Chapter 174: Sun and Moon
The air in the Cold Palace was so stagnant it felt like breathing through a damp shroud, and Xu Xiansu had nearly forgotten how incredibly hard it is to live her, especially when both her and her mother were nothing more than a pair of mortals.
In fact, her mother used to be a peak Spirit Ascension Expert, but before she was thrown in the Cold Palace, her cultivation was crippled by the Empress.
Xu Xiansu entered the small, cramped kitchen, her mind already calculating the calories her mother would need to regain a semblance of vitality.
But as she reached for the hearth, her hand met empty space and she paused, her eyes narrowing as she realized there was no longer any firewood.
A cold, familiar fury bubbled up in her chest, and she couldn’t help but grit her teeth as she remembered this petty cruelty all too well.
The palace servants, acting under the silen malicious orders of the Empress, would never bring kindling or split logs to the Cold Palace.
Instead, they would only deliver massive, unhewn trunks of ironwood, pieces so heavy and dense that even a grown man would struggle to split them.
They did this specifically to force the "fallen princess" and her sickly mother to exhaust themselves, hoping they would eventually succumb to the labor and the cold.
She walked out of the kitchen and stood in the center of the dilapidated courtyard, where several large pieces of wood were stacked in a haphazard pile.
She reached out to pull one of the logs from the stack, but her breath hitched as she struggled to even budge the wood.
She cursed her weak, malnourished body; this frame was like a cage compared to the transcendent power she had wielded at the end of her previous life.
After awhile, she managed to separate one from the pile, but it already almost exhausted her strength.
Gritting her teeth, she took up the rusted, heavy axe leaning against the stone wall. With a strength born of pure, distilled spite, she began to chop.
*Thwack!*
*Thwack!*
*Thwack!*
The rhythm of the axe became the soundtrack to her thoughts as she began to map out the next five centuries.
She didn’t have the luxury of time. She remembered that once Shen Haoran went to the academy, his strength increased by leaps and bounds that by the time she ascended and became a Supreme Emperor, Shen Haoran already helped all his generals ascend to the same level and was preparing to ascend to the Immortal World.
And for now, her first opportunity was that thing in the Eastern Region.
She remembered that around this time of the year, the Barbarians from the Vast Wilderness would initiate their first true breach into the empire.
They would surge through the flattened mountain ranges and begin their conquest of the Eastern Region.
In her past life, they had moved with a terrifying, primal efficiency, taking over the entire region in the short span of a single year.
The Empire, bloated and arrogant, had heard the reports of the invasion, but no one in the Imperial Capital truly bothered to send reinforcements.
To the Xu lineage, the Eastern Region was a sacrificial buffer.
She remembered that the tide only turned when Huo Yue, the future Flame Empress, alongside her husband Shen Ming—who happened to be Shen Haoran’s own cousin—decided to intervene.
They had defended the Eastern Region and pushed back the barbarian hordes with the help of Medusa, the Queen of the Desert, and the future Rainbow Scaled Empress.
However, what was most significant to Xiansu wasn’t that victory, but a specific, localized catastrophe during that war.
During the climactic battle between Medusa and the Chieftain of the Barbarians, a Three-Legged Golden Crow one of the celestial beasts that acted as the sun and lighting up the Prime Origin Realm, was caught in the crossfire.
The clash of Nirvana Rebirth realm intents caused the beast to explode in a shower of solar fire.
But before it died, the Crow managed to gather a single, concentrated droplet of its Source Blood Essence and hid it within a secluded valley in the Eastern Region hoping that one day, it will be able to revive itself.
’That is my opportunity,’ Xiansu thought, the axe biting deep into the ironwood. ’That droplet is the key to awakening my Sun Moon Divine Physique.’
In her previous life, because of the chronic malnutrition she suffered in this palace, her legendary divine physique had slumbered so deep in her soul that no one, not even the most powerful Saints of the Imperial Court, realized it was there.
In fact, she realized later that the reason she had fallen deathly ill shortly after this point in the past was that her physique had finally begun to stir.
But because her body lacked the energy and the spiritual foundation to support a Divine Awakening, the process had nearly killed her.
It was only after her mother’s death, when she had fled the Imperial Capital to search for any method of gaining strength for her revenge, that she had stumbled upon the hidden blood of the Golden Crow.
Unfortunately, it has been over ten years from now when she finally found it.
But still, that baptism had forced her physique to awaken, transforming her into a creature of celestial balance.
As one of the few physiques ranked on the same level as the Infinity Dragon God Physique, the Sun Moon Divine Physique possessed a terrifying, reality-bending ability: the absolute mastery over time.
One might ask, if it’s related to time, why is it name Sun Moon instead of Primordial Time or some other things?
It’s simple.
The Sun and Moon were the oldest clocks in the universe.
The Sun representing the relentless advancement of the future and the Moon representing the stillness and reflection of the past.
In her previous life, she had failed to reach the stage of "Perfect Integration" before her final battle with Haoran, yet she was still hailed as one of the most powerful and feared women in history.
Even with her physique only at the Grand Completion, she was still able to continuously accelerate time to increase the influence of dark energy—the force responsible for the current accelerated expansion of the universe—towards infinity.
As a result, space itself expands so quickly that gravity can no longer hold structures together, causing a Big Rip where galaxies are torn apart, then stars, then planets, and finally the very fabric of spacetime is shredded at a subatomic level.
It was that move she used to wrecked the entire Empire and almost destroyed everything.
This time, she wouldn’t just stop at Grand Completion, she will cultivate her physique to Perfect Integration!
But for nos...
She picked up the split firewood, her arms shaking from the effort, and re-entered the kitchen and began to det up a fire.
Then, as the fire began to roar in the hearth, she set a pot of water to boil, her mind already shifting to the pieces on the board.
’I should also befriend the Martial Emperor, Shen Tao,’ she mused, stirring a handful of coarse grain into the pot.
She remembered his tragedy very clearly, as it was very famous in the empire back then.
Because of his revolutionary cultivation of Internal Energy—a power that bypassed traditional Qi meridians—that crazy woman Feng Yuyan had hunted him down like a rabid dog to experiment on him.
If it wasn’t for his grandfather, the third Enshrined elder of the Shen Clan, sacrificing his entire cultivation and life to shield his escape, Shen Tao would have died on an operating table in the Underground Prison.
In her past life, Shen Tao became a vengeful god, one of the Emperors who wanted to annihilate Shen Haoran and destroy the Shen Clan more than anyone else.
He was a perfect ally.
Then there was the future Desolate Heaven Emperor, Shen Hao.
Right now, he should be suffering in a lower realm, his destiny shattered with his divine physique had been stolen by that "bitch" Chu Xueyu and implanted into Haoran.
Not to mention his parents were crippled and exiled.
She remembered perfectly well how Shen Hao stormed the Shen Clan to seek justice for his parents, supressing everg Supremes of the Shen Clan and even killing one of their Enshrined Elders.
’And then there is the Snow Wind Empress,’ Xiansu recalled, a cold smile touching her lips. ’She is destined to become one of Shen Haoran’s most loyal generals in the future. If I remember correctly, she is currently in the same lower realm as Shen Hao. If I can reach her first, I can turn his greatest shield into his sharpest blade.’
She had so many threads to pull, so many names to cross off her list, and so many tragedies to prevent—or cause.
The weight of five hundred years of memory was heavy, but as she poured the hot porridge into a bowl for her mother, she felt a sense of clarity she had never known.
She walked back to the bedroom, the steam from the bowl rising like incense.
Everything can wait.
For now, she will enjoy this moment with her mother, whom she dearly missed for hundreds of years.
"Mother," she said softly, her voice warm and gentle, hiding the cold, imperial fire within. "The food is ready. Let’s eat. We have a very long day ahead of us."