Yinhong and Benyan's Department

Gu Changyuan’s brow twitched slightly.

The moment the voice fell, the two trails of blood-red aura ceased to be concealed.

The blood-red light converged, revealing two figures.

A man and a woman hovered above the Heavenly Court, facing Gu Changyuan from a distance.

The man was tall and broad, clad in a dark red battle robe. Its style was ancient and simple, devoid of any excessive adornment, save for a few plain patterns embroidered in gold thread at the collar and cuffs.

At his waist hung a blade.

The blade was not long—about two feet—and its scabbard was black, unadorned.

Yet the murderous aura emanating from that blade was enough to suppress cultivators of lower cultivation.

The woman stood at his side, half a step ahead of him.

She wore a red bridal gown, covering her from head to toe in meticulous layers.

The gown was a vivid scarlet, so bright it was impossible to look away.

Countless fine red threads were woven together, forming intricate patterns on the gown’s surface. Those patterns gleamed with a dark red luster under the sunlight, like congealed blood.

Her head was covered by a red veil, completely obscuring her face behind it.

Both of them were saturated with the aura of the demon race.

What he noticed, however, was a familiar sensation in their energy, something that stirred his memory.

Seeing Gu Changyuan somewhat taken aback, the woman moved lightly, bringing the man beside her to a stop before Gu Changyuan.

“What’s the matter? Has the mighty Xuansha Ruin Lord already forgotten us so soon? Then again, it’s only natural—back then, the Ruin Lord merely offered a helping hand in passing, so you wouldn’t recall us, a simple married couple.”

Xuansha Ruin Lord.

The moment those words landed, Gu Changyuan shuddered sharply—that was the title he went by during his time in the Unordered Ruins.

Images began to flash rapidly through Gu Changyuan’s mind.

He remembered.

It happened after he had spent nine hundred years in the Unordered Ruins.

The exact time had blurred—there were no days or nights, no seasons of spring or autumn in that place. Time had lost all meaning there.

By then, backed by his own cultivation, boundless spiritual energy, and various top-tier secret techniques he had uncovered in the Unordered Ruins, Gu Changyuan had become a pinnacle existence in that realm.

No longer skulking and surviving from one crisis to the next as he had in the early days, he could now walk openly, explore at ease, and kill as casually as taking a stroll.

Once, he passed through a bleak, nameless region.

But he stopped.

Because he saw red.

A brilliant, vivid red—bright, passionate, carrying the breath of joy and life.

On a patch of barren, scorched earth, someone had laid a path with red silk, hung red lanterns from two posts, and set up a makeshift canopy with red fabric.

Two people were getting married there.

In the Unordered Ruins—that place where countless souls perished each day, where hope for tomorrow never existed, where merely surviving was a luxury—someone had chosen to pledge their eternal bond.

He didn’t know why he stopped.

Perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps because he had spent too long in the Unordered Ruins and had gone too long without seeing the breath of life.

That day’s wedding was simple, so simple it was almost shabby.

The bride wore that red bridal gown, veiled in a red covering; the groom was dressed in dark red battle robes.

As the couple bowed to each other in their vows, dozens of figures suddenly burst forth from their surroundings.

They were common brigands in the Unordered Ruins, preying on lone cultivators—many in number, skilled in ambushes.

They must have thought the marrying couple would be easy prey, that launching a surprise attack during the wedding would catch them off guard, that the red of the wedding would soon be stained with their own blood.

The couple clearly had not expected an attack at such a moment.

Gu Changyuan didn’t know why he stepped in.

In the Unordered Ruins, turning a blind eye was the norm, and meddling in others’ business was a death sentence.

Having lived through more than nine hundred years, he had long passed the age of hotheadedness or righteous indignation at injustice.

But that day, he intervened.

Perhaps it was because of that splash of red.

Perhaps it was because of the sheer absurdity of two people holding a wedding in the Unordered Ruins.

He didn’t stop to ponder the reason. The moment those attackers rushed in, he simply acted.

Having dealt with the ambushers, Gu Changyuan left without lingering.

He could sense that those two actually had a higher cultivation base than his own, though their internal spiritual energy was far thinner.

Though he heard them say, “If we ever have the chance in the future, we will repay you,” as he left, Gu Changyuan didn’t take it to heart.

The Unordered Ruins were too vast. Once people parted, they might never meet again.

He never thought he would see them again.

He certainly never imagined he would encounter them here, at the Heavenly Court, in the Celestial Realm, in such a manner.

The corners of Gu Changyuan’s mouth lifted slightly.

“I remember now.”

Upon hearing those words, the woman’s eyes behind the beaded veil curved into a smile.

“Good,” she said.

“Otherwise, my husband and I would truly be at a loss trying to describe that debt of gratitude.”

Gu Changyuan’s gaze swept over them. With a light wave of his right hand, the nine swords suspended above the Heavenly Court all returned to their sheaths simultaneously.

He floated half a step forward, moving closer to the couple.

“Your names.”

The woman let out a soft laugh, and the beads of her veil swayed gently.

“I am Yin Hong.”

She turned her head and glanced at the man beside her.

“This is my husband, Ben Yansi.”

Gu Changyuan nodded.

“I never expected to meet you in the Vast Celestial Realm. How did you leave the Unordered Ruins?”

A note of puzzlement crept into Yin Hong’s voice.

“We don’t really know either. We were drifting through the Unordered Ruins about a hundred years ago when we suddenly ran into a spatial rift. We thought we’d be cast into some strange place, but instead, we ended up here.”

Gu Changyuan inclined his head.

“I had a similar experience, though I left a few centuries before you did. It seems that to leave the Unordered Ruins, you truly have to rely on luck.”