In this sunless and moonless secret realm, the duration of the refining ceremony was unknown. Lu Xingzhou’s Dao cultivation was only at the seventh grade, and while he didn’t need to emit Dan fire himself, the mental exhaustion was incredibly hard to bear. However, this matter was something he dared not ask others for help with. Apart from wiping away sweat, Shen Tang couldn’t assist with anything else. Lu Xingzhou had prepared a ring full of pills to restore spirit, eating them non-stop like candy beans.

Finally, the furnace lid opened on its own, and a red-hot leg bone floated out from the furnace mouth. Even the fibula, knee bone, and ankle foot were complete, as if they were being treated as a prosthetic limb after amputation. Shen Tang let out a breath, secretly thinking that Lu Xingzhou’s earlier statement about not having thought about “changing prosthetic limbs” was a lie; he must have dreamt about it countless times. The shape of this leg bone was like it was carved into his heart.

“I have no strength left and need to rest for a while before refining the second one,” Lu Xingzhou reached out to summon the leg bone, with a hint of expectation. “Or, I can replace this one now; you can help me.”

Seeing his bright, sparkling eyes filled with expectation, Shen Tang couldn’t help but laugh. “You… now you look like a youth.”

Both recalled the day they first met when she had said, “You are not like a youth,” and they smiled again simultaneously.

“You are clearly only nineteen years old, yet you usually pretend so much. People who don’t know would think you are ninety-nine,” Shen Tang said with a laugh and a playful scold. “Okay, tell me how you want your sister to help you?”

As the word “sister” came out, Lu Xingzhou was startled for a moment, looking blankly at her smiling face, somewhat lost in thought.

“What’s wrong?” Shen Tang’s slender hand waved in front of his eyes. “Why the sudden daze?”

“Nothing,” Lu Xingzhou lowered his eyes slightly. “My sister… it’s not easy.”

Shen Tang was startled for a moment, then lost her laugh. “Are you afraid of getting your leg touched?” Her eyes glinted, and her gaze fell on Lu Xingzhou’s leg. “Now aren’t you begging me to touch yours?”

Lu Xingzhou: “……”

“Okay,” with the serious matter at hand, Shen Tang didn’t tease him further. “How should we do this?”

Lu Xingzhou looked down at his left leg. It had been broken by vines while helping to protect Dugu Qingli earlier. Since he was planning to change the bone anyway, whether it was broken or not was irrelevant. However, the muscles and flesh were still connected. The “fruit” he had used before to refine muscle-continuing medicine had been quite effective; the bone was broken, but the muscles were not.

In this situation, amputation wasn’t necessary. After all, growing flesh and meridians outside the bone was an extremely troublesome process. His own body’s flesh and blood, though atrophied, were still there. Keeping them would be considered flesh and blood recovery, while cutting them off would be rebirth of flesh and blood. Keeping them was better.

“I need to pick out all the broken bones in the calf. It’s not convenient for me to look down and find them myself, I’m afraid of missing some…”

Shen Tang didn’t say anything more. She sat beside the dragon bone, lifted his left leg onto her knee, thought for a moment, then first took out a luminous pearl and suspended it in front. Then she took a sword and cut open his leg, looking down under the light to pick out the bones.

Theoretically, continued muscles should have sensation, but Lu Xingzhou’s situation was still dull in sensation. Being hit by broken bones hadn’t caused much pain. It was the same now; even with very little blood, Shen Tang clipped out the bones piece by piece, and he didn’t feel much pain.

He just stared blankly at Shen Tang’s serious profile, his lips tightly pursed. The light from the luminous pearl spread a soft halo over her body, making her look particularly beautiful at this moment.

Earlier, when she wiped his sweat, the soft light in her eyes was something he dared not be distracted by, deliberately not thinking about it. Now looking at it again, he felt as if his heart was melting.

His leg was healed by her, and now his own could also be said to be being healed by her… so gentle, so focused.

Sister, huh?

Once this was a word exclusively belonging to Yuan Muyu, now…

Looking back at their interactions, Lu Xingzhou was more willing to call it mutual redemption. Whether it was their legs, or the things born from past events – her retreat and his darkness – all gradually dissolved in their interactions over these days.

A Nuo had said that Master had arrived in Xia State, hiding a monstrous malice in his heart. Although the malice was still there these days, it had visibly decreased a lot. At least in front of her, there was not a trace of it.

“Looking good, huh?” Shen Tang suddenly asked.

“Looking good.”

“Looks better than your little white-haired one, huh?”

“……” Lu Xingzhou held back for a while, still saying, “I said before, my feelings towards Qingli are not what you think…”

“Maybe not before, but now you two have already stacked together.”

“That was an accident.”

Shen Tang finally looked up at him for a moment. “How come you are willing to explain now?”

Lu Xingzhou didn’t speak.

Shen Tang’s hand paused slightly, and she said in a low voice, “After your leg is better, will you leave?”

Lu Xingzhou said, “If you need me to stay, I will stay. When Princess Highness feels Lu Xingzhou is no longer useful, then I will go.”

Shen Tang clipped out the last piece of broken bone. “Then you might have to wait a long time for that day.”

Lu Xingzhou did not answer.

After checking several times and confirming that no broken bones remained, Lu Xingzhou carefully took the knee bone and thigh bone and spliced them together, then took the calf bone and linked it to the knee, and then spliced the ankle…

Shen Tang found it quite interesting. It clearly looked like assembling a doll, very much like playing house, but after each piece of bone was spliced, the bonding point would flash a soft light, and then the bones would truly “grow” together, meridians would penetrate, and flesh and blood would fit.

It was very magical.

This wasn’t splicing; it was refining bone.

Others have also drawn out their spines and changed them into immortal bones, or even dug out people’s supreme bones and put them on… Shen Tang originally didn’t know how it was done, but now looking at it, it didn’t seem that rare, because immortal spiritual things themselves possessed such immortal meaning. When refined with various auxiliary materials, they could endow the “bones” with attributes, allowing them to fit and grow on their own, fulfilling the role of bones.

Otherwise, how could they be called “immortal”?

Lu Xingzhou also found it quite amusing looking at his own leg. His calf was originally deformed, with atrophied muscles. Now, with the support of bones in their normal shape, that bit of flesh and blood couldn’t completely cover them. Everywhere was like a leak, exposing the fiery red inside, vividly like a Terminator.

He had already prepared medicine ointment and bandages, and wrapped them tightly layer by layer. “This is the most appropriate use for the fruit you gave me earlier. Using it to continue muscles was quite wasteful; its main value is blood and flesh recovery. By wrapping it for a period of time, the flesh and blood can recover completely. At that time, the new flesh and blood may be tender; I am the jade foot.”

Shen Tang couldn’t help but laugh. “Just you, I see you more like ham.”

Lu Xingzhou was stunned for a moment. Indeed, it was like ham…

“Hiss…” He suddenly hugged his foot, his expression turning painful.

Shen Tang was startled. “What’s wrong?”

“This feeling of rapid recovery of flesh and blood is unbearable, numb and itchy… and the surging fire element power within this dead ham is in chaotic turmoil; I’m hot…”

After saying this, he was suddenly stunned.

Shen Tang blinked at him, and then suddenly smiled.

“I have sensation… I have sensation! Ha, ha ha ha…” Lu Xingzhou excitedly grabbed his calf, bent his knee and straightened it, laughing heartily. “I can move!”

Shen Tang saw Lu Xingzhou laugh like a child for the first time and felt a softness in her heart, also empathizing.

On the day she was cured, hadn’t she felt the same way? And Lu Xingzhou had held back for ten full years!

She leisurely took a crystal condensed from spirit water and tapped Lu Xingzhou’s shoulder. “Don’t be happy too early. When you’ve rested enough, continue. You still have one more.”

Lu Xingzhou took the condensed crystal and grinned. “As ordered, my Princess.”

The refining of the water bone was not the same as the fire bone. While it was simple to melt it softly, there was a fear of water and fire repelling each other and causing the furnace to explode.

However, having just studied the Yin Yang Ultimate Intent, he already had some insights into control and harmonization in this aspect. Lu Xingzhou refined it carefully and finally found it to be even faster and simpler to refine than the fire bone.

Looking at the water bone floating out from the Dan furnace, Lu Xingzhou stroked his chin as if in deep thought.

The refining process was originally a rehearsal of water and fire harmonization. From the previous experience, it seemed that when the Yin Yang Ultimate Intent skill was within the body, this water bone could indeed coexist with the fire bone. With the skill in the body, there would be no conflict.

This meant that his future path was set and could no longer be changed to something else.

Then the direction of Dao cultivation was also fixed. He must find the Dao cultivation part of the Yin Yang Ultimate Intent skill, which was the next main goal.

Shen Tang was currently helping him shave off the bone from his right calf. This side was not broken, so taking it away was even simpler.

Lu Xingzhou carefully brought the water bone close to his leg.

At the moment of bonding, the power of water and fire simultaneously transmitted from the calf to the thigh, then to the lower abdomen, meeting at the Dantian, and began to rampage.

One side was blazing and violent, burning everything, while the other side was gentle and inclusive, yet hid killing intent.

Lu Xingzhou endured the numbness and itching in his leg and the strange feeling of two heavens of water and fire in his lower abdomen, operating the Yin Yang Ultimate Intent skill at full capacity.

That true qi, which was originally like a DNA chain, rapidly expanded and spun wildly, soon becoming a red and blue Yin Yang fish, gently suspended in the Dantian.

Virtual qi becoming visible — the foundation of its form.

This was not from the ninth grade to the eighth grade.

It was a direct breakthrough from the lower three grades to the middle three grades.

Under the terrifying energy of the two heavenly materials and earthly treasures and the harmonization operation of the corresponding skill, Lu Xingzhou was astonished to discover… he was at the sixth grade…

Truly… shedding the mortal body and exchanging bones!

It was clear that in front of true heaven and earth spiritual things, the lower three grades were fundamentally not worth dividing into three levels; they were themselves a small level not worth mentioning… on the contrary, the threshold of the middle three grades was still worth looking at.

In a corner, there was still a wisp of black qi, which was the foundation of his own evil cultivation Dao law. It shivered under the extremely prosperous Yin Yang power, being completely suppressed.

Lu Xingzhou blinked and carefully stood up, propping himself on the wheelchair.

Both feet touched the ground, and earth vein power directly entered Yongquan, while spiritual qi from above directly penetrated Tianling.

If martial cultivation was cultivating the self, then Dao cultivation was cultivating the connection between heaven and earth, controlling external things.

Previously, Lu Xingzhou’s Dao cultivation level had always been stuck at the seventh grade and couldn’t advance simply because he had broken his leg, preventing the connection to Yongquan below and thus the intersection of heaven and earth, making it impossible to break the big threshold of the middle three grades.

And the moment it was formed, with the surge of spiritual qi in this secret realm, the breakthrough was light and easy.

That shivering black qi suddenly became majestic, like a little demon standing in front of the red and blue Yin Yang fish with hands on hips, wanting to challenge them.

Then it discovered that while its grade had gone up, its quality had not followed.

This evil cultivation skill practiced for ten years completely could not beat the Yin Yang Ultimate Intent practiced for only one day. The black qi was hammered around by the red and blue Yin Yang fish, kicked to a corner, and made no sound.

Lu Xingzhou opened his eyes and exited his inner vision.

He himself couldn’t see it, but his left eye flashed red light and his right eye flashed blue light, creating electricity in the empty room of this dark secret realm.

Lu Xingzhou cultivated both Dao and martial arts and broke through to the sixth grade simultaneously.

The next moment, both legs went soft. The newly bonded leg bones couldn’t withstand such a long standing. He stumbled and almost fell.

Soft jade leaned together, and a warm fragrance assailed him. Shen Tang gently reached out and held him in her embrace.