“No.” Lian Rusu shook her head. “No one should do anything.”
“I’d willingly give my life for ten thousand people, but I don’t wish everyone to be like me.”
“Is it Heaven’s Dao’s omen that only sacrifices me, giving the Nine Provinces hope for continuation?” Lian Rusu gazed intently at Li Ruoshui and said again, “At that time, I will enter the Return to Ruins Realm.”
Li Ruoshui’s smile was forced. Back when she first read the plot about the Taiyi Sect Master sacrificing herself, it hadn’t moved her much. But now, every thought of it felt like a knife carving out her heart. Unwilling to accept it, she refused to dwell on it. She focused on the present, silently pinning her hopes there.
“Doesn’t Senior Sister fear it?” Li Ruoshui’s voice trembled. She actually wanted to ask if, when the time came, Lian Rusu could turn back for her sake—but some words didn’t need saying to see the outcome; no point in asking.
“I do fear it.” Lian Rusu nodded, a smile playing on her lips like a lotus reflected in water, gentle and soft. “I want to live, so I want the tens of millions to live too.”
Li Ruoshui shuddered at her words. After a long pause, she murmured to herself, “We’re different.” Her eyes flickered, her gaze toward Lian Rusu gaining a trace of reverence. Sometimes she wished Lian Rusu would keep walking that path with rose-tinted glasses toward her, but the more she understood Lian Rusu, the farther apart they seemed. Aligned in goals, yet fundamentally opposed in essence.
The person before her was ultimately the moon in the sky—a distance no comparable cultivation could bridge.
“No one requires us to be the same.” Lian Rusu sat opposite Li Ruoshui, shaking her head in disagreement. “Junior Sister, the grudge in your heart seems quite deep.”
Li Ruoshui denied it vehemently. “Nothing of the sort.” She hooked her lips into a lazy smile and pushed Strange Tales of the Feather Country into Lian Rusu’s arms, not wanting her to see through her thoughts.
Lian Rusu was considerate and didn’t pry further. She flipped open Strange Tales of the Feather Country and read it earnestly.
Li Ruoshui spaced out for a bit, then secretly watched Lian Rusu.
Her heart felt terribly twisted, even entertaining the thought of why Lian Rusu didn’t press further.
But she snapped out of it quickly, wishing she could slap herself.
Why was she being so pretentious?
–
High in the clouds, the Feather Kingdom’s Imperial Palace.
Yu Chaoyun paced back and forth in the hall, her heart filled with many anxieties, as if she had returned to that day when the heavens collapsed.
“Those two fellow Daoists have already arrived in the Feather Kingdom. Fellow Daoist Yue said they had no intention of showing themselves, and we don’t need to seek them out.” The speaker was a tall female cultivator whose robes were adorned with dazzling gold and red, like the burning tail feathers of a phoenix. She was Zhaoshuang Tian, who had inherited Wen Yuhuang’s position. The current ruler and grand general of the Feather Kingdom were both extremely young, barely at the Golden Core stage, yet no one in the Feather Kingdom dared to underestimate them.
Yu Chaoyun lowered her eyelashes, her face hiding a trace of worry. “I’m not worried about them.”
Zhaoshuang Tian asked again, “Are you still thinking about that news from a year ago?”
Yu Chaoyun nodded, her expression dim. “I’ve sent messages to Master time and again, but she never replied once. Was the flute sound that the Dragon Lord heard at sea really from Master?”
Zhaoshuang Tian pondered for a moment before saying, “Such things can’t be faked.” She gazed at the weary Yu Chaoyun and softened her tone. “Nothing has happened in the Feather Kingdom this year. Try to relax.”
“I… can’t.” Yu Chaoyun rubbed her eyes and sighed. “What did they say on Phoenix Island?”
Master’s name seal was still there, not yet eroded by the ruin spirits. What was even more worrying was that one.
She had also appeared in the Origin Sea—ruin spirits or ghost spirits? And where was she now?
Zhaoshuang Tian’s lips moved as she wanted to tell some comforting lies to Yu Chaoyun, but facing those melancholic eyes, she couldn’t say anything. After hesitating for a moment, she spoke frankly: “No news.” They had to admit that whether it was ruin spirits or entering the ghost path, that person was no longer the same as them. Phoenix Island could no longer divine her life or death, nor her whereabouts.
Yu Chaoyun hesitated for a moment before saying, “These years, the Tianyan primal qi has been dense, but troubles have arisen one after another. Leaving aside the Feather Kingdom and the Empire’s Nation-Securing Chart, even Taiyi’s Path of No Return has stirred up waves. I’m afraid the Feather Kingdom can no longer remain stable.”
“The Feather Kingdom has no Cave Heaven anymore,” Yu Chaoyun sighed very softly.
In the game between the Nine Provinces and Return to Ruins, what position did they hold?
Yu Chaoyun continued, “We can’t place all our hopes on Master.”
Zhaoshuang Tian furrowed her brows slightly and walked closer to Yu Chaoyun, staring straight at her. “What do you plan to do?”
Yu Chaoyun said, “To achieve a Cave Heaven, both talent and resources are indispensable. But how many Cave Heavens can an ordinary person’s foundation pile up? Sometimes it’s not a lack of talent, but a lack of resources to make that gamble. Master left me many things, but I fear I won’t be able to step into Cave Heaven before the calamity arrives. Rather than piling them up in the palace, I might as well distribute them all. As for me, I can figure something out when the time comes to achieve it.”
“The Feather Kingdom has no Cave Heaven, and the divine sand and Extraterrestrial Gang Qi are only what we gathered back then—use a bit, and there’s a bit less. Divine sand can be bought with Spirit Jade Pills, but the latter can’t.” Zhaoshuang Tian blinked and asked, “Have you thought it through?”
Yu Chaoyun nodded. “Yes.” Compared to the safety of the Feather Kingdom, her own cultivation progress wasn’t that important.
—
Tens of thousands of miles away from the Feather Kingdom.
Chaotic energies drifted like thick fog across the wilderness, with almost no trace of living beings.
Yet in this desolate place, the ethereal and clear flute sounds echoed endlessly.
Amid the flute sounds, a blade light shattered like a swarm of fireflies, then suddenly coalesced into a human form, streaking toward the source of the sound like lightning.
The lingering blade intent gradually dissipated in the flute melody. The white-haired swordswoman wearing a conical hat sat cross-legged on a rock, quietly listening to the flute.
After a few breaths, the flute sounds ceased.
The flutist was a white-haired female cultivator dressed in a white round-collared long robe with pale green cuffs and collar, overlaid with a cloak as light as feathers that billowed like snow waves in the wind.
“How are you?” Yu Liansheng asked.
The swordswoman raised her eyes. Having not spoken for so long, her voice was very hoarse: “I remember that year when I parted from you.” She paused, then added, “Perhaps soon, I’ll forget even this.”
She was Zhi Wang, once the Feather Kingdom’s Wen Yuhuang. After entering the rift, she hadn’t truly died, but the place where she awoke was no longer the Feather Kingdom. The phoenix had successfully nirvanized yet also failed; she no longer had her original form and had turned to cultivating another path in a muddled state. She vaguely remembered naming that technique the Scripture of Crossing Ghosts, but she didn’t know if she was crossing ghosts or some other existence.
If not for the Thunder Spine Shark, she wouldn’t have returned to the Origin Sea; she wouldn’t have found Yu Liansheng.
Yu Liansheng chuckled lightly, hiding the dimness in her eyes as the jade flute spun once in her fingers. She said, “If you forget, then forget.”
Zhi Wang asked again, “Will you be sad?”
Yu Liansheng replied, “Not anymore.”
After so many years, hadn’t she already grown accustomed?
Zhi Wang uttered an “oh” and asked no more. She gazed at the churning chaotic energies and said, “There’s an ominous aura inside.”
“Wait a little longer,” Yu Liansheng blinked. “Until the red moon rises again.”
At that time, a path would appear from the Chaos Grotto to the primordial land. There, they might find the root of the Feather Kingdom’s rift catastrophe.
—
The person who had vanished without a trace appeared in the Chaos Grotto of the Origin Sea, while Li Ruoshui was still reading about people in Strange Tales of the Feather Country.
The book didn’t provide enough useful information, so out of curiosity, she searched in the Tianyan Mirror and found that some busybody had even made a drama series. Of course, the main storyline was the heart-wrenching romance between the Feather Sovereign and Wen Yuhuang that moved heaven and earth, ending in yin-yang separation. Not to mention that seventy percent of the plot was fabricated—it was at least half.
The images of the Feather Sovereign and Wen Yuhuang must have been portrayed well, as the Feather Kingdom cultivators not only didn’t protest but left a string of “wah wah wah” comments below.
Li Ruoshui glanced at the drama’s creator: from the Three Saints Academy.
Fine, she gained a new understanding of her fellow Daoists’ diverse talents.
Li Ruoshui casually searched along that fellow Daoist’s name seal, and a bunch of colorful immortal dramas popped up, including one called Peerless Prodigy: Li Shangshan Suppresses Ruin Spirits Single-Handedly, which covered her story after the Shanyue True Form Chart incident.
Li Ruoshui: “…”
What willing sacrifice for the Nine Provinces, what selfless righteousness worthy of a Vow Dao cultivator—how noble.
She had simply wanted to harvest experience packs purely; her intuition told her she could level up.
Though it made her famous, wasn’t it excessive not to pay copyright fees?
Li Ruoshui mentally noted a debt against the Three Saints Academy.
Lian Rusu’s voice sounded: “Junior Sister?”
Li Ruoshui snapped back to reality and quickly put away the Tianyan Mirror. Even she felt her scalp tingle watching it—if her close friend found out, it would be mortifyingly embarrassing.
Lian Rusu continued, “Fellow Daoist Yan sent word that there’s news on the Shadow Crows.”
“Hm? Yan Xun?” Li Ruoshui blurted out. “Why did she only tell you?”
Alarm bells rang in Li Ruoshui’s mind as she recalled that malicious “big sister”!
Her close friend often took care of rogue cultivators in the Tianyan Mirror—had that detestable little bird started calling her “big sister” behind her back? Why was the bird so enthusiastic? As if she was the only one who could chirp chirp chirp?! No good deed goes unpunished!
“I don’t know.” Lian Rusu answered Li Ruoshui’s question first, then said, “Fellow Daoist Yan is now at Golden Jade Cliff outside the main city. That’s the Golden Eagle Clan’s territory.”
Li Ruoshui asked again, “Did she say anything else?”
Lian Rusu shook her head. “Just that we should go to Golden Jade Cliff when we have time.”
Li Ruoshui pressed, “Anything besides that?”
Lian Rusu found Li Ruoshui’s attitude strange and puzzled: “What else could there be?”
Li Ruoshui’s heart pounded like a drum, but she kept a calm expression. She said steadily, “Nothing.” After a pause, she cautioned, “Birds have treacherous hearts in this world. I’m afraid you might get tricked, Senior Sister.”
She was actually quite annoyed and even brazenly thought that if there was to be any tricking, it could only be done by her!
All other busybodies should be sent packing.
