Li Fei nodded. "Yes."
Ri Yan glared fiercely at Lei Xiuyuan and said coldly, "Then get out! I still have words to say to him!"
Li Fei chuckled. "I already know everything I should and shouldn't know. Why make me leave? Just say what you need to here—I won't interrupt a single word."
Ri Yan's tail lashed in anger. "Truly, a grown daughter is no longer one's own! Taking his side already! Foolishly protecting him like this!"
Li Fei shook her head. "Ri Yan, actually, I have many things I want to say to you myself. Xiu Yuan and I plan to go overseas during this Sea Fall. I really hope you'll come with us. Will you?"
He fell silent for a long time before replying indifferently, "So you've finally decided to return overseas? Fine. Before leaving, we'll slaughter all those bastard scum of No Moon Court. I'd be delighted!"
"No." Li Fei looked at him calmly. "I just want to see the places you and Master visited before. No killing—that wasn't Master's wish."
Ri Yan sneered mockingly. "Humans are so fickle! Your vow to be an ordinary person hasn't even cooled yet, and now you want to go overseas. Who knows if in two days you'll want to slaughter all the Central Plains Immortals! I don't care about Celestials—if you want to kill, I'll kill with you. Wiping them all out would be cleaner!"
"I still want to be ordinary, but not by running away from everything." Li Fei spoke slowly. "I've seen too little, experienced too little. Even now, I still have the impulse to kill those responsible for Master's death. But even if I slaughtered everyone in the Central Land, Master wouldn't return, nor would he be happy about it. There must have been something more important than himself or me that he chose to sacrifice himself to protect. I want to understand Master's state of mind. I don't want to be a coward anymore, pretending my uniqueness doesn't exist."
Ri Yan snorted coldly. "Such silver-tongued words! I was planning to rip off your head for breaking your promise!"
He turned to gaze once more at Qing Cheng Xian Ren's corpse and sighed. "What haunted me with Heart Demon Possession wasn't just Qing Cheng's death. He didn't know what the Graftwood Seed he carried truly was, but I did. That day, I didn't just follow the north wind to the Building Tree—I went deliberately. I had selfish motives. Hearing of the Graftwood Seed's connection to the Yaksa, I wanted to witness this natural wonder, to see the so-called pinnacle in my lifetime. Qing Cheng was gravely injured beyond recovery, his path to greatness cut short. But the Graftwood Seed's peculiarities—if properly cultivated—could fulfill my long-held wish. I kept it from him, yet he refused to teach you cultivation or let me near you. Furious and confused, I argued fiercely with him, only for him to expose my hidden desires. Clever as he was, he'd already guessed some of it. In humiliated rage, I stormed out of Green Mound. The incident affected me too deeply—during the Year of Calamity, it summoned my Heart Devil, sealing my Demon Qi. Even now, I'm still obsessed with that wish. But you are you. Qing Cheng was right—you're human, and the power to choose is yours. Sending you to No Moon Court was likely his way of giving you that choice. You won't disappoint him in the end. Truly, you're the child Qing Cheng raised."Li Fei listened in stunned silence, never expecting him to end up praising her like this. Her jaw nearly dropped in shock: "Y-you're praising me?"
Ri Yan shot her a disdainful glance. "Just a casual remark. If mere words could accomplish things, the world would be full of smooth talkers! Judging by how you cling to this brat, you're still a fool!"
Suddenly, he opened his mouth and spat out a burst of red flame, precisely engulfing the corpse of Qing Cheng Xian Ren on the stone platform. Li Fei gasped, but before she could rush over, his withered body had already turned to ashes, sealed within a translucent orb of light.
"What are you screaming for?" Ri Yan swallowed the orb and said calmly, "Let him depart in peace. Someone like him shouldn't be left to rot as a corpse. I'll find a chance to return his ashes to Hu She Feng. All these years, he never stopped thinking of that place."
What was so great about that club-like Hu She Feng anyway? He couldn't even name the Graftwood Seed properly—calling it "Club." Infuriating.
Li Fei stared at him blankly. "Then... then you're willing to come with us...?"
Ri Yan ignored her, his burning gaze fixed on the jade-like arm bone on the stone platform. After a while, he added, "Keep this bone. When you have time, refine it together with your broken horn. The quality of this bone is leagues above that shoddy horn of yours. One day, it'll be a formidable weapon for your defense."
Refining the arm bone of the Graftwood Seed? Li Fei immediately recalled the agony of being forcibly refined by Zhen Yunzi that day, her face paling. Refining this bone—how was it any different from refining herself?
Ri Yan turned impatiently toward the cave entrance. "It's just a lifeless object. Humans always obsess over the most trivial things! I'm leaving!"
Leaving? Li Fei hurried after him, chasing him all the way out of the Sweet Splendor Realm, only to see him hovering midair, gazing at the lush greenery of Green Mound.
"...It's been so long since I've felt this wind, so long since I've felt this sunlight." Ri Yan lifted his head, taking in the sky and the earth, his sickly green eyes brimming with nostalgia. "The vast sky, the blazing sun, the endless sea of trees—this world, unseen for so many years."
Suddenly, he soared high into the sky, his snow-white figure vanishing like a streak of light, leaving no trace behind. Only his carefree laughter echoed across the mountains, fading into the distance until it was no more than a whisper.
Li Fei stood there dazed for a long time, the midday sun stinging her eyes. Not a trace of the fox remained. He had left just like that—no hesitation, no lingering. All his nagging, warnings, and gruff yet caring tirades had vanished in an instant.
The noisy clamor from moments ago was now replaced by the hollow sound of wind. Had their years of companionship truly come to an end?
Li Fei stood alone until her legs grew numb, then finally turned and slowly walked back into the Sweet Splendor Realm. Lei Xiuyuan was sitting beside the stone platform, his eyes never leaving the arm bone. Golden light flickered in his pupils, and even the slender horns at his temples seemed to gleam with brilliance.
The jade-like arm bone emitted a faint, eerie fragrance, lingering in the cavern's emptiness as if silently recounting its tragic fate.As if responding to this strange fragrance, the dense spiritual energy within the Sweet Splendor Realm began to ripple like gentle waves. This spiritual energy was all brought by Li Fei—the Source Spiritual Qi of the Graftwood Seed could purify the Demon Qi and Miasma that monstrous creatures and ferocious beasts relied on for survival and cultivation. She once thought Source Spiritual Qi was something different from the natural spiritual energy of heaven and earth, but now she understood: Source Spiritual Qi was simply natural spiritual energy condensed to its extreme, far denser than any spiritual energy found in the Immortal Abodes of the Central Land Immortals.
Among the myriad strange Overseas Foreigners, the existence of the Graftwood Seed was the most peculiar. From birth, there was only ever one—only when the old one died would a new one be born. Lei Xiuyuan had told her that if Master hadn’t forcibly cut the fruit from the tree back then, she would have grown to full maturity inside the fruit before breaking free.
These human-like yet inhuman species born between heaven and earth possessed innate spiritual wisdom. The fruits always nurtured stunningly beautiful young women, each with looks capable of toppling cities—yet no one cared about that. They often faced the covetous eyes of countless Yaksa the moment they emerged from their shells. The owner of this arm bone had been torn apart by a group of Yaksa, their eyes red with greed, the moment she broke free.
Whether she wanted to admit it or not, to the Yaksa tribes, the Graftwood Seed was less a person and more a tool.
"Xiu Yuan," Li Fei walked over and sat beside him, asking quietly, "If Master hadn’t taken me to the Central Land, would you have been the first person I saw when I broke out of the shell?"
Lei Xiuyuan forced his gaze away from the arm bone. "Yes."
"What would you have done then?"
His answer came without hesitation. "Kept you under house arrest."
...That was a merciless decision. Li Fei frowned. "What if I resisted?"
"Killed you."
Hey! That was way too blunt! Her frown deepened. Lei Xiuyuan chuckled softly and looked down at her. "There are no 'what ifs.' What’s already happened is reality."
Even the transcendent Netherworld Great Magic could only rewind time for the body—the passage of life and the emotions that once existed could never be reversed by any Immortal Technique. To him, all hypotheticals were meaningless. He focused only on the facts right before him.
Li Fei glared at him indignantly. "Do you ever say anything nice?"
The Netherworld Great Magic had rewound both his and Hu Jiaping’s time by centuries. This man had lived for hundreds of years before—had he always been this sarcastic? If you called him stupid, he was actually sharp and observant about many things; if you called him smart, some things about him were so infuriatingly dense it left her speechless.
She widened her eyes, staring at him unblinkingly. After a long standoff, Lei Xiuyuan finally couldn’t take it anymore and turned her face away, saying flatly, "Don’t look at people like that."
Li Fei found it funny too. She touched her cheek, lost in thought for a moment, then suddenly asked, "Xiu Yuan, if I hadn’t found out about Master’s secret, would you have kept hiding it from me?"
He thought for a long time before answering. "Yes."
"Why?"
"Wanted to see you happy."
Her eyes widened again. After a long pause, she murmured, "...You can say nice things after all."Lei Xiuyuan pinched her chin and gently shook it back and forth: "This is the truth, not sweet talk. Is this what you wanted to hear? Since we have some free time now, I’ll take my time telling you—but first, wash your ears clean..."
Li Fei quickly grabbed his mischievous fingers as he tried to poke her ears: "Save it! I don’t want to hear it! You might as well talk about the past instead!"
Lei Xiuyuan finally looked a little surprised. He gazed at her thoughtfully: "The past? You mean before I became Lei Xiuyuan?"
Li Fei nodded deliberately and coughed twice: "Like what you used to enjoy doing, or what you liked to eat, things like that."
Lei Xiuyuan let out a long "Oh," then lightly pinched her cheek twice with a faint smile. "There was nothing I liked or disliked. A cursed Yaksa wouldn’t even think about such things. I waited beneath the Building Tree for a long time—just for you to be born."
For the Yaksa, the greatest fear wasn’t the death of the Graftwood Seed, but the Building Tree never bearing fruit again. The entire Yaksa tribe was reduced to just him and Hu Jiaping, the only two newly born Yaksa left. With no new Graftwood Seed forthcoming, they had no choice but to follow the migration of the Heavenly Thunder Fire Sea during the Sea Fall, journeying to the Central Land in search of the shattered arm bone of their predecessor.
Cursed Yaksa were like monsters driven by desperate desire, which was why Hu Jiaping had been so resolute in choosing to stay in the Central Land for a new life. For every Yaksa, this was a dream come true.
"Anyway, I still have to thank the heavens for letting you be born."
Lei Xiuyuan smiled and ruffled her hair. Whether as a Yaksa or as Lei Xiuyuan, her birth into this world and her presence before him was the greatest blessing he could ever receive.
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