye Qingxuan’s eyes, but his demeanor now held a trace of detachment that had never been there before.
Ye Qingxuan’s eyes showed a determination he had never felt before. His voice carried a hint of cold indifference as he said:
“What I’ve lost on my path to immortality, I will reclaim once I reach the pinnacle. I will take back everything I’ve lost.”
After that, Ye Qingxuan carefully put away the letter and returned to the blessed land.
And so began his long, solitary years of cultivation.
In the days that followed, Ye Qingxuan was rarely seen outside the stone pavilion.
Only when Bai Zichun came each year to collect the Pure Spirit Trees would Ye Qingxuan venture out.
The rest of the time, Ye Qingxuan almost completely sealed himself inside the Qingxuan Cave Heaven Blessed Land, cultivating with all his might, day and night.
Even knowing that this method of cultivation yielded very little result, Ye Qingxuan simply didn’t care.
Ye Qingxuan had lost his usual rationality. It seemed his only thought was to increase his cultivation as quickly as possible.
Bai Zichun, who came each year to collect the Pure Spirit Trees, was almost the only outsider who ever saw Ye Qingxuan.
Every time he saw how increasingly indifferent Ye Qingxuan’s demeanor had become, Bai Zichun wanted to speak up and persuade him, but in the end, he remained silent.
Although Bai Zichun didn’t know what kind of blow Ye Qingxuan had suffered, he understood that Ye Qingxuan had fallen into some kind of obsession.
In his current state, Ye Qingxuan simply couldn’t listen to anyone else’s advice.
Blindly trying to persuade him might backfire and cause him to sink even deeper.
This was something Ye Qingxuan would have to overcome by himself.
As an onlooker, it was clear. Ye Qingxuan, who had been an orphan in his past life, had still underestimated the impact his parents’ passing would have on him.
He thought he could take it all in stride, not realizing he had already fallen into obsession.
Compared to other cultivators, Ye Qingxuan’s dependence on his parents was actually deeper—he just hadn’t been aware of it himself.
Having arrived in the Earth Xuan Realm with the memories of his past life, Ye Qingxuan was inherently reclusive. From early childhood, he had harbored a deep mistrust of this world.
It was his parents’ constant, steady love that gradually made him let down his guard, allowing him to accept his parents in this life and the world itself.
You could say that, in his early childhood, the only people Ye Qingxuan truly trusted were his parents.
His father and mother were also the most crucial link between Ye Qingxuan and this world in those early years.
And now, with his father and mother gone, Ye Qingxuan was like a kite with a broken string, adrift, not knowing where to belong.
He had cultivated for over a hundred years, yet when his parents passed away, he couldn’t even be by their side to see them off one last time.
Outwardly, Ye Qingxuan seemed calm, but deep down, how could he not blame himself and feel guilty?
His seemingly manic cultivation was, in fact, an unconscious attempt to escape from that deep-seated self-reproach and guilt.
Coupled with the fact that Ye Qingxuan had encountered almost no setbacks along his path, compared to the journey of other cultivators, his road had been far too smooth.
So, under the dual pressure of the Green Demon Realm’s invasion and his parents’ death,
a subconscious part of Ye Qingxuan desperately craved greater power. He wanted to completely control his own destiny, to change everything.
The influence of these various factors caused Ye Qingxuan to fall into obsession without even realizing it.
As time passed, Ye Qingxuan paid less and less attention to the outside world.
Under the influence of his obsession, Ye Qingxuan threw himself completely into cultivation. The light in his eyes lost its former vitality.
Even the Azure Dragon, Xiao Kong, and Xiao Ling, who had always been very close to him in the blessed land, now only dared to linger nearby, afraid of disturbing him.
Although they were just spirit beasts, their sensitivity to changes in aura far exceeded that of humans. They had naturally noticed the change in Ye Qingxuan.
Ten years after Ye Qingxuan’s father and mother passed away,
Ye Qingxuan once again sold 500 tier-four Pure Spirit Trees, exchanging them for four tier-three spiritual vein sources and five tier-two spiritual vein sources.
This time, Bai Zichun, seeing how Ye Qingxuan’s aura had grown increasingly indifferent, finally couldn’t help but try to persuade him:
“Qingxuan, you still have a very long road ahead. On the path of cultivation, who doesn’t encounter setbacks? Try to see things more lightly.”
Bai Zichun didn’t know exactly what had happened to Ye Qingxuan, so he didn’t know how to help him.
He hadn’t expected that Ye Qingxuan, who had been doing so well, would suddenly change so drastically, falling into an obsession and being unable to pull himself out.
And now, it seemed that Ye Qingxuan was showing signs of sinking even deeper.
As for Bai Zichun’s words, Ye Qingxuan acted as if he hadn’t heard them. He just nodded mechanically and returned to the blessed land.
It wasn’t that Ye Qingxuan didn’t want to respond. Rather, it was like he had fallen into a barrier of perception. His perception of everything outside was still stuck at the point before he had fallen into his obsession.
Therefore, Ye Qingxuan himself wasn’t aware of his own change.
Seeing this, Bai Zichun could only shake his head regretfully and then leave the Qingxuan Blessed Land.
Twenty-three years after Ye Qingxuan’s father and mother passed away,
Ye Qingxuan once again sold 500 tier-four Pure Spirit Trees, exchanging them for four tier-three spiritual vein sources and five tier-two spiritual vein sources.
After integrating all the spiritual vein sources into the Qingxuan Cave Heaven Blessed Land, it now contained:
12 tier-three spiritual veins, 17 tier-two spiritual veins, and 20 tier-one spiritual veins.
With over a dozen additional tier-two and tier-three spiritual veins, the rate of origin conversion in the Qingxuan Cave Heaven Blessed Land had increased several times over.
With the help of so many spiritual veins, the Qingxuan Cave Heaven Blessed Land quickly accumulated enough origin and successfully advanced to the late second-order stage.
Twenty-eight years after Ye Qingxuan’s father and mother passed away,
under the state of cultivating day and night, Ye Qingxuan successfully broke through to the Golden Core stage.
