Word Count: 2,912 Words
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Even in these chaotic times, a Nine-Change Dou Venerate stood among the peak experts of the world, and both women were only a hair's breadth away from breaking through and stepping into the Dou Saint realm.
After leaving seclusion, Nalan Yanran had taken command of the Demon Flame Plains, leading the Yan Alliance members in the struggle for Demon Flame Rocks. Rumor had it that she had once traded blows with a low-level Half-Saint from one of the Central Plains' hidden clans without the slightest fear, and without giving an inch of ground.
As for Feng Qing Er, although she rarely made a move herself, the Heaven Demon Phoenix Tribe's reputation was naturally no weaker.
Where the Ancient Void Dragons did not appear, the Heaven Demon Phoenix Tribe reigned as king.
The three great magical beast factions were now the Ancient Void Dragon Tribe, the Heaven Demon Phoenix Tribe, and the Snake-People Tribe. Yet with Huang Tian out of seclusion, the Heaven Demon Phoenix Tribe still held second place among them.
And on this day, the duel between Nalan Yanran and Feng Qing Er sent enormous waves rolling not only through the Central Plains and the Beast Region, but through the void realms of the Dou God Clans as well. Currents stirred beneath the surface everywhere. One Dou Venerate after another, and even Dou Saints, watched it all in secret.
After Yun Yun, these two were the most likely to become the next Dou Saints.
Three days later, the Myriad Bone Plains had already filled with people arriving from every direction. Buildings rose from the bare ground one after another, and above some of those towers and pavilions flew banners bearing the emblems of the Dou God Clans.
The true experts of those clans had not come in person. Most of the arrivals were younger clan members who wandered the Dou Qi Continent, or vassal factions come to observe the battle.
"Aren't the two of them only Nine-Change Dou Venerates? They aren't even Dou Saints. Why is everyone paying so much attention? Even members of the Dou God Clans have come." A young cultivator turned curiously to the older expert beside him.
"You don't understand. Ever since the business with the Shi Clan, the Dou God Clans have inserted themselves completely into the affairs of the Dou Qi Continent. Don't be fooled by the Central Plains' One Hall, One Tower, and One Alliance. The Pill Tower is an organization of alchemists, and its purpose is to keep the Hall of Souls from harvesting soul bodies. The Hall of Souls itself is nothing more than a subordinate faction of the Hun Clan."
"Only the Misty Cloud Sect of the Yan Alliance truly represents the cultivators of the Dou Qi Continent. If you want to join the Misty Cloud Sect, you only need to pass the assessment. No special background required."
"Nalan Yanran, to put it plainly, is grassroots. She has no backing whatsoever. Of course people are watching her."
On a mountain overlooking the plains, a Half-Saint-level figure gazed into the distance with his brows knitted tight. "The Yan Alliance's sudden challenge to the Heaven Demon Phoenix Tribe must have a deeper meaning behind it."
The old man beside him nodded gravely. "I've heard the Ancient Void Dragon Tribe has been making moves of some kind. And in the Demon Flame Space, Xiao Yan formed a close friendship with a powerful member of that tribe. The Yan Alliance almost certainly has ties to them."
"If that is so, could the Yan Alliance be probing the Heaven Demon Phoenix Tribe's stance? Do they mean to bind every faction on the Dou Qi Continent together against the Dou God Clans and find some way to preserve themselves?"
The Dou Qi Continent was vast beyond measure, and no small number of hidden clans concealed themselves within it, showing neither peak nor stream. Yet what had happened to the Shi Clan let the whole world smell the danger, and now every power feared for its own survival.
"The great tide that has held for tens of thousands of years on this continent is about to turn. The Central Plains will fall into chaos." One of the great figures spoke quietly as he looked out over the plains.
The same conjecture surfaced in more than a few minds. The Yan Alliance wants to unify the Dou Qi Continent and stand against the Dou God Clans!
This arranged battle was nothing but a test. If Nalan Yanran won, the Snake-People Tribe might well go to war against the Heaven Demon Phoenix Tribe!
The name of Queen Medusa was not one to be taken lightly.
…
That day, countless cultivators of the Central Plains and countless powerful magical beasts of the Beast Region poured into the Myriad Bone Plains. In truth, it was not only the Central Plains. Experts from the void lands and the outer reaches came swarming in as well.
Reclusive Dou Venerates appeared outside the Myriad Bone Plains one after another, all to witness the battle between Nalan Yanran and Feng Qing Er.
These two women represented far more than themselves. The powers standing behind them were entangled too deeply for anyone to ignore, and the Yan Alliance most of all. Two years had passed with Xiao Yan missing, and still no one dared belittle it. The Yan Alliance remained a colossus.
The Misty Cloud Sect and the Flower Sect, the greatest sects on the Dou Qi Continent. The Jia Ma Empire, its most vast and powerful empire. The Miteer Auction House, its wealthiest merchant organization. All of them belonged to the Yan Alliance.
To say nothing of the Snake-People Tribe, which held nearly half the Beast Region's territory, and the Xiao Clan, once a Dou God Clan in its own right.
That alone showed what sort of behemoth the Yan Alliance had become. For ordinary people, ordinary cultivators, unaffiliated rogue practitioners with no backing at all, it was an existence they could never go around.
Within the Myriad Bone Plains lay the Myriad Bone Battlefield, an ancient field of war on the border between the Central Plains and the Beast Region. From a distance, peak after peak rose from the earth, yet many of those massive summits were broken things. Some had been cleaved in two. Some had been blasted away until only their foothills remained. Others had been severed clean through the middle.
Ruins lay scattered across the battlefield. The hulls of enormous warships, the bones of colossal beasts, the shattered halves of giant weapons. Most of the white bones that had once covered this ground had long since crumbled into yellow sand.
In the barbarous age, back when Dou Gods still walked the world, a full-scale war between humans and magical beasts had erupted here. Rumor claimed that Dou Gods and Divine Beasts themselves had joined that world-shaking battle, and that the slaughter had been horrific beyond description.
It was that war which had finally fixed the border between the Central Plains and the Beast Region.
While everyone waited with craning necks, several powerful old monsters lifted their heads at once.
Clang!
A sword cry rang out. Sword intent spread through the air, and a keen, cutting wind swept across the land in an instant.
That single note filled the whole of the Myriad Bone Plains. Veteran experts and young spectators drawn by the excitement alike felt that terrible edge slice through their skin, as though it meant to run them through the chest the very next breath.
The weather had been mild and pleasant only moments earlier. Now the wind turned cold enough to bite into bone.
A figure drifted down and came to rest atop a broken peak within the plains.
It was a woman in a plain robe of silver moonlight. Her long black hair was gathered behind her head with a simple band, and her frame was tall and willowy. When the wind swept past, the robe pressed flush against her body and traced the slender line of her waist, the full curve of her chest, the long, clean length of her legs. A single glance was enough to hold a man's eyes and refuse to release them.
Her face looked soft enough to bruise at a touch, yet it carried a stubbornness all its own, like a fine blade that would sooner snap than bend. A trace of coldness lingered in her gaze. One could tell at a glance that she was not someone easy to approach.
Nalan Yanran.
"Hiss! It's Nalan Yanran, the Misty Cloud Sect's Sect Leader!" Old-generation experts from the hidden clans cried out in shock as she landed on the peak.
"What formidable sword intent." The Pavilion Master of the Ten Thousand Sword Pavilion had come as well. He had crossed paths with Xiao Yan more than once, and he had certainly seen Nalan Yanran at the Four Pavilion Grand Meeting.
Back then she had merely been a participant, pushed forward by Xiao Yan to fight Feng Qing Er. In the end Feng Qing Er had loudly challenged Xiao Yan himself, only to be finished off in a single move by the Five Ring Flame Expelling Technique.
Nalan Yanran had already fought in the preliminaries, and even then the strength she showed had surpassed that of his own disciple, Tang Ying.
Tang Ying stood there too. He sighed and shook his head at the sight of her. More than ten years ago he had competed against her for the Heavenly Mountain Blood Pool, and at the Four Pavilion Grand Meeting his master, Venerable Jian, had intended to send him against her.
Ten years had passed. Nalan Yanran now stood at the peak of the Nine-Change Dou Venerate stage, while he had not so much as set foot in the Dou Venerate realm. He remained stuck at 9-star Dou Ancestor. To reach Venerable Jian's level in this lifetime would already be tremendous fortune.
The gulf between them was plain at a glance.
'Is having someone to chase after really so important?' Thoughts churned endlessly through Tang Ying's mind. He knew that reaching Nalan Yanran's height demanded resources and fortune, but more than either, it demanded a reason to keep driving forward.
There was no question about it. Nalan Yanran had always been chasing a certain figure, and that figure was now called the strongest of the Dou Qi Continent's younger generation.
Sometimes choosing the right person to chase mattered more than anything. Even if you never surpassed them, when you finally looked back, you would find you had left countless others behind.
"It's not just Nalan Yanran. Look over there. That's the Yan Alliance's banner." No one had noticed when it appeared, but a pavilion now hung in the air above the mountains not far behind her. The whole structure was simple and dignified, built into the clouds so that it faded in and out of sight.
"It's Yun Yun! Even she has come!" Peerless figures who had once cowed an entire era felt their hearts tremble at the sight of the woman standing quietly within that pavilion.
Yun Yun had restrained her aura, yet even through the mist her outline showed and vanished by turns, a fairy of the clouds observing the world from her hiding place. She seemed formless and unreal, as though she belonged to the sky alone. Her beauty could not be clearly seen.
That was hardly strange. Yun Yun had reached the Dou Saint realm, and the means at her command were astonishing. To ordinary people, a Dou Saint truly was a saint, something to be admired only from a distance.
"Even Yun Yun, the Flower Sect's Sect Leader, has come. Both of the Yan Alliance's Sect Leaders are here."
"This doesn't look like an ordinary arranged battle at all, if Sect Leader Yun Yun herself has appeared."
The crowd fell to murmuring among themselves. The Yan Alliance's two Sect Leaders both held real authority. They could decide a great many things. More than a few hearts tightened at the thought.
And they were right to feel it, because Yun Yun was not alone inside that cloud-wrapped pavilion. The man who had founded the Yan Alliance Treaty, missing for two full years, was there with her.
"What if Feng Qing Er refuses the challenge?" Yun Yun asked softly as she stepped back inside, looking at Xiao Yan, who sat in a chair with his eyes closed.
Only then did Xiao Yan slowly open his eyes. With his current half-step Emperor State Spiritual Strength, the entire plains lay within his perception. He had no need to look.
"If she doesn't show, that saves me a good deal of trouble." A smile touched the corners of his mouth. His tone was mild, but even Yun Yun could hear the cold edge under it.
If Feng Qing Er failed to appear, Xiao Yan would set aside every question of agreements. Once he helped Zi Yan unify the Dragon Islands, there would be no reason to leave the Heaven Demon Phoenix Tribe standing at all.
With his strength as it was now, Huang Tian no longer merited even a moment's caution. Once, he might have given the man a wary thought or two. That time was gone.
The Heaven Demon Phoenix Tribe could simply be handed to Zi Yan and left to go on serving as food for the Ancient Void Dragon Tribe.
"With your strength, surely there's no need to go through all this trouble?" Yun Yun asked gently.
Xiao Yan looked at the woman before him, beautiful and elegant, noble in bearing yet warm and attentive all the same, and he could not help smiling. "True enough. But a little caution never hurts. Helping Zi Yan unify the Dragon Islands is no small thing. It concerns the whole Ancient Void Dragon Tribe, and there can't be a single slip."
"The Heaven Demon Phoenix Tribe can't be allowed to become the accident that ruins it."
"Besides, I'm a man who keeps his word. I told Feng Qing Er that if she accomplished what she claimed she would, I'd honor my promise and let her take charge of the Heaven Demon Phoenix Tribe. I won't wipe them out to the last. Too much killing isn't a good thing either."
Yun Yun listened in silence, quiet and gentle. When that tenderness flowed from her like water, it drew people in and put them at ease all at once.
Time seemed to halt. Only then did it occur to Yun Yun that this vast pavilion held no one but the two of them. A man and a woman, alone together in a single room.
Xiao Yan smiled, shifted over in his seat, and patted the space he had left empty.
There was no chance Yun Yun failed to understand him. A faint blush rose in her cheeks, and she gave him a coquettish, sidelong look that carried a flavor entirely its own, like a peach ripened to the full, so heavy with juice that the lightest pressure would draw it out.
She said nothing for a moment, but she did not refuse. She stepped over lightly, smoothed the hem of her long skirt with both hands, and sat down. She left a gap between them all the same.
Xiao Yan could not help laughing when he saw that she had sat beside him yet deliberately kept her distance. "You weren't this far away back in that mountain cave. I still remember..."
"You!" Yun Yun's hand shot up to cover his shameless mouth. "That was only because the Heavenly Flame had injured you. That's the only reason I..."
Xiao Yan laughed aloud, then turned and leaned back until his head came to rest squarely against the soft warmth of her chest. He closed his eyes and savored it. "I'm fairly sure this was the position. You cleaned the wounds and bandaged them."
Warmth spread against her, and Yun Yun did not know what to do with herself. Back then the Ten Thousand Beast Flame had left him barely alive, his cultivation still low, his whole body scorched by the Heavenly Flame until his skin split and the flesh showed through. Her Dou Qi had suppressed the fire, but the burns had covered him from head to foot, and it was Yun Yun who had washed and bound every one of them.
His shameless behavior sent indignation rising in her, and still she did not push him away. He rested with his eyes shut, looking almost asleep, and she sighed inwardly. There was helplessness in it, and a small sweetness too. After a while she raised her hand and gently brushed the hair on his forehead back into place.
Xiao Yan's breathing was calm and even. He had only just come out of the Demon Flame Space, and soon he would have to leave for Eastern Dragon Island to help Zi Yan unify the Ancient Void Dragon Tribe. After so much running from one crisis to the next, it was rare to find a moment to rest.
He lay there and let himself sink into that gentle affection of hers, soft as flowing water.
If anyone had seen it, a Dou Saint expert tending to a man with such warmth and care, the sight would probably have driven countless people half mad with envy, grinding their teeth in resentment.
Why did everything always end up belonging to Xiao Yan?!