Chapter 26: A Phoenix Bathed in Fire Part 1

A phoenix spreads its wings from out of the flames.

The great hall was dead silent.

Yun Shou was scared speechless, looking at Fu Yuqiu as if watching a warrior.

Fu Yuqiu had been knocked half-senseless by the fall, and the sudden turn of events frightened him so badly his tears were even forced back in.

His little face pale, he propped himself on his hands and scrambled backward with all his might. But his limbs didn’t quite cooperate; after only two shuffles he collapsed again, right on top of his own long white hair, and the pain made him hiss through his teeth.

Water droplets fell slowly, their plink-plink echoing through the entire hall.

Knowing full well he’d caused trouble, Fu Yuqiu wished he could bury his face in his arms — as if that would spare him from facing the painful reality.

The Immortal Venerable was soaked to the bone, yet his bearing remained as stately as ever.

He didn’t look angry. After a moment of silence, water droplets still clinging to his feathered lashes, he even reached out a hand toward Fu Yuqiu with perfect good temper.

“Did you get hurt in the fall?”

Fu Yuqiu’s hair stood on end.

He would far rather the Living Yama explode at him than endure this madness — smiling so gently at him, even showing concern for him.

—Fu Yuqiu had always thought his older brother had a vicious temper, whipping him at the slightest disobedience; but compared with the Living Yama, his brother was a gentle spring breeze, softness itself.

The Immortal Venerable gazed into those pretty black pupils and found them brimming with terror.

Somehow, a chill passed through the Immortal Venerable’s heart.

He didn’t like that look.

Just then a wisp of cloud drifted over and murmured something by the Immortal Venerable’s ear.

His eyes flickered; setting aside that ill-timed emotion, he said mildly, “What’s to be afraid of? Would I eat you?”

Fu Yuqiu blinked.

Soaked like this, and he really — really wasn’t angry?

At that thought, Fu Yuqiu calmed down a little. Since the Living Yama himself had turned the page on the drenching, Fu Yuqiu couldn’t be bothered to stir up more trouble.

He said sullenly, “Not scared. I-I want to go back.”

“Go back how?” The Immortal Venerable’s robes and hair were dripping, yet he remained as composed as ever, watching him lazily. “Crawl back?”

Fu Yuqiu: “…”

Fu Yuqiu’s soul had been scattered for twenty years; he couldn’t control the limbs of this human body at all.

Getting back to the side hall might genuinely require crawling.

Sensing that the Immortal Venerable was enjoying the show, Fu Yuqiu, in a rare fit of boldness, bared his teeth at him. “None of your business.”

With that outburst, the suffocating weight clogging his chest finally dispersed completely.

Fu Yuqiu quickly recovered his optimism. But it’s fine — twenty years is nothing. They only went back to the Secluded Sound Valley once every decade or so anyway. What’s done is done; I’ll just find a chance to go down to the Lower Realm, look for them, and explain everything.

His heart was big enough. Having consoled himself, he planted his hands on the floor.

…He was actually planning to crawl back.

The Immortal Venerable: “…”

The sight of a great beauty crawling along the floor was too much to bear. Yun Shou looked pleadingly at the Immortal Venerable, telegraphing frantically.

The Immortal Venerable glanced at him. “Take him back.”

Yun Shou hurried forward, reaching out to help him up.

Only, Fu Yuqiu’s body looked as if it were spun from cloud-mist, and the thick-hided dragon, before even getting close, grew half afraid he wouldn’t control his strength and shatter him.

Yun Shou drew a deep breath, steeled himself, and was just about to scoop Fu Yuqiu up in his arms when the Immortal Venerable’s brow knitted sharply. A thread of Spiritual Power shot over directly.

Fu Yuqiu couldn’t hold back a startled “cheep-jip” as he transformed on the spot into a palm-sized White Sparrow, drifting lightly down into Yun Shou’s outstretched palm.

Yun Shou: “…”

Where on earth did that possessiveness come from?

Yun Shou didn’t dare say another word and scurried off.

After the two had left, the Immortal Venerable said to the cloud by his ear, “Let him in.”

Before long, the Azure Luan Junior Venerable Feng Xingyun arrived from outside, stepping into the great hall and bowing with the utmost respect.

“This son greets the Venerated Father.”

The Immortal Venerable crooked a finger, and several droplets of water on the jade table floated up, spinning endlessly around his jade-white fingertips.

He said absently, “Rise. What is it?”

Feng Xingyun said mildly, “Feng Beihe, in the Lower Realm, toppled the Heaven-Listening Tower built by the Immortal Alliance — and in doing so snapped the Alliance’s Spirit Vein clean in half.”

The Immortal Venerable raised an eyebrow.

Not even half a shichen had passed, and Feng Beihe worked fast.

“And? What of it?” the Immortal Venerable said flatly. “Won’t the Dragon Clan go spread the Spirit Rain to mend it?”

Feng Xingyun looked troubled. “That is so, but the Three Realms are crying out in outrage, and the Demon Race… has severed its vassalage to the Four Clans and gone over to the Immortal Alliance’s side.”

The Immortal Venerable was still toying with those water droplets, apparently unconcerned.

Feng Xingyun waited a long while for no answer. He looked up, brow creasing. “The water on you, Venerated Father…?”

“Mm.” The Immortal Venerable finally spoke, giving him a look that was half-smile, half-not. “Your dear younger brother’s doing.”

Feng Xingyun’s heart skipped.

The Immortal Venerable used his Spiritual Power to gather every drop of water from his body into his palm; his robes and ink-black hair were dry again in an instant, leaving only a ball of deep blue water floating in the air.

“Do you recognize this Spiritual Power?”

Feng Xingyun bowed his head. “Xingyun does not.”

The Immortal Venerable gave a soft laugh. “What, is it not even half a month since you handed the Linked Azure Water to the White Sparrow and sent him up to the Nine Heavens to kill me — and you’ve already forgotten?”

Feng Xingyun’s face went deathly pale and he dropped to his knees at once.

“Venerated Father, see clearly — I would never dare commit such a monstrous act.”

“Wouldn’t dare?” The Immortal Venerable flicked two fingers casually, and the blue water ball smashed hard toward Feng Xingyun. “You seem to dare quite a lot.”

Feng Xingyun didn’t dare dodge. He let the water ball slam into him, instantly soaking him through.

The Immortal Venerable said quietly, “The White Sparrow broke from his shell barely twenty years ago; his mind isn’t fully formed. If you hadn’t orchestrated it, how would he have the Linked Azure Water, or the audacity to attack me with it?”

Feng Xingyun kept his head lowered, water dripping steadily down his face, inwardly cursing: Idiot.

He had given the White Sparrow the Linked Azure Water intending for him to place it in the Sweet Spring of the Nine Heavens.

And this idiot had gone and poured the water openly onto the Immortal Venerable??

“Venerated Father, calm your anger…” Feng Xingyun’s thoughts raced as he explained, “As you said, the White Sparrow’s mind is incomplete. Perhaps he misunderstood my meaning.”

“The Linked Azure Water was obtained by me from Feng Beihe. It can counter your Phoenix Fire and prevent you from achieving Nirvana.”

Feng Xingyun found a plausible account in an instant. “I feared Feng Beihe meant to harm you, so I seized it, intending to use the White Sparrow’s hands to deliver the Linked Azure Water to you. But the White Sparrow — whether directed by someone or genuinely deranged — took matters into his own hands and attacked you…”

In a few short sentences, Feng Xingyun first hinted that Feng Beihe harbored malicious intent.

Then he subtly implied that the White Sparrow, too, seemed to have designs of his own.

Washing his own hands completely clean.

The Immortal Venerable stared at Feng Xingyun steadily, listening to this seemingly airtight account, then slowly reached out and clapped his palms together gently, saying with a smile that wasn’t quite a smile, “Xingyun, you may not be the most capable of the Three Clans — but you are certainly the cleverest.”

Feng Xingyun’s expression didn’t change. “Every word Xingyun has spoken is the truth.”

Whether the Immortal Venerable believed any of it was unknown. He seemed in a slightly better mood. “Kneel outside.”

Feng Xingyun bowed. “Yes.”

With that, he rose and walked out of the hall, obediently kneeling outside its doors.

He had barely settled into position when the Nine Heavens’ snow-white cloud-mist abruptly darkened into storm clouds. With a crackle of thunder, torrential rain came pouring straight down.

Feng Xingyun was instantly drenched into a drowned rat.

But the Azure Luan Clan’s element was water, and they didn’t dislike water — at worst, a human body soaked through was merely uncomfortable.

Feng Xingyun knelt in perfect propriety, eyes lowered, feeling something extremely odd in his heart.

The Immortal Venerable’s behavior today didn’t seem like anger.

It was more like…

Redirected fury over something else?

Who had provoked him?

In the side hall beside the great hall of the Nine Heavens, Fu Yuqiu stood on the window lattice, staring in astonishment at the sudden downpour outside.

Looking out the window, he could vaguely make out a familiar figure kneeling outside the empty great hall.

Feng Xingyun?

Fu Yuqiu’s eyelids twitched.

Feng Xingyun had come to the Nine Heavens?

No wait — Feng Beihe had come up just now too. Could it be that the Cloud Ladder from the Nine Heavens to the Lower Realm had reopened?

Yun Shou had run off to the front hall to watch the show after putting him down, leaving the side hall empty.

Fu Yuqiu’s heart suddenly pounded wildly.

If he seized this chance and made for the Cloud Ladder…

Fu Yuqiu had already resolved to simply stay in the Nine Heavens, borrowing the tiger’s might to cow others — but a life spent perpetually beneath someone else’s heel, trembling in fear, was no life for a plant at all. And those “twenty years” that had passed in the snap of a finger weighed on his heart like a hammer blow no matter what.

He weighed his options back and forth, and finally decided to take the risk and go see the Cloud Ladder.

If his luck held and the Cloud Ladder was still open, he could escape down to the Drifting Path;

but if his luck was terrible, he’d just play cute and cheep that he’d been wandering for fun and gotten lost.

The moment Fu Yuqiu thought of “twenty years,” his chest ached so bitterly he could stand it no longer. Throwing caution aside entirely, he leapt off the window lattice and ran for the Cloud Ladder through the pounding rain.

Rain fell even in the great hall of the Nine Heavens.

The Immortal Venerable sat in his cloud chair, letting the cold droplets fall on him.

He was a phoenix whose Spiritual Power was of the fire element — and yet, for some reason, he liked standing in the rain.

Before long, Yun Gui suddenly arrived from outside, brow knotted. “Venerable One, the Little Highness is headed toward the Cloud Ladder.”

The Immortal Venerable’s closed eyes snapped open, golden and sharp.

“The Cloud Ladder?”