“I like you, so I’ll give you another little gift.”
The Heavenly Phoenix met Chen Yixin’s slightly wary gaze and smiled. He lightly touched a fingertip to Chen Yixin’s brow, paused inexplicably for a moment, then swept his hand across Chen Yixin’s body. The Heavenly Phoenix Token flew out from inside Chen Yixin’s jade clasp.
Elio’s Notes: The source previously calls this same scepter-like artifact the Phoenix Blood Token (凤血令). Here its formal name is finally given as the Heavenly Phoenix Token (天凤令).
“Someone tampered with it a little, but it really was made from my true blood. It can serve as a vessel.”
A streak of red light entered the Heavenly Phoenix Token before it returned to Chen Yixin’s hand.
“Take this scepter to Fengming Realm in the Upper Realm. You will be that realm’s Realm Lord. For now, it can serve as a place for the two of you to settle.”
The Heavenly Phoenix took one look at Chen Yixin’s slightly stunned expression and knew no further explanation was necessary. Chen Yixin had already understood what had been done to the Heavenly Phoenix Token.
If Chen Yixin had wavered even once along the way and used the Heavenly Phoenix Token, he would have activated the formation the Sovereign of the Phoenix Clan had placed inside it. He would have been dragged directly into the passage and returned to the Upper Realm. That passage had originally been left behind by the Heavenly Phoenix as its own route home.
Yet Qingruo had never used it in the end. Even when he fell, he had remained here and continued guarding this place.
“Take this phoenix feather as well. It can block three full-force attacks from a Sovereign. I hope you use it wisely.” Used properly, this phoenix feather could save Chen Yixin three times. Used badly, it might fail to save him even once.
Qingruo gave it to Chen Yixin because he wanted him to live well, not so Chen Yixin could rely on it fearlessly and provoke even more disasters.
“Yes.” Chen Yixin nodded. After hesitating for a moment, he asked, “Progenitor, your reaction earlier made it seem as though you recognized my Dao companion. I want to know more about him.”
The fact that Chen Yixin had not used the Heavenly Phoenix Token until now was not only because his will had been firm enough. It was also because he did not trust Father Chen enough. If Father Chen were merely his father, Chen Yixin naturally could have trusted him. But he was also an avatar of an Upper-Realm Sovereign, and that made it impossible for Chen Yixin to give him his complete trust.
After learning that someone had tampered with the Phoenix Blood Token, the guilt Chen Yixin had always carried instead faded away. Just as Father Chen had once told him: he and Wenren Li could trust no one but each other. That included them.
Unexpectedly, however, the Heavenly Phoenix before him gave Chen Yixin a far stronger sense of trustworthiness than Father Chen did. He wanted to hear what Qingruo had to say.
A teasing smile appeared on the Heavenly Phoenix’s face. “You’re not afraid I’ll start coveting him now?”
Earlier, Chen Yixin had looked as wary as though he were afraid someone might try to snatch away the meaty bone already in his mouth. Now he suddenly was not afraid to let Qingruo know about Wenren Li.
“Even if you coveted him, it wouldn’t help. A-Li can only be mine.” Chen Yixin lifted his chin as he spoke, though several degrees of wariness still entered his gaze. Surely this Heavenly Phoenix had not actually taken a liking to his A-Li…
“It truly wouldn’t help. I… we already fell long ago.” The Heavenly Phoenix shook his head and laughed at Chen Yixin’s expression.
For a god, falling meant true death: body and Dao extinguished, divine soul scattered. The fact that this wisp of Qingruo’s soul sense could remain was only because of the unusual nature of this hidden site. At this moment, Qingruo found himself grateful for precisely that peculiarity.
He slowly raised a hand and placed it on Chen Yixin’s hair, gently rubbing twice before smiling and stepping back.
“Your name is Yixin, yes?”
“Yes.” Chen Yixin had no idea why Qingruo was rubbing his head, but he nodded anyway. The first thing Chen Yixin had told him upon entering was his name, yet only now did this Heavenly Phoenix seem to have remembered it—no, more accurately, only now did he seem to want to remember it.
But that was not what Chen Yixin wanted to think about. His attention remained fixed on the possibility that Qingruo knew something about Wenren Li’s origins. He changed the wording of his question. “Does my A-Li have something to do with you?”
This was an ancient Heavenly Phoenix whose existence stretched so far back that Chen Yixin could hardly imagine it. The past buried beneath all those years must contain countless secrets and conspiracies that could not be spoken aloud. Chen Yixin only wanted to know how many of them involved Wenren Li.
The Heavenly Phoenix continued smiling faintly. Then ripples appeared in his eyes, and he gave a low answer. “Mm.”
“Yixin…”
“Mm?” Before Chen Yixin could ask anything more, the Heavenly Phoenix softly called his name again, then took another step closer.
Chen Yixin looked up in surprise. In Qingruo’s shimmering eyes he saw emotions he could not understand at all. Tiny crystalline tears slowly gathered there, leaving Chen Yixin suddenly at a loss.
Surely showing off his relationship had not somehow upset the Heavenly Phoenix?
“What’s wrong? If there’s something you need, tell me. I’ll do everything I can for you.”
“There’s nothing left. Seeing you, there truly is nothing left that I need.” The ripples in Heavenly Phoenix Qingruo’s eyes spread through his soul sense. Red light spilled everywhere. The last wisp of his soul sense remaining in this world was about to disappear forever.
Chen Yixin reached out and grabbed Qingruo’s red robe, which had already begun dissolving into motes of light. His expression was confused and carried a sadness even he himself could not understand. “What does that mean? What does this have to do with me? Is my father one of your descendants, or… am I?”
“Silly child.” Qingruo opened his arms and gently embraced Chen Yixin. Two tears of blood suddenly slipped from the corners of his eyes. More red light scattered from his body, and the form Chen Yixin had been able to touch began turning translucent. Even the embrace became unreal.
“Nothing else matters. You and Lord Li must live well. Live well for us.”
As those words fell, the red light around Heavenly Phoenix Qingruo swept outward and entered all three feathers on Chen Yixin’s forehead, pouring an extraordinarily pure surge of Heavenly Phoenix bloodline energy into them.
Chen Yixin was an ice phoenix, while Qingruo was a fire phoenix. Logically, Qingruo’s bloodline energy should not have benefited Chen Yixin much. Yet the moment all that red light entered him, the complete phantom of a phoenix bathed in fire appeared behind Chen Yixin, and the divine-flame mark between his brows instantly became complete.
Chen Yixin could sense the enormous change and growth that had happened to him in a single instant, yet there was not a trace of joy on his face. He held the phoenix feather and Heavenly Phoenix Token in his hands while overwhelming sorrow crashed down over him, pressing so heavily he could barely breathe.
“Qingruo! Qingruo! Explain yourself!”
Chen Yixin shouted, but there was no longer anyone inside the simple little shrine who could answer him.
Only after half a day did the phenomenon surrounding Chen Yixin gradually disappear, yet his emotions had hardly improved. He walked forward several steps and placed a hand on the wooden box Qingruo had entrusted to him.
He stood there for an unknown length of time. Only after every emotion had been carefully put away did he store the wooden box inside the jade clasp. Then he turned and began walking back toward the first palace.
As he passed the ruins of the second palace—the one he himself had dismantled—he began rebuilding its restrictions as he walked.
This palace no longer radiated red light. Instead, it glowed brilliant blue, the same color as Chen Yixin’s phoenix true body. Carrying an emotion he could not understand himself, he wanted to restore this place as completely as he could.
He entered the first palace and picked up the Fentian Nether Abode, which had been lying over the blood pool to recover. Before the Abode Spirit could greet him, blue light flashed from the ring and Chen Yixin forcibly put it to sleep.
Strictly speaking, what Chen Yixin was doing was taking his anger out on it. The blood in which both he and the Fentian Nether Abode had soaked was none other than Heavenly Phoenix Qingruo’s. That knowledge made him angry—irrationally, inexplicably angry.
He stepped into the blood pool again, but rather than floating on its surface, he sank beneath it.
Using the phoenix feather’s connection to Qingruo’s true body as a guide, Chen Yixin searched underwater for several days before reaching the true center of the Heavenly Phoenix hidden site. There lay Qingruo’s phoenix true body—the very thing Father Chen had once told Chen Yixin he absolutely had to find.
By using the Heavenly Phoenix remnant, even after returning to the outside world, Chen Yixin would need only ten thousand years of cultivation to recover to the half-step Sovereign realm he had possessed in the Upper Realm. Yet after walking over, Chen Yixin merely touched the feathers of the Heavenly Phoenix remnant before storing it inside the same wooden box that held Qingruo’s beloved’s ashes.
Chen Yixin believed that was the best place for the remnant to rest. He wanted strength, but he did not want to become strong in this way.
“In all the world, only I can gather immortal light, and only I can gather souls. I swear upon my Dao heart that one day, I will gather both your souls and let the two of you meet again.” Which meant Chen Yixin could no longer fulfill Qingruo’s request to scatter those ashes into the Heavenly River.
As he finished speaking, a red-glowing crystal flew out from the wooden box. It was Heavenly Phoenix Qingruo’s bloodline essence crystal. Qingruo’s determination to fulfill Chen Yixin’s intentions was apparently just as firm.
Chen Yixin extended a hand. The crystal circled his palm once, then flew directly into his chest, where it became embedded within him and was continuously washed over by his blood.
Chen Yixin had insisted on preserving the remnant, but even this crystal alone would drastically shorten the amount of cultivation time he needed in the future.
Chen Yixin was willing to use ruthless methods in pursuit of strength, but above all those methods he still had principles he would not trample. The Heavenly Phoenix had already given him far more than Chen Yixin believed he deserved. He could not accept the remnant, nor would he allow anyone else to destroy it.
Chen Yixin returned from the center of the hidden site to the palaces above. The blood in the pool had faded by more than half, but otherwise little had changed. He continued back toward the place where he had first entered this secret realm: a field of red Phoenix Flowers that looked as though it were burning.
He searched carefully for three full days and found no mechanism that would allow him to leave.
“I refuse to believe there is no way out of here except the path to the Upper Realm.”
Chen Yixin left that place and searched elsewhere throughout the hidden site, but there truly was no route out other than the passage leading directly to the Upper Realm.
“Forget it. I’ll cultivate first.” Chen Yixin would never return to the Upper Realm according to Father Chen’s expectations. For now, he could only wait for Wenren Li and Yinzi to come find him.
The Heavenly Phoenix crystal in his chest was continually tempered by his blood. His physical body grew stronger every day. When Chen Yixin returned to his phoenix true body, he no longer appeared as a tiny fledgling. Although he had not yet fully matured, in phoenix form even ordinary immortals were no longer his match.
Chen Yixin devoted himself completely to cultivation and lost all sense of the passing years. One day, when he felt he had prepared everything he possibly could, he finally sank his consciousness into the jade pendant at the center of his sea of consciousness and began trying to unravel its restrictions.
Some answers perhaps did not need to be told to him by anyone.
He himself had once known them.
While Chen Yixin cultivated and unraveled restrictions, Wenren Li and Yinzi had already spent nearly three years traveling through the void. They were attempting to reconstruct the vast web of spatial rifts that had surrounded the immortal gate so they could calculate the Heavenly Phoenix hidden site’s precise location.
“Father, don’t worry. We’ll definitely find Mother.”
Yinzi was stronger than before, and traveling through the void had become increasingly effortless. Wenren Li had advanced as well. A place where ordinary cultivators never dared linger was somewhere the two of them could now come and go freely.
Wenren Li did not answer. Several pebble-like objects floated up and down before him as though he were making extremely precise calculations. “Wrong. Keep going east.”
Three days later, Yinzi suddenly cried out. “Here! It has to be here! I can smell a phoenix!”
It was not Chen Yixin’s aura, but it was unquestionably the aura of a phoenix. This had to be the Heavenly Phoenix hidden site Chen Yixin had entered alone all those years ago—the same place Father Chen had called the North Sea Water Palace.
“Mm.” Wenren Li had sensed it too. For the first time in three years, something shifted across his otherwise nearly emotionless expression. They continued inward, though even now they did not dare enter recklessly.
Outside the hidden site’s outer boundary were fully ten void beasts similar to Yinzi. Yinzi could utterly crush one by himself, but ten were beyond what he could handle.
“Father, go find Mother. I’ll hold them off for you.”
Yinzi had not even managed to charge forward before Wenren Li caught one of his long whiskers. “No need.”
As Wenren Li spoke, he pointed forward. One void beast simply shattered into nothingness. The other nine, alarmed by what had happened, charged toward him. Wenren Li fought them alone. In only one hour, every void beast that would have required Yinzi to risk his life had been slaughtered.
Yet even after that, Wenren Li’s expression did not relax. If anything, he grew more vigilant. Yinzi did not know why, but he sensed the same danger and had already started trembling.
“Father?”
“What vile creature dares trespass into the Prison Realm!”
A golden-armored immortal stepped from a spatial rift, sword in hand. The pressure surrounding him completely surpassed every cultivator in Taixuan. He was a genuine immortal. As for exactly what level he had reached, Wenren Li would have to see the man’s true fighting strength before he could judge.
“Father…” Yinzi grew even more nervous. Wenren Li had become much stronger after his advancement, but not to the point where Yinzi believed he could fight a true immortal. Yinzi floated forward again.
“My mother is an Immortal Lord of the Upper Realm! If you dare hurt us, he’ll chop you into pieces! Piece by piece!”
“I stand guard over the Prison Realm. Even if an Immortal Lord trespasses, I will cut him down all the same!” Yinzi’s threat did nothing to shake the immortal. He raised his sword, intending to destroy Wenren Li and Yinzi together.
An overwhelming arc of sword light drowned Wenren Li and Yinzi. The immortal was just about to sheath his sword when he abruptly turned his head, terror flashing through his eyes. Wenren Li walked out safely from another direction with Yinzi in his arms.
“You monster have some ability after all. Take another strike from me!”
That first sword had used only thirty percent of his strength. This time he held nothing back, pouring his entire cultivation into the blow. If an immortal like him could not even kill a Lower-Realm cultivator, the immortals of the Upper Realm would laugh at him for an entire epoch.
Under the second strike, even the void surrounding Wenren Li and Yinzi cracked. Mockery entered the immortal’s eyes. He sheathed his sword and turned away.
Then he heard a quiet sigh.
“Too late…”
The moment he underestimated Wenren Li and Yinzi with his first attack, his death had already become inevitable.
The immortal looked down and saw that the stretch of void beneath his feet had been covered by a net of silver spiritual-power vines.
“I am Li. I rule life and death.”
Wenren Li uttered the profound words. The vines before and behind the immortal sprouted countless finer tendrils, which pierced directly into his body. The immortal’s face twisted for only an instant before his expression and movements froze completely.
“Die.”
At that word, every trace of light vanished from the immortal’s eyes. The spiritual-vine net dispersed. Wenren Li stepped backward three times and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. He had endured that immortal’s first strike head-on in order to lay the vine net.
“Let’s go. We’re going to bring A-Rong home.”
Wenren Li swept a hand out and stored the immortal’s corpse away. He did not even have time to inspect what treasures it carried. He was far more anxious to see Chen Yixin—the Chen Yixin from whom he had now been separated for a full thirteen years.
At the same time that Wenren Li was swallowed by the sword light, Chen Yixin stopped cultivating inside the hidden site. His brows drew together. “A-Li is hurt…”
The strongest part of Chen Yixin now was his divine soul. Wenren Li’s life soul was contained within it. Chen Yixin could not sense much else, but he could sense something of Wenren Li’s safety. What he could not determine was exactly when Wenren Li had been injured or what his present condition was.
Murmuring to himself, Chen Yixin stood and walked toward the Phoenix Flower field. All he needed to do was draw the Phoenix Blood Token across this place, and the road to the Upper Realm would open for him. In his heart, he still did not want to leave Taixuan now, but if he continued trapped here, he would have even less ability to intervene in whatever Wenren Li was facing.
Perhaps if he returned to the Upper Realm, he could find some way to reach Taixuan again.
“Go, or stay?”
Chen Yixin had cultivated inside this hidden site for nearly another three hundred years. Only the final restriction remained inside the jade pendant. If he wished, he could break it at any time and recover the memories and divine soul power of his previous life.
Yet because of an unease in his heart that he could not explain, Chen Yixin had delayed breaking that final restriction. And now, standing before this passage, he remained unable to decide.
“Master, your cultivation cannot advance while you remain here. Taixuan contains many hidden sites left from ancient times, but the Upper Realm is where you are best suited to grow.” Chen Yixin was born of the divine clans. Naturally, the Upper Realm was the place most suited to him. The one truly suited to Taixuan was Wenren Li.
“Master…”
“No more.” Chen Yixin interrupted the Abode Spirit. He sat cross-legged directly in the Phoenix Flower field, his expression gradually becoming firm. “I should trust A-Li.”
Chen Yixin closed his eyes, then abruptly opened them again. A long, narrow crack slowly appeared in the sky before him. A silver-haired man stepped through it, accompanied by a round silver bundle.
“A-Li… A-Li!”
For an instant Chen Yixin almost believed longing had created an illusion, but the Restriction Eye could not possibly deceive him.
This was Wenren Li.
His A-Li.
Chen Yixin shot forward like an arrow and collided with Wenren Li hard enough to push him half a step backward. “A-Li, you came.”
“I came.”
Wenren Li held Chen Yixin just as tightly. All the longing in his heart came out in only those two words.
Waaah… “Yinzi came to pick Mother up too.”
Yinzi bounced a few times, trying to draw at least some of their attention. But Chen Yixin was exactly the sort to value his man over his son. He continued clinging to Wenren Li and refused to let go, unwilling to be separated even for a second.
Wenren Li brought Chen Yixin back down into the Phoenix Flower field. The two continued holding each other for a very, very long time—so long that the sniffling Yinzi eventually grew bored and fell asleep, and still neither of them wanted to separate.
“A-Li, I missed you.”
Chen Yixin had never known himself to be this sentimental. The longing he had suppressed through so many years came boiling up the instant he saw Wenren Li. Beyond holding onto him and refusing to let go, Chen Yixin did not even know what else he could do or say.
“I missed you too.” Cough… Wenren Li gently stroked Chen Yixin’s hair while holding him tightly. He understood Chen Yixin’s feelings completely, but he still could not stop himself from coughing. Injuries caused by immortal power were not so easily healed.
Chen Yixin’s brow furrowed. At last he pulled slightly away from Wenren Li and raised a hand, resting his fingertips against Wenren Li’s lips. His expression turned utterly cold. “You really are injured. Who hurt you?”
Wenren Li pulled Chen Yixin back into his arms. The excessive coldness in Chen Yixin’s expression gradually softened. “I’ll recover after resting for two days. Don’t be angry. I already killed him.”
But Chen Yixin was not so easily fooled. He knew perfectly well that with Wenren Li’s cultivation, nobody in Taixuan could injure him—certainly not badly enough to make him cough blood. This could not have been done by any ordinary opponent.
“A-Li is going to hide things from me too?”
Chen Yixin opened his mouth and bit down on Wenren Li’s earlobe, using enough force to hurt a little. Right now, deception was the thing Chen Yixin hated most. He hated it whether the intentions behind it were good or bad. He did not want Wenren Li treating him that way too.
“I won’t. I know you hate it. I won’t.” Wenren Li did not avoid Chen Yixin’s bite, though the red spreading across his face could not be hidden. Having the person he loved bite his earlobe like this was not something an ordinary person could endure calmly.
“Mm.” Chen Yixin was fairly satisfied with Wenren Li’s answer. His sharp teeth finally released the earlobe, though he had already bitten it bright red. Moisture gleamed across it, making the sight strangely enticing.
Somehow, the anger and killing intent inside Chen Yixin were soothed somewhat by this rather enticing view.
His expression became relatively obedient again as he settled back against Wenren Li’s chest. Then he murmured, “Then A-Li has to tell me everything—how you were injured, and exactly how you killed the enemy.”
Wenren Li hid nothing. He carefully told Chen Yixin about fighting the immortal outside the hidden site, then finally even told him his present level of strength.
“With my current fighting strength, immortals who ascended less than ten thousand years ago are no match for me.”
But the Upper Realm had batch after batch of immortals who had cultivated for hundreds of thousands of years. Their current strength was still nowhere near enough once they returned there.
“We need to leave this place as quickly as possible. His death will definitely have alerted certain people. If we delay, we may genuinely be unable to leave.”
There was one thing the Abode Spirit had not been wrong about. This hidden site had brought Chen Yixin enormous improvement, but because of its peculiar nature, he could not undergo lightning tribulations here. Without tribulations, he could not truly advance. If he remained here for too long, returning to the Upper Realm would genuinely become his only option.
And obviously, that passage was one only Chen Yixin could enter. There was no way to take Wenren Li and Yinzi through with him.
Chen Yixin rose from the flower field and walked two steps before stopping. He lifted his wrist, only for Wenren Li to seize it.
“What are you doing?”
Wenren Li’s tone was extremely stern. Chen Yixin, who had thought his intention perfectly reasonable, inexplicably began feeling guilty.
“My blood contains a phoenix true spirit. It can help you recover faster…”
Under Wenren Li’s increasingly cold gaze, Chen Yixin’s voice became quieter and quieter. He himself did not think there was anything wrong with it, but in Wenren Li’s eyes this was precisely Chen Yixin’s worst habit and the one that most needed correcting.
“A-Rong, do you know what I feel every time you bleed?” Wenren Li released Chen Yixin’s wrist and slowly placed that hand over Chen Yixin’s chest instead.
“Do you know what I felt when I was here?”
Clearly, Wenren Li’s successful breakthrough had restored most of the memories from his previous life, and those memories were almost entirely about Chen Yixin and himself. They included the great battle that had shaken the Upper Realm—the one preserved within the Abode Spirit’s memories.
“What did you feel?” Chen Yixin asked dryly. He could understand Wenren Li’s feelings, but being scolded like this still made him feel wronged. His cheeks puffed slightly, his bright eyes lifting toward Wenren Li—stubborn and aggrieved at once.
“I like A-Rong. I treasure A-Rong. I don’t want you to be injured for me or bleed for me. I want you to be well.”
He had watched Chen Yixin be driven into desperation and been powerless. Chen Yixin had drained his divine blood for him, and Wenren Li had been powerless. Chen Yixin had planted him inside his own chest, and still Wenren Li had been powerless. At that moment Wenren Li had once thought that even if he had to be destroyed, he did not want Chen Yixin to do this for him.
“A-Rong, I can’t bear it…”
He would rather die himself than bear to have Chen Yixin do such things for him.
“But I’m the same. I want A-Li to be well too.” When Wenren Li was injured, Chen Yixin felt terrible just looking at him. It displeased him. He wanted Wenren Li healed as quickly as possible. “Or would you rather I treated someone else well instead?”
Chen Yixin did not believe he had done anything wrong and even began arguing unreasonably. Of course, this line of argument was very obviously heading in a terrible direction. Under Wenren Li’s gaze, Chen Yixin shrank his shoulders and voluntarily moved closer, kissing Wenren Li’s cheek.
“A-Li, I was wrong. How could I treat anyone else well? I only treat you well.”
“Mm.” Wenren Li answered with a quiet sigh. He knew Chen Yixin had understood perfectly. Chen Yixin simply understood and still did not think he had done anything wrong. If the same situation arose again, he would make exactly the same choice.
Could Wenren Li blame Chen Yixin?
No.
And he should not.
The person he ought to blame was himself—for being too weak to stop any of it.
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