They had spent the night at his parents' house. Before leaving, Han Chen had discreetly layered final protective sigils over the property — covering his parents, their cars, and anything that might be tagged or tampered with — and set up a subtle misdirection field inside the house to activate if danger was detected. With too many eyes watching, they couldn't simply vanish; they had to leave by car.
The next day, the paparazzi shots from the reunion hit online media. A few carefully chosen, slightly blurred images captured just the right moments, and overnight their social media following began to grow—boosted by both Xue Qing's idol influence and their own unexpected allure.
That morning, while Hye Won dozed in the passenger seat, Yue Lan's voice suddenly echoed in her mind:<"I saw the pictures."> Shortly after, Hye Won posted a single selfie from the return drive—a picture of her reclining in her seat while Han Chen drove one-handed, captioned, "Free advertising for Chen Motors." This post would later go viral, even prompting his parents to suggest filming an actual ad with them.
Later, as they drove, Hye Won remarked quietly that although she had shared much of her life with him, he only spoke when absolutely necessary—when he'd reached out to Yue Lan or explained things to move forward. She noted that he'd mentioned details to her about Xue Qing but never to Yue Lan, nor had he ever discussed the inspector or Tang Xiaomei.
Yue Lan, still silently connected, simply replied, <"Yeah, I'm curious too.">
With a quiet exhale, Han Chen resolved to explain further. "Fine. To explain Li Mei, I have to start with Zhao Lin and Xue Qing…"
And so began his account of past betrayals, of Xue Qing's infidelity and Xue Zhao Lin's exploitative ways.. Yue Lan remarked, satisfied that she'd seen through him.
"Don't mind her, Han Chen. Keep going," Hye Won said.
Han Chen briefly explained how, during training in a remote area, a Zhao family martial master sensed an unusual aura from him—just the aftermath of a breakthrough. The man attacked with aggression and ended up dead within seconds due to his own recklessness, bullying and Han Chen's unstable strength.
Later, Li Mei—an undercover CSMA agent posing as their temporary high school teacher—tracked him down and interrogated him using a truth-checking device. He admitted only partial truth, but when she kept pushing and tried disrupting his life, he temporarily controlled her to shut things down. She ended up helping him—acquiring various licenses, gathering classified intel—but grew obsessed. When she spiraled, he wiped her memory of the fixation and quietly boosted her cultivation to master level. She later married, had a child, and moved on.
A pause. Then, through the mental link, came the sound of Yue Lan retching in her bathroom after Hye Won recounted—uncensored—her own past: kidnappings, killings, mental torment, bloodied knives, sacrifices, cultists screaming as their rituals backfired. < Wtf..you two..">
"Done," Hye Won said flatly.
Then Hye Won asked, "What about the Tang family girl? I heard someone helped them during a crisis. Was that you?"
"An accident," Han Chen admitted. "Found her grandfather dying. Healed him anonymously. But CSMA—Li Mei's department—got bored, hacked my encrypted call for backup, and tracked me."
Hye Won smirked. "And the training?"
"Two months. No strings." His lips twitched. "She called me 'cold senpai.' Probably still does. But she did give me useful intel on Yue Lan back when I was looking for her…"
The drive continued with Yue Lan's grumbling in the background until they reached their apartment and greeted by Hye Won's mother.
Days passed. Even when Yue Lan begged him to extend her grandfather's life further, his stance stayed firm: The more I help, the deeper her debt. I have no karma with these people. Defying nature for strangers doesn't serve me. She'd prepared, but facing it — that was her trial now.
Two Months Later
Hye Won's mother had fully recovered. She made her promise not to return to their old home and to stay here instead. Since her mother insisted she didn't want to just rest all day, Hye Won— with Han Chen's help—set up an online sweet-selling job for her, just like before.
Hye Won is training Yue Lan on spiritual martial training by herself. With Han Chen's soul corridor carrying essence she finally crossed the boundary of dark jin after a long while.
Han Chen, however had settled into a disciplined routine—cultivating every other day with focused precision. His realm had steadily climbed to the 10th layer of Foundation Building as his heart demon's grip on his spiritual mind weakened, granting him newfound clarity. Now, he prepared for an extended seclusion to complete his body refinement before advancing to further realms and eventually Golden Core.
Inside his small world bead, he sorted through treasure piles until he found the body-remodeling pills he needed. Since the time chamber's accelerated flow wouldn't interfere with the process not involving qi cultivation, he entered, ready to push his physique to its absolute limit.
The Forgotten Path of Body Cultivation
In the lower immortal realms, most cultivators treated the body as a mere vessel—refining skin, flesh, bones, blood, and marrow just enough to support Qi cultivation before abandoning further development. But in ancient times, humans had once consumed beast blood, mirrored them, tempering their physiques to merge life essence and spirit into a core. That primal method had long since been discarded as inefficient, replaced by Qi cultivation's elegance.
Now, only those with broken dantians or ruined spirit roots bothered with body refinement—or the exceptionally wealthy, who could afford its astronomical costs. Yet the true masters of this path had once perfected it into a system rivaling Qi cultivation to a limit:
Mortal Shedding (Transcendence) – The biological body begins assimilating spiritual nature.
Gate Opening – Unlocking the hidden potentials within the human form.
Unity Realm – Interconnecting all gates to form a flawless energy network.
Essence Storage – Developing multiple dantian-like energy pools within the body.
Transcendent Corpus – Fusing flesh and spirit into a transcendent vessel.
At this stage, the cultivator shed mortality entirely—no longer man or woman, but a human spirit, a being so rare that only a handful had ever existed across millions of years in the immortal domain. Beyond this lay even greater realms: infusing the body with laws, evolving into a fairy spirit, and more.
But such knowledge was jealously guarded. Pioneers of any path rarely shared their life's work, and over time, the original intent of body cultivation had been obscured by fragmented teachings.
Han Chen, however, was different. His Enlightenment and Heaven Defying System granted him insights beyond ordinary comprehension from low level contents. Yet even he hadn't started from the true basics in his past life—It was expensive and impossible when he was getting started from his ordinary cultivator life...by the time he obtained the highest-tier techniques, it was a long while after golden core the lower threshold of easily merging his dual cultivation systems and now it had become an immensely complex task as there was a very much a chance of implosion while merge two different systems on a body perfected for one.
He'd died before practicing his perfected approach.
Now, after a month of reviewing his memories, he began anew.
The Refinement Begins
With the intricacies of body cultivation laid bare before him, Han Chen began the next chapter of his Trinity Refinement Sutra.
He began with the crushed lightning-attributed spirit stones, their residual arcs of blue light sparking faintly as they hit the basin. Then came the shavings of tempered dragonbone, each fragment etched with dormant power, layered carefully into the mix. He uncorked a vial—black phoenix blood, thick and iridescent—and let a few drops fall in. They hissed on contact. The liquid churned as he added purified spirit water, swirling into a volatile elixir meant to electrify the meridians, reinforce the bone lattice, and strip away weakness. Painful. But necessary.
Next, he turned to the side vessel. Steam rose as he poured in the boiled essence of thousand-year ironwood bark, its deep amber color glowing faintly. He added the fine powder of crushed star-metal flakes, which shimmered like ground stardust, then the blood of a peak-tier demonic beast, still warm, thick with latent violence. The mix turned earthy and metallic, the heat rising enough to trigger the embedded cooling array etched around the vat. This would temper his skin and muscle—ironclad.
Finally, for what came after—the most dangerous part. He uncorked a small, frost-lined vial of distilled moon dew, followed by a measured spoon of powdered soul jade, pale and nearly translucent. To it, he added a squeeze of silver lotus root extract, turning the mixture an almost ghostly silver. This wasn't for the body—it was for the marrow, the spirit, the trauma buried too deep for light or time. A single misstep here and his soul might scatter. But he didn't flinch. He carried out the alchemical mixing and dipped into it. It was an extravagance among extravagances for ordinary cultivators. The intense pain surged through tearing him, but he kept it in. Consuming his pills he started.