After Death, I Became My Shijie’s Palm-Sized Birdie – Chapter 57
by Little PandaBurial
Shijie, where is my mother?
The star-strewn night sky inside the Phoenix Lord Tomb turned from murk to brightness, and the cracks riddling that “night sky” grew all the more conspicuous.
The Phoenix Lord glanced at the fissures overhead, then dipped her head and gave her daughter’s back a gentle peck. Before Wen Qiwu could react, she sank into deep sleep in her mother’s embrace.
The Phoenix Lord gazed at her for a long, reluctant while, then fastened a necklace around her daughter’s neck before loosening her wings and handing Wen Qiwu over to Yun Heng.
A good portion of her belongings had been lost in the Immortal-Demon War all those years ago, but fortunately she had kept a few things back. This necklace was a storage Immortal Artifact, and inside it lay everything she had left in the world.
Yun Heng gathered her shimei carefully into her arms, and only after confirming that Wen Qiwu was merely asleep did she hold her a little tighter.
【Take her away from here.】the Phoenix Lord said to Yun Heng.
Yun Heng’s hold shifted slightly. She looked at the Phoenix Lord with worry and hesitation. “What about you?”
Did the Phoenix Lord not intend to leave with them?
【The Demon Realm has already set its sights on this place. Once you have all gone, I will destroy it — completely.】
She was only a wisp of a remnant soul, one that could not even meet the prerequisites for nirvana. In that case, she would most likely perish together with this place.
The Phoenix Lord did not fear death. She only regretted, a little, that the time she could spend with her daughter had been so short.
Yun Heng’s heart sank. She understood what the Phoenix Lord intended — but how could her shimei ever accept it? She had only just been reunited with her birth mother, and now she was to accept her mother’s dissolution?
“But if you are gone, then when Ah Que wakes up…” Yun Heng looked down at her shimei, whose sleeping face was less than peaceful, and her heart tightened. Their blood was linked; Ah Que had probably sensed something too.
【When she wakes, it will be you who stays at her side in my place.】The Phoenix Lord knew her daughter would grieve, but that was all right. There would be someone wholeheartedly devoted to her, watching over her, and sooner or later her daughter would walk out of her sorrow.
【If not for the daughter I never stopped thinking of, this remnant soul would have scattered long ago. What little time I could spend with her had been wrung from fate — I have no right to ask for more.】Against a complete divine soul, the wisp she now was amounted to less than one part in ten. Phoenix Nirvana was a miraculous art capable of reversing life and death, but only if the phoenix’s soul remained relatively whole; otherwise the risk of failure was extreme. The Phoenix Lord had once burned away part of her own soul, so this battered remnant had even less chance of success.
【After she wakes, you must stay with her. Keep her company.】the Phoenix Lord instructed, unable to quite set her mind at ease.
“She would rather it were you at her side.” Yun Heng’s voice was heavy.
The Phoenix Lord smiled. Her daughter was a child who loved to act spoiled — she could almost see Wen Qiwu tugging at her hand, swinging it back and forth, begging her to stay with her.
But before a parting ordained by life and death, even immortals and gods were helpless.
“Your Majesty…” The eyes of the Feather Tribe kings reddened. Their sovereign was now down to a single remnant soul that could not undergo nirvana — and soon even that remnant would be beyond saving.
【Qingluan, tens of thousands of years have passed outside, haven’t they? How are you still such a crybaby, just like when you were little? Dry your tears — don’t let the juniors laugh at you.】the Phoenix Lord said to the Qingluan King.
The Qingluan King’s tears only fell faster at the comfort. For once, the kings united to put their heads together, searching for any method that might save their sovereign, who existed now as nothing more than a remnant soul. Alas, even those well-traveled, knowledgeable kings of the Feather Tribe could come up with nothing.
Yun Heng was likewise turning over methods in her mind, but the greatest danger and obstacle was the Phoenix Lord Tomb itself. “Phoenix Lord, must this place be destroyed now? Could it not be sealed first — buy some time?”
Once this place was destroyed, the Phoenix Lord’s remnant soul would face the shock of spatial collapse head-on.
【There is no time. Look at the sky. Even if I do not destroy it, it will destroy itself. If I act with my own hands, I can at least keep this space under control; if it collapses on its own, I fear it will spill disaster into the world outside.】The Ten Thousand Bone Mound within the tomb was the residue left by the Immortal-Demon War ten thousand years ago. If the resentment of those things seeped out, it would surely bring devastation upon all living beings.
【A year at the longest, a few days at the shortest, and it will destroy itself.】
Only then did Yun Heng notice the sky, split into a spider’s web of cracks, with an unsettling power seeping faintly through the fissures. No wonder the Phoenix Lord meant to ruin this place.
But still…
Yun Heng looked at the person in her arms. Her shimei treasured her bonds — and this was her own birth mother. If she woke to find the Phoenix Lord gone, she would weep for a long, long time.
She could not bear to see her shimei cry.
The great phoenix’s phantom condensed into a human form. She walked to Yun Heng’s side and gently rubbed her daughter’s cheek — and as her hand withdrew, a single tear slid from the corner of Wen Qiwu’s eye.
Yun Heng’s heart ached. She wanted to wipe that tear away for her shimei, but the Phoenix Lord’s hand was faster.
【What a tearful child. I can hardly set my mind at ease about her. Little Friend Yun, I’ll be troubling you to look after her from now on.】The Phoenix Lord’s voice brimmed with attachment and reluctance.
She knew Yun Heng would agree. Having said her piece, the Phoenix Lord rose to her feet and reached out her hand — and the Nine Tribulations Bow suddenly flew out of Wen Qiwu’s keeping of its own accord, landing in her palm.
This bow had been the Phoenix Lord’s weapon from the very start. The moment it settled into her hand, it blazed with a radiance it had never shown before, humming with excitement, its aura of slaughter on full display.
The mountainous heaps of bones seemed to faintly sense the danger. The Phoenix Lord Tomb began to tremble, the bones grinding against one another with a sound like a threat.
At the very bottom of that sea of corpses lay the True Demon’s intact body, suppressed beneath them all — and that thing was the most restless of everything here. The Phoenix Lord drew back the bowstring and loosed an arrow. It pierced through layer upon layer of bone and detonated the True Demon.
Wen Qiwu’s strength was still a touch lacking, so she had never been able to draw out the bow’s true power. In the Phoenix Lord’s hand, it finally displayed its full might as a Divine Artifact.
“Boom!” A blinding white light flashed and was gone.
A vast crater yawned amid the bones. The True Demon at the very bottom had its head blasted away. It had assumed the Phoenix Lord was occupied with other matters and paying it no mind — never knowing that from ten thousand years ago to this very day, the Phoenix Lord had never once relaxed her watch over it.
The dust and shockwave of that arrow came rushing at them. Yun Heng raised a barrier, letting none of it touch her shimei.
She stroked her shimei’s face, her fingertips brushing past the corner of Wen Qiwu’s eye, where a faint dampness still lingered.
Yun Heng held her in her arms, gently rubbing her back. “Shijie will think of something. Don’t cry.”
The Phoenix Lord used the Nine Tribulations Bow to carve a path out for everyone. 【Go.】
The birds couldn’t bear to leave — so the Phoenix Lord threw them out.
And then there remained only…
Hmm? Why had the temperature here dropped?
The Phoenix Lord whipped her head around. She saw Yun Heng still cradling her daughter, wreathed in flame-like frost, drawing out what looked like the power of a divine soul from within her own body to fill that frost.
【Little Friend Yun?!】
The Phoenix Lord stepped forward — and found herself standing in frost.
To be able to press down her fire with frost — the child of the Human Race was truly capable. But this looked like… a secret ritual?
The “flames” around Yun Heng condensed into a single transparent, formless thread. One end was bound around her own wrist; the other, soundless and unseen, had fastened itself to the Phoenix Lord’s wrist.
The Phoenix Lord’s brows knitted. 【Nonsense!】
She had long since died. A soul in her state was hardly worth Yun Heng expending her own divine soul’s power to fill the bottomless pit in her wound.
“Phoenix Lord, for Ah Que’s sake — you must hold on.” Yun Heng’s face was white as paper, but her gaze was resolute, and for a moment the Phoenix Lord could find no harsh words to say.
【Oh, you child…】
She finally understood why her daughter, even in anger, could never bring herself to speak harshly to her shijie.
But the girl had already paid so steep a price, and the thought rose in the Phoenix Lord’s heart: to fight for it, just this once. Even if the time she could spend with her daughter would still be short, if she could weather this tribulation, she might yet live to see her daughter on her wedding day.
The fracturing of the Phoenix Lord Tomb’s space deepened step by step. The Phoenix Lord drew back the bowstring once more — this time her target was the crack-riddled sky. As the arrow flew, the shattered space was swallowed at once by the spatiotemporal turbulence outside, and those monsters that had once considered themselves without peer were shredded to nothing by the currents.
Yun Heng and Wen Qiwu were sent out by the Phoenix Lord. They appeared at the bottom of the cliff, and the Feather Tribe kings immediately crowded around, grief undisguised in their eyes. Seeing that Wen Qiwu had not yet woken, they lowered their voices to ask after her condition.
Learning that Wen Qiwu had only fallen unconscious, they breathed out in relief. But how were they to tell the Little Highness about the Phoenix Lord? None of them had the heart to let the Little Highness wake straight into something so cruel.
Yun Heng coughed softly, a rusty sweetness rising in her throat. She glanced at the thread on her wrist — it had fulfilled its mission, and had already snapped.
She looked toward the rift entrance of the Phoenix Lord Tomb. That place was quiet, utterly still, without the slightest anomaly.
Yun Heng waited a long, long time, and cold seeped slowly into her heart.
Had it failed?
“Mm…” Wen Qiwu stirred in Yun Heng’s arms, then slowly opened her eyes.
At the sight of the clear sky outside, her expression was dazed for a moment — and then it dawned on her that she had already left the Phoenix Lord Tomb; outside, it was still daytime.
Why had she suddenly fallen asleep? She had been… Wen Qiwu thought back, and then she understood: her mother had put her to sleep.
Why would Mother do such a thing?
She looked at her shijie, then at the Feather Tribe gathered around… There was no trace of her mother’s presence.
Clever as she was, she needed no one to tell her what had happened. Tears welled in Wen Qiwu’s eyes.
“Shijie, where is my mother?” She looked at Yun Heng, and her shijie’s gaze held pain and tenderness — again and again she seemed about to speak, and could not find the words.
The Feather Tribe averted their eyes, grief plain upon their faces. Their silence gave her the answer.
Yun Heng did not know how to comfort her, so she could only gather her into her arms. Wen Qiwu’s stifled sobbing made her heart ache terribly.
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