Breaking free from her long slumber, Ao Ling caught sight of the Immortal Fairy, and tears fell from her eyes unbidden.
"Xiao Ling, you still remember me?" The Immortal Fairy pointed at herself in disbelief; after all, Lianyi hadn't remembered her at all.
Ao Ling wiped away her tears and shook her head gently, an apologetic look in her eyes. "I don't remember. But my husband and the others said that there once were five immortals in the world. Yet when the fifth immortal fell, everyone's memories were tampered with, causing everyone to forget this immortal's existence.
"So my husband and the others told me about this immortal. They also said that this immortal was someone very important to me."
Ao Ling took the Immortal Fairy's hands, looked into her eyes, and said earnestly, "That immortal is you, Elder Sister Immortal.
"It's just that I have no impression of the things Tianjun and the others told me about."
What Ao Ling did not say was that the moment she awoke and laid eyes on the Immortal Fairy, an unexplainable sense of trust and an inexplicable feeling of warmth welled up within her—as if there had always been an empty space in her heart, and upon seeing the Immortal Fairy, that void had been quietly filled.
"My husband also said that if anyone could wake me from the Art of Playing Dead, it would only be you, Elder Sister.
"Where is my husband? He said he would bring you over to wake me up. Where is he?"
Ao Ling looked around, searching for Immortal Kirin, only to find herself lying inside a small pavilion surrounded by a boundless lake. "Strange, where is this? I clearly remember falling asleep in my immortal cave."
A dazed look appeared in Ao Ling's eyes. This wasn't what her husband had told her. "Elder Sister, what is going on?"
The Immortal Fairy had no idea what was happening either. Lu Yang, who had remained silent all along, suddenly asked, "Senior Ao Ling, could you tell us what happened before you went to sleep?"
"And who is..." Ao Ling only just noticed that next to Elder Sister Immortal stood a junior cultivator at the Nascent Soul stage.
"Lu Yang, the Second-in-Command of our Immortal Lineage," the Immortal Fairy introduced him in a tone filled with great esteem. "He's the one who revived me."
"Huh?"
Ao Ling grew even more bewildered. This, too, was completely beyond her expectations.
Lowering her head in thought, she sorted through her memories. "My experiences before falling asleep... Let me think where I should start. Right, let's start from the day the immortal war broke out.
"Back then, Lianyi was cultivating, and my husband was standing guard for her. I was reading a book at the time. Suddenly, my mind went completely blank, and a piercing ache gripped my chest, as though I had lost something forever.
"Right after that, I heard my husband let out an enraged roar. He assumed his Kirin True Form and strode across the heavens. Wherever he passed, countless stars shattered, grinding into dust.
"In the neighboring immortal domains, Ying Tian and the other two had similar reactions. No one knows what the four immortals sensed, but they all set out together for the region around the North Star.
"The four of them engaged in a fierce battle to the death with an unknown enemy. I had never seen the four of them so furious; it was an utterly uncompromising fight to the bitter end.
"That battle lasted for seven full days. During that time, I went to find Lianyi to ask her what had happened, but like me, she knew nothing at all.
"Seven days later, my husband returned heavily wounded. He said the enemy was mysterious and extremely difficult to deal with, and for safety's sake, he wanted both Lianyi and me to cast the Art of Playing Dead.
"Lianyi cast the Art of Playing Dead, but I insisted on staying awake and demanded that my husband explain what was happening.
"At my insistence, he explained the reason behind it all.
"Only then did I learn that all the strange occurrences from before were connected to your fall, Elder Sister Immortal.
"The one who killed you even erased your existence. When my husband and the other three learned of your immortal demise, they were consumed with rage and sought to eradicate the culprit. Regrettably, they did not succeed. They could only settle for second best: reshaping the stars to form a six-sided continent and imprisoning the culprit here.
"We couldn't eliminate the culprit in the short term, and we didn't even know where the culprit was.
"After some deliberation, my husband and the other three concluded that what needed to be done immediately was to find a way to revive you, Elder Sister.
"They said the simplest way to revive you was to speak your name. But even they had forgotten your name. They even split into tens of millions of avatars and spoke countless different names simultaneously, but that failed as well."
Logically speaking, speaking so many names at once should have hit the right one eventually; it was a matter of probability.
"So the four of them suspected that one avatar had indeed spoken the right name, but the culprit struck from the shadows, employing some undetectable method that caused the name spoken by that avatar to turn out wrong.
"This was merely a hypothesis and couldn't be verified. After all, after speaking your name, Elder Sister, my husband and the others would forget what they had just said."
Lu Yang said in a low voice, "There is another possibility."
"What is it?" The Immortal Fairy and Ao Ling looked at Lu Yang together.
"The mastermind behind the scenes only obscured 'Immortal Fairy Huang Doudou' in the ancient language, but did not obscure it in modern languages.
"I remember you once mentioned, Fairy, that regardless of the linguistic system, as long as someone speaks your respectful title and immortal name, it can revive you. But you are the only person who knew this; you never told anyone."
The Immortal Fairy remembered. Shortly after she had been revived, when Lu Yang was learning the ancient language while trying to learn 'foreseeing the future,' he had asked whether speaking her name in any language system could revive her, and that had indeed been her answer.
"The modern language?" Ao Ling had no idea what Lu Yang was talking about. Why did it feel as though so much had happened after she went to sleep?
Just how long had she been asleep?
Ever since she woke up, Ao Ling had been speaking the ancient language. Both Lu Yang and the Immortal Fairy were fluent in it, so there was no barrier in their communication. She had no idea that out in the wider world, no one spoke the ancient language anymore.
"Yes. Based on existing evidence, after the fall of the Xinhuo Dynasty, the ancient language vanished. Today, communication in the outside world uses an entirely different linguistic system."
Lu Yang analyzed earnestly, "That explains everything. It was impossible to revive you using the ancient language, Fairy. And whether it was Immortal Ying Tian and the other three immortals or the mastermind behind the scenes, none of them knew this, and none of them ever considered this possibility."
Once Lu Yang figured this out, a lingering dread gripped him, like surviving a disaster by the skin of his teeth.
Fortunately, no one had known about it. Otherwise, if the mastermind had continued the obscuration even after the language system evolved, the Immortal Fairy might never have seen the day of her revival.
Come to think of it, he had revived the Immortal Fairy just by uttering it off the cuff. That luck was almost too absurd. Could it be that all the good luck he had accumulated from saving the world in a past life had been exhausted on this?
Bah! What kind of good luck was reviving the Immortal Fairy, anyway?
"Wait, wait! Are you saying the Xinhuo Dynasty established by my husband and the other three has fallen?"
Ao Ling was astonished. How could the Xinhuo Dynasty, founded by four immortals, have simply vanished?
"Senior Ao Ling, you know about the Xinhuo Dynasty?"
Ao Ling nodded. "Of course. I witnessed the founding of the Xinhuo Dynasty with my own eyes."
Chapter 861