Xu Bai's words startled Liu San.

But he quickly understood. The suicide Xu Bai spoke of referred to this avatar.

"Young Master, why go to such lengths? With Old Fang and me here, along with the true Medicine King Cauldron, even if we cannot win, fleeing should not be difficult." Liu San looked at Xu Bai, bewildered.

Xu Bai did not explain much. "Just a precaution."

Liu San pressed no further. Instead, he instructed: "To make self-destruction easier, wrap the Soul-Melting Body-Dissolving Pill in spiritual power and swallow it into your dantian. At the critical moment, dissolve the pill, and the medicinal force will spread through your body in an instant. During this process, you must also pay attention to..."

After hearing Liu San's detailed explanation, Xu Bai calmly swallowed the deadly pill.

Feeling its presence within his dantian, his heart settled considerably.

With Arcana True Spirit Transformation to abandon this avatar's life at will, and this additional insurance, I should at least be able to destroy myself.

After all, the avatar would need to travel to the Myriad Immortals Alliance headquarters to face the Derivation Jade. No one could guess what level of powerhouses he might encounter there.

Given Xu Bai's appearance and bearing, thorough preparation was only prudent.

Next, I'll have to see how Fellow Daoist Jiao performs.

Xu Bai stood in the sky of the Beastkin World, his gaze piercing through layers of temporal and spatial obstacles to the scene within Tianling Province.

***

Inside Tianling City, a guard dispatched by the City Lord to maintain order surveyed the dense, dark mass of cultivators gathered within the city and cursed under his breath.

"Damn it, the last time Tianling Province was this lively was..." The words died in his throat.

He stood there a long moment, lost in thought, as though something important hovered just beyond his grasp.

When he finally came to, a faint puzzlement had settled on his face.

"When was the last time Tianling Province saw this many people?"

"It was the Tianling Province War," a lean, stern-faced cultivator beside him said coldly.

The vanished memories flooded back into his mind. Recalling what seemed like something from centuries ago, the guard’s expression grew distant. "Right. Before the Tianling Province War, the city was this crowded too.

"Old Sun, your memory is really good. I'd almost forgotten that..."

Sun Qi didn't respond to his colleague's muttering. Instead, he checked the Blossom Missive in his arms again, a flicker of light flashing in his eyes.

The Blossom Missive was the entry pass for the soon-to-be-held Flower Appreciation Assembly.

Its reputation had drawn a vast number of cultivators here, so many that even the massive space the Tianling City Lord had prepared was proving insufficient.

To avoid outright chaos, all cultivators who wished to enter and catch a glimpse of the True Tianling Flower had to proceed in order of arrival, one at a time.

Since they had all journeyed from afar, the cultivators didn't particularly mind paying the entry fee of one hundred contribution points.

The key issue was time.

Those queuing already filled the entire city. For the first time, even the teleportation arrays connecting Tianling City to other regions had been temporarily closed.

No one knew how long ordinary cultivators who wanted to see the True Tianling Flower would have to wait.

The organizers hadn't announced exactly how long the Flower Appreciation Assembly would run, either.

And the True Tianling Flower itself had only been consigned to the Thousand Li Hall by its owner. It could be reclaimed at any moment. Miss this chance, and there might be no next one.

Naturally, the sooner one could see the flower, the better.

Those holding a Blossom Missive could bypass the queue and enter early.

Rumor held that the price had climbed to ten thousand contribution points per missive, and the quantity was limited. It wasn't something one could simply buy on a whim.

Sun Qi had one because his uncle had given it to him.

Sun Qi's uncle, Sun Liancheng, was the newly appointed City Lord of Tianling Province.

He was a Dao Unity cultivator, guardian of the entire Tianling Province.

"This Tianling Flower does seem different from the ones I've seen before. Go take a look. Perhaps it'll help you break through," Sun Liancheng had said, though his tone held little hope.

The Heavenly Tribulation had trapped Sun Qi at the Golden Core realm for far too long.

He had tried every method he could think of, even risking his life on the Tianling battlefield, hoping the sheer terror of facing death might shatter the barrier. Every attempt had failed.

Besides Sun Qi himself, the rest of his family had already given up.

Tianling Flower... In Sun Qi's mind, the image of the flower rose from memory.

As a cultivator native to Tianling Province, he knew the plant well.

Before the great war, he had occasionally bought a few pots when the mood struck him and brought them home to admire.

But after the war, the Tianling Flowers had become tainted by the scent of blood.

Every time he saw them, they reminded him of the hellish scenes from the Tianling Province War. He had never bought another since.

"Who would have thought an original Tianling Flower still existed in this world?" Sun Qi murmured, a faint daze in his eyes.

After a colleague arrived and the handover of duties was complete, Sun Qi hurried home, changed his clothes, and made straight for the Blossom Grotto-Heaven.

The Blossom Grotto-Heaven was the venue Tianling City had prepared for the Flower Appreciation Assembly. His uncle, Sun Liancheng, had opened it jointly with a cultivator named Zhao Chong.

Zhao Chong was renowned for his love of flowers.

When he heard the Flower Appreciation Assembly would be held in Tianling Province, he had sought out Sun Liancheng and offered to help prepare the venue free of charge, all for a chance to see the True Tianling Flower with his own eyes.

Zhao Chong was only at the Spirit Transformation realm, but he had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, with intricate connections to several Dao Unity cultivators within the Myriad Immortals Alliance.

Sun Liancheng found it hard to refuse, and so he agreed.

The entrance to the grotto-heaven stood in the Dao Transmission Plaza of the city. A dark-skinned man named Jiao Xiuyuan had set up a table before the entrance, grinning broadly.

Sun Qi presented his Blossom Missive and was permitted to enter the Blossom Grotto-Heaven.

Before his eyes could even register the sights, a heady scent of flowers washed over him.

On a clearing paved with a hundred different blooms, cultivators already occupied chairs woven from green vines.

Sun Qi swept his gaze across the area and didn’t spot anyone he knew. Reclusive by nature, he simply found the seat matching his missive, sat down, and waited with patience.

After some unknown stretch of time, the grotto-heaven suddenly grew noisy.

The first batch of lucky individuals had begun entering the grotto-heaven one by one.

Once all the cultivators had entered, Jiao Xiuyuan suddenly appeared on the raised dais built from a variety of resplendent flowers.

The red wooden box in his hand instantly drew every cultivator's gaze.

Without wasting words on preamble, Jiao Xiuyuan simply announced, "Fellow Daoists, the Flower Appreciation Assembly officially begins now!"

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