The newly reclaimed city bordered an Ancient Divine Trace called Sunset Glow Ramparts.
Said to be the slumber site of the Sunset God, but the war’s bloodshed had sacrificed enough to awaken its gate.
Battle’s end left no respite; space at the entrance warped, birthing a massive, ominous dark vortex radiating dread suction.
Most didn’t grasp it, thinking divine traces brought fortune—unaware it could be indiscriminate devouring.
The vortex’s horrific pull was irresistible; resisters were dragged in, souls crushed—unless… a sacrifice satisfied Sunset Glow Ramparts, or all perished.
“Careful!” “Fall back!”
Amid cries, Jiang Chen’s Mortal Life Ashes hummed from its sheath, pitch-black karmic fire erupting skyward, stretching and solidifying into a vast arc barrier, forcibly shielding his panicked subordinates from the all-devouring swirl.
The fire barrier shuddered violently, clashing with the suction in teeth-grating rips; Jiang Chen felt his immortal power draining like a breached dam.
“Jiang Immortal Lord!”
His men cried in horror. Amid their anxious shouts, Jiang Chen glanced back once, then resolutely dropped the shield, letting the dark, spinning maw swallow him whole.
Something had to be offered to sate the divine trace.
What more did he have to lose?
Every living day was sober agony. Death unsatisfied too—a dilemma.
How could he be content…
This life, he’d been so lucky. His beloved had offered the world’s purest, fiercest warmth without reserve.
He’d once touched that precious glow, nearly claimed it.
How could he ever be content?
…
Jiang Chen awoke gasping for air.
His chest crushed by an invisible boulder, cold sweat soaked his thin inner robes, clinging stickily to his skin.
His vision swam with warped light and shadows; he made out Yu Rumu and Chu Fusheng, but their faces and forms rippled like reflections in disturbed water—eerie, unreal.
His body felt trapped in a thick, soundproof glass shell—immobile, only seeing their lips move, brows furrowed.
Time blurred before the trapped breath escaped his lungs in a ragged heave.
His chest heaved wildly, heart pounding madly anew.
Numb limbs, leaden, refused to lift—like a beached fish gulping air futilely, death’s choke unrelieved.
He struggled, crashing heavily to the cold ground.
The impact shattered something; the membrane broke.
“……Jiang Chen! Jiang Immortal Lord, are you alright?” Their voices finally filtered into his ears with some clarity.
He lay sprawled on the ground, gasping for breath with difficulty, forcing out a hoarse reply from deep in his throat: “……I’m fine.”
Fortunately, this wasn’t his first time.
The last time had been the same.
The previous time, in the Beiming Abyss. Everyone said that the last Demon Bright Azure Flame Commander, Yan Su, who had leaped into the Beiming Abyss, traded his physical body for unparalleled martial prowess.
But only after truly jumping in did he realize: the abyss dictated what it took in exchange. Who was he to choose?
The abyss devoured him, crushed him, seeming intent on churning his entire soul into a blurry haze. It tore away the few remaining flecks of color and warmth in his soul with brute force, yet then it released him.
A fuzzy feedback echoed in his mind, as if it was “satisfied with the flavor of some obsession in his soul,” “thoroughly sated,” before finally “granting mercy” by sparing his body and even leaving him twenty years of lifespan.
He couldn’t remember the rest.
Anyway, after emerging from the abyss, it had taken him a long time to adjust to this disoriented senses and warped perception of heaven and earth.
This time was no different.
For several days straight, the world around him remained slightly distorted. Jiang Chen had to work hard once more to adapt to this body that had been “hollowed out” and barely pieced back together.
But again, he found himself unable to sleep.
He asked Yu Rumu and Chu Fusheng for leave: “I’m going… to a place. Not long, just one night… then back.”
Half a month prior, the central and eastern armies had briefly converged, reclaiming a border town. Their camps weren’t far apart now.
Lin City’s myriad lights twinkled. Jiang Chen stood below the city walls, his gaze piercing through the darkness toward that familiar figure atop the ramparts.
Zhao Lixuan wore plain white immortal robes, unadorned by any excess ornamentation. Under the night sky and lantern glow, he appeared pristine, untouched by worldly dust. He patrolled the defenses with focused intensity, his profile sharp and resolute in the play of light and shadow.
Jiang Chen simply watched him like this.
Watched him so vivid, so real—as if, despite the separating night, some invisible force quietly soothed the churning obsessions and despair in his heart.
His fingers twitched, but he didn’t take another step forward.
He shouldn’t get close. He had no right.
He just watched from afar, watched him standing safe and sound amid the mortal lights.
Just this was enough to make it feel like he himself had been briefly pardoned from that boundless darkness and cold, returning to this world alive with the warmth of hearth and home.
……
Zhao Lixuan was quite surprised by Jiang Chen’s sudden arrival.
Especially since he looked so… pallid lips ghostly white, utterly distraught like a lost soul, chest heaving faintly. As if he’d just clawed his way back from the jaws of death, barely able to stand steady.
Zhao Lixuan’s heart clenched; he nearly thought something catastrophic had befallen the central army.
But no. Jiang Chen had only come to deliver a lamp—a quaint glass lantern from the Sunset Glow Ramparts Divine Miracle, emanating a soft, gentle glow. The light wasn’t blinding, yet it oddly instilled a profound sense of calm.
“This is…”
Jiang Chen’s voice was so low and cracked it nearly shattered, each word dredged up with effort from exhausted depths: “Not a Soul-Gathering Lamp. But it can… reflect the heart’s true desire. Perhaps… help you, soon, find… Lan Ze Immortal Lord’s… soul.”
Zhao Lixuan froze, his fingertips brushing the lamp’s faintly warm surface.
“Thank you.”
The perils of divine miracles varied; Sunset Glow Ramparts lacked the baleful aura of places like the abyss, but it was never easy.
Jiang Chen closed his eyes briefly. Being near him like this, without even touching, let him draw just enough strength from this fleeting proximity to keep going.
He drank it in greedily, yet restrained himself, drawing no closer.
“Mm,” Jiang Chen murmured so softly it was barely audible. “Then I’ll… be going.”
“Jiang Chen!”
A firefly streaked a faint trail through the night. He always felt Jiang Chen’s steps were unsteady, like a flickering flame on the verge of snuffing out.
In his worry, Zhao Lixuan instinctively grabbed his sleeve.
“Jiang Chen, are you… are you okay?”
Jiang Chen fell silent. A chill shiver ran through him as the night wind brushed past.
How should he answer? Tell him his organs twisted in agony as if displaced? That his remaining lifespan might have dwindled further from this ordeal? He couldn’t.
He simply halted, without turning back.
“Lixuan.”
“Mm?”
“Before, I said… back then, being with you… made me really happy.”
He felt the faint pull at his sleeve suddenly slacken. A bitter smile in his heart, though his face showed nothing.
He had no strength left. He’d come only to deliver the lamp, not to linger like a restless ghost.
“Lixuan, back then… it was me who was in the wrong.”
“If only, back then, I’d told you… I was happy.”
“……”
Zhao Lixuan: “Jiang Chen…”
The night breeze whispered. Jiang Chen lowered his gaze to their shadows on the ground, stretched long by moonlight yet refusing to overlap: “Lixuan, you don’t need to say anything.”
“I know… you don’t care anymore. I know.”
“I just… wanted to tell you.”
“Sorry. Back then, I took advantage… of how good you were to me.”
“I was… so awful to you.”
“Those two years we were together, you were so good to me. It was me who was wrong.”
“And these years since, and now… seeing you doing well, I’m… happy for you.”
“……”
The night was truly cold, the chill seeping into his bones.
He really wanted to feel that touch again, even just a trace of warmth.
But Jiang Chen didn’t move.
No clinging, no letting him see his unraveling. He delivered the gift and left.
All that remained was Zhao Lixuan carrying the small lamp back into the city, gently closing his room door.
Some regret crept in—he should have asked more. That divine miracle was so dangerous; what price had he paid for this lamp?
Perhaps it was his imagination, but Jiang Chen’s steps had seemed to stagger as he departed.
It wasn’t until he’d sat in his room a while that Zhao Lixuan noticed the extra package on the table.
Rumu Immortal Lord had followed out of concern but hadn’t lingered, leaving only a small bundle and a note.
Under the lamp’s glow, he unfolded the note. Yu Rumu’s neat handwriting read: “Jiang Immortal Lord picked out some pastries for you at the market when he arrived… but didn’t dare give them himself. So I brought them for him.”
Zhao Lixuan knew Yu Rumu had no intentions of meddling.
His senior brother was simply soft-hearted, couldn’t bear seeing others suffer, and often helped out fools like this with good intentions.
Zhao Lixuan opened the elegant food box beside it, revealing several neatly arranged savory pastries—ones he favored.
He dazed for a moment, glanced again at the warm, silent lamp in his hand, and remained still for a long time.
