[Location: Outside a Cosmic Defense Base]
[Time: Present]
My head left my body.
The world spun, upside down. The last thing I saw was Liyi—once smiling at me beneath the mirage flower tree, now clad in the cold armor of the deputy commander of the united forces of gods, humans, and beasts. As her blade fell, her grip faltered for half a second, imperceptible to all but me. The "Sword of Black Souls," once a symbol of protection, now dripped with my scalding blood. At her waist, the old, clumsily embroidered sachet bearing the mirage flower swayed helplessly in the blast's aftermath.
The crowd cheered, celebrating the demise of the universe's greatest villain. Of course, I understood—the so-called "villain" was merely one who stood against the "order" craved by the masses. And order itself was often the most precise gallows, strangling all misunderstood heresy in the name of justice. My severed head was but the latest offering to this scaffold.
Yet what gnawed at me was this: the person I had once fought tooth and nail to save was the one who had finally beheaded me. For the "order" she desired? For the "eternity" promised by the gods? Or… to erase the "mistake" she had once personally delivered to the Spirit Beast Realm—only for it to spiral out of control?
Consciousness plummeted into icy oblivion.
But this familiar, deliberately forgotten despair—the scent of fake mirage flowers, the aura of the Spirit Beast Realm's frozen peaks—was like a rusted key, violently wrenching open the ice-sealed door of my deepest memories.
That fool, shackled to the bone, still dreaming of brewing mirage flower wine to bring back.
Memories stabbed like icicles, piercing the frozen soil of time.
Crack! The sound of my spine hitting the ground was as crisp as a millennia-old icicle snapping deep beneath the permafrost.
[Location: Spirit Beast Realm · Frigid Mountain Training Grounds]
[Time: Ten Years Ago]
Back then, I was slammed into the ground with terrifying force.
Amid the pain, shards of memory were jolted loose, mingling with stranger fragments:
Seven years old. Rainy night. Street corner. Tattered burlap couldn't shield me from the biting wind; my ankles were purple with cold. A woman—her hair like dried straw, tied into two messy pigtails—shoved half a moldy pancake into my hands. "Eat. You're growing." Her voice was rough, like sandpaper. A massive bamboo basket of scrap metal weighed her down, bending her back like a taut bow.
"My hat—my straw hat!" She suddenly shrieked, bolting into the icy rain like a scalded cat, chasing after a wind-tossed hat. Mud splattered onto her hair—the same hair she'd secretly smooth whenever passing a rouge shop.
(Flashback: Deep inside a colossal, crumbling black-stone temple, a pair of eyes—left eye weeping crimson tears, right eye bearing a cold, intricate, slowly rotating golden sigil (Lena's right-eye sigil)—flared to life, locking onto something! Only much later did I understand: Lena's sigil was marking the coordinates of a "seed." And that seed… was me.)
The scene faded abruptly into grayscale.
The master's chains erupted in blue light. Worse, the mirror clearly reflected the chain insignia on his robe—identical to the ghostly blue sigil that had appeared on the neck of the woman who froze to death in that alley! The sigil writhed as if alive. This mark was a side effect for some spirit-wielders—its origin unknown, but it could be borrowed when spiritual energy ran low. Yet the more one used it, the more it parasitized, consuming its host until death. The only countermeasure was to strengthen one's spirit to suppress it.
"Get up!" The master's roar yanked me back to reality.
I coughed blood, each spurt a dull agony tearing through my organs. The sigil's erosion worsened—it granted power but also shackles. At this rate, my only hope was to journey to the Spirit Beast Realm, contract a beast, and amplify my spirit before the backlash consumed me!
If only I'd tasted that mirage flower wine Liyi brewed! Of course, another reason was to discern whether the spirit beast's fragmented illusions were real.
But three years ago, the bloodstained words on a tattered scroll in that secret chamber had seared into my mind like a curse: "Those who contract spirit beasts shall be blood sacrifices at the Gate. Lena's oath is absolute." It had haunted me ever since.
That "Gate"—where did it lead? Only now, headless, did I realize: it led not to power, but to a meticulously prepared altar.
My bones groaned under the strain, drowned out by the master's icy scoff: "Sloppy seals! Pathetic formations! Your spirit energy's in shambles, reactions slower than rotting wood! And you think you can protect what little you cherish? Dream on!" His sleeves flicked, and the blue chains within lashed like vipers, striking for my heart!
But this time, I didn't cower. Instead, I countered—not to block, but to stab at the source! Target: his sleeve!
"Seal Art: Xuanyuan Blade Decree!" Even if I only tore a shred of cloth! Even if I only sparked a few blue embers!
Rip—!
The sound of rending fabric screeched. Black threads fluttered; blue sparks flared briefly in the frozen air before vanishing.
A colder, thicker force surged back through the shattered mirror shards into my arm—like millions of ice needles stabbing into my veins, drilling toward my heart! The chain's agony didn't ease; instead, it tangled with this invasive chill, threatening to rip me apart!
Then, the mirage flower sachet Liyi had sewn grew scalding in my pocket! A crisp sweetness pierced my nostrils—my last clear sensation. As the fragrance hit, the chains' gnawing at my heart numbed for a bizarre instant.
"Get up!"
This voice wasn't the master's. It clawed from my bones—cold, alien, tinged with bestial rasp. Like another me, a future self already devoured by chains, whispering.
The master watched me struggle to rise, his gaze as complex as a weathered stele carved with illegible epitaphs.
Finally, he spoke, voice heavy with exhaustion:
"Tch… still worthless, huh? Of ten who enter the Spirit Beast Realm to contract a beast, nine never return. Doubled spirit energy, summoning sacred beasts, sealing spirits for nobility… So many covet this. But that place is a demon's maw that devours without spitting bones—an altar for 'blood sacrifice.' Don't touch this contract. Don't throw your life away." His words were ice, but beneath them lurked something like pity. His eyes skimmed my hollow gaze, as if seeing his own reflection from three centuries past.
The way he looked at me… was no different from how I now saw the pawns I'd used and sacrificed.
I told him: "Master, the world's in chaos. The sigil's erosion worsens, and the spirit beast's fragmented illusions grow louder. Contracting a beast is my only hope to resist the corrosion—and to learn the truth. I'll accept life or death."
His silence stretched, merging with the frozen wasteland. At last, he exhaled sharply, breath crystallizing instantly: "Fine… Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Since you're resolved…" He paused, pain flickering in his eyes—pain entwined with obsession over some ancient vow. "...Debts must be repaid. I'll help you."
Before I could react, a surge of primal spiritual energy—ancient, pure, heavy as the earth's birth—erupted from his withered body! Yet it chilled me to the core, for this power clashed with the blue chains' aura, yet coexisted grotesquely. The sigil on his skeletal arm blazed, throbbing as it crawled upward like a frenzied serpent! The veins bulged, pulsing with blue light like a dying heart's last beats!
Simultaneously, in a distant, blizzard-scoured valley of the Spirit Beast Realm, scavenger scorpions gnawing on bones froze, legs raised in alarm, carapaces rustling. Only later would I learn: this was the first disturbance near Lang Bai's hiding place—another ripple in Lena's web.
The master raised a bony hand, fingers carving black fissures in the air. The incantation hissed like countless wraiths shrieking from the void.
With the final syllable, space tore like rotten cloth—RIIIP!—revealing a swirling abyss that devoured all light. Beyond it lay a void so deep it could freeze time itself.
The Gate to the Spirit Beast Realm? The "Blood Sacrifice" Gate?
The cold swallowed me whole. The darkness pulled with irresistible force, as if to rip my soul from my body.
As the rift opened, I saw it clearly—his fingers splitting open! The blood wasn't red, but the same eerie blue described on that scroll. The droplets vanished into the abyss without a trace.
"Master, your hand—!" I lunged, yanking his sleeve back.
What I saw froze my blood.
The writhing blue sigil on his arm was climbing toward his heart like a maddened serpent! The veins pulsed like an unstable furnace, its rhythm syncing with the burning in my own chest!
He wrenched free, nearly throwing me off-balance.
His laughter was a death rattle, steeped in three centuries of despair: "Three hundred years ago… I walked this path… Owed the Xiao Clan a life… and 'her' an answer…"
Before he finished, his robes exploded into shreds, revealing horror:
A thick, glacial-blue chain—forged from the deepest cold—was coiled around his spine like a second skeleton, biting into bone and flesh with every pulse. Its surface oozed eerie light, radiating the same soul-numbing chill as the Gate.
"...Today, I repay with this rust-eaten corpse!" he roared. "Remember! The human realm reopens in five days—seven in the Spirit Beast Realm! Only one chance!" His final words, mingled with the screech of snapping chains and the Gate's thunderous howl, were branded into my soul.
"Your illusions… discern friend from foe yourself!" With his last strength, he seemed to warn a shadow lurking in the dark: "...If you encounter a soul-devouring array, flee—don't fight!"
"Understood, Master!" I nodded, throat too tight for more. Turning, I stepped into the abyss. The cold swallowed me instantly—back then, I believed this was the only variable that could alter fate.
At the last second, I glanced back.
The master's figure darkened, charring under the blue sigil's glow.
His gaze held release, hope, and bottomless sorrow—as if seeing through me to someone long lost to time.
"Storms rise from dust; tides swell from ripples…" His crumbling lips moved soundlessly. "Brother Xiao… Can that child's spirit… truly suppress the sigil's backlash? If not… let me repay the debt… for the entire Xiao Clan…"
The rift sealed shut.
The last light vanished.
[Location: Spirit Beast Realm Gate Passage]
[Time: Ten Years Ago · Immediately After]
Deep in the passage, bestial roars shook the heavens! The clank of dragging chains—clank… clank…—echoed like funeral bells, matching the scroll's description of the "blood sacrifice" ritual. The stone walls swallowed footsteps; each step felt heavier than the fading mountain behind.
Ahead lay endless, congealed darkness. The wind sliced like knives.
Worse, all warmth of Liyi in my mind—her smile holding mirage flower wine, her whispered reminders—was being erased by an invisible hand. My consciousness frayed; the chains were devouring memories! This sensory and mental stripping was the first toll of crossing into the Beast Realm.
Then, the note Liyi had slipped into my pocket burned like a coal! The pain pierced my numbness, reminding me: Something of hers remains!
Back then, I swore to survive. To contract. To grow stronger. To return—even as a sacrifice.
Now, I see how laughable that resolve was. I thought power could break shackles, not realizing it only led deeper into the web.
[Location: Korr System · Crumbling Temple Depths]
[Time: Simultaneous with Spirit Beast Realm Passage]
The blue chain-control array flickered.
Lena's bloodied fingers traced a fissure in the altar, her right eye's pink-gold sigil spinning coldly, reflecting the Gate's closing.
A faint smirk curled her lips.
"The show… begins."
The blue chain-control array flickered. Lena's bloodied fingers traced a fissure in the altar, her right eye's pink-gold sigil spinning coldly, reflecting the Gate's closing. A faint smirk curled her lips. "The show… begins."