Wei Yuan was about to dodge when another jolt of dread struck his heart. The earth trembled faintly, followed by a bizarre sensation of intertwined frost and blazing heat that swept over both their bodies.
Someone was scouring heaven and earth with a profound supernatural power. Wei Yuan immediately reined in his aura, freezing motionless.
The vajra's divine sense swept back and forth several times. Still unsatisfied, it scoured the area ruthlessly two more times before finally vanishing. Wei Yuan wanted to let out a long breath, only to realize his mouth had long since been stopped up.
Wei Yuan was exasperated. At such a life-and-death juncture, how could she still mess around like this? He pushed the girl away and cautiously extended his divine sense to inspect the situation outside.
Yet his divine sense had not reached a few zhang upward before it met scorching heat, forcing him to pull back. The heat carried the power of Vaidurya Pure Fire, which inflicted extra damage upon divine sense, leaving Wei Yuan unwilling to risk contact.
Calculating the distance, the heat had already penetrated over two zhang into the earth. What had happened on the surface? Had that guardian vajra begun setting fire to the mountain?
The mountain was not devoid of life. Amidst the trees and brush hid many small animals; some had listened to scriptures day and night and already developed spiritual awareness. In the Native Realm, all of them would be regarded as spirit beasts and carefully nurtured, even if inherently weak.
If he truly set fire to the mountain, wouldn't that be a wholesale slaughter of sentient life?
Unable to go up, down was the only way left. Wei Yuan projected his divine sense downward. This time, it seemed bottomless; probe down tens of zhang, and there was only solid rock.
Wei Yuan was calculating distances and cross-referencing with his mental map of the terrain, wondering whether he could dig an underground passage to escape—ideally with an exit opening onto the cliff face. But when his divine sense reached a hundred zhang down, nearing his current limit, he abruptly sensed a sinister, frigid aura. It was unspeakably foul and evil; merely brushing against it sent a shudder through him.
Wolves above and tigers below. Wei Yuan nearly tore his hair out—what kind of damned place was this?
Even so, he trusted his instincts. Very few things could evoke such intense dread from his gut; the Outer Domain walker he had seen in the Nether Cold Realm was one of them.
The Buddhist radiance and raging fire above were still comparatively tolerable; when probing them, the celestial laurel tree had at least swayed normally. But upon nearing the frigid evil below, even the celestial laurel tree seemed frozen in time, completely still, its sword qi suspended midair. From this, Wei Yuan knew the depths below were even less to be trifled with.
While he was fretting, the girl clambered back onto him, eager for a few more tastes.
"We're about to die," Wei Yuan said testily, "and you're still in the mood to fool around?"
"Precisely because we're about to die, we have to fool around a bit!" she said. "Once we're dead, we won't be able to anymore..."
Wei Yuan froze, actually finding some sense in her words. He had never been one to give up easily, yet who would have thought they would be driven into such a dead end? If he truly had to die here, there were still so many things he had never experienced...
The girl's body began squirming, growing hot, pressing and rubbing against him as if desperate to burrow right inside him.
Somehow, stirred by her friction, a fire within Wei Yuan suddenly flared up, impossible to suppress!
Wei Yuan resisted with all his might, shrinking back continuously—not out of disgust for the girl, but because he hated losing control of himself. Yet his side was curved too; even if he drew back upward, he only slid back down.
Clearly sensing his resistance, the girl broke into a soft giggle, her voice chiming like a bell in his ear, melodic enough to reach his very core. She wriggled again, and this twist proved thoroughly lethal.
Wei Yuan took a deep breath, clinging to the last shred of his sobriety.
"We're both going to die," she said. "Why not have some fun one last time? I was going to marry you anyway."
"There might still be hope. Let me think of another way..."
The girl suddenly sounded annoyed. "You just think I'm ugly!"
Wei Yuan could only earnestly console her. "Actually, you're just not that pretty. You're not really ugly."
If the girl had held a blade, she would surely have struck him down by now. Childhood sweethearts or not, she would have severed all ties in a single slash!
Yet she did not move. Instead, she let out a soft laugh, raised a finger before her eyes, and kindled a speck of dim yellow light at the fingertip.
The light was faint, but enough to illuminate her face.
It was a face that belonged only in dreams—refined, luminous, pristine, exquisitely pure in beauty, yet imbued with an intractable wildness that drove anyone who looked upon it mad. For instance, right now, as she bit her lower lip and looked at Wei Yuan, it was practically a provocation pointed right at his nose!
The faint light vanished in an instant, but that face was already stamped deep into Wei Yuan's soul.
"You..." Wei Yuan started, but a hand pressed over his lips. Then she whispered into his ear, "We're about to die and you're still making excuses. Don't tell me you can't perform?"
How could any man endure that? Wei Yuan exploded on the spot, flipping over to pin her down.
Proving oneself was a difficult endeavor; it was just that at this moment, Wei Yuan did not yet understand that truth.
In the darkness, after a fierce yet chaotic, fumbling performance, Wei Yuan felt he had made little headway. Right then, that maddening, itch-inducing voice sounded by his ear once more: "What are you flailing about for?"
Then she made a move. This was truly lethal. In an instant, Wei Yuan felt his origin soul soar into the highest heavens, looking down upon the Buddhist Pure Land and contemplating his past toad life.
At this very moment, a passage of scripture drifted through Wei Yuan's mind: *Movement generates Yang; at the limit of movement there is stillness; stillness generates Yin; at the limit of stillness there is movement again. One movement, one stillness...*
Before Wei Yuan could glean any profound truth from the wisdom of the ancients, the woman had already reached the limit of stillness and moved again, generating Yang through movement.
Forced into battle, Wei Yuan fought on, relentless and unyielding.
A crisp giggle rang out in the darkness. "Turns out you're still a virgin!"
Wei Yuan was furious!
Words were empty now; only iron and blood could prove him. Yet haste invited mishap. Before he could suppress her for more than a few rounds, Wei Yuan was suddenly startled, inwardly groaning in dismay. Sure enough, at the limit of movement, there was stillness.
Seizing this rare moment of peace, Wei Yuan hurried to ask, "Can we really not survive?"
"Of course it's real! At a time like this, why would I lie to you...?" Even as she spoke, at the limit of stillness, she moved again.
...
When silence returned to the dark, Wei Yuan seized the opportunity again. "When did you regain your awareness? Were you pretending not to be awake all this time?"
"This is a Pure Land. Entering here is like succumbing to the delusion of the womb; you simply believe yourself to be someone else. You, on the other hand—it's truly incredible how quickly you broke through the womb delusion."
Wei Yuan asked again, "Womb delusion! Then didn't we come in here just to throw our lives away?"
"That's the next question. I'll answer it in the next phase," the woman said, and at the limit of stillness, moved again.
What that next phase was, Wei Yuan understood all too well by now: the next time stillness arrived at the limit of movement.
Silence fell once more in the dark. Wei Yuan hastened to ask, "Didn't we come here just to die?"
Having experienced the Paper Bride before, Wei Yuan had broken through such womb-delusion-like illusions remarkably fast, having essentially spectated the entire evolution of the small village from the outside. But no matter how he looked at it, this whole trial was a death trap. Slaying the Demon King brought forth the guardian vajra, and even if one managed to slay the vajra, there were likely Arhats and Bodhisattvas waiting behind him. In a scenario like this, let alone a Dao Foundation cultivator, even a True Monarch would never return alive.
Wei Yuan simply could not fathom it. He held no grudge against the Marquis of Xiang, so why would the man be so bent on killing him? Did he really think Wei Yuan's teacher wouldn't chop him to pieces if his disciple died?
The woman chuckled softly. "Do you think the Marquis of Xiang is trying to harm you?"
"Reasonably speaking, he shouldn't be. His life is far more valuable than mine."
"Originally, once we were killed by the Demon King, the Pure Land would shatter and the cycle of reincarnation would end. Then we would enter the minor world housing the Arhat true blood. There, I would assume the karmic ties, and you would receive the true blood legacy. But who could have predicted that you'd break through the womb delusion and kill the Demon King outright?"
"...So what do we do now?"
"Continue, of course!"
"No, I meant... Wait, not *that* kind of continue..."
At the limit of stillness, movement again.
...
At long last, question time arrived again, though Wei Yuan's voice and breathing were somewhat unsteady now. "Do we really have no chance of escaping?"
"You can't even handle me, and you want to handle a vajra?"
Wei Yuan wanted to argue that these were completely different things, but she had already begun the next phase.
...
At the limit of stillness, movement again.
At the limit of stillness, movement again.
At the limit of stillness, movement again.
...
The phrase "at the limit of stillness, movement again"—the word "limit" referred to the transformation of Yin and Yang. It had nothing to do with time; it could be a long while, or it could be a single instant. Wei Yuan had thought it was the former, but in this cramped, dark space, he realized he had misunderstood the scripture: it truly meant the latter.
...
Wei Yuan had nothing left to ask, but feeling that not asking would waste an opportunity, he asked, "Aren't you tired? How about resting a bit?"
"Why sleep much now? In death, there will be plenty of time to rest!"
Dominating! Wei Yuan could only marvel in his heart.
...
The night was long.
...
Wei Yuan believed the long night would eventually pass. For a fleeting moment, he thought he saw the light of dawn, only to find she had merely lit a spark on her fingertip, using the flame to groom her eyelashes and, along the way, deal another blow to Wei Yuan's soul with that face.
And then the long night stretched on.
...
Wei Yuan pondered: movement and stillness, Yin and Yang—why did this alternation never cease?
Yet the classics of the sages had long since provided the answer: if Yin and Yang ceased moving, the world would return to primordial chaos, which was to say, it would be destroyed.
Then Wei Yuan thought again: wasn't this the Dharma-ending age right now? It was just that the destroyer of the world wasn't a demonic fiend, but a vajra.
...
Wei Yuan discovered that the more depleted his body became, the more active his mind grew, involuntarily entertaining all sorts of random thoughts for reasons unknown.
...
When the world finally fell truly quiet, Wei Yuan felt as if his body no longer belonged to him. He didn't even want to lift a single hair, reduced entirely to a human-shaped pile of tofu dregs.
Like a serpent, she slithered over Wei Yuan's body, now from left to right, now from right to left. Wei Yuan understood: she was telling him that she was only letting him off the hook for now.
Even up to this very moment, Wei Yuan's mind was still in turmoil, unable to grasp how things had reached this stage. But what was done was done, and to be fair... he didn't seem to have drawn the short straw either, did he?
That face of hers—though he had only seen it twice, if the phrase "capable of toppling kingdoms" could belong to only one person in this world, it could only be her.
The darkness remained stiflingly hot. Heat poured down ceaselessly from above, thick with the scent of Vaidurya Pure Fire. The fire up there had burned extraordinarily long; by now, heaven only knew what the world on the surface had become.
The woman lay draped over Wei Yuan. Suddenly, she spoke: "I went a bit crazy because I saw an ending I'd never seen before. I never expected it would turn out like this... In truth, I still have to thank you. If not for you, I wouldn't have awakened early to remember everything that was supposed to be erased. It's just that seeing the Master like that... I can't accept it!"
A hint of a sob edged her voice.
Wei Yuan had no idea how to comfort her, so he could only hold her a little tighter.
After calming her emotions, she gently tapped Wei Yuan's chest and said, "My surname is Li, and my given name is Ruyi. Li Ruyi."
Wei Yuan recited it silently several times, carving the name firmly into his mind.
"Don't forget me... Oh, you couldn't possibly forget me anyway. In the outside world, I have another identity: Consort Yuan of Western Jin."
Note:
"From the Non-Ultimate comes the Great Ultimate. The Great Ultimate moves and generates Yang; at the limit of movement there is stillness; stillness generates Yin; at the limit of stillness there is movement again. One movement, one stillness, each the root of the other. Dividing into Yin and Yang, the Two Modes are established."
— Zhou Dunyi, *An Explanation of the Diagram of the Great Ultimate*, Song Dynasty
Chapter 269