His voice paused slightly, inexplicably stopping for a long time.

It seemed the condition was wavering in his heart, yet he couldn’t make up his mind for a moment, or perhaps he was weighing whether Jian Chou could actually bear such a condition.

It felt like a very long time passed, yet also seemed like just a fleeting thought.

Immortal Wuzhong finally slowly raised his hand, pointing at the wide wooden cabinet by the door, with rows of square or spherical stones arranged on top, all cut rather regularly, looking like stone materials for carving.

“Go pick one.”

Pick a stone?

Jian Chou was slightly surprised, momentarily stunned, before finally coming to her senses from that phrase “not exactly enemies.”

She looked toward the cabinet with surprise.

Since Immortal Wuzhong had already made his request, and she was the one asking for help, how could she not comply?

A great cultivator versus a small Golden Core stage figure.

Jian Chou didn’t think he intended to harm her.

She bowed and replied “Yes,” then turned toward the cabinet.

As she passed Zhang Tang, he inexplicably glanced at her, and Jian Chou could only respond with a faint bitter smile: Look at her? She still didn’t know if this was fortune or misfortune!

The cabinet full of stones all sat quietly.

They looked no different from ordinary mountain stones she’d seen before—some gray-white, others with faint hints of azure or light red, all very pale.

At first glance, the stones all looked identical. Standing before the cabinet, Jian Chou examined them all around but had no idea what Immortal Wuzhong’s purpose was in having her pick a stone.

“Stones are born in mountains and seas, endowed with form by heaven and earth, naturally containing the Dao.”

From the corner, the withered old man gazed at that cabinet of stones and slowly began to speak.

“Those who work with stone—the lowest grade ignore its form and carve it like dead matter; middle grade follow the natural flow, guiding according to circumstances, lifelike and vivid; the highest grade don’t carve but select, taking heaven and earth’s beauty as beauty…”

“Supernatural craftsmanship, heaven and earth the ultimate artisan.”

Supernatural craftsmanship, heaven and earth the ultimate artisan.

Jian Chou felt these words were quite ordinary, seeming to discuss principles of carving, yet also seeming to hide some strange deeper meaning, not just about carving.

For now, she couldn’t quite understand, but gained some judgment about the matter at hand.

“Thank you for senior’s guidance.”

Jian Chou expressed her thanks, then looked through these stones and discovered a simple small stone in the corner.

Egg-sized, square-shaped, gray-white throughout, looking completely unremarkable.

This size was quite handy.

Jian Chou smiled. Since she didn’t understand how to choose anyway, she might as well follow her heart. She reached out and took the stone in her hand—the temperatureless stone was completely cold, but the size was just right, fitting perfectly in her palm.

“Have you chosen?” Immortal Wuzhong glanced at the stone.

Jian Chou walked back holding the stone, smiling: “I’ve chosen.”

“This is just an ordinary stone.”

Immortal Wuzhong’s messy hair and beard covered his entire face, making it impossible to see what expression he wore.

Jian Chou looked at him but couldn’t make out his expression, only speaking honestly: “This junior has no discerning eye. The cabinet full of stones looks no different to me, so I randomly took one that felt handy.”

Handy.

Quite direct indeed.

Immortal Wuzhong slowly stood up, his nearly rotted body actually producing a series of teeth-grinding creaking sounds, as if he had sat there for ages without ever moving.

He stepped over that pile of stone fragments, walking out unsteadily, seeming ready to collapse at any moment.

Jian Chou watched, yet inexplicably felt a thrilling sensation, as if what moved before her wasn’t a person but heavy mountains moving, vast seas shifting.

But when she blinked, this feeling vanished completely, and approaching her was again just an aged, candle-in-the-wind old man.

Jian Chou’s gaze unconsciously moved past Immortal Wuzhong to fall on what was behind him.

After he left, the small wooden stump he’d been sitting on was revealed.

A round piece, like the base of a tree trunk with its crown sawed off.

Probably quite ancient, so it appeared very worn, but didn’t look rotten, still solid. Just looking at it, one could see the ravages of time left in that circle of bark.

On the stump’s surface, where people normally sat, there was already a deep depression worn into it…

“Actually, all the stones in this room are ordinary.”

Immortal Wuzhong’s obscure voice sounded five feet away from Jian Chou.

She immediately raised her head to look at him.

Firelight shone from diagonally behind, only illuminating the outline of the left side of Immortal Wuzhong’s face, but blocked by hair and beard, it remained blurry.

He looked at her, then extended his hand toward her, his withered branch-like fingers taking the square stone from her palm.

Jian Chou didn’t understand his meaning.

Immortal Wuzhong didn’t explain, only turned the stone around, examining it in a circle, then looked back at Jian Chou: “Now, I’ll help you deceive heaven and cross the sea.”

What?

Jian Chou was startled, her entire person unable to react in time, when she saw Immortal Wuzhong suddenly raise his hand and grab toward her!

His withered five fingers were like craggy dead bones.

Yet between those fingers gathered wind and thunder, as if grasping a huge world, as if another heaven and earth were enveloping her, isolating her from the Extreme Domain of this moment.

No wind, no light.

She couldn’t even feel the faint earth force emanating from the ground, only confinement!

Like a cage descending from heaven, locking her up!

The crisis between life and death almost roared at Jian Chou, urging her to struggle, to resist.

Yet she couldn’t move even half an inch!

Her consciousness transcended her body, clearly able to “see” the hunched old man standing before her—curved spine, messy hair and beard, only those eyes finally leaked a ray of heaven-piercing, earth-penetrating brilliance through the vast murkiness!

One palm covering the sky, those withered fingers landed squarely on her crown, suddenly grasping!

Boom!

Thunder roared beside her ears, shaking Jian Chou until she couldn’t distinguish up from down, east from west.

The entire dark world suddenly blazed with light.

As if she had originally been trapped in a clay puppet, suddenly someone grabbed this clay puppet away, so she could see heaven and earth.

In Jian Chou’s vision, even the oil lamp’s glow became piercing.

In this brilliance, Immortal Wuzhong’s withered fingers, grasping Jian Chou’s head, actually forcibly lifted her entire body!

What a terrifying yet marvelous feeling!

Jian Chou stood in place, unable to move, only able to watch stiffly and horrified as another self was taken away.

Big Head Ghost and Little Head Ghost were so frightened they couldn’t speak, nearly biting through the hands in their mouths!

For Immortal Wuzhong, such a terrifying “grab” was completely ordinary, nothing special.

He grabbed Jian Chou’s physical shell and casually tossed it toward the gray-white stone in his palm—

With a flash, a “Jian Chou” was forcibly thrown into that egg-sized stone by him, disappearing in the blink of an eye.

In the original spot still stood a Jian Chou.

A somewhat “thin” Jian Chou.

She somewhat stiffly raised her own hands, looking at them—they seemed no different from before, yet Jian Chou felt a very strange, light and floating sensation.

This was the lightness of being freed from constraints, without body and flesh.

She turned to look at her three companions who had come with her.

Big Head Ghost and Little Head Ghost appeared ethereal, Zhang Tang solid and substantial.

Big Head Ghost and Little Head Ghost had ten points of light floating beneath their skulls, while Zhang Tang had a perfectly round pearl with ten points of spiritual light vaguely visible within.

And herself…

Jian Chou looked down at herself again, discovering her right shoulder was somewhat thin, her left neck also felt strange, and her right wrist was missing a bit.

The soul pearl was small as a grain of dust, mixed among light and shadow, somewhat unclear.

This was…

Body and soul separated!

Big Head Ghost and Little Head Ghost had jokingly said that to avoid being detected, wouldn’t dying once be simple?

Never expected…

Now it had actually come half true?

Immortal Wuzhong’s grab had directly taken away her body, leaving behind her soul.

This way, who could still discover she was a living person?

At this moment, she was indeed a soul!

But…

What about her body?

This question immediately arose, and Jian Chou couldn’t help but look toward Immortal Wuzhong.

Immortal Wuzhong still held the stone in his hand, seeming to know her question, and simply pinched it.

An incredible scene appeared.

The square stone lying in Immortal Wuzhong’s withered palm, after his fingers fell, continuously shed stone fragments from its surface, falling like rain.

The entire scene was like a crane emerging from water, shaking off water droplets clinging to its feathers.

How could this stone still seem like a dead object?

At that moment, it seemed to come alive!

Rustle, rustle…

In just a blink, Immortal Wuzhong’s palm held a pile of debris, and the stone Jian Chou had selected lay within these fragments.

Immortal Wuzhong looked at this pile of debris, his murky eyes holding a point of withered light. He showed the faintest smile for the first time, but it quickly disappeared.

“Pick it up and have a look.”

Within this stone seemed to be hidden her physical shell.

Jian Chou hesitantly glanced at Immortal Wuzhong, but still followed his words, raising her hand to brush aside the pile of stone fragments and pick up the intact stone.

The originally egg-sized square stone was now only an inch in size.

The sharp edges were gone.

It had become a not-very-smooth round ball, with an uneven surface, appearing quite rough, like the casual carving of a clumsy craftsman.

The gray-white surface was also gone.

After layers of peeling, the stone’s internal patterns were revealed—pale green, winding and curving, circling layer upon layer, like clouds and mist, lightning and thunder, mountains and rivers.

Small, but not refined.

It lay quietly pinched between Jian Chou’s fingertips, not moving at all.

Yet Jian Chou’s heart shook violently the moment she saw it.

That instant illusion was so intense she couldn’t ignore it!

It seemed what she held between her fingertips wasn’t a crude stone bead carving, but one of the trillion stars suspended in the universe!

Ancient, weathered, massive.

Rotating heavily, forming and gradually aging through countless millennia…

Her fingertips trembled slightly, the somewhat cool temperature immediately dispelling this illusion.

Just like when Jian Chou had first seen Immortal Wuzhong, all feelings completely dissipated, as if they were just the impractical fantasies of an ordinary person’s passing thought.

What she held between her two fingers was indeed just the most ordinary small stone possible, even somewhat comically ugly.

Jian Chou inexplicably laughed, seeming to mock her own strange thoughts.

Immortal Wuzhong turned around, slowly brushing the stone fragments from his palm onto the cabinet surface, forming a small pile.

“This stone contains your physical shell. When you leave the Extreme Domain and reach the Heaven-Release Fortune Array, it will naturally sense the power of the Nineteen Continents, release your shell, and fuse body and soul, causing no damage to your cultivation.”

Heaven-Release Fortune Array…

Jian Chou once again remembered this name.

She understood this was Immortal Wuzhong pointing out the method to leave the Extreme Domain. Having received this stone pearl, she couldn’t help feeling puzzled: “Senior’s guidance fills Jian Chou with gratitude. But those who seek senior’s assistance must complete senior’s requirements. I wonder…”

“When your body and soul refuse, you will naturally know.”

Immortal Wuzhong didn’t turn around, only standing before those countless stones like a crude sculpture.

Jian Chou looked at his back, not understanding, wondering if she had perhaps received some brilliant stratagem?

Since Immortal Wuzhong spoke no more, she knew it was time to leave.

Holding the stone pearl in her palm, Jian Chou bowed: “This junior and others take our leave.”

Immortal Wuzhong nodded slightly, giving his tacit consent.

So Zhang Tang, Big Head Ghost, and Little Head Ghost, who had waited beside her for a long time, all followed Jian Chou in withdrawing from the house, even carefully closing the door behind them.

After a soft sound.

Inside and outside the door returned to being two separate worlds.

Cold wind blew through the deep alley, making Big Head Ghost and Little Head Ghost shiver.

Even the thickest robes seemed thin now, and even Jian Chou felt some cold—this cold penetrated directly through her “body.”

Or rather, her soul.

This was a completely different sensation.

Standing outside, she opened her eyes to look again, no longer with mortal eyes but with soul’s vision, and the entire Wrongful Death City appeared even more brilliant and colorful.

The world through ghost souls’ eyes was different from what she had seen before.

Walking down from the steps, Jian Chou took a few steps and couldn’t help opening her palm to look.

The stone pearl with pale green patterns remained rough, a dead object.

Big Head Ghost and Little Head Ghost were extremely curious and found it fascinating. Not daring to speak inside the house, they hurriedly gathered around to look once outside.

Big Head Ghost’s mind was slow, unable to understand: “I didn’t sense any soul power fluctuations either. How did it change from square to round?”

“Probably some method we don’t know about…”

Little Head Ghost also pondered.

But Jian Chou was recalling the scene from just now.

The shock in her heart layered upon layer. Only now did she have the mind to sort it out, looking toward Zhang Tang standing on the old ground in the alley.

Her lips moved but ultimately she said nothing.

Jian Chou pocketed the stone pearl, ignoring Big Head Ghost and Little Head Ghost’s protests, and went directly to Zhang Tang’s side. Walking at a measured pace to the alley entrance, she finally spoke: “I remember that Lord Tingwei said earlier that Immortal Wuzhong has been in the Extreme Domain for a thousand years?”