Chapter 391 – Nine Loyal Souls, One-Handed Clash, Father and Son Reunited - Part 3

Li Yuan arrived back at Dawn Manor, mulling over the skirmish just now in his head. The first thing he did after returning was to search for Jing Shuixiang in the kitchen. Her cooking was divine, and he no longer feared getting fat.

He had gone only a few steps when a wave of inexplicable drowsiness swept over him. He stretched, yawned, and lovely memories flooded in, so sweet he longed to lie down and dream them all anew.

Then a faint sizzling teased his ears. He looked down to find both arms drying, blanching, as though turning into sheets of white paper. The change had barely begun when the vast Yang flame inside him flared, burning it away in an instant with a loud

hiss

as if ice had been flung into an open furnace.

“Zhao Gutong, Peng Minyi...” Li Yuan muttered. “Those two must have put a curse on me without me noticing.”

He had revealed one card; they had answered with three, one in the open and two in the dark.

Li Yuan hurried to the hidden chamber and sat cross-legged. Waves of flame rolled from his core. The room filled with strange sounds—water hissing on red-hot iron, mingled with shrieks like tortured prisoners losing their minds.

After a short while, the noises died. The drowsiness lifted, and the paper-white rash on his arms was gone.

Li Yuan got to his feet, worked the kinks from his limbs, sent his breath rolling through every meridian, and ran a full internal check. Only when he was sure nothing else was lurking within him did he let out a long, smoky breath.

Even so, caution gnawed at him.

“I should check with Yan Yu. Better safe than sorry,” Li Yuan remarked to himself.

He stepped outside, kicked into the air, and raced toward the black market ghost domain.

Soon, he landed somewhere deep within the mountains of Cloudpeak Province.

With a gentle thud, Li Yuan landed on the ground and was greeted by a familiar scene. As he approached the entrance of the black market, a barrier prevented him from entering.

Two membranes, one red and the other black, flattened against each other like water and flame that refused to mix.

“Yan Yu!” Li Yuan called out.

Before long, Yan Yu emerged from the depths of the black market, still in her blue robe. A dull wooden hairpin now fastened her coiled hair, and her once-pale lips glowed with a faint cinnabar tint, similar to an imperial concubine’s rouge.

Catching his stare, she smiled. “You were right. Those ghosts were affecting my mental state, but I’ve digested most of them now. As for the hairpin and lipstick, it’s just something I conjured up with Yin energy. Useless, really. I just thought they looked nice.”

“They do,” Li Yuan admitted.

Silence settled, until Yan Yu suddenly frowned. “Why in the world is there a mark of such monstrous Yin clinging to you?”

Li Yuan blinked. That was why he had come, to have her check him over. Yet she had spotted the problem before he could even explain the situation.

“What do you see?”

“It’s only an imprint, so far harmless, but it keeps you under a watching eye. How that

eye

will find you, I can’t tell. The Yin in this brand is...unimaginable.”

“How did it get there?” he murmured. Then he sat beside her and recounted his encounter with the Emperor’s entourage.

Yan Yu listened, then sighed. “The Emperor drags a mountain of karma behind him. Standing so close, careless as you please, you were bound to draw something’s attention.”

Li Yuan managed a wry grin. “Look at it this way, we were bound to lock horns with him sooner or later. Better to learn the shape of this karma now than in the middle of a crisis. And for what it’s worth, I’ve already eliminated the two curses they tried to put on me.”

He then described the symptoms.

Yan Yu thought for a moment. “The sleep curse smells of the Exotic Beast Park, and the paper-blanching curse feels like Apparel Atelier."

“So Peng Mingyi is really the jade husk of the Exotic Beast Park, and Zhao Gutong the one of Apparel Atelier? How were they turned?”

“With Yin energy rising everywhere, great ghost domains can quicken and grow minds of their own,” Yan Yu mused. “An unborn child bathed in ghostly energy seldom survives. But never say never. Given enough trials, one lucky baby might crawl out alive, a jade husk. The ghosts may be breeding them that way. Who knows how many mothers and infants have to die for one success...”

A flash of very human anger lit her eyes; her slim fists tightened.

After a while Li Yuan said, “So does the mark on me come from the Exotic Beast Park or Apparel Atelier?”

She shook her head. “I feel something deeper, but I can’t pin it down.”

“I see...” Li Yuan frowned, clearly troubled.

Yan Yu spoke again. “I have a remedy. You told me the Deathless Tomb is free of all Yin and Yang, yes? This mark is like a seed glued to your skin. A single trip inside should scour it clean.”

“You’re right. That could work.” Li Yuan nodded.

However, the Deathless Tomb was no casual stroll. The moment any living being stepped through the entrance, their combat power would drop to 0~1.

And in that void, the direwolves made for the perfect wardens. They were tireless, immune to the call, and above all answered only to the Wolfmother.

Trusting her with his life was another matter. Alliance or not, Li Yuan would not gamble on her goodwill. He could ask her to withdraw her direwolves and confirm it using his beast taming skills. But if she really planned to betray him, she could simply have the pack spring out from some hidden corner of the labyrinth and ambush him while he was still powerless.

His death would then be almost guaranteed.

“I’ll have to make some preparations first...” Li Yuan’s eyes narrowed in deep thought.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

A month and a half later.

A white-haired Li Yuan stood before the entrance of the Deathless Tomb.

Ice-blue pillars stabbed down from the sky like before, littering the empty burial ground until it looked like some vast crystal garden raised by giants

Between the spires lay the

sleeping

, men and women of the Nine Flames who had made their final trek here and froze to death. Their kin believed that when sunlight once again bathed the earth, these sleepers would open their eyes in a newborn world.

Little did they know that privilege was reserved only for the gods.

Two figures waited behind Li Yuan.

One was a regal beauty astride a pale wolf. She was the Yeke Khatun, Jen’gal Snow.

The second was a youth, an oversized boy even, standing barefoot on the ice.

Truthfully, calling him a boy was hardly fair. He was a mountain of muscle, standing well over 10 feet tall, with eyes blazing like twin sun. An aura of slaughter boiled around him in swirling vortices, as if a blood-drenched war god had taken human form. He carried a great golden axe and watched the old man at the entrance with a restraint that bordered on agony.

This was Li Yuan’s son, Jen’gal Naran, now the Khagan.

With the Khagan here, not a single direwolf would dare step inside.

Li Yuan had asked Snow to have her and Naran stand guard outside while he inspected his own coffin within the burial ground of the gods.

Snow agreed without any hesitation.

Ever since reuniting at the Trueflame Tribe encampment, father and son had walked together in silence.

Within the Deathless Tomb, the Wolfmother began herding her pack out of the labyrinth.

Li Yuan planned to send a few of his newly tamed juvenile direwolves inside for one last sweep. Then he froze because the Wolfmother now looked like a young stranger, barely grown.

She bowed. “Your pact with the Wolfmother will never be broken.”

Li Yuan frowned. “Where is the one I knew?”

“The old Wolfmother surrendered to the snow,” the girl said softly. “She found the true meaning of life.” She pointed into the distance. “She is there.”

Li Yuan turned and saw a new figure among the endless frozen dead. It was that of a young woman, whose face he would never forget.

A flood of memories surfaced.

𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

The first was that of their first meeting, where she glided toward him on the back of her wolf pack. Barefooted and wrapped in a silver dress, she had exuded a sense of holiness and charm.

He remembered the sunset he had shown her. The rosy light lit her cheeks and turned her tears the color of flame, as she stared unblinking at the scenery she knew she would only see once in her lifetime.

And when dusk finally swallowed the last ray of sunlight, she had whispered to him, “Let’s go home.”

The memories shattered into the present.

The Wolfmother had shed her dress and was caught mid-sprint across the frozen tundra, trying to flee. Ice had locked her in that pose forever, a ghost-blue statue among ten thousand others

sleeping

.

From a distant ravine came the harsh crack and groan of shifting ice, snapping Li Yuan from his trance. He tapped his staff; the juvenile direwolves darted into the labyrinth. After a thorough search, they trotted back.

Nothing stirred inside.

Li Yuan looked up at Naran, his son and the current Khagan. “If I don’t return, kill the Wolfmother and lay bare everything here.”

Naran said nothing, only nodded and watched the white-haired old man walk away. His face stayed calm, but his fingers squeezed the golden axe until the metal creaked.

He was the Khagan. The Khan of Khans did not cry.

Instead, Naran glared at the new Wolfmother. Under that stare she felt as if a man-eating beast had fixed on her; every hair on her body stood stiff.