182. One Who Should Not Exist
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Yu Wang had directed a killing blow right at Feng Lian's heart...
But though the attack flung her back, his black dragon scales somehow crawled out of her skin to protect her heart!
Feng Lian raised surprised eyes to find Yu Wang wearing an equally surprised expression.
"Impossible! There should be nothing left of him!" Yu Wang raged.
His aura suddenly surged and he placed a hand to his head, letting out a shrill scream.
He fell forward to his knees as his aura swirled in disarray, the force of his aura shattering even more of the cliff-side.
The floor gave way beneath Feng Lian's feet, and she found herself free-falling into the depths, but a pair of strong arms suddenly wrapped around her, and Yu Wang rose into the air with her, gently landing back atop the cliff.
He released instantly her and leapt away, staring at her over a distance, his eyes back to their original brilliant gold.
"A- A-Xuan...?" Feng Lian stared uncertainly at those brilliant gold irises.
But Yu Xuan suddenly bent over, hacking out a flood of black blood.
Feng Lian instinctively stepped forward, but Yu Xuan held up a hand.
"Don't come here!" He thundered, pinning her with a cold look. "I'm already beyond sav-...!"
He froze as Feng Lian appeared right in front of him, her arms wrapping around him.
It began to rain but both seemed oblivious.
Time seemed to stop.
In that moment, Feng Lian explained all that had happened against Yu Xuan's rapidly beating heart.
She had never hated him...
In fact, she had refused to believe he was guilty, and in her craze, she had rushed to read the Stars, going as far as forcefully breaking the Star Seal without an edict, all to find Yu Xuan.
And there, she had uncovered the hateful actions of the Sky Emperor and her own father...
Yu Xuan was weakened after they broke his Seal, giving Yu Wang temporary power.
But knowing that Yu Xuan would eventually awaken and regain control, Yu Wang fled to Shadow Realm, where the dark flame's power would be strongest.
All through those years, Feng Lian had worn the mask of repentance, only as an excuse to find Yu Xuan and break Yu Wang's hold over him.
But it was too late...
With the violent and demonic miasma within Shadow Realm, the dark flame had thrived, slowly killing Yu Xuan.
All that was left was a bit of his essence, preserved within the Phoenix feather and triggered if Yu Wang ever tried to harm Feng Lian.
Like now...
At the Abyss of no return, the two had remained hugging in the rain, knowing there was no hope, yet refusing to let go.
...until a powerful demonic aura pulsed from Yu Xuan.
"The dark flame is trying to reawaken, and I can't hold it off for much longer." Yu Xuan said, and then he suddenly pushed her away.
"A-Xuan!" She made to approach, but with a wave of his hand, a crystal clear shield appeared, locking him within an inpenetrable dome.
"A-Lian, I'm presently nothing but an echo... A lingering whisper. It was my good Fortune to meet you in this life, so forget a lowly person like me ever existed!"
"A-Xuan!" Feng Lian cried out, but no matter what attack she threw at his shield, it remained unmoved, and she watched in horror as he swiftly hit a few of his accupoints.
There was a sudden burst of powerful aura which flung her backwards and away from him.
Around her, the raindrops stood still as if paused in time, as a large white air-talisman appeared before Yu Xuan, causing a fierce wind to blow about, swirling their hair and robes.
"A-Lian..." Yu Xuan began as he held up a hand, and several gold qi needles appeared to surround him, hovering in place. "I'm not powerful enough to eliminate the dark flame, but I'll make you an endless promise...
"As long as I draw a breath, I'll never let him have his way!"
And with that, he directed the the needles to stab into him from different angles, making him spew out a flood of black blood.
"A-Xuan!!" Feng Lian leapt forward in protest, but once again, she was repelled by his crystal shield. "A-Xuan!" She cried out to him, but he didn't seem to hear her.
The gigantic shadow of a large monstrous demon rose behind him, choking the air with an impossibly dense demon aura, and Yu Wang's loud demonic voice echoed in protest,
"No!!!"
But Yu Xuan simply spread his arms open in surrender as wraiths of black aura streamed out of him from the needle points, pouring into the talisman.
He gritted his teeth in pain and blood poured from the sides of his lips as the dark flame was finally wrenched out of his body, turning his hair a brilliant white.
There was a massive explosion which would have surely destroyed everything around, but the now-pulsing air talisman drew in all the damage.
Then it folded in on itself, forming two vaguely transparent orbs, each with a black flame dancing within it. The orbs spun around each other for only a moment, and then shot into the skies in two different directions.
It was the Sealing technique Yu Xuan had prepared to split his consciousness, but he had now used it to seal Yu Wang away, sending him to two far-apart places.
Feng Lian stood in utter shock as the crystal shield faded away, along with the remnants of Yu Xuan's aura.
Her Phoenix feather floated down to her hand and she dropped to her knees limply.
Yu Xuan was now truly gone...
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Feng Lian remained kneeling there for almost an hour.
But as she silently wept, she was suddenly taken over by a vision.
At first it was familiar...
Yu Xuan broke through the border, turned to a black snake, and slithered into Sky Realm, stopping to drink water at the BeiDong river.
But surprisingly, no Feng Lian ever appeared before him in the vision!
Instead, Yu Xuan immediate sought out the largest library in Sky Realm... Sky Palace.
But the Sky Emperor had sensed him after some time.
Zhurong Sheng's hatred had led him to capture and endlessly torture Yu Xuan, telling the the truth of how his mother had been captured and abused to give birth to him.
"An evil seed like you shouldn't exist!" Zhurong Sheng had said. "A powerful dragon born to the Demon Lord, yet daring to possess the blood and aura of Sky Realm's Royal Family...!"
Finally, Zhurong Sheng had killed Yu Xuan.
However, Yu Xuan's dark flame flared stronger than ever after his death, and he awakened, his hand instantly closing around Zhurong Sheng's throat.
"My dear 'uncle'..." Yu Xuan calmly began. "All my life, my mother's Immortal blood made me a target of endless scorn in Shadow Realm, and I've never known the littlest sliver of love from my own father!
"My quest for knowledge kept me going, so I sought to enter Sky Realm, but after trying so hard to come here, I'm scorned by my mother's family as well...?"
The Yu Xuan who had awoken from the ashes was filled with only hopelessness and hate, and after killing Zhurong Sheng that day, he went on to mercilessly destroy the Three Realms...
Feng Lian gasped awake from the odd vision and a spatter of blood sprayed from her lips.
These visions were a side-effect of forcefully reading certain the stars without an edict, especially the Sky Emperor's Star.
The more these visions appeared, she would lose thousands of years off her lifespan, and for the past thousand years, she had been forced into numerous unwelcome glimpses of the past and future.
This time, however, she had witnessed a possible past that had never happened, and a sudden understanding settled in her heart.
Yu Xuan had originally been destined to destroy the Three Realms!
And her Love Tribulation was nothing more than Fate's way of derailing the Calamity...
Fate had deliberately set Feng Lian on Yu Xuan's path, preventing him from approaching Central Sky Realm.
Being a phoenix, she would first control him with her feather.
Then she would keep the dark flame at bay with her purging techniques till Yu Xuan was strong enough to control it himself.
By then, Yu Xuan would love Feng Lian so much that he would willingly sacrifice anything, including his own life, to suppress the dark flame.
Yet the tragedy remained inevitable...
The Sky Emperor had still acted on hatred, letting the dark flame loose and leading to the demon war.
Yu Xuan's love had pushed through and he indeed gave his life to stop Yu Wang and lock him away with the Split-Consciousness Seal, now known as the 'Demon Seal'.
However, the seal would not last forever...
The last thing Feng Lian had seen in the vision, was that Yu Wang would rise again!
Yu Xuan's seal had bought the Three Realms half a millennia of peace.
But then a certain person appeared.
A strange individual who's star had no prior thread of existence...
An individual who should not exist, and this person was destined to release Yu Wang.
Zhurong Fen...!
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