Chapter 144 - 143: Sword Spirit (2)
"Ling Xi," he repeated smoothly, deciding to match her conversational pace. "I’m—"
"Lin Yuan. I know." Ling Xi interrupted, leaning forward slightly in the air. "I’ve been awake for the last two hours, you know, just... quiet. Watching. You talk to your wife very sweetly, by the way. It was cute. I almost didn’t want to interrupt."
A sudden flush of heat touched the tips of Lin Yuan’s ears, accompanied by a small, genuine blush. For a Spirit Severing expert, being casually teased by a miniature nine-tailed fox spirit about his private moments was a jarring and thoroughly disarming experience. It immediately set the tone for their dynamic. She was playful, observant, and possessed a familial, irreverent cheekiness that completely shattered any expectation of a solemn, subservient master-spirit relationship.
He cleared his throat, setting the plain gray sword down flat across his knees, handling it far more carefully now, and studied her properly.
"Okay, so. Long story. You ready?" Ling Xi asked, suddenly clapping her small hands together. She pointed a tiny finger at his chest. "Sit up straight, this is important."
Lin Yuan straightened his posture instinctively before he even registered the command, an action which visibly delighted her.
"Good boy. Okay." She clapped her hands once more.
Instantly, the air around Ling Xi began to ripple, faint and translucent images blooming into existence and projecting a shared, waking dream into the space between them. Despite her casual, chatty delivery, the atmosphere gradually shifted into something cinematic and deeply sacred.
"A long, long time ago, before your kind had names for the eras, before anyone thought to write anything down, the world didn’t belong to humans," Ling Xi narrated, her voice losing its playful edge.
The translucent images around them swirled, revealing a terrifying ancient world drowned in thick mist and endless violence. Colossal demonic beasts, creatures large enough to rival entire mountain ranges, waded through burning primeval forests. Above them, hovering within storm-torn clouds, were figures of terrible, cold beauty. Gods. They gazed down with eyes filled with pure apathy at the small, fragile beings crawling through the mud below.
"Gods walked the lower realms like they owned the place. Which, to be fair, they kind of did," Ling Xi continued, gesturing toward the glowing illusions. "And demonic beasts ruled everything the gods couldn’t be bothered to watch. Humans were just... there. Prey animals with clever hands. Nobody thought they could amount to anything. We were food. We were dust."
The image shifted dramatically. The burning forests faded, replaced by a vast, blasted plain covered in ash. Standing completely alone in the center of the darkness, facing a vast, shapeless, and terrifyingly massive entity, was a single human figure.
"Except for one man," Ling Xi said softly. "The first one. History barely remembers his name anymore. Everyone just calls him the Ancient Human Emperor now, which he’d probably find very funny, honestly, since he absolutely hated titles."
"What was he like?" Lin Yuan asked quietly, finding himself completely drawn into the weight of the tale.
"Stubborn," Ling Xi answered immediately, a profound, almost aching fondness coloring her voice. "Impossibly, unbearably stubborn. He looked at gods and demons carving up the world between them and just... decided he didn’t agree with the arrangement. That’s it. That’s the whole reason any of this happened. One man decided the world owed humanity a seat at the table, and he refused to accept any answer except yes."
She gestured with her tiny hand, and the translucent projection sharpened. The lone human figure standing upon the ash-covered plain slowly raised his arm. In his hand was a blade. When he swung it, the oppressive mist and primordial darkness surrounding him split apart as though the very fabric of reality had willingly yielded before his will.
"He didn’t have some grand cultivation technique," Ling Xi explained, her molten-gold eyes reflecting the illusory light. "He had no divine bloodline, nothing like that. He just had an unbreakable will. So he took that will, everything he was, everything he believed in, and poured it into forging a weapon. He forged it out of conviction. Out of the refusal to accept ’no’ from beings powerful enough to unmake stars."
Lin Yuan looked down at the plain gray blade resting across his knees. For the first time, the lack of glowing runes or divine ornamentation made perfect sense. It no longer looked plain at all. Instead, it resembled the ultimate distillation of human endurance and defiance.
"That’s me," Ling Xi said, her voice softer now, her nine tails drooping slightly in reverence. "Or, well. Not me, exactly. I’m what grew out of that will over ten thousand years of carrying it. A spirit born from an idea so stubborn that it refused to die even after he did."
The translucent illusions slowly faded into the night air, leaving the balcony bathed once more in the quiet glow of the moon.
Lin Yuan looked at the small fox spirit. Even without probing her mind, he could sense the lingering weight behind those golden eyes, a vast ocean of history that she herself had yet to fully understand.
"Is there more?" Lin Yuan asked gently.
Ling Xi tilted her head, her fox ears twitching as she thought. She genuinely pondered the question, tapping her chin in the exact manner of a child trying to remember whether she had finished all her chores.
"Hmm. I don’t think so? That’s basically everything important," she declared with a firm nod.
A beat passed.
"Oh, wait, no. There was also the thing with..."
She abruptly stopped herself and waved one tiny paw dismissively through the air.
"Nope, never mind. Not important right now," she decided cheerfully. "I’ll tell you if I remember it properly later. My memory’s a little... patchy. Three hundred years is a very long nap, you know."
Lin Yuan studied her for a moment. With his extraordinary comprehension, he could easily tell that she wasn’t lying or deliberately withholding information. Her childlike and somewhat scattered consciousness simply hadn’t fully organized the memories she had inherited.
He merely nodded, accepting her explanation without pressing further. His intrinsic patience naturally came to the forefront.
"Thank you for telling me, Ling Xi," Lin Yuan said, his tone sincere and completely devoid of sovereign arrogance. "All of it."
Ling Xi blinked.
She stared at him for several seconds, seemingly caught completely off guard by the genuine sincerity behind his gratitude. A faint pink blush appeared across her pale cheeks, and she immediately let out a loud, defensive huff.
She crossed her arms over her chest, while all nine of her fluffy tails puffed up simultaneously, making her look considerably larger than she actually was. It was a very deliberate and very adorable attempt to hide her embarrassment.
"Well, of course I told you!" she declared indignantly, refusing to meet his eyes. "What kind of sword spirit keeps secrets from her own wielder? That would just be rude."