Phi-Fic Chapter 527 Echoes of Fate
Chapter 527 Echoes of Fate
I stared at the shadow crystal still warm in my palm, my fingertips unconsciously rubbing the edge of the storage ring.
The image of the ruins just now seemed to be etched into my consciousness—the chain patterns on the broken pillar overlapped with the patterns of the Blood Fiend Palace, and the whispers of the blurry figure holding the twin crystals now perfectly matched the vibration frequency of the Shadow Crystal.
The mountain wind swept past my ear, carrying the last wisp of black mist. I suddenly shivered and looked up to meet Wen Chen's concerned gaze.
"Yao Yao?" His voice was softer than the mountain breeze. His fingertips hovered lightly over my elbow, as if he wanted to support me but was afraid of startling me.
I then realized that I had stood up without even noticing, and my feet felt like they were floating on cotton.
Wen Chen's Ice Soul Sword was still stuck at his feet, a thin layer of frost on its blade, reflecting his tightly pursed lips—a habitual gesture when he was anxious.
“I… saw ruins.” I gripped my storage ring tightly, the heat of the shadow crystal seeping into my palm through the ring’s walls. “The chain patterns on the broken pillars… are exactly the same as those in the Blood Fiend Palace.” As I spoke, I caught a glimpse of Blood Fiend lying not far away.
The villain's already blood-stained clothes were now stained with dark red again, yet he still propped up half his face and sneered, his pupils pulsating with a fanaticism I couldn't understand.
"Senior Sister!" Zi Ling grabbed my sleeve from behind, her fingers as cold as if they had been soaked in ice water. "You looked so scary just now, your eyes were so fixed on you, you didn't even hear Senior Brother Wen calling you." Her hair was covered in bits of grass, clearly from when she rushed over and bumped into a pile of weeds.
I took her hand in return and felt the cold sweat covering her palm—this little girl always pretends to be clever, but she panics more than anyone else when it really matters.
“That bastard said ‘open the void realm,’” I turned to Blood Fiend, his cold laugh made my back teeth ache, “What exactly is it?” Before I could finish speaking, my waist suddenly felt heavy – it was Wen Chen who quietly clenched my storage ring into his palm, his fingertips gently pressing on my tiger’s mouth.
This is our code; he's saying, "Don't worry, I'm here."
“It is recorded in ancient books.” The ethereal immortal’s voice was like an autumn leaf falling on the water, startling Zi Ling and me so much that we turned our heads at the same time.
He had retreated to the stone wall three steps away without anyone noticing. The silver chain gleamed coldly in the moonlight, and the jade pendant on his wrist was pressed against the crack in the stone wall.
Seeing us looking over, he shook out a yellowed jade slip from his sleeve and tapped its surface with his knuckles: "Spirit crystals govern life and draw in spiritual energy; Shadow crystals govern death and devour life force."
"The two crystals unite..." His voice suddenly choked, and the jade slip shattered into dust at his fingertips. "It is the key to the Void Realm."
"The Void Realm?" Zi Ling's voice rose half an octave, echoing against the mountain wall.
I felt Wen Chen's palm suddenly tighten, his body heat coming through the storage ring, making my fingertips numb.
Elder Qingfeng stood up, leaning against the stone wall. His Taoist robe was stained with black mud, and he coughed twice with each step. "I once heard the patriarch say that the Void Realm is a graveyard of spiritual energy."
"If it really gets opened..." His cloudy eyes suddenly turned bloodshot, "the spiritual energy of the cultivation world will be drained, and all cultivators will become crippled!"
"So that's why Blood Fiend desperately tried to steal the Shadow Crystal?" Zi Ling's nails dug into the back of my hand. "He wants to be that 'destined one'?"
"Not necessarily." Wen Chen released my hand, and the Ice Soul Sword was drawn three inches from its sheath with a "hum," its cold light sweeping across Xue Sha's throat. "The passage to the Void Realm requires the resonance of two crystals, and even more so..." He suddenly stopped, his gaze falling on my storage ring.
Looking in that direction, I noticed a faint golden glow emanating from the ring face—it was the shadow crystal echoing the spirit crystal.
Blood Fiend suddenly laughed, the blood he coughed up splattering onto the Ice Soul Sword, hissing as it turned into wisps of smoke: "Little girl, still don't understand?" He pointed his blood-stained finger at me, "Why is the Shadow Crystal on your body in sync with the Spirit Crystal Stone?"
The inscription on the stone wall of the underground palace three months ago, "The beginning of reincarnation, the union of two crystals," refers to whom?
My temples are throbbing.
Three months ago in the Blood Fiend Palace, I did see that inscription that hadn't been eaten away by insects.
At the time, it was just a normal warning, but now it feels like a fine needle piercing into my sea of consciousness—the patterns of the shadow crystal, the broken pillars of the ruins, the legends of the void realm, all the fragments suddenly string together into a line.
"Yaoyao?" Wen Chen's hand covered the back of my neck, carrying his usual cool fragrance. "You're trembling."
I then realized that my shoulders were trembling.
The night wind lifted the hem of her clothes, and the spot where Yingjing was touching her skin began to vibrate again, once, twice, with the exact rhythm of the voice in her memory.
Zi Ling's fingers were still digging into the back of my hand, the pain bringing me back to my senses.
As I gazed at the madness in Xue Sha's eyes, I suddenly remembered what the ethereal immortal had said about "the destined one"—if the unification of the two crystals required me, then were all the previous coincidences arrangements of fate?
"So this is what Xue Sha and the others have been looking for..." Zi Ling's voice suddenly became as soft as a sigh.
I turned to look at her, and the moonlight fell on her tightly furrowed brows. In that shadow lay the shrewdness I knew well—this girl had probably already guessed something.
Blood Fiend's laughter, laced with blood foam, crashed against the cold gleam of the Ice Soul Sword, and Zi Ling's nails almost dug into the back of my hand.
Before Elder Qingfeng's cough had even subsided, the villain suddenly began to convulse violently—the veins on his neck bulged like earthworms, his previously unfocused pupils suddenly shrank to pinpoints, and black blood trickled down the corners of his mouth, gleaming eerily blue in the moonlight.
"Not good!" Wen Chen shouted, and the Ice Soul Sword was fully drawn from its sheath with a "hum," and frost flowers crackled and exploded along the spine of the sword.
His fingertips quickly formed a sealing seal, and the mountain wind rolled up his sleeves, revealing the love knot I had woven myself on his wrist—it was something I had made three months ago in Sunset Valley using the fragments of jade thread from the hem of his clothes, and it was now swaying slightly with his movements.
I tried to back away, but Zi Ling gripped my sleeve tightly.
The little girl's fingers were trembling, and her breath sprayed onto the back of my neck, carrying a fresh, herbal scent—she had brewed a stimulating soup for me this morning, and the medicine pot was still sitting unwashed in the mosquito net.
The Blood Demon's body began to become transparent, and its black blood dripped onto the ground with a hissing sound, like concentrated sulfuric acid corroding rocks.
I stared at his gradually blurring face and suddenly saw a kind of relief hidden in the madness in his eyes—as if he had finally completed some kind of mission.
“The true chosen one…” His voice seemed to drift from a great distance, the last syllable torn to shreds by the mountain wind, “has appeared…”
Just as the black mist exploded, carrying those words, Wen Chen's sealing seal was completed.
A net of icy blue light descended, covering the sky, but only managed to trap a few wisps of dissipating black energy.
I instinctively reached out to catch it, and for a fleeting moment, my fingertips touched the coldness within the black mist—not the crisp coldness of the Ice Soul Sword, but a decaying coldness that seeped from my very bones, exactly the same as the coldness in the chaotic space I dream of every fifteenth of the month.
"Yao Yao!" Wen Chen's palm pressed heavily on my wrist, and the cold energy of the Ice Soul Sword rushed into my meridians through his fingertips, forcing the wisp of black energy back into his palm.
I then realized that my hands were shaking so badly that I could barely hold onto the storage ring.
Zi Ling's tears fell onto the back of my hand, her sobs, choked with tears, mingled with the mountain wind as they reached my ears: "Senior Sister, don't scare me, that black energy just now got into your hand..."
"It's alright." The ethereal immortal's voice suddenly came from the left.
I turned my head and saw his silver chain gleaming with a pale golden light, the patterns on the jade pendant on his wrist seeming to come alive—he was probing for spatial fluctuations. "This is Blood Fiend's tracking technique, using his life as a catalyst." He flicked a beam of clear light from his fingertip, and the wisp of black energy instantly melted like snow baked by fire. "But his soul has dissipated, the tracking line is broken."
Elder Qingfeng staggered a couple of steps, leaning against the stone wall, his hands smeared with black mud from his Daoist robe. "I've lived for three hundred years, and this is the first time I've seen an evil cultivator use his life essence to activate a forbidden technique." His cloudy eyes stared at my palm. "Young friend, when you touched that black mist just now...did you sense anything unusual?"
I looked down at my palm.
The black mist had been driven away by Wen Chen's cold air, leaving only a pale blue mark, shaped like a broken six-petaled flower—exactly the same as the pattern under the feet of the figure in my dream who made me suffocate.
My throat tightened, and I suddenly remembered the scene I would see in my mind every midnight on the fifteenth of each month: two crystals, one red and one silver, floated in the chaos. The red one was dripping blood, and the silver one was absorbing light. I stood in the middle, and there was always a voice in my ear saying, "It's time to wake up."
"Yaoyao?" Wen Chen's thumb gently caressed the love knot on my wrist, his body heat seeping in through the chill of the Ice Soul Sword. "What are you thinking about?"
I looked up and met his eyes.
The corners of his eyes still carried the faint redness from when he formed the hand seal, and his eyelashes were covered with frost-like patterns, like a layer of fine snow.
Those eyes, which used to be like deep pools, now surged with an anxiety I had never seen before—he was afraid, afraid that I was hiding something from him.
"I..." The words were on the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed them back.
Ziling suddenly tugged at my sleeve. Her sobs had subsided, and her voice held a familiar sharpness: "Senior Sister has a six-petaled flower mark on her palm, just like the dream pattern she described in the Boundless Sea last month, right?"
My heart skipped a beat.
This little girl seemed flustered, but she had very sharp ears—I only mentioned the dream to her and Wen Chen once, on a stormy night in the Boundless Sea.
Elder Qingfeng leaned closer, his withered fingers hovering half an inch above my palm: "The Six-Petaled Soul-Locking Flower is the guardian mark of the Void Realm." His voice trembled. "Legend has it that only those who can communicate between the two realms will be marked by this mark..."
"Enough." Wen Chen suddenly shielded me behind him, the cold light of his Ice Soul Sword sweeping across the crowd. "Now is not the time to discuss this." As he turned, the hem of his robe brushed against the hem of my skirt, which was covered in grass clippings. "Blood Fiend is dead, but his words..." He paused, his gaze falling on my storage ring, the heat of the Shadow Crystal burning me through the ring's walls. "We'll have to discuss this back at the stronghold."
The ethereal immortal's silver chain suddenly made a crisp sound.
He gazed at the spot where the bloodlust had dissipated, the patterns on the jade tablet frozen, as if a pause button had been pressed: "This place is not safe to linger." He turned and walked towards the mountain path, the silver chain leaving a white mark in the moonlight. "There will be a thunderstorm in three days; the spiritual veins in this mountain valley are already unstable..."
Ziling sniffed and reached out to brush the grass clippings off the hem of my skirt: "I'll go get Elder Qingfeng's medicine pouch." As she bent down, the jade hairpin at the end of her hair glittered—it was the one I bought for her at the market last year. She said she wanted to save up enough spirit stones to exchange for gold, but she still hadn't been able to bring herself to do it.
Wen Chen grasped my hand, and the Ice Soul Sword automatically flew back to its sheath.
His palms were still cold, but his grip was steadyer than before: "Shall I carry you?"
I shook my head, but didn't pull my hand away.
The mountain breeze carried his cool fragrance into my nostrils, and the shadow crystal inside my storage ring kept bumping against my palm, like counting heartbeats.
We followed the ethereal immortal along the mountain path, with Zi Ling supporting Elder Qing Feng behind us. The old man's coughs came in fits and starts, mingling with the sound of the mountain stream, like a tune that was out of tune.
When I reached the mouth of the ravine, I looked back at the open space I had just been.
Under the moonlight, only a few pools of black blood and the mark left by the Ice Soul Sword remained—thin frost covered the sword mark, gleaming coldly in the moonlight.
The shadow crystal suddenly vibrated violently, and I subconsciously clenched my storage ring, my fingertip rubbing against the patterns on the ring's surface.
Wen Chen turned his head to look at me, and I smiled at him, but his brows remained furrowed.
When we returned to the base, the campfire was still burning.
When the disciples on night watch saw us return, they hurried over to greet Elder Qingfeng.
Zi Ling went to get medicine for her injuries, while Wen Chen was summoned by the Grand Elder to report on the battle situation.
I stood outside the main tent, gazing at the flickering firelight inside, and suddenly felt a bit tired—not from exhaustion of spiritual energy, but from a feeling of heaviness in my heart, as if a stone were pressing down on it.
The moment I lifted the curtain, the heat from the Shadow Crystal seeped through my storage ring, making me flinch.
I sat on the futon in the dark and took out the Shadow Crystal by the moonlight.
It shimmered with a faint blue light in my palm, and the patterns on its surface seemed to come alive, slowly merging with the six-petaled flower imprint on my palm.
The mountain breeze lifted the curtains, causing the candlelight to flicker.
The light of the shadow crystal reflected on the tent cloth, casting a blurry shadow—like two people, one holding a spirit crystal stone and the other holding a shadow crystal, separated by a cloud of black mist.
I gently stroked the surface of the crystal with my fingertips, and its vibration frequency suddenly synchronized with my heartbeat, once, twice, as if saying, "It's time to wake up."
Wen Chen's footsteps came from outside the tent, and I quickly stuffed the Shadow Crystal into my storage ring.
When he lifted the curtain and came in, the moonlight was falling on his shoulders, stretching his shadow long, almost touching my feet.
I gazed at the tassel of the Ice Soul Sword at his waist—it was woven from the star-patterned silk he had given me, and it was swaying gently with his movements.
"Tired?" He came over and reached out to tidy my hair, which had been ruffled by the mountain wind. "Rest first, we can talk about it tomorrow."
I nodded, but didn't move.
The shadow crystal in my storage ring was still hot, pressed against my lower abdomen through the fabric.
I suddenly recalled the look in Xue Sha's eyes before he died—it wasn't madness, it was relief, as if he had finally handed over a heavy burden to the person who was supposed to receive it.
Wen Chen sat down beside me and wrapped my cold hand in his palm.
His body heat seeped through my skin, but I still felt cold, cold to the bone.
The vibrations of the shadow crystal continued, once, twice, perfectly matching the rhythm of my dream.
I gazed at the moonlight outside the tent and suddenly felt an urge to tell him everything—about the dream, about the six-petaled flower, about the familiar feeling in that wisp of black mist just now.
But I swallowed the words back, because I knew that once I spoke, the anxiety in his eyes would turn into worry, and I...
I looked down at our clasped hands, and the love knot on his wrist brushed against the back of my hand.
The heat from the Shadow Crystal radiated through my storage ring, making my fingertips tingle.
I suddenly realized that perhaps some things were already destined from the moment I picked up the Shadow Crystal in the Blood Fiend Palace three months ago.
The night watchman's drum sounded outside the tent; it was three quarters past midnight.
I released Wen Chen's hand and took out Ying Jing, placing it on my lap.
Its light shone on my face, casting a blurry shadow on the tent.
I reached out and gently stroked its surface; the patterns flowed beneath my fingertips, as if telling some ancient secret.
Wen Chen placed his hand on the back of my hand, and his body temperature, transmitted through the shadow crystal, dispelled some of the chill.
I turned to look at him; he was staring at Yingjing, his eyelashes casting shadows beneath his eyes.
The mountain wind lifted the curtain, causing the candlelight to flicker and the light from the crystal to dim, making his features appear and disappear.
"Yaoyao," he called softly, his voice carrying a familiar steadiness, "No matter what happens, I'll be there."
I nodded, my throat tightening.
The crystal was still vibrating, once, twice, in sync with my heartbeat.
As I gazed at the flowing patterns on its surface, I suddenly recalled what Blood Fiend had said: "The true destined one has already appeared."
Perhaps, from the very beginning, all the coincidences were not coincidences, but rather the guidance of fate.
The drum outside the tent sounded again. I gripped the Shadow Crystal tightly, its heat seeping into my veins through my palm.
Wen Chen's hand was still covering the back of my hand; his body temperature acted as a barrier, keeping out the cold outside.
As I gazed at the moonlight outside the tent, I suddenly felt a sense of relief—whatever fate may be, at least I am not alone.
The vibrations of the shadow crystal continued, once, twice, as if saying, "It's time to set off."
I looked down at it, gently stroking its surface with my fingertips; the patterns shimmered with a faint blue light under the moonlight.
Tomorrow, when it's light, I'll tell Wen Chen everything, and then together we'll uncover this secret.
At this moment, the main tent was quiet, with only the occasional sound of the mountain wind blowing through the tent curtains.
I sat on the futon, repeatedly stroking the surface of the crystal. Its patterns flowed under my fingertips, as if telling an ancient story.
But I know that this story has only just begun.