A master of both medicine and martial arts, he picked up a beautiful CEO as his wife.

That night, for the first time in six years, the alchemy room on Nirvana Mountain was lit up all night.

Seventeen patients were carried up from the town one by one and lined up in the corridor outside the alchemy room. The medicinal soup was poured down their throats first, and then the window for the two-hour interval was opened.

Ye Feng started with the first one. He didn't use needles. Or rather, he used more than just needles.

He pressed three fingers of his left hand against his wrist pulse, placed his right palm against his back, and sent a wisp of peak Yang True Qi like a red-hot iron wire through it, driving the black Qi that was shrinking at the tip of his hand to one place, and then forcing it out from his palm.

When the first patient expelled the black energy, some of the disciples watching gasped – the black energy condensed for half a breath under the lamp for a moment after leaving the body, then twisted and turned before dissipating.

"The Deathly Fiend," Cen Heming said softly, "is alive."

The second, the third… by the ninth, sweat began to bead on Ye Feng's forehead. On the thirteenth, his hands trembled. Not from exhaustion.

It was that thing inside him that woke up.

One deathly aura after another is of the same kind. With each breath he exhaled, the deathly aura deep within his meridians, which had been subdued by the combined meridians, pushed outwards a little more. By the thirteenth breath, the deathly aura had already circled his heart meridian three times, making his back drenched in sweat from the cold.

"Ye Feng." Lin Yuqing, who had been standing by his side, immediately stepped forward and took his hand.

"Don't come any closer," Ye Feng said in a hoarse voice.

He shook off her hand, took a half-step back, and closed his eyes. At that moment, he suddenly remembered the opening line of the half-finished cultivation technique inscribed on the stone wall of the Hidden Vein Hall:

—Attract them, not reject them.

He had read the half-finished manuscript left by his master no less than a hundred times in the past two weeks. The beginning was full of bitter and difficult-to-understand meridian pathways, but the opening four words were as simple as a useless statement.

To draw him in, not to reject him. From the day he was born into this life-threatening situation, everyone taught him to "suppress," to "reject," and to "hold on."

But his master wrote "Guide". Ye Feng exhaled and, for the first time, released the Peak Yang True Qi that was binding his heart meridian.

A deathly aura immediately rushed over. It was cold.

The cold was colder than any attack he could remember, so cold that he instantly lost feeling even in his fingertips. But he didn't try to ram, burn, or tough it out with the sun as he used to.

He made way for him.

The death energy flowed along that path into a section of empty meridian he had prepared beforehand. It circled around, crashed at the end, swirled, slowed down, and finally, little by little, was enveloped layer by layer by the yin energy circulating in that meridian.

Wrap it up, twist it finely, and let it dissolve. Ye Feng shuddered. He opened his eyes, his gaze clear and lucid.

"Again."

The fourteenth, the fifteenth... As dawn broke, the seventeenth patient was carried out of the alchemy room. He was an eight-year-old boy, his face still pale, but he could move his fingers.

The woman guarding the porch hugged her son and wailed. Ye Feng, leaning against the doorframe, slowly straightened up. He hadn't stopped all night. The back of his Taoist robe was soaked with sweat, and the mountain breeze was bone-chillingly cold.

He scooped up a handful of cold water from the copper basin under the eaves and splashed it on his face. Ye Feng grinned at the blurry face reflected in the basin.

His calamities were always deadly.

But just last night, the deathly aura that had claimed his life for six years was used as a medicinal ingredient for the first time—he used it as a rope to bind the black aura on those seventeen people; and he used the yin essence as a knife to shred the rope inch by inch.

He mentally recalculated the accounts. The number of cycles of the combined pulse energy pressure had returned to eight, up from five or six. Eight.

"What method did you use that night?" Cen Heming's voice came from behind.

Ye Feng wiped his face and turned around. The old man stood under the pillar, having not slept all night, his eyes bloodshot.

"Left by my master," Ye Feng said. "Half of it."

Cen Heming remained silent for a long time before stepping aside to let the path leading to the depths of the alchemy room pass by. At the end of the path was an inconspicuous wooden door.

"The lives of thirty-seven of my nephews, and the lives of everyone in this town," the old man said in a low voice, "I, Cen Heming, acknowledge that you have passed this test. Go in."

"Six months ago, when the mountain gate was about to be breached, your master moved that thing from the main hall into the alchemy room overnight," the old man said. "He said that the main hall could seal off outsiders, but not its own people. That thing inside, the floor your senior brother swept, the door your junior brother guarded, is all inside."

As he passed under the corridor, Cen Zhao was squatting there tidying up the dregs of medicine. When he saw him walking in, he stood up.

"I didn't put a single penny of the money I collected down the mountain into my pocket. It all went into the medicine. I didn't break a single one of my master's rules."

Cen Zhao opened his mouth. Ye Feng had already entered the room. Behind the wooden door was a very small stone chamber. In the center of the chamber was a low table with a wooden box on it.

Ye Feng opened the wooden box. Inside was only a jade slip, bluish-green in color, with a warm and smooth surface, no more than three inches long.

He held the jade slip in his palm, and as soon as a wisp of peak Yang True Qi entered it, his mind went "boom," and countless words and phrases flooded in like a tide.

—《Zhenyuan Yaolue》.

That wasn't a cultivation technique at all; it was a record—written by the successive patriarchs of Nirvana Mountain over two thousand years, pen to pen, detailing everything about that thing underground: how it was suppressed, how it awakened, how its fortunes rose and fell with the seasons, and how it would seep out strands of deathly energy along the cracks in the earth's veins—

The black aura emanating from the seventeen people in Tingxue Town last night was described in a whole passage on the jade slip, with identical symptoms.

And in the end, it all boils down to four words:

Yin and Yang combine.

Ye Feng's hands trembled. He finally understood that the "core inheritance" his master mentioned in his letter was not some kind of peerless divine skill.

It's an instruction manual. An instruction manual that tells him "how to live and what to do."

But just as he read all the way to the last section—the crucial part that truly recorded "how to complete the combined meridians and how to use the two meridians to suppress the abyss"—

The words in the jade slip were broken. Not blurred, not incomplete. They were neatly and precisely broken in the middle of a sentence:

"...The key to the harmony of the two meridians lies in 'union.' This 'union' is not merely the union of qi, but the union of destiny. To achieve this 'union,' one must—"

The rest was blank. Ye Feng's heart sank. He turned the jade slip over and ran his fingertip across the bottom. There was an extremely fine, flat cut there.

It wasn't a bump or a break. It was as if someone used some extremely sharp method to slice off half of it at the root.

"Master," Ye Feng murmured.

The only person who could have cut off this half was the master himself. He left this half in the mountains, waiting for his return to retrieve it. But what about the other half?

Ye Feng held the half jade slip and slowly raised his head.

Outside the stone chamber, the faint sounds of disciples tidying up the alchemy room could be heard, along with a young voice calling out, "Don't throw away the dregs over here yet, Uncle Ye said to keep them for future reference—hey, be gentle, that jar contains aconite!"

That was a disciple named Jiang Wenqing. He was the most diligent runner that night, fetching water, delivering medicine, and relaying messages without a moment's rest. Ye Feng had a good impression of him.

Ye Feng put away the jade slip and was about to get up. Just then—a crisp "clang" came from outside the stone chamber. Something had fallen to the ground.

Ye Feng stopped moving. Not because of the sound. Because at that moment, a wisp of breath drifted in from the courtyard outside the stone chamber.

Extremely pale.

It was as faint as burnt incense ash, which would dissipate with a gust of wind.

But Ye Feng recognized it.

That's what he forced out of seventeen people last night, bit by bit—

The smell of death.