Bonus Chapter. Enjoy!
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Jin Li hugged Huo Yuhao tightly, her arms tightening as if she wanted to firmly etch the temperature of this moment into her memory.
Her lips pressed close to his ear, her voice soft yet clear, carrying an unprecedented gentleness: "Thank you for taking me to experience the wonders of human society, thank you for taking care of me all this time, I cherish the time spent with you very much."
Hearing these words, that ominous feeling in Huo Yuhao's heart suddenly surged, like a taut string emitting a sharp warning sound.
He wanted to push Jin Li away, but Jin Li was holding him too closely. His arms were pinned down by her shoulders, and coupled with the strain of his injuries, he couldn't break free for a moment.
He wanted to say something, but before he could speak, Jin Li continued: "I don't know when I started to fall in love with you either. Perhaps if it weren't for the question from that voice earlier, I wouldn't have faced my own heart."
"But I still want to tell you now that I, Jin Li, have fallen in love with you, no matter how you look at me."
Speaking of this, she suddenly chuckled softly: "When I said before that I was willing to give my life for you, I wasn't just talking."
Huo Yuhao's pupils shrank violently, and that ominous feeling seemed to finally come true at this moment. He had already guessed what Jin Li wanted to do.
Jin Li slightly loosened her embrace, her usually vibrant and bright face now carrying a softness like never before.
She moved her face away from Huo Yuhao's shoulder and shifted it in front of him, close enough to see herself reflected in his pupils.
She smiled, her golden pupils filled with undisguised affection. Her smile was clean and open, like the lightness after laying down all heaviness.
Huo Yuhao shook his head, his eyes full of refusal: "Don't..."
As soon as he uttered those two words, Jin Li smiled and interrupted him: "I don't regret it."
As her voice fell, her face slowly approached, and the center of her brows pressed against the center of Huo Yuhao's brows.
Afterwards, dazzling golden light suddenly erupted from Jin Li's body, like a small sun being ignited within her.
That light was blazing and warm, slowly condensing above her head into an illusory figure—the silhouette of the Auspicious Beast, the Three-Eyed Jinni. Its entire body was golden, and its third eye opened slightly on its forehead, emitting a soft and profound luster.
That golden phantom was pulsating slowly, as if continuously infusing its own energy into Huo Yuhao's body, flowing slowly down from the touching brows of the two.
Everything around seemed to have stopped at this moment; the sound of the wind ceased, the sounds of killing on the distant battlefield blurred, and even the scorching smell of gunpowder in the air seemed to be separated by an invisible barrier.
Huo Yuhao wanted to push Jin Li away, but found that he couldn't even move a single finger. It was as if a force had firmly fixed his whole body in place, leaving him only able to watch all this happen with his own eyes.
Wang Donger beside them was also filled with shock at this moment. She stared blankly at the phantom of the Three-Eyed Jinni above Jin Li's head, watching the golden light flow into Huo Yuhao's body endlessly as if it had life, and only then did she finally understand what had happened.
This is a sacrifice! (It's not a real sacrifice, check the next chapter. Some readers are too impatient nowadays and don't have the patience to wait for any plot twist, so I'm making a special note here.)
Jin Li turned out to be a transformed Spirit Beast, and right now she was conducting a sacrifice for Huo Yuhao!
This is at the cost of her entire life and cultivation, turning everything into the purest power to pass on to Huo Yuhao.
Huo Yuhao's Spirit Power had already reached level ninety, and Jin Li was obviously not an ordinary Spirit Beast.
After her sacrifice, Huo Yuhao's strength would definitely experience a qualitative leap.
But even so, facing a true Angel God, they still had no chance of winning at all.
Wang Donger looked at Jin Li's gradually transparent face, looking at the calm and unregretful smile in her eyes, the sourness in her heart at this moment melted away like being blown away by the wind.
Jin Li was willing to give her life for Huo Yuhao; her love for Huo Yuhao was not a bit less than her own.
At this moment, there was no jealousy in her heart, nor any mood to be petty; she just stood quietly there, watching that golden light flow into Huo Yuhao little by little.
Huo Yuhao wanted to interrupt the sacrificial process, wanted to push Jin Li away, wanted to terminate everything that was happening irreversibly.
But his body seemed to be frozen by some irresistible force, leaving him to only watch Jin Li carry out the sacrifice with his own eyes.
Feeling Jin Li's scorching and pure vitality pour into his body like a warm current, slowly healing the irreparable divine wound on his chest.
His throat felt blocked by something. He wanted to shout, but couldn't make any sound, and could only watch all this happen helplessly.
At the same time, the bit-by-bit past between him and Jin Li flashed rapidly in his mind like a revolving lantern.
Their acquaintance in the Star Dou Great Forest, their encounter after Jin Li took human form, their time together in the Spirit Pagoda...
Huo Yuhao's feelings for Jin Li were complex. At first, he was simply curious, curious about what kind of existence this legendary Auspicious Beast actually was.
Later, when he learned of her doomed fate in the original historical trajectory, pity arose in his heart.
Therefore, when interacting with her, he had always consciously or unconsciously avoided her original developmental trajectory of fate, trying to pull her out of that known predestined doom.
Although his care for her could not be called meticulous to the extreme, it was so delicate that even he himself had not noticed it.
He had always thought that those cares and concerns were simply due to guilt in his heart.
But until this moment, until she was sacrificing her life to him bit by bit, until he watched her figure gradually become transparent in the golden light, did he finally understand that it was not just guilt.
Unconsciously, he had also fallen in love with this Jin Li on this trajectory of fate.
That emotion was hidden in day-to-day interactions, wrapped by him in the names of "responsibility" and "protection", so much so that even he himself had not truly seen it clearly.
And now, when he finally saw it clearly, she was disappearing bit by bit right in front of him.
Huo Yuhao's eye sockets were already red. In those eyes that were usually always calm and composed, tears were swirling, and finally slipped down silently, dripping along his pale cheeks.
He knew this was a fictional battlefield, but he always felt that everything happening at this moment was definitely not illusory.
Jin Li was truly sacrificing herself for him; even if they left this place, she would never come back.
He couldn't figure out why this was. Clearly he had tried his best to avoid the fate of Jin Li's sacrifice, and clearly he had changed the trajectory of so many things.
But why, after he had done so much, did the ending of Jin Li's sacrifice still happen?
Why did that line of fate that he desperately wanted to bypass ultimately converge to the exact same end point?
Huo Yuhao couldn't figure all this out. Meanwhile, above the Divine Realm, the culprit behind all this, Tang San, was watching this scene unfold with a deadpan expression.
He stood before the light screen of the Nine-Colored Divine Temple with his hands behind his back, his calm gaze falling upon the image in the light screen where the golden light was gradually dissipating, revealing no emotional fluctuations on his face.
Ning Rongrong beside him, however, furrowed her brows slightly, her expression constantly shifting.
She was not surprised because Tang San secretly manipulated the sacrifice of the Auspicious Beast. Even the so-called Auspicious Beast was just a Spirit Beast, and had nothing to do with her.
What truly made her expression change was that just now, during the process of the Auspicious Beast's sacrifice, she suddenly sensed that deep within Jin Li's Soul, there was mixed a trace of aura that she was extremely familiar with.
That was the Soul fragment of Tang San's daughter, Tang Wutong.
Although Ning Rongrong was only at the rank of a second-tier Divinity at the moment, she was a deity after all, and the anomaly of that little aura couldn't escape her perception at all.
Her gaze shifted away from the light screen to Tang San beside her, her tone lowering slightly as she asked: "Third Brother, why would a part of Xiaoqi's Soul appear on this Auspicious Beast?"
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A/N:
I hope all of you are enjoying this story so far. I would appreciate some Power Stones if you can spare any. Leave a review if you like the story. Thank you.