With Qing Xu's help, Luo Luo defeated Li Zhaoye.
"Go on, tell me what you want me to do," he said, surprisingly generous.
The two had made a bet earlier—the winner could demand anything from the loser.
She stole a glance at him and asked, "If you had won, what would you have made me do?"
Li Zhaoye: "Haven't thought about it."
Luo Luo eyed him skeptically. "Really?"
Judging by his expression, he was clearly brimming with mischief.
"Why would I lie?" Li Zhaoye drawled lazily. "I just wanted to get that thing out of you. Haven't decided whether to make you use your hands or your legs yet."
Luo Luo: "……???"
It took her a moment to process his words before a wave of heat rushed to her face, staining her cheeks and ears red.
"You—" She paused, searching for the right insult before settling on, "Li Pervert!"
A filthy-minded dog through and through.
Li Zhaoye burst into laughter. "Pfft—ha! Luo Dummy, is that the best you can do?"
He laughed so hard he slapped the bed.
Luo Luo turned her face away, ignoring him.
"Hey!" he called out, still chuckling. "Made up your mind yet? Anything you want, just name it."
Luo Luo: "……"
His shamelessness was truly a gift.
She glared at him sullenly. "I haven’t decided. Later!"
"Fine." Li Zhaoye waved a hand dismissively. "Then let’s deal with the old man’s funeral first."
Luo Luo nodded. "Alright—where should we bury him?"
Without hesitation, Li Zhaoye answered, "Dongyu."
"Yeah."
Luo Luo had been thinking the same.
Dongyu—the crossroads of Li Ermiao’s life, where his parents' bones had long since turned to dust across those plains.
Burying him there was just right.
Li Zhaoye lowered his voice. "Let’s make it quick. The sect will start moving demon corpses soon. Better not let them find us."
Luo Luo: "……"
She nodded solemnly, fully agreeing.
Killing demons? Fine.
Handling the corpses? Absolutely not.
The two were in perfect sync. Li Zhaoye tore a page from his sword practice journal and scribbled a note for the sect.
Scratch, scratch, scratch—
His brush moved like a dragon in flight.
Luo Luo peeked over and couldn’t help but twitch her lips. "In such a short note, you wrote 'filial piety' three times. Makes you sound guilty."
Li Zhaoye scowled. "I’m traveling miles to bury my father—can’t I be a devoted son?"
Luo Luo: "……So devoted it’s killing me."
He crumpled the note and tossed it aside, starting over.
[Dongyu. Burying the body.]
"Happy now?" He shot her a sullen look, clearly annoyed. "So much trouble."
Back in the day, he could leave the mountain whenever he pleased, disappearing for months without a care.
Luo Luo: "……It’ll do."
After exchanging a glance, they left Mirror Twin Peak.
Half an hour later.
Xu Junzhu stared at the two notes on the table, lost in thought.
The neat one on the desk—[Dongyu. Burying the body.]
The crumpled one in the corner—[Escorting Master’s remains home to fulfill my filial duty. A man without filial piety stands for nothing. Traveling afar to honor him—] (cut off mid-sentence)
"Ah…" Xu Junzhu sighed. "Those two… must be suffering so much inside."
The "suffering" duo quietly slipped out of Tai Xuan Sect, detouring to Green Feather Peak to snatch a couple of chickens along the way.
Luo Luo hesitated. "Is it okay to eat meat during a funeral? Bad luck?"
Li Zhaoye: "Nope. Very bad luck."
He grinned. "So I’ll eat yours. You can watch."
Luo Luo: "……Take this sword!"
The sun hung low on the horizon, casting fiery hues across the land.
Their bickering shadows stretched long before vanishing beyond the mountains.
Dongyu Plains.
Luo Luo gazed into the distance, her mind prickling with a nagging thought she couldn’t quite grasp.
"Li Zhaoye," she asked hesitantly, "doesn’t this place feel familiar?"
Li Zhaoye gave her a deadpan look. "……We’ve been here a million times. Of course it’s familiar."
"Oh." She nodded obediently. "Right."
Just yesterday, they’d walked these very plains in Li Ermiao’s dream world.
She looked around, near and far.
"Something’s missing," she muttered to herself. "What is it?"
Li Zhaoye pulled a compass from his pouch and bonked her on the head with it.
"A good burial spot, dummy!"
Luo Luo: "……Oh."
Dongyu’s chaotic spiritual energy made it worthless to cultivators.
The compass needle spun wildly, refusing to settle on anything auspicious.
After a futile struggle, Li Zhaoye gave up. "Whatever. If everywhere’s cursed, nowhere is."
He shrugged off his outer robe, rolled up his sleeves, and started digging.
For dirty, simple tasks like this, he never let Luo Luo help.
"Stay back," he said, jerking his chin.
She didn’t argue—outside of fights, she hated getting her hands dirty too.
She watched quietly as he dug.
With his current strength, flattening a mountain would’ve been child’s play. Yet he wielded an ordinary shovel, carving into the earth like any mortal would.
Dark circles hung under his eyes, the crimson marks beneath them sinister as ever.
His expression was focused, lips pressed thin.
The scene should’ve been unsettling, but Luo Luo found an odd sense of peace in it.
No demons to slay, no grudges to settle—just the two of them, doing this one ordinary thing.
"I wish every day could be like this," she murmured without thinking.
Li Zhaoye paused mid-dig.
He straightened, staring at her incredulously. "What, killing one Qing Xu wasn’t enough? You want to make a habit of it?"
Luo Luo: "……"
Was that what she meant?!
She spun around, ignoring his nonsense, and focused on the scenery.
After much effort, Li Zhaoye finished two pits—one large, one small.
From his pouch, he retrieved Qing Xu’s body and laid it in the larger grave.
Rustle, rustle, rustle.
Shovel after shovel, he covered their master with earth.
Luo Luo crouched beside him, scooping dirt to sprinkle over the body.
The familiar face slowly disappeared beneath the soil.
Thud.
Li Zhaoye dumped a final heap, burying it completely.
"Master," Luo Luo said, forcing a bright smile, "it’s nice and warm underground—like being wrapped in a thick blanket. I’d know! When we couldn’t find shelter, Li Zhaoye used to bury me like this!"
"Hey, no slander," he warned, flicking her forehead. "I never covered your face."
Luo Luo: "……Oh ho ho."
Once the grave was filled, Li Zhaoye instinctively jumped on it—stomping the dirt flat.
Luo Luo reacted swiftly, grabbing him by the collar and yanking him back.
She scolded, "You can’t just trample over graves like that! Graves!"
Li Zhaoye, unusually subdued, avoided arguing and instead glanced around, changing the subject. "Doesn’t look like it’ll rain today."
Luo Luo snatched the shovel from his hands and carefully patted down the loose soil.
"What now?" she asked.
Li Zhaoye rummaged through his qiankun bag and pulled out a heap of spirit money and paper ingots.
He stopped her before she could light them. "Wait."
From the bag, he produced a cleaned and seasoned chicken, wrapped in lotus leaves, and placed it into a small pit nearby. After covering it with soil, he piled the paper offerings on top and gestured to her. "Burn it."
Luo Luo: "……?"
"Tsk." He tilted his head. "What are you waiting for? Light it up."
Luo Luo was utterly bewildered. "Aren’t we supposed to burn the paper money?"
Li Zhaoye replied matter-of-factly, "Burning money doesn’t mean we can’t roast a chicken at the same time."
Luo Luo: "……"
His logic was so impeccable she had no retort.
So the two of them used the flames meant for the spirit money to roast a beggar’s chicken.
Luo Luo couldn’t help feeling a little guilty. "…Will Master Qing Xu be so angry he climbs out of his grave to beat us up?"
Li Zhaoye scoffed, his expression utterly confident. "Nah!"
He tossed another handful of paper money into the fire and explained patiently, "If it weren’t for the chicken, would we even be burning this much for him?"
Luo Luo: "……"
He had a point!!!
If she were in Qing Xu’s place, she’d happily overlook the disrespect for such a hefty offering.
The chicken roasted over incense and paper money turned out just as delicious.
As soon as the lotus leaves were peeled back, a cloud of fragrant steam wafted into the air.
"Don’t fight, don’t fight." Li Zhaoye shielded Luo Luo with his body, deftly tearing off two crispy, steaming drumsticks and placing them before Qing Xu’s grave. "The old man always let you have the drumsticks on purpose. Let him have these for once, alright?"
Luo Luo stiffened slightly before slowly nodding. "…Okay."
Li Zhaoye reached out and ruffled her hair. "Good girl."
Her heart softened, and she lowered her head, quietly nibbling on a rib.
Li Zhaoye, meanwhile, gnawed on a wing, crunching through the bones with gusto.
‘Like a dog,’ she thought.
The juicy meat and rich marrow were irresistible.
The aroma of the roast chicken attracted a bald eagle, which swooped down unnoticed and snatched one of the drumsticks from the grave.
"Hey—it’s—it’s—!" Luo Luo, still holding her portion, could only gape in dismay.
Li Zhaoye: "Tsk."
He stepped into the wind, chasing after the eagle. With a swift grab, he seized its wing and wrestled the drumstick back.
The eagle turned its head and screeched angrily: "Caw!!"
Li Zhaoye narrowed his eyes threateningly. "Careful, or I’ll roast you next."
The eagle immediately cowered: "Caw… caw~"
With a flick of his wrist, Li Zhaoye sent the bird flapping unsteadily away.
He turned and landed with a heavy thud, shaking the ground.
Luo Luo looked up at him, her pupils suddenly dilating.
This scene felt eerily familiar.
"Li Zhaoye," she said, staring intently, "that jump just now… it reminded me of something."
Li Zhaoye took a bite of the drumstick. "What?"
Her expression was dazed. "…This place. It feels familiar."
He chewed nonchalantly. "Mhm. Familiar."
"That’s what was missing!" Luo Luo’s scalp prickled. "There was no second sun in the sky—I was standing right here when the Divine Hall fell!"
In that memory from the ancient past, Li Zhaoye had shattered the Divine Hall and leaped down from the sky just like this.
Li Zhaoye paused, then raised a brow. "Here?"
"Yes!" Luo Luo insisted. "Exactly here!"
She felt a surge of excitement, mixed with an inexplicable unease.
The ancient era was so distant it felt like a dream. To suddenly realize she had once stood on this very land millennia ago was indescribable.
Li Zhaoye polished off the drumstick in a few bites. "Tsk."
He tilted his head. "Let’s go. We’ll check old records, riverbeds, and land formations."
Luo Luo nodded vigorously. "Yeah!"
Who would’ve thought that Dongyu had been the Sage’s territory even in ancient times?
"We’ll definitely find traces of him here!" Luo Luo said excitedly. "I refuse to believe they could erase him completely from history!"
Li Zhaoye shot her a sidelong glance. "That happy, huh?"
Luo Luo beamed. "Yeah!"
"Heh." He reminded her, "Don’t forget what the old man said. A dying man’s words are true. Remember?"
Luo Luo nodded slowly. "I remember."
Luo Luo had wandered this land with the Sage for far too long in the past.
Closing her eyes, the entire route unfolded clearly in her mind.
The two of them sped forward, but when they reached where the great river should have been, there was no sign of it.
Li Zhaoye said, "Thirty years on this bank, thirty years on that."
"Oh…" Luo Luo nodded. "So this is normal."
He added, "Don’t bully the young and poor."
Luo Luo: "……"
They traced the path northward, following the river’s source.
"The Sage built the dam right around here," Luo Luo said, studying the distant and nearby mountains and terrain. She gestured as she explained to Li Zhaoye, "With just a wave of his hand, a massive tornado appeared—enough to move mountains and drain seas! It was incredible!"
Li Zhaoye pressed his lips together, silent for a moment, then raised a hand, signaling Luo Luo to step back.
"Back. Further. Keep going."
Luo Luo obediently retreated to a distance.
He summoned Changtian, gripping the sword with both hands as a dark, overwhelming aura began to emanate from him.
Luo Luo’s heart skipped a beat, and she cautiously moved even farther away.
Suddenly, a deafening sword cry split the air.
In an instant, the clouds above were torn apart, and a blade of light pierced the heavens, plunging into the distant mountains below.
The earth quaked, the mountains trembled.
A blinding radiance erupted from the depths of the rock, converging onto Li Zhaoye’s blade.
Changtian hummed with resonance, its brilliance in that moment eclipsing every divine weapon in existence.
"Boom… rumble… rumble…"
A terrifying fissure spread from his feet, racing toward the horizon like a devouring abyss.
Mountains split, rivers severed.
Amid the cataclysmic scene, Li Zhaoye glanced at her, the corner of his mouth quirking up.
He smirked. "Changing landscapes? Easy."
Luo Luo: "……"
The Sage had… while he just…
She was at a loss for words.
Li Zhaoye’s destructive methods weren’t entirely without merit.
After he tore open the earth, Luo Luo quickly found evidence of the river’s past existence.
Time had buried the riverbed and its erosive marks deep beneath layers of history.
Her eyes curved with delight. "I told you there was a river here!"
Li Zhaoye smiled. "Yes, yes."
He occasionally shattered obstructive rocks, bending down to examine the long-dry riverbed with care.
Luo Luo eagerly squeezed in beside him.
"Look! Look!"
After a long while, she straightened her aching back and stared blankly at the water-worn marks stretching into the distance.
Nothing, absolutely nothing—time had erased all traces of the riverbanks and dams that once existed.
Luo Luo’s eyes dimmed with disappointment.
The world had forgotten the Sage, and even this land bore no memory of him.
Earlier, Li Zhaoye had been irked by her excitement.
Now, seeing her crestfallen, he felt equally displeased.
“What’s the big deal?” He ruffled her hair and nudged her forward by the back of her head. “Dongyu is vast. There’s plenty more to investigate.”
“Mm!”
The riverbed was gone, and so was the land’s pulse.
Molten lava had long since swept away all evidence.
“Don’t lose heart,” he said, tilting his head. “Civilization’s traces might outlast even the shifting of mountains and seas.”
“Wow…” Luo Luo gazed at him in amazement. “Li Zhaoye, you don’t sound like an illiterate at all when you say things like that!”
Li Zhaoye: “…”
Palaces, temples, archives, forests of stone tablets.
The two of them slipped into one forbidden human site after another, searching for remnants of antiquity.
“This scripture depository is incredible!”
Luo Luo craned her neck to look up at the towering bookshelf before her.
It was a genuine relic, its deep brown wood weathered and brittle, the dividers between compartments nearly eroded by time.
The bamboo scrolls stored here had faded, their inscriptions now only discernible by the faint indentations they left behind.
After a night of reading, Luo Luo’s eyes burned with fatigue.
She rubbed them vigorously and kept flipping through the scrolls, one after another.
She couldn’t accept it.
That man—who had given everything for this world—had his name and deeds wiped away.
Not even the title of “Sage” remained.
Luo Luo seethed with anger. “They cursed him so loudly, hurled so much rotten food at him, and now they act like he never existed?”
Li Zhaoye leaped down from above.
“Look here.” He picked up a disintegrating volume and pointed to a line of text. “From this day forth, the sky held no second sun.”
He tossed the book aside and pulled out several others, highlighting similar passages.
Though phrased differently, ancient records all noted the disappearance of the second sun.
Folklore claimed a divine archer had shot it down.
Imperial historians interpreted it as heaven’s ultimate endorsement of the emperor’s virtue.
Astrologers meticulously documented changes in climate, rainfall, and temperature before and after its vanishing.
Scholars lamented the loss of its light for nighttime reading.
“This was real,” Li Zhaoye said, tapping the bookshelf lightly. “The evidence is plain and consistent—too mundane to be fabricated.”
Luo Luo nodded.
When people recorded events with such matter-of-factness, it usually meant they’d lived through them.
“But it’s so strange,” she murmured. “I saw it fall with my own eyes.”
In the world of memories, the entire sky had burned as the Divine Hall plummeted, trailing fire, down and down into the remote mountains.
Yet history treated it as though it had simply vanished—“poof.” And indeed, she’d never heard any tales of a fallen sun.
Luo Luo stared up at the ancient, towering shelves.
How could this be? Across eras and professions, everyone had silently erased the Sage.
With no mention of him in history, there was no record of his ascension as the Divine Sovereign either.
“Wait…” Luo Luo suddenly thought of something. She flipped back through the texts, scanning frantically. “Demons… demons… demons…”
Every ancient text aligned with what she’d always known—from antiquity to the present, demons had plagued the world, and cultivators had fought them.
Luo Luo shut the book, eyes wide. “But in the Sage’s time, there were no demons!”
She had traveled with him extensively and never once heard of demons.
People then spoke of how, in the deepest past, the Sage had driven them out, bringing peace to the world.
She’d even climbed a temple wall to ask an old monk: If the Sage banished demons, why don’t people revere him?
The monk’s answer had stuck with her: Because the Sage was too close, and the demons too far.
Yet… the history she’d witnessed in the memory world clashed starkly with these well-documented records.
“Did demons exist in antiquity or not?” Luo Luo was utterly confused.
Li Zhaoye kept searching. “Working on it. Patience.”
Soon, he stacked another pile of books in front of her.
His lean fingers traced the text.
“Look at how they describe killing demons. Doesn’t it sound exactly like how we do it?”
Luo Luo: “…Yes.”
He’d dug up all sorts of superstitious accounts.
Demons’ scalding black heartblood curing coughs. Their metal-hard hides fashioned into drums that could summon the underworld. Their mercury-laced bones placed under pillows to ward off nightmares.
Luo Luo’s expression grew solemn.
The corroborating details proved people had truly encountered—and slain—demons back then.
“Could the Sage’s memories be lies?” she wondered aloud.
“Impossible.” Li Zhaoye chuckled. “You might fool someone briefly with illusions, but you traveled with him for an entire lifetime.”
He added, dryly, “All over the place.”
Luo Luo: “…Right.”
She’d seen too much, met too many people, lived too many days in that memory world. None of it could be fabricated.
Dawn light filtered through the latticed windows into the dusty old chamber.
Li Zhaoye stretched and sighed. “Long nights breed bad dreams—guess we’ll have to kill the Phantom Maiden.”
Luo Luo: “…”
True to form, he acted without hesitation. Even as the words left his mouth, he yanked off a sealing talisman and slammed his palm against his own chest.
“Aaaargh—!”
Vicious black mist erupted as a piercing shriek rattled the shelves.
The Divine Sovereign inside him stirred awake. Li Zhaoye grabbed the Phantom Maiden and stabbed her into his forehead.
“Squeal!!!”
Within moments, the unfortunate spider burst apart, its belly bloated by the malevolent energy.
Black ooze splattered as Li Zhaoye’s voice, icy yet amused, cut through: “The final secret lies here.”
Luo Luo’s heart pounded.
She couldn’t bear the thought that the Sage might have been a villain.
“Hmm…”
Dizziness washed over her.
The outline of the Divine Hall materialized before her eyes.
Luo Luo looked up—and saw the Sage’s face.
His serene, compassionate gaze pierced through her, through the layers of dark hall walls, and out into the world.
Her breath caught.
The aura radiating from him was terrifying, less like a person and more like the cosmos itself.
A judgment from antiquity echoed in her mind—
He shed all human desires, merging with heaven and earth, becoming the Dao itself.
“Sage?” she called tentatively.
He didn’t look at her. Only raised his hands, slowly.
He rose into the air, an indescribable, immense energy rippling around him, pulling at the very fabric of the world.
His gaze fixed ahead, his voice calm yet resolute as he spoke, uttering a solemn vow.
"With my soul and life, I shall deliver all living beings from suffering, purge this world of its malevolence—until my last breath."
He lifted his hand, his finger pointing toward the abyssal gateway that loomed like the River of the Dead.
