Chapter 662- Rumours of a Dual Cultivator
The rumors moved faster than the light.
They traveled on merchant carts and pilgrim sandals, on the tongues of traders and the whispers of innkeepers, carried along roads and rivers and mountain paths like seeds scattered by a wind that no one could see but everyone could feel. In the taverns of Qinghe, in the markets of Lushan, in the teahouses of Pingyao and the dockside brothels of Yunjiang — the same story, told in different voices, grew legs and ran.
"Have you heard? An immortal roams the eastern valleys."
"Not just an immortal — an ancestor. A being from beyond the Golden Core realm. He appeared at the Plum Blossom Sect three weeks ago, during the orthodox coalition’s invasion. He killed four Golden Core sect leaders with a wave of his hand."
"That’s not the half of it. He goes to villages. Towns. He finds women — commoner women, mortal women, women drawing water from wells and washing clothes in rivers — and he... mates with them."
"Mates?"
"Copulates. Lays with them. And afterward — afterward, they become cultivators. Instantly. Like awakening from a dream. Mortal women, women who had never refined a single thread of qi, breaking through to Core Formation in a single night."
"That’s absurd. Core Formation requires decades of cultivation. Even the most talented geniuses in the great sects require years —"
"I’m telling you what I saw. Golden light. Pillars of golden light, erupting from a cave in the eastern valley. Four of them. Four pillars, side by side. And the next morning, four village women — commoners, untouchables, women with torn dresses and dirty feet — walked out of that cave radiating Core Formation energy. I felt it myself. My spiritual sense touched them and nearly recoiled."
"Who is this ancestor? What sect does he belong to?"
"No one knows. He wears dark silk. His eyes are gold and crimson. His body is... divine. No — not divine. Beyond divine. The guards of the Xu trading house knelt before him. The elder of the Xu family — peak Core Formation, two centuries of cultivation — prostrated himself. The madam of the Xu house was taken upstairs and not seen for a full day, and when she emerged, she too was Core Formation."
"A mortal woman? Elevated to Core Formation in a day?"
"Through copulation. Through the ancestor’s seed. He calls it dual cultivation — a method where divine qi is transferred through physical intimacy. Through the joining of bodies."
"You’re saying he fucks mortal women and they become cultivators?"
"I’m saying the proof is in the sky. Look east at night. Count the pillars of light."
The travelers counted.
Along the eastern roads, where the valleys cut through the mountain ranges and the villages clustered around wells and streams, the night sky had become a spectacle. Pillars of golden light — some thin, some thick, some solitary, some in clusters — erupted from the darkness at irregular intervals. Each one carried the unmistakable energy signature of a cultivation breakthrough. Each one burned for minutes or hours before fading, leaving behind the residual golden glow that lit the clouds from beneath.
The first had been Suyin’s. The untouchable woman from the mud hut. A single pillar, blazing from the eastern ridge of her village, visible for fifty li in every direction.
The second had been Madam Xu’s. A pillar from the restaurant in Qinghe, the golden light pouring through the roof of a two-story wooden building, the Core Formation energy rippling outward in waves that cracked the plaster on neighboring walls.
The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth had come simultaneously — four pillars from the cave in the unnamed valley, the combined energy of four women breaking through at once, the light so intense that travelers on the distant mountain roads had stopped and stared, thinking the sun was rising in the west.
Then more. Scattered. One in a farming village forty li south of Qinghe — a widow, they said, who had been working in her field when the ancestor descended. Another in a fishing hamlet on the banks of the Yun River — a fisherman’s wife, they said, who had been hanging nets when the golden-eyed man appeared. Another in a mountain settlement so remote that the villagers had never seen a cultivator — a young woman, barely eighteen, who had been gathering herbs.
Each pillar was Core Formation. Each breakthrough was instantaneous. Each woman had been mortal before the ancestor arrived and a cultivator after he left.
The world was rumbling.
Not the earth — the cultivation world. The natural order, the hierarchy of power that had governed the lower realms for millennia, was being shaken at its foundation. Mortals did not become Core Formation cultivators in a day. Commoner women did not ascend to the realm of sect elders through copulation. These things did not happen. Could not happen. Should not happen.
But they were happening.
And the lights in the sky were proof.
On the road between Qinghe and Lushan, a merchant caravan had stopped for the night.
Four carts, twelve men, one woman. The merchants were wine traders — their carts loaded with casks of spirit wine, the cheap variety sold to low-level cultivators in the market towns. They had made their purchases in Qinghe and were heading west, toward Lushan, where the wine would fetch triple the price.
The woman was the wife of the caravan leader — a man named Zhou Hai, thick-bellied and weathered, his face carrying the permanent squint of a man who had spent thirty years squinting into sun and wind. His wife — Caihong — sat beside the campfire, her hands busy with a needle and thread, mending a torn sack. She was forty, her body thick, her face plain, her hands calloused. She wore a cotton blouse and a rough skirt, her feet in straw sandals. Her hair was tied in a bun. Her armpits were unshaven — dark tufts visible when she raised her arms. Her tits were large, heavy, the mounds visible through her blouse, the nipples dark points against the fabric. Her hips were wide, her ass thick, the skirt pulled tight across it.
The men sat around the fire, drinking. The conversation had turned — as all conversations in the region had turned — to the ancestor.
"I’m telling you," one merchant said, his face red with wine, "my cousin lives in Qinghe. He saw the light. He felt the qi. He said the entire restaurant shook — the walls cracked, the floor vibrated, and a pillar of golden light came through the roof. And the woman — the Xu family madam — she walked out the next morning glowing. Glowing. Like a spirit. He said her cultivation was Core Formation. Same as the Xu family elder who’s been cultivating for two hundred years."
"Two hundred years in one night," another merchant said, shaking his head. "It’s not possible."
"Nothing is impossible when an ancestor descends," a third said. "These are beings from the upper realms. They don’t follow our rules. Our cultivation methods, our bottlenecks, our decades of meditation — to them, it’s all child’s play. They snap their fingers and the world bends."
Zhou Hai — the caravan leader — listened. His weathered face was skeptical. His squint deepened.
"Fairy tales," he said. "Some charlatan with a flashy technique, going around bedding village women and calling it cultivation. Probably a rogue cultivator with a decent illusion array. The lights in the sky? Probably spirit stone combustion. Someone’s mining operation gone wrong."