Chapter 130 - 129: Half-Step Spirit Severing (2)

Lin Yuan hovered before the massive tether. He tightened his grip on the blade of lightning, the energy of his Half-Step Spirit Severing cultivation making the weapon burn with the intensity of a dying sun. The initial cuts were finished. Now, he had to strike the core.

But as Lin Yuan raised the sword, his suddenly paused.

A butcher hacks blindly. A sovereign dissects, Lin Yuan reminded himself, his mind entering a state of chilling clarity.

Before he executed the final cut, he needed to completely understand this ultimate attachment. He projected his divine sense directly into the the tether, peeling back its layers to examine its fundamental core.

But as his divine sense pierced the outer shell of the thread, he discovered a dark, trembling essence hidden deep within the tether.

Obsession! It was the essence of obsession.

Lin Yuan’s consciousness was instantly flooded with the echoes of the dream domain. He felt the silence of the courtyard on the exact day Lin Fan had left for the capital. He felt the terrifying weight of the empty nest, the days spent sitting alone on the wooden porch, watching the autumn leaves fall and knowing that there was no one left to call his name. He remembered the quiet, agonizing dread of facing his final days in an empty room before his students had gathered in the snow.

This thick, final tether was not merely an attachment born of affection; it was a desperate obsession with not being lonely.

Lin Yuan’s brow furrowed in concentration. He traced the trajectory of this massive thread, following it upward from the pulsing crimson mass of the Mortal Heart to see where it anchored into his immortal soul.

What he saw next sent a shockwave crashing through his entire being.

The thread possessed a dual origin.

It did not just root itself into the Mortal Heart. The upper half of the massive tether split, its fibers weaving directly and inextricably into the very foundation of his Dao Heart.

Lin Yuan stared at the intersection, his breath catching in his throat.

In the world of cultivation, the Dao Heart was a solitary pillar. It was a cultivator’s unyielding conviction to reach the apex of the universe, built upon a solid foundation. To reach the Spirit Severing realm, a cultivator had to cut all external tethers, proving that their Dao Heart could stand against the crushing weight of eternity.

But Lin Yuan’s Dao Heart was built on the foundation of companionship.

From the very moment he transmigrated into this brutal world of cultivation, Lin Yuan’s path had been defined by a single conviction: his cultivation journey would never be one of walking alone.

That conviction had taken root the first time he heard Bai Qingyue play the zither. As her melody washed over him, something within Lin Yuan changed. He rejected the image of the solitary cultivator who walked the Great Dao alone, leaving behind everyone and everything in pursuit of immortality.

That was not the path he wanted.

In this world, he wanted to seek the Great Dao with someone by his side.

And that person was his Dao Companion, Bai Qingyue.

His Dao Heart was absolutely tethered to his Dao Companion. His conviction was not to sit alone on a crystal throne in an empty heaven—he had already rejected that illusion in the Dao Stone. His conviction was to drag the heavens down to the mud if it dared deny him the woman he loved.

The realization hit Lin Yuan with the force of a collapsing star.

If he swung the blade of lightning and severed this thread completely, as the path of Spirit Severing demanded, he would not just be cutting away a mortal attachment.

He would be severing his Dao Heart.

To destroy this tether meant destroying the very foundation of his cultivation. It meant tearing Bai Qingyue out of his soul. If he made the cut, he would survive, and he would advance to the Spirit Severing realm, but he would do so bearing a false Dao heart. He would become exactly the kind of sterile, solitary cultivator he despised. Without that conviction, his path may cause him to abandon the woman he loved.

Abandon Qingyue?

The mere concept was so utterly repulsive, so entirely unacceptable to his will, that Lin Yuan’s True Essence violently rebelled against the thought.

"I will not abandon her," Lin Yuan’s voice echoed, vibrating with a fierce authority. "I would rather burn my cultivation to ash than walk this path without her."

But the bottleneck of the Spirit Severing realm remained. If he did not make a cut, his soul would stagnate, unable to process the dense energies of the Half-Step realm, eventually leading to catastrophic Qi Deviation. He had to sever the attachment to cross the threshold.

The paradox seemed entirely unsolvable.

Lin Yuan hovered before the dual-originated thread, the lightning blade trembling slightly in his grasp.

And then, an idea illuminated his mind.

Lin Yuan looked at the dual origin of the thread. He realized that the two sources represented two entirely different concepts.

The root anchored in the Mortal Heart was the fear of loneliness. It was the desperate, clingy obsession born of a frail human life. It was a weakness.

But the root anchored in the Dao Heart was the conviction of companionship. It was the active, powerful, choice to love and protect his Dao Companion. It was a strength.

He did not need to destroy the love. He only needed to destroy the mortal obsession and fear attached to it. He needed to separate the mortal dread from the immortal promise.

To achieve this, he could not simply hack the thread in half. He had to slide the edge of his Thunder Rain Dao Intent perfectly between the dual origins of the tether. He had to sever the link connecting to the Mortal Heart, while leaving the fibers connected to his Dao Heart completely intact.

It was a maneuver of such terrifying precision that a single moment of hesitation, or a sliver of deviation, would result in the complete collapse of his Dao Heart and his instant death.

Lin Yuan’s deep purple eyes hardened. The fear of death vanished, replaced by the desire to protect his bond with Bai Qingyue.

He gripped the hilt of the lightning blade with both hands. He channeled the entirety of his Half-Step Spirit Severing cultivation, condensing the lightning into a razor-thin sharp edge.

The void of the River of Years Pagoda seemed to hold its breath. The massive temporal runes stopped drifting, freezing in place as they bore witness to Lin Yuan challenging the fundamental law of the heavens.

Lin Yuan took one final breath. He aligned his intent. He locked his gaze onto the exact junction where the fear of the Mortal Heart met the conviction of the Dao Heart.

With a roar that shook the very foundations of his spiritual sea, Lin Yuan raised his sword to strike.