Now, as the last of the golden soul blood torched down his throat, Qianye groaned and wobbled himself to his feet.

The mist that had enshrouded his soul realm had moved while he was recovering.

It had risen high, becoming a wide, expansive blanket over the sky of his soul sea. Only that black sun, shining gold, was allowed to peer its light through.

The koi, rejuvenated, swam restlessly throughout the realm. The luminous water beneath the red flowers had brightened once again, now with flecks of gold within it, and the flowers had begun regenerating.

Qianye’s soul body heaved for breath, huffing red mist, and was billowing with gold steam. His unsteady figure wafted it so thickly and far that it created its own curtain, as if he were a walking, golden wildfire.

The luminosity in his eyes had largely returned, and his soul flesh had filled out.

And in all that, Qianye’s eyes were dazed, lost in a deep reverie.

Then, the whole soul realm shook, rumbling with life at the demand of his voice:

"Bring!"

The surrounding koi fish stopped themselves and they opened their mouths. Once more, they relieved themselves of containing what they had torn Celosia into.

The chunks of the ancient nether demonesses soul body rapidly flew out of them.

Ouyang Qianye’s consciousness was fully aware of its actions, in his desperation to heal his soul realm and body.

If he wished to risk potential deficiencies and very serious weaknesses, then he could have just stopped now, with just being healed by her soul blood.

With an ethereal soul realm, even if he was not completely healed, it was far better than before. His soul might be somewhat more compromised, but it was enough to return to a normal life.

However, he was not satisfied with a normal life.

Qianye had been reborn into a cultivation world, how could be satisfied with normalcy when faced with the path of immortality?!

Fear for his life, lack of control over his agency, weakness before the the suffering of his loved ones, death, and disease; he would be subjecting himself to all of those damned, cursed, bloody, painful things if he relented for the sake of decency!

What did the appropriateness of his modern world matter anyway here?!

This was a world where someone could scheme to kill you over the shimmering plant you found in the forest in hopes that it could save your father’s life when all their needs revolved around their need for power to impress their ancestors.

Maintaining his reservations here would only condemn him to being he one being stolen from, and more than likely, killed for it.

All he had the intention of meeting her for was trying to draw her to his side and get at least a similar agreement to what Chu Xuan had gotten out of the ancient nether demoness.

And yet—by now he had long reasoned this—because he possessed a desirable soul that could nourish hers, helping recover her strength, after the severe weakness that breaking the seals had put her into, he was nearly killed a second time!

That was fine! It was all fine! He would accept it all!

If these were the circumstances that he had to now live with, it was all just bloody fine!

Anything was better than what he had to go through before this!

And thus, his hands, in a rapid blur, grabbed greedily for the golden blooded flesh, and he lost himself to esurience.

He devoured her down to her black bones, and by the end, that golden, burning steam had filled his whole soul realm, and he, heaving for breath, sweating red, was staring at that black, golden rimmed sun.

The koi fish had all disappeared.

His red sea of red flowers had been reborn, and his naked soul body was pristine and unlike his real body, it was sculpted to extremes of majesty.

Red fell from his eyes and his smile was wide and gold blooded.

"Thank you, truly."

[ Laudations, Ouyang Qianye! You have slain Celosia, an existence of an Exalted Grade Destiny. ]

[ You have earned 19’612 Fortuity! ]

[ You have significantly affected the Destiny of Chu Xuan, an existence of Empyrean grade Destiny ]

[ He has lost 12’000 Fortuity, and you have gained 12’000 Fortuity! ]

[ Laudations, Ouyang Qianye! You have diminished Chu Xuan’s Destiny grade to Legendary! ]

[ You have earned 3’500 Fortuity! ]

Once he heard the system messages, Qianye did not at all care for them.

His attention remained silently on that sun as his soul body burned.

Eventually, only as he finally began to cool and return to regularity, when his body stopped sweating all of its red soul blood out, did the sun gradually fade away.

’She noticed that I’m okay now...’ he thought as his smile grew, and then his head fell back level. His hands raised, wiping away the remnants of blood from his face.

’How long its been out there... an hour or two? That would have been the time it took for her to finish cleaning and then come back to find me nearly dying right?’

Qianye almost laughed at the prospect of him having gone through all of this suffering for merely an hour or two.

One’s sense of time while they were completely immersed in their soul was very strange. There was really no way for him to tell until he got out of here.

How absurd would that have been? To be reborn and only live a few hours in the new life that he had gained from transmigration, wouldn’t it make him a laughingstock amongst transmigrators?

’Regardless, I should get out of here. I seem to have worried her greatly.’

Then, Qianye raised his hand to the sky, ’But first...’

All of the ambient golden steam that had saturated his soul realm as densely as his fog had earlier, buzzed.

From the top of his high raised palm, a vortex began to form.

Swiftly, all of the gold steam began to gather in through that vortex and he compressed, and compressed it further still, ensuring that it did not get become any larger than his palm’s size.

Then, from the sea beneath him, any of the blood that Celosia had spilled and had sunk in there flowed out and gathered as well.

Eventually, he had drained all of the lingering gold from his soul realm.

Now, in his hand that lowered from its high, a perfectly round gold orb sat. He nodded in satisfaction at it.

Then with only the slight will of it, his soul body began to rise, flying up.

Qianye, once he reached a satisfactory height, sat himself cross-legged as some threads of mist began to gather around his figure. They created robes of a white styling with hints of red.

He glanced down at the thing as he held it over his palms within his lap.

’What an exorbitant amount of memories... Ouyang Qianye’s are like a modicum of dust in front of all of these.’

There was still a lot to do with his soul before he even began touching the memories of that witch.

His soul body had healed, however, it was not as if it had properly digested those extreme amounts of her that he had consumed yet.

It needed time to do that, and then he could safely begin processing it all.

Regardless, neither of those things were important right now.

Qianye then raised his head once more and then he gradually closed his eyes, releasing a long, finally relieved breath.