"Master... it is only that your current cultivation is too shallow. Even if you fear nothing, I fear that my words might trigger the Registry's gaze. I might be silenced before the first name leaves my lips." Wang Lei spoke with eyes that held a billion years of exhaustion, pleading with Shen Xuan not to press the wound.
"We are too low on the ladder to speak of them. To name them is to invite their presence into this fragile plane."
Shen Xuan gazed into the wolf's soul, seeing the structural cracks left by ancient, forgotten wars.
He saw the trauma of an era where even the stars were not safe. "I understand," he murmured, his voice like silk sliding over a whetstone. He reached out and patted the wolf's head; a gesture that bridged the gap between a God and his General, an silent acknowledgment of a debt that time could not erode.
"Master, when did you... return?" Wang Lei asked, his eyes narrowing as he finally sensed the state of Shen Xuan's current vessel. "The Chaos Seed Realm? You have only just begun the climb from the very bottom."
"Half a month ago," Shen Xuan replied, his eyes drifting to the window where the sky hung like a shroud of black velvet. "I walked out of the Ancestral Home. The world has changed, the air is thinner, and the Dao has been tamed, but the stars are still as cold as they were the day I was sealed." He patted the wolf's back, a rare flicker of emotion, perhaps recognition, perhaps nostalgia, crossing his features.
Wang Lei let out a low, vibrating growl of pride, his tail brushing against the dirt floor. "It matters not, Master. With us together, we shall cull them all.
They are not as invincible as the Heavens claim. In truth... they are quite fragile when the mask of their authority is stripped away."
Shen Xuan arched an eyebrow, a faint, amused glint in his gray eyes. "Oh? Such bold words from a dog who was hiding in a cave, trembling at the scent of mere Vessel Realm assassins."
"Haha! Master, you mock me," Wang Lei chuckled, leaning his head against Shen Xuan's knee with a familiarity that would have shocked any resident of the Luoshui World.
"When I first ascended to the Chaos Dao Origin Realm, I slaughtered two old monsters who had occupied that seat for an eon. My conclusion was simple: most of those 'Dao Origin' are merely high-level slaves. They relied on the borrowed laws of the Heavenly Registry rather than the strength of their own Will. Against a true Self-Authored Law, they are nothing but paper tigers waiting for the fire."
"Are you certain of that?" Shen Xuan let out a soft, melodic laugh that seemed to harmonize with the wind. "Or is that just your pride barking at the moon?"
"I am certain, Master." Wang Lei rubbed his head against Shen Xuan's abdomen, the fierce general surrendering completely to the boy.
"Go," Shen Xuan commanded gently, placing the wolf back on the floor. "The hour is late. Nature demands its tribute. Go to sleep. Your origin is still wounded; the moonlight will serve you better than my conversation."
Wang Lei bowed his head and vanished into the night, seeking the solitude of a nearby cave to digest the day's karma and the sudden, overwhelming joy of his Master's return.
Shen Xuan stood alone in the center of the mud house. He paused, his gaze landing on the only bed in the room. It was wide enough to house four, yet it felt like a boundary he should not cross. It wasn't that he lacked the desire to cultivate through the night; rather, it was a matter of Fundamental Logic. From his first breath in the First Era to this current life, Shen Xuan had never stayed awake at night unless blood was being spilled.
To the "Heavenly Slaves," nights were for cultivation, for a desperate, frantic race against time. But to Shen Xuan, enjoying the process of nature—the silence, the rest, the darkness—was the most fundamental power of all. It was a Law so primal that even the Heavens could not deny its authority. He turned toward the door, intending to sleep on the grass beneath the canopy of stars.
"You do not need to seek the wilderness," a voice drifted through the room. It was calm, yet brittle as thin ice. "The right side is vacant. I shall remain on the left. It would be... unfitting for my savior to sleep on the cold earth."
Shen Xuan stopped, his hand an inch from the wooden latch. He didn't turn around immediately. "So, you were awake."
"I... I only just woke. I heard nothing of your secrets," Ying Shuang lied. Her voice was flustered, the aloof "Amber Saintess" facade cracking under the pressure of his presence.
"Then you heard everything," Shen Xuan turned, his lips curling into a cold, needle-sharp smile. He shook his head slowly, walking toward the bed.
As he approached, Ying Shuang's heartbeat accelerated until it felt like a drum in her ears, shaking her very core. In the dim, amber glow of the small lantern, Shen Xuan's face looked like a masterpiece carved from mountain frost—unattainable, divine, and terrifyingly young. For a moment, she forgot the Teacher; she forgot her ruined cultivation. She only remembered that she was in the presence of something that could unmake the world with a whisper.
"This is acceptable," Shen Xuan said, his gray eyes locking onto hers. "To the left, Ying Shuang. Do not cross the center."
"Oh... yes. Forgive me." She scrambled to the far edge of the left side, making herself as small as possible, her breath hitched in her throat.
They lay in silence for a time. Two beings, resting on a bed of straw and wood. Though their bodies were exhausted, the air between them was electric with unspoken truths and ancient shadows.
"Have you truly chosen me simply because of a resonance of that physique of yours?" Shen Xuan's voice broke the silence. It wasn't cold this time; it was the voice of an ancient being who had watched a thousand civilizations rise and fall, and found them all equally wanting.
Ying Shuang froze. She turned onto her side, her amber eyes reflecting the dying lantern light. Tears, silent and hot, finally escaped. "Do you wish to hear it?" she asked, her voice a soft, aloof melody of sorrow. "The story of how the 'Pearl of the High Plane' became a fugitive in the dust of a middle-level world?"
"Speak," Shen Xuan murmured, staring at the ceiling as if reading the hidden script of the universe. "It has been an eternity since someone told me a story worth remembering."
"I lived in a realm of light," she began, her voice trembling with the weight of the past. "When I was born, the stars aligned to form the image of a lotus. I had parents who loved me and a brother who was my shield. But the day I walked into the Heavenly Registry Hall for my thirteenth birthday... the light died. That night, my clan was reduced to ash. My parents died in the blood and fire of our own courtyard."
She clutched the rough blanket, her knuckles white.
"He appeared then. A middle-aged man with the eyes of an emperor. He saved me, avenged my family, and took me as his disciple. For years, I worshipped him. I obeyed every command like a puppet, enduring the soul-torture he inflicted whenever I showed a trace of independence. I thought it was the price of my revenge."
She took a shuddering breath, her voice dropping to a whisper.
"Then I found the records. It was him, Shen Xuan. He didn't save me. He authored the massacre. He slaughtered my parents and my brother just to 'create' a tragic, loyal disciple he could harvest when the time was right. At that moment... my heart didn't just break. It turned into glass and shattered into a billion pieces."
Shen Xuan turned his body fully toward her, his gray eyes pinning her like an ancient specimen. "If he held the leash to your soul," Shen Xuan intervened, his voice a low, steady vibration, "then how did you escape his cage? A man who plans such things does not leave the door unlocked."
Ying Shuang's breath hitched. "He didn't need to hide it once I found the records. He walked into the room at that exact moment. He didn't strike me. He didn't even look angry. He simply... laughed. A cold, dry sound that echoed through the halls of my family's killers."
She closed her eyes, her long lashes casting trembling shadows on her cheeks. "It was then I realized why he had never touched me, despite his depravity. I had spent years researching my own curse, the Yin-Yang Dao Embryo. You know the Laws of this universe better than anyone I have ever met, Master. You must know the secret of the Embryo. It is not a treasure that can be stolen by force. Without my soul's consent, without my absolute submission, the Dao Essence remains locked within my marrow. Even if he were a Supreme... he could not harvest it."
Her voice dropped to a jagged whisper, thick with a darkness that seemed to chill the very air of the hut. "He is a monster who treats lives like currency. I found the traces of his path—over a thousand men and women, slaughtered and discarded after he had drained them for his Yin-Yang cultivation. I was simply his 'Greatest Harvest,' the one he was ripening for his final ascension. I fled when he was distracted by a void-storm, falling through the cracks of the Azure Star Galaxy."
A look of profound loathing twisted her peerless features. Shen Xuan watched her, his expression unreadable. He had seen cruelties that would turn her blood to ice, but he understood the meaning of her suffering.
"I ran until my meridians screamed," Ying Shuang continued. "Then came the seven. They were only at the Peak Chaos Vessel Realm, mosquitoes compared to the 'Gods' I had seen, but they were persistent. They wanted to wear me down until I was nothing but a broken shell for him to pick up."
She looked at her trembling hands. "And finally... when the air in my lungs felt like liquid fire and I had accepted that the Void was my only escape... You came."
She searched his face for a flicker of pity or anger. But there was nothing. Shen Xuan's face remained a mask of eternal calm. To Ying Shuang, this indifference was the ultimate comfort; in a world of greed, Shen Xuan's coldness was pure.
"Now, I have told mine... can you tell me your own life?" Leaning toward Shen Xuan, Ying Shuang raised her red eyes, filled with tears.
"Mine..?" He slowly mutters to himself, staring into the dark as if looking back across a billion years of silence. "My story is not a tragedy, Ying Shuang. It is a decree. I was born when the Chaos was young, and I was sealed when it became old. I have no parents to mourn, for I was born of the Primordial. I have no home to return to, for the world I knew has been erased. I am the last echo of an era that the current Heavens are trying to forget."
He looked at her, and for a brief second, his eyes weren't those of a fifteen-year-old boy, but of a Sovereign who had seen the beginning and the end. "Go to sleep, little saint. Your story has ended, but mine... mine is only on its first page."