Gou can devour and become a saint in the cultivation world.

Chapter 444 Pollution

She remembered the inescapable shackles deep within her soul, her expression changed drastically, and she quickly shook her head vigorously in refusal.

"No, Chen Lang, you should go by yourself. You absolutely cannot take me with you."

Her voice trembled slightly.

"The Qi royal family will not let me leave."

"Besides—besides, the reason I haven't been able to successfully form a Nascent Soul all these years isn't because I lack the aptitude, but because my soul was locked by the divine will of a demon. That thing is too high a level; it's not something you can touch."

Qin Chengcheng pushed Chen Yi's hand away and took a half step back, as if afraid that her troubles would affect him.

"Chen Lang, I'm already very happy and content that you've come back to see me."

She forced a smile, but it looked worse than a grimace.

"Don't worry, even if I fail to form my Nascent Soul in the end, I will never give my soul to a demon. At worst, I will perish, and I may be reincarnated."

"If you can advance to the Supreme Nascent Soul stage, and my reincarnation happens to still be in this great world, then you can find me from the vast sea of ​​people and take me as your disciple. I would be very satisfied with that."

Actually, these were just Qin Chengcheng's words to comfort Chen Yi.

She knew better than anyone that finding the reincarnation of a specific person among the countless mortals in the three thousand worlds was an almost impossible miracle.

Let alone the Nascent Soul stage, even the legendary Void Realm experts who can travel through the void have very little hope.

Qin Chengcheng said this simply because she didn't want Chen Yi to provoke that terrifying demon who made her feel a pang of dread just thinking about him.

She can't be a burden to him.

Chen Yi listened quietly, and seeing the deep despair in her eyes and the resolute determination to think of him, his heart stirred slightly.

He simply smiled slightly.

"It's alright, let me test what's in your head first."

The next moment, under Qin Chengcheng's horrified and obstructive gaze, Chen Yi flashed in front of her and pointed a finger at Qin Chengcheng's brow.

The movement was so fast that she didn't have time to react.

"don't want!"

Qin Chengcheng cried out in alarm, her soul instinctively trying to raise its defenses and build up mental barriers.

However, in the face of Chen Yi's boundless and pure divine soul power, her hastily constructed defense was as fragile as a thin sheet of paper, completely ignored and crumbling at the slightest touch.

In an instant, Qin Chengcheng was overwhelmed with mixed feelings—surprise, joy, and anxiety.

To her surprise, Chen Yi's strength far exceeded her expectations! He was not just a mid-stage Nascent Soul cultivator; the strength of his soul was simply unbelievable!

What's worrying is that the demonic intent within her is far more powerful than that of a Nascent Soul stage demon! She had sensed the Qi Emperor's oppressive aura from afar, but compared to this demonic intent, the Qi Emperor was like a firefly compared to the bright moon.

Even a mere wisp of thought is beyond the reach of Chen Yi, a Nascent Soul cultivator.

If Chen Yi were to be corrupted by that demon because he helped her with her examination, and thus be planted with demonic thoughts, then she would truly be unforgivable and have ruined Chen Yi's life!

But none of these things were within Qin Chengcheng's control.

She felt a distinct black and white divine thought, like an indestructible divine sword, pierce into her soul and consciousness.

The divine thought emanated a Yin-Yang divine soul charm that she could not comprehend, representing life and death, positive and negative, profound and unpredictable, as if containing the ultimate truth of heaven and earth.

This power seemed perfectly clear to her soul, as if she had returned home, without any hindrance, reaching the deepest part of her soul's origin.

At this moment, Qin Chengcheng was powerless to stop it.

The last vestige of her inner struggle vanished.

She feared that any resistance from her would affect Chen Yi's investigation, distract him, and make him more vulnerable to demonic influence.

Now that things have come to this, only complete trust remains.

She opened her soul to Chen Yi without reservation, allowing the black and white divine thought to pass through it.

As Chen Yi's divine sense reached the depths of his soul, his memories of the past hundred years unfolded before him like a series of paintings, without reservation.

Scenes flashed by rapidly in Chen Yi's perception.

He saw it.

On a quiet moonlit night, she sat alone in the courtyard, her delicate hands playing the zither. The music was plaintive and filled with endless longing, and she murmured the words "Chen Lang" softly.

He saw it.

On the desolate plains shrouded in demonic energy, she stood clad in white, wielding a spirit sword, locked in a bloody battle with monstrous creatures. When her spiritual power was exhausted, she swallowed a pill, her gaze remaining steadfast, without a trace of retreat.

He saw it.

She cultivated herself day after day, sensing the world around her, her spiritual energy surging, and her cultivation level slowly but steadily increased in solitude.

Practicing the zither, cultivating oneself, sensing the world, slaying demons and monsters, and—missing Chen Yi.

For over a hundred years, these same few things happened repeatedly throughout her life. Monotonous, tedious, yet full of resilience.

The scene shifts to the final thirty years.

Her Golden Core cultivation finally reached perfection, and she began to work on breaking through the Nascent Soul bottleneck.

However, during one of her battles against a powerful monster, she discovered that she had unknowingly been targeted by an unimaginably high-level demon.

With just a distant glance, a wisp of pitch-black divine thought disregarded space and seeped into his soul, clinging to him like a maggot.

At that time, the situation in the State of Qi took a sharp turn for the worse, and large swathes of its territory fell into the filthy demon realm.

The vast majority of Golden Core cultivators, seeking refuge, flocked to the last sanctuary—the imperial city of Qi Kingdom.

Qin Chengcheng soon discovered a strange phenomenon.

Only when she cultivated in the specific spiritual vein cave "bestowed" upon her by the Qi royal family could the demonic thought in her mind, which caused her pain day and night and felt as if it were tearing her soul apart, calm down.

Once she leaves that cave, the demonic thoughts will retaliate wildly, causing her unbearable pain.

Gradually, a terrifying guess took shape in Qin Chengcheng's mind.

The royal family—may be in cahoots with that terrifying demon!

They trapped her here so that she could use that tampered spiritual vein to form a half-demon infant!

When she reaches the Nascent Soul stage, she may appear to be living a life of unparalleled glory, but in reality, her soul will have already been corrupted, and she may become a puppet of the royal family or that demon.

Having figured this out, Qin Chengcheng felt a chill run down her spine.

Therefore, she had been at the peak of the Golden Core stage for decades, suppressing her cultivation and failing to break through.

Her only option was to rely on the Soul Thunder inheritance that Chen Yi had left her and try to fight against that wisp of demonic divine thought within her own sea of ​​consciousness.

However, although the Soul Thunder inheritance was powerful, the level of that demon was simply too high, and the two were not even on the same level.

What made her even more desperate was that the Emperor Qi, who controlled all the royal resources, was secretly cooperating with the devil to cut off her access to external resources, trapping her in that cage.

Over the years, Qin Chengcheng has struggled on with an indomitable will. The clash between the soul thunder and the demonic thoughts has made her soul increasingly exhausted and increasingly difficult to resist.

Chen Yi "saw" that the light of soul thunder in her sea of ​​consciousness was flickering and uncertain under the erosion of the boundless black energy, like a candle in the wind.

Under such circumstances, she might not be able to hold on for another ten years or so before she would be forced to undergo vasectomy.

What awaits her then is either to compromise with that demon and become a puppet that is neither human nor ghost.

Either they die in their final resistance, their souls utterly destroyed.