Chapter Eighty One

Chú Róng let out a muffled sound. His jade-like fingers, white and luminous, gripped the man's collar and gave a small tug — as if wanting to push him away, and yet as if wanting to draw him closer. His slender knuckles, pale as green onion shoots, still glowed white even in the dim light of the alleyway.

Ning Yuan glanced down and pressed his towering, mountain-solid frame closer, his tongue pushing deeper.

Chú Róng's long body trembled. He tilted his snow-white neck back, his face flushed, his beautiful brows furrowing under what he could no longer bear — a sight that sent tremors through Ning Yuan's chest, his throat tightening again and again.

"Róng Róng." The man's voice was hoarse. He locked his hand around the waist of the person in his arms — his palm was large enough to cover Chú Róng's waist with ease — and only reluctantly released the lips he had ravaged into swollen redness, before burying his face in the fragrant curve of his neck.

Chú Róng felt a faint, stinging pain along the skin of his neck. He instinctively tilted his head to dodge — which only did as the man wished, baring the entire side of his neck, left entirely to be taken.

"Wh— where is it?" Chú Róng swallowed without thinking. His eyes were misted over, and between his lips slipped damp, orchid-scented gasps, his breathing rapid and uneven.

Ning Yuan fixed his gaze on the delicate rise and fall at his throat, the darkness in his eyes deepening still further. He closed his mouth around it.

Chú Róng's pupils quaked violently. He let out a heavy, gasping breath, and could no longer utter a single word.

A few steps away, the main street blazed with light. Lamp shadows crisscrossed and overlapped. People dressed in all manner of clothing fled in frantic panic, accompanied by wave after wave of violent tremors.

Chú Róng's body had gone soft. His mind was a muddle. Through the haze, he heard the commotion and instinctively looked outward. His blurred, unfocused eyes steadied slightly: "Wh— what's going on?"

Ning Yuan lifted his head, still reluctant, and glanced briefly sideways. He pulled Chú Róng's limp body closer and patted his back with a gentle hand, helping him steady his breathing.

Only once the person in his arms had evened out somewhat did he speak, voice still roughened: "The secret realm is collapsing."

Collapsing??

Chú Róng's crow-feather lashes fluttered. His eyes widened in disbelief. The outer corners were suffused with a vivid crimson flush. This was the largest and oldest secret realm in the entire novel — supposedly indestructible.

"How could the secret realm be collapsing?" More importantly, the dragon breath still hadn't been found.

"I did it." Ning Yuan's heart gave a warm surge, and he couldn't help but bow his head and kiss the corner of Chú Róng's eye.

The man's tone was far too casual, as though he were simply mentioning some trivial, unremarkable thing. Chú Róng's mind stalled for a moment.

His body was so weak he could barely keep steady on his feet. He gripped the man's collar with both hands, drawing on that support to tilt his head back, and asked in puzzlement: "Why?"

Ning Yuan looked down and met his gaze. Dark currents churned within the depths of his eyes, as though the whole of Chú Róng were being drawn into them: "You weren't by my side."

The moment they had entered the ancient land, the secret realm had severed every connection between him and Chú Róng — even the Soul-Capturing Bell had been rendered useless. He'd had no other choice but to be transported somewhere, search it, and tear it apart. Move to the next place, search it, tear that apart too.

For days and nights without sleep, Ning Yuan had lost count of how many places he had destroyed. But heaven does not fail those who are sincere — his lost treasure had finally returned to his arms.

So in order to find him, Ning Yuan had forcibly demolished the entire secret realm? Chú Róng's heart gave a small leap. He lowered his lashes slightly. A feeling he could neither name nor describe rose up inside him.

Ning Yuan held him close, pressing one kiss after another to Chú Róng's lashes: "What about you? How was your spiritual energy sealed?"

That, too, Chú Róng didn't know.

"I have no idea." Chú Róng made a token gesture of dodging, and when that didn't work, he let the man kiss him: "When the teleportation array brought me here, it was already like this. These past few days, I stayed put and didn't move, waiting for you to come find me."

It seemed the secret realm itself had been playing tricks.

But why had it targeted only Chú Róng?

The darkness in Ning Yuan's eyes deepened by degrees, though nothing showed on his face. He spoke with unrestrained praise: "You did very well."

Hearing it, Chú Róng felt only embarrassment. He wasn't a child.

Chú Róng pushed his hands outward and extricated himself from the man's embrace. He looked at the people on the main street fleeing in terrified chaos, his crimson lips parting: "Where is the dragon breath?"

Ning Yuan rolled his throat, raised a hand, and pointed outward.

Chú Róng understood what the man meant. He couldn't quite believe it: "The dragon breath is here?"

"Correct." Ning Yuan's voice was low and roughened.

From the moment he had been transported here, Ning Yuan had sensed a tremendously powerful force permeating the surroundings — vast and boundless, its dignity inviolable. It was almost certainly the dragon breath.

The dragon breath had been right there beside him all along?

Wait — the original novel had mentioned that Cen Yan was accidentally transported to the location of the dragon breath. And by sheer coincidence, Cen Yan was right here. That aligned perfectly with what was written.

When he thought of it that way, it was entirely possible.

As if to confirm his guess, the quaking outside the alley came to a stop. Thin, wispy tendrils of white mist, fine as spider silk, gathered from every direction along the main street, rising up toward the sky. Above everyone's heads, they slowly converged into a drifting, elongated mass of irregular white fog that appeared almost substantial.

The white mist's shape was turbulent yet didn't disperse. It looked like a breath exhaled on a winter's day. The invisible pressure radiating from it seemed to merge with heaven and earth themselves. Even with every shred of his spiritual energy sealed away, Chú Róng could feel the tension in the air.

So this was the true dragon breath?

"Who is making trouble in this one's domain?" From within the white mist, an aged and authoritative voice rang out, drifting and echoing through the main street. The pressure in the air thickened by another degree.

Unable to mobilize his spiritual energy to resist it, Chú Róng immediately felt a growing discomfort.

What was this?

In the original novel, there had never been any other presence described within the dragon breath.

Chú Róng furrowed his brow slightly. In the next instant, a tall figure stepped in front of him, and the crushing sense of pressure on him vanished entirely.

Chú Róng looked up. It was Ning Yuan.

One arm thrown out to block, shielding him from the front. The other hand holding a spiritual sword condensed from pure spiritual energy. The pressure radiating from his entire person surpassed even that of the being within the dragon breath.

The unknown being took notice of Ning Yuan as well. The entire mass of white mist surged and roiled like something writhing, as though preparing to launch an attack — yet for some reason, it held off and did not act.

"So it is you." The unknown being sounded as though it were in admiration, and as though in quiet wonder: "For the world of cultivation today to produce someone such as you — that is truly rare. And not unworthy of the price he paid when this one forcibly sustained these three realms for three hundred more years. Is that not so, Chú Róng?"

Wh— what?

Chú Róng's breath caught. He looked up at the white mist in the sky in shock. This unknown being knew him?

How was that possible?

He had stumbled into this book by pure accident — he was a soul from another world. By all reasoning, no one here should know who he was. Unless — was this unknown being referring to the original host?

Thoughts raced through his mind one after another, and he had not yet sorted them into any order when the voice rang out again beside his ear like a clap of thunder: "You are you, and you are also him — for you were never two people to begin with."

One— one person?

Did it mean him and the original host?

He and the Chú Róng of the original novel were the same person?

Absurd.

Chú Róng's first instinct was disbelief. He had clearly lived more than twenty years in the modern world. Though he had been alone for many of those years, the awards and certificates and commendations he had received, the management positions he had earned step by step — all of it was crystal clear in his memory. It could not be a lie.

The unknown being seemed to know what Chú Róng was thinking, and let out a long, regretful sigh: "It seems you have no memories of before. But no matter — the fact that you have come back is already the greatest fortune."

What memories of before?

What coming back?

The more Chú Róng listened, the more lost in fog he felt. He thought for a moment about what to call this unknown entity: "Does Senior know me?"

"Senior? This is the first time anyone has addressed this one so." The unknown being paused for several breaths, as though savoring the novel form of address: "By the rules of heaven and earth, you should call this one — the Heavenly Dao."

The Heavenly Dao?!!

Chú Róng drew a sharp breath. The unknown being within the dragon breath was the Heavenly Dao?!

Even Ning Yuan's expression shifted slightly. Over the past several hundred years, the world of cultivation had weakened step by step. Long ago, no one had been able to sense the power of the Heavenly Dao anymore. There were even rumors that the Heavenly Dao had dispersed three hundred years prior.

He had not expected the Heavenly Dao to have been concealing itself within the Dragon Vein Ancient Land.

Ning Yuan took a quiet step forward and wrapped his protection around Chú Róng more completely.

The Heavenly Dao took in his movement without reaction. Its aged voice came without inflection: "You need not be on guard against this one. This one will not harm him. On the contrary — this one preserved its last thread of spiritual awareness through the dragon breath, and has been waiting here for him."

The Heavenly Dao had been waiting for him?

Chú Róng furrowed his brow. The knot of doubt inside him was like a snowball rolling downhill — growing larger and larger. Then the Heavenly Dao's voice continued: "Three hundred years ago, evil and malicious energy surged across the land. The three realms were plunged into ruin; all living beings suffered. This one stripped him of his innate gifts, his fortune, his spiritual roots, and used them to suppress the evil energy — forcibly sustaining the three realms' lives. It is this one who owes him."

The great calamity of three hundred years past — every cultivator in the Immortal Sects had heard of it. To this day, no one knew how the evil energy had finally dissipated.

Yún Tán, kneeling on the ground, gazed up at the white mist high in the sky. The depths of his ancient-mirror eyes held an undisguised shock that was impossible to conceal. Even the scorching heat throughout his body had been completely forgotten. So it had been the Heavenly Dao that had intervened.

No wonder the world of cultivation had no record of it — even the Heavenly Secrets Sect had not been able to find so much as a single word.

But — spiritual roots? Innate gifts? Fortune? Wasn't Master Chú an ordinary person?

Cen Yan clutched at his chest, brow twisted in pain, his expression equally baffled. Where would an ordinary person get innate gifts?

Ning Yuan, however, thought of how not long ago Chú Róng had leapt from drawing qi for the first time directly into Great Completion of Golden Core, and the light in the depths of his eyes dimmed slightly.

Even now, in a world of cultivation world where spiritual energy had weakened this much, Chú Róng had managed that. It was not difficult to imagine what his innate gifts would have looked like three hundred years ago, at their full strength.

With gifts like that, it was no wonder the Heavenly Dao had been moved to act.

Chú Róng himself, by contrast, showed little change in expression. He had read the full text of the original novel and could glean some sense from its settings of how formidable his innate gifts had been — but having spent so long as an observer outside the story, the feeling didn't hit him with anywhere near the same force it struck the others.

The Heavenly Dao paid no attention to the varying expressions around it. The mass of white mist in the sky pulsed and swelled — and then, all at once, a single wisp of white mist broke free from the whole and shot directly into the center of Chú Róng's forehead.

A sharp pain flared in Chú Róng's mind. In an instant, he lost consciousness.

It happened so quickly that even Ning Yuan, standing right beside him, couldn't react in time.

Ning Yuan's expression changed. He spun around sharply — and found Chú Róng with his eyes closed, countless threads of white light streaming out from the tip of his brow, circling and spiraling around him, gradually weaving themselves into a white cocoon-shape that wrapped around him completely, sealing him inside.

"Róng Róng!" Ning Yuan raised the spiritual sword in his hand, ready to bring it down — then checked himself. Afraid of injuring Chú Róng inside the cocoon, he forced himself to stop.

Ning Yuan dispersed the spiritual sword and reached out with bare hands to tear the white cocoon apart — but his hands closed around nothing. It was as though what stood before him was nothing but empty air.