Chapter 1919: Moon Memories (III)
At that time, for Xia Qingyue, it was one of the darkest moments of her life.
Yun Che had been buried within the Primordial Mystic Ark; the Cang Feng Kingdom was being trampled by the Divine Phoenix Empire, on the verge of destruction; her sect, the Bing Yun Fairy Palace, was forced into a desperate corner, waiting to die in a state of barely surviving...
Through the dimensional array left at the Bing Yun Fairy Palace by her grandmaster, Mu Bingyun, the entire Bing Yun Fairy Palace gave her the only hope of survival.
But the world she was transported to had a level far beyond her comprehension.
The spiritual energy here was extremely dense, and the people here were so powerful that she couldn't even imagine, let alone contend with.
At the age of twenty, reaching the Overlord Xuan Realm was an unprecedented miracle in her homeland. But in this world, the first two people she encountered forced her into a dead end in an instant.
Standing before her were two Azure-clothed Xuan adepts.
With cultivation at the Divine Origin Realm, in the God Realm, that was merely the starting point of the divine path. Yet it was a wall of despair that she had absolutely no power to resist.
"Tsk, a beauty like this, I bet even the legendary Dragon Queen or Divine Maiden wouldn't compare." The man on the right stared with blazing eyes, his fingers twitching: "If we offer her to the Sect Master, he'll probably reward us with at least ten Azure Qilin Pills!"
"Ssh! Shut your mouth! If someone overhears such blasphemous words, we're dead." The man on the left cursed harshly, then grinned, "I've seen plenty of beauties, but one this exquisite... even a Divine Emperor would lose control at the sight."
"In the past, such a woman would at least be the forbidden concubine of a Realm King, and just looking at her too much would be a crime. But now we've stumbled upon her—mere mortal-realm Overlord Xuan, clearly without backing..." He turned and squinted: "Are you really willing to give her to the Sect Master?"
"If you're unwilling, then of course I'm unwilling too."
The two exchanged a glance and laughed, their expressions filled with excitement and repulsive lewdness.
Their words fell into Xia Qingyue's ears word for word, and also into Yun Che's sea of consciousness.
His divine sense tightly coiled around these two men at that moment, firmly imprinting every feature of their entire bodies.
He even hoped that these two were still alive!
Even if it meant debasing himself, he would personally make them endure all the most brutal tortures in this world.
His bloodstained arm slowly rose, and the sword in his hand re-condensed snow mist and ice light.
"Oh? Still thinking of resisting?"
The Azure-clothed Xuan adept on the right casually extended a finger and flicked it in a teasing manner.
Ding!
The ice light shattered, the snow sword snapped, but the broken sword in Xia Qingyue's hand, propelled by that terrifying force, was cutting toward her own snow-white neck!
At the same time, all the profound energy in her body surged back, desperately destroying her own heart meridian.
This sudden change shocked the two Azure-clothed Xuan adepts, who never expected this snow-clad woman to be so fiercely resolute.
They both let out a strange cry and lunged forward... but everything happened as fast as lightning; even with their Divine Origin power, they couldn't stop it in time.
At that moment, an extremely heavy and terrifying rumbling came from the distant sky.
It was the sound of space being displaced.
And with it came a pressure so powerful that it seemed to freeze the entire world.
Xia Qingyue's sword stopped before her snow-white neck, and the profound energy about to destroy her heart also ceased its surge... It was a kind of aura beyond any words she could describe. Her body and breath were completely frozen, and even with all her strength, she couldn't move a fraction.
The two Azure-clothed Xuan adepts were also pinned in place.
They looked up and saw a small hundred-zhang-long mysterious ark.
At the front of the ark, a middle-aged man stood with his hands behind his back, looking forward. Dressed in a light purple long robe, he was as still as a rock amidst the wind stirred by the ark's flight. All the light in the world seemed to gather upon him as he gradually moved away.
Though they only caught a glimpse of his silhouette, an invisible majesty made them almost want to kneel and prostrate themselves.
And the flash of a profound light mark on the ark shocked them so much their pupils nearly shattered.
Because that was the Divine Moon Totem of the Yue Shen Realm!
They never thought they would one day personally come into close contact with a King Realm that was as high as the distant heavens!
In their shock, the man at the front of the ark suddenly turned his head.
A beam of divine light shot down, almost shattering their souls.
Then, that divine light actually paused briefly, and the ark also halted in midair.
In the frozen space, a purple figure slowly descended, standing on this land that was too lowly for him to tread.
Behind him, three figures also descended, standing respectfully, their eyes all showing the same surprise.
The two Azure-clothed Xuan adepts' hearts were too terrified to beat, their blood frozen. With their remaining will, they slowly knelt down, trembling: "Greetings... to the... Yue Shen... Venerable."
But they could never have believed that the man before them was the Yue Shen Di... Yue Wuyai.
The three Moon Guards behind him also didn't understand why the Yue Shen Di, in his exalted position, would stop and condescend to deal with such trivial matters.
They looked at Xia Qingyue, their eyes showing admiration... but they knew well that the Yue Shen Di was not fond of women, especially after the incident that year, he had hardly touched any woman.
But after looking for a while, a thought suddenly struck them simultaneously.
Wait! This woman...
"Her appearance seems slightly similar to..." one of the Moon Guards couldn't help but send a voice transmission.
"Shut up!" the other two Moon Guards gave him a warning look simultaneously.
Yue Wuyai didn't spare even a glance at the two Azure-clothed Xuan adepts. His gaze fell directly on Xia Qingyue, and the broken sword in her hand had been frozen in the air by him, cutting off her intention to commit suicide.
"What is your name?" he asked.
His voice was calm, carrying authority without anger. But no one knew that his mind was churning with an extremely abnormal agitation. Even the blood flowing through his body was filled with an inexplicable restlessness.
"...Xia Qingyue," she said her name for the first time in this strange world.
An unfamiliar name, a profound energy aura that hadn't yet entered the divine path. Yue Wuyai frowned slightly, about to ask something else, when his pupils suddenly contracted sharply.
"Glazed Heart!"
At Yue Wuyai's level, it was almost impossible to lose composure in any situation. But these three words escaped his lips in surprise, startling the three Moon Guards behind him, their faces changing drastically.
But the next words out of Yue Wuyai's mouth had nothing to do with the Glazed Heart. He took a step forward and said with obvious excitement: "Are you twenty-two years old this year?"
"?" A flicker of bewilderment passed through Xia Qingyue's eyes.
"Answer me! Yes or no!" Yue Wuyai's voice grew heavier, and the divine light in his imperial eyes trembled slightly.
"Yes," Xia Qingyue replied.
This answer caused a heavy heave in Yue Wuyai's chest.
After a brief silence, he suddenly said indifferently: "Kill them."
The moment the words fell, the Moon Guard in the middle had already acted. Dazzling moonlight silently enveloped the two Azure-clothed Xuan adepts. Before they could even let out a scream, they turned to ashes in the blooming moonlight, and with the dissipation of the moonlight, they completely vanished between heaven and earth.
Yue Wuyai didn't turn around: "You three, kill yourselves."
His emotionless, indifferent voice shocked the three Moon Guards, and then they heavily knelt. The Moon Guard on the right said in panic: "Divine Emperor, we have absolute loyalty to the Yue Shen Realm..."
Before he could finish, a dull explosion sounded in their ears. The Moon Guard who had acted earlier had already self-destructed his life meridian and fell dead.
"In this world, the only ones who can truly keep secrets are the dead," Yue Wuyai slowly closed his eyes. "As Moon Guards of my Yue Shen Realm, don't you even understand such a basic principle of conduct?"
The remaining two Moon Guards trembled but didn't speak again... If the Divine Emperor wanted them dead, how could they not die?
Stupidly defying orders would only make them die more miserably and bring disaster to their clans.
Buzz!
Releasing the final moonlight of their lives, they also severed their own heart meridians and died.
Three Moon Guards, three powerful Divine Sovereigns enough to rule over mid-level God Realms, were thus buried by a single word.
Everything that had just happened was beyond Xia Qingyue's understanding at that time. She slowly stood up, condensing a thread of barely operable profound energy at her fingertips: "Who... are you?"
"Four-tenths resemblance... age matches... turbid profound energy, clearly just arrived from the lower realm..."
He didn't answer Xia Qingyue's question, but murmured somewhat absentmindedly: "If the Glazed Heart appears in the world again, it can only be... born from her..."
His expression was indescribable, whether excitement or pain.
"Answer me one last question," he asked again. "Did your mother leave you when you were four years old?"
"!?" Xia Qingyue's eyes trembled violently.
"Never mind, no need to answer." But Yue Wuyai turned away at this moment, unsure whether he feared getting the answer he wanted, or the answer he didn't want. "Come with me to a place, to meet someone."
"Don't worry, I won't harm you. If I wanted to harm you, even if you had ten thousand lives, you couldn't escape my flick of a finger."
"On the contrary, if you refuse, with your cultivation and your Glazed Heart, you will surely walk into an abyss of death at every step in this world."
............
The scene then blurred, turning back to the original grayish color.
On her first day being transported to the God Realm, she had met Yue Wuyai... This was something Xia Qingyue had told him before.
Now witnessing the scene of that year firsthand still made Yun Che's heart ache for a long time.
Having cultivation that hadn't entered the divine path while standing in the God Realm, her beauty would undoubtedly become a huge disaster.
It was like being sent from a dead end to an even more terrifying abyss.
Yet she was incredibly fortunate, miraculously encountering Yue Wuyai and being taken by him to the Yue Shen Realm.
But...
In the scenes recalled through the Void of Memory, Yue Wuyai's reaction upon first seeing Xia Qingyue filled him with deep doubt.
Although Yun Che had never seen Yue Wugou, he knew from Mu Xuanyin that Xia Qingyue and Yue Wugou had at most a three or four-tenths resemblance, certainly not enough for anyone to immediately think of a mother-daughter relationship.
Why did he, with just a single glance, condescend from the exalted position of a Divine Emperor to appear before Xia Qingyue?
Age, Glazed Heart, coming from the lower realm...
From Yun Che's perception, Yue Wuyai didn't seem to be deducing through these that she might be Yue Wugou's daughter, but rather... it seemed more like he initially guessed that she might be Yue Wugou's daughter, and then the rest was just evidence and reverse reasoning.
At this moment, the gray dissipated again, and another new world unfolded in Yun Che's sea of consciousness.
This was an extremely beautiful small world: green grass forming shade, clusters of flowers, flowing water murmuring, and the bright, gentle moonlight casting a layer of mysterious illusion over everything.
This was the Divine Moon City of the Yue Shen Realm, an independent small world unknown to others, and no one could enter without permission.
Xia Qingyue stood beneath a tall green tree. In front of her were two figures sitting opposite each other.
One was the Yue Shen Di, Yue Wuyai; the other... was a woman dressed in red, her face pale.
Yue Wuyai's extended finger was pressed against the woman's heart, the location of her heart meridian.
His eyes were closed, concentrating his mind... No one knew how long passed, but a trace of pain flashed across his face.
Pfft!
His eyes opened, his body trembled, and despite forcibly restraining himself, a mouthful of blood sprayed out, staining a large area of the ground red.
"Wuyai!" The woman in red hurriedly raised her hand, her weak voice filled with deep panic.
But Yue Wuyai supported her with the other hand, smiling: "It's nothing, nothing. Just a bit of blood essence, it doesn't affect me at all."
Blood essence of a Divine Emperor... who in the world would dare to use the word "just" to describe it?