Ye Chenyan’s expression turned strange. “A treasure?”
Scholar Xiao hurriedly called out, “Senior, what about the two of us—”
“You two have other important work.” Tianji Zi looked perfectly serious. “I still need you here to provide cover.”
He turned and beckoned to Ye Chenyan. “Come here. I need to say a few words to you alone.”
Ye Chenyan narrowed his eyes. “What do you have to say that needs to be private?”
“Heh—” Tianji Zi pointed at him. “Not coming? Fine. I can say it in front of everyone.”
“Ahem...”
“Wait!” Seeing that Tianji Zi was actually about to speak instead of withholding information for once, Ye Chenyan became even more suspicious. “Private is fine.”
He walked over. Only after Tianji Zi waved a hand and cut off everyone else’s probing senses did Ye Chenyan ask, “What trick do you have up your sleeve?”
“A miraculous cure.” Tianji Zi chuckled. “On this trip to the Sea of Returning Ruins, I need you to retrieve something.”
Ye Chenyan’s expression shifted. “That treasure you mentioned? What is it?”
“A Realm Stone.” Tianji Zi nodded lightly. “I know you’ve never heard of it. Almost no one beneath heaven knows this treasure exists. But it is the one thing that can truly kill otherworldly evil demons.”
Ye Chenyan raised an eyebrow. “You divined that?”
“Hehehe—” Tianji Zi smiled proudly. “I heard about it back when I was still in the Esoteric Sect.”
Ye Chenyan: “...”
“I wasn’t just loafing around there.” Tianji Zi ignored his subtle look and continued smugly. “I found out quite a few things. At the very least, I learned how they intended to save this world.”
He paused.
“And not merely save it. The one in the Esoteric Sect also wants this world to develop according to his expectations.”
Ye Chenyan’s brows drew tightly together. “Then why scheme around Qingtang?”
Tianji Zi glanced at him and chuckled. “Because from the very beginning, he was guided here by the Heavenly Dao.”
“Him?” Ye Chenyan froze. “Why...”
“You know that the three thousand worlds each possess their own barriers, and those barriers are not easily crossed.” Tianji Zi’s expression turned serious. “Otherworldly evil demons are different. They wander through the void between the three thousand worlds, eroding the barriers around them. If they manage to tear open a fissure in the Heavenly Dao, they can pour straight through and destroy an entire world.”
“The war tens of millions of years ago cost the lives of countless cultivators, all just to resist those abominations.”
“Yu Qingtang is also a soul from beyond this realm, but he—”
“He’s different from them,” Ye Chenyan cut in flatly.
“Of course.” Tianji Zi nodded. “Aside from his character and his race, there is one far more important distinction.”
“He did not enter through a fissure in the Heavenly Dao.”
Ye Chenyan froze.
He instinctively turned toward Yu Qingtang. Yu Qingtang blinked back at him in complete confusion.
“That’s true.” Ye Chenyan looked away again. “Of the two fissures in the Heavenly Dao, one is under the Esoteric Sect’s watch, while the other only appeared recently in Rongzhou’s desert. He grew up in Biehe Sect. There’s no way he came through either...”
He looked upward almost unconsciously.
“Then where did he come from?”
Tianji Zi chuckled.
“Yuezhou. The Sea of Returning Ruins. Beneath the Dragon Palace.”
“The Realm Gate.”
Ye Chenyan repeated quietly, “Realm Gate.”
“A fissure in the Heavenly Dao is a passage forcibly torn open by otherworldly evil demons.” Tianji Zi chuckled. “But if someone transcends the world and becomes a true God-King, they can use the proper entrance.”
“That proper entrance is the Realm Gate.”
Ye Chenyan looked at him strangely. “God-King?”
“Of course.” Tianji Zi burst out laughing. “This little fellow obviously wasn’t some God-King from another world.”
“I told you already. Chance encounters. Fortuitous coincidences. It was all fate.”
Still smiling, Tianji Zi looked toward Yu Qingtang.
“The sea cultivators guard the Realm Gate. Back then, he was nothing more than a tiny wandering soul that accidentally passed through it. Ordinarily, the sea cultivators should have driven him out.”
“But...”
“Someone’s heart softened for a moment. They spared his life and allowed him to reincarnate in this realm instead of dispersing into the void.”
“And so, within what should have been a deadlocked game, one small variable remained.”
Ye Chenyan’s gaze trembled, but he quickly forced himself to calm down. “I already knew he wasn’t from this world. How he got here never mattered.”
“And if he isn’t from this world, then even if Heaven is about to collapse, it has nothing to do with him...”
“Oh?” Tianji Zi sneered. “You say it has nothing to do with him now. But when the time comes and he leaps straight through the Realm Gate—”
Ye Chenyan’s head snapped up. “What do you mean? You’re sending him back?”
“Hey, I never said that!” Tianji Zi hurriedly waved both hands, clearly afraid the brat might work himself into a fit and betray his master and ancestors. “I’m just saying, if the gate can be entered, then naturally it can be exited too. Especially for him. Since he managed to come in, he should be able to leave.”
“That is exactly what the Esoteric Sect values about him.”
“Even someone as powerful as Tianxuan Nü or the Nine Nether Demonic Sovereign suffers a drastic loss of strength upon leaving this realm and entering the void. But if he can step into the void completely unharmed...”
Tianji Zi did not need to finish.
Ye Chenyan already understood.
Tianji Zi chuckled. “Little Yu has always thought the Esoteric Sect recognized him as the Born Supreme because he knocked your fate off course.”
“Ah. That part was my doing too. Don’t blame him.”
“But in truth, the Esoteric Sect never found the wrong person.”
“He is the one they were searching for.”
“To the Esoteric Sect, he is the Born Supreme.”
“The savior of this realm.”
Ye Chenyan’s brows knitted tightly.
“So the Esoteric Sect’s plan is to have him take the Realm Stone that can kill otherworldly evil demons, then send him into the void to...”
“Fight all of them alone?”
He sneered.
“Absurd.”
“It’s not entirely absurd.” Tianji Zi chuckled. “The Esoteric Sect tried countless methods. They placed their hopes in the failed Heaven-Mending Art of the ancients. They placed their hopes in you, born inheriting immortal and demonic energies.”
“And in the end, they still placed their hopes in him.”
“A wandering soul like him might not appear again in tens of millions of years. If they let this one slip away, who knows whether this world could survive until the next?”
Ye Chenyan suppressed his anger and tightened his grip on the demonic weapon.
“Then why didn’t the Esoteric Sect bring him back and raise him the way they raised Ji Ruxue and Ying Wujue?”
“Hehehe.” Tianji Zi smiled and pointed at himself. “Do you think your master was just sitting around eating for free?”
“If I had already decided to ruin their plans, naturally I couldn’t let them get what they wanted.”
“Take a guess. Who got to him before the Esoteric Sect and sent him to Biehe Sect?”
Ye Chenyan: “...”
He knew the answer.
He simply did not particularly want to say it.
“Me, of course.” Tianji Zi looked immensely pleased with himself. “Not to brag, but once I deliberately hide someone, nobody can find them.”
“However...”
“You can hide a person. You cannot hide their fate.”
Tianji Zi shook his head slightly.
“I’m not an immortal, so I cannot read the fate of someone who does not belong to this realm. But the one in the Esoteric Sect, with guidance from the Heavenly Dao, may be able to glimpse a little.”
“The Heavenly Dao paved the road ahead of him, making his path unnaturally smooth. If he had been the ordinary diligent sort, he would have distinguished himself in no time and drawn everyone’s attention.”
“Heh.” Tianji Zi slapped his thigh. “And guess what? This child just happened to have no particular interest in cultivation. He had a back door opened for him by the Heavenly Dao itself, yet somehow managed to hide a tree in the forest and avoid being noticed!”
He finally could not hold back his laughter.
“Ah, truly a twist of fate! What a marvelous coincidence! Hahaha!”
Ye Chenyan: “...”
“Ahem!” Tianji Zi cleared his throat. “But the Esoteric Sect obviously wasn’t going to give up. They couldn’t control his fate, so they tried to lure him toward them instead.”
He waggled his eyebrows at Ye Chenyan.
“Do you remember that day when I told you to head toward the Ten Thousand Immortals Pavilion because some great opportunity was waiting for you?”
Ye Chenyan froze.
Then his expression turned strange.
“You!”
“No wonder! You never divine anything for me, and even when you do, there’s no way you’d tell me some heaven-defying opportunity was waiting for me to claim it!”
“Aiya—” Tianji Zi’s eyes curved into crescents. “Good thing you were still young back then. Much easier to fool than you are now. Otherwise I might not have managed to coax you into going.”
“If you hadn’t gone that day, the holy maiden of the Esoteric Sect would have met him.”
“He still had restrictions placed on him by several of us old fellows working together, but Ji Ruxue has an innate Dao fetus and is exceptionally close to the Heavenly Dao. If she had spoken to him for a while longer, there was no telling whether she might have seen through him.”
Ye Chenyan’s eyes flickered.
“So... so all this time, he thought he ruined my chance with Ji Ruxue.”
“But it was actually the other way around...”
“I ruined his chance with Ji Ruxue?”
“Exactly.” Tianji Zi looked Ye Chenyan up and down. “Thinking about it that way, Little Yu really did get the worse end of the deal. A pretty young lady got replaced with a stinking brat like you—”
Ye Chenyan gave him a sidelong look.
Tianji Zi immediately cleared his throat and amended himself.
“Though that little girl from the Esoteric Sect is not easy to deal with. You’re not bad either.”
“Originally, I only meant for you to lend a hand while you were passing by.” Tianji Zi sighed faintly. “But who could have known that once you went, you would get pulled into the game too?”
“And the original chessboard became even more of a tangled mess.”
“Especially after you insisted you had fallen in love with him at first sight...”
“Ahem.” Ye Chenyan turned his face away. “No need to bring that up.”
“What, embarrassed now?” Tianji Zi’s eyes curved with amusement. “Once he grew older, there was no way his fate could remain hidden forever. I originally planned to bring him to Guiyi Sect.”
“Then you got involved.”
Tianji Zi clapped his hands.
“So I had no choice but to adapt.”
Ye Chenyan looked at him strangely. “You were really willing to leave him hidden in Biehe Sect all those years? There really is something unusual about that place, isn’t there?”
“Shh.” Tianji Zi deliberately kept him in suspense. “There are all sorts of strange things beneath heaven. Why do you insist on asking about every single one?”
He patted Ye Chenyan solemnly on the shoulder.
“I know you care about this. Your master has practically opened his heart and told you everything this time, so don’t get stubborn with me. This is important.”
Ye Chenyan fell silent for a moment.
“If I take the Realm Stone before them, then the Esoteric Sect should stop targeting him, right?”
“Naturally.” Tianji Zi nodded slightly. “But you need to think this through.”
“To take the Realm Stone is to become the master of this realm.”
“That stone is obviously not something just anyone can take.”
“The Nine Nether Demonic Sovereign and Tianxuan Nü did not immediately go out to fight the otherworldly evil demons. They first went to the bottom of the Sea of Returning Ruins to obtain this stone.”
“They failed.”
Tianji Zi turned toward him.
“But those who came before us paved the road. At the very least, we now know what was missing.”
Ye Chenyan looked up at him. “What?”
“One breath of immortal energy.”
“One breath of demonic energy.”
“The Born Supreme.”
Tianji Zi lifted his eyes.
“And the united will of countless millions.”
Ye Chenyan froze.
“Countless millions...”
His expression changed.
“And the sect-master tokens from all those allied sects? That’s why you had me collect them?”
Tianji Zi nodded with a smile.
Ye Chenyan frowned. “But we’ve only collected tokens from allied sects in places like Rongzhou and Central Province. That should still be nowhere near enough.”
“Hahaha! Since I came personally, naturally I came prepared.”
Tianji Zi’s eyes curved with delight. He flicked his sleeve.
Clink-clatter-clang!
Sect-master tokens of every shape and kind spilled out from inside.
Ye Chenyan’s eyes widened.
“You...”
His expression turned increasingly strange.
“You didn’t rob these, did you?”
“Of course not—” Tianji Zi replied with perfect righteousness.
“They’re borrowed.”
Ye Chenyan suspiciously pointed at Golden Light Sect’s token.
“Golden Light Sect would lend you their sect-master token?”
Tianji Zi smiled kindly.
“I borrowed the Treasure-Gathering Basin from Daoist Idle Crane for a bit.”
Ye Chenyan: “...”
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