mtl008 Chapter 917: Immortal Domain Restoration: Xiao Bei’s Difficult Choice
Chapter 917: Immortal Domain Restoration: Xiao Bei’s Difficult Choice
The bronze fragments of the Dragon God Altar were still burning in the air, and Xiao Bei's dragon scales were scratched with fine blood marks by the star sand splashed when he fell.
Bei Li's body temperature in his arms was dissipating as his fingertips became transparent. The drops of blood she coughed up rolled onto Xiao Bei's clothes, and each drop reflected the collapse of the pillars of heaven in different directions.
The Eastern Azure Dragon Pillar was hollowed out by the black fog, and the Western White Tiger Pillar was covered with spider-web-like cracks.
“Dang—”
The gilded bell on Beili's wrist slipped to the ground and rolled to the side of the half-broken sundial.
Xiao Bei's dragon horn suddenly felt a sharp pain, and he saw the scene of the Xuanwu Pond three hundred miles away emerging on the surface of the bell: the left eye of the Xuanwu statue guarding the bottom of the pond was oozing scarlet liquid. That should have been the impregnable water vein hub of the fairyland.
"Brother Xiaobei's eyelashes are shining again."
Bei Li's pale fingertips stroked his brow bone, and the bronze light particles condensed into solid form under her touch, which turned out to be a broken chain of cause and effect.
"This time it's the fate of the Star Lord Siming..."
She suddenly coughed violently, and the Nine-Turn Glazed Hairpin in her hair shattered, and the Moon Soul Stone embedded in the hairpin rolled deep into the crack in the ground.
Xiao Bei's dragon tail unconsciously wrapped around Bei Li's waist, and the sparks flying from the friction of the scales illuminated the area within a radius of ten feet.
When the sparks touched the suspended gravel, they turned into golden runes, barely supporting the tilting Langya Immortal Mountain.
He could feel that Beili's immortal bones were resonating. Every time a new crack appeared on the celestial pillar, the ancient divine pattern on the butterfly bone on her back would go out.
"Don't frown just because I'm coughing up blood." Bei Li used his blood-stained sleeve to wipe the sweat off Xiao Bei's forehead, but the bloodstains drew half a star map on his skin.
"Look, the ground vein corresponding to the Tianji star..."
She suddenly groaned, and her fingertips dug deeply into Xiao Bei's arm. The green light that erupted from the place where the two were connected temporarily stabilized the cloud steps of the South Heaven Gate.
Xiao Bei's pupils suddenly shrank into vertical lines.
He saw more strange visions emerging from the blood mist that Beili had spit out: the Xuanshuang Pavilion's treasured sword was broken into three pieces, the Yaochi's twelve-level lotus platform was fading, and even the chaos barrier outside the thirty-three heavens had strange ripples appearing - as if something was chewing outside the barrier.
"We must go to Xuanwu Pond." Xiao Bei dug his dragon claws deep into the ruins of the altar, and the blood beads in his palms automatically condensed into seven hexagram sticks. "But your photoretrospective syndrome..."
He suddenly fell silent in the middle of his words, and the heart-protecting lock worn around Bei Li's neck suddenly made a cracking sound, and the memories sealed in the lock core from three thousand years ago began to overflow.
Those fragments of memory turned into streams of firefly-like light, reflecting the image of Beili locked in the ice coffin when they first met.
At that time, Xiao Bei was not yet a Dragon God, but a young cultivator who had accidentally entered the forbidden area. He used half of a broken sword to break through the black ice that had sealed her for a hundred thousand years.
"It's my turn to wait for you this time." Bei Li suddenly grabbed Xiao Bei's wrist and pressed the divination stick in his palm against his heart.
The hexagram stick penetrated the ethereal skin and directly touched the immortal core, making a clear sound like the collision of chimes, "Remember?
Last time in Guixu…” Her smile was filled with blood foam, and the cinnabar mole at the corner of her eye suddenly fell off, transforming into a red lotus fire that burned their clasped hands.
Xiao Bei's reverse scales suddenly became hot.
Of course he remembered the catastrophe three hundred years ago. In order to block the soul-destroying thunder for him, Beili's immortal core shattered into nine hundred pieces and scattered across the three realms.
At that time, her body was also in this ethereal state, but she stubbornly refined her life-saving magic weapon into a tracking compass to guide him to collect the fragments.
"The ground veins in the southeast are the most abnormal." A black dragon pattern moved on Xiao Bei's spine, and the air behind him twisted into a water mirror, reflecting the collapsing map of the fairyland.
The golden lines representing the spiritual veins are constantly disappearing with Xuanwu Pond as the center. Every time one disappears, a strand of silver appears at the end of Beili's hair.
When the eighth golden line went out, Beili suddenly broke free from his embrace.
She staggered and held onto the half-broken dragon pillar. Thirty-six strings flew out from her sleeves and wrapped around her body, forcibly preventing herself from becoming transparent.
"My photoretrospective syndrome and the existence of the immortal world have the same origin."
She plucked the strings with her fingertips, and each string affected the vibration frequency of a certain pillar in the sky.
"Look, when I play the note of zhi, the flames of the Suzaku feathers will..."
"Don't be so stubborn!" Xiao Bei's roar shook off the bronze tiles on the top of the altar. When the tiles fell to the ground, they turned into tortoise shells and revealed hexagrams.
He stared at the change of "Zehuo Ge", and his dragon tail slapped the ground anxiously, shaking up countless star sands carrying fragments of memories - each grain of star sand was a moment they had experienced together.
Bei Li suddenly groaned and fell to his knees, all the strings on his zither breaking.
The broken strings didn't fall, instead hovering in the air, forming an incomplete constellation map. "At three quarters past the hour of Xu..." Her bloodstained lips brushed Xiao Bei's ear. "The spiritual tide at the bottom of Xuanwu Pond will subside for half a quarter of an hour. That's the perfect time to rebuild the water veins..."
Xiao Bei's dragon horn suddenly made a tearing sound, and two clusters of green flames ignited from the tip of the horn.
This is a warning from the Dragon God bloodline, meaning that a hub that maintains the three realms is about to collapse.
He saw his own reflection in Beili's pupils - it was no longer the mighty ruler of the fairy world, but a wandering man with frost and snow between his brows.
When the tenth string turned into a point of light and dissipated, Xiao Bei suddenly pressed the dragon horn against Bei Li's forehead.
This was the dragon race's most solemn oath-taking ceremony, where shattered dragon scales mixed with divine blood formed a seal. "I'll use this reverse scale as proof." His voice was hoarse, as if worn by the grit of time and space. "Now it's your turn to wait for me."
Beili's tears finally fell, and the teardrops formed ice crystals in mid-air. Each ice crystal reflected their appearance at different times.
When the last piece of ice spike touched the ground, Xiao Bei's figure had already turned into a dragon-shaped golden light and rushed towards the southeast.
The protective energy he left behind condensed into nine phantom golden dragons, which coiled around the altar to form a protective formation.
"Be safe..." Beili murmured to the dissipating golden light, and a sweet taste suddenly surged in his throat.
What leaked out from between her fingers covering her mouth was not blood, but gleaming fragments of laws.
These fragments automatically arranged themselves into the disasters that Xiao Bei would encounter along the way, but they suddenly combusted when the signs of the third thunder disaster appeared.
Three hundred miles away, Xiao Bei felt a sudden pain in his heart, and his dragon claws almost tore the floating island in his path to pieces.
He looked back at the direction of the altar which had become a red dot, and suddenly realized that the shadow of the golden dragon protecting his body was fluctuating violently.
This fluctuation is different from ordinary attacks. It is more like... someone is trying to communicate using the long-lost ancient formation language.
The clouds above Xuanwu Pond were cracked into seven star-like marks. When the dragon-shaped golden light that Xiao Bei transformed into penetrated the water curtain, the scarlet liquid that seeped out from the bottom of the pond had already overflowed the water-controlling stele.
Elder Xuanfeng's crane cloak was covered with hexagram crystals. He was inserting his whisk into the cracked right eye of the Xuanwu statue, and each silver thread extended into a chain to suppress the water veins.
Thirty-six formation flags were suspended under Lingxuzi's feet, and the runes flowing on the flags formed a delicate balance with the speed of blood seeping from the bottom of the pool.
"The Dragon God has arrived, and Tianshu has returned to its place." The three silver threads of Elder Xuanfeng's whisk suddenly broke, and the turbid air gushing out from the broken parts condensed into a ghost face.
The old man calmly bit his fingertip and flicked the blood droplet towards Xiao Beilong's horn: "I have waited for this soul-splitting curse for two incense sticks - only the Dragon God's reverse scale can break it."
Xiao Bei's dragon tail swept away the foul ghost face that was rushing towards him, and the scales on his forehead reflected the changes at the bottom of the pool five hundred feet deep.
The scarlet liquid that oozed out was not blood, but turbulent flow of space and time wrapped in broken scales.
He transformed back into human form and landed at the center of the formation. The moment his toes touched the ground, dragon patterns appeared on the 36,000 water-suppressing stones at the bottom of the pool.
"There is still half a quarter of an hour left for the spiritual tide to calm down." Lingxuzi suddenly spoke, and the formation flag in his hand turned into an eight-diagram compass.
His sleeves fluttered, revealing the dense markings of abacus on his forearms. These were the backlash from continuously deducing the mysteries of heaven. "I need to suppress seven bleeding points simultaneously, but..."
"But you missed two places." Xiao Bei pressed his dragon claws on the center of the compass, and twelve golden lines suddenly shot up into the sky from the bottom of the pool.
The ends of five of the golden threads were wrapped around Beili's hair - she actually used the strings of her zither to send her immortal power across three hundred miles.
Only then did everyone realize that half a fragment of a glass hairpin was hidden in the dragon pattern on the surface of each water-suppressing stone.
Elder Xuanfeng's white eyebrows suddenly ignited with green Taoist fire, which was a sign of the deduction reaching its extreme.
He waved his hand to cast a soundproof barrier, his voice trembling, "The Dragon Queen's retrospective disease... perhaps it's a backlash on behalf of the Immortal Realm?"
The dragon pattern on Xiao Bei's back suddenly became ferocious, and the water in the pool formed a whirlpool under his feet.
An ice crystal emerged from the center of the vortex, containing the fragments of the law that fell when Beili coughed up blood.
"The karma caused by the shifting of the twenty-eight constellations should have been dispersed among all sentient beings in the three realms."
He swept his sword across the surface of the ice crystal, reflecting the image of Beili using the strings of a zither to mend the cracks in the pillar of heaven.
"She changed the trajectory of divine punishment."
The compass in Lingxuzi's hand suddenly exploded into golden powder, and the dust formed a three-dimensional star map in the air.
This usually taciturn formation master showed surprise for the first time: "Using love as the guide and the immortal core as the furnace?
This is an ancient forbidden technique..."
"So your formations need to be changed."
Xiao Bei's robes moved without wind, and all the water-retaining stones at the bottom of the pool turned over in response.
The black totem on the back unexpectedly transformed into coiled dragon patterns, and the causal chains replaced by Beili jingled between the cracks in the stone: "Use my reverse scales as the center of the formation. When the spiritual tide arrives, activate the inverted universe formation."
Elder Xuanfeng's whisk completely turned into a point of light, but the old man clapped his hands and laughed:
"No wonder when Guixu collapsed three hundred years ago, the hope for life I predicted was a ball of warm mist—it turned out to be the Dragon Queen's love tribulation that transformed into the hope for life for all living things!"
The moment the repair formation was activated, a strange sound like a baby crying suddenly came from the bottom of the pool.
The first spiritual tide was dyed black before it took shape. What was floating in the tide was not spiritual energy, but cursed runes wrapped in spikes.
The center of Xiao Bei's Ni Lin formation burst out with red-gold light, but wisps of black air were mixed in the light.
"Southwest Kan position!" Lingxuzi suddenly shouted, and the remaining formation flag in his hand turned into a silver sword.
The place he stabbed was exactly the projection of one of Beili's strings, and swarms of blood bats poured out of the crack torn by the sword energy.
The fate of Xiao Bei and Bei Li was clearly engraved on these bat wings.
The green flames from Xiao Bei's dragon horns surged, and the scene of Bei Li blocking the disaster for him three hundred years ago emerged in the flames.
He crushed the blood bats that flew towards him with his bare hands, only to find that each bat's corpse transformed into a barbed chain that wrapped around Lingxuzi. "It's not a curse, it's backlash."
He waved his sleeves to shatter the chains, and the dragon blood dripping onto the marks on Lingxuzi's abacus ignited blue flames.
"Someone has tampered with the causal relationship between our lives."
The second spiritual tide followed, and this time a translucent human figure emerged from the tide.
The protective aura of Elder Xuanfeng was penetrated by the figure, and seven blood holes instantly appeared on his Taoist robe.
The old man staggered and made hand gestures: "It's the lost Soul Devouring Shadow Guard... Be careful they touch the Life Lamp!"
The shadow of a golden dragon appeared behind Xiao Bei. The moment the shadow's sharp claws tore the shadow guard apart, the shadow of Beili's heart-protecting lock suddenly appeared on his chest.
Among the memories that overflowed from the lock core, there was a scene where he and Elder Xuanfeng discussed Taoism in Guixu - this was a past event that should have been known only to the two of them.
"Lingxuzi, Zhenwei Kun Palace!" Xiao Bei shouted with a dragon's roar, and the water-retaining stone at the bottom of the pool moved accordingly.
When the formation master inserted the silver sword into the new formation eye, the water level of the entire Xuanwu Pond began to flow backward strangely.
Those soul-devouring shadow guards twisted into runes in the backflow, spelling out an ancient seal script that made Elder Xuanfeng's eyes tear up - it was exactly the Taoist name of his master before his ascension.
The mysterious force's third counterattack came without any warning.
Countless pale arms suddenly stretched out from the bottom of the pool, each hand holding half of the chain of cause and effect.
The center of Xiao Bei's Ni Lin formation made a sound of tearing silk, and three of the strings of the zither that Bei Li sent from three hundred miles away broke.
The most terrifying thing is that those arms are not grabbing the flesh, but the most profound memories of everyone.
Lingxuzi suddenly groaned, and the marks left by the abacus on his forearm were disappearing.
The formation master thrust the silver sword back into his own brow, using the sword's energy to lock the deduction memory that was about to be drawn away:
"Dragon God... these are the causal thieves... to cut them off, we need to..."
Xiao Bei's dragon tail swept out a crescent-shaped golden light, and all the pale arms were broken where the golden light passed.
But what gushed out of the fracture was not blood, but star sand with a fishy and sweet smell - the same source as the blood beads coughed up by Beili.
His pupils shrank to the size of a needle tip, and his scales suddenly left his body and flew towards the altar. Beili's scream could be heard three hundred miles away.
When the fourth mutated spiritual tide arrived wrapped in a thunderstorm, all the dragon scales on Xiao Bei's temples had stood upright.
He saw that what was floating in the center of the thunderstorm was not lightning, but Beili's fingertips that were becoming transparent.
Those fragments of laws that had flowed out of her body were now reorganized into strange Dao patterns in the thunderstorm of heavenly punishment.
"It's not a punishment from heaven." Xiao Bei's dragon claws dug deep into the rock at the bottom of the pool, and the magma he grabbed condensed into a blood-colored hexagram in the air.
"Someone is using her photoretrospective syndrome as a pretext..."
The hexagram of "Mountain Fire Ben" shown on the fortune stick suddenly burst into black flames, and what emerged from the fire was the ice coffin where they first met.
A bloody palm print appeared on the inside of the coffin lid at some point.
Elder Xuanfeng's Taoist cap exploded with a loud bang, and his white hair stood up like silver needles: "This old Qiankun Mirror!" The surface of the bronze mirror he took out from his arms should have reflected the real situation at the bottom of the pool, but now it showed Beili strangling his neck with the strings of a zither at the altar.
What’s even more strange is that there is no cinnabar mole at the corner of Beili’s eye in the mirror.
Xiao Bei's reverse scales suddenly let out a sharp scream, and a red beam of light rose from the direction of the altar three hundred miles away.
The nine protective golden dragons emerging from the beam of light were twisting into snake shapes, and each dragon scale turned into a fragment of the glass hairpin in Beili's hair.
The protective formation he left for Beili was now draining the power of her immortal core.
"What a trick of reversing cause and effect." Xiao Bei laughed in anger, and the green flame burning on the dragon's horn turned into dark purple.
He tore open the pale arm that was absorbing Lingxuzi's memories with his bare hands, and wrapped the causal chain he pulled out around his wrist: "Lingxuzi, change the formation to the Nine Star Devouring Formation!
Elder Xuanfeng, please use the Qiankun Mirror to look at yourself three thousand years ago!
Before the last word fell, wings of light suddenly spread out from Xiao Bei's back.
These are not the wings that the dragon race should have, but the wings that Beili has built for them over the years.