Chapter 28

Silence flowed between them as Fu Lan Cen slowly withdrew the smile from her lips. She eased herself out of the woman’s embrace, her voice laced with tension and helplessness. “Don’t you want to have little fox babies with me?”

But as soon as the words left her mouth, she caught the glistening wetness in the woman’s eyes. Fu Lan Cen’s expression froze, a sudden unease stirring in her heart. She held her breath and ventured tentatively, “Why… why won’t you say anything?”

“If…” Lu Xi parted her lips as if to speak, but swallowed the words back down. She didn’t want to see the little fox upset or in tears. She feared that witnessing the fox’s grievance and despair would make it impossible for her to leave.

“What I mean is, if we want little fox babies, it might take a few thousand or even tens of thousands of years of just the two of us first. I still want… I still want to spend more time with you.”

Her final words came out gentle yet trembling, her lingering affection hidden in the increasingly soft drawl of her voice.

Fu Lan Cen narrowed her eyes and studied the woman’s composed face for a long moment, but she couldn’t spot anything amiss. She guessed perhaps it was because she’d brought up little ones for the first time, leaving Lu Xi at a loss.

She pouted and leaned back against Lu Xi’s shoulder. “Then let’s not talk about it for now.”

“These are all handmade by me, so you have to eat every last one, okay~” She deftly changed the subject.

Lu Xi leaned in and took a bite of the treat the little fox held to her lips, polishing it off clean.

“And this one…”

…

The night in the Heavenly Realm grew even darker.

It was well past midnight now. In the dimly lit room, a hand slowly emerged from behind the gauze curtains.

The woman, now fully dressed, glanced back at the girl sleeping soundly on the bed. Her feet refused to budge an inch further.

Only under 001’s urgent prompting did Lu Xi finally bend down and press one last kiss to Fu Lan Cen’s cheek.

“Sleep well, my lady.”

When you wake, nothing in this world will threaten your lives anymore.

Her hand clenched into a fist inside her sleeve. Lu Xi suppressed all the reluctance in her heart and turned away resolutely, vanishing from the home she shared with Fu Lan Cen.

…

Far away in the Northern Wastelands, a grand barrier woven from thousands of strands of divine power stretched endlessly into the distance. It glimmered faintly in the night, invisible to ordinary eyes.

This was the barrier erected by the many immortal lords and ladies stationed at the formation. It isolated the anomalies in the Northern Wastelands from the outside world, preventing other beings from noticing and sparking panic across the realms.

Atop a distant mountain peak, surging black mists had crept up from the cliff base, carrying biting winds that carved unavoidable gashes across everyone’s bodies.

Zhi Wu hovered in midair, staring intently as the golden-glowing formation was suppressed by the black fog. Cracks began tearing open at its four corners, more and more demonic qi pouring out as the ancient Demon Venerable’s aura swelled wildly with thunderous momentum.

She glanced at the others and channeled even more divine power from her body. Together with the immortal lords and ladies, their multicolored energies spilled forth, painstakingly mending the ever-multiplying fissures.

Though it had little effect now, as servants of the Heavenly Realm, they would exhaust every ounce of strength to suppress it desperately, come what may.

But with the Demon Venerable’s demonic power at its peak, no matter how many they were, they could no longer stop the formation from shattering and unleashing the demonic qi.

With an earth-shaking boom, the ruptured formation let out a feeble howl before dissolving into nothingness, vanishing completely into the pitch-black abyss at the cliff bottom.

“The Demon Venerable has emerged!” An immortal lord with keen eyesight locked onto the red-haired figure amid the demonic fog. “We can’t let him…”

Before the immortal lord could finish, the Demon Venerable flicked his sleeve, piercing him with a beam of dark light that even erased his divine essence.

The terrified crowd instinctively retreated several steps, but thoughts of the common folk behind them made them grit their teeth. Their gazes hardened as they charged forward resolutely.

Heaven and earth darkened, winds howling and stones flying.

The Demon Venerable’s ancient power was overwhelming. The immortal lords and ladies of the later eras stood little chance against him. Only with Zhi Wu, the primordial divine dragon, aiding them could they barely hold him at bay through sheer numbers, staving off his killing blows for a fleeting moment.

Yet despair gripped them as the Demon Venerable seemed to grow fiercer with battle. With a flick of his wrist, demonic qi erupted everywhere, summoning tens of thousands of demonic soldiers in an instant.

As more and more immortal lords and ladies fell, Zhi Wu’s eyes burned red with urgency. She shifted to her true form, joining the other Dragon Clan members in using their indomitable bodies as weapons to smash into the endless horde of demonic soldiers.

Lu Xi arrived to find herself amid a hellish purgatory on earth.

The thick black fog billowed, the mountaintop littered with the mangled corpses of immortal lords and ladies. Hundreds of wounded Dragon Clan members still battled fiercely against the demonic horde.

Zhi Wu caught sight of the arrival from the corner of her eye and rejoiced inwardly. “Xi Ning!”

Xi Ning had told her earlier that she had a way to reseal the Demon Venerable and just needed her to hold the line. Now that Xi Ning had arrived, Zhi Wu immediately relaxed.

“Watch out!” Caught off guard, the Demon Venerable ambushed her. Fortunately, Xi Ning yanked her aside, dodging the strike.

The red-haired Demon Venerable had fully burst from the shattered formation, standing arrogantly in the sky and sneering down at the nobly attired primordial true god. “Xi Ning? You don’t seriously think you can force me back all by yourself?”

His voice was hoarse and ragged, likely from disuse—like brittle, snapped twigs splashing into foul sewage, stirring up filthy waves.

Lu Xi had no interest in reminiscing with this old acquaintance from her original body’s past. She exchanged a glance with Zhi Wu, and they charged forward in perfect sync.

Zhi Wu’s dragon form coiled with crackling lightning as she struck at the Demon Venerable’s head from above, her spiritual breath blasting from below in a pincer attack from unexpected angles.

Clad in white robes, Lu Xi left traces of heavenly dao laws’ power at every strike point. Though they didn’t inflict heavy wounds on the Demon Venerable, she carefully linked them while he remained unaware. The forces converged, shattering the void and forming a massive spatial vortex.

“You?!” The Demon Venerable sensed the pulling force, his eyes bulging in rage as dark red demonic patterns swirled across his face. With a sweep of his massive hand, the demonic soldiers below dissolved into qi and were all absorbed into his bloodshot eyes.

Lu Xi repositioned herself in the sky, lightly tapping her forehead. A drop of bright red blood fell onto her fingertip. She clasped her hands together, closed her eyes, and chanted a long incantation. The surrounding spatial formation shifted abruptly, the vortex spinning faster as it devoured endless demonic qi. The lone Demon Venerable lunged desperately at the swirling array.

Vast primordial true god power erupted from Lu Xi, scattering as vital energy that summoned heavenly thunder. Infused with the divine maiden’s aura, it shattered the Demon Venerable’s defenses and neutralized his attack in an instant.

But it didn’t end there. Lu Xi’s incantation continued, her low chant turning into spring breezes that swept across the land. To Zhi Wu’s horror, the contract binding her to Xi Ning unraveled—and in that moment, she realized what Xi Ning intended…

“If you do this… you’ll completely annihilate your own soul!” Zhi Wu’s final shout rang out toward the primordial true god shrouded in golden light high above. She could only watch helplessly as her companion of hundreds of thousands of years used her divine soul as the catalyst. The array reformed, sturdier than ever. Then, expending all her essence blood, Xi Ning conjured a rain of divine power that soaked the devastated earth around them, restoring life to the barren land.

Finally, the primordial true god’s form shattered into billions of starlit motes that surged toward the vortex-pulled Demon Venerable, reinforcing the entire array once more.

A golden flash streaked by, shrinking the spatial vortex to a single cold pinpoint. It slowly descended to the repaired cliff bottom, where familiar divine power bloomed into a white misty fog that pressed it down completely.

Everything returned to nothingness.

Zhi Wu stared blankly at the revitalized mountaintop below, then at the golden light lingering unextinguished amid the immortal mists at the cliff base. She murmured softly, “Xi Ning?”

No one answered.

She tumbled to the ground, gazing at the corpses of her fellow Dragon Clan and immortal colleagues strewn everywhere. She realized then that it hadn’t been a dream.

So her sovereign of hundreds of thousands of years—Xi Ning True God—had truly vanished into oblivion?

To spare her the pain, Xi Ning had even severed their contract before her self-destruction.

“So… so your ‘way’ to reseal the Demon Venerable… was this?” Zhi Wu’s eyes reddened, unresigned as she glanced once more at the fog-shrouded cliff bottom.

The aura felt so familiar—it was all born from Xi Ning’s essence blood.

Grief tore at her heart. With the contract gone and her companion lost, it felt like a raw chunk had been gouged from her chest, a wound that would never heal.

The sky began to brighten as the fiery dawn sun rose slowly. A new day had arrived.

In the Four Seas Eight Wastelands, people who had slept soundly through the night awoke to days of leisure or toil, blissfully unaware of the night’s cataclysm in the Northern Wastelands.

Warm sunlight filtered through the windows, falling on the swaying gauze curtains. The chirping of birds roused the girl on the bed.

Fu Lan Cen slowly opened her eyes and instinctively scooted to the bed’s edge, reaching to hug Lu Xi and snuggle into her embrace.

But her arm flopped onto the empty sheets. Startled, she turned her head and discovered the woman who had shared her bed was gone.

“Xi Xi?” she called out.

No response.

“Xi-jie? Where are you?” She propped herself up and parted the hanging gauze curtains.

Still no sign of Lu Xi.

A faint unease crept over her. In the past, whenever Lu Xi rose first, she would appear at Fu Lan Cen’s side the moment she stirred, no matter where she was in the divine palace.

Why was there no trace of her today? Had she gone to the Northern Wastelands again?

Fu Lan Cen let her imagination run wild for a bit, the unease growing thicker. She dressed and stepped outside.

She searched the courtyard first, then checked the kitchen, even venturing to the back mountain.

But she scoured the entire Cloud-Dispelling Palace without finding Lu Xi. Not even the guards or maids knew where she had gone.

With nowhere else in the palace, she rushed out the gates and combed every corner of the Heavenly Realm, questioning countless people. Every answer was the same: no one had seen Xi Ning True God.

Fu Lan Cen decided to check the Northern Wastelands.

Before she could leave the Heavenly Realm, she vaguely spotted Lady Zhi Wu’s figure.

Recalling that Lu Xi had sent Lady Zhi Wu to the Northern Wastelands earlier, she guessed the dragon might know Lu Xi’s whereabouts. She hurried over.

Now up close, she saw Lady Zhi Wu’s disheveled state and the terrifying scars marring her body despite hasty treatment. Fu Lan Cen’s heart tightened. “Lady Zhi Wu? How did you get hurt?”

Zhi Wu had dragged her wounded body to the Heavenly Realm just to inform Fu Lan Cen.

But now, facing the puzzled innocence on Fu Lan Cen’s face, she suddenly didn’t know how to break the news of the previous night.

She gave a bitter smile inwardly. Xi Ning had hidden it from her, and now she had to be the one to announce Xi Ning’s demise to Fu Lan Cen.

Xi Ning was truly ruthless.

“Lady Cen.” Zhi Wu shed her usual irreverence and bowed deeply to Fu Lan Cen with utmost respect.

The little fox jumped back in fright. Though married to Lu Xi, she never leveraged that status, so she felt deeply uncomfortable receiving such formality from the primordial divine dragon.

“Lady Zhi Wu, what’s wrong? Why are you being so overly courteous to a junior like me out of nowhere?”

Though the Heavenly Realm basked in bright sunlight and ethereal immortal qi, Fu Lan Cen felt her limbs turning ice-cold, as if sinking into a frozen abyss.

Anxiety and tension rooted her to the spot, her heart hollow and adrift, like something had slipped through her fingers, leaving no trace.

“Last night, the sealing formation shattered, and the Demon Venerable broke free.” Zhi Wu kept her head lowered, her voice hoarse with regret. “To save all living beings, Xi Ning True God sacrificed herself. Her divine soul… is utterly annihilated.”