Chapter 588 – Flame God, Void, Outer Region - Part 1

A year passed.

Or perhaps not even that long.

Time had lost all meaning here. Glancing outside, there was nothing but blackness.

At first, it was the kind of black you'd see in the Evernight, blizzards woven into the darkness. But at some point, the storms had vanished. What remained was a strange kind of black. It was a pure, unbroken, bone-deep black.

In this darkness, even someone like Li Yuan, whose very body was flame, could see no better than an ordinary man.

Meng Xingxian and Han Feng could barely see five meters ahead.

As for Ying Zhuoyao, she could only feel her own limbs, and make out a faint outline of Li Yuan beside her.

Oddly, the little crow was unaffected. It flew ahead of the carriage, circling occasionally, resting when tired on the roof. It would cock its head now and then, scanning the void, and relay everything it saw back to Li Yuan.

Darkness. Endless darkness. That was all there was.

The wolf-drawn carriage rumbled on, as if it had left the world of the living and plunged into a starless cosmos, pulling the passenger cabin, and trailing behind it a small iceberg used for bathing and daily washing.

Inside the carriage, an ever-burning lamp cast a dim orange glow, just enough for the four people and one crow to catch vague glimpses of one another. A flash of fabric at the chest. The seam where knees were pressed together. The edge of an arm. Half a cheek.

If the direwolves pulling the carriage weren’t under Meng Xingxian’s ability, it would've gone mad long ago.

“Are we almost there?” Li Yuan asked.

A voice emerged from the darkness beside him. Ying Zhuoyao. “Soon, Young Master.”

Despite all she had accomplished, the beautiful woman was clearly terrified of death. She clung to Li Yuan, pressing herself tightly against him.

After a year in close quarters, a woman like her had long since learned to sense the unspoken needs of the man beside her.

And she made use of those moments. When the other two women were asleep across the carriage, their view blocked by stacked rations and the secret art steles, she would rest her head in Li Yuan’s lap and quietly please her master.

Li Yuan was no eunuch. Nor was he a sanctimonious gentleman.

Back when their relationship had just begun, he'd refused her advances. It had only been a few days, after all.

But six years had passed now. The future showed no sign of change. Their master-servant dynamic was bound to endure.

And if the servant chose to serve her master in this way, well, he had little reason to resist.

Especially when this servant was worth so much.

Li Yuan didn’t mind giving her a bit more affection in return.

In the suffocating dark, Ying Zhuoyao clung to Li Yuan’s arm like a drowning woman grasping at a lifeline.

The stacks of dried rations and the steles shielded them from the two women opposite.

Ying Zhuoyao shifted slightly, her heated thigh, wrapped in black trousers, sliding against the boy’s. Her body pressed close. Her hand, as deft as a creeping vine, slipped into the folds of his clothing. And once more, she began to serve him in silence.

A strange feeling stirred in Li Yuan’s heart.

He never would have imagined that he’d come to share this kind of connection with her, a woman who had once controlled the ghost cavalry, opening the gates to an era of chaos, and who had later played a pivotal role in the Grand Union of Yin and Yang. And now, here they were, tangled together by fate.

He reached out and gently ruffled Ying Zhuoyao’s hair, his fingers brushing over her lips.

They parted.

That was their unspoken signal, something wordless yet precise, a silent understanding forged over the past year.

The beautiful woman in the green robes leaned in close, quietly siphoning away strands of his lifespan. With every draw, she grew more radiant, more impossibly perfect.

A long while passed.

Then the curtain lifted, and the little crow flew in.

Ying Zhuoyao immediately sat upright, straightening her robes with a demure grace. She discreetly licked her lips and resumed her usual role as the obedient, well-mannered handmaiden.

“Papa, something strange up ahead,” the little crow said.

“What kind of strange?”

“There’s a tombstone on the ground,” she replied, then added, “a really big one. I even landed on it and nothing happened.”

The word

tombstone

caught Li Yuan’s attention. “Then let’s go take a look.”

This entire expedition had been about more than just gathering steles. It was about exploring the Outer Region, uncovering pieces of a wider world he’d only begun to grasp. Broadening his perspective.

He’d already found himself seated before the cosmic chessboard. It was only right that he try to read the whole board, not just the few squares in front of him.

The Great Zhou, Eastern Sea’s Immortal Domain, these were just a lit corner of the grand game.

What about the places still cloaked in shadow?

If he were just a bystander, he might’ve avoided strange tombstones altogether, wary of inviting trouble. But now this was exactly what he was here for. He couldn’t afford to pass it up.

“Xingxian, drive the carriage. Follow Sheng’er,” Li Yuan instructed.

The direwolves veered, trailing behind the little crow.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

A while later.

The direwolf carriage pulled to a halt.

The little crow gestured ahead, indicating the tombstone’s location.

Li Yuan had the carriage stop a fair distance away. He stepped down, cautious, alert, and began walking toward it.

There was no snow here. The ground wasn’t frozen, just dry, barren soil. No grass. No insects. The tombstone stood bare and crooked, half-sunken into this lifeless patch of earth.

Li Yuan conducted a quick sweep and found nothing.

On the face of the stone were strange markings, carved deep into its surface. He memorized them, then closed his eyes. The patterns didn’t fade from his vision.

“This isn’t a secret art stele,” he said. “Just a regular tombstone.”

The little crow tilted her head. “Then what’s it for? Some kind of memorial? Or is someone buried here?”

Li Yuan didn’t answer right away. He stared at the markings a while longer before turning back to call the three women down from the carriage.

Ying Zhuoyao didn’t recognize the script.

Even Meng Xingxian, who hailed from the Xia Dynasty, was at a loss.

Surprisingly, Han Feng did recognize some of it.

The Earth Soul cultivator, who preferred hiding deep in others’ souls, spoke up. “I once nested inside the soul of an old lady who studied the Age of the Ancient Gods. Picked up a few things while I was in there, bits and pieces about the era, and some of the script.”

She stepped up to the tombstone, lantern in hand, peering closely.

“But I can only read some of it. It’s rough and fragmented.” She walked up to the stone stele, holding the ever-burning lantern. As she examined the surface, she muttered, “But these are just some rough, scattered characters.”

Li Yuan said, “No matter. Let’s see what’s written on it.”

Han Feng studied it for a moment, then tilted her head upside down.

The faint glow from the lantern spilled across the worn, ancient stone, revealing time-eroded markings.

Everyone stared, confused.

Han Feng said, “This tombstone is upside down. The characters are inverted too. Looks like it was originally buried underground, and something shifted in the land that pushed it up.”

She read aloud, slowly: “Heaven...power...mistake...man...forbidden...marker...as...warning...”

The words tumbled from her mouth, disjointed and fragmented.

Still, Li Yuan could more or less make sense of what was going on.

Much of the writing on the stele had been worn away with time, leaving only traces. On top of that, Han Feng only recognized some of the characters.

“What does that even mean?” Meng Xingxian, playing her usual role as the uninhibited young girl in front of Li Yuan, raised her voice in feigned exasperation, though really she was just trying to provoke a discussion.

“Maybe it means the power of Heaven is flawed. It must be replaced by man? And this tombstone was left as a warning not to follow the wrong path?”

Ying Zhuoyao chimed in, “Young Master, perhaps it’s the opposite. The power of Heaven is not mistaken, and mortals must not tamper with it. This stele stands as a warning.’”

Li Yuan didn’t reply. He fell silent, lost in thought.

Meng Xingxian was throwing ideas around, inviting speculation. Ying Zhuoyao, on the other hand, was subtly saying, “This stele doesn’t really give us anything definitive.”

Still, Li Yuan believed that even if they couldn’t decipher the exact message, there was something important they could take away from it. Back in the Age of the Ancient Gods, it seemed there was a clear separation between the power of Heaven and the power of man.

As for what those powers actually were, he had only a rough understanding.

In simple terms, they were the heaven seal and human seal.

He’d seen the ancient scriptures that Empress Dowager Xie had retrieved from the Grand Heavenly Master. Those texts made it clear that the heaven seal had once existed in the past. But as the heavenly order shifted, those old registers lost their relevance.

The third rank, known as Return to the True Self, marked the transition from individual identity to union with Heaven and Earth. That stage could also be seen as the bridge from the human seal to heaven seal.

It suggested that mortal power and heavenly power could be connected, that one could evolve into the other.

Yet this tombstone from the Age of the Ancient Gods seemed to express the exact opposite idea.

Li Yuan thought carefully.

“Papa, did you figure something out?” the little crow asked.

Li Yuan didn’t hold back. He shared his theory with the group.

Han Feng added, “If it’s about the heaven seal, there are quite a few in the Deathless Tomb who know all about that. Not even talking about them, there was a caretaker who traveled with us once. He knew a lot too. But after he went to the Central Plains, he just disappeared. Maybe he was off chasing his own path.”

“Sheng’er, ask the people from the Deathless Tomb this...” Li Yuan turned to the little crow. His gaze sharpened, voice quiet but serious. “In the past...what would happen if a mere mortal directly tried to tap into the power of the heaven seal?”

The little crow nodded.

Li Yuan waited for a while.

“They’re still arguing,” the crow finally said. “Might take a bit.”

Li Yuan gazed at the tombstone, silently committing the worn inscription to memory. Then he climbed back into the wolf-drawn carriage and activated his

Ying Zhuoyao GPS

, letting her guide them toward the secret art stele she’d mentioned.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

An hour or so passed.

“Papa, I got something. One of them calls himself the Turtle Daoist. He says he’s seen the heaven seal with his own eyes. Mountains crumbled. Thunder fell from the sky. Rivers reversed their flow. All in the blink of an eye. But he was just a kid back then, so he couldn’t tell what cultivation realm the wielder was in. He was watching from the sidelines with his master.

“And his master...he just sighed as he watched. The Turtle Daoist said that sigh wasn’t fear, it was regret. Regret that power like that was about to vanish forever. I asked him, why vanish? He said the world changed. The heaven seal was becoming unusable.”

The little crow was still chattering away when Li Yuan suddenly turned, eyes sharp, and asked Meng Xingxian and Han Feng, “Do you two know what happened to the ancient gods?”

Sheng'er’s message might have been full of uncertainties, but one thing was clear. The Age of the Ancient Gods might’ve been the golden era of the heaven seal.

So Li Yuan’s question was simple. If the two of them had managed to survive in the deathless tomb, then why couldn’t the ancient gods, those who wielded the very power of Heaven itself? And if they could, where the hell did they go?

Surprisingly, both women shook their heads.

“By the time I started cultivating, the ancient gods were already gone.” Meng Xingxian said.

Han Feng added, “I once scouted the edges of the Outer Regions. Never saw a trace of them.”

Li Yuan turned back to the little crow. “Try to dig for more information.”

The little crow nodded and turned to consult her

snail shell

once more.

Silence fell over the carriage.