The road wound between old tombs and low hills.
Here in the Sacred Nether World, graves outnumbered living things. Stone steles leaned at crooked angles, half-buried by time. Great mounds rose and fell like the backs of sleeping beasts, sealed tomb chambers hidden beneath their skin of dark soil. Bone lanterns swayed from rusted hooks, their ghastly flames dim even in this forever-twilight sky.
Far away, Necropolis crouched on the horizon like a crouching beast, its outline half-shrouded in grey mist.
Ling Feng walked at the head of the group, hands tucked into his sleeves, steps unhurried. Around him, the oppressive Nether wind howled, carrying whispers and the faint scent of grave earth. Behind him followed women whose names could shake an entire world and a ghost tribe whose breath frosted the air.
At some point, his conversation with Qiurong Wanxue shifted—from borders and tribes to dao and cultivation.
"…Your dao light earlier," he said, tapping a finger lazily against his sleeve. "That crescent."
Qiurong Wanxue's steps slowed for half a beat.
"You saw," she said quietly.
"Hard to miss," Ling Feng replied.
His tone was casual, but his eyes were sharp. He had watched that crescent appear behind her in the battlefield—a pale moon hanging in the sky of her True Fate, riddled with cracks yet refusing to shatter even under pressure that should have crushed her several times over.
"It was cracked," he went on. "But it still kept holding, even when their pressure was already beyond what you should have been carrying."
He lifted his hand and pointed—not at her body, not at her forehead, but at a place in the air beside her, as if tracing something only he could see.
"There," he said. "In your True Fate, you have… four Fate Palaces open already?"
Her pupils shrank.
For the Ghost Immortal race, the True Fate was everything. To have it seen through at a glance was something few could endure lightly.
"…Young Noble can see that far?" she asked. Her voice was steady, but she couldn't quite hide the surprise.
"Your dao flow isn't that complicated," he replied easily. "I could guess even if I were half-asleep."
There was no arrogance in his tone, only simple truth.
"The crescent you formed is… your fourth palace's manifestation, right? That's where your Snow-Shadow destiny gathered."
Qiurong Wanxue nodded slowly.
"The first palace holds the tribe's inherited ghost dao," she said, almost reciting from memory. "The second, my personal comprehension of frost and shadow. The third, our ancestral graves' karmic echoes. The fourth… is where those lines converged into the Snow-Shadow's 'white shadow'."
"That's what I thought." Ling Feng's eyes glinted.
He stepped a little closer—not enough to touch her, but close enough that the faint scent of herbs and steel on him cut through the chill of Nether qi.
"Do you feel it?" he asked softly. "Past that crescent, something else. Like a door that never fully opened. Whenever you fight at your limit, it trembles, but never quite cracks."
Qiurong Wanxue's breath caught.
In the deepest part of her cultivation, there was such a place. A faint ripple, a nearly invisible seam in the sky of her True Fate. In life-and-death battles, in the ghostly tides of the Ghost River, she had brushed against it more than once… but each time, it had slipped away, like a mirage mocking her reach.
"…Yes," she admitted at last.
Ling Feng smiled.
"On your own," he said, "it'd probably take decades. And even then, you'd still be wondering, 'was there really something there, or was I just imagining it?'"
He lifted his hand.
"Stand still for a moment," he said. "I'll give you a little push. That's all."
Qiurong Wanxue hesitated.
Letting another's dao touch her True Fate so directly was no small thing. Among many sects, this was something reserved only for masters, ancestors, or the person one entrusted one's entire life to.
But this man had already poured gentle emerald light into her bones in front of Necropolis' valley, tempering them without leaving a single hook, chain, or lurking intent. With the sensitivity of a ghost chief, she had felt that his energy had come and gone without lingering—like a visiting sovereign who did not covet another's palace.
She nodded once.
"Please," she said quietly.
He stepped closer.
His hand rose—not to her chest, not to her brow, but to the space just above the white shadow at her feet. Her shadow flickered there: not black like ordinary shadows, but pale, like a layer of frost burned into the ground, the mark of the Snow-Shadow Tribe. He traced a crescent shape in the air with two fingers, echoing the dao light she had revealed earlier.
A thread of Chaos slid out.
It wasn't violent. It wasn't hot. It was… clear. A strand of power that ignored the thick Nether qi, slipping straight into the subtle lines of her dao as if it had always belonged there.
Qiurong Wanxue's world shifted.
In her inner vision, the sky of her True Fate—long dominated by the pale crescent—suddenly brightened. The cracks webbing the crescent smoothed out in an instant; its curve sharpened, its glow became colder, cleaner, complete. Behind it, in the far distance—a faint outline she had always dismissed as an illusion—moved.
It was like a door being lightly tapped.
A thin line split down its center.
A sliver of light seeped out, colder than the deepest winter, purer than fresh snow.
Her breath stuttered. Ghost flame burned brighter in her eyes. Along her meridians, her ghost qi surged—not out of control, but like a tide washing away old sediment. Her white shadow on the ground thickened, lines sharpening until it seemed carved in moonlight, its glow turning from faint frost to clean, sharp snow-light.
To the Snow-Shadow disciples watching, their chief's aura shifted.
She was still gentle, still steady—but the depth changed. The feeling of her dao became like a winter that had grown a second layer of ice: transparent, beautiful, and able to cut bare skin.
"Chief…?" Peng Zhuang whispered, knuckles whitening around his halberd.
Ling Feng withdrew his hand.
"That's enough for now," he said, voice casual, as if he had fixed a loose latch on a door. "If I push harder, you'll open it immediately, and your foundation will wobble. Let it ferment on its own."
Qiurong Wanxue opened her eyes fully.
For the first time since they met, she looked at him not as a powerful outsider, not as an unpredictable human… but as someone who had reached directly into her dao and left it better than he found it.
"…Just now…" Her voice was low. "Young Noble…"
"You were already at the edge," he said, shrugging. "I just nudged the door."
He glanced over the formation of Snow-Shadow elites marching behind her.
"And your people," he added, tone turning a little dry. "Their white shadows are… messy. Who taught you all your current formation?"
Qiurong Wanxue's expression grew complicated.
"…Our elders," she replied. "The inheritance was never complete. We used what we could understand."
Ling Feng made a quiet sound in his throat.
"Figures," he muttered. "Alright. Since we're already walking together—"
He snapped his fingers.
Peng Zhuang jumped.
"You, big halberd," Ling Feng said, jerking his chin at him. "Come here."
Peng Zhuang hesitated, then strode over, heavy halberd on his back, the other Snow-Shadow elites watching with tense, pale eyes.
Ling Feng pointed at Peng Zhuang's feet.
"Your tribe's dao emphasizes 'shadow following snow', right?" he said. "The way your shadows move now, they're too rigid. You're forcing them to chase your bodies instead of letting them lead."
Peng Zhuang blinked.
"Let… the shadow lead?" he repeated, stunned.
"Try this," Ling Feng said.
Before Peng Zhuang could brace, a thin thread of power flicked out, tapping his ghost shadow.
The white silhouette at Peng Zhuang's feet shivered, then… straightened. For the first time, it moved a heartbeat before his body, like a pale ghost stepping out ahead of its owner, tracing the most natural path through the world.
Peng Zhuang staggered.
In a breath, he felt his halberd path change. The clumsy weight that had always followed his strikes dissolved. His muscles loosened, his joints seemed to unlock; that white shadow underfoot anticipated his movements, smoothing out rough edges, shaving away wasted force.
"Swing," Ling Feng ordered.
Peng Zhuang obeyed.
The halberd roared through the Nether wind.
His white shadow swept forward first, drawing a pale crescent, and the weapon followed that crescent exactly, its edge humming as it cut the air. The strike landed—not on an enemy, but on a lonely tombstone far ahead.
With a dull boom, the thick grave stele cracked from top to bottom, carving a clean, crescent-shaped scar into the dark stone.
Even in this land of countless graves, that scar seemed especially cold.
Peng Zhuang gaped.
"This… this power…" he stammered. "It feels like… like when I broke through, but cleaner—like my bones finally caught up to my dao."
"Good," Ling Feng said, already stepping to the next disciple.
One after another, he reached out. A light tap on a white shadow here, a flick on a shoulder there, two fingers pressing into the air above a disciple's head to erase a crooked dao line.
His touches were never heavy, but each Snow-Shadow elite felt their cultivation shift as if they had secluded for months.
Shadows that had dragged like tired servants now slipped ahead like guides. Defensive patterns that had always been stiffness disguised as discipline melted into flowing curves. Attacks that had been a simple gathering of ghost qi became arcs of light that turned with the terrain and wind.
The Nether wind howled around them. Each time a Snow-Shadow disciple moved according to their newly adjusted dao, faint traces of frost-white lines appeared and vanished beneath their feet, connecting shadow to shadow, person to person, weaving a subtle lattice of pale light.
By the time Ling Feng dusted his hands off, the formation behind Qiurong Wanxue had changed.
The white shadows no longer lagged behind as thin silhouettes. They glided in front, crossing and overlapping, a moving pattern of lunar frost. If executed properly, this defensive web would no longer be easily crushed by simple pressure; it would breathe. It would take in force, redirect it, fold it back on itself.
Qiurong Wanxue watched with a strange, indescribable feeling.
Decades of slowly patching incomplete inheritance.
Generations of elders walking blind around a broken shrine.
A single walk on the grave road… and this human had casually done for her tribe what would have taken them lifetimes.
"…Young Noble is too generous," she finally said, voice quiet.
Ling Feng waved a hand.
"This?" he said. "Just some housekeeping. Helps keep your nice graves in order and squashes ugly people faster."
Peng Zhuang almost choked.
Nice graves… ugly people…?
Qiurong Wanxue's lips curved, the faintest hint of genuine laughter in her eyes.
This man.
This… human.
...
Of course, Ling Feng did not spend all his attention on Snow-Shadow.
He was only one man.
His hands were many.
As they walked past a ridge of broken tombstones where the Nether wind howled particularly fiercely, he drifted back toward Li Shangyuan.
The Pure Jade Physique fairy stood a little apart, jade eyes quietly observing the grave plains. The pale light of the Sacred Nether World reflected on her skin, making her seem like a warm piece of jade placed in a cold ancestral hall.
Ling Feng slipped an arm around her waist from the side.
"Thinking?" he asked, voice low by her ear.
Li Shangyuan's shoulders trembled slightly. That was her only outward reaction. She leaned into him a fraction, the corner of her lips curving.
"Watching," she answered. "These graves, these dao marks… they are very different from the Mortal Emperor World's. Their lines are colder, heavier. They sink instead of rise."
"Sink and rise are the same thing if you go far enough," Ling Feng murmured. "Just two sides of a big loop."
He dipped his head and brushed a light kiss against her temple.
Her cheeks glowed softly, like warm jade under a lantern.
"You're always like this," she whispered. "Saying strange things and then acting as if it is nothing."
"That's because it is nothing," he said, smiling. "You're here, I'm here, the world's huge… we might as well enjoy the trip."
She laughed quietly, the sound clear as chimes in winter air.
Ahead, Chen Baojiao glanced back and scoffed.
"Unrestrained," she muttered.
Yet her eyes had been hotter ever since the battle at Necropolis' outer valley. The dao she had stolen from watching his Chaos Force rip apart Ghost Immortal young lords still buzzed in her veins. When Ling Feng's gaze slid toward her and one brow lifted, she snorted and tilted her chin.
"What?" she challenged. "Looking for another target to bully?"
He caught up to her and reached out to ruffle her hair.
"No," he said. "Just checking if you've calmed down. If not, I might throw you a punch or two later and have some real fun."
Her eyes lit up, then she caught herself and bit back the smile, ears turning faintly red.
"…Hmph. You'll have to keep your word," she said.
"When have I ever not?" Ling Feng replied cheerfully. "I like taking responsibility."
Behind them, Bai Jianzhen walked in silence, sword at her waist, gaze straight ahead. Her aura was as sharp as ever, a sheathed edge that cut simply by existing.
When Ling Feng's hand reached back without looking and caught hers, she did not pull away.
Her fingers tightened on his for a heartbeat—just one.
Then she let go, turning her face slightly so that her flushed ears were not too obvious.
Chi Xiaodie and Bing Yuxia walked with arms crossed, pretending not to look. But every time Ling Feng teased someone else, they would click their tongues, quicken their steps, and somehow end up near his side again. Ling Feng would always notice, always drag them into his lazy, infuriating orbit with a remark or a fleeting touch.
Xu Pei, on the other hand, simply slipped her arm through his when no one else was looking, leaning against him with the ease of someone who had already given her heart—and body—without holding anything back. One soft look from him, one murmured "Pei," and the storm-like qi in her chest would calm like a choppy sea under clear skies.
Su Yonghuang occasionally endured his sudden embraces with a helpless smile.
Once, when he pulled her close by the waist as they crossed a ridge where the Nether qi was particularly turbulent, she gave him a sideways glance.
"We are in the Sacred Nether World," she said. "In front of a ghost tribe. Be serious for a moment."
"I am serious," he replied, tightening his hold. "This place is gloomy. If I don't hug my sun, how am I supposed to walk properly?"
Her expression wavered.
"…Smooth," she muttered, but she didn't push him away.
All of this, Qiurong Wanxue saw.
She watched how he treated each woman—not as ornaments hanging at his side, not as trophies to show off before a crowd, but as people whose tempers and dao hearts he understood intimately. He knew when to tease until their ears burned, when to simply sit in silence beside them, when to hold them without saying anything.
It was bewildering.
How could someone who crushed young lords beneath his heel as if killing chickens, who had stepped on the pride of Yin Moon and Black Chaos without blinking… turn around and smile like that?
And yet…
As they walked, he also spoke with her.
Not constantly. Not overwhelming, like a flood. Just enough.
He asked about Snow-Shadow's customs. She told him about their ancestral rites: how the tribe used white shadows to escort lost souls, how they lit bone lanterns with frost fire so that the dead would not forget the path home. He listened without the slightest trace of boredom, occasionally tilting his head as if genuinely curious about the small details no one else cared about.
In return, he told her a little about the Mortal Emperor World—not of Immortal Emperors and Heaven's Wills, but of simple things. A city where lion banners flew above crowded streets. An academy where Merit Laws flowed like rivers and juniors fought over seats in the lecture halls. A mountain where the sunrise turned the clouds gold.
His words were light, almost careless, but as Qiurong Wanxue listened, she felt an odd warmth in her chest.
This human walked as if the Nine Worlds were his backyard.
He laughed as if no shackles existed above his head.
Without realizing it, her guard lowered by degrees.
Without realizing it, she began to answer his questions more readily… then to ask a few of her own.
Without realizing it, in the quiet spaces between tombstones and Nether wind, a thin, nearly invisible thread formed between her tribe and this strange group of humans.
And Ling Feng's women noticed.
Bing Yuxia's eyes narrowed over her fan, observing every subtle change in the ghost chief's gaze.
Li Shangyuan hid a tiny smile behind her sleeve.
Chen Baojiao clicked her tongue, then smirked, a fighting-spirit glint in her eyes that had nothing to do with swords.
Su Yonghuang's gaze grew deep, but there was no jealousy there—only the calm understanding of a woman who had already accepted that the man beside her walked a road where countless fates would naturally intersect.
"He is doing it again," Xu Pei whispered, her lips close to Su Yonghuang's ear. "Even ghosts will be pulled into his orbit."
Su Yonghuang exhaled softly.
"As long as he does not hurt them," she said. "And as long as they are prepared."
...
Far away, in another part of the Sacred Nether World.
Distant Cloud region.
Soaring Remembrance Village.
Compared to the grave plains and Necropolis' looming silhouette, this place was quiet.
Soaring Remembrance Village nestled among soft hills and old trees. Its houses were simple but sturdy, tiled roofs weathered by countless years of wind and rain. Stone paths wound between courtyards where children chased each other and old men drank tea, the air filled with a subtle, lingering solemnity.
Many great figures had once come from this village—generals, daoists, hidden experts—but now, on the surface, it looked like an ordinary settlement resting under a grey sky.
At the village's heart stood a towering tree.
Its trunk was so thick that a dozen men could not encircle it with joined arms. Its bark was old and scarred, yet each scar seemed to form faint, mysterious patterns—as if someone had carved dao lines into it with the patience of eras. Its branches spread wide, bearing no leaves, yet from them hung countless strips of cloth, old prayer tablets, faded jades carved with vows.
The Dream Wishing Tree.
A tree blessed by the hand of an Immortal Emperor in a forgotten era, a tree that had silently watched over this village and its descendants for generation after generation.
Under this tree, people came to throw their wishes.
Some wished for fortune. Some wished for dao breakthroughs. Some wished for love.
Today, a young woman stood beneath its branches, jade in hand.
Her features were beautiful—brows like distant green mountains, eyes bright as flowing water. She wore the robes of Thousand Carp River's prime descendant, but a simple hairpin and modest waist sash softened her noble bearing. Her aura had not yet reached the level that shook worlds, but it held a quiet, unyielding dignity.
Lan Yunzhu.
Behind her stood elders of Thousand Carp River, keeping a respectful distance. Not far away, villagers whispered, curious. The air itself seemed to hold its breath.
An old man in simple robes watched from the side, hands clasped behind his back. His hair was white, but his spine remained straight. His eyes, half-lidded, held the depth of someone who had walked the dao for a very long time.
Venerable Yang.
He was not only a high elder of Thousand Carp River; he was also Soaring Remembrance's pride—a son of this village who had climbed from these quiet hills into the ranks of an emperor's lineage. Yet at this moment, he was merely an old man watching a junior stand before a tree he respected deeply.
Lan Yunzhu raised the jade in her hand.
It was a simple piece, carved with flowing wave patterns. She had held it for days, sleeping with it under her pillow, infusing it with her thoughts and dao, her worries and small stubborn hopes.
She looked up at the Dream Wishing Tree.
In countless stories, those who came here to throw their jades were tested in strange ways. Some saw their jades gently caught by the branches, hanging and swaying as if weighed and judged. Some had their jades fall straight back down—rejected.
Some… had their jades vanish, taken by a fate only the tree knew.
Lan Yunzhu bit her lip once, then exhaled.
She thought of Thousand Carp River—of elders concerned about alliances, of the pressure from other lineages that had begun to look at her as a chess piece.
She thought of the names that had been placed before her as potential dao companions—sons of Ancient Kingdoms, Heaven's Will candidates, talented young lords whose arrogance smelled the same no matter which river or continent it came from.
She thought of her own dao heart, which refused to bow to a life decided entirely by others.
She thought, finally, of a vague, almost childish wish she had once made: to meet someone who could walk shoulder to shoulder with her, who would not be crushed by her lineage's expectations… who would not flinch before the storms of Nine Worlds.
"Senior tree," she murmured in her heart, respectful. "If you truly see fate… then please, choose."
She poured her wish into the jade.
Then, with both hands, she gently tossed it upward.
The jade traced a pale arc through the air, catching the grey light as it flew.
The Dream Wishing Tree's branches stirred.
The jade landed among the twisted limbs with a soft clink, caught between two ancient branches. It swayed, resting there.
Lan Yunzhu held her breath.
Venerable Yang narrowed his eyes slightly, his old heart calm. He trusted the tree. In all his years, he had never seen it choose wrongly. If it accepted the jade, it meant there was an answer. If it rejected…
The wind passed.
Ghostly clouds drifted overhead.
The jade lay still.
One breath. Two. Three.
Some elders relaxed faintly.
"It seems the tree is considering," one murmured. "This is good. It means—"
Before he could finish, the jade trembled.
Not a small, subtle twitch—but a violent shudder, as if something invisible had seized it.
Light flared.
For an instant, all the Dream Wishing Tree's branches stirred at once. The strips of cloth, old prayer tablets, and faded jades hanging there clinked against one another, a thousand offerings striking together in a strange, momentary rhythm. It sounded like quiet bells tolling beneath the earth.
Lan Yunzhu's eyes widened.
The jade exploded from the branches.
It shot upward like a shooting star, leaving behind a streak of bright light that cut through the dim sky. It pierced the low clouds as if they were paper, then vanished from sight, leaving only a thin, fading afterimage in the heavens.
The entire Soaring Remembrance Village fell silent.
Even the children stopped playing. Chickens froze mid-peck. The wind itself seemed startled, hesitating among the eaves.
Lan Yunzhu stood frozen beneath the tree, hands still half-raised.
"…Grand… Grandpa Yang…" she stammered, using the affectionate title from her childhood. "This… is this… rejection?"
If the tree meant to refuse, the jade should fall.
Fall at her feet, perhaps. Bounce off the bark. Maybe even shatter.
But this—this was…
Venerable Yang did not answer immediately.
He stared at the point in the sky where the jade had vanished, his old eyes reflecting the fading line of light.
Within his dao heart, something stirred.
The Dream Wishing Tree was not an ordinary spiritual plant. It had seen eras come and go. It had endured storms that would erase lineages. In all the records he had studied, in all the stories the village elders told, the tree followed a certain pattern—catching, holding, dropping.
It did not launch.
Unless…
Slowly, Venerable Yang exhaled.
"The tree did not reject you," he said at last, voice low but clear. "If it meant to refuse, the jade would be broken, or it would fall back down."
"Then…" Lan Yunzhu's voice trembled. "Then why…"
"Because your wish," Venerable Yang murmured, eyes deep as an ancient well, "has already taken effect."
Lan Yunzhu blinked, stunned.
Already… taken effect?