After Death, I Became My Shijie’s Palm-Sized Birdie – Chapter 78

Dragon Gate

Why is there a bird squatting on the Dragon Gate?!

After nightfall, a blinding light erupted over the sea, followed by a thunderous boom as colossal columns of spray burst open across the water.

            

Every tower and pavilion in Jiaoyue City was swaying; loose roof tiles crashed down and shattered against the ground, mixing with the blood already pooling there.

No one knew exactly what rumors the innkeeper had put into circulation, but factions that had planned to sit back and watch threw themselves into the farce as well.

The city descended into utter chaos — several bands of fighters hacking at one another until no one could tell who was who. Fortunately, Bai Jiao had spent a fortune in her day enveloping the entire city in an array, and its power was more than enough to shield the buildings; the cultivators’ brawling couldn’t destroy the city itself.

            

The battle raged for the better part of the night before it gradually burned out. Casualties were grim, and a victor had barely been decided — but before they could celebrate, a wave of shadows that came from nowhere harvested every last one of the survivors.

Once Bai Jiao’s people had the situation in the city firmly in hand, Yun Heng turned the whole of her attention to the sea. Things there were just as brutal — by dawn, the water would be dyed red, countless corpses drifting upon it.

She had no idea where Qingtuan had flown off to; Yun Heng couldn’t find a trace of her, but she faintly sensed a power in the heavens above, gazing down upon Jiaoyue City.

            

Those qualified to fight on the sea, human or demon, all possessed formidable strength — yet immortals who could each dominate an entire region on land now lay dead and alone upon the water, without so much as a soul to collect their bodies.

“Hahahaha!”

At the heart of the sea battlefield, maniacal laughter mingled with cursing. Earth Immortal Realm cultivators had been turned into fish food — even their souls hadn’t escaped.

            

The one dealing the blows was the Black Sea Pavilion Master. Facing him were the former City Master’s uncle and the demon king. Though it was one against two, the side holding two Golden Immortals was the one losing ground.

At this moment, anyone who veiled their eyes with a secret art would have seen an endless stream of strange power welling up from beneath Jiaoyue City, all of it converging on the sea to feed that demon.

“Despicable! Shameless!” Watching the scene unfold, the hard-pressed human and demon cursed him with aching hearts. That was dragon vein power — power Bai Jiao herself could barely bear to draw on in ordinary days. Regarding themselves as Jiaoyue City’s future masters, they naturally took the demon for a thief stealing what was rightfully theirs.

            

“A mere demon dares run wild in Jiaoyue City! The people here and the City Master loathe demons to the bone. If I reveal your true face to this city, you’ll be hunted down and torn apart!”

At the threat, the demon suddenly laughed aloud, and the mockery in it left the human and demon across from him flushing white, then green.

He was laughing at how limp and hollow their words were — their threat was nothing to him but a scratch of an itch.

            

“So what? I’ve no interest in being City Master here. Those demons and humans may loathe me all they like, but the most they’ll ever dare is curse me a couple of times behind my back — do you see a single one of them coming before my face? And as for the City Master… those two words are even more laughable coming out of your mouth. Didn’t you people already kill her? Threatening me with a dead woman? Hahahaha!”

“She— she isn’t dead! She’s resting safe and sound in the City Master Manor right now! Wounded, yes, but the moment she learns you’ve stolen her treasure, she’ll come tear you apart alive!” The very man who had once wished he could curse Bai Jiao into her grave was now waving her pelt like a banner to frighten his enemy.

The other’s blustering threat — outwardly fierce, inwardly faint-hearted — only made the Black Sea Pavilion Master laugh harder, until his belly actually ached. He looked down: a sword had run him through the abdomen.

            

He raised a hand and shredded the Earth Immortal who had ambushed him, then drew the blade out with a light tug. The sword was poisoned — his wound flushed black-purple — yet before long it returned to normal, as though his body had simply absorbed the venom.

The sea heaved up mountainous waves once more. Amid the wind and spray, the Black Sea Pavilion Master was gone from where he’d stood; in his place loomed a black colossus that blotted out sky and sea.

That vast body ran straight up to the heavens, and its head thrust out through the dark clouds and thunder.

            

“Since you’re so certain she isn’t dead, why aren’t you scrambling off to beg her for rescue?” The Demonic Flood Dragon’s voice was more deafening than the thunder rolling above the clouds.

Go find Bai Jiao? Bai Jiao would love nothing more than for this demon to kill him! But… what was the beast implying? Was Bai Jiao truly dead? Then who was the “Bai Jiao” in the City Master Manor?

He had no time to puzzle out whether Bai Jiao was dead or alive before the flood dragon struck first. The colossal demon spat out black mist, and in an instant not a sliver of light remained on the sea.

            

“Demon King, we’d best join forces and deal with him first… Demon King?!” He whipped his head around — the “friend” at his side had already vanished.

Having absorbed the power from beneath Jiaoyue City, the flood dragon’s strength had surged; he could likely trade blows with an ordinary True Immortal now. The former City Master’s uncle had never been his equal to begin with, and the gap had only widened — and with the demon king deserting in the middle of the battle, the man was left with little but a dead end.

Unwilling to accept his fate, he staked every last card he held on a desperate gambit — and was still very nearly torn in two by the flood dragon.

            

He lay sprawled and bleeding on the surface of the sea, despair flooding his eyes. The flood dragon’s gaping maw crept closer and closer, on the very verge of swallowing him alive. Just as the man shut his eyes in resignation, a clear, crystalline chime drifted between heaven and earth.

【Ding-ling.】

The sound was faint and far-reaching, as if it had come from the distant edge of the sky.

            

Gentle moonlight dispersed the mist the flood dragon had conjured. The crescent hung so bright it was nearly blinding, and the man lying on the water narrowed his eyes against it.

The power that had been pouring without end into the flood dragon’s body abruptly stalled — and in the blink of an eye, it began flowing back. Not only the portion still in the air, but everything he had just absorbed — and more besides!

The man sprawled on the sea suddenly remembered something Bai Jiao had said years ago. She’d said… whatever ate hers, whatever took hers, would have to spit it back a hundredfold.

            

The flood dragon’s massive body gradually withered. Mouth agape, head thrown back, as if a rope were cinched tight around his neck, he fought desperately to swallow back the stolen power — only to discover that some contract, binding as the laws of heaven and earth, had fastened itself onto him. The contract declared that the dragon vein power he’d absorbed had never been stolen at all — it had been “borrowed.” The term was up, and repayment was now due: far more than he had ever taken.

Knowing nothing of any contract, the flood dragon understood in a heartbeat that he had been played!!

“Hahahaha…” The blood-drenched half-demon pulled himself up out of the water. He knew the old principle well — strike while the enemy is down.

            

The tide of the battle reversed. Sliced and hacked to pieces, the flood dragon plunged into Canghai and vanished without a trace. The victor had barely a single breath left in him; he swallowed a healing immortal pill, then produced a xun¹ and sounded two notes, proclaiming his victory to all.

“Gurgle.”

The gradually calming sea stirred with something strange again. He looked down: an enormous fish head had surfaced — one and only one fish head, severed clean from its body, a thick layer of ice sealing the cut.

            

The head belonged to none other than the demon king who had just fled mid-battle. The feeling of blood running cold climbed straight up into his heart.

Then, in place of the subordinates coming to receive him, came the cold gleam of a sword slitting his throat.

The snow blanketing Jiaoyue City hadn’t yet melted before fresh flakes came drifting down from the sky once more.

            

The sword intent that had executed a Golden Immortal went utterly unmasked; every soul in the city felt the bone-piercing chill and edge of it. The captured humans and demons fell silent as cicadas in winter — the moment they realized the sword intent’s owner was the City Master’s ally, they knew they would never have another chance to turn the tables.

Yun Heng sheathed her sword. Apart from the contract branded onto that flood dragon, everything had unfolded precisely within the innkeeper’s plan. The ringleaders had met justice, and the greater share of the rebel upper-tier strength was gone with them; Jiaoyue City appeared to be back within the City Master Manor’s control — yet her expression still could not be called relaxed.

Because Yun Heng had realized that although the flood dragon was a demon, its power did not match the one who had been scheming against her from the shadows. Another demon, with strength no weaker than the Golden Immortal Realm, still lurked hidden — and this flood dragon might well be nothing more than that one’s blade.

            

“Shijie, is it over on that side?” Wen Qiwu’s brows knit faintly. She raised a hand to press against her chest — her heart was beating inexplicably fast, and a heavy, sinking pressure had settled over her.

“Mm, it’s over… Ah Que! Are you unwell?” The instant Yun Heng noticed her movement, she swept her up and onto the bed. Perhaps because her shimei’s once-sickly state had left a deep and lasting shadow over her mind, the wavering light in Yun Heng’s eyes was frayed nearly to breaking with panic.

“I’ll go find a doctor. Lie down and rest.” Yun Heng probed her shimei’s condition with spiritual power, but found nothing at all — so she could only go seek out a more expert medical cultivator.

            

“Don’t go, Shijie! I’m fine, there’s no need for a doctor, I just…” Wen Qiwu shook her head, suppressing the nausea welling up inside her. “I just heard a great many strange sounds.”

It felt like hundreds of flies buzzing inside her skull — enough to shake her very divine soul.

But Yun Heng had heard nothing. She even suspected the demon lurking in the dark had done something to her shimei. In an instant, frost crawled across Jiaoyue City’s streets and walls, the power of it reaching even out over the sea. Wherever that demon was hiding, once her ice sealed this entire space, she would find it — though… doing so might well claim innocents along the way. Not everyone could withstand the frost of a True Immortal.

            

“Shijie!” Wen Qiwu abruptly sensed something wrong. She pushed herself up at once, gathered her shijie into her arms, and gently patted her back. “Don’t tense up. Don’t let your thoughts run wild. I’m fine.”

Her shijie’s emotions were surging; killing intent, slipping its leash, spread outward. Once upon a time it would have meant nothing — but her heart demons had not yet been purged. If the killing intent broke free of her control, the heart demons might seize her mind in a single careless moment.

Wen Qiwu laid her purest flame into her shijie’s divine soul, and the warm fire dispersed the mad thoughts come swarming in.

            

A long while passed before Yun Heng’s taut body slowly relaxed, the dangerous blood-color receding from her eyes.

“Are you truly all right? Let’s still have a doctor look at you.” Yun Heng’s voice still carried a trace of trembling and lingering trepidation — she still wanted that doctor.

“I’m fine — it doesn’t really hurt at all, honestly.” Wen Qiwu raised a smile, her expression calm enough that no one could have told whether she was putting on a brave face.

            

“I was only… the noise gave me a bit of a headache. Those sounds seemed to… come from the sea?” The moment Wen Qiwu’s words fell, the sea erupted into raging winds and monstrous waves. A force surpassing even the True Immortal Realm detonated within the water; the array over the city shattered as if it were nothing, and Jiaoyue City took the second shockwave head-on.

Yun Heng pressed her shimei into her arms, then with a single stroke of her sword split space itself, cleaving the incoming force in two before it could strike the city.

The mountains and rock on either side of Jiaoyue City were crushed to rubble, laying bare deep ravines. Had that force slammed directly into the city, the consequences would have defied imagination.

            

Several dragon roars, deafening, rang out across the heavens. True dragon phantoms of many colors burst up through the sea, spiraling around the dragon pillars rising from the water, and at the last they joined their bodies together — forming a Dragon Gate!

Everyone stood utterly stunned. The Dragon Gate, unseen for several thousand — even ten thousand — years, had emerged out of nowhere, a full day ahead of the Dragon Gate Grand Ceremony?!

A battered, scar-covered flood dragon suddenly shot up out of the sea, fixing the Dragon Gate with a greedy stare. He was the closest to it; none of the other demons had yet recovered their wits — he would certainly be the first to reach the gate…

            

Wait! What was that white blob atop the Dragon Gate? Why in the world was there a bird squatting there?!

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