Why lie to him?

In truth, even Jian Chou herself didn’t quite understand.

Perhaps at the moment she discovered the truth, she felt an inexplicable fear that couldn’t be shared with others?

What Xie Buchen had said about her still held some truth after all.

The Kunpeng Wings That Hang from Heaven Dao Seal was forged into her completely new body, adding an ancient pattern to her shoulder blade.

She had never felt the pain from beginning to end.

But this absence of pain was more painful than pain itself.

Leaning against the uneven rock wall, with the dried spring eye before her and the wailing wind outside, Jian Chou suddenly felt that loneliness.

She gazed outside, not knowing how long she had been looking.

Until the light of that completely new Dao Seal disappeared entirely from this rock cavern, and she suddenly coughed up a mouthful of blood.

Her spiritual consciousness, having broken through to the Bounded realm, could easily reach throughout the entire polar regions while she held the position of Ninth Hall Yama King.

But there was no Fu Chaosheng.

She even knew clearly that he wouldn’t seek revenge against Kunwu. He had simply left this world that he couldn’t understand and where others couldn’t tolerate his existence.

The bloodstains on her body hadn’t been washed away, but as she supported herself against the cave wall to stand, they followed the flowing embroidered patterns on her Mountain and River Robe, falling to the bottom of her long robe and settling into a deep, dark red color.

On the ground still lay that half-heart stained with demon blood.

Jian Chou thought for a long time before finally picking it up and placing it in a box together with the half-heart she had obtained from Lord Wu Guan.

In just an instant, they fused together, becoming a complete heart.

A complete, masterless heart.

The demon blood that had stained it fell away, congealing into several deep blue beads.

An innocent heart had once belonged to a certain Yashan cultivator, later refined by Lord Wu Guan, then half swallowed by Fu Chaosheng and half gouged out by her, but in the end it was just placed there all alone.

“Click.”

The box was gently closed. Jian Chou forced herself to rein in all her emotions. When she gripped Thread of Heaven again, all the weakness that had briefly appeared disappeared completely from her.

On her ice-and-snow-like face was the old calmness and severity.

Kun was dead.

Fu Chaosheng had left.

But the remaining matters had not been completely resolved because of this.

Her mind kept flashing back to Wang Que’s expression earlier—how he had seemed to want to say something to her but ultimately said nothing—and throughout this entire Yin-Yang realm war, Xie Buchen’s various actions that seemed ordinary but were actually unusual in her eyes.

Kunwu… something had happened…

Jian Chou held Thread of Heaven and at this moment didn’t directly leave the rock cavern, but instead turned to look toward the depths of this cavern.

In the past, black wind would blow from within the cave, and the nine-headed bird’s remnant soul would condense at the entrance.

But now there was nothing.

The nine-headed bird’s remnant soul was nowhere to be found, and even the black wind that seemed like it would never blow again was silent in the dust.

She remembered that she had once passed through this cave entrance, as if her soul had left her body, and wandered through all of Shijiu Zhou. She also remembered that during the Black Wind Cave body tempering years ago, when she had advanced deeper against that knife-cutting, axe-chopping black wind, she had countless times wondered where the end of that cave would be…

Facing this cave entrance, Jian Chou stood for a long time, as if trying to understand something.

But in the end, she still took her sword and walked in.

Complete darkness.

The cave walls had endured countless blasts of black wind, embedded with dark silver wind-swallowing stones full of holes. The ground was covered with a thin layer of dust. In this place where no one should have set foot, there was actually a string of vague footprints that looked like someone had recently entered this cave like her and walked toward the other end.

She should clearly be alert, even stop to think about whether she should continue toward the other end of the cave. But when Jian Chou saw these footprints, she only paused for a moment before continuing forward.

As if these footprints didn’t exist at all.

She walked for a very long time. Halfway through, she even saw a patch of moving space-time turbulence at the edge of the cave wall, reminding her of the turbulence she had encountered when returning from the eighteen levels of hell to Shijiu Zhou years ago—the one that had made her sleep for sixty years.

This time, she wasn’t swept into it.

She passed safely by its side.

The further she walked, the more obvious the familiar aura became—the aura that belonged uniquely to Shijiu Zhou.

Then finally, as if confirming something, she saw…

Familiar handwriting.

Black Wind Cave, leaving words at a thousand feet!

Yashan, Qu Zhengfeng!

Yashan, Jian Chou!

Though the handwriting was different, both were first-rate in their sharpness, clearly showing a sense of confrontational rivalry.

Jian Chou suddenly laughed.

It wasn’t because she remembered those times of competing with others out of pride, but rather a sigh…

Shijiu Zhou and the polar regions had always been connected by this Black Wind Cave. They were actually very close—there was no need for such elaborate efforts as this Yin-Yang realm war to reach each other. It was just that between the realms, there had always been the never-ceasing black wind that blocked people’s steps and limited their understanding, keeping these two naturally close realms in isolation for thousands upon thousands of years.

Just like people and people.

She gazed at these two parallel lines of text for a long time, then raised her foot to leave. But at the moment she lifted her step, she suddenly noticed that after more than eighty years, there were actually two more lines of text at this thousand-foot mark.

Arranged very strangely.

Yashan Sword heart Returns returns

Home home

Every stroke revealed deep, concentrated sharpness. Running her hand over those strokes, she could clearly feel the sword intent surging within each line!

The handwriting was exactly the same as Qu Zhengfeng’s inscription beside it.

Only above those three characters “heart returns home,” there seemed to be traces of something having been erased.

Jian Chou frowned slightly. She moved her finger to this spot, wanting to know what exactly had been erased here. But the moment her finger touched that place, the wind-swallowing stone on the cave wall seemed to sense something and suddenly crumbled away!

“Crash…”

Broken stone fragments fell to the ground at her feet.

What appeared before Jian Chou was actually a scroll embedded in the cave wall!

She felt bewildered and instinctively reached out to extract this scroll. It looked completely ordinary, but the moment it touched her hand, it reminded her of the Book of Life and Death.

When she unrolled it to look, her heart shook.

Faint golden light emerged from the scroll.

At the beginning of the scroll were only four characters in ancient, difficult-to-read script flowing like water—Nine Bends River Map!

At this moment, her mind thundered as she suddenly realized something. How could she have time to examine it carefully? In a flash, she had already rushed out from the depths of this cave, heading toward Kunwu!

Rolling green mountains rose and fell across the earth; rushing rivers meandered between the green mountains.

Kunwu’s eleven peaks still stood tall.

The Jiutou River bay, at the edge of Kunwu’s territory, was as flat as a lake surface. The morning sun that had just risen was reflected on the river surface, and together with the fresh blood flowing into the river water, it dyed half the river surface a brilliant color.

The shrill wind had never sounded so pleasant;

The oppressive sky had never been so clear;

Even the miserable wails covering the mountains and fields were like tomorrow’s wine at tomorrow’s tower—drink it all in one gulp, get drunk and be done with it…

How exhilarating, how utterly exhilarating!

The stone Yashan sword was covered with deep and shallow blood stains. As it advanced, it severed countless heads of Kunwu’s younger generation disciples. Killing all the way up this mountain path to Kunwu, past the martial arts field, it finally reached the One Crane Hall.

Before him was this vast Kunwu, with countless faces filled with shock, anger, and fear;

Behind him was his Tomorrow Star Sea, nearly a thousand crisscrossing blades and swords!

“Demon, demon—”

“Quickly activate the protective formation!”

“What do you want to do?!!!”

“Get away, get…”

…

What was once a paradise on earth had become a hell on earth!

Qu Zhengfeng held his sword, stepping on those blood-flowing steps, looking at the carnage before him and feeling as if he had returned to eleven cycles ago when he was heavily besieged by polar region ghost cultivators with no one coming to rescue him.

Only now it was Kunwu who was stretching their necks for slaughter.

They should feel familiar, shouldn’t they?

Before leaving the polar battlefield, he had destroyed the Eastern Polar Ghost Gate’s teleportation array. Presumably, no one in Kunwu would know there was still a shortcut from the polar regions back to Shijiu Zhou. When the battle was decided and they struggled to return to provide aid, seeing this river full of fresh blood and mountains full of corpses, would they be able to taste Yashan’s pain from years ago?

Qu Zhengfeng laughed.

On his billowing black robe, golden threads were stained with blood…