“You… were you calling me stupid?” From the day Lan Xin was born, she had never heard anyone direct truly unpleasant words at her. Even now, with Chen Yixin saying “stupid” straight to her face, she found it difficult to believe.
“That’s true. How could an idiot understand that this lord is insulting her…”
Chen Yixin narrowed his eyes as he spoke. He had once tried to hunt Lan Xin down, but unfortunately, he had never met her before and did not know her appearance or aura. She had also kept herself hidden inside Guangle Immortal Palace and refused to come out. Now she had delivered herself right in front of him and let him remember her. Was that not stupid?
Lan Xin’s face flushed hotly. Chen Yixin’s words had thoroughly infuriated her, and the things she had never dared say to him before could no longer be held back.
“What is so good about that tree yao? He reduced you to this state, yet you still refuse to give him up. I’m stupid? Fine, I’m stupid. Even now, I still wanted to save you, to plead on your behalf…”
“It’s good that you know you’re stupid.” The corner of Chen Yixin’s mouth lifted. He was fairly satisfied that Lan Xin had accepted the assessment herself. He glanced at Changdong, who was standing there watching the show. “Haven’t you seen enough of Guangle’s daughter making a fool of herself? Do you need this lord to stay and watch a little longer with you?”
Immortal Emperor Changdong, unexpectedly catching a stray, bowed slightly. “The Sea of Ice Extremity connects to the Heavenly River. Even Lord Yixin should exercise caution there.”
“A place where gods have fallen—what is there to be cautious about?” Chen Yixin replied, already walking forward.
Cold sweat appeared on Immortal Emperor Changdong’s forehead, and his back bent slightly lower before he followed. Lan Xin could only stand there and watch Chen Yixin and Immortal Emperor Changdong disappear into the distance.
Immortal Emperor Changdong’s attitude toward Chen Yixin struck Lan Xin as extremely strange. But if something like this were enough to make her give up, then she would not be Lan Xin, daughter of an Immortal Emperor.
After crossing tens of thousands of mountains and rivers in a single step, Chen Yixin suddenly paused and turned his head to give Immortal Emperor Changdong another instruction.
“Oh, right. Have someone guard the Sea of Ice Extremity. I don’t want anyone disturbing me.”
“All… all right.” Immortal Emperor Changdong, who had been bracing himself for a difficult demand, relaxed at this simple instruction. But he had barely let out that breath when his tension rose again. “Feng Yuan has arrived. Does Lord Yixin wish to see him?”
Chen Yixin stopped atop a small earthen slope. Immortal Emperor Changdong looked at him and waited for his decision. If Chen Yixin agreed, there was naturally still enough time for them to meet. If he refused, then the next opportunity would be at least five hundred years from now.
“Then I’ll see him. It’ll save him from running all the way to the Sea of Ice Extremity to look for me…”
Chen Yixin swept a hand outward and laid down a barrier. The table and chairs Wenren Li had prepared for him inside the jade clasp appeared before him.
Immortal Emperor Changdong’s figure repeatedly flickered around the small slope as he arranged formations on the spot. This way, whether they ended up fighting or discussing secrets, nobody who ought not to hear would be alerted.
“Sit.” Chen Yixin glanced up at Immortal Emperor Changdong when he returned from laying the formations, then lowered his head again and stared absently at the blue bell in his hand. There were some people one simply could not think about. Once he thought of them, the longing began, and once the longing began, it quickly slipped beyond his control.
Immortal Emperor Changdong had been sitting for less than half an hour before he could no longer bear the atmosphere. He felt that he ought to say something to comfort Chen Yixin, yet at the same time he felt he had no right to offer such words.
Another quarter of an hour passed before Sovereign Feng Yuan finally arrived.
After landing, he first exchanged a glance with Immortal Emperor Changdong, then walked toward Chen Yixin.
“Jiu’er, your father has his own—”
“Sit.” Chen Yixin lifted his gaze from the bell, gave Sovereign Feng Yuan a slight nod, and gestured toward the seat opposite him. His presence was completely unfurled, and he looked as though he already understood everything. Feng Yuan had only just begun speaking, yet suddenly found himself unable to continue.
“What you should say is that the Phoenix Clan has its own difficulties. First there was my Elder Brother, trapped within the Prison Realm until he died in grief. Then there was me, preserving the Phoenix Clan’s fortune through several eras so it would not be extinguished. If not for the upheaval of the heavens in this lifetime, who knows whether the day of my birth would ever have come.”
Chen Yixin spoke slowly and leisurely about matters they scarcely dared mention. Even though they had already prepared themselves mentally, both Changdong and Feng Yuan still felt their hearts pound with alarm, almost unable to remain seated.
Yet Chen Yixin’s eyes remained open, calm, and clear. He could already face these blood-soaked truths of the past without flinching.
Qingruo was an ancient Heavenly Phoenix, and so was Chen Yixin. They were phoenix eggs born naturally from Heaven and Earth, and only two such eggs had ever existed. Within the Ancient Phoenix Divine Clan, a Heavenly Phoenix was akin to a saint, possessing incomparably high status. Yet in the end, even a being of such exalted standing had value only insofar as he could be exploited until death.
Trading a single saint for the continuation of an entire race might seem worthwhile from the perspective of the race’s prosperity. No one bothered asking whether the saint himself was willing.
Chen Yixin was even more innocent. He had been enshrined like some inheritance treasure inside the forbidden grounds of the Ancient Phoenix Divine Clan. Only after his consciousness had grown muddled and he nearly became a dead egg was he finally permitted to enter the world.
To Chen Yixin and Qingruo, the Phoenix Clan had brought more hatred than kindness. Sovereign Feng Yuan, as Sovereign of the Ancient Phoenix Divine Clan, knew this better than anyone.
“When did Lord Yixin… learn of this?” Sovereign Feng Yuan no longer dared call Chen Yixin “Jiu’er” or “Little Nine.” Sweat dampened his palms. He had not felt nervous in millions of years, yet now he was experiencing the sensation again and again.
“After I sent A-Li down to the Lower Realm and returned to the Heavenly River for that battle… I remembered at the bottom of the Heavenly River. And what I know is not limited to my Elder Brother Qingruo. There was War God Lin Yu, Azure Dragon Baocheng… and Great Emperor Yuxu, who shielded the Upper Realm from countless calamities.”
Chen Yixin had only been an egg then, but even as an egg he had been lively, active, and fully capable of expressing joy, anger, sorrow, and delight. Now, every name he spoke seemed to carry the taste of blood and tears.
Some grief did not disappear merely because enough time passed. If Sovereign Feng Yuan had hoped Chen Yixin would simply never remember, then he had been far too optimistic.
“They spilled divine blood onto the earth and fought with everything they had on the Void-Heaven Battlefield to secure peace for every realm. And what were the people they protected doing? Scheming against one another. Scrambling for power and profit. Comparing whose territory was larger and whose household had more beauties… The Ten Emperors and Nine Clans. Heh.”
Feng Yuan and Changdong opened their mouths, wanting to argue that not everyone had been like that. But when they met Chen Yixin’s gaze, the rebuttal would not come. They truly had failed those heroes who once died on the Void-Heaven Battlefield.
“Changdong. Feng Yuan. No matter what A-Li and I do from this point forward, you may continue choosing neutrality just as you always have. But the moment either of you shows even the slightest intention of standing against us… I will not show mercy. Neither will A-Li.”
A cold gleam flashed through Chen Yixin’s eyes. He was not warning Feng Yuan and Changdong.
He was merely informing them.
Both men drew deep breaths and nodded, only to hear Chen Yixin speak again in a low voice that sounded even more dangerous.
“This is no longer the land my Elder Brother and the others spilled their blood to protect.”
Chen Yixin slowly raised his eyes toward the heavens, as though he could already see the Divine Blood Barrier on the Void-Heaven Battlefield trembling on the verge of collapse. The peace bought with the fall of an entire generation of gods had lasted long enough. It was time for those who remained to taste the bitter fruit planted by their predecessors.
“Lord Yixin… could Lord Li truly be Great Emperor Yuxu?” Even with the barrier and formations fully in place, Immortal Emperor Changdong looked excessively nervous when he asked the question.
Compared with him, Chen Yixin was remarkably casual. He made no effort to avoid the subject. “Perhaps. But I would rather he weren’t.”
Wenren Li’s former friends and subordinates had either died in battle, been imprisoned, or been persecuted to death. Almost none of the people he had once protected even remembered that he had existed. Chen Yixin would rather Wenren Li never recover memories so unpleasant.
That unbearably heavy title, Great Emperor Yuxu, was better left behind.
Changdong and Feng Yuan grew even more solemn at this answer. Before, they had only been ten or twenty percent certain. Now their certainty had risen to forty or fifty percent. Chen Yixin was the only living being remaining who had personally known Great Emperor Yuxu.
Their falling in love might have been chance.
Their meeting had absolutely not been.
“Don’t imagine that A-Li and I will end up like my Elder Brother and the others. We’re not stupid.”
Chen Yixin rose. Sovereign Feng Yuan and Immortal Emperor Changdong stood with him. Before a Chen Yixin who had recovered memories from such an ancient era, the two of them were juniors. That had little to do with how many secrets they knew or how much power they controlled.
“The Sea of Ice Extremity isn’t far from here. You don’t need to escort me.” Chen Yixin swept a hand out after they rose. The table and chairs vanished, and the barrier he had placed dispersed with them.
Sovereign Feng Yuan and Immortal Emperor Changdong bowed slightly and watched Chen Yixin leave. The Sea of Ice Extremity truly was close enough that their immortal senses could tell whether he arrived safely.
A long time passed. Immortal Emperor Changdong still wore a grave expression, while Sovereign Feng Yuan continued looking as though there were words trapped in his throat.
“Indeed… it was my Phoenix Clan that wronged them.”
He had originally intended to ask Chen Yixin for the Heavenly Phoenix remnant. Fortunately, he had never spoken the request aloud. Otherwise, even the final shred of sentiment between them might have disappeared. And knowing Chen Yixin’s temperament, even if he had remembered nothing, he would never have handed Qingruo’s remnant over anyway.
Once they confirmed that Chen Yixin had entered the Sea of Ice Extremity, the two men parted ways on the little slope. Changdong had to return and deal with Immortal Emperor Guangle, while Feng Yuan needed to return to the clan and consult the elders about the great calamity the Upper Realm might soon face.
Chen Yixin had only visited the Sea of Ice Extremity once before. It was from its deepest reaches that he had once collected water for Wenren Li. After that, he had never returned.
He transformed into his phoenix true body and plunged downward, diving deeper at astonishing speed. A hundred zhang. A thousand zhang. Still he continued. At depths like these, even an Immortal Emperor arriving in person would likely struggle to endure.
In ancient times, the Sea of Ice Extremity had been one of the punishments Great Emperor Yuxu established for the immortal and divine races. Almost every other trace Yuxu had left in the Upper Realm had been erased, save for divine punishments such as this—things that simply could not be removed.
Chen Yixin kept descending. A thin layer of frost gradually formed over his feathers, but still he did not slow.
He had not grown tired of living and come here to seek death. Rather, only if his true body in the Upper Realm approached a state of suspended death would the soul-summoning and guiding rite Wenren Li had established in Taixuan have any chance of succeeding.
Eighty-one Soul-Gathering Lamps had burned on Shuanghe Mountain for nearly forty-nine days. Throughout that period there had not been a single unusual response. Wenren Li sat cross-legged at the center of the lamps, his divine soul reinforcing their power.
“A-Rong… A-Rong…”
For all forty-nine days, Wenren Li repeated that call without stopping. At the same time, the strange power of the Soul-Gathering Lamps carried his divine soul into a chaotic expanse. At the center of that chaos, an enormous wheel slowly turned.
It was the Wheel of Reincarnation.
Wenren Li did not understand why the lamps’ strange power had brought him here, but the Wheel of Reincarnation felt inexplicably familiar. Merely observing it also brought tremendous benefit to his cultivation.
“Wheel of Reincarnation, can you guide a path for A-Rong and me?”
Wenren Li did not remain long in that state of comprehension. Eighty-one Soul-Gathering Lamps could not sustain him here indefinitely.
Two breaths after he spoke, a faint silver thread extended from the Wheel of Reincarnation. Wenren Li did not hesitate. He stepped forward.
At the other end of that thread, something was being drawn toward him.
A frozen phoenix.
The chaotic expanse vanished from before his eyes. The Wheel of Reincarnation disappeared as well. When Wenren Li opened his eyes again, he was still sitting atop Shuanghe Mountain of the Tianji Sect.
Only now, an icy phoenix egg rested in his arms.
With Chen Yixin’s half-step Sovereign cultivation, returning directly to Taixuan was already impossible. Only by taking the newborn form of a phoenix egg could Taixuan accommodate him and allow Chen Yixin and Wenren Li to reunite once more.
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