Chapter 2181: Hearts United as One
As Shen Wuyi spoke, her moon-like eyes were also capturing every fleeting change in Yun Che's expression and gaze. But from beginning to end, she did not see him show the slightest hint of surprise.
"This is also the thing that puzzles me the most."
The past wounds of Shang Yi surged in his heart. Though they had faded, they still brought a trace of lingering pain. He lowered his voice and spoke slowly: "Back then, after learning that there was another world beneath the Abyss of Nothingness, amidst the fear and unease, there was also a sudden surge of wild joy... because it might mean that you still had a hope of survival."
"But that hope was completely extinguished after I personally fell into the Abyss."
"When I leaped down the Abyss, I was at my peak and fully prepared. In terms of protective power, I was slightly stronger than you back then, and in terms of physical toughness, I far surpassed you. Even so, the spatial turbulence of the Abyss passage was still a terrifying nightmare for me. Every moment, I felt as if my body was being completely torn apart."
"At that time, I had to desperately realize that you, severely injured and exhausted, simply could not survive in such spatial turbulence... not to mention several days and nights, I'm afraid you couldn't even hold on for a hundred breaths."
"After arriving in this world, I tried again and again to search for your name... it was only because I couldn't accept it, an unrelenting unwillingness."
Shen Wuyi listened quietly, her jade-like expression serene, never interrupting.
"So when I saw you on the Pure Land, you can't imagine how unbelievable and ecstatic I was at that moment."
A smile spread at the corners of his lips, as if he had returned to that unforgettable moment: "In the Divine Sleep Forbidden Domain, when I mentioned our marriage contract, I thought that given your condition at the time, the only possibility for you to safely pass through the Abyss passage was if you were blessed by heaven when you fell, never touching any spatial turbulence. If so, that marriage contract you had hidden in your clothes might have survived... even intact."
"Blessed by heaven?"
Shen Wuyi finally spoke, but let out a faint scoff: "You, a person who would rather fight fate alone, even in certain death, actually believe in something called 'blessed by heaven'? "
"I do."
These two words left Yun Che's mouth without any hesitation, his gentle voice carrying near-religious conviction: "I believe even more that this blessing of heaven will always accompany you, eternally and indestructible."
It was as if something had lightly stung her eyes, causing Shen Wuyi to unconsciously avoid Yun Che's gaze at that moment. Her mind seemed to freeze for an extremely brief instant.
She was extremely calm and self-controlled; she never allowed her thoughts to be swayed by anything... but the world she remembered had never been cast such a gaze, nor had she ever felt such tender affection...
Too unfamiliar, indescribable, and even a little unsettling.
"But I don't believe it," she replied. "I only believe in myself."
A completely unsurprising answer... Even Xia Qingyue, who back then knew she was a "vessel of fate," did not follow the predetermined destiny but made her own choice... Falling into the Abyss was a complete escape from and resolute resistance against the word "fate."
Yun Che's toes shifted. He wanted to move closer, but in the end, he restrained himself and held back. As he had said, how Xia Qingyue had safely fallen into the Abyss was something he simply could not explain, beyond the ethereal "protection of fate."
He could only say helplessly: "I know these words are hard to believe, and your doubt is completely reasonable. But I have not exaggerated or deceived by even half a word..."
"No need to explain. I believe."
The cold gleam in her eyes instead slowly faded. She said calmly, "Deception requires a reason and carries the risk of being exposed. Being as shrewd as you, there is no reason for you to fabricate such a useless, easily exposed, and full-of-holes lie."
"In my judgment, it should actually be true."
The curve at the corner of Yun Che's mouth lifted slightly. He said with deep emotion, "Indeed, you are still you."
He understood very well that Shen Wuyi's response was not trust in him, but trust in her own intuition and judgment. She was Xia Qingyue, yet she had no memories belonging to Xia Qingyue. And to Shen Wuyi at this moment, he was merely someone she had met a few times, whom it would not be an exaggeration to call a "stranger."
But it didn't matter. She was still alive, which was already a fortunate dream; her choice to stand and fight alongside him had stained the originally dead-gray path ahead with too beautiful a splendor.
"However, even for you, being forced to become the Divine Maiden of the Eternal Night Divine Kingdom must have been extremely difficult these past twenty years or so."
He asked the question that had been lingering in his heart: "I have always had a doubt. The twenty years before you became the Eternal Night Divine Maiden, where were you? Since returning from the Pure Land, I have never been able to find any information about you from twenty years ago. Even in the Xuanji Hall, there is no trace of anything related."
"Was it deeply hidden by the Wuming Divine Venerable, or... was it somewhere else?"
Yun Che's tone gradually changed, because he suddenly noticed that as he spoke, Shen Wuyi's eyebrows were slowly furrowing, a sign of growing surprise and confusion.
"Twenty years before becoming the Eternal Night Divine Maiden? What do you mean?" Her eyes were deep with inquiry.
Yun Che frowned unconsciously and said seriously, "You fell into the Abyss four years before I did."
"Given the time black tide of the Abyss World, for our world's four years, the Abyss World has already passed forty years. That means by the time I arrived, you had already been in this world for forty years."
"And you became the Eternal Night Divine Maiden twenty years ago. So the twenty years before that..."
He didn't finish, because Shen Wuyi's emotional change was completely beyond his expectations... The doubt spilling from her was actually several times greater than his own.
Her brows tightly knit, her gaze rippling faintly, then gradually turning profound as he spoke, like a galaxy shrouded in mist—hazy and difficult to discern.
After a long while, she said in a low voice, "When I opened my eyes and saw the first rays of light in this world, when I had the first wisp of consciousness in this life, I was already in the Eternal Night Divine Kingdom."
"And in the first year of my awakening, I was already anointed as the Eternal Night Divine Maiden."
"At least according to my understanding, in my memories, there is no such 'first twenty years' you speak of."
"...?" Yun Che was suddenly stunned, his mind briefly blank, and the aura around him condensed for several breaths.
Then, he slowly shook his head and said with utmost firmness, "Ab... so... lute... ly... im... pos... sible."
"The scene of you falling into the Abyss appears in every subsequent dream of mine. There's no way I could misremember such a simple and clear time. And under the time black tide of the Abyss, the flow rate is indeed ten times different. That can't be wrong either."
At least Yun Xi's age perfectly matched the time black tide.
"..." Shen Wuyi did not answer, could not answer.
Because her understanding and memory truly only spanned twenty years. Her astonishment was no less than Yun Che's.
And from her perception and judgment, his expression did not seem like a lie or fabrication.
At the Yidian Cloud Summit, after learning that Shen Wuyi was Xia Qingyue, Yun Che had once murmured a doubt to Li Suo... From the information he knew about Shen Wuyi at that time, when she first became the Eternal Night Divine Maiden, twenty years ago, her cultivation was only at the tenth level of the Divine Lord Realm.
And when she fell into the Abyss, she was also at that level.
He had been deeply puzzled then: given Xia Qingyue's talent and aptitude, how could her cultivation have made no progress at all during the full twenty years from her fall into the Abyss to her first becoming the Eternal Night Divine Maiden?
He had briefly considered many possibilities... And now, Shen Wuyi's answer to him was that she simply did not have those twenty years!
What... was going on?
"Where did the Wuming Divine Venerable find you?" Yun Che suddenly asked as something occurred to him.
"The Mist Sea. But she did not find me," Shen Wuyi corrected. "The one who actually rescued me from the Mist Sea was Shen Wuyouluan. I was unconscious at the time, and the place where I was found was deep within the Mist Sea, where someone of my then cultivation should never have set foot."
Deep within the Mist Sea... That was a place only those at the Divine Extreme Realm dared to venture.
"Shen Wuyouluan took pity on me, rescued me from the Mist Sea while I was unconscious, brought me back to the Eternal Night Divine Kingdom, and healed my wounds. She intended to wait until I woke up and recovered before safely sending me away."
"But before I awoke, Shen Wuyanye sensed that I possessed the Nine-Xuan Exquisite Body. Thus, I fell into Shen Wuyanye's hands. She gave me the name 'Shen Wuyi' and forcibly chose me as the perfect Divine Successor. The person who had saved me naturally became her instead of Shen Wuyouluan."
"Including that marriage contract—Shen Wuyouluan had accidentally discovered it while rescuing me. Out of compassion, she took the risk to hide it for me all this time. But under Shen Wuyanye's oppressive might, she could not tell me the truth, though that didn't stop me from gradually seeing everything clearly with my own eyes."
Yun Che's brows furrowed even more tightly. He had once briefly probed the depths of the Mist Sea, but quickly retreated in panic and never dared to venture deep again.
How could she have been sleeping there back then?
And those inexplicably missing twenty years—could she have been sleeping all that time in the depths of the Mist Sea...
The space fell into a long silence again. Shen Wuyi lifted her gaze from her contemplation, looked at Yun Che's expression, sometimes shifting, sometimes lost, and said, "It seems you find it difficult to unravel."
"Difficult to unravel is an understatement..." Yun Che's brows remained tightly knit for a long time. The twenty years from Xia Qingyue's fall into the Abyss to her becoming Shen Wuyi seemed to have been forcibly gouged out, without even a trace of existence... This was not just a difficult puzzle; it was a bizarre violation of common sense.
Coupled with how she had safely passed through the Abyss passage...
What had happened? Or what was hidden behind all this?
Shen Wuyi said coldly, "The thoughts of mortals and spirits are hard to fathom, let alone the secrets of the world involving space and time. Since these are unsolvable doubts from the past, why trouble your heart over them? Perhaps one day, the truth will inadvertently reveal itself."
Hearing this, Yun Che resolutely cast aside his tangled thoughts: "You're right. Compared to how to return to our homeland safely with you, these trivial matters are completely unimportant. So, Qing... Wuyi, what exactly does this never-existed 'Panlong Seven Mysterious Crystal' mean?"
Shen Wuyi did not answer directly, her eyes deep like an unfathomable pool: "Why don't you guess?"
Yun Che said, "I guess... it has something to do with the 'secret scripture' that Shen Wuyanye screamed out when she fell into the dream that day."
She looked at him deeply, "Although you, as someone who can defy common sense and control abyss dust, are the most likely person in the world to see through this plot, being able to hit the mark so accurately truly impresses me again. This makes me even more interested in your layout."
She spoke slowly: "In the Divine Sleep Forbidden Domain, you said that you used despicable means to make the Heaven-Breaking Divine Maiden fall for you, in order to break the alliance of the Weaving Dream, the Heaven-Breaking, and the Senluo Divine Kingdoms, burying a hidden line that would turn them into enemies."
"When I first heard it, I thought it was absurd and laughable. Because even if magnified tenfold, it would still just be emotional wounds and betrayed loyalty. So what if the three Divine Venerables severed ties? So what if the three Divine Kingdoms truly turned against each other? At the most extreme, it would only lead to closed borders and severed exchanges. How could mere romantic grudges between the younger generation cause a calamity of national chaos?"
"Now it seems that your methods should not be so shallow."
"Of course, all of that was just a prelude and a foreshadowing." Organizing his thoughts, Yun Che took the initiative to explain: "The reason my identity as 'Meng Jian Yuan' was flawless is that the Dreamless Divine Venerable, Meng Kongchan, firmly believed I was Meng Jian Yuan, and he would never have any doubt no matter what."
"Oh?" Shen Wuyi's eyes showed surprise.
What Yun Che gave was still the unvarnished truth: "Simply put, I used the Heart-Painting Divine Venerable's extreme concern for his daughter to trick him into sending me to the Weaving Dream Divine Kingdom, where Meng Kongchan personally applied Dreamfall to me, to confirm that I had no ill intentions toward Hua Caili. That was my opportunity. When Meng Kongchan applied his soul force to me, with his soul domain wide open and completely defenseless, I used a wisp of an ancient demon soul to counterattack his soul, implanting the cognition that 'I am Meng Jian Yuan.'"
"Along with three blank spots where 'suggestions' could be triggered at any time."
Every word Yun Che said was undoubtedly earth-shattering. Meng Kongchan was the strongest in terms of soul power among the six Divine Kingdoms—that was indisputable. Counterattacking his soul, implanting cognition and suggestions that could be triggered at any time... Even if someone dared to say it, no one would dare to believe it.
Shen Wuyi's aura rippled with slight disturbance, but she did not voice doubt or sneer. Instead, she calmly said, "It is indeed a method that no one would dream of, so bizarre that even if you laid out the whole truth, I'm afraid no one would believe it."
"You specifically mentioned this matter. Does it mean the core of your plan lies with Meng Kongchan?"
Yun Che did not answer directly, but said with particular certainty, "I cannot explain the details in a short time. But I can guarantee that..."
"Within five years, the Divine Kingdoms will surely be in turmoil!"
Shen Wuyi's moon-eyes half-closed, her long lashes trembling slightly, as if in surprise or contemplation.
"There is another important matter." Yun Che continued, "I originally intended to use the power of the Xiaodie Divine Kingdom to throw the Eternal Night Divine Kingdom into chaos. But now that it is your home and the ground of your planning, I will naturally change that plan."
"Using the Xiaodie Divine Kingdom?" Surprise rippled again in Shen Wuyi's eyes: "The Xiaodie Divine Kingdom is the most loyal to Yuan Huang and the least inclined to contend with outsiders. I am very curious, what could possibly move them..."
She stopped mid-sentence, her beautiful eyes surging with cold waves: "Could it be... Pan Buwang?"
Yun Che smiled and nodded, delighting in their mutual understanding: "Exactly."
Shen Wuyi's lips moved slightly, a subtle expression crossing her face: "Though I do not know how you will bring this about, there is... no need to change it."
"Eh?" Yun Che was slightly startled.
"After all, that is the power of a Divine Kingdom. If it can be used, how could it be wasted? If you can truly stir up a catastrophe, then I have my own ways... to divert the trouble elsewhere."
"Alright!" Yun Che did not ask further, just nodded heavily.
Neither of them knew how the other would act, yet they gave each other complete trust... For Yun Che, this was too simple and natural; for Shen Wuyi, since she had made her choice, she would never regret or hesitate.
At this moment, Shen Wuyi turned her gaze toward the barrier behind them.
A quarter of an hour was too short. Unknowingly, it was quickly coming to an end.
"Since I have chosen to tread this desperate path with you, I will naturally not just wait idly. As for what I will do... you will soon know."
With that, she turned around and walked away. For her, this trip to retrieve the Panlong Seven Mysterious Crystal and to inform him of her choice was enough. As for the future, she would watch and act accordingly. Even if death came, it would not be in vain.
"Wuyi!" Yun Che subconsciously raised his hand to call her stop, his fingertips curling slightly before slowly falling. His voice was soft, filled with profound concern: "Shen Wuyanye is too terrifying and dangerous. Whatever you do, you must first ensure your own safety."
Shen Wuyi did not stop; she spoke quietly as she walked: "Madmen are certainly terrifying, but they are also the easiest to deal with, aren't they?"
"Everyone says that becoming the Eternal Night Divine Maiden is a great tragedy. In truth, for most of the time, I am extremely grateful that I ended up in the Eternal Night Divine Kingdom."
As her final words fell, her figure had already stepped out of the barrier. Her expression returned completely to coldness and aloofness, showing neither joy nor sorrow, untouched by the mortal world.
————