Chapter 24: Rain of Blazing Fire Part 1

With his newly stabilized Spirit Core so hard to control, Fu Yuqiu made his way there cursing in practically two languages.

“So ugly—the Living Yama weighs like a scale-weight, chirp-chirping until birds peck him! Chirp…”

“Chirp, chirp-chirp-chirp!”

“Aaah! I’m so ugly!—Muddy mud loach! Back in the Secluded Sound Valley I’d have fed you to…—chirp chirp!”

Fu Yuqiu: “…”

Fu Yuqiu was nearly driven mad by his power flipping between human and sparrow—he couldn’t even get through a single curse, and the choking frustration was unbearable.

Rolling and crawling by turns, he finally caught sight of the Phoenix Hall ahead, and his temper cooled slightly. Hands and feet alike, he laboriously dragged himself up the steps.

Normally no one dared approach the Phoenix Hall, and its doors stood half open. Fu Yuqiu crawled through in his human body and heaved the doors apart.

With a creak, the doors swung slowly open on either side.

The Phoenix Hall was vast and empty—like an exquisite cage. The dense formations covering the ground and the countless crisscrossing red cords and Wind-Divining Chimes overhead formed a heaven-and-earth net, trapping the magnificent Phoenix fast within, without freedom.

At the thought, Fu Yuqiu felt wronged on the Phoenix’s behalf.

“This is just too tragic.”

Even he got to flounder around the whole vast Nine Heavens, while the Phoenix was confined to this little world—and tortured on top of it.

Still mourning, his gaze traveled, practiced, to the center of the formation, to find that poor broken-winged Phoenix.

One sweep of his eyes—and the great hall was empty. No familiar figure in sight.

Fu Yuqiu: “?”

Fu Yuqiu tilted his head, baffled, question marks filling his mind.

Where was the Phoenix?

“Could it be…?” Fu Yuqiu had a sudden brainwave. “He used the Phoenix Inheritance to heal his broken wing and just flew away?”

But on reflection that didn’t work either—the Cloud Ladder of the Nine Heavens was still sealed.

Besides, with the Living Yama holding court here, he would never easily let so rare a Phoenix fly off.

Suspecting his eyes, Fu Yuqiu was about to creep closer for a better look when his frame shuddered through another violent shift.

His line of sight plummeted. Fu Yuqiu transformed back into a White Sparrow midair and crashed down, smacking his beak on the doorsill with a “chirp-squeak,” nearly chipping off the tip.

The familiar world spun dizzily around him—Fu Yuqiu was used to it by now. He waited patiently for his round little body to steady itself, then hurriedly looked up.

The Phoenix, as if he had materialized from thin air, lay docilely curled at the center of the formation. Seeing him, he lifted his head slightly and said gently, “You didn’t hurt yourself?”

Fu Yuqiu: “?”

Fu Yuqiu was confused—had he really been seeing things?

“You’ve been here all along?”

The Phoenix nodded. “This formation has been redrawn. I can’t leave for now—what is it?”

Fu Yuqiu decided the anger must have made him hallucinate.

The White Sparrow shook his head, fluttered over, and burrowed his head aggrievedly into the warm down of the Phoenix’s chest, letting out a small whimper.

The Phoenix stiffened all over and looked down at him. “What are you crying about?”

Fu Yuqiu had been holding it in, but at those words, after straining and straining, he finally broke completely, wailing a heartbroken “Chirp!”: “I’m so ugly! I turned into an ugly human!”

The Phoenix: “…”

Fu Yuqiu’s loathing of the human body came from the depths of his soul, and he wailed to heaven and earth that he had turned unspeakably ugly—ugly beyond all compare under heaven.

The Phoenix had no idea how to comfort him.

This sparrow’s sense of aesthetics…

might genuinely be broken.

But Fu Yuqiu’s rare fit of weeping didn’t last long before that hateful Spirit Core started acting up again.

Another round of that familiar, detestable circulation of power—and the tiny White Sparrow nestled against the Phoenix’s down suddenly transformed into an “ugly” human body.

Fu Yuqiu gave a muffled chirp and flattened the caught-off-guard Phoenix beneath him.

The Phoenix: “…..”

The Phoenix was knocked flat, plain and simple.

Fu Yuqiu had no time for crying; he hurriedly braced his hands on the floor and heaved his heavy body up. Nervously he asked, “Y-you’re not crushed, are you?!”

It was probably the first time the Phoenix had been so undignified—even his feathers were in disarray.

He rose in silence, looking disinclined to speak with anyone.

Afraid he was hurt and hiding it, Fu Yuqiu hurried to inspect him.

He still wasn’t good with hands; with difficulty he hooked his fingers under the Phoenix’s drooping beak and forced his head up.

—It was how the Living Yama had teased the White Sparrow before.

The Phoenix: “?”

Golden eyes began to brew a storm like the sky before rain.

Fu Yuqiu, oblivious, went on anxiously checking whether the Phoenix was crushed, chattering all the while: “Does it hurt here? Here? Or here? Why aren’t you talking—did I crush your throat?”

The Phoenix: “…”

The Phoenix, afraid that opening his mouth would loose a mouthful of Phoenix Fire at him, could only endure in silence.

Having finished with the beak, Fu Yuqiu went to inspect the wings, entirely unaware of the growing terror in the Phoenix’s eyes.

The Frost Chill in the air made Fu Yuqiu shiver.

He chalked it up to the human body lacking down and paid it no mind. A quick once-over confirmed no real injury, and his gaze fell on the Phoenix’s drooping broken wing. Brow knotted, he asked, “Didn’t you use the Phoenix Inheritance? Why isn’t your wing healed?”

Through his bout of Fire Poison, Fu Yuqiu had drifted half-conscious the whole time, and the single memory that stood sharpest was giving the Phoenix Inheritance to the Phoenix.

He frowned, puzzled. Did I really, in my daze, crawl all the way to the Phoenix Hall?

As his thoughts scattered, the Phoenix said flatly, “Whether this wing heals or not makes no difference to me.”

“Why?” Fu Yuqiu asked. “Don’t you want to fly?”

The Phoenix glanced at him. “And why don’t you want to fly?”

Fu Yuqiu answered righteously, “Because I can’t. And I’m scared of heights.”

The Phoenix: “…”

That excuse would never sound convincing, no matter how many hundreds of times he heard it.

“There is no wanting or not wanting.”

It seemed that every time the subject of wings came up, the Phoenix turned strangely cold.

Fu Yuqiu recalled what the Phoenix had said before—about having his wings broken and being forced to fly anyway—and sucked in a breath, silently cursing the Living Yama as heartless and cruel, traumatizing the Phoenix so badly he had developed a complex about flying itself.

Fu Yuqiu changed the subject, chirping furiously: “The Living Yama really is no good chirp. Don’t let him fool you again.”

The Phoenix: “…”

Why was he cursing again all of a sudden?

“Setting aside how he’s tormented you—look at this shell of mine…” Fu Yuqiu raised his hand and stretched out his fingers, nearly suffocating at how ugly the knobby-jointed hand was. He said in agony, “My old Spirit Core, apart from being disobedient, worked beautifully. But I stayed one night in his sleeping chamber, woke up from a nap, and turned into this monstrosity.”

The Phoenix was silent.

“He must have done something to my Spirit Core.” Fu Yuqiu had always preferred to assume the very worst of the Living Yama. “Tell me—could the Living Yama really be deranged enough to put Withering and Flourishing into my Spirit Core?”

The Phoenix gave him a long, cool look, as if unwilling to dignify that with an answer.

In the space of a few sentences, Fu Yuqiu’s frame shifted back into a White Sparrow.

His moods came fast and went fast; he gave a delighted “whee,” fluttered his wings, and burrowed into the Phoenix’s down.

Back and forth like this, the Phoenix had nearly grown used to this white bundle forever flinging itself into his arms. But the sparrow had just now turned human and flattened him thoroughly. The Phoenix’s golden eyes flickered, and a wisp of white-mist-like Spiritual Power slipped quietly into Fu Yuqiu’s Inner Mansion.

Perfectly unsuspecting, Fu Yuqiu tipped his head back and asked, “If you didn’t use the Phoenix Inheritance, where did you put it? The Living Yama won’t demand it back, will he?”

The Phoenix said flatly, “I hid it in my feathers.”

Fu Yuqiu craned his head curiously to peer at the Phoenix’s body, faintly glimpsing a weak glow among the layered flight feathers. “The Living Yama didn’t notice?”

“…” The Phoenix’s face didn’t change. “He rarely comes to the Phoenix Hall.”

Only then did Fu Yuqiu relax, charging him repeatedly: “Then hide it well! What if you need it someday?”

The Phoenix nodded.

Perhaps because he had found a fellow sufferer in this man-eating Nine Heavens, Fu Yuqiu felt an inexplicable attachment to the Phoenix. Having vented his grievances, he began trotting in circles along the formation, examining it.

“What are you looking at?” the Phoenix asked.

“Trying to see how this formation works,” Fu Yuqiu said, very seriously. “It’d be great if it could be undone.”

The Phoenix sighed without sound.

The formation served no real purpose on ordinary days; when not running, it was merely an intimidating “wallflower.”

But Fu Yuqiu had evidently imagined the Living Yama as deranged beyond measure, believing this “binding” formation worked only on the Phoenix, and he rolled back and forth across the vast array like a little glutinous rice ball, extremely earnest about it.

The Phoenix didn’t stop him, his gaze trailing after the rolling “rice ball.”

Just then, a cloud drifted silently to the Phoenix’s ear.

Yun Gui’s lowered voice came from within.

“Venerable One, Junior Venerable Beihe requests leave to enter the Nine Heavens. He says it concerns the Immortal Alliance of the lower realm.”

The Phoenix didn’t so much as move his gaze, still watching Fu Yuqiu roll along the formation’s edge, and sent back a flat Sound Transmission.

“Mm. Let him in. He may wait in the great hall.”

The cloud was about to disperse when the Phoenix, eyes still on Fu Yuqiu, added a line.

“He may wait kneeling.”

“…” Yun Gui choked, then said meekly, “Yes.”

The mist dispersed.

Fu Yuqiu was still studying the formation.

His elder brother had always been away, but every so often he would have a Spirit Beast deliver him a pile of little curiosities from the outside world—and among them had been several ancient books on formations, said to be near-impossible to find in the Three Realms, for which formation cultivators fought tooth and nail.

—Where his brother had gotten the ability, no one knew; he had simply tucked them in among a bundle of miscellany and sent them, along with a few strings of candied hawthorns, to the Secluded Sound Valley.

Fu Yuqiu hadn’t appreciated how precious those books were; he had flipped through a few pages out of boredom and tossed them aside, and who knew what dusty corner they were moldering in now.

After several laps around the formation, Fu Yuqiu was nearly panting his tongue out without gleaning a single thing, and slunk back in defeat.

“Figure anything out?” the Phoenix asked.

“Uh… probably?” Fu Yuqiu, not wanting the Phoenix to think him a useless little good-for-nothing, gave a muffled chirp to cover his embarrassment. “It’s a very, very powerful formation. Made specially to trap the Phoenix, you know.”

The Phoenix: “…”

Fu Yuqiu’s conscience itched terribly. Probably sensing the Phoenix’s disbelief, he pressed on valiantly: “The, the mountain is pure yang qi, the water pure yin. The formation’s eye sits in gen. The great baleful, great yin qi happens to suppress the Phoenix Fire on your body.”

The Phoenix: “…..”

If the Phoenix were not himself a master of formations, he might actually have believed that string of nonsense.

But the sight of Fu Yuqiu spouting drivel with a perfectly straight face inexplicably struck something in the Phoenix’s heart of stone, and he couldn’t hold back—he suddenly laughed, softly.

It was not his usual mask-like smile, but a warm, genuine amusement, his icy golden eyes like fireflies melting loose.

Had Fu Yuqiu been in human form just then, the blush of guilt would have burned from his cheeks all the way to his toes.

He nearly buried his head in the down at his chest, claws curling restlessly, and mumbled, “D-did I get it wrong?”

“Not at all. I’m sure that’s exactly it,” the Phoenix said, smile undimmed. “No wonder, trapped in this formation, I always feel as though something is suppressing me.”

Fu Yuqiu lit up and lifted his head, chirping ingratiatingly: “See, see! The Living Yama’s heart is wicked!”

The Phoenix: “…Right. Wicked indeed.”

“Utterly vile!”

“Mm. Vile beyond measure.”

Fu Yuqiu chattered on, shuffling and reshuffling his pitiful stock of curse words, slandering the Living Yama for a good two quarters of an hour, and the Phoenix indulgently cursed along with him.

Only after a long while did Fu Yuqiu suddenly realize something. He looked at his wings and claws in surprise.

His Spirit Core had been unstable, forcing him to change shape every few minutes—but this time his White Sparrow true form had held steady all this while, without the slightest urge to revert to that ugly shell.

Fu Yuqiu cheered up, deciding he must be uniquely gifted, having learned to control his Spirit Core in so short a time.

“Oh, right,” Fu Yuqiu said to the Phoenix. “I secretly hid a fruit for you earlier. I’ll go get it.”

The Phoenix nodded. “All right.”

Fu Yuqiu rolled off.

The Phoenix watched him leave the Phoenix Hall and was about to dissolve into mist when, from the corner of his eye, he caught a little head poking back around the doorsill.

The Phoenix went rigid.

Fu Yuqiu said to him in the smallest of voices, “Remember to hide the Phoenix Inheritance well.”