Across the stratospheric battle line, the sudden convergence of reinforcements had turned the airspace into a densely packed powder keg.
"Holy hell... all Four Great Ancient Tribes packed into one place? This is a premium historical event!"
"Honestly, the last time a standoff of this scale occurred... was literally the last time it occurred!"
"What's the play here, boys? Are we hosting a massive, cross-faction battle royale? Because my Ancient Martial Mystic Court is claiming the vanguard slots right now!"
The human side was chattering away with intense, high-octane battle intent, the atmosphere incredibly lively and volatile.
An elder from the Golden Crow Clan stepped forward, his voice booming across the clouds like cracking thunder. "Humans! You have mobilized an unprecedented, massive military vanguard across our borders. State your intent! What business does humanity have invading the Northern Region? Are you declaring a total war on my Golden Crow Clan?!"
Liang Jianqiu let out a sharp, mocking laugh that cut right through the crackling heat. "The Three Great Top Factions of humanity mobilizing simultaneously... just to declare war on your feathered little flock? Tell me, old bird—do you honestly think your clan even possesses the tactical qualifications to demand that kind of budget?"
The retort was entirely, mercilessly brutal. The expressions of the Golden Crow vanguard turned instantly black with rage.
Strictly speaking, if the Four Great Ancient Tribes could actually suppress their egos and unite as a single, cohesive military front, even the combined might of humanity's Three Great Factions would struggle to match them. However, each of these ancient bloodlines held themselves in absurdly high regard, universally boasting that their specific lineage was the absolute apex of cosmic nobility.
They were arrogant to a fault.
Consequently, they historically preferred to keep to their own sovereign domains. It was already a spectacular miracle if they weren't actively tearing out each other's throats on any given Tuesday; expecting them to coordinate a joint military defense was a complete pipe dream. Because of this structural division, in an isolated one-on-one faction war, not a single beast tribe could withstand a sustained human offensive.
Furthermore, the Bai Ze Clan had been locked in a bitter, petty blood-feud with the Golden Crows for millennia. Seeing their rivals get thoroughly humiliated on the grand stage, a Bai Ze commander immediately burst into a raucous, booming laugh. "Exactly! A bunch of silly, oversized chickens, constantly acting like they're hot stuff!"
Amidst the friction, a middle-aged fox demon named Han Mei—a powerful Supreme Realm authority within the Nine-Tailed Fox Clan—slowly swept her mesmerizing, slitted eyes across the human vanguard. "The last time humanity authorized a mobilization of this structural amplitude... it was due to the cataclysmic descent of the Heavenly Abyss. So, tell us, Daoists. What is the catalyst this time?"
Immortal Master Lingwuzi smoothly shifted his horsetail whisk, his voice cutting through the wind with serene gravity. "This time, our presence here is precisely because of the Heavenly Abyss."
The announcement hit the demonic ranks like a physical shockwave, triggering an instant, volatile uproar. Dozens of powerful beast lords turned their gazes over, their eyes widening.
"The Heavenly Abyss?!"
"Are the heretical hordes of the Devil Race launching a mass-scale reclamation?!"
"No wonder... no wonder the human sectors emptied out their elite garrisons..."
The Golden Crow elder's tone turned intensely sharp. "Are you implying that the spatial anchor for this cycle's Heavenly Abyss is dropping directly into our Northern Territory?"
Liang Jianqiu nodded grimly. "My vanguard units unburied definitive structural traces of the Devil Race within the northern perimeters weeks ago. And just today, we have verified that their elite cells are executing covert, high-frequency movements across this exact sector. The physical manifestation of individual Devils doesn't automatically mean the grand Abyss has fractured yet—but their logistical layout is undeniably tethered to it."
Hearing this, the primary leaders of the Four Great Tribes fell into a heavy, solemn silence. The apocalyptic devastation of the last Heavenly Abyss descent was still vividly burned into their collective cultural memory. Even though that specific disaster had anchored squarely over the Central Continent—forcing humanity to bear the absolute brunt of the kinetic damage—the sovereign beast tribes had still been ruthlessly targeted by the Devil elite cells and had suffered catastrophic, multi-generational casualties.
While the grand masters of the two races were locked in a high-stakes geopolitical debate, Li Xuanxiao's cognitive focus was entirely elsewhere.
From the exact millisecond the Nine-Tailed Fox Clan had made landfall, his vision had been magnetically locked onto a specific, incredibly familiar silhouette standing casually within their ranks.
Li Xuanxiao blinked rapidly, rubbing his eyes in utter bewilderment. Wait... am I having a localized hallucination?
That effortlessly graceful posture, that flawless, breathtakingly pure face, those exact, deeply familiar lines of her eyebrows and eyes...
No way. Li Xuanxiao shook his head, a wry, self-deprecating smile tugging at the corner of his lips. What kind of absurd mental fan-fiction am I writing here? The young maid from my memory should be safely nesting back in the remote Dayu Kingdom! It's a coincidence. It has to be. In a world this massive, it's statistically normal for two completely unrelated people to have similar looking face.
As if perfectly tracking the exact vector of his intense gaze, the young woman smoothly tilted her head.
Their eyes met dead-center across the gap. Instantly, her beautiful features lit up with a brilliant, genuinely delighted spark of surprise. She flashed a devastatingly charming, naturally seductive smile that radiated pure warmth.
"Master~ Long time no see. I do hope you've been keeping well~"
!!!
The moment that familiar, melodic cadence pressed against his eardrums, the final shred of Li Xuanxiao's denial was violently liquidated. The sheer, unadulterated shock echoing through his brain was entirely indescribable!
It really was Ya Qin! The personal maid who had spent months serving his daily needs back in the Su Family Residence during his mortal days in the Dayu Kingdom!
Hold on... Ya Qin is actually a high-tier Nine-Tailed Fox demon?!
Li Xuanxiao's eyes went completely wide, his face a perfect canvas of absolute disbelief. A chaotic montage of their shared history flashed wildly behind his eyelids. They had engaged in deeply intimate, high-amplitude bedroom athletics on a regular basis—yet, throughout that entire domestic timeline, his internal scanning systems had never detected even a microscopic trace of demonic Qi on her person!
But as his logical gears quickly synchronized, he realized this wasn't a failure of his perception—it was a massive deficit in baseline metrics. Back when they lived in that restrictive lower kingdom, the ambient spiritual density capped mortal strength at the Early Origin Realm, and he was barely scrambling through the lower tiers. Ya Qin, on the other hand, had clearly already awakened her ancient bloodline memories, likely operating comfortably within the Heaven Realm or higher. A structural gap of an entire major cultivation tier meant her innate concealment tech was functionally flawless to his lower-tier eyes.
I was casually sleeping with a powerhouse demon whose baseline stats completely dwarfed my own...
Recalling those intense, high-energy nights of domestic frenzy, Li Xuanxiao felt a sudden, profound wave of lingering fear creep up his spine. If Ya Qin had harbored even a micro-gram of lethal intent back then, the spiritual grass growing over his premium burial plot would probably be ten feet tall by now.
But wait... A sudden, triumphant realization hit him, completely salvaging his deflated masculine pride. No wonder! No wonder I—the self-proclaimed 'Seven Times a Night Lad'—was consistently getting completely dematerialized and left exhausted in those matches! It wasn't that my stamina specs were lacking... I was literally trying to solo an elite Nine-Tailed Fox who had a massive realm advantage!
Regaining a healthy chunk of his core confidence, Li Xuanxiao's mental scrolling suddenly hit a massive, jarring roadblock. His expression shifted drastically from smug relief to absolute, razor-sharp vigilance.
The Gu worm.
The heretical tracking parasite nestled in his meridians that had been generating that subtle, unprovoked psychological pull across the world map... it had been planted the exact day she vanished from the Su family estate, right when he secured his own path toward the central Upper Realms of the continent.
Li Xuanxiao adjusted his posture, his eyes locking onto her with deep, defensive caution. "Ya Qin... that specialized Gu worm anchored directly over my heart. You planted that, didn't you?"
Ya Qin nodded smoothly, her demeanor entirely honest, open, and completely devoid of guilt. "Guilty as charged~ That was simply my personalized insurance policy to ensure I could completely possess Master forever."
Saying this, Ya Qin tilted her head, her luminous eyes slowly tracing up and down his physical frame, meticulously scrutinizing his current energy signatures. As she mapped his aura, her jaw subtly dropped, a genuine look of deep astonishment painting her beautiful face.
"My... Master truly lives up to being the absolute prize Ya Qin chose for herself. To scale all the way up to the Void Realm in such a ridiculously short developmental window! No wonder my bloodline resonance lost its tracking lock on Master's physical location recently."
Her slender, porcelain finger slowly traced the contour of her lower lip, her pink tongue flicking out in a naturally seductive, incredibly casual motion.
Li Xuanxiao breathed out slowly, trying to maintain tactical clarity. "Given the sheer realm disparity back when we were down in Dayu, you could have easily liquidated me or drained my cultivation base to boost your own. Why didn't you act?"
Ya Qin tilted her head, looking mildly offended by the logic. "Why would I ever consume Master? I didn't want to turn you into resource points; I simply wanted to possess your entire existence, body and soul."
She took a dainty step forward, her voice dropping into a sweet, terrifyingly intense purr. "Ya Qin is fundamentally different from that timid Young Miss Miaoyin. Young Miss Miaoyin nurtured a sweet, fragile little crush on Master, but she was far too much of a coward to ever act on it openly. Even when Master was preparing to permanently leave the Dayu Kingdom, she only possessed the structural courage to ask for a basic farewell hug. What an utterly pathetic loser!"
She paused, her eyes flashing with a deep, unsettling fanaticism. "Ya Qin doesn't do compromises. I want to own the entirety of Master."
Si Miaoyin... actually liked me?
The sudden revelation dropped into Li Xuanxiao's brain like a stray brick, but the sheer dissonance of hearing a high-tier demon casually dissecting human teenage pining completely threw off his rhythm. He took a deep, steadying breath, steering the conversation back to the immediate threat. "And that twisted ambition is the sole reason you saddled me with a parasitic heart-worm?"
Ya Qin sighed softly, nodding with a profound, touching sense of pity. "It's an absolute tragedy that it failed to fully mature. If the Love Gu had been granted just a few more months to properly cultivate within your system, Master would currently be hopelessly, pathologically in love with Ya Qin to the point of literal death and rebirth."
This isn't love! Li Xuanxiao screamed internally, his mental alarms firing at maximum frequency. This is a textbook, premium-tier, unadulterated Yandere! This is a severe psychiatric condition! You desperately need a multi-stage clinical intervention!
Li Xuanxiao opened his mouth, fully prepared to aggressively correct her deeply flawed relationship paradigms. But realizing that trying to explain the modern cultural nuances of psychological character tropes to an ancient, upper-tier fox demon would be an exercise in absolute futility, he forcefully shut his jaw.
Besides, now that the mystery of the tracking Gu's origin was fully solved, he didn't need to tolerate its presence for a single second longer.
Li Xuanxiao immediately shifted his consciousness inward, mobilizing his core energy to launch a total internal purge to liquidate the parasite. However, the moment his spiritual awareness scanned his heart meridians, he froze in complete shock.
The insidious, high-tier Gu worm—which had been securely cocooned and buffered under his massive reserves of Luck—was completely gone. It had already been silently, systematically dissolved into nothingness.