After Death, I Became My Shijie’s Palm-Sized Birdie – Chapter 51
by Little PandaDisaster
Her sword intent has been exposed — how is she supposed to explain it to Wen Qiwu?
“Are your hands hurt?” Yu Hengwei cradled Wen Qiwu’s hands in her own, so anxious she had half forgotten her sense of propriety.
Wen Qiwu was unhurt — her hands were numb, at most. The one who had actually been injured was Yu Hengwei.
A fresh gash had opened across her wrist, blood sliding down that pale, flawless skin.
“…” Without a single word, Wen Qiwu drew Yu Hengwei’s wounded hand over, took wound salve from her storage ring, and smoothed it over the cut. Anyone with eyes could see how furious she was — let alone Yu Hengwei.
Yu Hengwei had barely opened her mouth when Wen Qiwu’s beautiful eyes glared her back into silence. Wen Qiwu always carried herself with gentle, kindly warmth — she would never glare at anyone unless she was truly angry beyond bearing. And before outsiders she habitually layered on an extra measure of distance, so seeing her like this now made her seem all the more vividly alive, quietly drawing the two of them closer together.
“The power inside the Phoenix Lord Tomb won’t harm me. There’s no need to be so nervous next time, and no need to take blows for me — that power doesn’t know you from anyone.” Wen Qiwu ground her back molars, yet in the end she still made a point of giving the warning.
“I understand.” Yu Hengwei’s voice was the very picture of obedience, as if the words had truly sunk in. But when the next threat descended, she would in all likelihood toss that promise beyond the nine heavens1.
“If the Phoenix Lord Tomb means to refuse you, you’ll be repelled even if you force your way in. Do you still want to try now?” Worry crept into Yu Hengwei’s voice.
She had assumed the Phoenix Lord Tomb would never reject Wen Qiwu — Wen Qiwu carried the bloodline of the Phoenix Clan, after all. And yet this was the result.
“Let me try again.” Wen Qiwu walked two more steps forward and planted herself in the middle of the rift. She glanced back at Yu Hengwei, hovering watchfully at her side. “Fellow Daoist Yu, do stand a little farther back. Don’t let it hurt you again.”
“But…” Yu Hengwei plainly could not rest easy letting Wen Qiwu stand that close to the rift alone, yet she could not hold out against the look in Wen Qiwu’s eyes — which was, frankly, somewhat terrifying.
In the end, Yu Hengwei retreated the smallest of distances. Her brows tipped faintly downward, and a trace of grievance settled over the cool, aloof beauty. She looked for all the world like some household pet that had been cast aside.
Wen Qiwu very nearly softened. She hastily warned herself not to look any longer, then hardened her heart, turned her head away, and fixed her eyes on the spatial rift before her.
This time she released the immortal power that was her birthright as a phoenix. When that power flowed into the rift, it truly met with no rejection.
So she wrapped that power around herself and tried once more to press close to the rift — but the instant her hand was about to touch it, the power within shoved her out yet again.
Wen Qiwu staggered back several steps, straight into Yu Hengwei’s arms.
“Hss…” Wen Qiwu drew a sharp breath through her teeth. Her hand smarted as though scalded, but there was no real harm done.
“Are you all right?” Yu Hengwei searched her from head to toe, twice over.
Wen Qiwu shook her head to show she was fine.
“This place most likely refuses entry to everyone — human, yao, demon, or anything else. Myself included.” Wen Qiwu suspected her plan had come to nothing. Her identity had brought her no convenience whatsoever; she would simply have to find another way.
Then how had Yu Hengwei first “wandered in” back then? It probably had not been wandering at all, but forcing her way in — hadn’t it?
The moment Wen Qiwu felt the rift’s power for herself, she understood that the tale of an accidental entry was fit only for soothing children. A place guarded this jealously — and an outsider simply stumbled in? She found it far more likely that Yu Hengwei had wrenched the rift open by force; only, the power inside was stronger still, and it had soon hurled her back out.
She herself bore the phoenix bloodline, so the backlash against her could never be too severe. But what had Yu Hengwei endured, back then?
A fine, needle-prick ache welled up from the bottom of Wen Qiwu’s heart.
“Let’s think of another way. No more attempts for now.” At the sight of Wen Qiwu’s scalded-red hand, Yu Hengwei could not keep the heartache from her voice.
“Mm. Let’s see whether there’s another route.” Unless the Demon Emperor of that ancient day had never meant for later generations to enter at all, there had to be another way into the Phoenix Lord Tomb. But where to begin? Wen Qiwu sank deep into thought.
Just then, Wen Qiwu caught a thread of damp, rank stench on the air. Unbeknownst to them, the concentration of water-attribute demonic qi in the atmosphere had climbed to an extraordinarily dense level!
Her heart was suddenly beating too fast, as though something ill-omened were about to happen.
“Fellow Daoist Yu — do you smell that unfamiliar demonic qi in the air?” Ever since the demonic beasts’ rampage, the heart of the Endless Tree Sea had been wreathed in foul haze, the air never entirely free of a faint demonic taint. But this felt nothing like before. It was as if some monster had drawn very close to them — so close that its reek struck them full in the face.
Yu Hengwei had already noticed. Strangely, though, the smell came from every direction at once, as though it saturated every corner of the Endless Tree Sea, and so she had no way to fix its position.
Wen Qiwu brought out her Nine Tribulations Bow and stood ready, poised to meet the enemy at any instant. Yu Hengwei kept up her guard even as she hunted for the monster’s tracks. Something, she felt, must have slipped past her notice.
Drip, drip…
A fine, pattering fall of “raindrops” struck the ground. Yu Hengwei’s head snapped up toward the sky — her pupils contracted, and her hand was already on her sword hilt.
“Ngh!” Wen Qiwu abruptly clutched her head and swayed. Alarmed, Yu Hengwei tore her gaze from the heavens and caught her at once.
“Fellow Daoist Wen!” Her heart very nearly stopped on the spot.
“Something… something’s wrong!” Wen Qiwu’s face had gone somewhat pale. In her mind, wail after wail of birds came keening, one upon another.
The trial grounds — something had gone wrong there!
Wen Qiwu guessed right. The Feather Tribe’s trial grounds had already become a scene of hellish devastation.
Only moments before, the Feather Tribe’s younger generation had plunged one after another into the trial grounds under their elders’ guidance. The Kings had only just watched their children wing their way into the trial space — they had not even had time to breathe easy before a smear of black shadow appeared within the grounds.
The Kings never even saw clearly what it was before several young Feather Tribe members came dropping down, soaked in blood. Before the bodies could touch the earth, that shadow flickered past once more — and the corpses were gone, leaving behind nothing but a stray pair of feathers.
The Feather Tribe members sent to the trial grounds were, for the most part, the standouts of their clans’ young generation, each clan’s future hope and mainstay. Every death among them was a knife gouging flesh from the Kings’ hearts!
“Quick! Open the gates of the trial grounds again! Every child taking part in the trial is to return at once!” one of the Kings bellowed.
Frantic to save their own children, they could think of nothing else — and never imagined that this single act would very nearly keep every Feather Tribe soul here in the Endless Tree Sea forever.
“Buzz…”
The gates of the trial grounds were thrown open once more, and panic-stricken Feather Tribe members came streaming out. Yet just a hair short of flying home to their own encampments, a stream of black, viscid liquid snared their bodies.
The Kings had no time even to reach them. The instant that viscid liquid clung to them, the Feather Tribe members were extinguished.
They became part of the black liquid — and turned to attack their own companions.
The Kings plunged straight into the trial grounds and ripped that mass of black viscid fluid to shreds. But no sooner was that done than the black rain came pattering down once more outside.
Every raindrop that struck the earth swelled in the blink of an eye into the very thing the Kings had just torn apart.
How many drops were there in that sky? The Kings could not kill them fast enough. At last, some among the birds sensed the wrongness overhead and turned their eyes upward.
One glance, and even the widely traveled Kings went white in the face.
“That’s…” Directly above them, a phantom shadow had unfurled to blanket the whole of the grounds. It looked like a formless expanse of sludge, as though it had just been dredged up from some stinking ditch.
But a very, very long time ago, this thing had very nearly destroyed the entire Cangwang Realm.
“The True Demon?!” From every angle, that silhouette was unmistakably the True Demon the Phoenix Lord had shot down in ancient times!
This was the thing that had brought the Phoenix Lord to her fall. The Feather Tribe’s hatred of it was etched into their bloodline inheritance, and the Kings in particular carried vivid memories of it.
That was a being of the God Realm! Even the Phoenix Lord of that age had paid a devastating price to shoot it down! Though it had been dead all these years, with barely one part in a hundred of its strength remaining, they — mere Golden Immortal Realm cultivators — might well prove no match for this monster. Worse still, without ever realizing it, they were now trapped inside the True Demon remnant’s very body, and already stood at a disadvantage.
The battle had not even begun, and the Kings’ fighting spirit had already dimmed a notch.
“Heh…” Hidden far off, the true culprit behind it all — Bone-Eroding Demon Lord — quietly dissolved his presence. And then the True Demon’s remnant soul went berserk.
To digest every last morsel of “food” within its body, it attacked all that lived. Yu Hengwei brought out artifact after artifact to meet the assault; though her stores were many, they were still somewhat wanting against that True Demon remnant soul.
Little by little, the remnant seemed to realize that these two were troublesome, and it committed still more of its strength against Yu Hengwei and Wen Qiwu.
Between Yu Hengwei and Wen Qiwu, the latter was plainly the weaker. The monster’s remnant, acting on near-pure instinct, seized upon Wen Qiwu as its point of breach.
“Swoosh!”
Wen Qiwu faintly caught the whisper of something splitting the air — but the instant the sound reached her, it was already too late. The venomous black thorn was a hair’s breadth from her back!
“Clang!” A wash of scarlet light rose in Yu Hengwei’s eyes. Her sword left its sheath, and a single streak of sword qi flashed past, pulverizing the black thorn outright.
She was panting lightly, her body still trembling. The sword intent was loosed — and beneath it, heaven and earth alike cracked open along their seams. Pierced through in that same stroke was the soul body of the True Demon remnant. The monster shrieked again and again in pain, and its tide-like assault ebbed.
Gripped by terror, she had struck purely on instinct, without a single thought for anything else.
Only when she came back to herself did Yu Hengwei remember — her sword intent had been exposed. There was no such thing under heaven as two identical sword intents. How was she supposed to explain this? She lowered her eyes, not daring to read the look on Wen Qiwu’s face.
Someone that clever would be certain to see the problem.
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