Qingxi neither confirmed nor denied.
“Very well.” The Immortal Venerable was in excellent humor. “Name your boon. Forget the Shadow Vine Fruit—I may grant it to you regardless.”
Qingxi’s gaze went to the sparrow in his palm.
The white sparrow’s feathers were still damp, looking wretched and bewildered. No bird likes a full-body soaking; at a glance, this one had clearly been punished.
Qingxi forced her eyes away. “Might this one ask the Venerable One… to return my clan’s white sparrow.”
The Immortal Venerable said, interested: “White sparrow?”
“Yes.” Qingxi said, “The white sparrow is simple-minded and knows nothing of the world. Staying in the Nine Heavens, he might disturb the Venerable One…”
“He won’t.” The Immortal Venerable scratched under Fu Yuqiu’s chin, saying mildly, “I’m rather fond of him.”
Qingxi: “……”
Qingxi grew anxious. “But—”
The Immortal Venerable’s five fingers closed, cradling the white sparrow loosely, gently in his palm.
He asked, tenderly: “But what?”
“The white sparrow carries no spiritual power at all, has never formed a core—he’s no different from a mortal bird…”
Qingxi’s voice cut off abruptly.
Because she saw it: word by word, as she spoke, the Immortal Venerable’s fingers around the sparrow were tightening, bit by bit.
The Immortal Venerable still watched her gently. “Go on.”
Qingxi’s teeth clenched hard.
The Immortal Venerable was telling her: If you want him to return the white sparrow, fine—he can return you a corpse all the same.
Fu Yuqiu, oblivious to all of it, was still heartlessly preening away for dear life.
This shell is so annoying. Too many feathers.
Qingxi dared not say another word. She gave a slight nod and swerved to a new topic: “If the Venerable One does not disdain him, then it is the white sparrow’s fortune—might I trouble the Venerable One to let me have a few words with my brother?”
The Immortal Venerable’s fingers slowly loosened, his smile so warm his golden eyes glowed. “Naturally.”
Fu Yuqiu panicked at once, scrambling to cling to the Immortal Venerable’s fingers.
Don’t! The nasty woman wants to stomp him to death!
But what the Immortal Venerable granted, he did not take back. Fu Yuqiu was handed over all the same.
Wary of everything, Fu Yuqiu arrived in Qingxi’s hands, cradled with practiced familiarity as she carried him out of the inner hall.
Once they were somewhere with no one around, Qingxi brought the sparrow up to eye level, the coldness on her face vanishing in an instant. Glancing warily left and right, and finding no one watching, she spoke in a rush.
“The Immortal Venerable seems to have fallen ill again. Tomorrow he will go into seclusion at the Sweet Spring to recover, and those two dragons will be absent. At the third quarter of the hour of Zi, when all the waters of the Nine Heavens stop flowing, sneak out. No one will stop you.”
Fu Yuqiu froze, staring at her blankly.
She… she means to get me out?
“Be good.” Qingxi stroked the red plume between his brows, her normally fierce features softening all at once into something indescribably gentle. She said softly, “Come out of the inner hall and head north. Take the Cloud Ladder down from the Nine Heavens. I’ll be waiting at the entrance to the Drifting Path.”
Fu Yuqiu’s heart jumped.
The Drifting Path—Mid-Cloud Ridge!
Well, what a coincidence!
Fu Yuqiu was overjoyed—no sooner does one doze off than someone brings a pillow.
“The Immortal Venerable is mercurial. If you stay in the Nine Heavens, sooner or later something will happen to you.” Qingxi wiped his still-damp feathers with her sleeve, a hint of heartache in her voice. “Once you’ve escaped, I’ll send you to hide in the mortal world.”
Fu Yuqiu nodded hard.
Qingxi’s head ached at his dopey look, and she repeated the escape route twice more. “Got it?”
Fu Yuqiu: “……”
He’d memorized it the first time. It was only a few sentences.
Just how stupid was the original shell, that even a few sentences wouldn’t stick?
Seeing him look so confident, Qingxi’s brow furrowed; still uneasy, she repeated it one last time before finally, reluctantly, carrying him back.
Watching her receding figure, Fu Yuqiu thought: the rumors really were false.
This sister of the white sparrow’s didn’t seem to hate him at all, unlike the stories said.
Qingxi had been right.
The Immortal Venerable did seem to have fallen ill again.
Fu Yuqiu was shipped off to the Golden Cage in the side hall without so much as seeing him, and that night wasn’t summoned to “attend the bed” either.
As for Yun Shou and Yun Gui, not even a dragon scale was to be seen—who knew where they’d gone.
Fu Yuqiu spent the whole day in the Golden Cage drinking water, nearly drinking himself sick.
After nightfall on the second day, Fu Yuqiu was hiccuping from all the water; barely recovered, his incorrigible self went back for more.
But the moment he sidled up to the jade basin, he watched the endlessly bubbling water suddenly shudder—
Then every last drop of water in the jade basin vanished. Not one remained.
Fu Yuqiu was startled.
“Chirp!?!”
My water! Where’s my water?!
He stared blankly for a long moment, then, as if remembering something, turned to look around.
Not just the basin—even the water in the side hall’s miniature waterfall had vanished into thin air.
The mist that had always blotted out the sky had disappeared at some point; his vision was crystal clear—this was the first time Fu Yuqiu had ever actually seen the great hall of the Nine Heavens.
At the bizarre sight, Fu Yuqiu suddenly recalled Qingxi’s words…
“At the third quarter of the hour of Zi, all the waters of the Nine Heavens stop flowing.”
So that’s what she meant?
Fu Yuqiu was instantly fired up. He bounced up, plucked a feather from his body, and jabbed it at the Golden Cage’s lock, poking this way and that—before long, the lock clicked open.
The Shadow Vine in the Secluded Sound Valley had taught him that.
The vine had said, smugly: “With that temper of yours, someday someone’s going to chain you up and beat you. Learn to pick locks—might save a grass’s life when it counts.”
Fu Yuqiu hated being told he had a bad temper, and had promptly beaten the vine up in a fit of exactly that bad temper.
Who’d have thought the lock-picking skill would actually come in handy someday.
Having escaped the Golden Cage smoothly, Fu Yuqiu—who couldn’t fly—rolled his round, chubby body along until he made it out of the inner hall.
Outside: not a soul. No dragons, no mist.
Fu Yuqiu looked left and right, got his bearings, and rolled-and-flapped his way toward the Cloud Ladder of the Nine Heavens.
This is north, right? Fu Yuqiu rolled until his eyes spun, thinking blearily. North leads to the Cloud Ladder down to the Drifting Path. North… north.
Fu Yuqiu hopped and rolled through the empty Nine Heavens for ages without glimpsing so much as a shadow of the legendary Cloud Ladder—though there was an exquisite palace standing not far off.
Something’s off, Fu Yuqiu’s thoughts wandered. The Nine Heavens is this vast, and only three people live here?
By all rights, someone of the Immortal Venerable’s exalted station should have a whole retinue of attendants—yet in his two days in the Nine Heavens, apart from Yun Shou and Yun Gui, Fu Yuqiu hadn’t seen a single living person.
—The servants didn’t count. Fu Yuqiu had sneaked one glance and discovered those things were actually carved from stone.
Fu Yuqiu shivered. Don’t tell me the Immortal Venerable has some strange quirk, and that’s why no one attends him?
His head was full of horrifying scenarios when, just then, a heart-rending bird’s cry rang out from the distant palace.
In the dead silence, the shrill scream nearly scared Fu Yuqiu headfirst into the ground.
“Chirp—”
Fu Yuqiu’s feathers nearly burst off his body.
That was a bird?!
There are OTHER birds in the Nine Heavens?
After that agonized cry, silence fell again.
Fu Yuqiu, badly frightened, flapped and scrambled past the palace doors as fast as he could.
Only once safely away from that strange palace did Fu Yuqiu breathe a small sigh of relief.
But very soon, an even more pained bird cry came from behind him, like something under torture.
Fu Yuqiu jolted—and somehow, suddenly, remembered that oriole from before, tortured bloody by the Immortal Venerable yet still struggling to set off fireworks with its life force.
Listening to the cries behind him, Fu Yuqiu thought in terror: The Living Yama wouldn’t happen to enjoy tormenting others… would he?
He dared not linger. Run, run, just RUN.
Down the empty jade-paved road, one white ball rolled and scrambled all the way, then shot into a patch of grass.
But before long, Fu Yuqiu actually rolled his trembling way back again.
Fu Yuqiu was scared out of his wits, chirping nonstop to comfort himself.
“I’m not crazy. I’m just going back to look. One look… The Living Yama’s recovering at the Sweet Spring anyway. He can’t catch me.”
So telling himself, he climbed the steps and slipped carefully through the half-open palace doors.
Fireflies beyond counting greeted him in a dazzling wave, countless little lights faintly illuminating the surroundings.
The sound of the Wind-Divining Chimes rose slowly, like a breeze drifting past.
Fu Yuqiu edged further in—and clear as day, another bird’s mournful cry came to his ears.
He followed the sound—and froze.
The vast hall held no furnishings at all. The floor was covered, dense and endless, with spell formations; countless red cords crisscrossed overhead, strung with hundreds upon hundreds of shattered-jade Wind-Divining Chimes, every slight stir setting off a wash of lovely wind-bell chimes.
At the very center of the formation, streams of water converged from all directions, gathering into fine currents that plunged downward like a waterfall.
At the bottom of the falling water, a brilliantly colored bird lay dying, curled in the flow.
Fu Yuqiu’s pupils contracted sharply.
The bird’s plumage was magnificent—more gorgeous, more stunningly vivid even than the azure luan’s that day. It seemed to instinctively struggle against the water’s current, but at the slightest twitch, its wings would not move at all.
That beautiful bird—it seemed its wings had been deliberately, brutally broken?
Fury roared up in Fu Yuqiu’s chest, and he chirped out in rage.
“The Living Yama really does have a taste for torturing birds and beasts!”
In the water, the dying phoenix abruptly opened its eyes, revealing a pair of golden pupils like burning flame.
