Rumble---
At the top of the snow-capped mountain, a golden thunderbolt, enveloped in the majestic spiritual energy of the sky, poured into the golden core in Ye Anping's abdomen conducted by the Snow Jade Spirit Sword.
It was as if blood boiled in his body, bruises bursting out and covering his skin in splotches.
Even though Ye Anping had already experienced sixty-one lightning tribulations, he still couldn't get used to the intense pain caused by it and had to clench his teeth and hiss to endure.
On a cedar tree a little further away, Xiao Tian looked at Ye Anping who was struggling in the lightning, tightly biting her lips in distress.
Unfortunately, there was nothing she could do about it except helplessly watch.
Compared to what Ye Anping went through, the tribulation of Feng Yu Die, Pei Lianxue, and Xiao Yunluo was just child's play.
While Xiao Tian was still thinking, he suddenly went limp and fell backward.
Xiao Tian rushed over anxiously and tried to touch Ye Anping to check on him.
But just before her small hand could touch him, a golden electric spark erupted from his body.
Bang! It hit so hard that her hand involuntarily retracted.
"Ah..."
Xiao Tian rubbed her fingers and looked at the bloodless Ye Anping. Taking a deep breath, she gritted her teeth, closed her eyes, and then forced her way into Ye Anping's abdomen.
Snap-snap-snap--
It was as if an electric mosquito swatter met a large swath of mosquitoes.
Crackling sounds filled this deserted mountaintop.
Soon after, Xiao Tian was shaken out by the spiritual energy of the thunder tribulation again and planted headfirst into the snow.
Although she was shaken out, she got to see the situation inside Ye Anping's body.
Because of his spiritual root qualification, Ye Anping simply couldn't assimilate the spiritual energy of the heavenly thunder tribulation so quickly.
The spiritual energy that had not been assimilated yet was now like a frightened rabbit, bumping around and biting through his meridians.
Ye Anping had told her that he was fine, but he didn't seem fine at all!
Xiao Tian was so anxious that she started to cry. She hurriedly flew to Ye Anping's side, and seeing that his eyes were out of focus, grabbed his face and shouted. "Anping! Don't sleep! Don't sleep!"
"..."
Ye Anping was speechless now. He had survived every thunder tribulation in the past two years like this, and he had planned to sleep through it. When Si Xuanji came, she would move him back anyway.
But now, Xiao Tian was in his face, yelling and crying...
So annoying!
He told her not to make a fuss.
While feeling irritated and helpless at the same time, Ye Anping heard a crisp bell sound.
Jingle-ling...
This sound, which was a nightmare for Ye Waner, was like a campfire in winter to him.
Ye Anping no longer tried to hold on, relaxed, slowly closed his eyes, and fell asleep.
"Ah?! Anping?!! Anping! Wake up!!"
"This idiot! Really..."
Xiao Tian's eyes were swirling with tears, and it wasn't until after she heard a petulant scolding voice from the side that she realized that an uninvited guest had arrived and slowly raised her head...
...
At dawn, Ye Anping woke up in bed as usual, but he felt like a ghost was pressing down on his chest, and his body felt heavy.
Lifting the quilt, he saw the culprit for this "ghostly pressure"-- Xiao Tian, who was now sleeping curled up on his chest.
Ye Anping sighed helplessly and stroked Xiao Tian's head with his fingers, but unexpectedly, they sank inside her head...
This feeling was like sticking his fingers into a basin of flowing hot water, so alien that he felt his eyes popping out.
"..."
"Woo~~"
Ye Anping wordlessly withdrew his hand, got off the bed, and went to the table expectantly to read Si Xuanji's message from yesterday.
---"Yesterday I saw you lying on the top of the mountain wearing only two pieces of clothing. Aren't you cold? A cultivator won't catch a cold, but he will feel uncomfortable, right? There are still ten thunder tribulations left. Just hold on for a few months."
Ye Anping smiled, took the paper, and wrote:
"Thank you for your concern, Master. I wonder if you can let me meet you at the end. I have wanted to meet you for the past two years to thank you in person."
As he was writing the reply, Xiao Tian rubbed her eyes and stood up.
She stared at Ye Anping blankly for a moment, then suddenly recalled what happened last night. Her cheeks turned red, and she shook her head to clear her mind of distracting thoughts before hurrying over.
Seeing Ye Anping's reply, Xiao Tian pursed her lips. "Anping, the so-called Master Tianji is actually..."
Ye Anping glanced over and interrupted bluntly. "She's Yunluo's sister, right?"
"Ah? You knew?!" Xiao Tian was a little surprised, but she quickly added, "Then, why are you pretending not to know her? And you call her Master..."
Ye Anping was silent for a while and pouted slightly.
From what Xiao Tian said, he could tell that she still didn't realize that Si Xuanji was the Immortal Matriarch.
Isn't she the spirit of the Heavenly Dao Scroll...
He had to wonder, was Xiao Tian so unobservant, or was Si Xuanji too cautious?
Ye Anping shook his head helplessly. "Since she doesn't want to reveal her identity, why should I ruin her game?"
Xiao Tian pondered for a while before saying, "Well, you're right. But speaking of it, when I saw her in the Imperial Sect before, I felt that she was weird."
"Hmm? Weird in what way?"
Xiao Tian propped her chin and analyzed. "Well... can't say, anyway, it's just weird. Yesterday, when she detached her spiritual sense and attached it to your body, I saw that she was so skilled in using it that she didn't look like a Foundation Building cultivator. Regarding the control of the spiritual sense, she is much more skillful than both Yu Die and you."
"..."
Naturally, she was more skilled than him and Feng Yu Die, but...
?
In the past two years, Ye Anping spent the night of the tribulation completely unconscious, and every time Si Xuanji would clean up the scene before she left.
He didn't know what Si Xuanji did...
And now, after hearing what Xiao Tian said, he roughly imagined some scenes in his mind...
"She separates her spiritual sense and attaches it to my body..."
"Ah..." Xiao Tian blushed and said shyly, "That's right..."
Ye Anping exhaled and raised his hand to interrupt her. "Forget it. I'm not interested in listening, so don't tell me. Just pretend you didn't see it, and you are not allowed to write it in the Heavenly Dao Scroll."
"Ah? Of course I won't write it, it's not you and Yu Die! I'll only write about you and Yu Die in the scroll."
?
"Huh?"
"Nothing, nothing! Hehe~" Xiao Tian smiled and circled him twice, changing the subject. "Anping, what are you going to do now?"
"...Practice the sword."
Ye Anping replied casually, then put on his clothes, took out the Snow Jade Spirit Sword, and walked out of the house.
...
Time passed as days and months flew by.
The snow on the white peaks of the mountains turned to flowing water, and the young buds in the forest broke out of the ground.
Winter turned to spring--
Ye Anping overcame nine thunder tribulations in the blink of an eye.
Although Xiao Tian worried about him every time he went through the tribulation, Si Xuanji always appeared barefoot by his side in time.
After calling him a "fool", she helped him relieve his yang energy and restore his damaged meridians.
However, Si Xuanji never agreed to the "meeting" Ye Anping requested in the letter.
Although he always knew that the person on the other side of the letters was Si Xuanji, perhaps because he had been acting with her for too long, he gradually immersed himself in the play.
After dating "online" for so long, two years of companionship and help from this person actually made him fall in love for real.
However, in the end, the other party was still not willing to let him see her.
After the seventy-first thunder tribulation, when Ye Anping woke up, he saw Xiao Tian's smiling face and Si Xuanji's farewell.
"Congratulations in advance on your success. I have also been in the Western Region for two years. It is time to say goodbye. The path of Immortality is long, I hope you will live up to your original intentions. Let's say goodbye here. Someday, if we are destined to meet again, I hope that we will be able to talk about the vicissitudes of the Immortal Path."
Ye Anping felt inexplicably depressed when he read this, and he wrote back:
"Master, do you really not want to meet me?"
...
Twelve days later--
The sky changed drastically as black clouds pressed down and silver colors danced about.
Threads of spiritual energy gathered like fireflies from more than a hundred miles away, toward the mountaintop where Ye Anping was, forming a vortex in the air.
Everyone in the Hundred Lotus Sect stopped what they were doing or walked out of their houses, and they looked toward the spiritual vortex in the sky.
On the martial arts platform, Liang Ating, now sixteen years old, put down her sword, pointed there, and asked with a surprised face, "Father, what's going on over there?"
Liang Zhu looked out for a moment and sighed. "Your sixth uncle has formed a core."
Ye Waner, who was teaching the Hundred Lotus Sect disciples sword skills, also came over and sighed. "Young Master Ye really made a Heavenly Dao golden core? Brother Liang, we bet five hundred spirit stones before, and you lost. Let's settle the bill, hehe..."
"Heh..." Liang Zhu shook his head and smiled wryly, waved his hand, and threw out a bag of spirit stones from the storage bag. "It was to be expected."
...
In the Hundred Lotus Sect's Heavenly Pavilion, Ye Ao and Kong Yulan, who were drinking tea by the window, also looked at the spiritual vortex in the distance with wide eyes.
"Yulan... Why is the spiritual vortex of this core different from the one we formed at that time?"
"Are you blind? This is the Heavenly Dao golden core! Don't you see that the spiritual energy is golden?!..."
"Ah?! What the hell? That kid..."
"Go change your clothes quickly, let the disciples in the sect gather, and go pick up our Ping from seclusion later!"
...
The last "thunder tribulation" had no thunder and no tribulation.
Breeze swept across the grass on the mountaintop. Ye Anping slowly opened his eyes, but he didn't feel any power crushing him!
Just like drinking a cup of tea, his sight and hearing were much clearer.
The scent of grass in the air became more pronounced, and the azure sky was much brighter.
He sat there, looking in the distance, wondering if he could catch a glimpse of "Master Tianji". But after waiting for a long time, no one appeared in the forest.
Xiao Tian also flew over from the nearby forest and said, "Anping, she didn't come this time. I looked around but didn't see her."
"Sigh--"
Ye Anping smiled bitterly, sighing.
It looks like he met a heartless woman who had been teasing him for two years, and then dumped him without a word.
This was really...
Ye Anping stood up, put the Snow Jade Spirit Sword into his storage bag, and returned to the cave where he had temporarily lived for two years.
When he built this cave residence, there was only one main room.
Looking back now, there was a sense that things had changed, as if everything in the past had become distant.
The yard was full of various flowers that he and Si Xuanji had planted together. There were also many cracks in the pavilion and a bamboo forest that covered the sky had grown behind the yard.
Ye Anping opened the door and walked into the main room, approaching the wooden table where he and Master Tianji had written letters. On the table was still the last letter he had written.
---"Master, do you really not want to meet me?"
It seemed that Si Xuanji really didn't come this time.
"..."
Ye Anping was a little depressed, but after thinking about it, he felt relieved.
He tried to preserve everything in the room. The one hundred and forty-one letters to Si Xuanji were protected by a thread of spiritual energy and left on the table.
He packed the clothes in the closet and walked out of the house.
Perhaps in another hundred years, a young cultivator will discover this cave, and then from the things inside, he will see that a cultivator in the Foundation Building stage has successfully formed a core with the help of a cultivator named "Master Tianji".
As for who Master Tianji was, let the future generations figure it out for themselves.
Ye Anping walked to the front of the cave, turned, and cupped his hands. "Goodbye."
Then, he summoned his flying sword and prepared to return to the Hundred Lotus Sect.
Xiao Tian sat on his shoulder with a smile. "Anping, are you going to act out the whole play?"
"Heh..."
Ye Anping sneered and did not answer.
Just as he was about to take off with his sword, a fiery red bird suddenly left a flying flame in the sky.
Yiiii---
Its cry echoed in the mountains.
The next moment---
Tap-tap---
The sound of footsteps came from the forest behind Ye Anping.
Turning around, he saw a woman with her eyes closed, resting her hand on the tree trunk next to her as she faced him with a smile on her face.
Kiiii---
With a cry, the fiery red bird swooped down, flapped its wings to cushion its fall, and landed on her shoulder, looking at him with piercing eyes.
The woman stepped forward and cupped her hands. "Master Ye, congratulations on your Core Formation."