ATAVID CH108

Those voices were like curses, deeply branded into his soul. From then on, through Xuan Jin’s long and endless years, only the words “revenge” remained.

Another three hundred years passed, and Xuan Jin broke through his cultivation boundary.

Stepping into the Integration Stage, his cultivation was already enough for him to flatten the two great immortal sects of Buxu and Xuanjian.

In the same year he broke through, without exception, every single cultivator who had participated in the destruction of Tiandu met a violent death.

Fresh blood dyed the mountain gates and palace halls of the Buxu and Xuanjian sects red. The once high-and-mighty righteous sects were reduced to an earthly purgatory overnight, with blood flowing like rivers and corpses strewn everywhere, just like Tiandu in the past.

Xuan Jin… at the beginning, truly only wanted revenge.

But when he actually slaughtered those sanctimonious cultivators with his own hands and made them pay their blood debts, he fell into a state of bewilderment.

His great vengeance was avenged, but he possessed a profound cultivation in vain; he had no idea where to go or what to do for the rest of his life.

Later, he returned to Tiandu entirely alone.

However, the once bustling, lively Tiandu was no longer what it used to be. The carved beams and painted buildings had completely collapsed, the long streets and pavilions were reduced to broken walls and debris, and the wind blew through the ruins, leaving only a deathly silent wilderness. Not a trace of the past could be found.

Moreover, the Demon Realm was inherently a place where the strong preyed on the weak. After hundreds of years, a new main city had long been established, and no one remembered the destroyed Tiandu anymore.

The world was vast, yet he had no place to call home.

At that moment, an overwhelming sense of loneliness swallowed him whole. He missed his father and mother more than ever before.

Thus, he went to the Wangchuan River by himself.

He stood quietly by the bank of Wangchuan for a long time, watching the dark blue river water vanish into the endless darkness. A grim wind howled over the river as dead souls drifted and sank, but he could no longer find even a shred of a trace of his closest kin.

He had avenged his deep blood feud, but he had also lost the place he could return to forever.

Still later, he was branded a fiend by the Immortal Alliance. Surrounded and hunted everywhere, he accidentally strayed into the boundless yellow sands at the border of the Nine Serenities and the Demon Realm.

With flying sand and rolling stones filling the sky, yin energy interwoven with demonic energy, he fell into a nightmare and plunged into the Yellow Springs illusion.

His misplaced obsession, centuries of unyielding hatred, and bone-deep longing erupted entirely at this moment.

His obsession materialized, and his resentment condensed into a city. A City of Yellow Springs that belonged solely to him, sealing away all his past and regrets, rose abruptly from the ground, trapping him there lifetime after lifetime.

He originally thought that he might die amidst the yellow sands.

But within the illusion, he saw Qin Shiyue.

Qin Shiyue said, “Your Highness, it is time for you to wake up.”

On the very last day of the one-month duration of the Yellow Springs illusion, he broke through the barrier.

Looking at Qin Shiyue, who had become a ghost cultivator, he felt an inexplicable urge to laugh. But he was no longer the Xuan Jin of the past; he merely remained silent, finally asking, “Why are you here?”

Qin Shiyue said, “Your Highness, after Tiandu was destroyed, I turned into a ghost. I am now the Lord of the Nine Serenities. I originally intended to flatten the Buxu and Xuanjian sects with my own hands to avenge our clansmen throughout the city, but I didn’t expect Your Highness to beat me to it.”

He paused: “I followed Your Highness here.”

As the words fell, the two lapsed into silence once more.

The estrangement that had once spanned between them seemed insignificant before the destruction of Tiandu.

“Qin Shiyue,” Xuan Jin slowly stood up, looking at the city amidst the yellow sands that was conjured to look identical to Tiandu, and said, “From now on, do not call me Your Highness again.”

The little prince of Tiandu City had died long ago.

Qin Shiyue remained silent for a moment. Without the slightest hesitation, he bowed his head, bent his waist, and respectfully changed his form of address: “My Lord.”

Xuan Jin said nothing more.

“My Lord,” Qin Shiyue curled his lips and asked, “Where are we to go now?”

After seeing the City of Yellow Springs, Xuan Jin knew exactly what his obsession was. What he wanted was never a simple revenge. He wanted… he wanted Tiandu. A Tiandu that was exactly as it was, unchanged from three hundred years ago.

He turned back and looked at Qin Shiyue: “My father once told me a rumor. If one becomes a god, when the deity falls and offers themselves as a sacrifice, they can reverse the universe and turn back time. Qin Shiyue, I want to go back. Back to the Tiandu of three hundred years ago.”

Qin Shiyue said, “Alright.”

Yet for ten thousand years, there had never been word of any cultivator successfully ascending to godhood. The two of them paid a heavy price just for a vague and illusory rumor.

It wasn’t until two hundred years later, when Xuan Jin’s cultivation reached the sixth tier of the Integration Stage—this year, he was only two tiers away from ascending to godhood—that he sensed the call of the Deity’s Fall Ground. There lay the divine bones left behind when the Heavenly Dao ascended.

That time, the Deity’s Fall Ground manifested in the Cultivation World. No one knew that to open the Deity’s Fall Ground, one had to ignite one soul or one spirit of a cultivator at or above the Void Refinement Stage to serve as the key to open the secret realm.

Or rather, it wasn’t that no cultivators knew; some did know. It was just that the Integration Stage cultivators who could sense the location of the secret realm dared not try. This was because if they failed to find the divine bone inside the secret realm and lost a soul or a spirit in the process, the loss would outweigh the gain. On the other hand, those who were willing to try did not possess the cultivation required to sense the secret realm’s location.

Qin Shiyue ignited one of his own souls to send Xuan Jin into the secret realm.

Xuan Jin looked coldly at Qin Shiyue: “Do you know what you are doing?! You are already a ghost cultivator, and by losing a soul, do you want your soul to dissipate entirely?!”

Qin Shiyue’s figure had faded considerably, but he spoke nonchalantly: “Once you turn back time, this soul I lost will naturally return.”

Xuan Jin looked at him and fell into a long silence. Another heavy weight had been added to his path toward godhood.

He responded, “Alright.”

Fortunately, heaven favored him, and Xuan Jin found one of the divine bones.

The following year, Xuan Jin ascended.

In the five-hundredth year after the destruction of Tiandu, he finally ascended and became a god.

No one would have expected that the first person in tens of thousands of years to break through the heavenly realm and ascend to the divine throne would be a demon cultivator who hailed from the Demon Realm, his hands stained red with the blood of immortal sects.

After becoming a god, Xuan Jin destroyed his own divine core. The deity fell, and the time regression activated.

Xuan Jin thought: Heaven favors me, let time regress to before Tiandu was destroyed.

Regrettably, heaven did not hear his voice. Most likely as a punishment for him, the first time regression brought him back to the day before he was to slaughter the two great immortal sects.

“Ha,” Xuan Jin tilted his head up to look at the sky. “What? Do gods need to possess a heart of compassion to become gods? Heavenly Dao, do you want me to show compassion to them? But on what grounds?”

Xuan Jin refused to do so.

He made the exact same decision as the previous timeline, still slaughtering the Buxu sect and the Xuanjian sect.

Two hundred years later, he ascended again, and subsequently destroyed his divine core once more, initiating the second time regression.

This time, the regression timeline stopped on the day Qin Shiyue ignited one of his souls to open the Deity’s Fall Ground for him.

Xuan Jin watched quietly, finally coming to understand that he could never regress to before the destruction of Tiandu. Instead, with every regression, the timeline would push further forward. Even if he turned back time again later, the timeline he returned to would not be before Tiandu’s destruction; the greatest probability was that he would already be a god.

Therefore, after ascending for the third time, Xuan Jin no longer obsessed over harming himself to regress time.

He sought another path that defied heaven—

Using tens of thousands of resentful spirits as a guide, he laid out a Resurrection Grand Array, wanting to call back his deceased clansmen. As long as his clansmen could return to the world, they could rebuild Tiandu.

Using his status as a god, he brought disasters upon the five realms, allowing the flames of war to spread and corpses to litter the fields, solely to gather enough power from resentful spirits.

But in the end, when he strained everything to amass the tens of thousands of resentful spirits and ran the grand array several times, he still could not call back even half a soul from Tiandu.

The obsession of his entire life collapsed with a crash, and boundless despair swallowed him completely. Yet right at that moment, he saw the Heavenly Dao.

The depths of the Heavenly Dao’s eyes held a compassion that looked down upon all living beings as it spoke slowly: “They have long entered reincarnation and cast themselves into new lives. Why must you hold onto this so stubbornly? Xuan Jin, since you have already ascended to the divine throne, you must no longer interfere with the karma of the five realms. Even if you regress time once more, what you get in return will only be the exact same ending.”

Xuan Jin looked up, the depths of his eyes surging with a crimson malevolence and the accumulated resentment of a thousand years. He sneered: “Since you are the Heavenly Dao, where were you when Tiandu was destroyed back then? Now that I want to slaughter all living beings in the five realms, you hypocritically show yourself instead, vainly attempting to act as the good person who sets things right?”

The Heavenly Dao sighed softly, its tone carrying a hint of helplessness: “I cannot casually interfere with the established karma of the five realms either. Yet the present catastrophe of the five realms is entirely born of your personal selfish desire. The misery of all living beings is entirely caused by your heart.”

“So what?” Xuan Jin laughed frantically. “Using their lives to exchange for the return of my Tiandu clansmen—what is wrong with that? This transaction couldn’t be fairer.”

Hearing this, the Heavenly Dao’s expression darkened slightly, its tone turning a bit heavier: “When your deep blood feud was avenged back then, everything should have ended there. You only care about acts of obstinacy, but have you ever thought about whether your clansmen, who have long entered reincarnation, are truly willing to be forcefully dragged back from reincarnation by you, to be trapped in this thousand-year-old hatred and repeat the same disastrous mistake?”

Xuan Jin curled his lips: “How do you know they are unwilling?”

His eyes grew cold as he recalled the unspoken implication within the Heavenly Dao’s words just now.

An absurd guess surfaced in his heart.

Xuan Jin suddenly smiled. He looked directly at the Heavenly Dao and asked word by word: “Is it… as long as this disaster is not done by my own hands, you simply have no right to interfere, and no way to stop it?”

Without waiting for the Heavenly Dao’s response, the divine power around Xuan Jin suddenly reversed without the slightest hesitation. Once again, he chose to destroy his divine core, using his divine soul and life as a guide to forcefully tear through time and space, regressing the entire timeline.

The third time regression landed in the timeline one thousand nine hundred years after the destruction of Tiandu.

As expected, he was already a god. Perhaps at the same time he regressed time, the Heavenly Dao also used divine power to nurture the five realms anew. The earth regained its vitality, the mountains and seas were restored, and living beings bred and multiplied, thriving once more, as if that catastrophe and slaughter had never been anything more than an illusion.

This time, he no longer acted personally.

He hid outside the vision of all living beings, wandering through the crevices of yin and yang within the five realms, collecting resentful spirits and accumulating the power required for the Resurrection Grand Array bit by bit. At the same time, he was also searching for someone—the person he deemed in his heart to be the most suitable to serve as the blade in his hand.

Time flashed by, and another century passed.

This year, in the mortal world, he met a person.

This person was named Cui Mingjin, who came for the sake of his wife. Within his eyes rested a paranoia that Xuan Jin was all too familiar with. He thought: This is an extremely suitable blade.

Thus, he bestowed the hidden parasite to Cui Mingjin. This parasite was merely an introduction; what he truly wanted to give was that set of refining secret methods. He wanted to use Cui Mingjin’s hand to foster the birth of the Resentment-Born.

Once the Resentment-Born manifested in the world, a catastrophe would surely arise in the mortal world. The Heavenly Dao would be bound and unable to intervene, allowing him to take the opportunity to gather the endless resentful spirits of the world.

But on second thought, since it was a sharp weapon used to plot a grand scheme, how could it be worthy of having romantic attachments?

Therefore, he replaced the parasite that was originally meant only to transfer pain with the Bitter Ferry Parasite—a parasite that fed on love and affection.

This kind of parasite was highly interesting. It would gnaw away at affection when love reached its peak. Unless one party’s divine soul was completely obliterated and scattered, this parasite would remain without solution or break for eternity.

Everything proceeded according to his plan. Although Cui Mingjin did not use that parasite, he did indeed refine his wife together with the lives of the entire city’s commoners. The Resentment-Born manifested, throwing the mortal world into chaos.

Just when Xuan Jin thought he was about to succeed, he ran into Shen Peiqiu and Lan Yuanzhou. These two were perhaps the children of the Heavenly Dao, actually managing to join forces and slay the Resentment-Born beneath their swords.

The plan fell through at the final step, forcing Xuan Jin to activate the fourth time regression.

For the fourth time regression, perhaps because the accumulated number of regressions was too high, his own divine power was mostly damaged. This time, the timeline actually landed two thousand years after the destruction of Tiandu.

His original plan was to take advantage of the fact that Lan Yuanzhou had not yet been born in this lifetime and was completely unacquainted with Shen Peiqiu to completely sever the trajectory of their destinies ahead of time, eliminating the possibility of any future variables.

Unluckily, he encountered a cultivator. The Chief Disciple of the Lingxiao Sect, Wei Lan.

In the timeline of the previous regression, it wasn’t that Xuan Jin hadn’t considered him. He had once entertained the thought of enticing this exceptionally talented individual into the demonic path to be used for his own purposes.

However, this person cultivated the Great Dao of Unfeeling. His Dao heart was as pure and clear as ice, firm to the point of being flawless. He remained completely unmoved despite all kinds of enticements and was extremely difficult to control. After weighing the options repeatedly, Xuan Jin ultimately gave up on that notion.

Yet he hadn’t expected to encounter Wei Lan on his way to the Cultivation World.

With no way to avoid it, the two immediately clashed, every move being a fatal strike. In the end, both suffered devastating losses.

Wei Lan was gravely injured, his life hanging by a thread, and he plummeted into the mortal world. Xuan Jin also suffered a backlash; his divine soul violently destabilized, forcefully shattering one soul and one spirit. Utterly exhausted, he fell into a deep slumber, losing all consciousness.

This slumber lasted for a full twenty-two years.

By the time Xuan Jin woke up again, the world had long since changed, and things were completely different.

The very first instant he opened his eyes, an uncontrollable surge of monstrous rage and anxiety washed over him. He immediately thought of the chess game he had laid out for many years and thought of Cui Mingjin, deeply afraid that his absence midway had caused a fatal error in the overall plan, ruining all prior efforts. He wished he could hack Wei Lan into thousands of pieces.

Yet he unexpectedly discovered that things had worked out through a freak combination of factors, completely deviating from his expectations but striking a lucky blow that pushed forward step by step toward the direction he wanted most.

Wei Lan had actually fallen into Jinghu City and lost his memories. He became acquainted with and loved an ordinary mortal woman, moving his true feelings and birthing mortal affection.

Upon learning of this, the elders of the Lingxiao Sect, in order to force him to kill his wife to validate his Dao, forcefully pulled out the newly grown thread of affection within his body. Afterwards, realizing that the child he had conceived with that woman possessed a supreme ice spiritual root that was rarely seen in ten thousand years, they ruthlessly cut open the belly to extract the child, utterly disregarding any human decency or righteousness.

Meanwhile, the Cui Mingjin of this lifetime did not use the lives of the entire city’s commoners to refine with his wife like the last time. Instead, he fused this mortal woman with his own wife, refining a Resentment-Born with even greater resentment.

Tsk, the Cultivation World is truly rotten to the core. Thousands of years have passed, yet it remains just as nauseating as back then.

While thinking this, Xuan Jin went to the Lingxiao Sect with great interest. He wanted to see with his own eyes that Sword Venerable Wei Lan, whose Dao heart had been unbreakable in the previous round of the timeline. If the forcefully extracted thread of affection returned to his body, and if the crushed love and hatred surged back together…

Would he also fall into the demonic path, never to recover?

It was only a pity that at that time, Wei Lan was in secluded meditation.

However, he instead found another blade inside the water dungeon of the Lingxiao Sect—a weapon far more convenient and sharper than Wei Lan.

That person was Wei Lan’s biological son, who possessed a supreme ice spiritual root rarely seen in ten thousand years. He had been ripped from his mother’s body since birth, tasting all the bitterness of the world.

The thick demonic energy wrapping around his entire body, as well as the cold malice that was displayed without the slightest concealment, all suited his desires perfectly.

Xuan Jin was very pleased. Curving his lips, he used his identity as a god to choose Wei Xun.

He murmured within Wei Xun’s consciousness: “As long as you slay your inner demon seven times, you can become a Heavenly Demon Body, achieve great success in the way of the sword, obtain supreme cultivation, and henceforth become immortal and indestructible. That way, you can kill everyone who ever insulted and bullied you, kill Wei Lan, and slaughter the entire Cultivation World. Isn’t that great?”

Wei Xun curled his lips coldly. Facing the voice that suddenly appeared in his mind, he said sinisterly, “Beat it.”

Xuan Jin was not angry. Simply by looking at Wei Xun, he knew they were the same kind of person.

Using his meager remaining divine power, he manipulated Wei Xun’s consciousness, setting the path Wei Xun ought to walk in the future: “Since you hate them, go to the Demon Realm first and take the seat of the Demon Venerable. On the day your cultivation reaches great success, you will naturally have the ability to slay them all beneath your sword.”

Afterwards, he left the Lingxiao Sect.

This time, even though he knew that Shen Peiqiu and Lan Yuanzhou were once again entangled in karma, he did not feel the slightest bit of anger; he even felt it was inconsequential.

After all, he had already found the most perfect chess piece. With Wei Xun as this sharp blade, all other variables were nothing to be feared.

He set off to return to the mortal world to look for the one soul and one spirit that had been shattered and scattered into the mortal world during his great battle with Wei Lan.

After many twists and turns, Xuan Jin finally found his lost souls in a wild forest on the outskirts of the mortal capital city. After that soul and spirit fell into the mortal world, they reincarnated into Wen Xingyao. At that time, Wen Xingyao was ten years old.

He was stupid to death, being chased and bitten by two wolves, crying and screaming wildly.

Xuan Jin raised his hand to form a seal, saving the child who was shrinking on the ground and trembling. His brows knit slightly as he displayed his disgust without concealment, saying coldly, “Idiot.”

Wen Xingyao’s eyes were red, his face covered in tear stains. He was stunned for a long while before reacting, lunging forward to tightly hug Xuan Jin’s leg, refusing to let go, sobbing as he cried, “Waaah, t-this young master thought I was definitely going to die in the mouths of these two wolves today…”

Xuan Jin was highly resistant, shaking his leg in an attempt to throw him far away. Wen Xingyao, however, tilted his head up, his eyes looking at him brightly: “You are an immortal, right? In the future, can this young master cultivate to become an immortal just like you?”

“Mm.” Xuan Jin crouched down, guiding him patiently, “You want to cultivate?”

Wen Xingyao nodded heavily: “Yes!”

Xuan Jin said alright. Raising his hand, he lightly tapped Wen Xingyao’s forehead, transforming into a spiritual entity that surged into this mortal shell that was connected to his own source. When he opened his eyes again, Wen Xingyao was already Xuan Jin.

It was just that Xuan Jin could only use Wen Xingyao’s body to grow up. After staying in the mortal world for another ten years, Xuan Jin finally fully recovered his divine power. In the identity of Wen Xingyao, he went to Jinghu City, where he encountered Wei Xun, Shen Peiqiu, and Lan Yuanzhou.

Because in the previous timeline, Cui Mingjin had died at the hands of Shen Peiqiu and Lan Yuanzhou, Xuan Jin didn’t bother with Cui Mingjin anymore, treating him as a discarded piece.

Now, Wei Xun was more important.

Just as he had thought, under the influence of his divine power, Wei Xun had already slain his inner demon twice; there were five times left. But this time, he absolutely could not let Shen Peiqiu and Lan Yuanzhou ruin his plan again.

After deliberate consideration, Xuan Jin went along with the situation and entered the game, apprenticing under Shen Peiqiu to become the second disciple under his seat.

On one hand, he lurked by Shen Peiqiu’s side in the identity of a disciple, quietly watching the changes; on the other hand, relying on the divine power imprint left inside Wei Xun’s body, he coldly observed every step the youth took.

He watched Wei Xun kill Yun Shuangjian, send Lin Qing to the Wangchuan River, and finally head to the Demon Realm, walking step by step toward the path of the Demon Venerable he had set.

In order to drive a wedge between Shen Peiqia and Lan Yuanzhou, Xuan Jin gave Su Fuyao the so-called awakening system. Sure enough, in the end, Shen Peiqiu saw through it.

He also guided Wei Xun to rescue Shen Peiqiu, but after Wei Xun rescued the person, the matter just ended there. Left with no alternative, Xuan Jin could only personally take action, spreading countless fabricated, ambiguous rumors throughout the Cultivation World to stir up trouble between the Demon Realm and the Cultivation World.

Strangely enough, Wei Xun seemed to never care.

Such a situation actually suited Xuan Jin’s wishes perfectly.

The more Wei Xun focused on revenge and cultivation, the more he would walk down the chess game he had laid out, becoming the most perfect sharp blade.

This was the closest Xuan Jin had ever come to success because the resentful spirits gathered from Wei Lan destroying the Lingxiao Sect, combined with Wei Xun’s several fierce battles with the Cultivation World over these years—though still lacking a bit—had already caused the Resurrection Grand Array to begin operating.

He had planned for many years, lacking only the final step.

However, the sole variable appeared in Wei Xun, the very person he was most at ease with and had most meticulously manipulated.

In that great war between righteous and evil factions in the eighty-seventh year of Xiping, Wei Xun’s sword way had already reached the fifth boundary. As long as he broke through his inner demon two more times, he could become a Heavenly Demon Body to be used by him henceforth.

Unluckily, during that very battle, Lan Yuanzhou thrust his sword forward. Wei Xun could clearly have avoided it, yet he stood in place, completely motionless, forcefully taking that piercing strike through the heart.

The thousand-year chess game collapsed with a crash at this very moment.

Xuan Jin had never been so violently enraged. The Demon Fall Pearl had long since exhausted its source spiritual energy to save him back then, possessing no capability for resurrection after being used once. At this moment, even if he was a deity, he could not save the dying Wei Xun.

His eyes looked ready to split from hatred, the veins bulging across his entire body. He suddenly squatted down, a pair of crimson eyes staring fixedly at the dying Wei Xun, roaring with poisonous malice and madness: “Why?! Why didn’t you dodge?!”

Why did he seek his own death?

Was it because what he gave wasn’t enough?

He had personally given him the supreme power to rule the Demon Realm, given him the easily obtainable Heavenly Demon Body, and given him all the opportunities to climb to the peak. What on earth was he still unsatisfied with, why did he have to personally destroy all of this, destroying his thousand-year hope!

Wei Xun coughed slightly, blood flowing down the corner of his lips. He looked at the sky and smiled with curved lips.

The next moment, he slowly turned his head, a trace of bone-chilling coldness flitting through his scattered gaze. His tone was sinister and detached, as if he had finally broken free from some invisible shackle: “…I kept saying that some disgusting thing has been influencing me all along.”

Hearing this, Xuan Jin’s hatred almost shattered the void. At this moment, he only wanted to get an answer. No longer caring about hiding his traces, his divine power gathered, conjuring his physical form as he spoke with exasperation: “Give me an answer!”

It was clearly March, yet snow was falling in the sky again.

Beautiful hexagonal frost flakes rustled down.

Wei Xun raised a blood-stained hand to catch a piece of falling snow, saying nothing.

After a long time, just when Xuan Jin thought he would never answer, he heard him say: “Because it’s so boring.”

He smiled, feeling the vitality within his body dissipate bit by bit. Opening his thin lips, he said word by word: “It’s truly very uninteresting.”

In the end, Wei Xun died in the righteous and evil war of the eighty-seventh year of Xiping.

Xuan Jin’s plan this time also ended in an extremely absurd and laughable manner.

He had never been so close to success, yet he had also never failed so wretchedly at the final step. Therefore, he regressed time once more.

This time, the timeline he regressed to was the tenth year of Xiping.

In this year, Wei Xun entered the demonic path, falling into a state of being half-demon and half-ghost, his temperament cold and fierce.

Meanwhile, within the gap of regressing time and space, Xuan Jin unexpectedly captured a stray soul coming from a foreign world.

That soul was fragile and clean, rootless and drifting, floating within the crevices of the foreign world, making it the easiest to handle.

He himself could not explain what kind of thought resided in his heart, but he merely bound that stray soul together with Wei Xun in the form of Wei Xun’s inner demon.

He told that stray soul: “You only need to die seven times as his inner demon to help him achieve perfection in his sword way and great success in his cultivation. On the day the task is accomplished, I will help you reshape a physical body, allowing you to be reborn in this world and live a stable life.”

That was what he said.

At the same time, however, he thought with a retaliatory psychological mindset: Boring, is it, Wei Xun?

Then this time, I shall add a slightly different variable for you.

If you are constant companions year after year, for a decade or several decades, with your souls relying on one another day after day, will you develop an undue attachment and an unbreakable affection for this stray soul from a foreign world, the only one that stays close to you?

When that time comes, when you have a weakness, an obsession, and a person you would risk your life to protect, will you still easily think of dying?

Xuan Jin even could not help but chuckle softly in a low voice.

It would be best if he truly fell in love, truly tilting everything to care.

When the seventh reincarnation arrived, this stray soul was destined to have its soul dissipate entirely, whereas Wei Xun would bear an immortal and indestructible body, only able to be trapped eternity after eternity within the pain of being unable to obtain what he sought, having lost his love forever.

How pitiful that appearance would be.

He ought to taste this kind of pain too—paying the price for ruining his plan.

_

Author’s Note:

• Foreshadowing ①: The City of Yellow Springs appeared in Chapter 53.
• Foreshadowing ②: The reason Wen Xingyao wanted to practice cultivation was because he was saved by an immortal when he was young. The one who saved him was precisely Xuan Jin, which was mentioned in Chapter 21.