The Devil Fire Soul Cauldron was the only Formation suitable for Zhu Xuelian’s cultivation, and the oppressive heat of the magma chamber immediately greeted her with unrelenting fire. The chamber had only one cultivation platform available, and the rest was a sea of lava, churning and bubbling just below the platform on which Zhu Xuelian stood.

  This close to the sea of lava, even her clothes began to smoke as embers consumed the silk and then flamed out.

  Strangely enough, despite the heat, this place felt soothing to her. She had her heavenly fire root and the Salvation Ashes manual — a divine Dao art — to thank for that.

  They were both given to her by Eternal Red, after months of torture. Even now, Zhu Xuelian’s body remembered the awful days of living under the tyranny of that monster, though calling it living was a stretch. The torture and pain she and Wu Yulan experienced at the hands of Eternal Red crossed the boundaries of life and death, figuratively and literally. Zhu Xuelian even broke her life vessel — certain death for cultivators — to slay Eternal Red, yet not only did she fail to inflict any damage, Eternal Red would not even allow her to die, reversing the damage Zhu Xuelian had done to herself.

  However, this manual did not come for free, or as a reward for entertaining Eternal Red. Zhu Xuelian was given the fire root of a godly being, and a martial art to cultivate it, to kill Lu Long — a legendary figure, and the man Eternal Red wanted dead. She wanted the man who betrayed and imprisoned her so dead, that she gave half her origin to Wu Yulan and Zhu Xuelian, reducing her lifespan to twenty years. If that lifespan should run out before Lu Long was dead, both Zhu Xuelian and Wu Yulan would die with her.

  It's not like Zhu Xuelian didn't understand this kind of hatred.

  Salvation Ashes was a manual unlike any other in the world. It was a Dao Art, meaning that even if she died, went through the cycles of karma, and was reborn, she would still possess the manual. Even her children would inherit it.

  It was almost exactly how demonic beasts propagated their knowledge through generations, and each one cultivated their bodies in similar ways. Like they possessed genetic memories.

  Eternal Red truly was a monster; she even said that her origin was that of a phoenix.

  In this detail, Zhu Xuelian felt there was a key to the future.

  Zhu Xuelian made herself comfortable on the platform, and summoned to mind the first layer of the Salvation Ashes manual, which, despite its name, did not save anything — merely purify the ashes of the saved.

  Salvation Ashes could be cultivated from the mortal stages of one’s existence and possessed methods to cultivate the body, soul, and spirit. It required divine blood and divine life, later in one's cultivation to break through the major stages, and without knowing how to obtain those, Zhu Xuelian never truly practiced it.

  But now, for reasons beyond merely her cultivation, she had more than enough reasons to attempt it.

  To cultivate a devil’s art, like a devil beast, left a bitter taste in her mouth, but there was not a thing under Heaven that she wouldn’t try to keep her dream alive.

  She took a breath, and this was the first breath of her life. First Breath of the Ember — the opening layer of the Salvation Ashes described the method of taking one’s first breath after rebirth. Before one could enter the first layer proper, one had to take this breath and endure the weight of life.

  The remnants of her clothes immediately burned away. A circle of charred basalt formed around her, as even her hair caught fire. Her eyeballs boiled. Her blood boiled. Her bones melted.

  She thought that she experienced the pinnacle of pain during Eternal Red’s hospitality, but she truly was a frog at the bottom of the well, marveling at the sky. Every fiber of her being burned; not just her physical flesh, even her spiritual vessel burned. Pure fire flowed through her veins and meridians, activating the sleeping roots of a phoenix and burning away the inconvenience of an unhallowed vessel.

  Even the lava below seemed like a cool, distant quench, compared to the fire in her heart, but the searing pain was so overwhelming that she couldn’t move a muscle. This one breath incinerated and turned her mind to ashes.

  Despite this, with what little sliver of consciousness she still had, she focused on her breath. She drew it in, slowly. She did not rush; that would be a fatal mistake. No pain could compare to the hollowness she would feel if she was left without the object of her obsession in this world. So she endured it; she would endure anything. No price was too high and no sacrifice was too small.

  It took hours, but to her, it felt like days or weeks.

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  The first time she and Yaoyue formed their Foundations, she thought they would die. She was certain of it. Tribulation lightning descended, and she was ready to become fuel for Yaoyue’s Foundation. But even back then, Yaoyue sacrificed for her, and built this body for her, to survive. She awoke to a Physique that was suitable to follow Yaoyue.

  Even during the Eternal Red incident, Yaoyue crossed the barrier of physical mortality, to become a sword that could cut even gods. It wasn’t enough, but Zhu Xuelian understood the meaning of it.

  Even that day, just before Zhu Xuelian dueled and killed Yu Shun, Yaoyue told her.

  She was suitable. On their own, they could not reach the apex in this life. They could only reach the apex together. One was nothing without the other.

  Those lucky stars that blessed Zhu Xuelian, and which she admired, were in Yaoyue's sky. The pain of burning alive? That was a mere flash in the pan compared to what awaited her if Yaoyue disappeared.

  There was a way forward, and to Zhu Xuelian, the only way forward was through.

  The fire root and the cultivation of a phoenix.

  The derivative Physique of her obsession.

  She expelled her first breath, and a sphere of fire qi formed around her. Just like that, she crossed into the late stages of Qi Condensation. Her lungs were burned to ashes, her bones charred, and her flesh sloughed off in sheets of molten fat and then burned ashes.

  If she had a voice, she would’ve screamed, but her throat burned away too.

  Her veins, however, remained. Her meridians, although blazing, remained. Her dantian, although incinerated, processed the absurd abundance of fire qi.

  Where the fire burned away her lesser form, fire also remade it — weaving igneous fibers of lava and jade where skin and bone should be. Her entire body was charred black, but the luminous veins of her pulsing meridians shone through like a blazing light, dimming the room in their radiance.

  Samsara Ashes — the first layer of Salvation Ashes opened to her and accepted her. It was different from ordinary cultivation. There was no bottleneck; she simply eased into the early stage of Qi Refinement, and it felt more as though a great presence observed her from afar, and allowed her into the next realm of cultivation.

  However, Zhu Xuelian didn’t pay much attention to the differences. Her heart stabbed and throbbed as she reached out with her burned flesh to clasp her fingers around Yaoyue’s vessel — the sword hovering invisibly over her shoulder, always there.

  She barely had the strength to grasp it, but she held on as tightly as she could, smiling.

  “It is my turn to sacrifice for you,” she whispered. “The foolishness of reaching for you, and yearning to be at your side… it was never lost on me. Maybe those stars sparkled like that because the things I wish for are all finite?”

  Slowly, she made her way to the edge of the platform. “But I won’t give up. I will reach you. Didn’t we say we would seek the Dao together? Even if this is as far as I go in this life… in the next life… in every life… I won’t give up. I want to be at your side forever.”

  She raised the sword, pointed the tip at her chest, and hesitated for a moment.

  “You always sacrifice for me. You always cut your roots for me, though I never deserved it. That is why… this life… I give it all to you,” as she spoke the words, she pushed the sword through her chest. “Maybe it is only worth days to you… or hours… or minutes… but to me… this life… with you… is everything…”

  The moment she fell into the sea of lava — because they were of the same Physique — the sword mended her burned flesh, remaking it out of black jade and metal. Whatever the fire touched, the heavenly treasure restored and reforged. Even without its dominant will, it was as though the sword remembered her, and offered its aid, like it always did.

  Zhu Xuelian, after all, had a body of black jade, metaphysically speaking, produced from the blood of the sword. Her hair, her nails, her flesh, her bones, her teeth, her blood — everything of hers — had the properties of black jade when she obtained the Black Jade Lily Empress physique, smelted and refined by Yaoyue.

  So what if her life was worth only a minuscule amount compared to Yaoyue's? If one hundred years was not enough, then ten thousand should do. If that was not enough, then she would sacrifice a million for one more moment in which her heart was whole again.

  No one understood where or how Zhu Xuelian obtained her tenacity and willpower. It was obsession. Unimaginable obsession.

  For a life worth living.

  Thus, Zhu Xuelian smelted again, like precious jade or a bar of metal, casting off all the impurities that weren’t black jade or of Yaoyue. All those mortal, lesser things that weighed her down or stood in her way — the things that betrayed her and failed her, and caused her so much suffering — she burned them all away, until naught but the finest, fiery black jade remained.

  As her cultivation progressed, her lifespan diminished, fed into the dynamo of consumption that was Yaoyue — not merely a sword, but an entity that devoured worlds for sustenance.

  In those moments, when the jade was mending her flesh, she felt at peace. She felt connected. She felt as though she was returning to her origin and becoming part of the sky she admired.

  Outside the Formation Hall, lightning thundered for days; discharging furiously into the giant tree at the summit of the mountain. Not only the disciples occupying the mountain that Heaven decided to erase, but even Sovereign beasts covered in absolute terror, though the beasts at least had the good sense to run away as far as possible.

  Yet, the tree absorbed every fork of lightning, and devoured every sound, letting this spectacle of mysterious heavenly wrath wash over and around them like a stream parting around a rock. And for all the booming fury and wrath, not a speck of damage was inflicted on the mountain, the sect, or the surrounding valleys.

  Only blood-red fruits appeared in the canopy of the mysterious, heaven-defying tree, and the prevailing sense that something terrifying had been born or awoken into the world.

  [ Physique: Black Jade Lily Empress — Indestructible, black jade is the vessel of Dao Monarchs. To consume the sun that rises with calamity is the right of the uncompromising flower. ]

  [ Soul: Absolute Sword Monarch Heart — Abandon the way of the Divine and the way of the mortal. From nothingness, the path; from the path, the Sword Sovereign’s unrivaled dominion above Heaven and Earth. ]

  [ Race: Human -> Human (Sword Devil Path) ]

  "I will even become a devil for you..."

  Fiction Page ]