Chapter 258: The Primordial Spirit is Formed!

Darkness, chaos; Lu Yuan's consciousness drifted alone in the void.

He did not know how much time had passed, but his consciousness gradually returned; his eyelids twitched slightly, and he opened his eyes slowly and with some difficulty.

What met his eyes was pure white, along with somewhat glaring lights. A feeling of numbness spread throughout his entire body, as if a great mountain were pressing down upon him; even moving a finger was a luxury.

A faint scent of disinfectant drifted into Lu Yuan's nose, giving him an incomparably familiar feeling.

Where is this place?

His mind was a chaotic mess, shrouded in fog, as if something were being obscured, or perhaps as if something were rapidly fading away. At the same time, an extreme, stinging pain felt like countless steel needles piercing into his mind, causing pain and confusion to flash constantly in Lu Yuan's eyes.

"Doctor, come quickly, come quickly, he's awake!"

A crisp, excited, and choked-up voice suddenly rang out by Lu Yuan's ear.

Lu Yuan turned his head with effort, and a face that felt vaguely familiar entered his vision.

A woman with a beautiful face, though looking somewhat haggard, had eyes radiating an incomparably joyful light as she shouted something; she looked as if she wanted to get closer but was forcibly holding herself back. It was as if the current Lu Yuan were a porcelain doll that would shatter at a touch, which was why she was so cautious.

She was wearing a loose white hospital gown and had gauze wrapped around her head; it seemed she had also sustained some injuries.

Is this... a hospital? Who is this woman?

Lu Yuan's brain reaction became somewhat sluggish; his mind was shrouded in countless mists, chaotic and muddled.

Tap, tap, tap.

Rapid footsteps approached; a group of doctors in white coats, looking experienced, pushed the door open and entered. They hurried forward to gently lift Lu Yuan's eyelids, observing him for a moment.

Lu Yuan was like a puppet, lacking the strength to speak, and let them do as they pleased.

Afterwards, the observing physician revealed a joyful, congratulatory smile, turned around, and said to the girl with the gauze on her head:

"Congratulations to the family, his consciousness has basically recovered; there is no need to worry about him becoming a vegetable!"

Lu Yuan, lying on the bed unable to move, immediately saw the girl burst into tears of joy, cover her mouth, forcibly suppress her excitement, and take out a phone to make a call.

This person seems very familiar.

Lu Yuan's mind was like lightning and thunder; a massive wave of pain surged over him, his vision went black, and he fell into a deep sleep.

By the time Lu Yuan opened his eyes again, a large crowd of people was already standing before his bed, nearly filling the relatively spacious ICU ward.

Face after face, incomparably familiar yet seemingly very strange, entered his vision one by one.

"A Yuan, how are you?"

"Doctor, doctor!"

"Little brother, you're finally awake!"

Familiar yet strange, his parents, older brother, wife, and childhood friends all looked at him with nervous and joyful expressions.

"A Yuan, you're finally awake."

Lu Yuan's mother could finally no longer suppress the excitement in her heart; she wept with joy, gripping Lu Yuan's hands tightly with one hand while gently stroking his face with the other:

"You were in a coma for over a month; you scared your mother to death!"

Lu Yuan's father stood before the bed with slightly red-rimmed eyes, saying repeatedly:

"It's good that you're awake, it's good that you're awake."

Lu Yuan's mind at this moment was like a rusted machine, extremely sluggish; after a long while, he asked with difficulty:

"What happened to me?"

Hearing the weak voice Lu Yuan emitted, his mother shed tears and gently patted the back of Lu Yuan's hand:

"It's over, it's all over."

"You and your sister-in-law were in a very serious car accident during your road trip; you suffered multiple comminuted fractures and almost lost your life, but fortunately, the surgery was very successful."

Lu Yuan's older brother said calmly and comfortingly:

"The perpetrator has also been caught and is still in detention, just waiting for the legal process."

A car accident?

A flash of inspiration flickered through his mind. Lu Yuan suddenly remembered the cause and effect.

He vaguely remembered driving out with his wife, whom he had just registered his marriage with not long ago. As a result, before they had even left the city, while waiting for a red light at an intersection, a massive force suddenly came from the rear diagonal, and after that, he knew nothing.

So that's how it is?

Lu Yuan slowly turned his gaze toward his right hand, which was being gripped tightly by his mother.

A strange, inexplicable feeling rose in his heart; this hand of his should not be so pale and weak—it should be a pair of hands capable of grasping the stars and plucking the moon, of burning mountains and boiling the seas.

"Strange."

Lu Yuan's eyes fell into a daze.

The sunlight was mellow; a light rain had just fallen the previous night, and a fresh fragrance permeated the entire park, refreshing the heart and lungs.

A plain-looking woman pushed Lu Yuan, who was sitting in a wheelchair, as they strolled along a small path.

More than half a month had passed since Lu Yuan woke up, and now he was barely able to go out in a wheelchair to breathe fresh air. Looking around, the park was full of patients like him out for activities.

Even now, he still had a feeling of being in another world.

"What is it, are you still thinking about that dream of yours?"

The wheelchair stopped moving; his wife came to the front of Lu Yuan, gently tucked in the gap of the blanket on his knees, and couldn't help but say with a playful smile:

"How could there be any immortal cultivation in this world? You must not say things like that in front of Mom and Dad, otherwise they will get anxious and worked up again, and then they'll bring in a bunch of so-called psychological experts to pester you; you'll be the one suffering then."

Lu Yuan's eyes cleared, and he immediately came back to his senses and chuckled:

"Wife, you must not tell them, otherwise they'll annoy me to death again."

Then, without waiting for his wife to speak, Lu Yuan looked toward the horizon; he raised his hand and said slowly in a low voice:

"However, that dream was truly too real—so real that it makes me think that *this* is the dream I'm having now."

In that dream, he had inexplicably transmigrated to an ancient, strange world, becoming a refugee fleeing for his life, with his future hanging by a thread.

Later, through a twist of fate, he seemed to have been taken in by a Boxiyuan, where he began practicing martial arts and immortal cultivation, fighting on stage, and later even had a series of conflicts with the imperial court and the foreigners.

In this dream, he soon achieved success in his cultivation; whether it was the government and imperial court or the rampant foreign rulers, all were overthrown under his invincible Supernatural Power, and he thereby established a brand-new nation, and was worshipped by hundreds of millions of commoners as the Supreme Heavenly Master.

The dreamscape was constantly blurring; what he could vaguely recall at the end was that he seemed to have ascended to the world of immortal cultivation and was undergoing some kind of breakthrough and attempt, after which he broke free from the dream and woke up. A pair of soft hands tightly gripped Lu Yuan's hands, his wife gazing into Lu Yuan's eyes with a gentle and pained expression, saying softly:

"Alright, stop letting your imagination run wild. I've contacted a very authoritative recovery physician for you; as long as you put in some earnest effort, you'll be able to run and jump in less than half a year."

"Ah? It will take that long?"

"What does that matter? You have me with you."

His wife held his hand, her smile gentle.

Another two-plus months later.

In the dead of night, the moon was bright and the stars were sparse.

In front of the tall floor-to-ceiling window, Lu Yuan sat in his wheelchair, gazing at the brilliant starlight filling the sky, only feeling that these countless stars in the sky possessed an indescribable strangeness.

His gaze was at times clear, at times chaotic; the fog in his mind seemed to be seen through bit by bit, then gradually faded away.

Half a year later.

Although there were steel pins in many places in Lu Yuan's body, he was already able to move normally; except for not being able to do strenuous exercise, he was no different from a normal person.

During this period, his parents and wife took meticulous care of him, and the subsequent matters such as the pursuit and prosecution of the perpetrator had long been completed; once his body was basically unimpeded, Lu Yuan and his wife began preparations for the wedding.

Although the two had received their marriage certificate, the car accident happened before they could hold the wedding; now that his body had recovered, the wedding naturally had to be put on the agenda.

Just like that, the two began intensive preparations; hotels, invitations, wedding dresses—all kinds of trivial matters kept Lu Yuan spinning.

However, whenever it was night and he rested, Lu Yuan would always raise his head to look up at the stars and moon in the sky.

In his mind, something was gradually sprouting and becoming clearer and clearer.

Four months later, in the early spring of the second year, at a certain hotel, the two held their wedding.

Neither side's family invited too many people; those present were all truly close friends and relatives, adding up to no more than a hundred people.

Flowers, applause, cheers.

Amidst the music, his wife wore a pure white wedding dress, a heartfelt happy smile on her face, lightly holding the arm of Lu Yuan, who was in a formal suit, walking step by step toward the officiant.

Along this short distance, parents and friends applauded enthusiastically, beaming with joy; his father-in-law and mother-in-law were joyful yet their eyes were moist, filled with an irrepressible sense of emotion.

The pair of newlyweds, steps light, arrived before the officiant.

Everyone held their breath, looking at the newlyweds with blessings.

After the two sides solemnly took their vows and exchanged rings, the newlyweds embraced and kissed; the most enthusiastic applause erupted from the audience, and every guest stood up joyfully to applaud.

After a long while, amidst the enthusiastic applause, the newlyweds separated. There was irrepressible happiness in the wife's eyes, turning into a pool of overflowing love, just gazing at her husband like this.

Lu Yuan looked straight at this beautiful, gentle, and virtuous woman before him; everything was so perfect, perfect to the point of being dreamlike.

Then, he suddenly reached out to gently stroke her smooth cheek and said softly:

"Thank you."

"Really, thank you."

"This dream should be the dream I once held in my heart, right? Parents are healthy, I have a decent job, a gentle, beautiful, and virtuous lover, a happy love life, a smooth life, no accidents, no pain, no sorrow..."

As Lu Yuan's voice fell, time froze.

The music, the air, the scent of flowers, the wife's smiling face, the blessings of friends and relatives—everything was suddenly frozen.

The scene was fixed at this moment. All this beauty stayed at this moment, forming a silent yet happy and warm painting; all the visions, as if all the sounds and smiles, were preserved forever at this moment.

"I want to thank the so-called inner demon for actually giving me the chance to experience these emotions; otherwise, I would have even forgotten my past life, forgotten that I was once just a vulgar and ordinary soul."

Lu Yuan gazed at his wife, who was still smiling happily, as well as his parents and guests, his expression nostalgic, smiling as he said goodbye:

"So, dream of the past, goodbye..."

Then, he waved goodbye, and at the same time, his body became lighter and lighter, lighter and lighter, floating up like a goose feather.

Rising higher and higher, rising higher and higher, everything in his eyes shrank rapidly.

"In this life, I did not cultivate good karma, only loved to kill and set fires..."

"Suddenly, I untied the golden rope, and here I snapped the jade lock."

Past lives, parents, friends and relatives, all kinds of subconscious dreamlike memories drifted away from him; Lu Yuan suddenly laughed out loud, his laughter filled with indescribable freedom and detachment; this was the joyful laughter of seeing through the heart and severing all the shackles of the past:

"The tide comes on the Qiantang River; today I finally know that I am I!"

Hum!

Finally, everything returned to chaos and darkness.

A dream of a yellow millet, passing in an instant.

Bidding farewell to the past, it was as if a brand-new "I" was born, reborn from the ashes. Lu Yuan's consciousness became unprecedentedly clear, his heart having undergone a tempering in the invisible, appearing with indescribable changes.

Breaking away from the dream of the past, Lu Yuan, who seemed to have drifted beyond the nine heavens, saw his surroundings turn into a gorgeous and psychedelic world; within the seven-colored rays of light lay all-encompassing, endless illusions, surging toward him to envelop him.

These seven-colored rays of light hid a power that made wishes come true; it seemed that with a single thought, one could possess infinite wealth, infinite power, and infinite strength; countless desires and obsessions, true and false, were mixed together, surging and enveloping him like a bottomless abyss of mud.

Lu Yuan was like a reef that had experienced thousands and tens of thousands of years, unmoved as a mountain, while his consciousness seemed to turn into a peerless divine sword, sweeping out toward the illusions surging around him.

Crack!

The next moment, all illusions shattered and vanished like a mirror, and Lu Yuan's vast consciousness returned to his body, perceiving his own self!

The tribulation of the inner demon was officially passed!

Just as the tribulation was passed, the dazzling Spirit Embryo in his dantian instantly cracked open, and then a Primordial Spirit body, identical to himself, emerged, blooming with brilliant divine light and flying into the space of his consciousness!

At this moment, countless vitality bloomed on the ground around Lu Yuan, flowers blossomed, and light rain fell, evolving the meaning of reincarnation—blooming and withering—in the blink of an eye, brilliant and fleeting.

At this moment, the wind and clouds in the sky stilled, and an astonishing wave of spiritual pressure permeated his body, giving people a sense of the vastness of Heaven and Earth, with all things bowing and all living beings silent; had it not been for the isolation array set up in advance, this grand wave would likely have surged and swept across hundreds or thousands of miles in an instant!

The late stage of Refining Qi into Spirit, the Primordial Spirit realm, was thus achieved!

PS: This book is going to end this month. I have to admit that the later part is clearly a bit broken; this is mainly due to the author's lack of control, plus the fact that the first map and the immortal cultivation map are somewhat severely disconnected.

In fact, looking back now, the first map of the magic-modified Great Qing should only have been suitable as a dungeon for the "heavens" genre, focusing on changing the world; on this basis, the map compatibility was really poor. It's a pity that by the time I realized this, it was already too late.

Regardless, a book should have a beginning and an end. I will try my best to handle the ending well. Thank you to the brothers who have been following the updates until now.