Xu Ying and the bronze bell followed Jin Buyi’s memories to Chaoge. Their vantage was that of Jin Buyi, looking down upon this ancient, divine city.
The towering, magnificent Chaoge was filled with grand, primitive architecture, its human cultivators powerful as boundless abysses. This was a divine kingdom on earth, where the Qi Refiners worshipped not the rustic spirits of the present day, but the heavenly gods of the Heavenly Dao world.
The Qi Refiners marched alongside the armies of the Great Shang, conquering in every direction, sweeping across the other realms of Shenzhou and warring through other continents, hauling back the peoples of other races to Chaoge as slaves.
During holidays and festivals, the great clans would slaughter slaves by the thousands to offer in sacrifice to the heavenly gods. In those days, whenever a festival arrived, the sky would become riddled with gaping rents, and heavenly gods would descend one after another to the mortal realm to partake of the offerings.
With every festival, they devoured slaves by the millions.
Under the patronage of these heavenly gods, the Great Shang waged relentless war, sweeping across the Yuanshou world. Young Master Xu Ying, son of a wealthy merchant family, consumed an immortal herb capable of communing with heaven, earth, ghosts, and gods. His wits sharpened considerably, and his seal seemed to loosen a fraction. The young master followed his family’s merchant caravans, purchasing captive slaves taken by the frontline soldiers and escorting them back to Chaoge.
He knew how to cultivate, and his cultivation grew mightier with each passing day. Jin Buyi followed at his side.
As his cultivation advanced by leaps and bounds, he seemed to gradually awaken certain memories, appearing to remember Jin Buyi.
“Buyi, is what we are doing truly right?”
At times, this young master grew confused and would ask Jin Buyi, “Is it right for us to slaughter other nations and sacrifice to the heavenly gods?”
He said, “I look at those slaves, and they are human just like us. Yet the heavenly gods we sacrifice to do not seem human at all. Why must we kill people who look identical to us just to curry favor with foreign gods?”
Jin Buyi did not know.
Though it was a primordial beast suffused with a fire capable of burning through the blue sky and destroying everything in its path, it had no conception of right and wrong.
It only knew that upon coming into the world, the very first thing it had seen was Xu Ying’s face. To it, Xu Ying was its closest kin. It would never allow its kin to be harmed or made a fool of.
Whatever young Ah Ying did was the right thing.
The young Xu Ying harbored many doubts. Once, he parted the disheveled, filthy hair of a child, revealing a delicate face beneath. This slave girl was named Yan Bao’er, a girl of an alien race from the Yuanfeng world.
With the aid of the heavenly gods, the Great Shang had already conquered the Yuanshou world and begun its campaigns into other worlds.
The young Ah Ying fell in love, inevitably captivated by the slave girl Yan Bao’er.
“I remember you. It feels as if we met in a past life,” Yan Bao’er told him.
The young Ah Ying said to the girl, “Ever since I consumed that immortal herb, ancient scenes keep flashing through my mind, and your figure is always in them.”
Yet the disparity in their stations was far too vast. Even if the young Ah Ying granted Yan Bao’er her freedom, he could never take her as his wife.
What was more, he had no authority to give Yan Bao’er her freedom in the first place.
Over the course of the Great Shang’s wars and conquests, only the Emperor of Shang, who embodied divine mandate, held the power to pardon captured slaves.
Then came another year’s Winter Sacrifice. The young Ah Ying watched as his beloved was dragged onto the altar to be offered up to the heavenly gods.
The young Ah Ying went berserk.
He stormed the most important sacrificial rite of the year, carving his way onto the ceremonial grounds of the offering to heaven and clashing with the mighty priests who enjoyed the heavenly gods’ divine favor.
Jin Buyi swooped in, attacking the priests who wounded the youth and burning many of them to ash.
*Ah Ying, whatever you do, I will follow you.*
Carrying Xu Ying and Yan Bao’er, Jin Buyi tore a bloody path out of Chaoge and fled for their lives. Behind them, the iron cavalry of the Great Shang trampled the sky in relentless pursuit.
The heavenly gods of the Heavenly Dao world were incensed as well. For mere mortals to dare snatch their sacrificial offerings was a flagrant defiance of the laws of heaven, a lawless outrage that could never be forgiven!
Vast as the realm was, there was nowhere left for them to take refuge.
Jin Buyi protected the two of them as they darted into hiding, surviving countless slaughters.
The divine bird gradually matured, growing ever mightier, while Xu Ying and Yan Bao’er also grew stronger by the day. Through endless battles, the young man and woman continued to grow, and their affection for each other deepened.
Yet Jin Buyi remained forever an inseparable part of their little family—indeed, its most important pillar.
“We shall never forsake nor abandon one another. Even in the next life, and the life after that, we will reunite,” they swore to each other.
Yet the vengeance of the heavenly gods and the Great Shang was fiercer than they could have ever imagined. The hunt dragged on for centuries, fighting from Shenzhou to other continents, and from the Yuanshou world to other worlds.
The heavenly gods did not hesitate to descend in person, determined to eradicate this pair of lovers who dared defy heaven’s decree and violate the laws of heaven.
Following Jin Buyi’s memories, Xu Ying and the bronze bell traversed an unimaginably vast stretch of time, one that left both of them shaken to their core.
Gaps began to appear in Jin Buyi’s recollections. This ancient divine bird had grown old; its memories were decaying into oblivion.
These crumbling memories were like primal chaos: to fall into them was to be assimilated into the chaos, forgetting everything.
They were also like a labyrinth, looping endlessly without any way out.
Xu Ying and the bronze bell weathered tribulation after tribulation of fading memories. The bell fought desperately to shield Xu Ying, fleeing one pocket of oblivion after another.
These memories were profoundly precious to Jin Buyi, yet it was simply too old—so old that it could no longer recall these experiences.
The bronze bell kept glancing at Xu Ying, wondering what thoughts were running through his mind after witnessing Jin Buyi’s memories.
Amidst the long river of Jin Buyi’s memories, Xu Ying slowed his steps once more. He watched this particular stretch of memory with absolute focus.
This memory had to be exceptionally vital and profoundly etched, for even now, Jin Buyi had not allowed it to completely fade away.
By this point, the young Ah Ying and Yan Bao’er had grown into the most powerful Qi Refiners under heaven. Alongside a golden crow wreathed in the flames of war, they traversed the river of time, facing off against heavenly gods without yielding an inch of ground.
Time and again, they eluded the hunt, even engaging in decisive battles against heavenly gods and the Great Shang’s supreme high priests. They had even raided the slave transports of the Great Shang, leading those slaves in open rebellion against the rule of the heavenly gods.
Yet, Yan Bao’er gradually grew old.
She lived out the full lifespan of a Qi Refiner—four thousand long years. The maiden of yesteryear was now white-haired and withered, her youthful grace nowhere to be seen.
Ah Ying was still a youth.
The maiden of the past had finally reached the end of her days. On her deathbed, her consciousness grew faint.
The young Ah Ying held her hand, his voice quiet yet imbued with immense power, as though trying to brand his vow into her very soul so it would endure through thousands and tens of thousands of lifetimes.
“In our next life, I will find you, no matter where you are across the myriad worlds of the heavens.”
One flower withered away.
Somewhere else in the world, another flower quietly sprouted, gradually bursting into bloom.
While resisting the relentless pursuit of the heavenly gods and the Great Shang, Jin Buyi and the young Ah Ying searched for the woman bound to him by a past-life promise. They traversed the starry void, fighting as they traveled across one world after another.
The young Ah Ying also awakened more of his memories, and the pursuers sent after them grew ever more formidable.
Those pursuers were people entirely distinct from the heavenly gods, draped in absolute mystery. Even the heavenly gods treated them with utmost deference and respect.
It was the most treacherous battle they had ever faced, yet the young Ah Ying was ecstatic. He said to Jin Buyi, “I think I have found what sealed my memories.”
He drew out one marvelous rune after another. These were Immortal Dao runes, insights he had grasped while clashing with those mysterious figures.
“It might be these very things that sealed my memories,” he said excitedly.
Jin Buyi studied the Immortal Dao runes intently, but it could not understand them.
Though it was the most powerful primordial variant beast in the world, there were still things beyond its grasp. The Immortal Dao runes the young Ah Ying drew were far too profound and enigmatic for it.
Seeing this, Xu Ying murmured softly, “Lord Bell, we found what we were looking for.”
The bronze bell remained silent.
It knew Xu Ying was bound to be wrestling with complicated emotions, and it did not know how to console him.
Xu Ying gazed at the Immortal Dao runes preserved in Jin Buyi’s memories. They were concepts Jin Buyi could never comprehend, and many of the runes had already blurred, grown faint and illegible.
It simply could not remember them.
Xu Ying walked forward through Jin Buyi’s memories, hoping to find more useful clues.
Together with the bronze bell, he skirted past the stretches of decayed memories, arriving at another deeply etched recollection within Jin Buyi’s mind.
The young Ah Ying had found the girl who haunted his dreams. Yet on the very day he found her, he also walked straight into a trap.
Those mysterious figures and the heavenly gods had reached the girl first, using her to lay an ambush. The moment the young Ah Ying stepped toward the trap, he realized something was wrong.
“Buyi, in the future, bring this character to find me and awaken me.”
The young Ah Ying branded a golden Immortal Dao rune into Jin Buyi’s memory and said with a smile, “You can still escape. Fly, and do not stop. In the future, we will reunite.”
Jin Buyi looked at him in bewilderment. Hadn't they promised never to forsake or abandon one another? Why was it being told to flee? He could escape too; why throw away his life?
Why go forward when he knew it meant certain death?
“There is always a glimmer of hope, isn't there?” The young Ah Ying waved his hand, sending Jin Buyi far away, before striding into the ambush without a single backward glance.
Though he knew it was a trap, he had to try.
Jin Buyi flew and flew. This was the first time it had ever fled without fighting. The divine light erupting from the ambush behind it cast its shadow across the vast primordial wilderness.
It held fast to the youth’s words: *Fly, and do not stop. In the future, we will reunite.*
It beat its wings and flew, fleeing for over a century before the storm finally settled.
Then it set off to search for Ah Ying once more, streaking across strange, unfamiliar lands like a blazing sun.
It searched for a long, long time. It began to sense that its prime had passed; age was creeping into its bones. Certain memories slipped away from its grasp; things that had clearly been of supreme importance were simply forgotten.
Still, it continued to fly, continued to search.
It cried out in the sky, “Jin Buyi! Never forsaken, never abandoned, Jin Buyi!”
At long last, it found Ah Ying again. Ah Ying was still a youth, entirely unchanged, while it had grown more aged feathers.
The human cultivators guarding Ah Ying were immensely powerful. They fought fiercely against it, driving it away.
Time and again, Jin Buyi was battered and wounded, yet time and again it returned, throwing its life against those human cultivators.
It showed the golden rune to the young Ah Ying, but it was of little use; Ah Ying did not remember it at all. The human cultivators and heavenly gods caught up with it repeatedly, wounding it and snatching Ah Ying away.
It stubbornly flew back and forth, searching high and low, like an obstinate old man who knew no compromise.
Yet with the passing of time, it grew old.
It had not been defeated by those human cultivators or heavenly gods; it had been defeated by time.
One day, soaring through the air, it was suddenly seized by a wave of confusion. It did not know why it was flying, nor what it was searching for.
It had grown so old that it had forgotten the memories once engraved into its very bones. It was so old that it could no longer remember its friends, its devotion, so old that it had forgotten Ah Ying and everything from the past.
It vaguely recalled that it seemed to be looking for something—something very, very important—yet it could not remember what that something was.
It was, perhaps, simply exhausted.
As heaven and earth were sealed, it too was swept into that sealed realm. When Yunmeng Marsh was released this time, it was already too old and weary to even bother moving.
Yet the moment that Fusang tree descended from the heavens, an impulse stirred in its heart, and it longed to fly once more.
It seemed to catch a familiar scent. And so it spread its wings, beating its ancient pinions and dragging its aged body through the air, flying and flying until it landed upon that Fusang tree.
It felt a deep sense of closeness here.
It breathed out flames, igniting the divine tree, and crouched comfortably upon its branches.
Catching sight of a familiar figure, it felt a faint sense of having seen him before. Sticking its head out from the foliage, it scrutinized the youth named Xu Ying again and again.
“Strange, I seem to have seen you somewhere before,” it said.
*I am too old.*
Looking at Xu Ying, Jin Buyi thought to itself. It had grown far too aged to remember this boy.
Chapter 160