Chapter 571 - He Walked Through History and Witnessed Myth - Part 2

Li Yuan bent down and gently lifted the withered man onto his back, then began walking west.

The wind was bitter, but he possessed the withered flame. Controlling the cold around them was nothing to him.

“I’ll take you somewhere to rest,” Li Yuan said.

Ji Hu’s mind flickered with surprise, mixed with a strange kind of joy. Not joy at the thought of death, but at the fact that, in the end, he still got to see his father.

But now, he could no longer speak.

He lay on Li Yuan’s back, silent.

The man carrying him looked far younger than Ji Hu’s own son, yet this man was his father.

Li Yuan raced westward through the snow.

“Hu’er, hang on. There’s still time. As long as we reach the Deathless Tomb, there’s hope. When you wake up again, your father still has so much to tell you.”

Ji Hu couldn’t speak. Every part of him was breaking apart inside, but Li Yuan’s gentle power held him together, extending his life just enough to keep that final breath from slipping away.

All he could manage was the barest twitch of his cracked lips, the tiniest upward curl at the corners.

The youth ran through the snow, the old man on his back, leaving streaks of afterimages behind him.

It was as if the river of time had been thrown into reverse. And in the blink of an eye, they were back more than 40 years ago.

A young man, carrying a boy through a bustling marketplace.

But unlike now, the boy back then wasn’t silent. He laughed and shouted joyfully, his clear eyes reflecting the splendor of the Bright Moon Prefecture, the glow of lanterns, the man by the bridge hawking candied hawthorns, the glitter of sweets and toys.

“Dad! That one! That one!” Ji Hu yelled. He didn’t know how to name what he wanted, could only point eagerly, his voice frantic with excitement. Opportunities to leave the Xie residence were rare. Only his father could sneak him out.

But that boy from 40 years ago could no longer utter a sound.

The bustling city was gone, replaced by a frozen, lightless world of snow and silence.

Time and memory blurred together. The old man and the boy became one.

Only the youth remained unchanged.

Two lines of tears slid down the old man's weathered face, soaking quietly into Li Yuan’s shoulder.

“There’s still time.”

“You have to hold on, too.”

“You’re the Human Emperor. You have a will stronger than anyone’s. A heart vast enough to swallow the world. You can endure this..”

“I’ve calculated it. At most, half a month.”

“Half a month, and I’ll reach the Deathless Tomb. I’ll place you inside.

“Do you still remember Naran”

“He’s there too, resting.”

“When you both wake up, you won’t be enemies anymore. You’ll be family. Hahaha...”

“Don’t sleep.”

“Now’s not the time to sleep.”

...

Li Yuan kept talking, voice low and steady.

The old man’s lips stayed curled, almost as if smiling. But the tears wouldn’t stop.

He was still the Human Emperor. Even with his body shattered, even as his flesh broke down inch by inch, he clung to a sliver of consciousness.

Li Yuan moved with incredible speed, like a storm cutting through the drowned lands of Ocean Province and Silkfloss Province. He passed Sword Mountain Pass, once built to stop the Nine Flames Tribe, now abandoned thanks to the Evernight.

He ran over towns and forests frozen in place. Beneath the frostbitten soil, half-buried beasts lay unmoving, caught mid-stride, never having escaped.

They looked like old ice sculptures, sealed in time, silent witnesses to a world that once lived. And omens of what the mortal world might have become.

To Li Yuan, this was no ordinary road. This was the longest, darkest road he had ever walked.

The Deathless Tomb was no longer where it used to be. It had drifted west, sliding far from its original place.

So far, no one even knew where anymore.

If not for the guidance of Sheng’er’s glacier avatar, Li Yuan wouldn’t have had a chance of finding it at all.

Even when she finally arrived, she told Li Yuan it would still take another half a month.

The Deathless Tomb had drifted so far that even she didn’t know exactly where it had gone.

Li Yuan said nothing more. He simply continued heading west.

He moved so fast that even Sheng’er, with all her swiftness, couldn’t keep up.

Then one day, the withered

ugly child

on his back, no longer the Human Emperor, suddenly spoke.

“Dad.”

“Yeah...?” Li Yuan answered softly.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

At that very moment, in the Central Capital, some were cheering the tyrant’s death. But far more were caught in the violent tremors of a palace upheaval like no other.

Grand General Xie Feng was dead. His 30,000 armored cavalry weren’t by his side.

He had been assassinated, stabbed from behind during a supposed meeting, by an elder from the Ying Clan who had volunteered to see him off. The elder had waited patiently, biding his time, and struck when Xie Feng drew near, plunging a blade into his heart.

Though Xie Feng had once been a martial prodigy, his years as the grand general had been consumed by military matters and family responsibilities. His personal cultivation had stalled.

He could command 30,000 sixth rank soldiers, forge them into a formation that could suppress entire realms, but he himself had never advanced past fifth rank.

A pierced heart left no chance of survival.

The assassin didn’t escape either. Xie Feng’s guards reacted instantly and cut him down.

Of course, that elder wasn’t truly of the Ying Clan. He was a spy from the He Clan.

While the Ying Clan mourned the death of their patriarch yet celebrated their Crown Prince’s rise to the throne, they never expected the He Clan to strike like a serpent, sinking its fangs deep at the very moment they were weakest.

Ji Yong’s declaration of banning travel to the Eastern Sea became the He Clan’s sharpest blade.

The Prince of Star’s residence was surrounded by troops at dawn. His wife, the Princess of Stars, was relocated under

honorable

protection to the Second Prince’s estate.

The He Clan orchestrated a textbook coup, complete with forged edicts.

The Ying Clan, He Clan, Xie Clan, everyone in the capital was scrambling for the throne.

No one cared where the tyrant had died.

No one cared what changes had shaken the heavens and the earth.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Far below the Yellow Springs, a coffin drifted up and down in the murky tide.

The massive Underworld was slowly descending into deeper realms, moving further and further away from the mortal world, preparing to sever its final connection.

This...was what the ancient texts called

Heaven and Earth Severed.

Without the Underworld, the Yang energy of life would no longer gather in the world above.

The balance of Yin and Yang would collapse.

But one last thread remained.

And that thread rested in someone else’s hand.

Inside a pitch-black, airless coffin, thick with deathly Yin energy, the porcelain-white face of Yan Yu remained locked in a hollow stare into the distance.

She had been staring for years. Now, at last, something shifted. That lifeless face twitched. Her hand, resting limply at the bottom of the icy coffin, stirred.

Slowly, she lifted it, higher and higher. Then her fingers clamped around the neck of the female ghost clinging to her body.

And began to squeeze, slowly, tightly, and with increasing force...

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

The Evernight, which had been silently creeping eastward, finally came to a halt. As if it had reached its limit, it began to slowly retreat, bit by bit, shrinking back from the land it had swallowed.

Li Yuan kept running, urging the Human Emperor to hold on.

But this journey...it was far too long.

Li Yuan had never traveled such a long, lonely path.

He carried the Human Emperor on his back, completely unaware of the chaos unraveling in the imperial capital behind him.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

The Crown Prince was dead.

The Second Prince, Ji He, extended his arms and calmly slipped them into the sleeves of the golden nine dragon robe.

With a serene smile, he turned and walked into the grand imperial hall, ascending the steps toward the dragon throne.

The throne was cold.

And only someone cold-blooded enough could ever sit upon it.

Before he took power, Ji He had been obsessed with killing the Crown Prince. But now, staring at that throne, all he saw was a storm of trouble rushing toward him.