Chapter 205: CH. 205 | Nascent Soul Extraction
Even though there was no way to confirm it for certain, not yet, not with solid proof in hand, he was sure his Clone wouldn’t lie to him.
A clone born from his own soul, his own memories, his own heart, had no reason to deceive him about anything, and especially not about something as personal as An Yue.
Ten years. It was a long, exhausting stretch of time for anyone to sit with, but it weighed heaviest on An Yue, the one who’d been left behind while he vanished into the unknown.
He understood that over the course of those ten years, plenty must have happened, changes in the sect, changes in her, changes in the world around her, all of it tangled up with An Yue and with the Lingxian Sect as a whole.
Ten years could reshape a person completely, and he had no way of knowing yet who she’d become in his absence.
To figure out whether An Yue truly had some connection to Senior Ling Weixi, whether that presence he’d sensed was real or just his own hope playing tricks on him, he knew he’d need to confirm it in person.
No amount of guessing from a distance would settle it. He needed a face to face meeting, needed to look at her, to feel it for himself.
On top of that, he also had a simple, reliable way to determine whether what lingered in her was genuinely a remnant of Senior Ling Weixi’s soul, or something else entirely, something that only resembled her.
And that method was clear enough, it ran through the ability of the inheritance orb Ling Weixi had given him long ago, a tool built for exactly this kind of confirmation.
To make use of it, though, Lin Tian needed to meet An Yue directly, needed to stand close enough to read her condition properly, to see with his own senses what state she was truly in.
Later, that has to wait until later.
Lin Tian set the thought aside, pushing it to the back of his mind so he could focus on the more urgent task in front of him, and that task was clear: help extract the Nascent Soul essence from his own Clone before anything else could be done.
Both his hands rose and formed a hand seal, one after another, precise and practiced, activating a separate rune array meant specifically for this purpose, to begin the delicate and dangerous process of extracting that Nascent Soul.
He already knew what was coming. The process would be extremely painful, brutal even, and it would drain an enormous amount of strength from both of them.
Still, he needed it. He needed the power and the ability locked inside his clone’s Nascent Soul, because later, that same power would help An Yue break through into her own Nascent Soul stage, a leap she might not manage on her own, not in time, not without help.
A white rune array bloomed to life beneath the body of the Lin Tian Clone, who had been sitting cross legged on the ground this whole time, patient, still, waiting.
He kept himself perfectly focused, letting Lin Tian work uninterrupted, letting him complete the white rune array and carry out the extraction without resistance.
Pain began to spread through the Clone’s entire body almost immediately, crawling into every limb, every channel.
It felt as though his meridians were being stabbed again and again without pause, an unending assault, while his strength was pulled away from him at a merciless, drastic pace, faster than his body could even process.
A white orb rose up and hovered in the air in front of Lin Tian, drifting gently, absorbing the spiritual energy that was steadily being drawn out of the Clone’s body, pulling it in strand by strand.
Slowly, gradually, as more and more spiritual qi energy was successfully absorbed into that orb, another burst of qi rang out through the space around them.
But this sound wasn’t the sound of triumph, wasn’t the telltale mark of someone breaking through to a higher realm. It was something else entirely, the sound of a cultivation base being deliberately torn down, dismantled piece by piece.
The Lin Tian Clone was willing to endure it, willing to let it happen without complaint, because even now, even as a copy, he was still a part of Lin Tian, still carried that same love for An Yue inside him.
He understood he might never get the chance to stay beside her, not really, not as himself.
But he hoped, quietly, that the sacrifice of his Nascent Soul would be more than enough, would give her everything she needed to break through into the Nascent Soul realm on her own.
Lin Tian pushed his focus forward, channeling the strength of his primordial qi energy outward, continuing to draw in the last of the Clone’s spiritual energy without hesitation.
That draw caused the Clone’s cultivation base to collapse in stages, falling hard and fast, from Mid Nascent Soul down to Early Nascent Soul, then further down to Core Formation, then further still to Foundation Establishment, and finally crashing all the way back down to mortal once his Qi Condensation base was destroyed along with everything else.
The shockwave of spiritual energy rippled outward with tremendous force, spreading across the entire area and startling the other disciples who happened to be training nearby.
They flinched, turned sharply, and looked toward the sect’s main building at once, realizing without any doubt that the burst of spiritual energy had come from somewhere inside it.
Inside that main building, Lin Tian had finished. He’d successfully gathered and extracted the full Nascent Soul essence from his Clone.
He held the resulting orb in his hand now, a pale white sphere humming softly with dense, dominant spiritual energy.
Inside it, he could see the faint outline of a soul, his own clone’s soul, sitting cross legged within the orb as though still deep in cultivation, calm, unbothered, complete.
"Nascent Soul extraction successful," Lin Tian said quietly, almost to himself.
"Only someone with high level pill refining skill could help me refine a pill using an ingredient like this, a Nascent Soul essence."
As the words left his mouth, the presence of the Clone’s soul began to fade, dimming little by little until it vanished completely, leaving Lin Tian standing there entirely alone in the quiet of the room.
He stepped forward, unhurried, and lowered himself onto the cultivation altar, his eyes fixed straight ahead, locked onto the system panel that had remained active this entire time, patiently waiting for his attention.
The panel displayed a simple prompt, asking whether Lin Tian wanted to review the notifications that had been piling up, left unopened for who knew how long. Lin Tian wanted to see them.
Of course he did. He was eager to know exactly how far his disciples’ emotional stages had progressed while he’d been gone.
He selected Yes, and immediately more system panels began appearing one after another, rapid and overwhelming.
Lin Tian was caught off guard by just how many there were and how varied the content was, covering everything from rewards to missions to notices about emotional stage advancements, an entire decade’s worth of accumulated updates flooding in all at once.
"Wait!"
"I can’t read all of this clearly."
"Just show me the panel for the latest Emotional Stage progress."
[Command received]
[An Yue: Loyalty (9500/10,000)]
[Ya Fei: Loyalty (8100/10,000)]
[Yun Yun: Loyalty (8500/10,000)]
[Luo Mei: Loyalty (9200/10,000)]
[Ji Xue: Loyalty (7200/10,000)]
From that panel, Lin Tian could see with perfect clarity exactly how far his disciples’ emotional stages had come along in his absence.
Every one of them had experienced a significant jump, enough that they now stood fully within the Harmony phase of the Loyalty stage, a level he hadn’t expected to see reached so completely, not this fast, not without him there guiding them.
Ten years, ten years really was more than enough time for them to climb this far without me.
It wasn’t just their emotional stages that had grown, either. He also came into possession of the bag of holding that had belonged to his Clone, still intact, still full.
Digging through it, he found no shortage of techniques, items, and valuable abilities that his clone had managed to collect over the years, gathered through sect mission rewards and countless disciple tasks completed one after another.
Lin Tian looked through everything carefully, item by item, and quickly realized just how useful all of it would be to him going forward, especially given how many earth grade technique rewards had ended up in there, techniques far beyond what most disciples would ever get their hands on.
That haul alone would meaningfully expand the number of techniques available to the Lingxian Sect as a whole, giving both disciples and elders alike a real chance to grow stronger, sharper, and far more capable than before.
With that settled, Lin Tian rose and left the sect’s main building behind, stepping out into the open air until he reached the front courtyard of the sect.
He turned his gaze away, letting it settle on Taixuan Mountain in the distance, the place where An Yue, now serving as head of the Hall of Techniques and Weapons, spent her days training herself alongside the disciples under her charge.
In an instant, without wasting another moment, Lin Tian moved, covering the distance in a single step and arriving at Taixuan Mountain, where plenty of disciples were scattered across the grounds, training hard and studying with quiet, focused determination.
Their attention snapped toward him almost immediately, drawn by his sudden arrival on the mountain.
"M Master Lin?" one of them asked, voice unsure, caught somewhere between disbelief and excitement.
Lin Tian nodded and confirmed it really was him, greeting each of them warmly as he passed. His steps slowed and finally stopped just in front of the hall building. He looked ahead, drew in a breath, and called out for An Yue.
The moment An Yue heard his voice, she didn’t hesitate. She rushed toward him at once, quick and eager, closing the distance until the two of them finally stood face to face after all this time.
"Lin Tian?"
"There’s something I need to talk to you about, Yue’er."