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

When Jiang Yining opened her eyes, her mouth and nose were filled with a fishy, ​​astringent liquid.

She instinctively braced herself against the bottom of the pool, but the veins in her right arm ruptured the moment she exerted force.

A sharp pain shot from her palm into her shoulder blade, forcing her to fall back into the pool of blood.

Fan Chenxin's hoarse cry still lingered in his ears, but all that remained before his eyes was a dark red glow of water.

"Since April is currently staying at the entrance to the secret realm, Chu Ling Shuang should be able to protect her."

Jiang Yining confirmed the matter in a low voice, then suppressed all her chaotic thoughts.

Fan Chenxin and Lou Xiaotian's whereabouts are unknown. She doesn't even know where she is now. If she rushes to find them, she will only lose her life first.

She used the Wanling Divine Wood to probe her limbs and quickly examine the injuries.

The spatial turbulence tore apart seven main veins, and most of the newly condensed Yuan liquid dissipated, leaving only 30% of the Qi and blood of the Condensation Realm cultivators available.

Fortunately, the dantian was not completely shattered, and the three main branches of the Myriad Spirit Divine Tree were still intact.

The blood pool was about three zhang in diameter, and the liquid had a strong mineral smell, but there was no trace of living blood in it.

The poolside is paved with black stone bricks, each brick engraved with intricate patterns.

The patterns didn't directly attack her, but they were slowly drawing the wood-elemental power in her dantian.

Jiang Yining looked up and around.

This is a closed underground stone palace with nine dark silver ore stones embedded in the dome and the four walls engraved with peeling array patterns never seen before.

This book was first published on 2020s.com, providing you with a reading experience free of errors and disordered chapters.

In front of the stone hall stood a seven-story platform, where a young man in a black brocade robe sat at the highest point.

The man had high, prominent brow bones, a sharp nose and jawline, and long, jet-black hair tied back with a silver crown.

His face was so handsome that it lacked any gentleness; when his dark silver pupils drooped, they were reminiscent of a frosty blade.

He twirled a blood-red bead in his hand, and with each turn, a layer of the array patterns around the pool would light up.

Jiang Yining steadied herself by holding onto the pool wall.

"Since you've been looking around for so long, you shouldn't mind telling me where this place is first."

The young man in the black robe did not answer immediately.

He held the Spirit Pearl between two fingers, his gaze slowly shifting from the red mole between her eyebrows to her dantian.

"When you fell from the spatial turbulence, most of your meridians were already destroyed. If I had acted three breaths later, you would be nothing but a pile of broken bones now."

"Since you've rescued me, I'll accept this favor. As for your reasons for putting me in this formation, we can discuss that separately."

"You recovered faster than I expected. To be able to negotiate with me even in this situation is quite sensible."

The man stood up from the high platform, his dark robes billowing across the stone steps.

He did not deliberately release his aura, but the array patterns in the entire stone hall lit up layer by layer with his footsteps.

The purple-gold qi and blood that Jiang Yining had just gathered in her body suddenly sank.

Nirvana state.

This power far exceeded that of the Qi Refining Realm, leaving her no room for direct confrontation.

If she were to activate the Soul-Devouring Vine now, the opponent could easily suppress her and the divine tree back into her dantian with a single palm strike.

The man stopped three steps away from the pool of blood.

"My surname is Pei, and my given name is Yunji. This is the Pei family territory deep within the Heavenly Desolate Secret Realm, and also the Guiyuan Boling Hall."

"Since Young Master Pei is willing to reveal his name, it seems he is not prepared to kill me immediately."

"If I only wanted to kill you, I wouldn't have wasted a space-fixing talisman to pull you out of the turbulent waters."

Pei Yunji raised his hand, and the image of the Myriad Spirit Divine Tree was reflected in the Peeling Spirit Pearl in his palm.

"The ancient divine tree within you originally belonged to the Pei family's ancestor. Three thousand years ago, someone stole the divine tree while the ancestor was breaking through to the Shattered Realm, severing the Pei family's lineage. The Pei family has been searching for it for three thousand years, and now it has finally reappeared."

Jiang Yining looked at the purple-gold divine tree in the pearl, her face showing no surprise.

"You've concluded that the object inside me belongs to the Pei family based solely on a single bead. Such evidence, even if taken to the City Lord's Mansion, probably wouldn't be enough to exchange for a piece of strange beast bone."

"You want me to slowly verify the provenance of our ancestral artifacts with you?"

Pei Yunji pressed the Spirit-Peeling Pearl into the array groove at the edge of the pool, and hundreds of blood lines instantly lit up along the pool wall.

"The Divine Tree has nine ancestral roots in total, and the third one retains the Pei family's dark silver ancestral pattern. No matter how deeply it is hidden in your dantian, it cannot be hidden from the Spirit-Peeling Pearl."

Sensing the approaching bloodline, the Divine Tree of Myriad Spirits immediately wrapped its roots around Jiang Yining's heart meridian.

The shadow of the purple-gold vine emerged from behind her shoulder, but the edges of the leaves were constantly shrinking due to the pressure of the stone palace array patterns.

For the first time, a subtle change appeared in Pei Yunji's dark silver pupils.

"It actually took the initiative to protect your heart meridian. It seems that you have been fused for longer than I estimated."

"The Divine Tree of Myriad Spirits has long been integrated with my dantian, heart meridian, and soul. If you forcibly separate it, the roots of the tree will surely break, and I will die on the spot. You have waited for three thousand years; you can't just want to take back a withered tree."

"Are you reminding me that keeping you alive is in the Pei family's best interest?"

"I'm giving you a safer option."

Jiang Yining placed her palms on the edge of the pool and endured the pain of her damaged meridians as she walked out of the blood pool.

"You can heal my injuries first, and then check on the current state of the sacred tree. If it is indeed related to the Pei family, we can exchange resources or cooperate to find a way to restore it. Directly cutting open the dantian will only result in mutual destruction and will not benefit you at all."

Pei Yunji walked up the stone steps to the edge of the pool and looked down at her.

"You've been avoiding one thing when you speak. If the sacred tree truly belongs to the Pei family, no matter how deeply it's integrated with you now, it shouldn't remain within your body."

"The treasure has been separated from its original owner for three thousand years, and its current ownership is impossible to determine. Besides, if it hadn't been cared for by me, it might not have survived to this day."

"So, it seems the Pei family should thank you for taking care of our ancestral belongings?"

"Thanks are unnecessary; you only need to acknowledge that I am now inseparable from it."

Pei Yunji chuckled softly, his voice devoid of warmth.

"You dared to discuss ownership with someone in the Nirvana Realm while you were only at the Qi Condensation Realm; you certainly have a lot of guts. Unfortunately, you misjudged one thing: the Pei family was never prepared to accept a lose-lose situation."

He stepped over the edge of the pool, pinched Jiang Yining's chin with his five fingers, and forced her to look up.

That hand didn't use much of its energy, yet the pressure of the Nirvana Realm had already locked onto her shoulders and neck.

If Jiang Yining resists even slightly, the newly scabbed veins will split open again.

Pei Yunji scrutinized her eyes.

"You're not afraid; you're even calculating the distance between my right main vein and the array's core. Do you think that if you get close enough, the divine tree will have a chance to devour my life force?"

Jiang Yining met those dark silver eyes, without releasing a trace of purple-gold wood energy from her fingertips.

"If Young Master Pei is truly confident in his cultivation, why should he care about how a mere Qi Condensation Realm martial artist calculates things?"

"Provocation won't work on me, so you can save your energy."

Pei Yunji released her chin, his fingertips then falling on the array of patterns on the edge of the pool.

"The Pei family has never stopped researching non-destructive separation for three thousand years. The Returning Origin Spirit-Stripping Array you see now was built to retrieve the Myriad Spirit Divine Tree. It will not directly cut open your dantian, but will only separate the divine tree from your bloodline one by one."

Jiang Yining wiped her chin with the back of her hand and glanced at the surrounding array walls.

"Since this formation was built long ago, why has the sacred tree never been retrieved in three thousand years?"

"Because the sacred tree has not yet appeared, the formation naturally lacks a suitable container for verification."

"Therefore, you cannot be certain whether the so-called non-destructive peeling can actually be successful."

Pei Yunji's dark silver eyes narrowed, and the blood vessels inside the stone hall tightened simultaneously.

"You're good at finding loopholes in other people's words, but those loopholes won't save you. Whether the formation is successful or not will be clear in seven days."

"If the sacred tree is damaged in seven days, your Pei family's three thousand years of waiting will be destroyed in your hands."

"I will control every single array pattern; it's not your place to worry about me."

"If I don't cooperate, how do you plan to control me?"

Pei Yunji raised his hand and pressed it into the void, and four dark silver chains immediately rose from the four corners of the blood pool.

The chains didn't touch Jiang Yining, but they firmly pinned her purple-gold qi and blood around her dantian.

"You can resist, or you can try to destroy your own heart meridian. But every time you struggle, the Returning Origin Spirit Stripping Array will prematurely draw away a portion of the divine tree's essence."

Jiang Yining sensed the points where the chains landed and silently memorized the locations of the four key points of the array.

"Since you regard me as a vessel to hold the divine tree, you should at least repair the meridians of this vessel. With my current injuries, the first round of stripping may directly shatter my dantian."

"The Blood Pool in the Stone Palace contains the essence of the earth's veins. The fact that you've woken up means it has already taken effect. As long as you don't do anything unnecessary, you won't die before tonight."

"Not dying tonight doesn't mean you'll be able to leave alive seven days from now."

"You've finally asked something truly useful."

Pei Yunji retreated outside the blood pool, his long black sleeves sweeping over the Spirit-Peeling Pearl.

The ancient array patterns of the entire stone hall lit up one by one, and the blood-red light sliced ​​his cold face into two sides of light and shadow.

"If you are still alive after seven days, I may consider letting you leave. Of course, that is without the Myriad Spirit Tree."

As Pei Yunji uttered his last word, the Guiyuan Stripping Spirit Array was fully activated.

The mineral liquid in the blood pool flowed backward along the array patterns, and four dark silver chains rose from under the stone bricks, respectively fastening Jiang Yining's wrists and ankles.

Before she could break free, nine dark silver ore stones from the dome had already dropped blood-red pillars of light.

"Pei Yunji, you won't even give me half an hour to recover from my injuries?"

"You've been stalling for time since you woke up, which is enough for the Myriad Spirits Divine Tree to repair two of its meridians. If you continue to wait, it will only allow it to hide its roots even deeper."

"You know so much about the Myriad Spirits Divine Tree, yet you don't know that it's most adept at absorbing external power?"

"If it can devour the entire Guiyuan Stripping Spirit Array, I will personally escort you out of the Pei family's territory."