◎I would rather die than ever go back to that Devil Den.◎
“Dog of a man.”
“…Dog… of a man.”
“Ugly crow.”
“Ugly crow…”
“Rotten tree root.”
“Rotten tree root.”
Fu Yuqiu’s vocabulary of curses was the same handful on loop, about as threatening as a feather duster.
He cursed one line per step down, and made the phoenix repeat after him.
The phoenix, honest soul, followed along meekly, cursing in that mild, gentle voice.
After a good while, Fu Yuqiu ran dry. He wracked his brains desperately—and suddenly recalled a curse he’d picked up at a lantern festival in the mortal world.
He spat it out, furious: “Chirp-chirp-chirp!”
The phoenix: “……”
The phoenix seemed to find it hard to get out. He said, softly: “That’s a bit… a bit too vile.”
“Say it!” Fu Yuqiu glared at him. “We’re fixing that bleeding-heart habit of yours, starting now.”
“……” The phoenix was silent a long while. Then, following along: “Chirp-chirp-chirp.”
Only then was Fu Yuqiu satisfied.
With all this fuss, Fu Yuqiu’s nerves had entirely unraveled.
He looked back at the Nine Heavens, already swallowed by mist, and gave a delighted chirp. “The Drifting Path should be just ahead, right?”
Seeing how utterly clueless he looked, the phoenix sighed soundlessly. “The Drifting Path is a small realm below the Nine Heavens. Not unlike the mortal world.”
Fu Yuqiu gaped. “The Drifting Path isn’t a Mustard Seed realm?”
Word was the Drifting Path housed the three Junior Venerables of the Nine Heavens, plus a Presiding Venerable of the Yuanchu Clan—four people, all told. Surely it couldn’t be much bigger than the Secluded Sound Valley.
“It is a small world.” The phoenix explained patiently. “But the Drifting Path is vast—half the size of the mortal realm. The end of the Cloud Ladder doesn’t lead there directly; you pass through a teleportation rune.”
Fu Yuqiu, half understanding: “So the Drifting Path is big?”
“Very big.”
“Then how far is Mid-Cloud Ridge from that teleportation rune place?”
The phoenix said: “If you plan to roll there the whole way, five or six hundred years ought to do it.”
Fu Yuqiu: “……”
Fu Yuqiu had assumed that reaching the Drifting Path meant reaching Mid-Cloud Ridge would be easy. Who knew it was this far?
And so the valiant, chest-puffed white sparrow wilted like a frost-bitten plant—practically drooping his leaves…
The phoenix blinked.
This is a white sparrow. Why do I feel as if he has leaves to droop?
“Is your enemy on Mid-Cloud Ridge?” the phoenix asked.
“No idea.” Fu Yuqiu shook his head miserably. “I’ll have to check them one by one.”
If the one who’d ordered him, in his memories, to assassinate the Immortal Venerable with the Linked Azure Water was the Azure Luan Junior Venerable Feng Xingyun, then that ruled him out as “Feng Beihe.”
That left two. One Vermilion Crane, one Peacock…
“But it’s fine!” Fu Yuqiu suddenly rallied, indomitable. “I can have the Azure Luan Clan Master fly me to Mid-Cloud Ridge. She can fly!”
At the word “fly,” the phoenix’s eyes darkened. “I don’t think that will work.”
Fu Yuqiu: “Huh? Why not?”
“The three Junior Venerables share the Drifting Path, but they feud endlessly, fire and water.” The phoenix explained. “Short of a death-fight, none of them sets foot in another’s territory.”
Fu Yuqiu: “……”
Fu Yuqiu wilted again.
Then when am I ever going to find Feng Beihe?
He was scowling so hard he lost track of his feet. His claw came down on empty air—there was a strangled “chirp-jee,” and the snow-white ball went rolling down the stairs like a runaway snowball.
The phoenix: “……”
The phoenix’s pupils contracted. Instinct set one foot forward—and the mist around him materialized instantly, forming a pair of phantom hands reaching for the sparrow.
—For one heartbeat only.
The phoenix came back to himself, and reason crushed instinct flat. The mist scattered.
He watched, cold-eyed, as the white ball rolled out of sight.
The Cloud Ladder had no railings, no cover. The slightest deviation, and one would plunge the full ten thousand zhang, leaving not even bones behind.
“Chirp—”
Fu Yuqiu shrieked without pause, struggling to stop himself, but momentum from above couldn’t simply be arrested—and with a body that was essentially a ball, the white sparrow rolled with terrific smoothness.
Dizzy beyond words, Fu Yuqiu screamed at every stomach-lurching drop from one step to the next, terrified he’d shoot clean off the bottom of the ladder.
But for once, his habitual terrible luck turned good: his body stayed dead-center on the ladder the whole way down, and by sheer fortune he never flew off the edge.
Fu Yuqiu had no idea how long he’d been rolling when, in one final whirl of sky and earth, he suddenly arced out like a folding fan and went flying.
“Chirp-jee…”
The white ball smacked flat against a thick white jade pillar, stuck there a while, then slowly slid down the polished surface, inch by inch.
A muffled thud.
Fu Yuqiu lay spread-eagle on the ground, claws and wings splayed, flattened like a white pancake.
The phoenix, arriving a few steps behind: “……”
He lowered his head and gently used his beak to flip over the Fu Yuqiu “pancake” lying face-down. Sure enough, the sparrow’s two jet-black eyes were spinning in circles—dizzy, clearly, and thoroughly.
Fu Yuqiu, senses scrambled, heaved out a breath as though coughing up a grass-shaped soul, nearly passing on to the afterlife.
The phoenix: “……”
The phoenix nearly burst out laughing. He pecked gently at Fu Yuqiu. “Are you all right?”
“Ugh.” Fu Yuqiu, at death’s door.
“We’re here.” Seeing nothing worse than dizziness, the phoenix said, “This is the formation that leads to the Drifting Path.”
Only then did Fu Yuqiu rally, struggling back up.
Nine white jade pillars stood in a circle, enclosing the vast, intricate formation at their center. Talisman runes blanketed everything from pillar to floor, heavy and ancient beyond telling.
Fu Yuqiu looked around blearily. “How do we open the formation?”
Even if he couldn’t find Feng Beihe right away on the Drifting Path, at least he wouldn’t be waiting to die in the Nine Heavens.
“Is someone meeting you on the Drifting Path?” the phoenix asked.
Fu Yuqiu nodded. “Yes.”
“Then simply wait for them to open it from that side.” The phoenix said. “Opening it from the Nine Heavens would require the Immortal Venerable’s Golden Plume Token.”
Fu Yuqiu corrected him: “The Living Yama’s.”
The phoenix: “……”
“Why don’t you hold a grudge like a normal person?” Fu Yuqiu shot him a glance—and as his eyes rested on the phoenix’s gentle face, a thought struck like lightning. He jolted all over, and when he looked at the phoenix again, his eyes were full of strange horror. “Don’t tell me…”
The phoenix’s instincts flared. “Don’t tell you what?”
Fu Yuqiu hesitated forever before venturing, delicately: “You don’t… like that Living Yama, do you?”
The phoenix: “…………”
At that deadpan look, Fu Yuqiu grew only more certain.
“Ssss.” So the phoenix really had been tortured into something wrong in the head. He’d fallen for the very person tormenting him?
The phoenix: “……”
Fu Yuqiu had read about this in medical texts: it said those who endure certain ordeals sometimes fall in love with the very architect of their suffering.
He’d never understood how such people could exist—had assumed the medical texts made it up. And now…
Now he’d seen a living specimen!
The phoenix felt he ought to explain something, but he opened his beak slightly and, remarkably, couldn’t think of a single word.
Just then, the formation beneath their feet began to turn, and different talisman runes flared to life on each of the nine white jade pillars.
Soon, the formation on the ground condensed into the shape of an azure luan spreading its wings for flight.
The passage to Azure Precipice Mountain on the Drifting Path slowly opened.
The Drifting Path. Azure Precipice Mountain.
Beside the nine white jade pillars, Qingxi held a Golden Plume Token, watching the passage open.
Yun Gui stood at her side, brow knotted. “If the Venerable One learns of this, your life is forfeit.”
“Hah.” Qingxi sneered, arching a brow at her. “And if that fool Feng Xingyun beguiles the white sparrow into dropping the Linked Azure Water into the Sweet Spring, my entire Azure Luan Clan faces annihilation—just like the Vermilion Bird Clan before us.”
Yun Gui said: “The Venerable One knows the sparrow carries the Linked Azure Water. He did not fault it.”
“Isn’t giving people hope before crushing it into despair exactly your Venerable One’s cruel style?” Qingxi said coldly. “He’s toying with my brother like a plaything. As long as the Linked Azure Water exists, the Immortal Venerable will kill him one of these days.”
Yun Gui felt inexplicably uneasy, her brow knitting tighter and tighter. “But what if—”
“You are so long-winded.” Qingxi glared at her. “You said yourself you’d help me just this once. Why all this dithering?”
“This is simply going too smoothly. That’s what troubles me.”
“It’ll be fine.” Qingxi was far bolder than Yun Gui, and said with a shrug, “Best case, my brother escapes. If he doesn’t, I take the Linked Azure Water back—at the very least, if he’s dragged back to the Nine Heavens, his life won’t be in danger.”
As the two spoke, movement finally came from the passage.
Undisguised delight broke across Qingxi’s cold face. Her eyes curved, and she hurried forward.
“White sparrow!”
Sure enough, the white sparrow came rolling leisurely out of the passage, smacking into Qingxi’s shoe with a “chirp-jee.”
Qingxi scooped him into her palm at once, stroking the red plume between his brows with practiced ease.
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
Seeing the sparrow through safely, Yun Gui breathed easy.
But before that breath finished, from the still-open passage walked out—unhurried—a phoenix of five brilliant colors.
Yun Gui went rigid.
The phoenix strolled as if pacing his own garden, every motion elegant and supremely regal.
He gave the frozen Yun Gui a faintly smiling glance, then let his gaze settle on Qingxi.
Qingxi had been happily cradling her brother when an overwhelming pressure crashed into her, the bloodline submission locking her body stiff.
The smile froze on that gentle, beautiful face as Qingxi looked down, inch by inch, until her gaze landed on that magnificent phoenix.
The phoenix…
Darkness flooded Qingxi’s vision; her face went white as paper.
Yun Gui jolted in horror, her whole body trembling. Never had such fear seized her—whether from that terrible pressure or pure dread, her instincts screamed to kneel, yet her body couldn’t move at all.
Fu Yuqiu hadn’t the faintest idea what was happening. He hadn’t even noticed Yun Gui standing there—his whole mind was full of joy at having escaped with his life, thrilled beyond measure.
Those days in the Nine Heavens had been darkness upon darkness, one agony after another, constant terror of being set off as a firework.
Now he’d slipped the Living Yama’s claws and rescued a beautiful phoenix besides—he was completely unwound.
Next, all he had to do was talk Qingxi into carrying him to Mid-Cloud Ridge.
—He couldn’t get revenge right away, sure. But at least his bird life was safe.
The brighter his prospects looked, the happier Fu Yuqiu chirped: “Finally out! I would rather DIE than ever go back to that Devil Den!”
Qingxi: “……”
Yun Gui: “……”
