A hundred years had passed since Su Min left the Immortal Gate. The world had changed in her absence, but the silence she left behind remained a constant, aching presence.
"I wonder how she is doing now." Xie Yingying rubbed her temples, a habitual gesture of weariness that had become more frequent over the decades. She stared at a small, luminous vial containing a single drop of Su Min's blood essence, the only physical trace of her left behind. Tian Hao had brought it back after one of his brief, infuriatingly vague returns, along with sparse news and even fewer answers.
After delivering the long promised pill to his lover, Tian Hao had stayed at the Immortal Gate for a few years before departing once more, drawn by his own restless path. The two of them, Su Min and Tian Hao, had made too many powerful enemies in their rise. While Su Min's formidable presence had once cowed all opposition, her prolonged absence meant that even Xie Yingying and the backing of the Golden Crow could not maintain the same level of unquestioned authority. Su Min was irreplaceable, not just in raw strength, but in her commanding presence, in the unshakable way she had held everything and everyone together.
Still, that was not what troubled Xie Yingying most. Her slender fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around the cool glass of the vial. She was not worried about power or political influence. She was worried about her.
The path of cultivation was one of relentless, often solitary pursuit, for fleeting opportunities, for perilous breakthroughs. Tian Hao's road had been paved by the clear, structured legacy of a deceased Mahayana expert, and Xie Yingying herself had inherited Jiang Xi's complete lineage in the ancient tomb, ensuring a relatively smooth progression to the mid stage Dao Comprehension realm. Breaking through to the legendary Unity stage was now only a matter of time and accumulation.
But Su Min? Her path was a mystery, a road less traveled. The Five Elements Holy Body was a supreme rarity, with only the mythical Five Elements Emperor known to have wielded it to completion in all of recorded history. There were no convenient legacies, no guiding manuals left for her to inherit. Her path was far more arduous, requiring her to forge it herself step by treacherous step.
And now she had left this familiar world behind, venturing into a completely foreign and unknown realm. No allies. No safety net. No one to watch her back. Who knew what ancient dangers or cunning adversaries lurked there?
Xie Yingying closed her eyes, allowing a rare wave of helplessness to wash over her. It was not just worry, it was a profound sense of being unable to help, to protect. She had long grown accustomed to Su Min's steadying presence. Her quiet, unshakable confidence. The subtle, often unnoticed way she positioned herself between her allies and any looming danger. The way her calm voice could anchor a chaotic situation without ever needing to be raised.
Without her, the world itself felt off kilter, tilted on its axis. But even now, with this gnawing concern, Xie Yingying could not bring herself to simply chase after her.
Because Su Min had asked her to stay. To hold the line. To protect what they had built.
And so she waited. She held her post. With a vial of blood warm in her palm and a heart that, even after a hundred long years, still beat a little faster at the mere thought of her name.
"Report! Another group of celestial outsiders has arrived through the eastern pass." A disciple's voice broke the silence, and Xie Yingying's headache instantly worsened.
"Those ancient families fled like rats back then, and now they are returning one by one, expecting a hero's welcome?" she muttered to herself.
Over a decade ago, the strange, oppressive force that had shrouded the entire world, blocking the stars, had finally dissipated, revealing the starry sky once more. Yet very few below the Unity stage could actually traverse the cosmos safely.
The native inhabitants of the Heavenly Continent, the core of this realm, had traditionally shown little interest in the wider universe, content with their rich lands. But it seemed the universe had now taken a keen interest in them.
Many powerful sects and ancient clans had fled during the last Dharma Ending Era, seeking refuge on their prepared ancestral worlds under the protection of their imperial artifacts. Now that the heavenly suppression had lifted, they were returning, their ships piercing the atmosphere like falling stars.
The Heavenly Continent was the legendary heart of all things, home to the finest spiritual veins, the rarest resources, divine artifacts, and even the Golden Core Heavenly Ranking, a supreme inheritance ground for the next generation. Its pull was irresistible.
Their return was always inevitable.
"This world is descending into chaos. If Su Min does not come back soon, even the Immortal Gate might get dragged into the mess. The Fallen were bad enough, and now we have these newcomers with their sense of entitlement." Xie Yingying sighed, the weight of leadership heavy on her shoulders. As a recognized top tier faction, the Immortal Gate could generally hold its own. None of the returning clans dared act too arrogantly in their immediate presence, knowing the stories.
But problems remained, simmering beneath a surface of polite diplomacy.
The one silver lining was that these returning families, wherever they settled, naturally became staunch protectors of their new old land, further squeezing the Fallen's territory and influence. Many hidden Fallen strongholds had been eradicated in recent years because of this.
Yet now, a new complication had emerged in the form of the Yao Clan, a particularly powerful and ambitious faction from beyond the stars.
"If only Su Min were here. The Golden Crow is not suited for mediating human political conflicts, and I... I cannot suppress them all alone." Xie Yingying grimaced. The sect was invaluable to both her and Su Min. Its abundant resources and stable environment had propelled her to the Dao Comprehension stage within a century, and she would defend Su Min's legacy here at all costs.
The Golden Crow, however, was different. As a proud divine beast, it was generally unwise and against her nature to meddle deeply in the squabbles of human factions unless the Immortal Gate's very foundation was threatened.
Even at their historical peak, divine beasts, whether Golden Crows, Kirin, Phoenixes, or Dragons, had never truly surpassed humanity's collective dominance. An ancient, devastating war between the two races had lasted millennia, ending only when the beast clans, unable to sustain their numbers and unity, finally conceded.
Unless these newcomers were foolish enough to invade the Eastern Mulberry State directly, the Golden Crow and her kin would not intervene.
Which left Xie Yingying in a precarious position. Without an imperial artifact of her own to wield, even her mighty Lunar Sovereign Body was not enough to intimidate the most powerful returnees.
But if Su Min were here? The mere thought was a comfort. A recognized peak seventh tier alchemist, the only one in the world, could mobilize every single Dao Comprehension expert on the continent with a single word, a promise of a custom tailored seventh grade pill. Who in their right mind would dare oppose her then?
"Lady Xie, have you reconsidered our proposal?" A languid, confident voice interrupted her thoughts. A strikingly handsome youth, who looked no older than eighteen but held the eyes of someone ancient, smiled at her with an almost ethereal, practiced charm.
But she felt none of the warmth his smile was designed to project. A coldness settled in her chest.
"Young Master Yao," Xie Yingying said, her voice cool and devoid of emotion, her gaze sharpening like polished jade. "You are not welcome here." She did not raise her voice. She did not need to. The finality in her tone was a wall of ice.
Advancing beyond the initial Dao Comprehension stage required truly vast resources, far beyond what mere chance encounters or small sects could provide. She had consumed a significant portion of the sect's accumulated reserves to reach the mid stage, consciously leaving the remainder for Su Min's future needs.
The Golden Crow, fortunately, had her own complete divine beast inheritance and needed no support from the sect's stores.
"Lady Xie, your Lunar Sovereign Body is indeed formidable, and the Immortal Gate is a recognized supreme sect. But your territorial claims are... excessive. Six of the seven major states? Our Yao Clan only asks for two. It is a reasonable request." The young master's smile did not waver. His cultivation base was a solid match for Xie Yingying's, also at the mid stage Dao Comprehension. As a direct descendant and the chosen son of a former emperor, he had been sealed away at the half step Dao Comprehension stage to survive the ages, and upon awakening, had inherited his father's profound legacy and even gained partial control of their family's imperial artifact.
With such formidable backing, even Xie Yingying, for the sake of the sect's overall stability, had to hesitate before acting rashly.
Note: Xie Yingying had temporarily assumed the mantle of leadership for the Immortal Gate, as the previous sect master's cultivation was simply insufficient to navigate these turbulent times.
But beyond territory, the Yao Clan had another, more personal ambition, marriage.
The Lunar Sovereign Body's primal Taiyin Qi was immensely nourishing for any cultivator, and to ancient clans with fading bloodlines or dwindling inheritance, it represented a potential shortcut to renewed ascendancy. Add to that Xie Yingying's own chilling, peerless beauty, and she became something more than a sovereign level cultivator, she became a prize to be won.
That was precisely how he saw her.
His voice, his posture, even the polite smile he wore, all of it held the same silent, calculating appraisal. He had done the math, weighed her value like a commodity, and decided she would be his. Not for love, not even for simple lust, but for what her unique constitution and status could offer his clan.
And Xie Yingying had seen that look before, in a hundred different eyes. The reverent gaze that cloaked naked ambition. The practiced civility that masked a deep seated entitlement. Power disguised as diplomacy.
He spoke as if this were a negotiation between equals, but she knew better. Behind his polished charm was the same simmering greed she had seen countless times before.
He did not want her. He wanted what her body could give him. He wanted to carve up the world Su Min had built with her own hands. And worse, he wanted to claim her, Xie Yingying, as part of that plunder.
That was the part that truly repulsed her to her core.
A match with her Lunar Sovereign Body would grant immense, direct cultivation benefits. Every major clan with a shred of ambition dreamed of it. And the way he looked at her, not with reverence, not even with genuine desire, but with a cold, possessive entitlement, it made her stomach turn.
She was not a vessel. Not a resource. Not a key to power. And certainly not for him.
Xie Yingying's patience, already thin, evaporated. Her voice dropped to a glacial calm that could freeze fire. "Not an inch of the Immortal Gate's land will be surrendered. Not now. Not ever." Her refusal rang through the hall with absolute, unshakeable finality.
The young master's perfectly crafted smile finally faltered, if only for a fraction of a second. But she did not miss it, the flicker of frustration and surprise beneath the polished mask. The slight, almost imperceptible twitch of his jaw. He had expected resistance. But not that it would be so… absolute, so devoid of fear or negotiation.
"Let him be disappointed," she thought with a cold, inner satisfaction. "Let him choke on it."
Because she would never, ever allow him to stain what Su Min had left in her care. She had fought tooth and nail to hold this ground. She had burned through the sect's precious resources to rise high enough to protect what mattered. Su Min had entrusted it all to her, had left without a word of complaint or doubt, believing Xie Yingying would endure, would protect their home.
She had.
And she would continue to, until her last breath.
As for marriage? That question had been answered long ago, in a quiet understanding that required no vows. Her heart was not empty, nor was it available. It had long since taken root in another's hands, in quiet moments of shared silence, in glances exchanged across a crowded room, in trust forged between life and death battles.
She and Su Min had never made a formal announcement, had never stood before a crowd to declare anything. They had not needed to. Anyone with eyes and the faintest touch of emotional insight could see the truth that lived between them.
Their bond did not rely on ceremony or public validation. It existed in the comfortable space between words, in the way they moved in seamless synchronicity when the other was near. In the profound comfort that required no explanation.
And it was certainly not something a man like him, with his transactional view of relationships, would ever understand.
Men like him only saw value, they never saw the soul beneath.
No, her heart was not for bargaining. It was not a token in a political game.
And it was most certainly not available.
Not now. Not ever.
Yet despite the absolute nature of her refusal, she remained acutely aware of the larger, practical stakes. Without the Golden Crow's direct intervention in human disputes, the Yao Clan still held a significant advantage. They had three confirmed Dao Comprehension stage experts and, most critically, an imperial artifact that could be fully awakened and wielded through their direct bloodline. Even if Xie Yingying could borrow the Golden Crow Bell, she could not hope to confront that level of force directly and prevail.
And he knew it.
Which was precisely why he had not yet pushed harder, why this was still a negotiation and not an open conquest.
The Golden Crow might not interfere lightly, but she would certainly act if her territory or her allies were directly provoked. And then there was the Immortal Gate's true master, the woman whose name alone gave even emperors pause, the legendary Five Elements Holy Body and a seventh tier alchemist.
Those titles alone made them cautious.
But as the years passed without a single confirmed sighting of Su Min's return, doubts had begun to grow and spread. Had she perished in the trackless void? A full century was a long, long absence for even a Dao Comprehension cultivator.
"Hmm?" Xie Yingying's expression shifted, a subtle change that would have been invisible to anyone who did not know her intimately.
Just a flicker at first in her deep, calm eyes. Barely perceptible.
Then, her spine straightened almost imperceptibly, her entire posture tightening as though she had caught the faint, familiar scent of something long missed on the wind.
And then, she smiled.
It was a rare, genuine expression, so unexpected and utterly disarming that it transformed her cold beauty into something luminous. So much so that the young master, for all his arrogance and composure, momentarily faltered, his confident mask slipping completely.
But the smile was not for him. It did not belong to him.
It passed through him like moonlight through mist, unseeing, untouched. It was meant for someone who had not yet arrived in body, but whose return was now, in Xie Yingying's heart, no longer in doubt.
"Return in one year," Xie Yingying said, her voice suddenly light, almost distracted, as if already thinking of future preparations. "She will receive you personally then, and you can present your... request... to her directly."
With that, she turned smoothly on her heel and walked away, her black robes sweeping the polished floor like the first brush of dusk on still water. No hesitation. No need to look back at his stunned face.
She knew, with absolute certainty, that he would not dare make a move now.
And she was right.
The young master's face paled, the blood draining away to leave a waxy sheen. "She… she is returning?" The question was a whisper, laden with a dread that settled deep into his bones.
Su Min's reputation preceded her, a tapestry of stories that spoke of a gentle demeanor that could harden into ruthless, absolute action in a heartbeat. If she truly was coming back, all of their careful plans, their territorial ambitions, would crumble to dust.
The two states they sought were, in truth, their own ancestral lands, territory they had abandoned during the great exodus. Had any other, lesser faction held them, they would have seized them by force without a second thought.
But Su Min? The very name was a deterrent.
Their intelligence reports painted a terrifyingly consistent picture. A woman who had united countless powerful, prideful experts under a single banner to completely annihilate a foundational Buddhist sect, a feat not even the ancient, empire spanning anti Buddhist campaigns had ever achieved. She was the kind of person no one with any sense dared to test, because if she decided to act, you would not survive long enough to feel regret.
They dared not underestimate her.
With a pale, grimacing nod, the young master turned and left swiftly, the air in the hall suddenly heavy with his unspoken dread. This was, after all, the Eastern Mulberry State. Stirring serious trouble here meant potentially facing the Golden Crow herself in her own domain, let alone the one who had somehow tamed her and built a sect around her.
~
Inside the now quiet hall, Xie Yingying stood motionless for a long moment, her gaze falling once more to the small vial nestled in her palm.
The single drop of blood essence inside it, which had been still for a century, now trembled, glowing with a soft, internal light.
Her fingers curled around it, her grip careful yet fiercely reverent. Her chest rose and fell with a slow, deep, silent breath.
"Su Min… was close. She was really, truly coming home."
For a hundred years, this vial had remained active, a tiny spark of life quietly awaiting its other half. A sliver of Su Min's very essence, left behind not just for safety, but as a spiritual anchor. A beacon. A silent promise.
And now it pulsed with renewed life, resonating across the vast distance.
Xie Yingying had known. She had sensed the shift in the world's subtle currents, felt the intangible threads that connected her to Su Min pulling tighter across the cosmos. She had waited, endured, shouldered the immense weight of command, of politics, of fragile alliances, all for this day, for the certainty that Su Min would return.
No longer would she have to stand alone against the tide.
Not that she had missed her, of course. That would be an undignified admission.
It was not that her nights had felt colder and emptier. Or that she sometimes, in a moment of distraction, reached out for a presence that was not there. Or that no amount of deep meditation or advanced cultivation could quiet the hollow ache in her chest when she thought of her name.
Certainly not.
Still… her lips curved again, just faintly at the corners, a private, radiant thing.
"It will not be long now." The words were a soft exhale, a burden lifted.
Whatever madness Su Min had braved to cross the deadly heavens without an imperial artifact for protection, Xie Yingying would not question it now. If Su Min believed she could return, then she would. Her will was a force of nature.
And Xie Yingying would be right here, waiting. Holding the fort. Keeping the home fires burning.
Just like she always had.
~
In the cold, airless depths of space, after an eternity of silent travel, Su Min's dark, focused eyes flickered open.
"How many years has it been? Crossing the void is truly no joke." Her voice was a dry rasp in the absolute silence. She took a long, deep swig from her ever faithful gourd, the spiritual water within soothing her parched meridians.
The cosmos held not a wisp of spiritual energy to replenish a cultivator, and her Shrinking Earth Into Steps technique was not omnipotent. Dense asteroid belts, chaotic spatial storms, and gravitational anomalies had often forced her to rely on raw physical endurance and her armor's protection, slowing her progress to a crawl at times.
Without the little gourd's seemingly endless replenishment, she would have been lost forever, a frozen statue adrift in the infinite night. The void was simply no place for a Dao Comprehension cultivator to travel for extended periods.
"I finally understand that old Lovecraftian movie, 'Event Horizon.' The sheer scale of the abyss is terrifying. Decades, maybe even a century, without encountering another living being, without a single voice... a normal human mind would have shattered and gone mad. For a mortal, this journey would have been an entire lifetime spent in absolute isolation." She chuckled to herself, a hollow sound in the vacuum, then focused her will and pressed onward.
The final, most dangerous stretch lay directly ahead, a famous turbulent cosmic storm where stable spatial movement was impossible. Donning her Black Tortoise armor, its plates sealing around her with a series of soft clicks, she took a deep breath and plunged into the chaotic, light swallowing maelstrom.
Half a year later, battered but unbroken, she shot out from the far side of the storm.
And there, before her, was a sight that truly, physically, took her breath away.
It was not a planet. It was a continent. A vast, impossibly large floating landmass, shimmering with internal light and swirling with clouds, dwarfing any star or celestial body she had seen in her decades of travel. Mountain ranges like spines, seas that glittered like scattered jewels, all suspended in the dark velvet of space.
No wonder the cults from that other world had called it the Heavenly Continent in their records. The name was perfectly literal.
"Legend says it was a fragment of the true immortal realm, broken off and fallen to the mortal world. Now I see why. Nothing natural could explain this." Su Min felt a wide, unstoppable grin spread across her face, the first real, unburdened expression in a hundred years.
She was home.
"Heavenly Continent, your prodigal daughter has returned!!!" Her voice, amplified by spiritual energy, rang out into the void, a declaration to the stars themselves.
(Or as the old saying from a forgotten life went: "I, Hu Hansan, am back!!!" ...Wait, no. That did not feel right. Wrong cultural reference.)
She shook her head, laughing at herself, and shouted again, with all the power and joy in her soul, "I, Su Min, have returned!!!"
===
Su Min, your little wife missing you already~
Anyway, her smile only for our precious Su Min ~~