The power within the Phoenix Inheritance was the mightiest fire-attribute Spiritual Power in the Three Realms. The Fire Poison in the White Sparrow’s body had nowhere to hide, and struggled before dissolving.
The Spirit Core inside Fu Yuqiu shuddered violently, and he sank into deep sleep.
When consciousness returned, Fu Yuqiu was still burning up, dazed and disoriented.
But the miserable clash of water and fire was gone, leaving only a gentle warmth, like the lingering heat of a burnt-out bonfire.
His meridians were brimming over, and the rich Spiritual Power of the Nine Heavens was drilling into his Inner Mansion.
—This feeling felt strangely familiar.
Muddled, it took Fu Yuqiu a long while to remember: back when the Secluded Grass had formed its Spirit Core, it had been this same bizarre sensation of fullness, as if he might sprout another leaf just to contain it.
What’s going on? Fu Yuqiu thought, bewildered. Doesn’t this White Sparrow shell already have a Spirit Core? Why form another one?
As his thoughts wandered, a gentle voice came from beside him: “Awake?”
Fu Yuqiu looked up.
The Phoenix was beside him with lowered eyes, his golden pupils beautiful as firelight.
Only then did Fu Yuqiu realize he was lying in the palace “imprisoning” the Phoenix, atop dense arrays of activated Spell Formations, with red-corded Wind-Divining Chimes overhead ringing out now and then.
Countless fireflies danced within the formation, their glimmering points of light like wildfire across an open plain.
The hall, so eerie and sinister before, somehow took on a touch of poetry.
Fu Yuqiu’s fevered brain had turned to mush, and he couldn’t think why he was here. His first reaction upon seeing the Phoenix was—the Phoenix Inheritance!
Consciousness dim, he dully opened his beak and felt around for a long while before realizing the Inheritance had, at some point, been plucked away again.
With no reason left, Fu Yuqiu’s emotions ran entirely unchecked. He let out a “chirp” and wailed between sobs, “Living Yama… not a person! Took the plume away again!”
The Phoenix: “…”
The Phoenix hadn’t expected this to be his first words upon waking, and couldn’t help laughing. “You mean the Phoenix Plume?”
Fu Yuqiu whimpered. “Mm.”
“Look behind you,” the Phoenix prompted.
Fu Yuqiu obediently hopped around and turned to look.
Nothing there.
The Phoenix: “…”
The Phoenix said, exasperated, “Turn your head, not your whole body.”
“Oh.” Fu Yuqiu turned his head—and found a golden-red Phoenix Plume stuck in his snow-white feathers.
Fu Yuqiu’s wits were scattered; his tears came fast and went faster. Beaming, he clamped the Phoenix Plume in his beak and snuggled toward the Phoenix.
“Ph-Phoenix, for you, it’s for you.”
The Phoenix gazed down at that golden-red plume for a long time. Though he knew perfectly well the White Sparrow had no ulterior motives, the vigilance of one long schemed against still wouldn’t let him fully trust a stranger who was kind to him for no reason.
“You don’t want it?” he asked.
Fu Yuqiu chirped softly, bewildered. “What?”
“This is the Phoenix Inheritance.” The Phoenix stared into Fu Yuqiu’s clear, deep-pool eyes and said, word by word, “Refine the power within it and you could soar to the heavens in a single bound. You could form a Core, and smoothly assume human form.”
For birds and spirit beasts in cultivation, whether one could form a Spirit Core and assume human form was the measure of progress.
As if taking human form would draw a line between oneself and those untamable beasts, setting one apart in lonely splendor.
Since breaking from his shell, the White Sparrow had never been able to form a Spirit Core. Though he bore the title of “Little Highness” in the Azure Luan Clan, he could not escape the gossip.
Useless. Little glutton.
He didn’t even have a name.
For one who had endured cold stares and torment for lacking a Spirit Core, wasn’t the thing he longed for most precisely such an opportunity—to form a Core, assume human form, and wipe away his shame?
As he thought this, the Phoenix’s gaze—originally only a test—grew colder and colder.
Such a temptation, no one could resist.
Seeing Fu Yuqiu seem to be pondering, the Phoenix added, “The Snow Deer Clan Master says there is Fire Poison in your body. Only the Phoenix Inheritance can drive it from your meridians.”
Fu Yuqiu seemed to shudder, looking conflicted, even his bean-black eyes squinting into slits.
The Phoenix said coldly, “Even so, you don’t want the—”
“Human form…” Fu Yuqiu suddenly murmured, cutting him off.
The Phoenix: “Yes. Human form.”
No bird or beast didn’t long for human form. This White Sparrow too would—
Before the thought finished, Fu Yuqiu suddenly shrieked “Chirp!” and snapped angrily, “Don’t want human form! Human form! No!”
The Phoenix: “…”
The Phoenix wondered if he’d misheard.
Though Fu Yuqiu’s senses were clouded, his instinctive revulsion toward humans had his tail feathers bristling with rage. He buried his head in the Phoenix’s warm down, grumbling, “Human forms are hateful. I’d rather be a bird forever than be human. Hateful. So hateful.”
The Phoenix: “…..”
He began to suspect Fu Yuqiu really was just a bird.
How could any bird or beast not want to become human—not even want to fly?
And afraid of heights, no less.
Fu Yuqiu’s head was too muddled, and he didn’t know how to curse properly, so he could only stumble over “hateful, so hateful” in circles.
The Phoenix fell silent.
With Fu Yuqiu stirring things up like this, even that last little thorn of doubt in the Phoenix’s heart dissolved into nothing.
Fu Yuqiu hummed his refusal of human form and tried to jam the plume in his beak into the Phoenix’s feathers, as if the plume had become synonymous with that dreadful phrase “human form” and he had to be rid of it at once.
The Phoenix sighed without sound and accepted the Phoenix Plume.
Only then did Fu Yuqiu relax, flopping back onto the Phoenix’s soft feathers, disoriented and half asleep.
The Wind-Divining Chimes overhead gave a soft chime.
The Phoenix Inheritance within the plume was drawn by the Phoenix and slowly channeled into the formation beneath the ground. As the talisman patterns worked, it transformed bit by bit into cloud-like Spiritual Power that slipped silently into Fu Yuqiu’s meridians.
The Phoenix’s blaze-hot Spiritual Power devoured the Fire Poison, while the “Spirit Core” in his Inner Mansion—the Linked Azure Water—also despised fire-attribute power, instinctively trying to drive the Phoenix’s energy out.
The Phoenix watched coldly as the Linked Azure Water shrank into a tiny thread of water, scurrying through Fu Yuqiu’s meridians in a futile attempt to dispel the Phoenix Fire.
Stupid thing.
This Linked Azure Water was rather sinister—it seemed purpose-built to extinguish the Phoenix Nirvana Fire. Once Linked Azure Water entered a Phoenix’s Inner Mansion, it was tantamount to severing the path of the Phoenix’s Nirvana rebirth.
To kill the undying Phoenix, once and for all.
Before, the Phoenix might have deliberately guided the Linked Azure Water into his own body.
But now…
He looked at the White Sparrow leaning against him—so frail that a single press of his five fingers could crush him to powder—and, somehow, suddenly drove his Spiritual Power hard, striking the Linked Azure Water inside the sparrow’s Inner Mansion in an instant.
The Linked Azure Water convulsed violently. It seemed to have gained sentience; it did not answer to Fu Yuqiu’s control at all, and only surfaced in moments of life and death.
“Since you wish to masquerade as a Spirit Core…” the Phoenix said flatly, “then be a Spirit Core forever.”
The Linked Azure Water trembled, sensing the killing intent on the Phoenix, and screamed silently.
It instinctively tried to flee the White Sparrow’s shell, but before it could leave the Inner Mansion, a pressure like a snow-capped mountain pinned it down. Its nascent consciousness plunged into a deep pool too deep to see the bottom of.
The light faded from before its eyes, little by little.
The consciousness it had so painstakingly gained clung to that last thread of light like a single string; as it sank ever further, the string drew ever tighter.
Tighter and tighter…
Until, with a faint “snap.”
The string broke.
The Linked Azure Water became, thoroughly, a “Spirit Core” without any consciousness, meekly curled up within Fu Yuqiu’s Inner Mansion.
The Phoenix withdrew the plume and looked down at the sleeping white bundle.
The Fire Poison in Fu Yuqiu’s body had been burned away entirely by Phoenix Fire, and with the Linked Azure Water turned into an obedient Spirit Core, the vast Spiritual Power finally flowed from the Inner Mansion into the sparrow’s meridians.
The White Sparrow whom the Three Clans called a useless little glutton finally had a Spirit Core.
Fu Yuqiu, knowing nothing of all this, slept all the deeper.
After a whole night’s turmoil, the red sun rose beyond the hall, dawn light pouring through the mists over the Nine Heavens.
The Cloud Ladder was unsealed once more. The Yuanchu Presiding Venerable Ming Nan was escorted from the Nine Heavens, but instead of returning to the Drifting Path, he turned and descended to the Mortal Realm, heading for the Yuanchu Clan.
“Venerable One, shall I keep watch over him?” Yun Gui asked, brow furrowed. “He now knows the Yuanchu Young Clan Master was never your savior. If he tells the clan…”
The Immortal Venerable had spent the entire night transferring Spiritual Power to Fu Yuqiu, and a trace of weariness showed between his brows—but his mood seemed excellent. He lazily flipped through a yellowed, archaic book, his golden eyes sweeping across the dense columns of characters without pausing, pages flying past.
“No need. However much he fears me, he will serve me,” he said absently. “The Yuanchu Clan would gladly make Ming Nan a soul-sacrifice for that Young Clan Master of theirs. If he loses my protection, his fate will likely be worse than death.”
Yun Gui nodded thoughtfully.
“Is this every soul reincarnated through the Nether Realm in the past month?” The Immortal Venerable finally finished the thick Reincarnation Registry. “Any omissions?”
Yun Gui: “The Six Paths of Reincarnation in the Nether Realm are all governed by the Ten Yama Kings. There has been no error in millennia.”
The Immortal Venerable closed the Registry and knitted his brow in thought.
Yun Gui asked carefully, “Is the Venerable One looking for someone?”
“Mm.” The Immortal Venerable absently tapped two fingers on the armrest of his cloud chair. “Ming Nan said the Yuanchu Clan divined that he was reincarnated. But in the Registry…”
Yun Gui: “Who is it?”
What sort of person could so occupy the Venerable One’s thoughts?
The Immortal Venerable only said, “I don’t remember.”
He had passed through Nirvana; only feelings remained, and his memory was shattered past all reading.
Yun Gui was momentarily at a loss, unsure how to ease the Venerable One’s burden.
Just then, Yun Shou came running from the sleeping chamber, gasping: “V-Venerable One, the White… the Little Highness isn’t doing well!”
The Immortal Venerable rose sharply.
In the sleeping chamber of the Nine Heavens:
The little White Sparrow lay curled on the vast bed, too groggy to control his newly formed Spirit Core. From time to time a blade-of-grass-shaped column of water would spring from his body and vanish again.
In no time at all, more than half the bed was soaked.
The Immortal Venerable strode in and flung aside the layered cloud curtains—only for a jet of water to come flying at his face.
He raised a hand to block it; the water, charged with the Linked Azure Water’s power, stopped just short in midair.
Sensing the Linked Azure Water’s ferocity, Yun Shou flew into a rage and blustered, “Insolence! He means to harm the Venerable One!”
Yun Gui: “…”
Yun Gui clapped a hand over her brother’s mouth, grinding her teeth. “Shut up already!”
Did he not see that this White Sparrow had even slept in the Venerable One’s own bed?
Not a shred of situational awareness.
Fu Yuqiu still frowned, uncontrollably spouting strings of water into the air.
The Immortal Venerable stepped forward to examine him and frowned.
It wasn’t the Fire Poison flaring. It looked more like…
He was about to assume human form?
