“Little wretch, let’s see you keep that tough talk up.” A group of older children surged forward.
This filthy child in tattered clothes — his small face marked with lines of black and purple bruising, his body covered in welts — was fierce and unyielding. He did not say a single word, just fought back with everything he had, striking two children of eleven or twelve hard enough to make them cry out in pain.
“Everyone pile on — beat this little stray to death. What ancestors being invincible? They got beaten to death all the same.” Several of the ringleader children shouted and rushed forward with small wooden sticks.
The small wretch swung his fist with full force and smashed one older child’s face wide open, blood spraying from his nose. The boy howled and began crying. Some of the children started to waver — though they had the numbers, they were afraid of him and hesitated to press forward.
“What is there to be scared of? He’s just a little wretch.” One older child stepped forward, his palm glowing with light, slapping toward the small wretch — clearly someone who had learned a few cultivation techniques.
Boom!
The small wretch was sent flying and tumbled into the corner of the wall. A swarm of children piled on, fists and feet flying.
“Beat you, see if you dare keep that hard mouth — what Sacred Body, it’s been finished for a long time. Stop wearing it as a badge of pride.”
Among these children, one or two came from notable backgrounds. On this ancient star where cultivation was nearly impossible, they had successfully established their Foundation, building a solid base for themselves. Without that, this group of children would not genuinely be able to deal with the small wretch, who possessed innate divine strength.
“Hey — he might actually die, stop kicking!” someone suddenly cried out.
The group of children immediately jumped back. Though they yelled fiercely, they were genuinely afraid of causing a death — every one of them grew unsettled.
“He’s fine — he’s tough, born to take a beating. But let’s stop here for today. If something really does go wrong, who’ll be Cang Yun’s sparring target? The Cang Family will hold it against us.”
The group of children scattered in a rush, leaving behind only the small wretch — curled up in the corner, blood trickling from his forehead, bruises on his face. His eyes were bright and fierce, like a small tiger that still refused to submit.
Ye Fan watched it all in silence. He now walked into the alley and looked at the boy. “Does it hurt?”
The small wretch, though only six or seven years old, was on high alert. He said nothing, stood up, and retreated to one side.
“You are a descendant of the Sacred Body — why are you being beaten?” Ye Fan said.
The small wretch still did not speak. His dirty little face was drawn tight. Behind the childish features was a look of suppressed anguish — his inner world was clearly far from calm.
“Is the Sacred Body very powerful?” Ye Fan asked again.
“Don’t you dare look down on the Sacred Body ancestor — he was powerful, he was invincible!” The small wretch finally erupted, lunging forward like a small tiger, his eyes sharp with an unexpected ferocity.
“Then why are you being beaten?”
“The heavens and earth have changed — I cannot cultivate.” The small wretch clenched his small fists tightly. He had not cried when he was being beaten, but now he quietly wiped away a tear. “If I could cultivate, no one could ever insult my ancestors — not even someone with the Heaven-Dominating Tyrant Blood flowing through their veins!”
Ye Fan crouched down and gently patted the boy’s head. He let out a soft sigh. Just as he had thought — this little one had encountered the same problem he had faced long ago.
He let his hand pass over the bruises. A faint shimmer of rosy light flickered through his fingertips, and all the hidden injuries on the small wretch healed. The blood on his forehead disappeared — not even a scar remained.
The small wretch’s rigid posture relaxed slightly. He looked on in confusion, uncertain why this person would be so kind as to heal his wounds — so unlike anyone he had ever encountered.
“Do you want to cultivate?” Ye Fan asked.
“Yes — but I can’t. I always hit a wall I can’t break through.” The small wretch was deflated, full of unwillingness. He hung his head and tugged at the ragged hem of his clothing.
“If you want to, I’ll teach you. Great Dao suppression, heavenly regulations — none of that amounts to anything.” Ye Fan said.
“Really?” The small wretch’s large eyes lit up immediately. But they quickly dimmed again, and he hung his head. “We’ve tried so many methods. Nothing ever works.”
“Do you have any family left?” Ye Fan asked.
“I have a grandfather. His legs aren’t well, and his health isn’t good.” The small wretch answered honestly.
Just from the state of his clothing, it was clear the family circumstances were poor. Otherwise, he would not look like a little beggar, chased around and beaten by a gang of children.
Ye Fan felt along his four limbs. The bone structure was extraordinary — highly suited for cultivation. Then he pressed his palm against the boy’s Wheel of the Sea meridian. Just as expected — and just as it had been with himself back then — it was as though an iron mass sat there, solid and immovable, impossible to dissolve.
A thread of golden light shot from Ye Fan’s fingertip and vanished into the child’s body with a soft whoosh. The small wretch cried out in surprise and his body trembled. His entire body began to glow. Every vessel wall became crystalline, with wisps of golden light drifting through them.
“This is truly remarkable — so much dormant golden blood. Even compared to the first-generation Sacred Body, it falls not far short!” Ye Fan exclaimed in astonishment.
This was a genuine descendant of the Sacred Body. Even after such immense stretches of time had passed, the sacred blood within him had not diminished — it remained extraordinarily concentrated, simply lying dormant.
This was a manifestation of ancestral reversion. Not a true Sacred Body — but if he continued to cultivate without ceasing, he could reach the pinnacle. Through acquired transformation, he could become a fully realized Sacred Body like the first generation.
It was truly astonishing. The Sacred Body bloodline had been extinguished in the Northern Dipper long ago. To think he would encounter a small wretch here, with such extraordinary potential.
As for the inability to cultivate, the suppression of the Great Dao — for Ye Fan, that was not an absolute impasse.
“Uncle, can you really let me cultivate — really break through this barrier?” The small wretch was anxious. He saw that Ye Fan had been feeling along his bones this whole time without saying anything, and his heart was deeply unsettled.
He tilted his head back, his small face written over with an expression of desperate hope. Those large, clear black-and-white eyes were filled with longing. He gripped his tattered hem nervously.
“Opening the door to cultivation is not difficult. The hardest part is breaking the curse. Back then, a forebearer Divine King used his divine blood to wash my cultivation map for me — and nearly gave his life doing it.” Ye Fan fell into a daze, thinking of the peerless Divine King Jiang Taixu. Such grace was impossible to repay.
A span of decades — nearly a century — had passed in a blur, yet it all seemed still before his eyes. The Divine King’s white robes soaked red, defying heaven itself to restore his path forward.
Everything he had today — all of it — had been bought with the life of the white-robed Divine King, wrested back for him. Without it, he might have remained blocked forever, suppressed by the Dao, never seeing this day’s harvest.
“Once, a forebearer spilled his divine blood for me and traded his life to win me a path forward. Now it is time for me to do something for those who come after.” Ye Fan murmured quietly.
“Uncle, can I really cultivate?” The small wretch tilted his head back, his bright large eyes glistening with tears on the verge of falling.
“You can. But when it comes to truly shattering the final shackles, you will still have to rely on yourself and on certain opportunities.” Ye Fan said, patting his head, giving him a firm and certain answer.
Back then, the white-robed Divine King must have already reached the Sacred Realm, using divine blood to wash the cultivation map and break the Sacred Body curse — and yet he had nearly given his life doing so. He succeeded in the end, but Ye Fan still emerged with injuries to his Great Dao.
That period had been fraught with twist after twist. Ye Fan had gone far away alone, leaving the Northern Region, entering an ancient forbidden land, and ultimately carving out a path of survival through nine deaths to find his own way forward.
Now his own strength stood within the Sacred Realm. It was natural that he could use blood to wash the cultivation map, carving out a path forward for the small wretch. Whether he could avoid leaving hidden injuries from the Great Dao, however, was uncertain.
This was a quiet corner of the city — very still. A courtyard that appeared not particularly small, yet was dilapidated and worn, clearly ancient architecture left over from the past.
Yang Xi had never been so happy as he was today. His small face was flushed with excitement. He shoved the rotting wooden door open with a loud crash and bellowed, “Grandpa, I can cultivate now!”
In the courtyard stood a few ancient trees, their fallen leaves thick on the ground. An old yellow dog barked and barked, rushing up to the small wretch Chen Xi, then turning to bare its teeth at Ye Fan.
An old man with a slight limp in one leg walked over. His clothes were patched all over and equally tattered. His head was full of snow-white hair. He was very aged. Setting down a wooden bucket, he walked over from beside the water well.
Yang Yunteng was elderly and weakened, his face deeply creased with wrinkles, his cloudy old eyes still carrying awareness. He limped forward and looked at Ye Fan. “And you are…?”
“Grandpa, he’s a Sacred Body — a Sacred Body who can cultivate! He’s going to teach Xi’er the methods of cultivation. I’ll be able to cultivate soon! I’ll never be afraid of them again! No one can insult our ancestors — I will definitely defeat those with the Heaven-Dominating Tyrant Blood flowing through their veins!”
The small wretch called out with absolute sincerity. His small face was flushed red with excitement. Both little hands clenched into fists, squeezed tight.
Ye Fan’s entire body radiated light. The golden blood within him rumbled like thunder — yet he kept it under perfect control, not letting the pressure spill outward. He only let the old man sense that unique aura belonging solely to a Sacred Body.
He was direct, with nothing to conceal. He stated his purpose clearly — because no matter how excitedly a child shouted, people would still doubt.
The old man stood frozen. Then, in the next moment, a low and muffled roar escaped him — as though he had suppressed it for years — like an aged lion unleashing its grief-stricken cry. “Heaven has eyes — no, this has nothing to do with heaven. We defy the heavens ourselves. We will shatter every obstacle that blocks us. The line of our Sacred Body can cultivate once more!”
It was as though he had stored up endless frustration and anguish. In this moment, the old man wept openly, his tear-streaked face — wrinkled and worn — glistening with tears.
“Back then, our ancestor died at the hands of those with the Heaven-Dominating Tyrant Blood. We refuse to accept it!” He howled, as though under the weight of boundless suppression and pent-up grief.
When that Sacred Body had fallen in battle long ago, his descendants had later journeyed into the stars, learned of everything that had happened here, and wept with inconsolable sorrow. They had permanently stopped here, taking root on this ancient star — and this branch of the family was born from that.
“The ancestor had already foreseen it… that the heavenly regulations might change, that the Sacred Body line would grow more and more desolate. To think that you could walk against the current.” Yang Yunteng the elder wept one moment and laughed the next. Years of suppression had left him appearing somewhat unhinged.
This was a family in decline. The Sacred Body bloodline had nearly been severed entirely — yet the family seemed to carry within it some great and profound secret.
Ye Fan knew that without the escort guides over the generations looking after them, the fallen Sacred Body line likely would have ceased to exist long ago. That they had endured to this day was no small feat.
This Sacred Body family with its dim prospects carried ancient secrets buried deep within them.
Whether it was the small wretch or this old man teetering at the edge of his final years — when it came to their ancestor spilling blood beyond the boundary and burying his bones in a foreign land, both of them felt profound grief and fury. They believed unflinchingly that the Sacred Body was invincible.
“Do you truly believe that?” Ye Fan asked the small wretch.
Yang Xi’s clothes were tattered rags — yet in this moment he was a furious little tiger, shouting: “I absolutely believe our Sacred Body ancestor was the strongest! If I can cultivate, and someone with the Heaven-Dominating Tyrant Blood appears in the future, I alone will fight ten of them!”
Yang Yunteng said nothing about the battle of that long-ago era. But everything was written on his aged face.
Too much time had passed. Ye Fan did not press for the details of that battle — there was no longer anything to change.
“I wish so much that the ones who fought the Sacred Body back then had all lived — I don’t wish for those few people’s Heaven-Dominating Tyrant Blood to have congealed. I hope that one day I can personally suppress them with my own hands.” Ye Fan said quietly.
Yet to the grandfather and grandson, those words struck like thunderclaps.
Yang Yunteng’s voice trembled. “That… seems unlikely now. The ages have stretched too far. Even those who once stood at the absolute pinnacle of the human path cannot escape the passage of time.”
Ye Fan said nothing in response. He did not argue. He simply gazed upward at the sky, looking out into the boundless starry void.