Chapter 129 - 128: Half-Step Spirit Severing

Inside the River of Years Pagoda, Lin Yuan sat perfectly still, his legs crossed in a flawless lotus position, his hands resting lightly upon his knees. His deep purple eyes were closed, his breathing slowed to a rhythm so faint it was practically imperceptible. To an outside observer, he appeared to be resting in tranquil meditation.

But within the vast ocean of his inner mind, a cataclysmic war was about to commence.

The Spirit Severing realm!

It was the step that stopped most Peak Nascent Soul experts from ever advancing further in the cultivation world. It was not a realm achieved through the accumulation of spiritual Qi, nor could it be bought with mountains of spirit stones or divine pills. It was an evolution of philosophy, a brutal, unforgiving crucible that required a cultivator to physically dismantle their own psyche.

To sever the mortal tethers was to cut away the very things that made a soul mortal, elevating it into a state of flawless and unburdened divinity.

But the danger was immense.

The metaphysical blade formed from a cultivator’s Dao Intent was sharper than any physical artifact. If that blade wavered for even a single moment, if the cultivator hesitated because of fear, regret, or weakness, it would not merely sever the attachment, It would sever the soul itself, causing the cultivator to collapse instantly.

Lin Yuan’s consciousness hovered before the newly formed Mortal Heart. It was a dense, pulsing crimson nexus, sitting heavily at the center of his sea of concussiness.

Emanating from this crimson heart were thousands of metaphysical threads—some as thick as iron, others as thin as silk. These were his attachments, his fears, his traumas, and his desires. They were the anchors that tied his divine potential to the mortal dust.

Above the heart hovered the blade of his Thunder Rain Dao Intent. It crackled with lightning.

I must not rush, Lin Yuan told himself. A butcher hacks blindly. A sovereign dissects.

Before he could strike, he had to undergo a ruthless examination of his own psyche. He projected his awareness into the tangled web of threads, forcing himself to confront the ugly, hidden truths of his own soul.

Within the River of Years Pagoda, the years passed one after another. A single year became ten in what felt like a flash as Lin Yuan carefully examined his own psyche, treating the process of Spirit Severing with extreme caution.

As he searched through the depths of his soul, he discovered a thick, dark thread pulsing with an arrogant and toxic light. It represented his desire for absolute control.

Ever since he had transmigrated into the cultivation world, Lin Yuan, like countless other cultivators, had carried the belief that he could calculate, manipulate, and dominate every variable in the Nine Provinces. But the dream domain had brutally shattered that illusion.

He had stood before a screaming, dying child and realized that there were forces in this world that refused to bow to his will. Disease. Time. Mortality.

No matter how powerful he became, he could not control everything.

His arrogance had never been true confidence.

It had been a shield, a way to hide his deeper fear of chaos and the helplessness that came with being unable to control the outcome.

He saw another thread, gray and brittle. It was the fear of decline.

Lin Yuan isolated this gray thread. He felt the phantom ache in his left shoulder. He felt the terrifying, humiliating weakness of his aging mortal body collapsing in the mud after the duel with Ma Teng. As an immortal, he projected an aura of ageless perfection, but deep down, the mortal lifetime had infected him with the creeping dread of becoming obsolete, of growing old and useless.

Lin Yuan then grasped the hilt of the lightning blade with his spiritual intent. He took a steadying breath, aligning his absolute willpower with the edge of the weapon.

He swung the blade.

Slash!

The blade of lightning sheared cleanly through the brittle gray thread representing his fear of aging.

The reaction was instantaneous and horrifying. An agonizing, soul-tearing pain violently erupted within his Sea of Consciousness. It was a million times worse than having a physical limb amputated without anesthesia. It felt as though a core piece of his identity was being burned away. Lin Yuan’s physical body violently convulsed in the real world, a sharp gasp tearing through his gritted teeth, a bead of cold sweat rolling down his skin.

But as the gray thread dissolved into nothingness, an incredible sensation followed the agony.

The weight on his soul lightened by a fraction. His Cultivation, previously at the absolute ceiling of the Nascent Soul realm, suddenly boiled, expanding slightly, its density purifying and elevating closer to that point.

Lin Yuan did not pause to catch his breath. If he stopped to acknowledge the pain, the fear would paralyze him, and the blade would shatter his soul.

He immediately turned his attention to a thick, jagged thread that pulsed with dark, muddy resentment.

It was the trauma of his early cultivation struggles. It was the memory of being a weak, disposable pawn. It was the freezing rain of the slums, the crushing boot of the Black Tiger Gang on his throat, and the desperate, humiliating necessity of bowing his head to stronger masters just to survive another day. It was a trauma that led his rapid ascension, but it was also a chain that kept his perspective locked in the dirt, always fighting like a cornered street rat rather than a true sovereign.

Lin Yuan then raised the blade of lightning once more. His concentration was absolute, a terrifying singular focus.

Slash!

The jagged thread was cleanly severed.

Another shockwave of blinding agony ripped through his spiritual sea. The pain was so intense that Lin Yuan’s vision momentarily went completely white. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth, his cultivation violently rebelling against the strike. The blade wavered dangerously for a second, the lightning sparking erratically, threatening to plunge directly into his core and reduce him to ash.

Hold! Lin Yuan roared within his mind, summoning every ounce of his might. He forcefully stabilized the blade, forcing his soul back into alignment.

As the trauma dissolved, a massive surge of spiritual clarity washed over him. The lingering, subconscious anxiety of his early weakness completely vanished. His aura grew significantly colder, purer, and infinitely more majestic.

He had found the rhythm. The required dismantling of his superficial mortal tethers had officially begun.

For the next several years within the temporal void, Lin Yuan waged a brutal war against his flawed self.

He isolated the threads of vanity, slicing away the need for the adulation of the masses. Slash!

He isolated the threads of petty vengeance, cutting away the desire to humiliate those who had wronged him in the past. Slash!

He found the thread of his arrogant desire for absolute control, recognizing that true sovereignty was not controlling the storm, but remaining immovable within it. Slash!

With every single cut, his soul bled, and his physical body trembled under the unimaginable strain. The process was a literal flaying of the ego. But with every thread that dissolved, his spiritual frequency skyrocketed. The heavy impurities of the mortal dust were being purged from his existence, leaving behind only the pure essence of his Great Dao.

Finally, he brought the blade down upon the last cluster of minor and moderate attachments—the lingering connections to the Azure Swallow School, the pride of his mortal legacy, and the fading echoes of his students’ reverence.

Slash!

As the final tether snapped, the absolute limit of the Nascent Soul realm—a barrier that had felt as impenetrable as a divine iron wall—shattered completely.

BOOOOOOOOM!

A catastrophic explosion of spiritual energy detonated within Lin Yuan’s Sea of Consciousness.

His spiritual essence violently expanded, its volume multiplying exponentially as its qualitative structure fundamentally transformed.

In the physical world, Lin Yuan’s aura exploded outward with force. The twilight of the River of Years Pagoda violently trembled, the massive temporal runes flickering erratically as they struggled to contain the sheer magnitude of his expanding presence.

He had breached the absolute ceiling.

He was no longer a Nascent Soul cultivator. His aura stabilized, radiating the chilling, majestic, and unfathomable pressure of the higher realm. He had successfully reached the Half-Step Spirit Severing stage.

Lin Yuan slowly exhaled, the breath carrying the faint, crackling sound of thunder. His spiritual sea was vast, pure, and incredibly light, purged of all the superficial mortal dust that had previously weighed him down.

But as the explosive surge of his breakthrough settled, and the smoke of his severed attachments cleared, his divine perception locked onto the center of his soul.

The Mortal Heart was still there.

It was no longer a tangled, chaotic nexus. The minor threads were entirely gone. But anchored directly into the absolute core of the crimson heart was one single, impossibly thick, radiant tether.

To cross into the true Spirit Severing realm completely, he had to cut this final thread.

Lin Yuan hovered before the massive tether. He tightened his spiritual 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 superficial cuts were finished. Now, he had to strike the core.