Yuan was the name Lu Shiyuan had given herself.
She had been born a little bird, petite in stature with vibrant, beautiful plumage. Lu Shiyuan hoped to grow as powerful as a kite soaring through the skies.
Though she couldn’t compare to the great immortals of the upper realms, she still bore the title of immortal.
Unlike the creatures of the other realms who had to strive through cultivation, Lu Shiyuan had been born atop the Fusang Divine Tree. By the time she reached a hundred years of age, she was able to take human form.
She would occasionally sneak into the grand banquets where the immortals gathered from all directions, stealing sips of nectar and jade liquid. Over millions of years like this, the little bird had accumulated no small amount of cultivation.
When calamity struck the Six Realms and countless immortals of the Immortal Realm perished together, Lu Shiyuan alone transformed back into her bird form and hid within the trunk of the Fusang Divine Tree. By sheer chance, she survived.
As for Pu Yin, she had been merely a half-grown child from some rural village. Back then, while playing by the riverbank, she had rescued the injured Lu Shiyuan who had fallen to the mortal world. That was how Pu Yin came to gain her cultivation and her fateful encounters.
Lu Shiyuan’s immortal body had been gravely wounded, and she had lost part of her immortal soul, making it difficult to maintain her human form. Moreover, after that great upheaval, the spiritual energy between heaven and earth had grown exceedingly thin. Unlike the spiritual power used by cultivators, demons, and devils, the immortal power that immortals prided themselves on was utterly dependent on the spiritual energy of heaven and earth. As a result, Lu Shiyuan’s recovery progressed at an agonizingly slow pace.
Fortunately, Pu Yin stayed by Lu Shiyuan’s side, year after year.
Time passed—they knew not how long. The seas turned to mulberry fields and back again in endless cycles, until both had lost all sense of time.
Then one day, the secluded Cold Mountain Courtyard, which rarely saw a single visitor, welcomed a most unusual guest.
On that day, the sky over the perpetually snow-covered land cleared for once. Lu Shiyuan, as was her habit, flew to a branch of the lush great tree in the courtyard for a nap. In the next instant, her gaze caught sight of a figure in a crimson skirt striding through the snow like a brilliant sun—Shang Si, young and boldly eye-catching.
That scene stayed etched in Yuan’s memory for many years.
Shang Si had never known that there was another soul who cherished those decades in the Cold Mountain Courtyard as dearly as she did.
Nor had she ever imagined that immortals still existed in this world—and that this immortal was none other than A Jin, the little companion who had played with her day after day in the Cold Mountain Courtyard all those years ago.
A Jin was Lu Shiyuan, and Lu Shiyuan was A Jin…
Upon hearing all this, Shang Si sat there in a daze for a long while. During that time, the colorful little bird flapped its wings and circled the palace a few more times before finally tiring out and nestling quietly on Shang Si’s lap to sleep.
The bird’s feathers were gorgeously hued and felt extraordinarily soft to the touch. As it slept, it curled into a ball, its head nodding down repeatedly. Shang Si lowered her gaze and watched the little bird for a long time before suddenly lifting her head to look at Pu Yin. “So that day on Fog Moon Shoal, when my Myriad Spirits Return to Origin fizzled out halfway through, it was because Shiyuan intervened… The version you taught me back in the Cold Mountain Courtyard wasn’t the complete technique, was it?”
Was it?
By now, the scenes from that day on Fog Moon Shoal had replayed vividly in Shang Si’s mind once more.
She didn’t even need Pu Yin’s answer; she already knew.
And as expected, Pu Yin simply nodded faintly. “Yes.”
Myriad Spirits Return to Origin was a devastating ultimate technique that harmed the enemy as much as it damaged the user. Back when Pu Yin had taught it to Shang Si, she had sought Lu Shiyuan’s permission multiple times. The response had always been the same: teach part of it, but withhold the rest.
Everything Pu Yin knew came from Lu Shiyuan, and the only one she had ever been loyal to in her life was Lu Shiyuan.
In Shang Si’s eyes, this aloof senior had passed down those secret arts and ultimate techniques because they shared a natural affinity, a fated bond.
But to Pu Yin, there was only one reason—because Lu Shiyuan liked her.
Lu Shiyuan had taken a liking to this little Young Sovereign of Yedu, so Pu Yin had made an exception and allowed Shang Si to stay in the Cold Mountain Courtyard with them. It was all because of Lu Shiyuan that Pu Yin had often offered guidance to the young Shang Si back then.
And even on that day at Fog Moon Shoal, when Shang Si had forcibly elevated her strength with her ancestral secret art to unleash Myriad Spirits Return to Origin, it had been for Lu Shiyuan’s sake.
Mei Meng at full power would have been no match for even Shang Si in her prime. Resorting to a self-destructive move like that had been a last resort.
No one but her, the Ye Lord, could have done it.
Yet Lu Shiyuan had stepped forward at that moment, placing herself ahead of Shang Si to shoulder the burden.
“Though she is just a little bird, she is still an immortal. Even after millions of years, when people have long forgotten the immortals and no longer pray for their protection…”
Pu Yin spoke slowly, as if reading Shang Si’s thoughts.
Yet even she herself was only half convinced by those words.
How much of it was for the sake of the common people, and how much was to protect Shang Si herself? Pu Yin could not say.
Shang Si said, “Later, I returned to the Cold Mountain Courtyard, but it was already deserted. I searched everywhere in the Three Realms but couldn’t find any trace of you. Why…”
“Back when the Immortal Realm fell, Sister Yuan suffered a grave injury that never fully healed. Not long after you left that day, her condition took a turn for the worse. So we found a way to return to the Immortal Realm, which had long since collapsed, and sought out the place where Sister Yuan once lived. The Fusang Divine Tree had withered, but its roots hadn’t rotted away completely, and they helped nurse her wounds.”
“Ever since then, we’ve rarely ventured down to the lower realms. Even when we had needs, it was just me going alone.”
That was why Shang Si had scoured the Three Realms without finding a trace of them—they weren’t in the Three Realms at all.
Pu Yin fell silent for a moment before explaining the rest: “The Lu Shiyuan you met three years ago was likely the fragment of Sister Yuan’s immortal soul that she lost back when she was so badly hurt.”
That soul fragment had no future or past of its own, guided only by a faint, distant link to her main body. It had taken on a form that resembled Pu Yin by some seventy percent, and for reasons unknown, it had ended up in another world.
Fortunately, it had eventually made its way back here from that other world.
It was hard to call it anything but fate. Pu Yin had kept Yuan company in the completely sealed-off Immortal Realm for so long that she had lost all track of time in the outside world.
No one could have anticipated that, just a short while ago, that lost soul fragment would seek her out on its own in such a manner—reuniting with the main body and bringing its own separate memories along with it.
That also explained why Lu Shiyuan’s cultivation had surged to such a fearsome height right after emerging from the Immortal Realm.
Yuan had finally laid eyes once more on the figure who lingered deep in the recesses of her memory, as if eons had passed.
She had no idea that her lost soul fragment, while active in the outside world, had forged countless subtle connections with Shang Si.
But the timing of their reunion had been disastrously inconvenient. Yuan hadn’t even had a chance to tell Shang Si she was back before she vanished once again.
Unlike the previous time, even Yuan herself had no idea if this absence would stretch on even longer.
Or… forever.
