Bai Shuo have been awake for awhile.
She felt the reassuring presence of the Tushan sisters.At least,she hadn't noticed any hostility from them.
She could feel they were no longer in the cave but she couldn't be bothered to open her eyes.
Forty years?
The news has shaken her so badly igniting a gnawing urgency to cultivate.
Being weak was a really weird feeling.
Frankly speaking,there had been moment of weakness in her previous life as well. Mostly from injuries sustained from crossing realms to fight.
Her Heavenly Spiritual Fire Root doesn't just allow her to cultivate faster but also grants her an almost insane comprehension speed.
She was a battle maniac and loved challenges beyond her realm.
Remarkably, before she joined the Lingli Sect,she could already hold her ground against a Qi Gathering Cultivator as a peak Body Tempering Cultivator.
At the peak Qi Gathering realm,she could fight against a Foundation Establishment Experts on equal grounds.
Astonishingly, though crossing realms grew more difficult as cultivation progresses, after joining the Lingli sect,she could fight against a Golden Core Expert as a Foundation Establishment Cultivator albeit not without serious, life threatening injuries.
And later,fighting a Nascent Soul cultivator as a Golden Core Cultivator.
Body Tempering realm.
Qi Gathering realm .
Foundation Establishment realm .
Golden Core Formation realm.
Nascent Soul realm.
Soul Transformation realm.
She had always loved defeating her enemies from a lower realm.
She loved the thrill,the pressure and the explosive improvement born from those life and death battles.
Yet, even the weakness from the injuries sustained from those battles paled in comparison to the weakness she felt now.
It was different.
It wasn't merely the injuries.
It felt inherent.
Trash!
She had heard Tushan Hui say it more than once.
She knew quite a few trash in her past life.
Her sister,Bai Yu could be counted as one. Naturally, before her Spirit Root was upgraded.
But she never thought that even the Ancestral Clans have useless offsprings amongst their rank.
When it came down to it,the Ancestral Clans were known as Heaven's darling.
Endowed with natural advantages and strong bloodlines.
She had already noticed that her fox body has a weak and unstable Foundation Establishment Cultivation.
Not considered quite a feat for her who advanced to the Foundation Establishment Realm at the age of eleven.
However, the Ancestral Clans might lay in their bloodlines and terrifying physique .
Most of the Human's Cultivation and Mystic Arts were created from the divine arts of the Ancestral Clans.
Phoenix Rise. Her signature and self created move was created from comprehending the ancient tomes and murals of the Great war.
So she was really curious to see what was considered useless in the Primordial Abyss afterall the majority of culitvators in the Human Realm are Foundation Establishment and Golden Core Expert.
Do I have a weak bloodline?
Indifferent and oblivious to her surroundings,she entered a state of self-introspection.
She controlled the primal qi, clumsily at first before getting a hang of it.
It felt similar to using Spiritual Qi.
The gentle sweep of Primal Qi followed her intent.
Her inner sight sharpened.
She frowned inwardly.
What she saw was… wrong.
She had seen the Spiritual Meridians of a fox,no two foxes exactly.
One was a Spiritual Fox which she raised as a pet. It was a reward from a secret realm and it was a rare nine tailed fox although it hadn't gained sentience .
Spiritual Beasts were usually formed from nature and although strong couldn't be compared to Ancestral
Clans.
The meridians of the second fox she had met was even more weird. It looked nothing like the spiritual beast's meridians.
Humanity always believed that the Ancestral Clans and Spiritual Beasts have the same type of meridians.
But that encounter shattered her belief.
The second fox was clearly from the Ancestral Clan.
It was intelligent and very…. cunning .
But that's not the point. The internal structure of that fox's meridian looked like hers.
Not exactly.
The fox's meridians was thicker, stronger and dense with Primal Qi.
It was clearly a high leveled fox,his nine tails said that much but also something more--something that intrigued her.
A hybrid.
A cross between human and fox or any other Ancestral Clans.
A despised species.
She could recognize the familiar meridians unique to the human body and also the unfamiliar meridians, probably unique to the Ancestral Fox .
A hybrid.
I am a hybrid?
No.
What if she was wrong from the start and that's how the normal foxes looks like.
The meridian network was unlike Human's which she was familiar with.Some pathways were broad echoing the natural, moon-fed circulation of foxkind.
Others were unnaturally narrow, rigid, arranged in patterns closer to human cultivation veins.
Worse still, these two systems did not align.
Where a fox meridian should have curved and converged, a human-like channel cut across it at an awkward angle.
In certain places, the lines overlapped without merging, like shadows cast atop one another—close, yet fundamentally separate.
There were gaps as well.
Not breaks, but spaces where qi should have flowed freely, only to vanish into a dull, echoing stillness before reemerging elsewhere.
The circulation felt fragmented, as if parts of her body were borrowing routes never meant for them.
A chill crept through her awareness.
Dangerous?
Bai Shuo hesitated, then pressed on.
She guided a denser strand of Primal Qi toward one of the unfamiliar intersections, probing it carefully.
The moment her Qi touched that region, resistance flared. The channel rejected her, convulsing as though alive. The two incompatible flows collided, fox-nature and human-pattern grinding against one another.
Pain erupted.
It was sharp and immediate, tearing through her senses as the qi surged out of control.
The fragile balance within her meridians shattered.Energy rebounded violently, slamming back into adjacent pathways.
Bai Shuo's body jolted.
Blood spilled from the corner of her muzzle and stained her white furs forming a huge contrast.
Her vision swam; the inner landscape she had been observing collapsed into chaos, light and shadow tearing apart under the strain.
She withdrew her consciousness at once—
The Tushan sisters were startled.
Tushan Lin rushed to take her pulse--
Something Bai Shou hadn't even known foxes possessed.
"Do you want to die? Tushan Lin snapped "What do you think you are doing?"
Bai Shou was speechless,how many times had she been reprimanded already?
She has always been the one reprimanding others,not the other way round.
Tushan Lin expression was stern,a sharp contrast to her usual warmth."I don't know what you did but whatever you are doing is obviously aggravating your injuries."
" I'm okay.."
No one believed her.
A look of doubt was clearly plastered on Tushan Xin's face.
Tushan Hui's lips curled up in a disdainful smile and even the icy Tushan Fei gave her a look of disapproval.
Honestly, that's the first emotion she had seen on her face since they met.
Tushan Lin refused to comment. She guided her primal qi into her body.
Sigh. She was really okay. Fine,maybe not exactly.
Bai Shou lowered her head thoughtfully.
The condition of this body is really strange but she had to first understand the identity of the fox body she currently occupies.
She looked towards her so-called best friend only to notice her new surrounding .
She felt the movement of space and knew they were out of the forest.
Her eyes scanned the beautiful Palanquin.
The interior space was vast. Fox Sigils carved on the walls glowed faintly.The floor was inlaid with smooth jade-stone etched with muted fox runes, warm beneath the feet despite the abyssal cold beyond.
Low couches lined the sides, covered in pale fur and soft silk, their colors deliberately restrained—ivory, ash-red, muted silver—soothing to the eyes and steadying to the mind.
At the Palanquin's heart,a suspended fox seal array pulsed faintly,it's light slow and steady, propelling the vessel forward.
Void Silk curtains layered the exterior transculent and shifting. Through them,she spotted a similar palanquin following behind.
"Reinforcements have arrived?"
"Yes,em.. not exactly reinforcement but our main force for the Qingyu Competition."
Bai Shou was puzzled.
"Main group? The ones behind us? Then why didn't we go together with them in the first place?"
The question prompted the four Tushan sister to turn to look at her.
Her fox furs stood on end.
Strange. Why are they giving me such a weird look.
Tushan Xin cleared her throat."Because you insisted that we go first"
"Wait,what? She did? And they agreed? It doesn't look like this body has such an authority though."
Bai Shou's thought were a bit chaotic but she still choose her words carefully.
" Why did I want us to go first?"
"How would we know the meaning behind the words of a trash? Hmph.. if not because of your injuries,I would seriously suspect you colluded with the wolf clan."
Tushan Hui's words were as biting as usual but something clicked in Bai Shou's mind.
A wild thought arouse in her mind.
"Hold on,did Tushan Shuo know something?
Did she know I'm going to reincarnate in her body?
No.
If she knew she wouldn't have gone first unless…"
Her thoughts were halted by Tushan Lin's cheerful voice.
"Oh…right,Prince Shao is here, he's your Fiance."
Boom.
Her mind went blank.
Fiance?
Prince?
She was even engaged to a prince of the Fox Clan?
Just who are you…. Tushan Shuo?