Heavenly Wheel Ascension

Yuyan Die’s trembling footsteps left trails of silver blood upon the cracked stones. She did not know why her legs moved, or why her nearly shattered soul felt drawn to the shadow of that man’s back. The fear that had once paralyzed her had now transformed into a sort of devotion born of desperation.

Zhi Xuan stopped his pace without turning. The air around him suddenly became thin and seemed to freeze, as if the universe itself were holding its breath.

"Why do you still follow, Butterfly?" Zhi Xuan’s voice sounded hollow, yet it carried a vibration that made Yuyan Die’s bones creak. "I did not harvest your soul out of mercy, but because my scythe does not deign to drink the blood of an opponent cowering beneath my feet."

Yuyan Die fell to her knees once more, her beautiful features now ruined, yet her silver eyes stared at Zhi Xuan’s heels with a terrifying intensity. "Master Gu... I... I have glimpsed what lies behind the veil of your soul. I... I felt the world collapse upon seeing that figure."

She prostrated until her forehead touched the sharp rock. "Ancient Insects only follow the strongest. After seeing the Devil Saint within your mind, I no longer have a place to return to. If I return to Yao Gu with this shattered soul, the Ancient Han Clan will turn me into a cultivation furnace. I... I do not want that."

Ao Sheng, perched on Zhi Xuan’s shoulder, snorted loudly, golden smoke curling from his nose. "Senior, this woman is very cunning. Just now she wanted to turn us into nutrition, and now she crawls like an earthworm just because she was terrified by the fox auntie."

"She is not lying about one thing, Senior," Xiao Die interrupted, her voice carrying a melancholic tone. "Once an Ancient Insect beholds a higher Master, they can no longer serve a lesser master. It is the curse of our bloodline. Yuyan Die... she no longer has a way home."

"Her soul is cracked, her consciousness split from plundering Senior’s mind where the Great Devil Saint resides," Xiao Die continued. "If Senior is not interested, you can kill her directly. But if Senior wishes, a Six-Desires Devouring Butterfly can become a spiritual beast equal to us."

"Another one?" Zhi Xuan chuckled, but his voice contained not a shred of joy. "I already have a talkative dragon and a grumbling moth. Now, a butterfly that was torn apart without even a struggle?"

Zhi Xuan turned his body slowly, letting his robes sweep the swirling dust. He gazed at the pathetic figure of Yuyan Die; a sacred envoy who once radiated heavenly brilliance, now merely a cracked vessel with scattered remnants of essence.

"You want me to pick up a shattered frame?" Zhi Xuan asked, his voice piercing like nine winters. "The six desires you prided yourself on have turned back to devour their owner. You are but a burden to my journey."

Yuyan Die raised her face, silvery tears streaming down her pale cheeks. "I... I am willing to become the dust beneath Master’s footsteps. Let me be the servant who guards Master’s shadow. Only by being near Master’s aura can my broken soul find a place to rest."

Suddenly, Yuyan Die’s throat felt constricted, the rune pattern on her forehead flickering as she felt the pull of a distant soul seal. Her face instantly turned blue, her hands clutching her own neck with whitening nails.

"A—Ahhh... Master... Han..." Yuyan Die moaned between her broken gasps.

Far away in the Yao Gu Plains, within a magnificent hall, a middle-aged man in silver-embroidered robes opened his eyes. He felt the resonance of his seal being disturbed, and through Yuyan Die’s fading consciousness, he attempted to force his will to destroy the butterfly’s heart rather than let her fall into another’s hands.

"Presumptuous!" A heavy, authoritative echo of a voice emerged from the rune on Yuyan Die’s forehead, radiating a high-level pressure attempting to explode her head.

Zhi Xuan merely watched the scene with slightly narrowed brows. He hated coercion, and he hated it even more when someone attempted to kill a celestial creature seeking life right in front of him without his permission.

"Ancient Han Clan..." Zhi Xuan hissed. "Even across the distance of the Plains, you still try to show your rotten fangs."

Zhi Xuan raised his hand, his fingers forming the Reversing the Flow of Samsara mudra. Light from the Six Paths Reincarnation Disk appeared briefly at his fingertip. He did not destroy the rune with force, but touched Yuyan Die’s forehead with the tip of his index finger.

DENGGG!

A sharp clinking sound, like the simultaneous snapping of giant zither strings, echoed through the air. The red rune on Yuyan Die’s forehead instantly dimmed, cracked, and finally crumbled into meaningless shards of light. The soul contract bond binding Yuyan Die shattered into pieces under Zhi Xuan’s authority of reincarnation.

Yuyan Die gasped, falling forward with her chest heaving violently. She felt as though a weight of a thousand jin had just been lifted from her soul. For the first time in her life, she felt a silence within her mind—no more whispered commands from her former master. Her eyes dimmed, and slowly the woman’s form shrank into a six-winged butterfly lying upon the jagged rocks.

Zhi Xuan looked at the small, helpless creature. Her wings, once grand with a six-colored glow, now looked dull and torn in several places, vibrating softly from the lingering pain of the forced soul-seal severance.

"Senior, you truly severed the blood bond of the Han Clan," Ao Sheng whispered, the small dragon landing beside the butterfly, his large eyes observing with scrutiny. "That man in Yao Gu must be spitting blood right now. Destroying an expert’s soul seal is a supreme insult."

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"I do not care about the Ancient Clan," Zhi Xuan said flatly. He moved his palm, and instantly the essence of the Reincarnation Domain’s Beast Path enveloped the small butterfly’s body.

A grayish-green light from the Beast Path crept smoothly, wrapping Yuyan Die’s tiny frame in a soothing energy cocoon. The wounds on her wings began to close, and the cracks in her soul essence slowly reconnected, though they would never be truly whole as they were before.

"Desire Nightmare," Zhi Xuan murmured, reciting Yuyan Die’s name. "A Rank 2 Sacred Beast, yet her cultivation has plummeted due to the soul seal damage. Ancient Insects are always interesting in their transformation and evolution."

Zhi Xuan moved his fingers, letting the small butterfly float until it rested on his open palm. Xiao Die changed back into a small moth, while Ao Sheng perched back on Zhi Xuan’s shoulder. The Golden Dragon appeared filled with confusion.

"Senior, is it that easy?" Ao Sheng exclaimed. "Ancient Insects... are there none that take a male form when transforming? I’m curious about Senior Li Chen’s North River Spider from back then. If it transforms, would it look like a woman or a man?"

Zhi Xuan did not respond to Ao Sheng’s silly chatter. His eyes remained fixed on the light cocoon protecting Yuyan Die’s small form. Silence reigned once more atop the jagged rocks, yet it was no longer a threatening silence, but a quiet carrying the weight of a new destiny being woven.

"Coming from Yao Gu, only to fall and fail in testing me," Zhi Xuan murmured. "Han Shanshan, has her head begun to show madness because of that wager of half the Ancient Han Clan’s wealth?"

Zhi Xuan flipped his palm, letting the light-wrapped butterfly float into the folds of his robe, resting in the warmth of stable spiritual essence. He did not look back at the destroyed cliff; the bodies of the four masked guards had turned to dust and were swept away by the west wind, vanishing as if they had never existed in this mortal world.

Zhi Xuan stepped, covering thousands of zhang in a single stride, moving away from the chaos on the cliff. Beneath his feet, rivers and forests shifted into the denser civilizations of the eastern Chi Di; at the very least, Zhi Xuan intended to distance himself from the Ancient Shen Clan’s reach without feeling watched.

Beneath his robes, the energy cocoon protecting Yuyan Die pulsed regularly, resonating with Zhi Xuan’s calm heartbeat. For other practitioners, carrying a wounded Sacred Beast was a drain on essence, but for Zhi Xuan, the butterfly’s presence was no more than a feather falling onto the surface of a lake.

He appeared with a soft thud that swept the ground around him; hundreds of zhang ahead, there was a caravan party seemingly heading somewhere. The caravan consisted of a dozen wooden wagons reinforced with copper plates, pulled by a type of one-horned beast whose steps were heavy yet stable.

Zhi Xuan moved his fingers, and immediately a simple brown robe enveloped his body. He let his hair remain loose as he slowly walked with a calm pace behind the caravan. Each step closed the distance until he was only a few dozen zhang behind them.

"Hah, the air is very fresh this morning," a voice emerged from one of the walking guards. " ini spiritual stones will at least be of high value. Once I’ve gained enough wealth, I’m just going to go home to the western region."

"Why do you want to go home? Isn't the eastern region more prosperous?" countered the guard beside him. "Well, though all Chi Di soil is fertile, the eastern region is closer to the Ancient Clan center."

"It's not like that, I just want to marry my beloved and leave this job," the first guard replied, his face bright with hope. "Besides, the Trade Alliance is a massive entity; losing one small guard like me means nothing, right? Hahaha!"

Zhi Xuan listened to the conversation from a distance, his eyes as deep as the ocean watching the backs of the guards with an unreadable look. Simple mortal desires—marrying a beloved, going home, a small peace—sounded so alien, yet somehow gave a warm echo in the corner of his heart, which he had recently cleansed with wood carvings by the river.

"Heh, you, so young and already thinking of marriage!" joked a middle-aged man sitting as the beast-driver. "The journey to the nearest city is still two days away. Honestly, I’m a bit lazy to go to East Tiger City myself."

"Why?" asked the second guard. "Is it because you feel the journey there is harder than the next destination?"

"Because of the rumors circulating in the wine taverns, you idiot!" the middle-aged man spat on the ground, his eyes narrowing at the dusty horizon. "You youngsters are too busy thinking about women to keep your ears open. Word is... the Young Kings of Chi Di are gathering there, who knows what they are doing."

"Young Kings? You’re joking, Uncle?" exclaimed the young guard who had just boasted of his beloved, nearly tripping over a protruding tree root. "You mean those geniuses from the major sects? The ones whose cultivation has already touched the sky even though they haven't reached a full cycle of age?"

The middle-aged man snorted while pulling the reins of his increasingly restless beast. "Who else but them? And it’s not just the Young Kings of Chi Di; there are practitioners from other lands participating in that meeting. Heaven knows what those talented youngsters are up to."

"It's not just an ordinary meeting," added a senior guard with a pockmarked face who had been sharpening his dagger on the wagon. "I heard from the caravan captain; this is an official banquet held by the Pavilion of Heavenly Secrets. They say they intend to go to the land of Huang Tu, seeking traces of the Underworld."

"Underworld? You’ve surely had too much wheat wine, Senior Pockmark!" the young guard’s laughter erupted, though there was a trembling note in his voice. "Only a madman seeks the door to Huang Tu. That plain is a barren land that not even the Ancient Clans control in the slightest."

"Speaking of Huang Tu, don't you know the ancient proverb that says the dust there is the bones of fallen Gods?" The senior guard called Pockmark grinned, showing an incomplete row of teeth. "And the Pavilion of Heavenly Secrets isn't a collection of drunks. They wouldn't gather the Young Kings just to exchange cups of wine if something hadn't surfaced."

"Look at that, who is that tall man?" a rear guard suddenly pointed. "I've seen him several times; I thought he was just hunting, but he’s actually following us."

Every pair of eyes in the caravan immediately turned backward. The tall figure in simple brown robes stood in contrast to the vast horizon. Although he walked with steps that appeared slow, somehow the distance between himself and the caravan remained consistent—as if the space beneath his feet folded itself to match their rhythm.

"Who are you, Wanderer?" The middle-aged man holding the reins shouted, his hand instinctively pulling the locking lever on his wagon. "Your face is clean, but you look disheveled. What do you want? Do you wish to hitch a ride?"

Zhi Xuan stopped his pace exactly ten zhang behind the last wagon. He raised his face slightly. "Just a wanderer. I am not hitching a ride; I shall walk and I have no ill intent toward your caravan."

The guards looked at one another, doubt clearly etched on their faces. In a practitioner world full of guile, a man walking alone on a trade route without carrying a weapon appeared either too brave or too insane.

"Zhang Shui," Zhi Xuan interrupted convincingly. He snapped his fingers and brought out a black bamboo sword that looked tattered. "I have my own weapon, do not worry."