The next day, Jiang Chen woke extremely early.
He had never experienced such a deep, dreamless sleep—enough to leave him somewhat dazed.
Opening his eyes, the faint morning light of winter filtered through the side window.
It was as if, for the first time in his life, he noticed how the residual snow on bare branches refracted tiny glints of gold, how the distant ink-green pines and cypresses stood serene like ancient jade, how the birdsong rang clear—and from the direction of the camp not far off came the calls for breakfast, along with the greetings and footsteps of numerous Immortal Lords.
So vibrant, so lively… Jiang Chen lay there in the warm bedding.
For the first time, he truly felt that he, too, was part of this vibrant world.
A rush of warmth surged to his heart, heating the corners of his eyes. He turned to gaze at the person still sleeping soundly beside him.
Zhao Lixuan was pillowed on several comically oversized goose-shaped cushions, his breathing steady and even, his sleeping face utterly at peace. Jiang Chen simply watched him like this—back when he’d had him entirely to himself for two whole years, through all those days and nights together, what the hell had he been doing?
He had never noticed how defenseless and adorable Zhao Lixuan looked when asleep?
Especially with those big geese on either side, mirroring each other perfectly.
Even more adorable.
As Jiang Chen thought this, he couldn’t help but reach out a finger, wrapping it ever so lightly around a strand of ink-black hair scattered across the pillow.
But even the hair wasn’t enough to soothe his longing. His fingertip slid quietly downward, hooking onto that hand with its distinct knuckles.
Even interlacing their ten fingers felt insufficient. In the end, he pulled the man tightly into his arms again, until the warm body heat seeped through their clothes and his restless heart finally settled back into place.
He said… let’s start over.
If that promise was just a moment’s pity… Jiang Chen clenched the edge of his sleeve, not daring to dwell on it.
He feared he couldn’t bear the consequences.
But this was Li Xuan.
The Li Xuan who, after he’d shattered his heartfelt sincerity all those years ago, had still lit the beacon to guide him home.
He would never go back on his word or make promises lightly. Thinking of this, Jiang Chen’s heart eased a little. He held the person in his arms even tighter and drifted back into deep sleep. So this was what sleep could taste like—not an endless cold quagmire anymore, but immersion in a warm current, buoyed by a faint sweetness of hope.
…
When Zhao Lixuan woke again, he got straight to business, calling a small-scale emergency secret meeting.
Jiang Chen silently trailed behind him.
It had only been one night of sleep, yet on this short walk to the main command tent, they ran into Chu Fusheng, Yu Rumu, and others, who all remarked, “Jiang Immortal Lord looks radiant today—your complexion is excellent!”
Even the High Priest Yu said, “Jiang Immortal Lord today… inner radiance aglow, pure qi flowing. Have you encountered some good fortune?”
Is it that obvious?
Jiang Chen was still a bit dazed, unsure how to respond.
Perhaps he’d stood there too woodenly in a daze, because suddenly a hand reached back from ahead.
Zhao Lixuan actually turned around and, in front of everyone under the clear sky, naturally grabbed him—not just a sleeve corner like before, but directly clasping his hand this time, their fingers interlocking without question.
Under the gaze of all eyes, in broad daylight.
Jiang Chen’s ears heated slightly, but he didn’t struggle at all. He obediently let himself be led forward.
A thin layer of snow blanketed the path; their steps crunched through it, one after another.
For some inexplicable reason, Jiang Chen lifted his free hand into the air and made a grasping motion—of course, he caught nothing; the snow from last night had long stopped. This abrupt, almost childlike gesture drew a cold huff from Shen Fengyu nearby.
Entering the command tent, Jiang Chen sat down right next to Zhao Lixuan.
Zhao Lixuan sat at the head, steadily laying out the agenda, but Jiang Chen’s thoughts still floated in a haze of unreal bliss.
The overwhelming daze of happiness had nowhere to settle, so he actually pulled out the Frost Jade Flute he always carried, lowering his head to quietly fiddle with the little fat goose pendant carved from white jade dangling from its end.
This emergency meeting was meant to discuss the earth-shattering secret he’d brought back from Clear Heart Island.
And here he was.
His mind and eyes filled only with the bone-melting warmth of these past dozen hours.
This isn’t a dream, right…
If it is a dream, then I truly pray to drown in it forever, never to wake.
…
The greatest secret Jiang Chen had brought back from Clear Heart Island was neither his own origins nor the conspiracies and ambitions of Wu Fu, Luo Ting, and the others.
It was the truth spat out by the Breath of Chaos on Demon King Su Zhen’s birthday—a truth that utterly upended Su Zhen’s beliefs from then on, sealed away for eons.
The truth wasn’t complicated or hidden.
“There is no such thing as a ‘Demon God’ in this world. There never has been.”
The world only knew that millennia ago, an ancient war between gods and demons had swept the heavens and earth.
In the end, evil did not prevail over good; the God Clan suppressed the Demon Clan, bringing clarity to the world and order to all.
But they didn’t know that in even more ancient times, when heaven and earth first separated and laws first formed, light and shadow were born together, order and chaos coexisted. Earth, water, fire, wind, mountains, forests, rivers, lakes… all things in the world had their own nature, each with its master.
There was no good or evil among them; all followed the Dao naturally, each an indispensable link in maintaining the balance of heaven and earth.
Yet precisely because these mutually generating and countering forces coexisted, the Three Realms were inevitably turbulent.
Gradually, the gods who wielded “purity,” “order,” and “life” developed discriminatory minds, deeming themselves superior and blaming all frequent calamities on those gods who wielded “turbidity,” “chaos,” and “destruction.”
They even joined forces to brand the ancient gods with “negative” divinities like ferocity, slaughter, war, disorder, and chaos as “demons,” intent on exterminating them utterly to forge their ideal pure and ordered Three Realms.
“But slay chaos, and the world will birth new chaos; erase shadow, and new eerie shadows will arise in places of light.”
This was the Heavenly Dao.
There could be no light without shadow.
Likewise, without chaos, what was order?
All were creations of heaven and earth; superiority existed only in the human heart. Yet if one side were rooted out, the other would swiftly dissipate as well.
“This is… the principle of the Great Dao’s cycle.”
This principle of the Heavenly Dao’s cycle was something the gods only gradually understood after countless brutal wars. They abandoned the idea of total extermination and chose exile over slaughter.
After all, since the dawn of heaven and earth, there had been the upper, middle, and lower realms.
The upper realm was pure and ethereal—the current Unstained Immortal Realm; the middle realm turbid and substantial, the vast Mortal Realm of myriad forms; the lower realm dim and dark, today’s Demon Realm.
The gods devised a scheme, driving all the “Demon Gods” and their kin to the lowest realm. They jointly invoked the laws of heaven and earth, causing pure spiritual qi to rise and turbid qi to sink, forever imprisoning those gods and their followers in the filthy depths.
But would the ancient gods, forced from their homes into the tainted lands, submit willingly?
Of course not—they resisted fiercely.
War reignited, toppling heaven and earth.
After rounds of divine-demon conflicts, it ended with the fall of the mightiest, Cang Ming, who wielded the origin of chaos. His remnants were eternally sealed in the lower realm. Light and darkness parted ways from then on, their enmities irreconcilable.
Soon, another ten millennia cycled by, and the divine bloodlines waned.
Whether the victorious “gods” of old or the defeated “Demon Gods,” all sank into eternal slumber in the river of time.
The God Clan faded into hiding, while the Immortal Clan quietly rose in this world nurtured by the gods’ legacies.
The earliest Immortal Clan were said to have been casually enlightened by ancient gods.
Perhaps on a whim, finding some creature pleasing, or deeming a mountain flower cute—they’d blow a breath of divine essence, granting it spiritual wisdom and immortal bones, birthing an immortal fetus.
At that time, pure spiritual qi abounded in heaven and earth; even without enlightenment, enlightened beings could ascend to immortality through their own cultivation.
But as divine blood thinned and heavenly pure qi waned, in the past millennium, mortals achieving immortality through personal cultivation became rarer than phoenix feathers and qilin horns. Today’s Immortal Clan mostly relied on inherited bloodlines.
And in the early days of the Immortal Dao, there was no talk of “demons” either.
Alas, history repeated itself, mirroring the ancient God Clan’s tale.
Factions emerged among the immortal sects—over doctrinal disputes or seizing spiritual veins. Former fellow cultivators saw each other as heretics. Exclusion and suppression became commonplace; some even sought total eradication.
Those immortals bullied and cornered to the brink either hid their names in the Mortal Realm or fled to the Demon Realm to cling to life.
Over years soaked in turbid qi, twisted by survival and hatred, they became what later generations called the “Demon Clan.”
…
“So, not only do immortals and demon immortals share origins—gods and Demon Gods do too. And between immortals and demons… they share origins as well.”
The tent fell into prolonged silence, broken only by the occasional faint pop of the charcoal fire.
If told to ordinary folk, this secret might be dismissed as nonsense—some scoffing, others laughing it off.
But Demon King Su Zhen was different.
His mind was keen, his spirituality innate.
“In an instant, Su Zhen comprehended it all. This… has no end.”
The recurring drama of cycles would never halt.
First, some gods warred on others, igniting endless bloody divine wars spanning millennia. Once those heretics were slaughtered, new heretics would be carved out from the survivors, and the conquests continued.
When the gods fell, the Immortal Clan repeated it.
Despite shared roots, some immortals were branded demons and mercilessly suppressed.
After human immortals and demon immortals joined forces to seal the Demon Clan, human immortals soon deemed demon immortals heretics, sparking conflict a millennium ago and driving them all into the Mortal Realm.
But did expelling the demon immortals end it all?
No.
Conflicts, discrimination, schemes, large and small clashes—had they ever stopped in these thousand years?
So, following Su Zhen and Luo Ting’s deepest delusions—using every evil art to strengthen demon immortals, reclaim the Unstained Immortal Realm, even exterminate human immortals.
Would that be the final end?
When that day came, with human immortals gone, beast demons might suddenly scorn tree demons as clumsy, flower demons disdain grass demons.
New boundaries would be drawn, new oppressions begin.
Look at the Mortal Realm—what of it?
In his youth, Chu Fusheng had been forced to cast a spell changing his natural golden hair and blue eyes, simply because standing out invited exclusion. Only by disguising himself as one of the crowd could he gain a moment’s peace.
But was it just hair and skin color?
Noble or lowly birth, doctrinal differences, clashing views, varying abilities… each could fuel strife.
Endless cycles, no end in sight.
…
It was precisely because Su Zhen saw through this ceaseless absurdity that he abruptly lost his way forward.
At that moment, it was the Spirit of Chaos that comforted him.
They said that conflict might indeed be endless, so what the capable should do wasn’t futilely trying to end the cycle, but striving to mend and maintain it.
Even if that peace could only be held for a century, fifty years, or even less.
Even if only one generation could enjoy it.
Even if only one family or household found stability amid chaos.
Even if just a rabbit in the wilds or a fish in the stream lived out its life in peace;
Even if a flower in a secluded valley, unknown to all, bloomed freely in the morning dew.
Nothing in the world was eternal—gods fell, immortal bones decayed, mortal flesh returned to dust. Seas turned to mulberry fields; nothing lasted forever. Yet one couldn’t deny the meaning of existence itself just because of inevitable dissolution.
On the contrary, sometimes a fleeting moment of peace and beauty was eternity.
And that was when Su Zhen learned that for millennia upon millennia, the Spirit of Chaos had silently guarded this heaven and earth with such a mindset.
Their divine consciousness originated from the ancient god Cang Ming, cast into the Abyss by the gods’ slaughter that year.
Betrayed by his closest friend, besieged by former allies, his divine body destroyed and soul eternally imprisoned in that place of endless dark—how could They harbor no hatred?
They had once seethed with resentment, wishing to incinerate the Three Realms, make heaven and earth bury with Them, force all betrayers to pay in blood!
But after ten millennia of time flowed by.
In boundless solitude, Their malice settled, returning to simplicity and truth—a clarity and purity like a newborn child’s.
Then came an even longer silent vigil.
They saw the Three Realms’ myriad wounds all too clearly.
They heard the world’s greed, hatred, delusion, resentment, injustices, and wrongs.
He had heard too many anguished cries and wails, witnessed countless conspiracies and torments, and beheld the endless cycles of rebellion, suppression, and despair.
He had once been filled with utter despondency,
Once harbored deep disgust,
And even contemplated unleashing his remaining power to topple the Three Realms, razing everything to start anew.
But what then, after the razing and renewal? Would it truly bring a better outcome?
Most likely not—it would merely swap one batch of beings for another, dooming them to replay the old tragedies. That realm of perfect virtue and flawlessness, utterly pristine, has never existed within the Heavenly Dao. All sentient beings can hope for is to draw infinitely closer to the light, yet they can never arrive at a state free of strife and desire.
Once he understood this, He finally attained true peace.
From that point on, He saw ghouls and monsters rampaging across the world,
Yet also beheld majestic rivers and mountains, the serene bloom and wilt of flowers;
He saw sentient beings struggling for survival in the crevices of fate,
And also—
The fleeting glimmers that appeared unexpectedly amid endless time.
For instance, those bland, water-like days in the Abyss, when Demon King Su Zhen burst into its depths.
He would bring sweet demonic power to “feed” Him, offer novel gifts from the outside world, and play such enchanting qin melodies.
How could this mortal world not be absurd, brilliant, and beautiful?
