After getting what he wanted, Bai Qiuran left the main peak of Qingming Mountain with great joy and returned to the Seven Stars Peak where he lived.
However, during the period when Bai Qiuran left, there seemed to be uninvited guests in the courtyard. When he came to the gate, Bai Qiuran felt an unpleasant cold and gloomy atmosphere emanating from his courtyard.
He stopped for a moment, then opened the gate without fear, walked into his bedroom, and saw the uninvited guest standing in front of his bed.
“It really is you, Xue Ling.”
Looking at the young man wearing a white robe and blue complexion, Bai Qiuran sighed.
“Why do you come here?”
“Bai Qiuran.”
The young man named Xue Ling looked at him with an emotionless face.
“Your life is coming to an end.”
Bai Qiuran’s face cooled down, and the two looked at each other in silence.
After a moment, he scratched his white hair a little irritably, and replied:
“Well, how does this day come again so quick… Alright, I know, you can go back.”
But Xue Ling did not leave, instead stayed in place and continued:
“It’s been over three thousand years, you should give up.”
“Give up what?”
Bai Qiuran insisted:
“Cultivators should persevere their brave and keep enterprising! Although you are a Soul Taker of the Underworld, how do you keep thinking of persuading people to give up their lives?”
That’s right, Xue Ling was one of the Soul Takers who was responsible for restraining the soul of the dead and bringing them to the Underworld.
As a ghost who brought death to the human world and maintains the order of the heavens and the earth, unless Xue Ling himself was willing, living beings could not see him, including cultivators who have set foot on the path of immortality.
In the whole Qingming Sword Sect, except for Bai Qiuran who was dying and the Great Elder who was about to pass the Heavenly Tribulation, even Jue Yunzi couldn’t feel Xue Ling’s existence.
As a Soul Taker, Xue Ling and Bai Qiuran could be regarded as old acquaintances. Although Bai Qiuran has unrivaled strength, could even kill a thunder beat with a sword, but he was still a cultivator during the Qi Refining stage.
Cultivators in the Qi Refining stage, no matter how strong, always had many insurmountable obstacles, and lifespan was one of the most important ones.
A cultivator in the Qi Refining stage could live for a maximum of three or four hundred years. At this age, if he couldn’t successfully, then his physical body would be dead and his soul would be detained. Soul Taker would come to take their soul and send to the wheel of reincarnation.
However, Bai Qiuran was one of the most distinctive. First, the endless Qi in his body guaranteed that his physical body was stronger than the physical body of an ordinary Immortal, and would never decay. Second, he had the Heavenly level of Wood Spiritual Root, which not only increase his speed of cultivating, but also ensured that the body fully absorbs the medicine, and could use the pill with an unlimited number of uses.
Among the pills, there was one called Longevity Pill. Every time a cultivator consumed one, he or she could increase the lifetime by five years. However, because of its medicinal properties, the number of uses was limited, so it’s generally used by those who are about to run out of lifespan to make a final struggle.
But Bai Qiuran did not have this restriction, so he relied on Longevity Pill to extend his lifespan to 1000 years.
The first meeting between Bai Qiuran and Xue Ling was more than 2,000 years ago, when Bai Qiuran’s lifespan was about to exhaust the first time. At that time, Bai Qiuran was traveling and was trapped in the palace of an Immortal. Among the relics left, it’s impossible to refine the Longevity Pill, so Xue Ling, a young ghost who had just become a Soul Taker, came to take his soul.
At that time, Bai Qiuran also felt that he was going to make a breakthrough. With the dream of advancing to the Foundation Establishment stage, he struggled to resist, not only breaking the chain of restraining soul but also beating Xue Ling in turn.
Xue Ling was also stubborn as a mule, so he kept chasing Bai Qiuran relentlessly for a few months. Only after the latter refined and ate another Longevity Pill, he then returned to the Underworld with unwillingness.
The two ended up being rivals like this. For more than two thousand years, whenever Bai Qiuran’s lifespan was about to run out, Xue Ling would come out to trouble him. The fighting between the two once caused the Underworld and even the Immortal Realm to pay close attention. Until hundreds of years ago, when the Underworld dispatched a large number of Soul Takers and Hell Judges to cooperate with Xue Ling to arrest Bai Qiuran, but still ended up in failure, thus Xue Ling slowly gave up his intention to use force to detain Bai Qiuran’s soul.
Now Xue Ling has basically become Bai Qiuran’s lifespan alarm clock. Whenever his lifespan was about to run out, the Soul Taker would come to remind him that it’s time to refine more Longevity Pill.
“I just want to advance to the Foundation Establishment stage!”
“Well, you know the old rules anyway.”
Xue Ling squinted at him.
“If the time comes and you don’t find a way to extend your life, I will come to capture you.”
“Go, go, go.”
Bai Qiuran waved his hand impatiently.
“Do you have so much free time to waste here?”
Seeing Bai Qiuran’s expression, Xue Ling didn’t intend to talk with him anymore. He turned around and walked to one side of the room. Then the figure faded gradually and disappeared into the corner of the room.
Bai Qiuran fell to his bed all of a sudden, resting his head with his arms, watching the top of the mosquito net.
His life has continued like this since his master Qingming Taoist ascended.
As a cultivator in the Qi Refining stage, he has been fighting the bottleneck of Foundation Establishment stage every year for three thousand years.
Every year was his last year to live, and every year he must rely on Longevity Pill to continue to live.
As time passed, those who had high hopes for him, some ascended, some failed to pass the Heavenly Tribulation, some died in the battle. Those who wanted to harm him and the Qingming Sect were all dead, none was spared.
And this state of life has also left him unable to enjoy the happiness that cultivators could enjoy in their long life.
He had no acquaintances and reputations. He watched his first love became the wife of his senior brother, being alone for 3,000 years.
He took off the red robes of disciples, rejected becoming the leader of Qingming Sword Sect, and came to this most remote peak alone, living alone.
He has been refined Qi for 3,000 years, only for advancing to the Foundation Establishment stage one day.
“Ah, really troublesome.”
Impatiently scratching his waist, Bai Qiuran was lying on the bed, muttering:
“It seems that when going down the mountain this time, I also have to find the materials for Longevity Pill.”