Many children, many blessings: Stealing the offspring of powerful figures to cultivate immortality.

"If you monk dare to die now, I, Jiang Yining, swear to smash all the golden Buddha statues in your Great Thunderclap Temple to dust."

Amidst the storm that tore everything apart, Jiang Yining firmly gripped that severed, bony wrist.

The raging spatial turbulence, with its terrifying suction that could shred stars, raged wildly around them. Without hesitation, she forcibly extracted the last bit of chaotic life force remaining within her body.

Several decaying, purplish-gold Soul-Devouring Vines flowed upstream along her back, tightly wrapping her, the five treasures sleeping on her chest, and the blood-covered Buddha disciple into an airtight, sturdy cocoon.

"Let go..." Fan Chenxin's cold, snow-white face was covered with shocking bloodstains, and she managed to squeeze out two broken syllables from deep in her throat.

His usually calm eyes were now filled with resistance, as he tried to use his last bit of strength to push away this stubborn woman.

"If you want to be that saint who sacrifices his life for righteousness, you'll have to ask me if I agree."

Jiang Yining completely ignored his self-destructive advice and, using the terrifying momentum of the fall, forcibly pulled his shattered body into her not-so-broad but exceptionally warm embrace.

She pressed his head firmly against her shoulder, letting the corrosive dark gold flames burn charred marks on her back.

The cocoon, having lost its spiritual support, collapsed completely after penetrating the last dark gold barrier. The Myriad Spirits Divine Tree let out a mournful cry and transformed into a thick, soft cushion beneath them.

The three of them, along with the shredded debris, crashed heavily onto a barren, dark red landscape, raising clouds of pungent, blood-red dust.

"Cough..." Jiang Yining vomited a mouthful of black blood mixed with fragments of internal organs during the violent impact. Her usually clear and sharp eyes became sore from the sand and dust.

She endured the terrifying pain, as if her internal organs were displaced, and struggled to her feet, using her mud-covered hands to support herself against the cold red rocks beneath her.

"What kind of hellish place is this?" Jiang Yining tentatively extended her divine sense outward, only to be shocked to find that there wasn't even a trace of spiritual energy in the air. She felt as if she had been forcibly sealed inside an airtight iron coffin.

After exhausting its last bit of life force, the Myriad Spirits Divine Tree, which had been dormant deep within her dantian, fell into a deep slumber and could not respond to her calls.

"Mother, it's cold in April, and I want to eat sweet fruit in April."

Bound to her chest, Wu Bao Jiang Siyue writhed restlessly in her sleep, her fluffy fox tail unconsciously wrapping around Jiang Yining's wrist.

"My dear April, Mother is here. When it gets light, Mother will find you the sweetest fruit to eat."

Jiang Yining quickly untied the strips of cloth wrapped around her chest and carefully wrapped the soft little ball of flesh around her chest.

She comforted her daughter before turning to check on the lifeless man lying in a pool of blood a few steps away.

"Fan Chenxin, open your eyes." Jiang Yining knelt on the desolate wasteland covered with sharp stones and reached out to pat that bloodless handsome face.

The touch was icy cold, the extreme chill seeping into her veins from her fingertips, making her breathing heavy.

After enduring the deadly dark gold chain attack from the Divine General of the Divine Realm, Fan Chenxin's blood and qi had been completely burned away by the poisonous fire. At this moment, even his most basic breathing was so weak that it could be ignored.

"You monk, you're usually so eloquent when you're preaching, but now you don't even have the energy to talk back." Jiang Yining suppressed the bitterness surging in her heart and skillfully placed her fingers on his cold and stiff pulse point.

His meridians were empty, with only the lingering poison from the divine realm stubbornly gnawing at his already damaged heart meridian.

"Without the protection of Buddha's light, your body is nothing but a mortal skeleton. Do you really think you are an immortal Arhat?" She scolded in a low voice with a cold face, while taking out a rough porcelain bottle containing ordinary mortal wound medicine from her personal storage bag.

In this godforsaken place, divine sense cannot open high-level storage rings; one can only rely on these mundane objects that one would normally disregard to save one's life.

Jiang Yining uncorked the red cloth and poured all the black powder that emitted a pungent medicinal smell into her mouth, chewing it forcefully with the warm blood seeping from her tongue.

She bent down and, without any hesitation, mixed the chewed medicinal paste with her own saliva and applied it little by little to the terrifying, deep, bloody hole in Fan Chenxin's chest.

"Ugh..." Fan Chenxin let out a suppressed groan under the piercing pain, her tightly closed eyes creased in agony.

"If you feel pain, it means that the King of Hell finds you too troublesome and is unwilling to take your life." Jiang Yining completely ignored his instinctive struggle caused by the pain and pressed her blood-stained fingers directly onto several key acupoints on his chest.

Using the mortal massage techniques she had accumulated over the years from fighting her way through mountains of corpses and seas of blood, she forcibly used her meager vital energy to unblock the stagnant and broken meridians in his body.

"You bald monk, you always like to make decisions on your own. Did you ask for my opinion, the person involved?" Jiang Yining pressed hard on the acupoints on the side of his neck with her fingers.

Fan Chenxin's Adam's apple bobbed laboriously, but he had no strength to utter a single word.

"I spent so many days with you at the Great Thunder Temple, not to see you turn into a corpse in this desolate place where not even a blade of grass grows."

Jiang Yining poured out all those rebellious words, trying to fill the wilderness with her voice.

"If you die, who will cure my daughter of the remaining poison from the divine realm? Even if you die, you still have to pay back the debt you owe me." She continued to provoke his fragile nerves with that irrefutable tone.

Night fell without warning on this desolate wilderness, and a terrifying chill, capable of freezing one's bones, howled and swept wildly through the dark red canyon.

Jiang Yining dragged Fan Chenxin's incredibly heavy body and, with great effort, finally found a narrow cave that could barely provide shelter from the wind and rain.

"This godforsaken place can't even find a single piece of firewood to burn. If you bald monk don't regain your body temperature soon, the three of us will be frozen solid here tomorrow morning." Jiang Yining wrapped the Five Treasures tightly inside the few robes she had taken off to ensure that the little bit of heat wouldn't be lost.

She turned to look at the man lying on the cold rock, convulsing from hypothermia, and a glint of absolute rationality, devoid of any lust, flashed in her purplish-gold eyes.

"If those old monks at the Great Thunderclap Temple knew that their high and mighty Buddhist disciple was being held in the arms of a demoness like me for warmth, they would probably be so angry that they would go berserk on the spot." Without any hesitation, Jiang Yining unbuttoned the only thin inner garment she was wearing.

Large swaths of snow-white, delicate skin radiated an alluring, warm glow in the dim cave. She pressed her soft, fragrant body against Fan Chenxin's chest, which was as cold as iron.

"Your skin looks so pure and serene, but it feels rougher than the rocks of the far north." She wrapped her arms around his broad back, pressed her cheek against his cold neck, and tried to warm his dying body with her meager body heat.

"Insolence..." Fan Chenxin regained a faint sense of consciousness amidst the piercing fusion of ice and fire, and uttered two words with trembling lips.

"I've been quite unruly in many ways. If you, monk, can't stand it, you can just push me away and go outside to freeze to death (º ʖº)." Jiang Yining not only didn't let go, but instead squeezed her body even harder into his tattered embrace.

That pure skin-to-skin contact brought a chilling sensation that sent shivers down one's spine. Enveloped in that warm, cool fragrance, Fan Chenxin's remaining rationality was completely overwhelmed by guilt at that moment.

"You shouldn't have saved me." Fan Chenxin's voice was so weak that Jiang Yining had to put her ear to his lips to hear him clearly.

"I, Jiang Yining, never need a reason to save anyone. Since you shattered the Buddha's relics for me, your life is now my private property." Jiang Yining declared her ownership domineeringly.

"This humble monk... cannot give you what you desire."

"Whether you give it to me or not is your business, whether I want it or not is my business. Now shut up and save your energy." Jiang Yining covered his mouth with her hand, preventing him from continuing to lecture her.

Fan Chenxin struggled to open her bloodshot eyes, her vision blurred as she looked at the stunningly beautiful face so close to hers, feeling the seamless closeness between them.

"Ningning... don't worry about me, you'll freeze to death."