Ye Yang slumped back to the ground. If Little Thirteen hadn’t braced him from behind, he would have collapsed long ago—grievously wounded and battered by emotional whiplash.
At this point of utter despair, Ye Yang had no tears left. His eyes only ached, dry and stiff, as if they could no longer move.
Chilian felt the worst. If only he had thought of it sooner…
Old Li sighed quietly. He had experienced countless partings in his long life, but he never imagined he would witness the fall of two gods in a single day.
The others were lost in their own thoughts. Only Yan Yungui thought differently. He tossed the Soul-Restoring Herb into Chilian’s arms and scanned the crowd. Not a single ghost cultivator was in sight.
Makes sense, he thought. The ritual to resurrect a fallen god and the sacrifices for forbidden arts both require life force. Ghost cultivators wouldn’t qualify.
Not wasting a moment, he said, “I’ll go to the Underworld.” And with that, he vanished.
“Hey—” Old Li’s hand grabbed nothing but air. “That man acts way too fast.”
He shook his head. It’s no use. Yan Yungui had never even encountered the Underworld of their world before. He had no idea that finding a god’s spirit wasn’t so easy. If it were, Old Li would have gone himself ages ago.
Sure enough, the next second, Yan Yungui reappeared, looking utterly stunned. “How can I not find the Underworld?!”
The one who answered him was a calm-faced Ye Yang: “Only beings who have truly died can find the Underworld. Even ghost cultivators have to follow strict procedures to travel there. They can’t come and go as they please, let alone living people and demons like us.” After all, the very premise of ghost cultivation was that one’s soul had not properly passed to the Underworld after death—only after reaching a certain level of cultivation could one gain a foothold there.
“So that’s how it is. Truly, every world has its differences.” Yan Yungui sighed. “Ah, young friend, we’ve done our best.”
Ye Yang nodded in thanks, appearing to have fully accepted reality. But the usual light in his eyes was gone.
Old Li couldn’t bear to watch any longer. He turned away, picked out a few YCG staff members from the crowd, and directed them to contact those outside the secret realm to arrange proper medical transport for the wounded.
Everyone busied themselves. Ye Yang didn’t want to seem overly sentimental, so he joined in to help. Director Tu had also come down and took him along to set up a teleportation array dedicated to evacuating the injured.
They had built about a third of the large, slow-transmission teleportation array when Ye Yang suddenly felt a burning pain in his chest.
At first, it was very faint—almost an illusion. But soon, the heat in his chest grew more intense, until Ye Yang could no longer ignore it.
He reached up and touched something.
What is this…? He brought the hot object to his eyes and his heart jolted. Th-this is the scale Shen Ming gave him to protect him! It had long since merged with his spiritual sense. Why was it coming out on its own?
Chilian leaned in curiously, but before he could say a word, the scale suddenly burst into brilliant golden light. Ye Yang’s heart tightened, and he clenched his hand around it, but the scale quickly crumbled into powder on the ground.
Before he could grieve, his chest suddenly swelled. Ye Yang couldn’t help making an indescribable expression as, right before Chilian’s horrified eyes, a sleek, pitch-black serpent emerged from Ye Yang’s chest!
It was the Spirit Snake!
Ye Yang was so excited he could barely speak. He tried to grab the snake, but his hand passed straight through its body.
“What’s with the excitement, little rabbit?” The Spirit Snake’s tone was as smug and teasing as ever, as if nothing had happened in all this time.
He cut off the flood of questions Ye Yang was about to ask and continued, “Ah, time’s short, so I won’t chat. Listen up, little rabbit. I have a wisp of Shen Ming’s spirit here. I’ll put it into Xuanwu’s body. Once I’m gone, Xuanwu will return.”
The Spirit Snake drifted through the air. The moment he touched the Xuanwu’s shell, his body began to disintegrate, just like the scale before.
Just before he vanished completely, he left one final remark: “When that guy wakes up, little rabbit, you make sure to tell him this—I didn’t do it to save him. It’s just that if he really died, I, as his inner demon, couldn’t survive either. Really, it wasn’t for his sake…”
While Ye Yang was still processing this sudden turn of events, Old Li had already flown to his side. Vines wrapped around Ye Yang and the Soul-Restoring Herb and hurled them toward the Xuanwu. “Quick! Do as he said!”
·
Time seemed to rewind to just minutes earlier. Ye Yang touched the Xuanwu’s dull, stiff shell again. The cold beneath his fingers made him tremble. Then a weight settled on his shoulder—Ji Qing. He had linked his spiritual energy with Ye Yang’s, and a surge of abundant energy began flowing into the Xuanwu’s body.
Little Thirteen, Chilian, Yan Yungui… Everyone who still had strength left joined in.
Old Li stopped a few old-timers who could barely stand. “That’s enough. They’ve got it covered. Don’t cause trouble—if you pass out, someone will have to carry you out.”
“How did this happen?” Bai Jun asked as he channeled his spiritual energy.
Old Li barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “If you don’t know what’s going on, why are you charging in anyway?”
Then he explained, carefully gathering up the Soul-Restoring Herb, which had exhausted its cultivation and shrunk back into a seed. “No harm in telling you all now. That Spirit Snake is Lord Xuanwu’s inner demon. He used to be sealed in the YCG headquarters’ barrier.
He must have used the connection between himself and that scale from earlier to abandon his physical form and come here directly as a spiritual body. He was born from Xuanwu’s spiritual awareness. Over time, he gained a wisp of Xuanwu’s spirit. Using that wisp as a guide, along with the Soul-Restoring Herb, there’s a chance for Xuanwu’s soul to return.”
“Now it’s all up to Little Ye.”
Hearing this, Ye Yang frantically increased the flow of energy. The color drained from his lips in an instant—this was a truly death-defying effort!
Even Director Tu couldn’t help but set down his work and stare fixedly at the scene.
No one knew how long passed—it felt like both an eternity and the blink of an eye. Then, the gigantic Xuanwu on the ground suddenly vanished. In its place, the human form of Shen Ming lay motionless across Ye Yang’s lap. Ye Yang could hold on no longer and collapsed unconscious against Ji Qing.
Amid the chaos, Old Li saw it clearly. Though Shen Ming’s body was covered in wounds without a single unscathed spot, though he lay completely still and unaware, his chest rose and fell with the faintest breath!
He’s back!
“He’s alive!”
“He’s alive, he’s alive!”
“Really alive!”
“Hurry, hurry—lay them both flat!”
…
Amid the excited, noisy crowd, the “corpse” of Fu Ye, still kneeling on the ground, suddenly opened its eyes.
He was already dead. But because of the fallen god’s power and the forbidden arts, his soul could not pass to the Underworld. It would only dissipate completely.
He was a great demon, after all, so the dissipation would take some time. Fu Ye had thought he could quietly savor these final moments, savor the thrill of revenge. Who could have imagined…
Everyone was crowding around Shen Ming and Ye Yang. Even Old Li no longer paid any attention to Fu Ye, who had already self-destructed his demonic power, leaving him utterly defenseless and soon to vanish entirely.
Fu Ye knelt upright on the ground, his gaze slowly growing vacant.
He didn’t know what he was feeling now. Was it resentment? Anger? Sadness? Or… regret?
It was probably regret.
Even Fu Ye himself hadn’t expected that, at this moment, the thing he regretted most was not killing a god, nor practicing forbidden arts—but Ye Yang. That little sea hare he had never taken seriously from the very beginning.
It turned out his fleeting worry from before had merit. Ye Yang really was the variable.
Starting from the kidnapping of the fox clan’s cubs in Luoyang City, through Fu Ye’s carefully laid plans, all the way to this final battle—Ye Yang had become the unexpected variable time and time again. Fu Ye just never truly paid attention.
In truth, Fu Ye’s original plan hadn’t been so complicated. He had simply wanted to become stronger. Though he didn’t yet know who his enemy was back then, he was certain it was a great power.
As time passed, without any proper guidance, Fu Ye came to blame everything on that single drop of golden blood. It was the origin of all his tragedies, the sole force that had altered his destiny.
Having already gone to extremes, he grew increasingly paranoid. When he discovered that forbidden art, he strayed completely onto the wrong path.
He had his demon followers quietly and cautiously plunder innocent lives. He knew that the evil art required so many living beings that any large-scale action would alert all factions, making his plan nearly impossible to succeed.
But soon, he realized that their current pace would never work. The forbidden art didn’t just require a large number of lives—it required them all to be fed into it within a specific timeframe. They would never be fast enough.
Then came an even more despairing revelation.
Fu Ye finally confirmed who his enemy was. The only true orthodox god still walking the earth: Shen Ming.
That meant he had to master the forbidden art. Otherwise, revenge was impossible.
For the sake of revenge, Fu Ye had long since become a demon. He didn’t care how many lives were thrown into the furnace. So what if he cooperated with the heretical cultivators he so despised? As long as he could kill Shen Ming, he would do anything!
He had merely used the Vermilion Bird, already controlled by its inner demon. He had merely used greedy, profit-driven accomplices. He felt no burden whatsoever.
He had succeeded, even with all the unexpected variables—the Spirit Snake, the Soul-Restoring Herb. None of it mattered.
But who could have known that, at the very end, everything would be ruined by a tiny sea hare? He had never imagined that Ye Yang’s abilities could prove so useful.
·
The wounded had mostly been evacuated. Shen Ming’s condition was still critical, so he had to remain here. Ye Yang had woken up but refused to leave, staying close by. Old Li, as the highest-ranking and most powerful person on-site, stayed behind to deal with the secret realm and the altars. It was only then that he finally remembered Fu Ye.
He turned and was startled to see Fu Ye staring at him. Vines sprouted instinctively from his body. But upon closer look, he realized Fu Ye was indeed truly dead—only half of his dissipated soul was still holding his body together.
He breathed a sigh of relief and raised his hand to disperse the remaining half of the soul, just to be safe.
But Fu Ye’s corpse suddenly spoke: “I have something to say to Ye Ye.”
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