Chen Yixin thought it over from every angle and concluded that Wenren Li’s breakthrough probably required far too much time. The hidden site would open any day now, and Wenren Li was likely afraid that if Chen Yixin continued guarding him, he would miss the best opportunity to obtain the phoenix remnant.
“But he could’ve just told me himself. Why make you pass along the message?”
If Wenren Li had told him directly, Chen Yixin would not have stubbornly refused to leave. He could still tell which matters were more important than others. Of course, in his heart, Wenren Li’s importance might very well outweigh the immortal-light hidden site.
Yinzi grumbled and continued onward, not daring to offend the slightly irritated Chen Yixin. Truthfully, even Yinzi did not fully understand Wenren Li’s actual intention. The moment Chen Yixin flew away to undergo his tribulation, Wenren Li had awakened and immediately instructed Yinzi to take Chen Yixin to the Water Palace hidden site as soon as his tribulation ended.
Chen Yixin lay sprawled on Yinzi’s back in little-blue-bird form for quite a while before finally returning to his half-yao form. He sat up on his knees, carefully stored away the immortal-light cluster first, then closed his eyes to consolidate his newly advanced cultivation.
A little under one hour later, Chen Yixin and Yinzi emerged from the void. A dazzling curtain of light filled their vision. Only after adapting for a moment could Chen Yixin make out the situation before him.
Apart from the floating reef beneath their feet, there was only an enormous gate spilling immortal light, with one corner broken away. There was nothing before the gate, and nothing behind it either.
“Mother, be careful. Void tunnels are everywhere around here. Take one wrong step, and you’ll end up in another realm.”
Moreover, the small worlds connected this densely were probably all ruined Lower Realms already in decline. If someone truly fell into one, cultivating would become enormously more difficult. Anyone capable of using so many small worlds to construct a trap like this must possess terrifying methods. Whether there were still other hidden measures remained unknown.
Chen Yixin did not move recklessly. He swept a cluster of blue flame out before him, while Yinzi’s aura surged. Their auras immediately merged completely into the surrounding Heaven and Earth.
Almost the instant the two of them disappeared, several reefs materialized not far ahead. Another group had found this place.
“Many thanks to the Taixuan envoy for leading the way for us. Now you can die!”
A broad, heavily built man gave a savage laugh. A powerful treasure art crashed downward, pulverizing the reef beside him before it had even fully emerged.
An envoy was worth respecting only while he could bring them benefits. Once those benefits came into conflict, nobody showed the slightest mercy. Use someone to cross the river, then tear down the bridge behind you once you reached the other side—that sort of naked exploitation was the normal state of affairs in the cultivation world.
“Activate the formation! Whoever comes through dies! The treasures in this hidden site belong to this Venerable!”
The burly man continued laughing loudly. His figure vanished from the reef where he stood, yet he did not reappear on the platform before the immortal gate.
“Venerable?”
His subordinates and several allied friends stared around in astonishment, their expressions hesitant. “Did the Venerable enter the immortal gate?”
“We’ll know once we go over and look.” Heat rose in their eyes as they spoke, but without exception, the moment each of them took a step forward, they vanished without the slightest sound. The platform near the immortal gate remained completely empty.
“Mother, be careful. Inside the spatial rifts near the immortal gate are beings similar to Yinzi.”
Those people had not fallen into another world. They had simply been grabbed and eaten.
“Hmph! It’s stealing Yinzi’s food! I’m angry!”
Yinzi puffed up angrily in Chen Yixin’s arms. Chen Yixin soothed him with a few pats while continuing to conceal their presence. The formation that group had activated probably would not hold for long. More importantly, aside from two particularly suspicious and cautious people, everyone else in the group had already been wiped out.
“Brother Ming, this place is far too strange. You know my cultivation art gives me a special sense for danger. Ever since we entered this place, everything has felt wrong.”
“I feel it too,” the other man replied. Yet despite both of them sensing that something was wrong, neither had warned the burly man. The speaker then asked doubtfully, “Did that envoy really die just like that?”
They had long heard about the immortal and demonic sects of Taixuan Continent. The two sides minded their own territories, but overall, the foundations of Taixuan’s sects were stronger than those of Lai Continent. For an envoy from Taixuan to be killed that easily felt somewhat unlikely.
“Didn’t Venerable Mo disappear just as—”
Before he finished speaking, a roar of agony rang out. The burly man they had just mentioned reappeared drenched in blood, one foot and one hand already gone. “Brother Ming! Brother Lu! Save me!”
He stretched out one hand for help. Before Ming Yuan or Lu Dong could even react, his other leg was torn away. Judging from the wound, it had clearly been bitten off by some ferocious beast.
Aaaah—!
The agonized screams gradually faded away. Right in front of the seemingly peaceful immortal gate, that Soul Transformation Venerable was eaten alive.
“It really isn’t picky. Flesh and blood aren’t nearly as tasty as divine souls…” Yinzi had forgotten the days when he had been so hungry that he swallowed everything whole, including the floor tiles of the Fentian Nether Abode.
After complaining, Yinzi suddenly remembered another deeply upsetting fact. “Mother, it stole Yinzi’s food again.”
These people had come to compete with Chen Yixin for treasure. That made them enemies—and therefore Yinzi’s rations.
“Be good. Wait until more people come. Then you can fight it for food and bully it properly.”
Blue flame surfaced in Chen Yixin’s eyes. He paid no further attention to the two cultivators whose faces had gone almost completely white and instead stared at the immortal gate, which radiated immortal light of unprecedented purity. If he gathered all of that immortal light for Wenren Li, surely it would be enough for A-Li to break through.
But the immortal light on the gate was clearly different from the ownerless immortal light scattered through the seawater. To gather it, Chen Yixin would need to recover at least to the cultivation of an ordinary immortal. At present, he did not even have time to break through to Nascent Soul. It was only wishful thinking.
“Yinzi, go. Destroy the formation, make some noise, then wait for my instructions.”
Yinzi’s long whiskers swayed, and he vanished from Chen Yixin’s arms. Without Yinzi’s void aura concealing him, Chen Yixin’s figure appeared before Ming Yuan and Lu Dong. The pupils of both men contracted, and their guarded expressions intensified.
Chen Yixin took one step forward, but not toward them. He too was attempting to reach the platform before the immortal gate. Just as Yinzi had warned, the instant he stepped off the reef, he felt an enormous pulling force from other realms, while a divine sense far stronger than anything a Taixuan cultivator possessed locked onto him.
Those forces pressed down together, nearly rendering him unable to move. At that moment, the three feathers on his forehead trembled lightly. The restraints enveloping him vanished, as did the strange forces pulling at his body. Chen Yixin paused for only an instant before diving forward.
A trail of blood blossomed behind him. Chen Yixin’s body swayed, but after paying a certain price, he reached the platform.
Ming Yuan and Lu Dong had not simply stood and watched. The moment Chen Yixin rushed forward several steps, they moved too. They safely made it two steps before terror appeared on their faces. Ming Yuan’s sense of danger was stronger. He severed one arm and retreated to the reef. Lu Dong, however, followed in the burly man’s footsteps.
He was swallowed by a strange beast whose form they could neither see nor whose aura they could sense.
At that moment, a deafening explosion carrying the aftershock of a collapsing formation swept through the area, only to disappear completely before it reached the immortal gate.
Chen Yixin raised a hand and lightly wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. Even with his phoenix bloodline awakened, late-stage Golden Core cultivation was still insufficient in this place.
He ignored Ming Yuan’s confusion and sat down cross-legged, waiting for Yinzi’s return while resisting the strange beast’s divine-sense probing and restraints.
“Fellow Daoist, perhaps we could try cooperating.”
Ming Yuan assumed Chen Yixin had concealed his true cultivation. Even if Chen Yixin were weaker than him, he ought to possess at least half-step Soul Transformation strength, or perhaps carry some secret treasure that allowed him to contend against Soul Transformation without losing. That already made him worth negotiating with.
Chen Yixin ignored him. He swallowed medicinal pills and meditated for a time. Once the internal injuries caused by the spatial-rift forces had healed seventy or eighty percent, he turned his back and studied the immortal gate even more intently than before.
A long while later, he suddenly muttered, “Looks familiar.”
“Abode Spirit, are you there?”
Chen Yixin called to the Abode Spirit of the Fentian Nether Abode inside his ring. He and Wenren Li had already placed many rare spiritual treasures inside the abode, and the Abode Spirit benefited from them as well. Even if it slept, it would not be the sort of sleep from which it could not be awakened.
Two breaths later, spiritual light flashed from the ring and the Abode Spirit answered Chen Yixin’s summons. “This old servant is here.”
“In the Upper Realm, have you ever seen an immortal gate like this?”
This was unquestionably Chen Yixin’s first time coming here in this life, but such a powerful feeling of familiarity could not have appeared without cause. It could only have come from his previous life.
The Abode Spirit poked its head out of the ring and flew forward a little. After examining the gate closely from every angle, it turned back toward Chen Yixin. “This aura resembles a forbidden land of the Upper Realm. That place is called… the Divine Ruins.”
“The ruins left behind by the great war between divine clans in ancient times were called the Divine Ruins. The place is impossibly dangerous. How could part of it have fallen into Taixuan…?” The Abode Spirit did its best to explain, but its answer still did not resolve Chen Yixin’s inexplicable familiarity.
For that familiarity to survive reincarnation meant that something unusual must once have happened in a place like this—something memorable enough to remain etched into him even after rebirth. But what exactly had happened?
Chen Yixin frowned slightly and sent the Abode Spirit back into the ring, then turned his attention to other matters. Ming Yuan did not dare move rashly, nor did he try persuading Chen Yixin again, but neither did he leave.
Chen Yixin circled the immortal gate for nearly four hours before cultivators drawn over by the shattered formation began arriving. Their arrival did not take much of his attention. He continued circling the gate, seemingly hesitant, as though he had not yet made up his mind.
“Fellow Daoist over there, could you tell us the route for reaching the platform? We would be endlessly grateful.”
After repeated attempts had ended only in death, someone finally turned his attention toward Chen Yixin. “Help us reach the platform, and we’ll help you enter the immortal gate.”
They assumed Chen Yixin kept circling because he could not enter the immortal gate himself.
Chen Yixin finally turned around. His naturally amorous eyes settled on the speaker, and he asked, “Truly?”
“We cultivators naturally keep our word.”
The male cultivator Chen Yixin was looking at inexplicably flushed. His expression and tone became even more earnest as he promised.
Chen Yixin nodded lightly, seemingly convinced. He took one step forward, then added, “But I can only open the path once. If I open it for you now, I won’t be able to do anything for those who arrive later. Let’s wait a little longer.”
“This…” Chen Yixin being this gullible and kind was entirely beyond what these cultivators expected. They wanted to object, exposing their decisive, selfish side, yet somehow found themselves uncomfortable doing so. What if Chen Yixin saw how selfish they were and refused to open even this one path for them?
“There should at least be a time limit. The immortal gate won’t keep waiting for me—I mean, waiting for you to go inside.”
The cultivator nearly let the truth slip and flushed even harder. Beneath his shy and seemingly honest exterior, the heat and greed in his eyes when he looked at the immortal gate could not be hidden. He desperately wished the person standing before the immortal gate were himself rather than Chen Yixin.
“Three days. Whether everyone has arrived or not, in three days I’ll open the path once for all of you.”
Three days was hardly a long time for cultivators, but within Mingfeng Domain it was enough for the news to spread once throughout the region and for those rushing here to arrive.
Chen Yixin continued circling the immortal gate for most of the day, then sat down to regulate his breathing again, claiming that he needed to prepare himself to open the path three days later.
More and more people arrived, with the numbers increasing the later it became. Some factions tried to suppress the news, but Chen Yixin had Yinzi, who could enter and leave as he pleased. Nothing they did could truly block the information.
The Merfolk Emperor, Ze Fang, and the Great Peng Yao Emperor eventually arrived as well. They were somewhat surprised to see Chen Yixin, yet not truly shocked. All of them had witnessed Wenren Li’s abilities. That he and Chen Yixin could accomplish things others could not was hardly worth being surprised about anymore.
“Is the Divine Lord deliberately stalling for time?”
The Merfolk Emperor exchanged words with the Great Peng Yao Emperor. Because of Chen Yixin and Wenren Li, these two factions that had once been irreconcilable enemies could no longer easily start fighting again unless Chen Yixin and Wenren Li completely abandoned one side.
Moreover, after cooperating throughout the journey, although they could not claim that all past hatred had disappeared, they were at least capable of calmly speaking to each other.
“I don’t know. We’ll observe for now and wait for the Divine Lord’s orders.”
The Great Peng Yao Emperor and the others all raised their vigilance and prepared to enter battle at any time. To them, they could give up the secret treasure if necessary, but absolutely nothing could happen to Chen Yixin.
Time passed quickly. Exactly three days had gone by since Chen Yixin last spoke with that male cultivator.
He slowly opened his eyes and looked across. The opposite side, originally empty, was now packed with cultivators. Reef after reef had linked together until they formed an area no smaller than the platform before the immortal gate. Nearly a thousand cultivators filled them densely.
“Fellow Daoist, the time we agreed upon has arrived.”
The male cultivator could barely conceal the excitement in his eyes as he spoke to Chen Yixin, his burning gaze carrying something unusual. During these three days Chen Yixin had paid almost no attention to anyone else, and the only person he had spoken to was him. That sense of being treated differently stirred something in the man’s heart.
More importantly, Chen Yixin’s half-yao form was extraordinarily beautiful, seeming both immortal and yao. Even sitting there without moving, he was a sight capable of shaking the heart.
Chen Yixin did not look at him. He slowly stood, then lowered his head. Spiritual light spilled from the feathers on his forehead. A moment later, an enormous pair of wings formed entirely from spiritual power spread behind him.
A clear phoenix cry seemed to pierce this entire stretch of Heaven and Earth. Blue flame rose in Chen Yixin’s eyes as he spoke a single word.
“Open!”
The moment the word fell, every invisible spatial rift hidden throughout the void was revealed before everyone’s eyes. They were packed together like an enormous net, instantly making everyone’s scalp prickle with fear and belated dread. At the same time, a monstrous void beast as tall as the immortal gate appeared, dominated by a huge blood-red maw.
Its back faced the crowd. It had been hovering directly before Chen Yixin the entire time, its mouth that could not fully close gaping toward him, its hunger obvious without any need for explanation. This was the strange beast Chen Yixin had been resisting while he meditated, forever seeking an opportunity to swallow him.
Chen Yixin raised his eyes and met the beast’s gaze. For one instant, it seemed to have been petrified. Then it roared. No sound emerged, yet invisible sound waves surged outward. Cultivators with slightly weaker cultivation immediately began bleeding from all seven orifices.
But the feathers on Chen Yixin’s forehead trembled lightly, and the invisible waves were completely blocked beyond his barrier, unable to injure him at all.
Chen Yixin’s so-called act of “opening the path” was not finished. One of the wings behind him suddenly detached and transformed into an enormous sword, slashing down. The beast’s hide was extraordinarily tough. It clearly felt pain, but the strike did not threaten its life.
“Everyone, attack with everything you have! Help me kill it!”
No one objected. Obviously, if they wanted to reach the immortal gate, they first had to kill this beast that had swallowed so many people. Chen Yixin raised one hand in a signal. Every cultivator standing on the reefs unleashed their strongest attack.
The beast sensed danger and roared as it tried to flee, only for its body to abruptly freeze. None of those attacks had landed on it. At the same time, the sword-wing Chen Yixin had struck it with had not dispersed.
The blue wing rose, crossing countless spatial rifts while carrying every attack launched from the opposite side. One move had been overt, the other hidden. Multicolored radiance burst outward, and the blue wing suddenly reversed direction—not toward the void beast, but straight toward the damaged immortal gate.
Rumble—!
It sounded as though heavenly thunder had exploded directly beside everyone’s ears. The cultivators were stunned by what Chen Yixin had done, and the collision itself made many of them cough blood. Chen Yixin was no exception. In fact, he suffered the strongest backlash, coughing blood three times in succession before finally stopping himself from being blasted off the platform.
His eyes burned as he stared at the immortal gate, then his expression darkened. “Still not enough!”
His left wing flew out as well. This time absolutely no one was willing to cooperate with Chen Yixin, but the blue wing did not gather their spiritual power or attacks. Instead, it drew in the true blood they had coughed out from the backlash. Chen Yixin sliced open his own wrist and scattered several drops of his own blood into it.
“Break!”
At his command, the bloodstained left wing slashed down on the immortal gate. This time, everyone finally heard something crack.
A crystalline point on the immortal gate shattered, taking countless connected spatial rifts with it. Every time a rift broke apart, a strand of immortal light spilled from the gate. Chen Yixin did not move, but a pair of wings unfolded behind him again, and the immortal light began attaching itself to those spiritual wings of its own accord.
One strand, two strands… ten strands, a hundred…
“Yinzi!”
Chen Yixin suddenly called. Before him, a silver cloak swelled outward—Yinzi’s true body. He charged straight into the void beast. New grudges piled atop old ones; Yinzi had endured this thief long enough.
The two void beasts collided, shattering even more spatial rifts. The cultivators who had realized they had misunderstood Chen Yixin also joined in and attacked with everything they had. One disturbance triggered the next, and countless spatial rifts collapsed one after another.
Several unlucky people were injured by Yinzi or the other void beast. Others were caught in the aftermath and sucked into spatial rifts that had not yet broken, disappearing without a trace. Once the chaotic battle truly began, only those who were clever enough and vigilant enough could preserve themselves.
Yinzi was somewhat weaker than the void beast, but his bloodline suppressed it. With the cultivators assisting him, the beast soon began bleeding as well. Its belly split open, and blood threaded with strands of silver poured out.
None of the blood shed by anyone went to waste, including the beast’s. Chen Yixin drew all of it toward the immortal gate and smeared it across the surface, accelerating the collapse of the spatial rifts.
“Divine Ruins… fallen gods… divine burial…” Chen Yixin’s eyes suddenly widened. At last, he understood where this sense of familiarity came from.
He had found Wenren Li in a place like this.
Yin-Void power. Wenren Li’s soul form still carried the aura of a place like this. There could be no mistake.
“Fellow Daoist, please don’t take offense. We misunderstood you earlier.”
Chen Yixin truly had been wholeheartedly opening a path for them. When they saw him strike the immortal gate, they had assumed he was simply exploiting them so that he could enter alone.
As more and more spatial rifts shattered, the cultivators were no longer confined to the reefs where they had first arrived. The male cultivator who had spoken with Chen Yixin first was now only three steps from the platform before the immortal gate.
The power Chen Yixin had displayed only made him more dazzling in the man’s eyes. Without realizing it, he no longer cared as much about the immortal gate. The mysterious, beautiful person before him had become even more compelling, and he could no longer deny that his heart had been stirred.
“I still haven’t asked Fellow Daoist’s name. I am—”
Chen Yixin finally shifted his gaze slightly in the man’s direction, but there was nothing familiar in his eyes. Chen Yixin remembered what he himself had said, yet had never cared who the person he spoke to actually was.
And that man would never have the chance to tell Chen Yixin his name.
The void beast suddenly appeared behind him and bit down, severing the cultivator in two at the waist. Its aura forced Chen Yixin two steps backward. He lowered his eyes and concentrated, ignoring all the killing around him as he focused entirely on gathering immortal light.
The spatial rifts closest to the reefs shattered first, while those nearer the immortal gate broke later. As time passed, Chen Yixin’s wings became almost completely covered in immortal light, looking like the true divine wings of a phoenix.
Then Chen Yixin’s wings abruptly dispersed. Blood flowed from his wrist again, dripping onto the immortal-light clusters. Because he still could not be certain whether the Yin-Void power carried any hidden dangers, he used divine blood to cleanse all of it at once.
Yinzi had been about to deliver the final blow to the dying void beast when he suddenly appeared beside Chen Yixin instead. He opened his mouth and swallowed the immortal light, rubbed his whiskers against Chen Yixin, then vanished back beside the beast and finally delivered the fatal strike.
“Tell A-Li to come to the Water Palace and pick me up.”
As Chen Yixin spoke, he raised his right hand. A single strand of immortal light still clung to it. This was the final strand, and the only one that still contained Yin-Void power—the only one capable of carrying him into the immortal-light hidden site.
Before anyone could react, Chen Yixin stepped backward and disappeared through the immortal gate.
Without that final strand of immortal light, the immortal gate completely exploded. The entrance ceased to exist.
Yinzi, carrying both Chen Yixin’s message and enough immortal light for Wenren Li to break through, had already escaped through the void.
The cultivators who had barely survived the bloody battle and had not even had time to catch their breath stood there stunned, unable to comprehend what had just happened.
Chen Yixin truly had opened the path.
And he had also destroyed the path afterward.
Nearly a thousand cultivators were present, every one of them someone who had lived for hundreds or thousands of years, yet all of them had been thoroughly used by a Golden Core Perfected Master barely over a hundred years old.
“Venerable!”
At the very back of the reefs stood three people who had never participated in the battle from beginning to end. Their faces were utterly ordinary, and their presence was so weak that no one noticed how unusual their behavior was.
But if Chen Yixin had spared even a little attention to look in their direction, he would have recognized their auras. They were Han Zichuan of the Tianji Sect, along with his two attendants, Ming Yue and Tian Yang.
“Will the divine scion still return?”
They had traveled thousands of miles from Taixuan Continent out onto this sea because their divinations showed that a path to the Upper Realm existed here, and that only Chen Yixin could walk it. If he left, the hope Taixuan had placed on him for ten thousand years would leave with him.
They had come specifically to stop Chen Yixin from entering the hidden site and prevent him from using it to return to the Upper Realm. But man proposes, Heaven disposes. Chen Yixin had awakened his phoenix bloodline. Even with Golden Core cultivation, by borrowing momentum and power from others, he was no longer someone they could easily stop.
“As long as Wenren Li is here, he will definitely return.”
Han Zichuan frowned slightly as he spoke. Turning away, he murmured, “I only hope he doesn’t use the Phoenix Blood Token.”
Once Chen Yixin used it, even if he did not take the passage within this hidden site, he would still be carried away. The Sovereign of the Ancient Phoenix Divine Clan had never abandoned his efforts to remove his youngest son from this tangled conspiracy and from the twists of fate that even destiny itself could not fully explain.
“Venerable, can Father Chen’s words really be trusted? He told you so much, but now it looks like he was using you.”
Since he could not confront Chen Yixin directly, he had used them instead to bring about this blood-soaked conflict and create a situation where Chen Yixin would enter the immortal-light hidden site alone.
“Perhaps.”
Han Zichuan and his two attendants disappeared from the reef. Ze Fang, the Great Peng Yao Emperor, and the others, having finally recovered from their shock, also left the entrance that was about to be completely swallowed by the void.
They felt somewhat regretful. Had they known, they would not have let their people leave Chen Yixin’s spatial treasure that day. Then their people could have gone into the immortal-light hidden site as well and sought opportunities of their own.
As for Yinzi, after escaping through the void, he quickly found Wenren Li’s new place of seclusion through the bond between them. It lay several hundred zhang beneath the seabed in the depths of the sea. Following Chen Yixin’s instructions, Yinzi poured all the clusters of immortal light inside. Even then, he still could not approach the underground cavern by so much as a single step.
Elio’s Notes: A zhang is a traditional Chinese unit of length, roughly 3.3 meters, or about 11 feet.
Clearly, Wenren Li’s breakthrough was dangerous enough to harm anyone nearby. Only after Yinzi poured in all the immortal light did the terrifying sensation that made his fur stand on end ease slightly. Even then, he did not dare approach. After devouring the void beast’s divine soul and guarding Wenren Li for two months, Yinzi himself slipped into a half-dormant sleep.
These waters lay at the very center of Mingfeng Domain, its most dangerous region. Even Soul Transformation cultivators would not willingly set foot here. Moreover, after everything Chen Yixin had done, the cultivators who came to these waters were either injured or dead.
After searching around the area where the immortal light had appeared and confirming that nothing more could be gained, everyone eventually left despite their unwillingness.
Mingfeng Domain returned to its former state. Sea beasts, strange gales, and sea vortices remained in constant turmoil. Only the central region was extraordinarily calm. There were no strange gales, and no sea beasts dared approach. Yet the moment one left this central area, sea beasts appeared in astonishing numbers.
From the outside, it merely looked as though Mingfeng Domain had become even more dangerous. Nobody knew about the abnormal calm at its center. This situation persisted for nearly ten years. During that time, Yinzi grew from the size of a cloak to the size of a rug covering half a bedroom. His breathing was deep and long, his aura profound. After devouring that void beast, his strength had increased severalfold.
Wenren Li emerged from the underground cavern dressed in black, silver hair falling over his shoulders. He walked over to Yinzi without waking him. With a sweep of silver light, the traces of aura remaining on Yinzi reconstructed everything he had experienced over the past years.
“Ten years…”
By Wenren Li’s calculations, his breakthrough should have taken only one month. Yet the immortal light Chen Yixin sent back had caused him to sleep for ten full years.
But that was not what Wenren Li most wanted to see. He searched those ten years for some trace of Chen Yixin and found nothing. Only after tracing farther back, to ten years ago, did he finally see him—not the bright, captivating smile he remembered, but Chen Yixin’s bleeding wrist and resolute expression.
With the Phoenix Blood Token, Chen Yixin could have entered the immortal-light hidden site directly. Yet he had refused to use it from beginning to end. In order to gather immortal light for Wenren Li, even if he had to spill every last drop of divine blood, Chen Yixin had been determined to see this breakthrough succeed.
Was Wenren Li moved? Of course he was. But above that came worry and anger.
Worry that Chen Yixin would suffer after entering the hidden site in such a condition. Anger that Chen Yixin always disregarded himself whenever it was for Wenren Li’s sake. Once those emotions settled, Wenren Li pressed a hand to his chest.
He felt heartache, each wave stronger than the last.
“A-Rong…”
What Chen Yixin encountered after entering the hidden site was not far from Wenren Li’s expectations. Chen Yixin seemed to have manipulated every cultivator in those waters and achieved every one of his goals, but his cultivation remained a weakness he could not erase.
His injuries were far worse than he had allowed anyone to see. Inside the immortal-light hidden site, so long as he refused to use the Phoenix Blood Token, one trial followed another, hardly giving him any time to recover.
Eventually, Chen Yixin could no longer maintain his half-yao form. The little fledgling that had once been glossy and sleek became a skinny bird that shed feathers every day. This continued for nearly three years, until Chen Yixin reached the center of the hidden site and entered the first blood pool the Heavenly Phoenix had left for its inheritor. Only then did his condition begin improving.
The Abode Spirit inside the Fentian Nether Abode recovered as well. Chen Yixin remained inside that blood pool, which had been supplemented with spiritual materials, for half a year before climbing out and entering the first palace.
Ancient jade slips covered the walls. Without question, this was knowledge the Heavenly Phoenix required its inheritor to learn.
These jade slips concerned the Sword Dao of countless realms. Besides written records, they contained sword techniques preserved in light and shadow. At first Chen Yixin still worried about how much time was passing, but eventually he became immersed in an ocean of swordsmanship and forgot all about the flow of time.
Wenren Li was breaking through outside. Chen Yixin was growing stronger here. He could not allow himself to fall too far behind.
What he did not know was that time flowed differently inside the hidden site. The farther inward he went, the slower time moved. That gave him comparatively more time to study.
Three years passed outside, while Chen Yixin had already experienced nearly three hundred years inside that palace.
Soaking in the blood pool, practicing swordsmanship, comprehending—this was his life for the first two hundred years. During the final hundred, however, Chen Yixin merely floated cross-legged above the center of the blood pool in silent contemplation.
A blood-colored phoenix-shaped ripple bloomed beneath him. His aura faded until it was almost nonexistent. One day, he opened his eyes. The wings behind him spread, and a single feather drifted gently down. Chen Yixin raised his gaze. The feather appeared at his fingertip, and he pointed forward.
The wall at the deepest end of the palace collapsed with a thunderous crash. He had studied the Sword Dao of countless realms and, through it, comprehended a sword art that belonged to him alone: the Fentian Sword Art. It looked light and graceful, but concealed endless killing intent.
“Fentian Sword Form One: Falling Feather Returns to Stillness!”
Chen Yixin did not remember what his Fentian Sword Art had been like in his previous life. This was the understanding of swordsmanship he had reached in this lifetime, and it belonged uniquely to him. The Heavenly Phoenix had never intended for Chen Yixin to copy its sword art or anyone else’s. Its inheritance existed so Chen Yixin could comprehend a sword art of his own.
Passing through the newly opened doorway, Chen Yixin once again encountered a similar predicament. He could not advance even one step.
This palace was not built from immortal jade. It had been constructed entirely from restrictions. If he wanted to cross it, he would have to unravel every restriction in the entire palace.
Chen Yixin’s study of this field was practically nonexistent. Everything he had comprehended from the Fentian Nether Abode up to now was not even enough to unravel the first and simplest restriction trapping his foot.
Fortunately, the jade-clasp space Wenren Li had given him also contained jade slips concerning restrictions and formations. Starting from complete bewilderment, he began fumbling his way through learning.
It took nearly one year just to unravel the first restriction. The enormous palace before him, however, contained at least a million of them.
It was a project so overwhelming that Chen Yixin nearly despaired.
He stepped forward and continued studying. Three days later, he suddenly turned his head. A sense of danger swept past, making all three feathers on his forehead stand upright.
The palace did not give him unlimited time to solve each restriction. Had he been three days slower, even if he had not died, he would have been gravely injured.
That threat and urgency left Chen Yixin no time to contemplate the almost endless future of unraveling restrictions before him.
He focused completely on learning and breaking them, advancing at an unbelievably slow pace.
Chen Yixin did not know how quickly time was flowing, but another three years had already passed in the outside world. He spent at least five hundred years unraveling every restriction in that palace. All impatience disappeared from his brow, while the blue light in his eyes gradually settled into a deep, profound shade.
After unraveling more than a million restrictions, Chen Yixin faced a choice: continue forward, or sink his consciousness into the jade pendant. With his current mastery of restrictions, he was confident that he could now break the restrictions within the pendant.
Of those five hundred years, the first four hundred had been extraordinarily difficult. Almost every time, Chen Yixin only broke a restriction at the last possible moment. Once, he had even relied on phoenix divine power to force his way forward.
But after four hundred years, the quantitative accumulation of his experience finally produced a qualitative change. He broke restrictions faster and faster. Even his spiritual sense quietly began transforming. Each time he unraveled a restriction, a phoenix phantom appeared. This was the Fentian Restriction Art the Heavenly Phoenix wanted him to master: there was no restriction it could not break, and no art that could destroy it.
Chen Yixin paused only for a moment before choosing to continue. It was not yet time—at least, not before all the cultivation he had suppressed during these hundreds of years had risen with him.
Beyond the palace was a small square room that did not look particularly spacious. Since he had already come this far, there was no reason to hesitate. Chen Yixin walked over and pushed open the door.
It was an extremely simple memorial hall: one memorial tablet, one wooden box, and a single red phoenix feather.
Chen Yixin had taken only one step forward when red light flashed over the wooden box and a man in red appeared before him.
He had blood-red eyes, yet there was not the slightest trace of bloodlust or slaughter in them. They were clear and pure, his gaze like moonlight—elegant, gentle, and refined enough to make one forget the mundane world. He was a Heavenly Phoenix bathed in fire, yet somehow unlike the Heavenly Phoenixes of legend. There was something distinctly different about him.
“I did not expect such a perceptive phoenix to appear in later generations. Come closer.”
He beckoned to Chen Yixin, looking at him with the benevolence one would show a junior.
Even Chen Yixin before these nearly thousand years of trials would have recognized that something about the man was unusual. Now that he had comprehended the Restriction Eye, it was even clearer: this was merely a wisp of soul sense that would soon dissipate.
“Greetings, Progenitor. My name is Yixin.”
Chen Yixin bowed slightly, then approached as the Heavenly Phoenix’s soul sense requested.
“My name is Qingruo. Since you have benefited from what I left here, you must help me accomplish one thing.”
Chen Yixin bowed again. Heavenly Phoenix Qingruo continued, “Help me take this box of ashes back to the Upper Realm and scatter them into the Heavenly River.”
Chen Yixin stepped forward and lifted the box into his hands. These were not the Heavenly Phoenix’s remains. The ashes inside belonged to someone of the divine clans.
Gentleness passed through Qingruo’s eyes. He murmured, “Even if the Upper Realm failed him, it was still the homeland where he was born. The endless Heavenly River is the burial ground of the gods. He should like it there.”
“This is the Taixuan Heavenly Prison Realm. Were you and he imprisoned here?”
Chen Yixin felt that he had received tremendous benefits from this hidden site. The small favor Qingruo had asked in return was nowhere near enough to balance what he had gained, so instead of remaining silent, he asked the question himself.
“Taixuan Heavenly Prison Realm…” Qingruo repeated the five words and shook his head. “If we had not become disillusioned and left of our own accord, who would have had the ability to imprison us?”
His anger paused. Then he gave a small, puzzled sound and moved his nose slightly, as though trying to smell something on Chen Yixin. “Hm?”
Chen Yixin blinked along with him, then lowered his head and sniffed himself. He had not bathed in all these years, but a phoenix body did not collect dust or grime. There was no possible way he smelled strange.
The Heavenly Phoenix took another step toward Chen Yixin and reached out. A phantom of Wenren Li appeared for an instant before dispersing. After that, the look Qingruo gave Chen Yixin became even stranger.
“You’ve dual cultivated with him?”
“Yes.” Chen Yixin saw nothing worth denying. He carefully studied Qingruo’s expression, trying to determine whether the Heavenly Phoenix cared that Chen Yixin had dual cultivated at all, or specifically cared that the person he had dual cultivated with was Wenren Li.
“Oh…” Qingruo nodded, his reaction becoming placid again.
Chen Yixin continued staring at him. He could not determine anything else yet, but at least one thing was certain: Wenren Li was not the reincarnation of the person this Heavenly Phoenix loved.
At last, Chen Yixin no longer had to worry about becoming romantic rivals with the Heavenly Phoenix across lifetimes.
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