She Appeared

The night was like a massive black curtain, pressing heavily upon the sea of clouds, mercilessly devouring the last glimmer of light between heaven and earth.

The wind howled, tearing through the night sky, carrying with it a pungent, lingering scent of blood—the remnants of the slaughter that had just taken place.

A flying vessel, crafted entirely from thousand-year ironwood, carved a solitary, pale streak of light through the boundless darkness.

That streak of light resembled a falling star on the verge of extinction—neither ostentatious nor hesitant, but pressing onward with a near-obsessive silence, racing straight toward the most perilous forbidden land in the Central Divine Continent.

Wherever the flying vessel passed, even the sea of clouds parted silently to either side, as if the very clouds sensed the suffocating oppression aboard.

At the bow of the ship, Ye Xuan remained seated cross-legged.

His Flawless Dao Body emitted a faint yet utterly pure, lustrous glow in the dense darkness—a radiance not like the blazing heat of a golden core, nor the eerie aura of demonic power, but a sacred light that was gentle as jade and untouched by dust.

Yet beneath that sacred exterior, deep within his dantian, the Devouring Heaven Art, which had absorbed the full cultivation of the Nine-Tailed Celestial Fox, roared and churned with a ferocity and wildness completely at odds with its outward purity.

Vast demonic energy surged like an ocean, untamed in its savagery; every strand carried thousands of years of accumulated malice and intellect from the Nine-Tailed Celestial Fox, rampaging through his meridians like ten thousand trapped beasts losing all reason.

The Devouring Heaven Art, in a near-brutal manner, crushed and refined that immense demonic energy piece by piece, grinding down the rebellious intellects and wills, transforming them into the purest, most obedient energy, which it then fed back into every shred of flesh and bone in his body.

This process was anything but elegant; it was filled with an indescribable agony.

Yet Ye Xuan's expression was terrifyingly calm. His brows were slightly furrowed, as though he were weathering nothing more than a minor ripple of wind and waves, his back still held as straight and sharp as a sword.

Wu Lingfeng and Ying'er huddled in the deepest part of the cabin, pressed tightly against each other, not daring to breathe too loudly.

It wasn't the first time they had witnessed Ye Xuan cultivating, but every time, the intangible pressure still made their hearts tremble.

At the same time, tens of thousands of miles away, above the clouds, a massive golden war vessel belonging to the Divine Nine Sacred Ground slowly and steadily rumbled through the thick clouds.

The war vessel was so vast it nearly blotted out the stars for ten miles around.

Its frame was forged from spirit metal tempered by the sacred ground’s secret arts, its flesh from ancient wood spanning eons, and golden ritual arrays gleamed with flowing light, engraved into every inch of its hull. From afar, it looked like an ancient golden dragon perched high in the sky, surveying its domain, dominant and untouchable.

On the deck, sacred ground disciples patrolled the night in orderly fashion, their steps solemn and reverent. Each exuded an air of no mean cultivation, a testament to the depth of the Divine Nine Sacred Ground’s legacy.

Yet in one corner of the deck, a few disciples in moon-white robes lacked that solemnity.

Gathered in a cluster of five or six, they kept their heads low, leaning together in hushed whispers.

"Hey, what do you think..."

A young female disciple with a delicate appearance spoke first. She carefully scanned her surroundings, ensuring no elder was passing by, before lowering her voice: "When we flew past that flying vessel below... that man we saw—do you think it could be Ye Xuan?"

Her words made the others draw in sharp breaths, exchanging glances filled with lingering dread.

"He looks way too much like him," said a tall male disciple, swallowing hard. Though his voice was barely a whisper, the shock in it was unmistakable: "No, it's almost an exact likeness. In all my years, I've never seen two people with facial features so identical."

"And moreover," he added, his expression growing complicated, "did any of you sense it? There was an extraordinarily strange aura about him. I've cultivated for many years, yet I couldn't even begin to fathom what that aura was. It just felt like something pressing down on you, making it hard to breathe, leaving only one thought in your mind..."

"Flee," interjected a slightly younger female disciple, rubbing her goosebump-covered arms. "The only thought in my head at that moment was flee. But he wasn't even looking at us. I'm not even sure he noticed we were there."

"But the key point is..." The first female disciple furrowed her brow, incredulous. "Wasn't he already dead?!"

That statement dropped like a stone into still water, stirring the ripples of unease in their hearts into a raging tide.

Her voice was laced with genuine confusion and shock: "Back then, the Sacred Lord himself ordered all his immortal bones drained, his every shred of cultivation crippled, and then, like a dead dog, he was tossed into the Immortal Burial Lake."

"The Immortal Burial Lake," she repeated, her voice rising slightly before she realized her loss of control and lowered it again. "That place is the Immortal Burial Lake! Even a real Immortal who falls in by accident is slowly eroded by its corrosive force, dissolving into a bloody mess with not even bone fragments left. How could he—a mortal stripped of all cultivation, a worthless wreck—possibly walk out of the Immortal Burial Lake alive?"

Silence fell among them.

"Maybe... he just looks alike?" someone muttered, though the disbelief in their own tone betrayed them.

Just as the discussion grew intense, a low, sluggish sound came from deep within the silent cabin.

"Creeeaaak!"

In the vessel's depths, a heavy jade door slowly opened. Etched with intricate cloud patterns and cranes, the door was worn smooth and refined by time.

As the crack widened, a cold, aloof yet faintly decrepit aura drifted out, silently lowering the surrounding air’s temperature by several degrees.

The whispering disciples all stopped mid-sentence, their backs stiffening in unison.

They turned their heads.

A woman in a pure white long dress stepped slowly from the deep shadow within the cabin.

She was stunningly beautiful.

Not with a fiery, passionate allure or with seductive charm, but with a beauty that made it impossible to look away yet made you involuntarily step back.

This beauty was ethereal, untouched by worldly concerns, as though she lived among the clouds high above. A permanent frost lingered around her brows, chilling to the eye yet—paradoxically—drawing you in.

But her complexion carried a sickly pallor, the kind left by years of seclusion without sunlight. It was so pale it seemed almost translucent, as if she might shatter at the slightest touch.

Her figure appeared overly slender; the white hem of her robe fluttered gently with her steps, like a wisp of smoke that the wind might carry away at any moment.

Yet, it was precisely this delicate, fragile kind of beauty, paired with the unshakable coldness and indifference between her brows, that somehow exuded a suffocating, unparalleled elegance. The world seemed to hold its breath in her presence.