Chapter Eghty One

"This one has already said — this one will not harm him." The Heavenly Dao spoke to stop Ning Yuan. Whenever the matter involved Chú Róng, the Heavenly Dao's tone always softened.

The muscles of Ning Yuan's jaw clenched tight. His hands gripped into fists, the veins on the backs of his hands standing out in sharp relief, the knuckles pressed white.

Before a cultivator ascended, no one could transcend the limits set by the Heavenly Dao — not even Ning Yuan, whose cultivation ran as deep as his did. He was, nominally, first beneath all three realms, yet he could still only stand by helplessly and watch as harm came to the person he loved, right before his eyes, without being able to do a thing.

Ning Yuan drove his nails into his own palm, letting the hard edges break the skin and sink into flesh. Bright red blood flowed out between his fingers and dripped down.

And within the white cocoon, Chú Róng lay with his lashes closed, as though an invisible force were buoying him up — lifting his entire body so that his toes left the ground.

"Chú Róng." The aged and authoritative voice rang out in his mind. Chú Róng's consciousness began, little by little, to come back to him.

His lashes, like butterfly wings, trembled several times. But his eyelids refused to open no matter how he tried. His limbs, too, were rigid and unresponsive — as though he had been hit with an immobilization spell, completely unable to move.

What was happening?

The scene before he had lost consciousness surged back into his mind. Chú Róng's heart gave a small chill, and some wariness rose instinctively — but in a short while, it all subsided.

The Heavenly Dao was the master of heaven and earth. Killing him would be as easy as turning over a hand. Whatever he did, none of it would make any difference.

"You — your nature is even more clear-eyed than it was three hundred years ago." The Heavenly Dao, seeming to sense the change in Chú Róng's heart, said with something like wonder: "And that is not unworthy of this one having sent your remnant soul to another world to heal and grow."

Chú Róng's heart shook. Did another world mean the modern era?

"Yes." The Heavenly Dao confirmed it: "Three hundred years ago, when this one stripped you of your spiritual roots, your fortune, and your gifts, you should have dissolved into heaven and earth completely. This one could not bear it — so this one gathered a remnant thread of your soul and sent it to another world."

Could it really be true, then — everything the Heavenly Dao had said before — that he and the original Chú Róng of the novel were truly the same person?

Chú Róng's emotions surged and churned, like countless great waves crashing against one another. A thought struck him, and he posed the question in his mind: "Was my transmigration into this book also done by Senior?"

Otherwise, he had simply stayed up too late and taken a stumble — how could that alone have been enough to bring him into the novel the moment he opened his eyes?

His parents had died young. Chú Róng had clawed his way through life alone. For a long stretch of time, he had barely been able to eat regularly. His stomach troubles and low blood sugar had never let up, and he had suffered quite a few episodes — had even lost consciousness on more than one occasion. None of those had been any less serious than a simple fall. Why had none of those brought him here?

"That is correct. It was this one who summoned you back." The Heavenly Dao paused briefly, a sigh threading through its voice: "However, this one's power was insufficient. This one could only act through a medium."

Chú Róng's mind moved quickly. In a moment, he understood what the Heavenly Dao meant: Tiānyáo Chronicles was the medium.

He had transmigrated into a book, it was true — but he had merely taken on the name of the cannon fodder protagonist of that novel. Everything that was Chú Róng was already his: the appearance, the body, and even the gifts.

That, then, explained why he and the original host looked exactly alike.

As for why it had to be the Chú Róng within Tiānyáo Chronicles — Chú Róng turned it over carefully, and a guess surfaced in his mind: everything he had possessed had been stripped away three hundred years ago. His fortune and the rest must have been left utterly depleted — not a thread remaining. A good fate was probably never going to fall to him.

And in the original novel, the cannon fodder protagonist Chú Róng had been born into lowly circumstances. Though he held the nominal title of the eldest illegitimate son of a marquis's household, he had been completely unwelcome — sent away to a remote manor to scrape by as a child, and nearly had his life taken by a fire there. Grown somewhat older, he had had a puppet gu planted in him, had tried to use Cen Yan as a way to save himself, and instead had set off a whole chain of events that followed — ending in a fate of suffering endlessly, his bones fed to wild beasts.

Looking across the full text of the novel, Chú Róng's destiny could not be called anything other than wretched. It matched his fate perfectly.

"You really do draw upon one to understand ten." The Heavenly Dao said with admiration. It had only offered a single nudge, and Chú Róng had worked out the whole of it himself — his comprehension and his cleverness were exactly the same as they had been three hundred years ago, without a single difference.

Chú Róng could hardly believe it — he had made a wild guess and gotten it right? But everything the Heavenly Dao had done for him had been done with nothing but painstaking care.

"Thank you, Senior." The words of gratitude Chú Róng spoke were deeply sincere.

"There is no need to thank this one — it is this one who should be thanking you." The Heavenly Dao's voice softened further, becoming almost like that of a gentle elder: "Three hundred years ago, every living being across the three realms should have perished when this one did. If not for you — by what means would the three realms have endured these three hundred years?"

As the Heavenly Dao's words settled, the white cocoon surrounding Chú Róng peeled off a single thread of white silk and bored into the center of Chú Róng's brow. In the next instant, countless unfamiliar images surged up inside his mind.

The first image.

Atop a soaring, towering mountain peak, white clouds drifted past. An ancient, elegant residence nestled there, beautiful as a painting.

In the main chamber's warm inner room, a beautiful woman with a pale complexion leaned against the chest of a handsome man, her gaze full of warmth as she looked at the newborn infant in her arms.

"My wife has worked hard." The man lowered his head and pressed a kiss to the beautiful woman's forehead, his voice full of tender care.

The beautiful woman curved her lips into a smile, raised a hand to gently stroke the baby's cheek, and lifted her fingers to her nose to sniff: "Husband — our little Róng smells so wonderful."

The man leaned in and took a sniff at her fingertips. A faint, delicate orchid fragrance. He let out a full, hearty laugh: "This little one — born with a natural fragrance, truly. What a pity he isn't a girl; otherwise, he and the Ning boy from Qīngxū Sect would make quite the pair."

The beautiful woman pinched his arm lightly, caught between laughter and tears: "What nonsense are you talking — Ā Yuān is only two years old, and by all accounts his spiritual roots are exceptional; he's the apple of Qīngxū Sect's eye."

The man let out a dismissive hum, entirely unconcerned: "Qīngxū Sect is a great sect, yes, but the Chú family is no lesser. A cultivation family of refinement spanning hundreds of years — our household may be small, but every member in it is gifted beyond ordinary measure. We're no worse than Qīngxū Sect. And my son couldn't possibly be worse than that Ning boy."

These were… his parents?

Before Chú Róng could look any longer at the faces in the image, a second image flashed forward.

Still in the residence atop the mountain peak. Still the same man and woman from the first image. The man was holding a child, adorable as carved jade and snow — a little taller than the child in the second image — and entered the residence with a broad grin, his mouth stretched nearly back to his ears in delight.

"I always said — how could a son of mine ever be lacking! Born with extraordinary talent, practically made for cultivation — Róng'er, be good; tomorrow Father will start teaching you to cultivate!"

The beautiful woman walked beside him and shot him a glance at those words — though it carried no real sharpness, and was gentle and lovely instead: "Róng'er is only one year old. Cultivation can wait a little longer."

"But." The beautiful woman's brows and eyes dropped, and her lovely face was filled with worry: "The path of cultivation is a hard one. I would rather Róng'er grew up as an ordinary person — carefree, without worry, for a whole lifetime."

"Nonsense!" The man didn't agree with this view at all: "The Chú family's ancestral teaching for hundreds of years has been to slay demons and protect all living beings. Róng'er is a man — and the young master of the Chú family besides. How could he not shoulder that responsibility?"

……

The images intercut, complex and jumbled. Chú Róng glimpsed them in passing — like watching someone else's life flash before their eyes.

When the images in his mind finally came to rest again, six years had passed within the scene.

Atop the peak, a man and a woman stood holding swords, gazing up at a sky roiling with dark tribulation clouds. Before them was a child in fine embroidered silk robes — a little taller than in the second image — his snowy cheeks still carrying the last softness of early childhood, but already enough visible in his features to glimpse the devastating beauty he would grow into.

"Be careful, my wife — the tribulation lightning is about to descend!" The man's expression was serious as he spoke in a low, urgent voice.

The beautiful woman nodded, gripped her spiritual sword, and at the moment the first bolt of heavenly lightning struck, she swept her sword across to meet it!

Qi drawing complete.

Early Qi Refinement.

Mid Qi Refinement.

……

As the tribulation clouds sent bolt after bolt crashing down, the injuries on both their bodies grew more and more severe. The expressions on their faces grew more and more unbelieving: "Great Completion of Golden Core…… Nas— Nascent Soul?!"

……

Nascent Soul at seven years old??

Chú Róng could barely believe his own eyes. Were his innate gifts really this terrifying?

Before he could recover from the shock, the images in his mind began to race forward again at dizzying speed. When they came to rest once more, the scene had changed completely.

Heaven and earth were shrouded in darkness. The once-grand and flourishing Chú family residence had been reduced to rubble. The grounds inside and out were heaped with corpses. Blood flowed in spreading rivulets, dyeing the earth a deep, soaked red.

A slender young man stood before the ruins. Cold rain seeped into his clothing, drenching it. His black hair was soaked through and plastered against his pale face. His bloodless lips were clamped tight together. His jaw trembled uncontrollably.

His sleeves hung down, half-covering white jade hands. His fingertips were dug deep into his palms, blood seeping out between his fingers.

And yet the young man seemed to feel no pain at all. His strikingly beautiful face — identical to what it would become in adulthood — was like jade shattered into fine chips, or a thin layer of snow clinging to a branch, fragile enough to fall at any moment.

"Why?" The young man asked in a hoarse voice. There was no living person anywhere around him. It wasn't clear who he was asking.

"Fate." A single word reached Chú Róng's ears out of thin air. The Heavenly Dao's voice.

What was fate?

Was fate that all living beings were meant to die? That the Chú family was meant to die? That his parents were meant to die?

"What if — I refuse to accept fate?" The young man spoke each word with deliberate weight. Rain streamed down his face. From his drenched lashes hung a single crystalline drop.

The Heavenly Dao was silent for a moment. Then, slowly, it spoke: "Would you be willing to make a bargain with this one? Give this one your spiritual roots, your gifts, your fortune, your fate — and this one will protect the peace of the three realms."

The Heavenly Dao paused briefly, then added: "This protection can last three hundred years at most. But you will dissolve into heaven and earth, unmourned and unremembered, without even the chance of rebirth."

"Three hundred years?" The young man murmured softly. To exchange one person's everything for the peace of countless living beings across three realms for three hundred years — that was worth it.

The young man hesitated barely at all and answered immediately: "All right."

The Heavenly Dao, however, did not act at once. Instead, it asked: "No regrets?"

"No regrets." The young man took one last, long look at the shattered, ruined Chú family residence, then slowly closed his eyes — the resolution of one walking calmly into death's arms: "The Chú family's ancestral teaching is to shelter all living beings. I am the young master of the Chú family. This is my duty."

……

So this was the truth behind the dissipation of the evil energy three hundred years ago?

A wave of sorrow, long overdue, swept over Chú Róng's chest and submerged him. Beneath his closed lashes, a crystalline tear slid from the corner of his eye, beyond his control.

The Heavenly Dao saw it and let out a long, slow sigh: "This one does not know whether what this one did was right or wrong. Only — at the moment of this one's complete dissolution, this one wished to give you a small measure of recompense."

"Dissolution?" Chú Róng didn't understand. Hadn't he reached an agreement with the Heavenly Dao? Why, then, was the Heavenly Dao also dissolving?

The Heavenly Dao explained in measured tones: "Heavenly fate cannot be altered. Three hundred years ago, though this one protected all living beings of the three realms, this one could not escape dissolution. The power gained through the exchange with you was used first to suppress the evil energy, and second to sustain the peace of the three realms. Now, this one is nothing more than a single thread of spiritual awareness."

It had lingered on, barely holding itself together, because it had wanted to do something for Chú Róng.

"But three hundred years have passed, and the gifts and fortune this one stripped from you have nearly been exhausted. The seal on the place where the evil energy was suppressed has also begun to loosen."

So the evil energy in Qingyang — it had escaped from that seal?

Chú Róng sat in thought for several breaths. Not knowing whether it was the influence of those past memories, he asked a question that ran contrary to the principles he had lived by for more than twenty years: "Is there a way to resolve it?"

"Seal the evil energy back into the place of suppression and station someone to keep watch over it. That is sufficient." The Heavenly Dao answered: "When a new Heavenly Dao is born, the evil energy will naturally dissipate."

As one waxes, the other wanes — this was the immutable law of heaven and earth in motion.

So that was how it was.

Chú Róng let out a slow breath. At the very least, the living beings of the three realms would not have to relive the catastrophe of three hundred years ago.

"To see you once more, this one……" The words were unfinished. The Heavenly Dao suddenly stopped, and when it spoke again, a note of gentle teasing had crept into its voice: "This one cannot even wait a few quarters of an hour. If this one doesn't let you out soon, he is going to go mad with anxiety."

He?

Chú Róng's heart gave a small, warm stir. A face of god-like beauty surfaced in his mind in an instant: Ning Yuan?

The moment the man's name slipped through his mind, Chú Róng felt the rigidity in his limbs begin to fade away, little by little. The heaviness dragging his eyelids down also began to lift, degree by degree.

The thick white cocoon surrounding him unraveled like a tangled ball of thread, wisps dissolving away strand by strand, gradually revealing the young man it had enclosed.

"Róng Róng?"

Ning Yuan's tall figure jolted to a sudden halt. The spiritual energy gathered in his palms radiated a pressure that made the air around them visibly warp.

The outer corners of his eyes were faintly tinged with red. The moment the last thread of the white cocoon dissolved, he flew forward and locked his arms around the half-floating figure — with such force that even Chú Róng, whose consciousness had not yet fully returned, felt the pain of it.

Chú Róng's brow furrowed slightly. He opened his luminous dark eyes, and looked up at the man before him in a daze, his voice low and soft and lingering: "Ning Yuan?"